I just found this story. Finally, it looks like Microsoft is beginning to get the picture about how you can’t sell expensive OSes like Vista Premium to 3rd World or Developing World Countries.

Microsoft Plans $3 Suite for Emerging Markets as Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates is launching a global initiative to bring educational technology to the developing world.

It goes onto say what will be included: As part of the new plan, Microsoft will offer a US$3 software package called the Student Innovation Suite, which includes Windows XP Starter Edition, Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007, Microsoft Math 3.0, Learning Essentials 2.0 for Microsoft Office and Windows Live Mail desktop.

BUT, and it’s a big ‘but’, it will only deal with governments and educational institutions. It’s not likely to be available on the street. You can read more about M$’s Unlimited Potential strategy here. Clearly, though, the pressure created by Linux, OLPC and some of the not-for-charity projects that are coming about are indeed putting pressure on M$ to do something. Also, the rampant piracy in some parts of the world is a problem in need of a solution.

Will this be enough? Comments, suggestions, and ideas? How would you tackle the problem?

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I don’t do this very often, though I should. I’m publishing some links to some interesting stories for you to check out this weekend. Once you read them, do please come back! So subscribe to our feed so you don’t miss anything!

Our first story is from Genius Types and highlights how talk really is cheap. Dealing with many different types of people from my professional, business and personal lives, I have learned how some talk and sound like savage guard dogs, or wise and knowledgeable types, only to discover that their actions didn’t live upto their own hype. A colleague, for example, who is typically late for appointments, and not just by the polite 5 or 10 minutes, regularly claims that s/he has no time for people who are late, has no respect for them either, and will not wait for them. Lately, I’ve come to judge people who do first, then talk about things later. Hence, I’ve told very few people about this blog, and how it’s really becoming something I love doing. Only about four people really know anything about it. I just don’t want to blab about things anymore. Genius Types Entry is called Don’t Tell Me What You Are Going to Do.

The second story is from a very new blog, called Self Made Minds, and focuses on Passive/Active income. There is quite a long entry that I’m composing now on this topic, one that I have been reminded of just in the past few months: How Long Will You Trade Hours for Money. In the article, you will find some examples of how to magnify your earning power instead of just having a 1:1 relationship: 1 hour of your time produces one unit of your income. And believe me, teachers, lawyers, McDonald’s workers, etc., we’re all in the same boat, albeit at different payscales.

The third story is more like a project article. It looks at software that will help you to manage private ads on your blog or website. OpenAds is the renamed software (used to be known as PHPADSNEW2.0). The article offers help step by step on implementing your first campaign on the advertising system. Naturally, this is an intriguing system but you have to be running your own server (hosted website, virtual host, or managed host) to be able to use this. Should be a good software to install and have fun with. I am considering its adoption for one of my client’s website some time within six months as his forum grows.  The article is entitled Managing Private Ads with OpenAds.

Do you have any suggested reading for this weekend? If you do, please link to this discussion.

I just did an analysis of my traffic over the past 30 days to see where it was coming from. Interesting reading. I discovered that nearly 88% of my traffic occurs from just these six types of sources. Let me explain what these types are.

1. Forum traffic provides about 13% of my total traffic. Forums are communities of people who share like interests. I’m a member of quite a few communities but I don’t always check in. Forumosa, Digital Point, Payperpost, Adsensechat, TESOLTeachers, Steve Pavlina’s forum, among others. I’ve joined other communities, too, but I can’t remember what they are! Typically, I include my web address in the profile section, but recently I started including the most recent postings as part of my signature file to generate interest.

2. Blogs of course provide a lot of traffic, too. About 13% but much of this comes from links in articles, blogrolls, and comment traffic. Backtracks also help. The blogging community is too big to really point to any significant blog traffic from one particular blog.
3. Direct traffic accounts for 20%, but I’m still trying to find out what that means exactly. Anyone?
4. Traffic Generators are sites like Blogmad and Blogsoldiers type websites which aggregate information about blogs and direct traffic in different ways. These account for 14% of the traffic to this blog. But Blogmad and Blogsoldiers also use a surfbar type method which displays the blog for a short period of time. They do generate traffic, and some visitors, but the quality of the traffic is poor. Typically, visitors only see the first page in the rotator script, and that’s it. Views per Visit are typically little over 1. I foresee shortly ending the website’s relationship with these types of website.
5. Technorati on the other hand is a blog directory and search engine website that really does generate better quality traffic. In addition, they help rank the blogs according to how many people have also linked to your blog. Technorati brought about 7% of the traffic to the blog.

6. Surprisingly, or not, search engine traffic brought large shares of the traffic, with the lion’s share going to Google search traffic. Nearly 20% of the traffic came from Google Search alone. Wow! I hadn’t done much to improve those rankings except the obvious stuff: linking, blogrolls, directories and postings. For the term “investorblogger.com” Google produces 16,100 hits… Mmm.

What activities do you use to generate traffic? Have you tried any of these? What worked for you? What didn’t?