The closing ceremony to the Sydney Olympics ended with an artistic performance by the next hosting country. China and its main city, Beijing, will be hosting the Games later in 2008. The display that China put on was breathtaking. It felt, at the time, that having to wait for four years for China’s opening ceremony […]
Anja Merret
Anja Merret lives in Brighton, United Kingdom, having moved across from South Africa a while ago. She started a blog at the beginning of 2007 and is using it to try to find out everything important about page ranks, traffic and all things internet-marketing related.
Her soap-box material is the war in Iraq and anything that causes innocent people to get hurt. She also loves tech stuff, as an amateur only, and considers herself a Silver Surfer Gadget Girl Geek. Huh? Her musings may be found on http://www.anjamerret.com.
She has recently started a new venture, offering marketing advice to newbie business folk. It's especially for those who by necessity find themselves self-employed. Read more at: http://www.marketingfundi.com
Posted inGeneral
Let me try something controversial for a change
Recently I have been talking about more serious issues. It has been quite a wake-up call how readers can often be quite nit-picking and very ready to point out where one might have gone wrong. I truly appreciate feed-back, but it does make one hesitate to write again. I mean, who wants to be wrong? […]
Posted inBusiness
Lies — more lies — and then there are financial firms
A blogger friend posted a lovely short article recently with the title “6 Reasons Why We Lie”. All of his reasons were absolutely spot-on. However, his final summary was the best. He maintained that the fundamental reason why people lie is because it mostly works. I want to add to this: it mostly works when […]
Posted inGeneral
Immigrants: A threat or an opportunity?
North America, specifically the United States, has been a land peopled by descendants of Europe. At least, that’s how I perceived it to be. If you are ever in New York on St Patrick’s Day, check out the parade. It’s an endless procession of Irish descendants. The numbers could, of course, be attributed in part […]
Posted inLifestyle, Tech
Science fiction and the cellphone
Science fiction is not normally my first choice of reading material, unless of course it is about the trips through galaxy as described by a very funny writer called Douglas Adams. But I have been converted to the modern Cory Doctorow-style science fiction. Somehow his books seem to appeal to my vision of the future. […]
Posted inMedia, Tech
We are living in a free-love society
In a rather illuminating article in the latest Trendwatching brief, the discussion is about free love. It’s about businesses offering goods, services or experiences to consumers for free and making their money from other things. Prime examples that come to mind are the home printers that are dirt cheap but where you have to take […]
Posted inGeneral
What do we want from our life?
The American elections are quite interesting to outsiders for a change. Usually as a non-involved party, the endless primaries and the actual elections tend to be terrible yawn affairs. It’s normally time to cancel all newsletter subscriptions from the US. Not this time around. It’s good to see some of the younger generation engaging in […]
Posted inLifestyle
Let me count how many ways I love you
Apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning for the title line, which I creatively adapted from one of her poems. We have survived another frantic flower-buying, champagne-popping, pink-penguin-attack called Valentine’s Day. The retail industry, every year, lugs huge bags of money to the bank while gleefully chuckling at the foolish consumer who buys into the hype. In […]
Posted inLifestyle
We reward bad behaviour
Listening to the UK’s Classic FM today, a dramatic and thundering rendition of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto by the Berlin Philharmonic under the baton of Herbert von Karajan and pianist Yevgeny Kissin gave me goose bumps. It also reminded me of a recent article on Von Karajan in the newspaper. Celebrations of Von Karajan’s 100th birth-year […]
Posted inGeneral
Bullies-R-Us
The armed forces always believed that subordination of the troops to the command was essential. If there were strictly enforced rules of behaviour maintained, then the soldier next to you would be able to rely on you performing according to drill during the times when the battle made everything else unpredictable. At what stage does […]
Posted inNews/Politics, Tech
Bullies-R-Us
The armed forces always believed that subordination of the troops to the command was essential. If there were strictly enforced rules of behaviour maintained, then the soldier next to you would be able to rely on you performing according to drill during the times when the battle made everything else unpredictable. At what stage does […]
Posted inGeneral
Creativity is as important as the sciences
When I was at senior school I chose to take maths and physical science as my main subjects. I only did this because this made me appear intelligent and gave me a certain status. It also gave me four years of total hell and agony. Science was not for me. My option otherwise would have […]