Miscellaneous Ramblings – 8/24/2007

Most Liveable City In The World

For the who knows how many years in a roll, Vancouver has once again won the title of the most livable city in the world by the Economist Intelligence Unit global liveability rankings. The ranking assesses living conditions in more than 125 cities around the world by looking at nearly 40 individual indicators grouped into five categories: stability; healthcare; culture and environment; education; and infrastructure.

The survey gives a rating of 0%-100% and judges a city with a lower score to be the more attractive destination. A rating of 20% is where real problems are seen to begin – anything over 50% places severe restrictions on lifestyle. Vancouver is the most attractive destination, with a liveability index of just 1.3%. Directly behind Vancouver was Melbourne, Vienna and Perth. Toronto (ranked #5) was the only other Canadian city in the top 10.

Ideas for the Next John Chow Ad Contest

Tim Schroeder at eMonetized thought it would be a good idea to raffle off his sponsorship button. He was going to offer tickets at $10 each. However, he later discovered that raffles are technically only allowed for charities and non-profit organizations unless they are free.

Tim is now looking at other ideas for a John Chow ad contest. One of the idea is to give the button away for free! Considering the button cost $500 per month, that’s very generous of him.

Sponsor Button Performance Numbers

Speaking of ad buttons, Zac Johnson made a post giving the numbers he’d received on his Zactoon button.

According to Google Analytics, initial stats show a little under 400 clicks have been sent over since the new design went live, which went live on Aug 22. Stats also show the average referral from John Chow views 2.24 pages and spends an average of 8:58 minutes on the blog.

Four hundred clicks in less than two days. Not bad at all. Zac is looking for someone to make him a new ad button. If he uses your button he’ll send you a free “Damn It Feels Good to be a Super Affiliate!” t-shirt. Speaking of which, how come he hasn’t sent me a shirt yet?

Make Money Online by Blogging for Someone Else

Bob Buskirk is looking for some bloggers to help him run Think Gaming and Think CE. If you are interested in writing news they require one post per day. If you are interested in writing original content they require 2 posts a month. These are paid positions. For the blogger who just wants to write and not worry about all the other stuff associated with running a blog, this may work out well.

What Do You Mean You Only See The Header?

For those who are complaining that the header on this blog is too big, you have to look at it through the eyes of my theme designer, Nate Whitehill. This is what he see when he looks at his monitor. Click on the image for the full resolution screen shot.

screenshot2560×1600_small.jpg

The problem I see is Nate has only one 30″ Apple Cinema display. They’re only $1,800. Go grab another one and get some dual monitor goodness happening! Hmm, maybe that can be the next contest giveaway. BTW – the current John Chow dot Com Million Dollar Wiki contest has been extended until September 30.

Doing The Potty Dance

To get your weekend off to the good start, I figure I would show you a video of Sally doing the potty dance at her Grandparents’ house. Enjoy!