Australia Day and Aussie Bloggers Forum

Today, Australia is celebrating Australia Day. Although I'm in the Philippines to visit family, club members, friends, peers, and get some work done, my family in Adelaide will get to observe the celebration as it unfolds today.

One thing that I got to appreciate in Adelaide is the accessibility of Henley Beach which is almost like a 10 minutes drive from our home. It is a great place to relax and spend time with the kids (who is usually online in this school vacation season).

Blogging about one's experience in another country and establish relationship takes time. That is why I find the recently launched Aussie Bloggers Blog as a great opportunity. I'm sure that this will help me in discovering new blogs that can be added to Ratified Australia.

Apart from sharing information, there are also collaborative efforts in the forum to promote fellow bloggers such as the creation of an Aussie blogroll, write a guest post or be interviewed. There is also an incentive in participating. Those who make 20 posts in the forum will also gain access to the Events and Meets forum where one can participate.

Happy Australia Day everyone!

A quiet birthday

Yesterday, I turned another year older and my first time to celebrate it outside of the Philippines. Thanks to the Internet, I got my round of birthday greetings from relatives, friends, and contacts in the Philippines using Facebook, Twitter, Friendster, Yahoo Messenger, Google GTalk, email, text messages, among others. Mike and Tonyo also blogged about it. Many thanks to all of you for remembering.

My birthday, as in the past few years, is usually celebrated by having a family dinner at home. Last night, we went to a Vietnamese restaurant near Adelaide. The food was not as great as I experienced last September. I think I'll be better off cooking next year.

The year 2008 will be interesting. I'll spending nearly 1 month alternately between Australia and the Philippines. My trip to the Philippines this month is something that I look forward to. In addition to taking care of the household and meet relatives, I'll be able to catch up with club members, peers, friends, do trainings, meet clients, and association peers.

I don't usually have a birthday wish. Although for this year, here is what I'm hoping to achieve (at the minimum):

• For the blog ad network, have 100 active participating blogs.
  
• For the writer's network, have 20 reliable freelancers.
• Maintain 100 active club members.
• Publish 1 to 3 books/e-books.
• Study.
  

There are other aspirations that I can't publish at this time. However, if I achieve them, I'll likely blog about it.

Aussie Blogs in Entrecard

One of the communities I got the chance to join lately is Entrecard. This site allows you to do the following:

• Each time you visit a blog that has the entrecard widget, you can drop a card that earns both of you 1 advertising credit.
• You can use this credit to place ads to other participating blogs. Once approved, your 125x125 ad will appear for one day. They can also do the same to your blogs.
• I have a small ongoing project where I give away 100 entrecard credits a week. It is also meant to help bloggers looking for topics they can blog about.
  

Some of the things I've done with this system are as follows:

• Instead of home pages, you can opt to promote a specific blog post especially if you are running a contest, activity, or have a feature article that is worth promoting.
• Cross advertise. If you have a several blogs, you can opt to have blogs cross advertise with each other especially when you just joined and the credit required is still low.

There's not too many Australia-theme blogs in Entrecard at the moment. This is what I found so far and through Lani, noted as well those that have their shared their blogs in the Aussie Bloggers Forum.

• Tasmania's Journal of Discovery
• ProBlogger
• A.K.A Mum
• Angel Psychic Blessings
• Discovering Australia
  
• Swollen Pickles
• DigitalBurn
• MotorDude
• The Original Mx5
• NotJustMama
• Schwoit
• A Roaming Aussie Mum
• On Blogging Australia
• Blogging Sueblimely
• My Radical Blogs
• My Big World of Crap
• Lightening
• Alive
• Blogging Personal
• Amys Digi World
• Leopard Tricks Tips and Tools
• Our Great Southern Land
• Scarlet Words
• Television Adverts at Duncan's TV Ad Land
• The Blog Link
• Beauty Banquet
• Adelaide Green Porridge Cafe
• Home of Slightly Cracked Dreams
• Socko's Spot
• Telling It Like It Is
• Josh Sharp design
• Get a Real Blog
• Picklebums
• The Tall Poppy
• Abundance Highway
• SultanaBlog
• Bambino Ezekiel
• Ben Barden
• Insight of Nothingness
• The Australian Drug Blog
• Servant of Chaos
• Mummified Times Five
• My True Story
• Secretely
• Snoskred
• Trainee Trader
• Wish Washy
• Andrew Messer
• Michael Talk
• Michael Aulia
• Comfort Joy Designs
• Tim Christie Freelance Photographer
• The Metaverse Journal
• Hobart Daily
• Lightening's Blogworld
• Secluded Habitat
• Dipping into the Blogpond
• Aussie Bloggers
• Dutsji
• DietMe!
• Mrs. Sparrow
• A Guide to Affiliate Marketing
• What a Load of Bullshit
• Magneto Bold Too
• Pen-Pusher
• Stuff to Get
• Buffy's Blog
• Make Money Blogging with Thomas Sinfield
• Down Under
• I'm a Myrtle
• Lily's Life
• Textual diarrhoea
• Michael's Tumblr
• 5 minutes food
• The Nook of Oz
  

Hope to see more Aussie and Australia theme blogs. Will update this once I found another one. I also urge you to check out Andrew's list.