I haven’t gone to church for months, so in trying to feel good about myself, I decided to do the next best thing — microfinance someone. You could say that a microfinance is like a venture capital that you invest in a business, but really it is more of an investment opportunity where your money can be used again and again to help the poor get off their feet and attain financial freedom. In other words, microfinance is a glamour word for what it actually is — a donation (I know I’m oversimplifying its actual meaning, but that’s what I wish it should be anyway).

I heard about Kiva.org through my favorite daytime show, Oprah, when they were interviewing Bill Clinton, and he in turn introduced the Kiva founders, a couple named Matt and Jessica Flannery. Kiva’s business model is very simple.
1) Kiva lenders collectively funds a listed enterpreneur of their choice with a loan.
2) The money is distributed to the chosen enterpreneur via Kiva’s microfinance partner.
3) The enterpreneur repays the loan to Kiva lenders.
4) Kiva lenders can re-lend the funds, donate them to Kiva, or withdraw them.
Like so.

I like the fact that Kiva supports PayPal payments where all my online income is going into, and so I did my first Kiva funding of USD25 (check out my Lender’s Profile while you’re at it). I know that isn’t much, but that’s what’s left in my PayPal since I haven’t been actively making money these past couple of months.

Still, it feels good knowing that I’ve helped made a change in someone else’s life. The best thing is that when Patricia manages to pay me back, I can do the whole good deed all over again, and that would be double my happiness! You know what karma says — what goes around, comes around.

For this reason, I am at this moment declaring that 25% of my monthly earnings from this blog (which translates to roughly around USD50 including ads and paid postings) will go to funding Kiva as well as another of my chosen non-profit organization. It’s highly likely it will be Doctors Without Borders, the group of people responsible for introducing the life-saving Plumpy’nut and end malnutrition deaths among infants and children in the Third World countries (! watched this amazing peanut-butter like food helping infants as young as 4 months old stayed alive through 60 Minutes). I just hope they accept PayPal ’cause I don’t have a cheque.

p.s. Will this make me feel better about not going to church? Unlikely

It’s a sad day for free speech in Malaysia. The government-run body MCMC has ordered one of the nation’s major ISPs, TMnet, to block the alternative news media Malaysia Kini. Malaysians may still access it, though, by following the tips posted at LiewCF.com.

I suppose that since Mahathir is no longer in power, his promise that the government will not censor the Internet is no longer relevant.

The Malaysian Government is turning into a totalitarianist.

Well, I just want to say this: thank you, Pak Lah, for your cowardice. I will be waiting for the day we turn into becoming another Myanmar.

I was staring at LornaTimbah.com a few moments ago thinking about which post I wanted to blog first, when I noticed something quite shocking on my Google toolbar — LornaTimbah.com is already ranked 4!

Thinking that there might be a problem with my toolbar, I double-checked with other PR engines as well as Firefox’s SEO plugin. My eyes did not deceive me.

After a while, I figured I know why it gained PR so fast. I hazard a guess that since I parked the domain to point to WebGrrrl.net for awhile, LornaTimbah.com somehow inherited this blog’s PR.

I know, I know, you’re saying that WebGrrrl.net is only PR2. In fact, WebGrrrl.net should rightfully be, and had been, PR4 at some point, but Google penalized my rank for something that I may or may have not been aware of (I’m still waiting on their answer to my reconsideration).

I may never know the real reason for this spike of PR, maybe some of you SEO experts out there could shed some light on this matter. I suspect that this rank may change back to 0 soon, but that’s OK.

That is what I have planned for my namesake domain. I decided to not repeat the same mistake I have made with WebGrrrl.net. Yes, I did a big mistake on WebGrrrl.net, by not sticking to a particular focus earlier on, and instead putting a little too much discussion on general matters.

Initially, I did intend to make WebGrrrl.net a place for my personal rants, but after a while I felt that it didn’t seem productive enough. After discovering and reading many of the problogging sites out there, I finally felt sure that I should put a focus on this blog, and therefore decided to share on matters of blogging, IT, and WordPress. Even then, I tend to stray off from time to time.

I hope LornaTimbah.com is a step up in terms of quality posts. The topics I covered there are also as dear to my heart as technology and blogging is. In any case, I thank all who’ve given your views concerning how I should use LornaTimbah.com.

Edit: I forgot to add that the theme I used in LornaTimbah.com is one that I built from scratch. Not too shabby, do you think?

This domain name is mine finally. Right now, it’s just a parked domain pointing to this blog, since I’m not sure what to do with it. I’m almost sure I’ll turn it into another blog (original, I know), and I’m definitely sure it won’t be filled with personal rants by yours truly.

What should I do with it? Does anyone has any recommendation?

I’ve been meaning to do this ever since I received an encouraging number of participants for this project through SocialSpark. Take a look at the top of this blog’s sidebar, and you will see a link called Take My Challenge. Read through the requirements before you request for one.

In case you missed my previous post concerning this topic, Take My Challenge is a project I started in SocialSpark as a way to build links to and from WebGrrrl.net. The way this works is that if you blog about and link to a post I made in this blog, I’ll respond in kind. Pretty simple stuff.

In a way, this also prevents me from going through a “writer’s block” — you know, when your brain goes through this weird spasm, and you suddenly don’t have any idea what to blog about? This is a pretty neat way for me to warm up my thoughts and start collecting ideas on topics I’m interested about.

I have tagged my posts as IBlogUBack on those related to this project, so if you’re interested and you like what you see, take my challenge now.

As SunEGrl mentioned in her post and as every EntreCarder knows, EC has partnered with SezWho, thus enabling you to earn EC credits every time you comment on other EC members’ blogs and vice versa. This partnership is a step up from just dropping your EC cards, and would require ECers be more proactive participants in each others’ blogs.

I first saw SezWho implemented on Andy Beard’s web site, and contrary to what SunEGrl claims, the SezWho plugin didn’t slow down Andy’s blog noticably as far as I know.

If you’re looking to increase your traffic and visitor participation, you should definitely try EntreCard and signing up for SezWho.

As for WebGrrrl.net, I don’t plan on installing SezWho any time soon, as my current mission is to increase traffic from search engines instead of just relying on social bookmarks. I’m already using 13 WordPress plugins in this blog, and I don’t plan on bombarding my site with anymore plugins unnecessarily.

I do foresee myself using SezWho on this blog in the future, mainly because it can be a wonderful boost of exposure for commentators on this site, as SezWho not only shows you the comments you made on this blog, but other blogs that have SezWho installed. Makes bloghopping more fun, too.

Sylvie Dixie e-mailed me 11 days ago giving me a heads up about WebGrrrl.net being featured as the Blog of The Day down at FuelMyBlog. It’s a blog-ego boost for me, although I’m not sure what my blog has that deserves the honor.

FuelMyBlog is a blog community slash directory where you can vote for your favorite (or least favorite) blog, enter competitions or simply chat with other FuelMyBlog members across the Internet. Although I visit the site only once in a while, it’s a fun place to get to know other bloggers especially those within your niche.

Thanks, FuelMyBlog. I would have blogged earlier about it if my Internet connection weren’t so unbearably slow.

Since my preferred browser has always been Firefox, I thought I’d give the ScribeFire add-on a try. I would have been posting away with joy if it were not for my lame-slow Internet connection which I have to bear for another week.

Having the tool taking over half of my browser space took a little time to get used to, but it’s worth it for the convenience it gives me. I’m especially impressed with the multi-blog site and platform support, making it easy for me to switch from one blog to another whenever I feel the need to post in either one of the sites I own. I also like the fact that when I need to add a link I have copied, ScribeFire grabs the URL and automatically inserts it in the Add a Link option, then all I needed to do is click OK and the URL’s part of my post’s hyperlink.

I may take Wanderer Thoughts’ recommendation to use DashBlog, though. The part that caught my eye with this tool is its integration with Twitter. Active Twitter users may find this tool convenient for their use.

Despite it being a paid post, I am exactly in the same wavelength as Serial Box.net on using SocialSpark to connect with your blog visitors and increase your web site traffic.

I did blog about my recent attempt to use the Spark ad feature as part of my back linking strategy. What I haven’t mentioned (no thanks to my Internet connection) is that my advertisement was yanked a few days ago by IZEA for violating its terms of service. Specifically, I requested that there is no use of NoFollow on the link back from the reviewers’ blogs to mine, and removing NoFollow is a big NoNo for SocialSpark. For what it’s worth, responses for that short two days since I put up my Spark (after changing the title a bit by promoting my PR) was quite encouraging.

I’m thinking of making the IBlogUBack challenge a permanent one, as soon as I can find the time to put up a page on it. Will keep everyone posted.