I finally received my Australian skills assessment results and I am happy to announce that it was approved. I received my approval letter last week on 15 April 2008.

It did take about 3 months but I am sure it would have been faster if not for the delays. If you’re reading this, send in certified true copies of documents instead of the originals. I had a few original copies of references letters and I submitted one of them to the Australian Computer Society and they were rejected. Extremely inflexible if you ask me.

Now that I have the green light to submit my application for the Skilled - Sponsored visa, I have about 3 application forms to fill up, AUD $2060 to pay to the Australian government for the application fee and some other paperwork to do.

In my process of applying for this visa, I have learnt that some of the common myths of emigration out of Singapore are absolutely untrue.

1. Myth no. 1: You must have a degree to emigrate to Australia. This is not true at all. I only have a Diploma and it is enough. If you don’t have formal qualifications, you need to prove to them that you have related work experience.
2. Myth no. 2: A migration agent is necessary and they can get your application approved faster. Rubbish. I went to a migration agent because I didn’t know what to do at first. Then the migration agent I went to told me which visa I can qualify for and what are the documents I need to prepare. However, I did not follow up with the migration agent because I did think paying him SGD $4000 for filling up forms was a good investment. Read the instructions carefully and do it yourself. The Australian government does not give applicants priority if they submitted through a migration agent. Save that money to move your stuff or pets over to your new country instead.
3. Myth no. 3: Your skills have to be on the “in demand” list of occupations. My chosen profession was not in the Migration Occupations in Demand List (MODL). That does not mean that they don’t want you.
4. Myth no. 4: Places like Melbourne and Sydney are “full” and it would be hard to migrate there. I am not so sure about this but I do know that there is a labour shortage problem in Western Australia. Common sense tells you that they need more people in that area. The Australian government is issuing an additional 6000 visa this year for skilled migrants. Obviously, they want and need more skilled people in Australia. If your plan is to migrate to the eastern side, get to Western Australia first and move to the east. Unless your visa is for a “designated area”, there isn’t any restriction on you to move around within Australia.

Even Lee Kuan Yew once stated that most Singaporeans cannot leave. This is nonsense. A more accurate assumption would be that most Singaporeans can leave but they won’t. You do not have to be the “top 20 to 30 per cent of educated Singaporeans have the skills and abilities to emigrate to anywhere in the world”.

I once believed I was not able to emigrate out of Singapore because I listened to friends and relatives who knew nothing about how to do it. You should not listen to these unqualified people like I did. Instead, go to immi.gov.au and check out the requirements yourself and visit a qualified Australian migration agent that has free consultation.

Tagged As: australia, Australian Computer Society, Migration Occupations in Demand List, MODL, singapore emigration

Categories: Vincent's Updates | No Comments »

I just upgraded my blog to WordPress 2.5. I really like the new admin interface but I found a few bugs with WordPress 2.5.

1. wp_list_pages function does not excluded sub pages from the exclude list. I posted this WordPress 2.5 wp_list_pages error at the WordPress support forum. I simply copy and pasted the wp_list_pages function code from WordPress 2.3.3 to replace the buggy WordPress 2.5 function.

2. Selecting a page for the home page works fine but it seems to mess up if I try to get the blog posts to show up in a non root folder like “/blog/”. I fixed this by installing the Filosofo home page control plugin, setting the “Front page displays” option to “your latest posts” at “Settings -> Reading”.

Overall, I really like this new WordPress. I feel it is great step forward for WordPress.

Tagged As: WordPress 2.3.3, WordPress 2.5, wp_list_pages

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I have never really understood how to use nofollow links until last night. I guess I must have been very slow to pick up this technique of preserving your Google Pagerank.

On Wikipedia’s entry on nofollow links:

Search engine optimization professionals started using the nofollow attribute to control the flow of PageRank within a website. This is an entirely different use than it was intended originally. Nofollow was designed to control the flow of PageRank from one website to another. However, SEOs realized that a nofollow used for an internal link should just work as well as nofollow used for external links. It makes sense, for example, to use nofollow for internal links to pages that are not relevant for search engines and only for visitors who are already on the website. This includes pages, such as “About Us”, “Contact Us”, “Terms of Use” or “Privacy Policy”. Matt Cutts, one of the initial designers of the nofollow attribute, encouraged this use of the attribute.

At the bottom of this snippet, there is a reference to an interview with Matt Cutts, in which he endorses the use of the nofollow link. Evisibility has a great blog post about nofollow tags with nice illustrations to explain the “Google Juice” theory.

Dan Thies has a free SEO book that explains the basics and advanced uses of the nofollow tag.

What I did for my own blog was to add the nofollow tag on these links:

• About Me
• Contact Me
• Copyright
• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy
• RSS Feed

I also made some minor changes to my blog by removing the “month chunks” plugin, which had a lot of links to my older blog archives. It would be interesting to see the effects of this minor change on the traffic of my blog and other sites.

Tagged As: nofollow, seo

Categories: Blog Updates, Search Engine Optimization | 1 Comment »

More reasons to dump Internet Explorer for Mozilla Firefox….

Internet Explorer 7 is so slow I can’t bear to use it unless I am testing my web sites. More information about this at ZDNet.

Categories: Vincent's Updates | No Comments »

This NetAudioAds (Voice2Page) thing is such a disappointment because I have not received any audio ads at all. I thought 1 February 2008 was supposed to be the official launch but it turns out that it was only a partial launch. I believe that should have been specified clearly beforehand.

NetAudioAds (Voice2Page) have hired Charles Heflin to market their business. I know Charles Heflin from his site SEO 20/20. I have his “Masterplan” ebook and I like most parts of it. However, I am very sceptical about anything Mr Heflin promotes because he has not paid some of his affiliates commissions and some of his work was allegedly copied from Caroline Bogart.

I know this because I am a member of his private forum and one of his affiliates by the name of Lawrence has been trying to contact Mr Heflin to get his commissions for promoting his products. No response whatsoever was made to Lawrence despite his various attempts to contact Mr Heflin, including posting a forum topic at the SEO2020 private forums.

Caroline Bogart issued a warning to Mr Heflin for using her work in his own work and passing it off as his own.

I am also put off by the way Mr Heflin treats his own customers in his forums by totally ignoring us. I tried to contact him to get a PDF copy of the Masterplan ebook because I lost my copy when my hard drive crashed. I also received no answer from him regarding my queries. However, if you email Mr Heflin about his latest promotions, he is quick to reply to your questions. Try asking him questions about “Pay Per Play” right now and you will get a prompt answer.

The integrity of Mr Heflin is very shady. I have waited months for this and now it is still in “testing mode”. If you say you’re going to launch something on a certain date, then do so. Don’t launch something and say we are not 100% ready as we are still testing things out. Luckily, Mr Heflin is only responsible for the marketing side of NetAudioAds (Voice2Page). If he’s in charge of the payments, we might not get anything like Lawrence.

Tagged As: Caroline Bogart, Charles Heflin, NetAudioAds, pay per play, SEO2020, Voice2Page

Categories: Advertising Revenue | No Comments »

Since today is the 29th of February, this is an opportunity for me to submit a post to rant on how silly our calendar systems can be. Most people on planet earth follow the Gregorian calendar, which I am not sure how and why it became an international standard. I find it extremely stupid that we have to add an additional day to a so-called leap year just to balance the days of the years.

Being a Chinese, I thought the older Chinese calendar systems were superior than the newer Gregorian calendar. However, a lot of feng shui masters disagree on the exact date of every year’s Chinese New Year, because some believe we should follow the Chinese Solar Calendar while others follow the Chinese Lunar Calendar.

The Chinese New Year is often referred to as the Lunar New Year or the Spring Festival. The problem I face with these 2 Chinese calendar systems is I can be considered to be born in the year of the Dog if I follow the Chinese Lunar Calendar or the year of the Rooster if I follow the Chinese Solar Calendar. This is because the spring season did not arrive when I was born according to the Chinese Lunar Calendar, which meant that it was not officially a new year yet. As a result, I feel out of sync with time and I can’t really tell people what animal sign I belong to unless I clarify which calendar you are referring to.

Last year, I discovered a superior calendar system - A calendar I believe should have been the current international standard rather than the Gregorian system. That calendar is the Mayan calendar and it is amazingly simple and perfectly organized.

There are 13 months in a year, 28 days in a month, 4 weeks per month, 7 days in a week and 1 day of renewal to celebrate the new year. The new year starts on 26th July on our Gregorian calendar. With a calendar like this, we won’t have nonsense like leap years and uneven months. Everything would be orderly and predictable and we won’t be out of sync with time.

I also found this free Dreamspeall Mayan Calendar software. It is really nice to look at and it displays all these mystical looking Mayan symbols and tells you what they mean.

This is how it looks like on my Windows machine:

Another thing that really bugs me is daylight saving. Fortunately, we don’t use it in Singapore. However, some states in the USA and Australia do and this is another way we become out of sync with time and out of sync with reality. We have to “lie to ourselves” to make believe it is a certain time when we know it isn’t true. It is not like the problems with the date isn’t enough and we have to screw up the hours of the day as well.

I believe my life would be much more organized if I didn’t have to use the Gregorian calendar. Maybe the world would be a better place if we use the 13-month calendar. However, I doubt this will happen any time soon as it would be a very radical change.

Tagged As: 29th of February, Chinese calendar, Chinese Lunar Calendar, Chinese Solar Calendar, Gregorian calendar, leap years, Mayan Calendar

Categories: Vincent's Updates | No Comments »

I just downloaded and installed Firefox 3 Beta 3. It is slightly faster than the version 2.0.x. I like it very much but I wish they could do the “font smoothing” effect like Internet Explorer 7 does. That would make the fonts look nicer and more readable.

Categories: Vincent's Updates | No Comments »

I submitted my skills assessment application to the Australian Computer Society in mid January. It should take about 4-6 days to reach Sydney, Australia by air mail but they received it and opened up my package at the end of January.

It seems like I missed out on 1 step - I forgot to certify true copies of my reference letters. I do not remember it was a requirement but maybe I overlooked it while I was reading the instructions. Any way, I had to visit a lawyer to get it certified and I mailed them back to the Australian Computer Society last week. They just acknowledged to me via email that they have received the documents.

This is kind of funny because I sent in a copied reference letter and an original reference letter. It seems like they do not accept the original reference letter. Very inflexible indeed. My skills assessment application should take about 12 weeks. I am hoping that it will be done by the end of April 2008 or earlier because the Australian visa application will take about 7 months.

A couple of days ago, the Australian government announced that they will be adding 6000 more visas for skilled workers. That is great news for me because I will have a higher chance of getting one of these visas!

Tagged As: Australia Migration, Australian Computer Society, certified true copies, reference letter, skilled migration, skills assessment, visa

Categories: Vincent's Updates | No Comments »

This is a nice article about Voice2Page from Wall Street Journal Online.

Using V2P Communications’ coming audio ads, which will pay blog publishers a 25% commission on ad revenue, a site that gets 2,000 unique visitors a day with an advertiser paying $14 per 1,000 plays would earn $7 a day, or $49 a week.

Let’s break this down into smaller chunks.

Visitors = 2000
eCPM = 25% x $14 = $3.50
Pay Per Play = $3.50 / 1000 = $0.0035
Earnings = (Visitors / 1000) x eCPM OR Pay Per Play x Visitors = $7.00

The eCPM is the net rate Voice2Page pays its publishers after it takes their cut. The eCPM rate is for 1000 impressions or plays. If you divide the eCPM by 1000, you get the net amount of money you should receive per impression or play. Multiply the number of unique visitors by the Pay Per Play rate, you get your estimated earnings. If your visitor stays on your site for longer periods, they might get another play and you earn from it too.

A $3.50 eCPM isn’t a lot of money. Some popunder ads pay this amount. I am still sceptical about Voice2Page. Let’s see how it goes when it is launched on 1 February 2008.

Categories: Advertising Revenue | No Comments »

I wrote a review on OnlyWire last August. Seems like they have gotten worse. I only see my Delicious working for me at the moment. The other social bookmarks that were supposed to be posted through OnlyWire never made it.

Categories: Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »