Well wishes for a prosperous 2008!
  - Zander

Who knew it was this easy to become a millionaire? And here I’ve been doing things the hard way..

If you’ve been a regular reader of this blog, you’ve probably noticed that my posting frequency has slowed down considerably. My primary source of income is from my e-commerce site, and December has been a record month for us! Over the years, more people have started doing their Christmas shopping online. And I can’t say I really blame them, it’s absolute chaos on the roads right now..

We noticed that we were getting WAY more traffic than in years past, and certain product pages were getting thousands of hits each day. (And these were pages that didn’t have any sort of SEO done to them!) Google Analytics showed us that all of the traffic was coming from Google. Next, a trip to Google Webmaster Tools showed us that we were ranking #1 for the pages that were getting all of the traffic!!

So how did a bunch of pages without ANY search engine optimization end up in the #1 spots on Google? It’s called Google Universal Search. Universal Search is a new system that Google rolled out back in May 2007. It blends listings from its news, video, images, local and book search engines among those it gathers from crawling web pages. You’ve probably seen it over the past few months, as YouTube videos and Google News articles started showing up among your regular search results. What worked for us was that we were submitting XML feeds to Google Base (formerly Froogle), and they decided to include Base products in the search results. Since virtually no one uses Google Base, we completely dominated our niche!

[Edited January 5th: Apparently Google has decided to remove Base products from Universal Search, and traffic has dropped drastically..]

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m an adrenaline junkie.. I’ve bungee jumped from a 201-foot tower (A.J. Hackett in Las Vegas, NV), tried indoor skydiving (Flyaway Indoor Skydiving in Las Vegas, NV), did a 1200-foot parasail (Xtreme Parasail in Oahu, HI), and pushed cars to their absolute limits (Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving in Chandler, AZ). And currently, I’m training in preparation for climbing Mount Everest! (And trying to generate enough $$ to pay for it..)

So when Christmas came around last year, my girlfriend decided to feed into my addiction and get me something truely out of this world - An experience swimming with sharks! The Adventure Aquarium in New Jersey offers participants the chance to come within inches of sand tiger sharks, sandbar sharks, nurse sharks and barracuda. You then get to enter the Stingray Lagoon, where you get to swim with and feed dozens of stingrays..

For whatever reason, I put off doing it for months and months, but finally decided to do it yesterday afternoon. There were 4 participants in the group, along with an instructor (who was carrying a PVC pipe, presumably to hit the shark with if they tried to take a bite out of us). We spent a little of an hour in the actual water (at a chilly 70 degrees, even with a wet suit on), and I’d say it was the perfect amount of time - Not too long, but not too short. Start to finish, the whole thing took about 2 hours. For those that are wondering, the cost was $165 ($150 if you have a season pass to the aquarium), and you get free admission to the aquarium, as well as free parking. (They also give you a free t-shirt and souvenir photo). My only complaint was that anyone that came to watch you do the experience had to pay the $20 admission to the aquarium, even if they were just coming for the sharks).

It was a pretty cool experience. It’s relatively safe (they haven’t had any accidents “yet”), and it’s something you’ll remember for the rest of your life. So if you’re looking for something to get your blood pumping, I’d definitely recommend it!

A company called Terrafugia is currently developing a plane that transitions into a car. For a mere $148,000 you too can own a Transition. When completed in late 2009, it will have an average cruising speed of 115 mph, gets over 25 mpg in the air. It’s classified as a Light Sport Utility vehicle and weighs only 1320 lbs. It will be powered by a 100 hp, 4-stroke Rotax 912 ULS. This engine is FAA certified to run on both 91+ octane autogas as well as 100LL. The same engine is used to power the rear push-prop and front wheels, using a clutch-based transmission for power selection. The Rotax engine is certified to allow a 5% ethanol mixture.

Cargo and Dimensions
The vehicle will have 550 lbs of usable cargo weight in a 20 cubic foot space, which can be divided up among people, bags or fuel. It has a 20 gallon fuel tank which consumes about 120 lbs of fuel. Its maximum range is 460 miles (400 nm) when operating at 75% power, which is required to sustain 115mph cruising speed. When in folded position, the vehicle measures just 6.75 feet high, by 7.5 feet wide, by 18.75 feet long. No data on the wingspan was given, however it could not exceed approximately 35 feet due to the stated dimensions and mechanical operation of the wing through a single central hinge. The internal cabin space is 50 inches wide.

Transition’s wing loading is approximately 8.8 lbs per square foot, which is comparable to light sport or general purpose aviation aircraft. They currently have a working prototype wing design, however it is machine mounted and is not part of the actual aircraft. All of the pictures and images seen are either from a 1/5th scale prototype that was built and flown, or from computer generated animation.

The vehicle goes from 1-2-3, or from 3-2-1 via the push of a button. It must be stopped, engine off, to make the transition. The vertical stabilizers double as rear taillights and indicators. A pilot’s license is required to operate the vehicle, which will have a price tag of approximately $148,000. It will be available in late 2009, with a full-size prototype completed in late 2008. A 1/5th prototype has already been created and flown.

In order to operate the vehicle, the pilot (not the driver) will have to be FAA certified and hold a pilot’s license. Currently only a visual flight rating (VFR) ability is planned, as the on-board instruments will not be sufficient for a full Instrument Rating.

Source TGD

Ask any small business owner when their last vacation was, and the answer is inevitably the same - “What’s a vacation?” Trust me, I totally understand.. It’s tough to leave your business behind, but all work and no play actually makes you less productive. So even though I’ve got a mountain of work to tackle, I’m taking a much-needed vacation! (And we’re flying for free, thanks to all the points I racked up on my American Express Gold Card)

But the key is to truly “unplug” from your job. Just recently, I got a flyer from Carnival Cruises promoting their new wi-fi and cell phone service.. I’ve never understood why people would need internet access while they’re relaxing on vacation, but people are strange. The teenagers are probably checking their MySpace profiles 20 times a day, while Dad is checking his work e-mail every few hours. One of the things I like about cruises is that there are no annoying cell phones (and douchebags loudly talking on their Bluetooth headseats) - But it looks like that will change shortly! Soon you’ll see everyone laying out by the pool with their laptops and Crackberries in hand, and those same people will return to work the following week no less stressed than when they left!

That’s not my idea of a good time. So I’m off, completely unplugged from the world, with only one goal in mind - TO RELAX! No laptop, no cell phone, not even my iPod. I’ll pass the time with books and magazines (remember those?). See you guys in a week!