Christmas in Ottawa

Christmas in Ottawa - Are you the one?

2006-03-28T13:35:00.000-05:00

Are you the one? If you are, this Christmas you may get tons of Christmas presents from your fans. Who is this person? Well, the Canadian Idol of 2006.

This year, we had Canadian Idol tryouts at the St. Laurent Shopping Centre on March 25 (Sat) and 26 (Sun). Good, no camping outside!

I work at the mall on Sundays. So, I saw Canadian Idol staff wore black T-shirt with big white bold printing of “ARE YOU THE ONE?” on. The staff also got $10.00 St. Laurent Shopping Centre voucher for lunch, free drinks and chances to meet the Canadian Idol-to-be before he or she was even picked.

How we can work for the Canadian Idol? One of the staff told me she is taking TV production. Well, people, you better take notes. If you still haven’t decide what to study at college, how about TV production?

Christmas in Ottawa - Suspicious email “Message from PayPal Customer Support: Account Violated (7KMM97392588V31931L0KM)”

2006-03-15T16:45:00.000-05:00

If I didn’t just switch my PayPal email address, I would have been tricked. Everyone please be very careful of suspicious email from fraudsters. According to PayPal website, PayPal will greet their customers with their first and last name or company name in their email.

It is so good that we are not at the Christmas shopping period. Otherwise, we would be very concern about other people trying to log into our PayPal accounts for some Christmas spending money. Of course, we do not like other people access to our accounts for any unauthorised withdrawal at all times.

Do you recognize this email?
Account Review Team identified some unusual activity in your account, one or more attempts to log in to your PayPal account from a foreign IP address.

IP Address: 80.53.1.130
Time: March 13, 2006 15:05:08 PDT
Country: Poland

IP Address: 80.53.255.174
Time: March 13, 2006 15:07:58 PDT
Country: Poland

IP Address: 141.85.99.169
Time: March 13, 2006 15:13:09 PDT
Country: Romania

IP Address: 141.85.99.169
Time: March 13, 2006 21:28:08 PDT
Country: Italy

IP Address: 195.61.146.130
Time: March 13, 2006 21:33:43 PDT
Country: Italy

After I forward the suspicious email to PayPal, I got a reply within 10 minutes to confirm it was a suspicious email. From the reply, PayPal suggested that we do not enter any information into website links with suspicious email. If we accidentally enter our information at any fake website, we should immediately log into our PayPal account and change our password, as well as our security questions and answers. PayPal also recommend that we contact our bank and credit card company immediately.

In the email, PayPal suggested that if we notice any unauthorized activity on our PayPal account, we should report it to PayPal by following the instructions below:

1. Log in to our account only from the PayPal website. Do not use links provided in any email.
2. Click on the Security Center link at the bottom of the page.
3. Click on the 'Unauthorized Transaction' link under the Report a Problem column.
4. Follow the instructions on this page in order to access the appropriate form.

Finally, PayPal recommend taking a few steps to protect ourselves from identity theft by:
1. Download the SafetyBar, a toolbar for Outlook and Outlook Express, which identifies known spoof emails.
2. Get eBay Toolbar with Account Guard which warns us when we are on a potentially fraudulent (spoof) Web site.
3. Frequently monitor our account for suspicious activity.

I hope you read this blog message before you visit any fake PayPal website. Good luck everyone, let’s not become another victim of fraudsters!!!!!

Christmas in Ottawa - Content, content and content

2006-03-15T16:39:00.000-05:00

According to the experts, the best way to get better search engine result is content of one’s website. And it is also the reason why people will visit and revisit a special site. My Christmas Countdown in Ottawa site is a time sensitive website. Well, people don’t want to visit it before or after Christmas time is understandable. People don’t celebrate Christmas will not come to my site. People who don’t like Christmas songs will not like to visit my site, either. Unless I change the theme of my website, I have to accept the low hit count during the year and hope for more visitors at Christmas season.

Christmas in Ottawa - My unexpected Google ranking

2006-03-08T21:49:00.000-05:00

Everyone wants his / her website to be the first site at any search engine result. I am no different. Driven by my curiosity, I googled my Christmas Countdown in Ottawa site. To my surprise, my site was number two on Google.com over 151,000 websites!!!!! Number one site was a web-ring I joined years ago.

Oh my God! How could it be? I didn’t update my site for years. How come? So, I typed the same 4 words - Christmas Countdown in Ottawa - to do Google Japan, Yahoo Japan and MSN Japan search. The result was unbelievable.

My Christmas Countdown in Ottawa site claimed the number one spot in Google Japan over 151,000 websites; the number one spot in Yahoo Japan over 91,300 websites and the number one spot in MSN Japan over 22,166 websites from world website search.

This is just too good to be true. What did I do to get this kind of excellent result? Well, I submitted my Christmas Countdown in Ottawa site to Yahoo and joined all the related web-rings I could found. Google and MSN Japan just happened to have my site listed.

Oh, in case you have never visited my Christmas Countdown in Ottawa site before, I also did my search on all the Japanese search engines because this site is a bilingual one written in English and Japanese.

Wait a second, with this unbelievable result, did I get tons of visitors to my site? The answer is NO. What I did was just some so-called experts would be able to help you – found keywords that nobody uses and made your site filled up with these keywords. Without other competing websites, of course, your site will be number one ranking in Google, Yahoo, MSN and more.

So, in order to get visitors to my site, I need to know the keywords they use for website search. What are the keywords they use? If I know, you will see me selling E-books for secrets of success.

Christmas in Ottawa - My website’s visitors, where are you?

2006-02-16T17:34:00.000-05:00

My Christmas Countdown in Ottawa site is not a website to sell stuff. Well, I shouldn’t be worrying about how many people will visit it. But it would be nice if hundreds or thousands of people visit my site daily.

So, after I created my first Christmas Countdown in Ottawa 2001 site, I followed advices to register my site to all search engines I knew. Then, I linked to all Christmas Web Rings I found. Third, I linked to two other diary sites to try to increase my site’s exposures.

I thought I got myself well prepared for tons of visitors. When I checked how many people came to my site, it was a shocking low number. I received a lot of traffic when all Web Rings’ owners checked on my site before they approve Christmas Countdown in Ottawa 2001 to join their Web Rings. After that, it looked like only my sisters, some of my friends and I visited my site.

In 2002, I tried to improve my website’s content to attract more visitors. But I still didn’t get that many hits. Now that I haven’t up-date my Christmas Countdown in Ottawa site for years, of course, no one visits it. The hit counter of this site is around 3,800 hits just like the hit count I had two or three years ago.

According to internet expects, one of the main strategies to increase traffic is to make sure your website or web page is on the first page of any search result. Or, preferably within the top three of any search result. Since I haven’t been getting any traffic, my site must be listed in search result number two millions, perhaps. When I did my own internet search for my Christmas Countdown in Ottawa site, I was extremely surprised for its ranking.

New blog in the block - Christmas in Ottawa

2006-02-15T06:58:00.000-05:00

Hello, everyone! Yes, yes, I know it is February now. I should talk about events like up-coming St. Patrick’s Day or Easter or anything else except Christmas. But Christmas is always a happy time for me. I love to sing Christmas songs at all times. Well, people working around me hate me for that, though. Ha, ha ha.

I think of Christmas now because I decided to renew my Christmas Countdown in Ottawa website. In 2001, I created my first website Christmas Countdown in Ottawa 2001. This site has daily Christmas songs to listen to / to sing-a-long with while counting down to the Christmas Day. It took me a long time to create this site. There are so many things I can improve in it, specially, I know more about how to create a better website. But I choose not to. I would like to see my improvement through various editions of my “Christmas Countdown in Ottawa” websites years after years.

In 2002, I tried to create two different Christmas Countdown in Ottawa websites - Christmas Countdown Web Site 2002 for January to November and Christmas Countdown in Ottawa 2002 for December. Well, a lot of things happened. So, the first one was only continued for several months. The second one has Christmas carols through out the Christmastide.

More unexpected things happened in 2003 to 2005. My Christmas Countdown in Ottawa website was not even been up-dated. Now, I want to start renewing my site to the 2006 edition. I would like to share joy and happiness through music with everyone. I wish everyone a safe, happy and healthy 2006.