With all the commotion lately about Net Neutrality, file-sharing laws, and related internet legislation regarding copyright protection and net citizen rights, you may have heard of the “Great Firewall of China.”

This government firewall has plagued the citizens of that country for the past few years, repeatedly censoring important world topics to the citizens of China, and been especially annoying to Google and other online advocates of free press and speech.

“Oh, you don’t need to read that…”

The Chinese government has taken it upon itself to block anything they decide is not acceptable to be read and browsed by their countrymen. The laws and stranglehold over their net citizens allow them to block websites from being accessed by any internet connection within their borders.

A glaring example of this practice is the fact that China, as a country…. BLOCKS GOOGLE. You know Chinese people love that their government does this for them. I mean, who uses Google nowadays?

Americans, prepare to be blocked

Now, in the same horrible fashion, the RIGHTS & FREEDOM of American net citizens are threatened as well.

The US Government wants to begin enforcing a bill that effectively undermine the freedom of the internet as we all know it. Without exaggerating, the Protect IP Act…. BREAKS the internet as we know it.

During a time when we should all be coming together to equalize things in the global economy and help spur the growth of things, it seems like a very broken approach that should not even be on the table for debate.

Help stop internet censorship legislation in the USA!

PROTECT IP Act Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

2011 was expected to be the most profitable and productive year of my life. Beyond just making money and growing my companies, I was not disappointed. I learned way more than I thought I would.

I was catapulted into a year of change by several life decisions I made last year and stuck with. This led me to experience a lifestyle I could have never imagined, before living it. I had finally figured out how to make serious money online, and had no idea how drastically it would change my life.

Things I had been building and putting together for years FINALLY came together, and are actually up and running and growing on a large scale. It’s a wonderful feeling, and I think I’ve learned more about business from this year of living than all of my schooling and study combined.

The advertising network, Chase Clicks, is starting to really catch on in multiple segments of the web. My lead generation service is integrated with it, and growing steadily as well. It’s super exciting on this end.

By establishing and growing a solid base of internet marketing platforms, I feel that I’ll have a reliable promotional channel for my future ideas and projects. I’m really looking forward to bringing a massive amount of exposure to my network of businesses and websites.

Unlike most other internet marketers, and online professionals, this is my full-time career and I haven’t had a “day job” or anything that resembles one in over 5+ years. Most of my time is spent dialing in campaigns, refining web properties, and improving things on the network in general.

I do this because it’s my passion, not because I’m looking for a quick payday. I would do this for free if I could! I seriously enjoy my work that much.

Before I started focusing exclusively on my own projects, I was busy designing websites and doing graphic design before it was trendy.

This can be a blessing and a curse. A blessing in that I’ve always been my own free spirit, and have complete freedom to do whatever I want… and of course a curse in that I spend ALL of my “free time” focused on how I can make more money, more effectively, and continue to grow my businesses.

Luckily, the longer I’m in the business world, the easier it seems to get. As things continue to build, network volume keeps growing and the word keeps spreading. I’m looking forward to working with a lot of new marketers and publishers over the next few years and building things up to an extraordinary level.

It’s official, the one and only Steve Jobs is dead.

It was announced on the Apple homepage with a full-page tribute to the company’s founder and technological innovator.

The man that pushed the tech industry, brought us the Apple II’s many of us played with as kids, the iPads and iPhones that brought Apple huge profits and pushed the world to embrace smart phones, and much much more, is gone.

If you haven’t seen Steve’s Stanford commencement speech, it’s a must watch. From it, one of my favorite quotes rings so true, even today. “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish”

The fate of this great man shows us all how short life is, and how much of a difference a single person can make.

Steve Jobs gave the world more than we’ve come to expect from an individual, and his vision continues to live on and will for many years, despite his passing. If anything, he is a huge inspiration to those of us trying to make a difference.

 
Apple’s Steve Jobs – The Crazy Ones:

 

Steve, you will be greatly missed by many people in this industry and world.
You made a huge difference in many of our lives.

Below is a touching tribute from Steve Wozniak, remembering Steve Jobs:

The truth is, it’s not just you.

The general sentiment floating around the American culture is that of distress and anxiety. Everywhere you look people are intent on believing we as a country, and even individuals. are quickly and steadily running out of time. They don’t know what should be done about it, but something should be done. They don’t know who should do anything about it, but someone should do something.

Those of us who are looking to be blessed with some sense of fulfillment in their lives usually have goals, or general direction. Something we’re working on, towards, or against. For some of us, these things emerge much earlier in our lives, and the path is a lot more clear. For many years, I’ve known that I wanted to be in the business world and someday found and run a large web company. I’m still working up to the scale I’d like, but I have a relatively large self-funded web hosting network, a large network of websites and online services, and only need to focus on a few things to really tie it all together.

If you know me on any personal level, or follow along with my cryptic blogs, you may know that I ended an engagement with my longterm girlfriend at the end of last year. Slowly but surely I’m beginning to readjust and get used to it. I miss her often still, and it’s definitely affected my work this year in many ways, but I know ultimately it was for the best. The intense feeling of impending doom afterwards wasn’t something I enjoyed, but I’ll deal with it. Honestly though, the whole experience taught me a lot and caused me to reevaluate things in my life. As much as I miss that girl, I’d be lying to say I regret the lessons I’ve learned from that relationship.

As the title to this post states, despite the looming tick of the clock, there is plenty of time. Time for mistakes, time for fun, and whatever else you feel like along the way. If you’re focused on where you want to go, you’ll eventually get there. I guess you could say the biggest thing I learned from the breakup was to make the time. Make time to have fun and enjoy your success, otherwise whats the point?

To realize the vision I’d like to achieve with my company, I’ve begun laying out a road map to the end goal I’d like to achieve over the next few years from a business standpoint. I’ve done so before in the past to varying degrees, but this time things are to the point where I might actually have all the pieces to the puzzle, and it’s refreshing. I have a vast amount of resources, and many years of knowledge and experience, I just need to buckle down and refine a few of my existing services, create a few viral hits, and see where it takes me.

On that note, expect a lot of product announcements over the next few months. I’m looking to make some major moves with my businesses and will be working to increase the exposure of the network dramatically.

With all the frameworks and abstractions out there nowadays, it’s not surprising that developers don’t write web applications in PHP or raw Javscript as often as they used to. It’s awesome to consider the rapid development of ideas possible nowadays.

As responsibilities continue to grow, I’m finding myself needing to embrace more streamlined approaches to my work flow to really accomplish this year’s aspirations. It’s caused me a bit of stressful transition, but ultimately pushed me to leverage automation, quick reference, and the other standard trappings of an overloaded programmer.

I always found it a bit curious to see newer web developers completely shy away from PHP when starting out, and jumping on the Ruby or Django bandwagons, but after working more and more with frameworks… I’m beginning to see why. Things that yesteryear might’ve taken dozens of lines of code are doable without breaking a sweat. Gotta love progress.

Not really a point to this point besides one of those rhetorical -face/palms- we all do once in a while when we really step back and evaluate how productivity can be improved. Anyways, lots of big projects coming up that will really benefit from this, and I’m looking forward to some of the product announcements that will be coming up as a result.