The Lauri Monroy Blog

Are we in control of our own decisions?



Very similar ideas that I was talking few days ago when referring to the book: Nudge: http://astore.amazon.co.uk/thelaumonblo-21/detail/0141040017

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Interesting what a pile of cash will do to us. So close - so far. Have a look:

http://100k.theladders.com/

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When you are looking for a new job you need to Google yourself as the first thing. If what you see is not what you like then a serious personal online branding execrise is required. If you see photos of yourself running naked or old discussion forum or blog comments where you make rasist jokes you do have a serious issue at hand. How do I get stuff away from Google? The thing here is you dont - you should have though few years back when you uploaded that offending stuff.

The only way to overcome this annoying little issue is to create content that ranks higher than the content currently being listed by Google about you (sorry but I am only talking about Google since we all know on this planet there is only one search at the moment. Sorry Bing and others.).

How do I do that? Well the basics are easy, just follow this simple guide:

1. Make your facebook profile fully private. Do not let anyone else seeing anything except your trusted Friends.
2. Purchase a domain name that contains your name. If your name is Jane Smith, buy janesmith.com OR jane-smith.com OR jane-smith.net OR janesmith.co.uk OR jane-smith.tv etc... In the end it does not matter which domain it is - it just needs to contain your name in it. That's the key.
3. Open a blog using any of the free online blogging services such as Blogspot, Posterous, etc... Name the blog based on your name - this is important - in this case it would be called The Jane Smith Blog.
4. Forward the domain into that blog. You can either ask the domain provider to do that or sometimes the blogs also support that directly (like posterous).
5. Once you have your personal .com / .net blog up and running then the next step is the hardest. Start writing clever stuff about the indsutry you want your next job from. This is the hard part! You also need to write stuff often, ideally 2-3 times a week at minimum.

As a results of this your blog will be ranked higher by Google since it's on a domain that has your name and the blog has also your name on it.

Additionally you should also:

1. Create a LinkedIn profile if you do not have it already. Make it public and have a LinkedIn URL which again contains your name - again (important).
2. Create a Twitter account if you do not have it already. Again make it public and have a Twitter name that has your name on it.
3. If you use posterous - you can publish from your posterous blog to twitter automatically. This is very handy, you can have your blog running on posterous and you will create Tweets automatically once you post. I think posterous is really cool
4. You can also create a Google profile, it you do not have it already.

If you do the above you should be fine in few months. Unless your name is either a very common name or your name is similar to a celebrity name.

You can buy a domain from here: http://www.123-reg.co.uk/
You can open a blog here: http://www.posterous.com/
Google profile is here: http://www.google.com/profiles/

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A brand new plane suddenly vanishing almost without a trail. I am here with @paolocoelho that we need an explanation. Latest facts from wikipedia, note the bomd threat note in the end of the article.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AF_447

http://twitter.com/paulocoelho

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As he said in the show he made have a mistake - and I believe he did. The two remaining candidates Jasmina and Kate are both nowhere near where Debra is - well at least that's what I believe. Anyway the UK The Apprentice show is a great piece of work - you will learn a lot about life while watching it...

http://www.biogs.com/apprentice/debra.html

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I do not know what to think about this - it feels like science fiction for me. Computers obviously do not have emotions but this is well programmed to look like the real thing. Also the discussion feels very natural but I believe that is just well rehersed for the video (you know - advertising). We are still far away from having computers that can have real natural discussions. This clip is anyway a good demonstration what might be coming in a few years time. Artifical Intelligence is certainly interesting but I prefer my friend to be real - someone to go out and have a real pint with and a real discussion.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/e3-project-natal-hands-on

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I am reading this book and it really well tells how most of our choices are driven by outside influence. If you ever wondered why advertising works read this book - it's life changing.

Find out more about the book "Nudge": http://astore.amazon.co.uk/thelaumonblo-21/detail/0141040017

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Just one day I was looking how Finland is doing in terms of its famous suicide rate and I did found out that there it is still quite close to the top of the list. Russia being ahead of us as most ex-soviet countries - interesting socialism was not so good for happiness then?

The more I looked at the list I realised that if you reverse the list it becomes a list of the happiest countries on this planet. Quite interesting.

So now all of to Saint Kitts and Nevis (where-ever it is!) - should be the happiest place on Earth!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Kitts_and_Nevis

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From Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447

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Scary - big planes such as this simply do not disappear. According to the news reports the plane was outside radar coverage and just sent an emergency message that all systems are going down. And then nothing. Extremely unusual event.

Our hearts and minds are with those affected. Horrbile tragedy. Hopefully the plane is found soon - worst case would be that it is never found. Imagine a plane going missing... that would not be nice.

Anyway some good facts here:

http://trueslant.com/milesobrien/

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