If you’re as interested in d’interweb as I am, and you have a vested interest in it (it pays my bills!), then you’re very likely to have some favourite blogs which you frequent on an ongoing basis.  So, I thought i’d share some of mine!  Here goes…

Mashable

Mashable’s tagline is ‘All That’s New on the Web’, and that pretty much sums it up.  They’ve plenty of news stories daily, and not just rehashed press releases either.  It’s not just good news either, the site is now known as one of the places you’ll get the inside scoop on layoffs and security alerts in internet land.  They’re also fond of ‘Best of…’ and ‘How to…’ articles, which are handy for tracking down new bits and bobs.  I did think their old site design was nicer, but that’s just my opinion!

Paul Walsh

Paul calls himself ‘The Irish Opportunist’, and it does take a bit of an Irish chancer to develop a CV like you’ll see on his homepage (check it out here).  He also has a habit of getting to know the right people – he’s managed to get Paul Birch on board as an investor and advisor for his new mobile startup, Wubud.  Paul Birch is brother of Michael Birch, and the siblings co-founded Bebo.com which was recently sold to AOL for an obscene amount of money.  Cha-ching.  Paul (Walsh that is), is big into video blogging too, and frequently uses Qik and Ustream to help make his posts a little bit more interesting.

Dries Buytaert

Dries is the main man behind Drupal, the open source content mangement framework of choice for thousands of developers worldwide.  He also recently founded Acquia, which I recently blogged about.  A bit of a visionary, it’s interesting to get an insight into one of the strongest brains in the open source content mangement space.

Lullabot.com/writings

Lullabot have created heaps of high profile sites using Drupal on behalf of clients like MTV, Fast Company, and Sony BMG.  They’ve also created and contributed plenty of core and additional modules for Drupal, and have drafted some very handy training articles to help developers get to grips with Drupal and get creating sites quickly.  Well worth a look if you’re into that sort of thing!

Matt Mullenweg

This clever chap is behind one of the most popular open source blogging platforms in the world today, WordPress.  Through his company, Automattic, he’s been rolling out heaps of other services used by developers including Akismet (anti spam thingy), PollDaddy (which he bought from the Infacta boys and girls earlier this year), and Gravatar.  One reason to hate him?  He’s just 24, making anyone older than him – me included – seem like a total and complete failure!  Check out his Wikipedia entry here.

Many things are to blame for our global ‘recession’. One of them – in Ireland at least – has been the endless vanity splurge for home buyers. In the past five to ten years we have turned into a nation of people hungry to own our own property, at whatever cost. This in turn has ramped up assumed demand, therefore prices, and the end result for some people is a not so good situation where they’re in negative equity. Thank fuck i’m not one of them. But what else causes unease and uncertainty in markets, causes panic in various economies, and puts pension investments – and other funds from the pockets of every day earners – into jeopardy?  Stupid stock trading, that’s what.

An uncle of mine, Denis, is a clever bastard.  He threw fifty grand at Eddie O’Connor when he was setting up Eirtricity – which was then rebranded Airtricity and sold for billions less than ten years later.  My uncle cleaned up on that one to the tune of an eight figure sum or so (i’ve estimated!), because he’s clever, holds his nerve, and looks at investments in the longer term.

I flew to Sligo for a family gathering in October 2006 and Denis was there again as per usual.  Looking happy as a pig in shit with his big white beard and a pint of Guinness in his hand, he looked quite delighted with himself.  The smug git had just bought stock in Partygaming through his broker, Davy, and was rather happy about it.  Remember this was 2006, when the yanks had just banned gambling on the internet, and gambling stocks had bombed because – apparently – the USA rules the world.  Partygaming had bombed with all the rest, and was dirt cheap.  He bought a shitload of stock at $34.50 a share or so.  Nobody was touching it.  But my uncle did.

Fast forward to May 2008, not even two years later.  Partygaming stock peaked at $278.50.  Needless to say my uncle got rid of the stock he’d snapped up when nobody else wanted it, and made back 8 times his initial investment.  When he ‘has a go’ at buying a certain stock he doesn’t just throw a few hundred quid here or there – tens of thousands get pumped into it.  He held on, had faith in the stock, and did very well from Partygaming.  Again.  He’s used gambling sites himself, so he could see the long term value in them.  Ironically, traders didn’t.

Hands up if you search Google every day?  I just put my hand up.  Hands up who probably clicks on a Google Adword every day, with or without realising it?  I just put my hand up again.  Who uses Gmail?  My hand is still up.  Who uses Google Apps for their everyday business email, collaboration, calendars and so on?  I just put my hand up once more – it’s getting tired now.  Who watches videos on Youtube at least once a week, if not more?  I did it again – my fucking hand is killing me at this stage.

Right, so we’ve established that pretty much every day, a vast majority of internet users around the world use at least some form of Google product in their everyday lives.  Yes?  Then why, from $741.79 on November 6th, 2007 did Google stock bomb to $328.98 on October 9, 2008?

As of today, 16th October 2008, Google is up 13.85 points on todays NASDAQ trading at $353.02.  This is still half of what it was less than a year ago, even though Google has been increasing revenues quarter on quarter, delivering new products to the market with unrivalled pace, and advertising bucks are moving faster and faster from traditional media to online.  So why has the stock lost so much value?  Because traders don’t know their stocks well enough, and panic under pressure to easily.  What they sometimes forget is that the half-value lost is the half-value in pensions, college funds, and nest eggs.

Savvy savers should take a choice today to take the plunge and start some self-managed investing using any of the online share trading services.  It can’t possibly be worse than investing in someone with the ‘know how to secure your future’, now can it?

On that note, i’m working on a new share trading and information site at the moment which will hopefully be a valuable tool for self-service investors in future years to come.  I don’t think i’ve ever seen a better time for it.