As some of you may already know, I head out every Saturday to enjoy some Vietnamese pho with a bunch of local dot com moguls (and moguls in the making), but earlier today, we decided to have a change of pace. Back in March, we went to Sea Harbour Restaurant in Richmond for some dot com dim sum, but given that a reservation there means next to nothing, John Chow decided to get us a table at Kirin Seafood Restaurant — located in the Three West Centre next to Richmond Centre Shopping Mall — for this week’s edition of dot com dim sum.

In the picture above are the eleven attendees. Going clockwise from the bottom, we have:
- Root of all evil John Chow
- His lovely wife Sarah
- Friday Funny man Matthew Schmoll (he’s hidden behind John’s big head)
- Erin Berringer from Newport Business Media
- BlueFur web hosting’s Gary Jones
- Think Referrals Business Network President and Founder Rainer Schmoll
- Online money maker Greg Morgan
- The blog-less Wolfgang (sorry, I don’t know your last name Wolf)
- Freelance writer Michael Kwan (that’s me)
- Stephen Fung, having recently returned from his trip through Asia
- Self-proclaimed king of awesomeness Ed Lau

With eleven people munching down on the best dim sum Richmond has to offer — I personally prefer the Kirin location at City Square in Vancouver — the total bill for our two-hour Saturday lunch came in at over $200. Thankfully, dot com dim sum was sponsored by Canada web hosting provider, BlueFur. Thanks again Gary!

If you’re looking for quality web hosting, Blue Fur comes highly recommended. Enter “JohnChowRocks” into the coupon code area to receive 15% off any hosting package.

On a side note, Kirin Seafood Restaurant is particularly well known for their chicken feet. We had two varieties of it as part of our lunch, but the one shown below was much better than the standard “phoenix claw” variant. These marinated chicken feet came with a vinaigrette on the side for dipping. Simply delicious. I guess growing up with traditional Chinese cuisine, I’ve lost the natural aversion that a lot of people have to eating “strange” foods like this.

Pictures courtesy of fake Stephen Fung

The day is upon us. The legendary Super Smash Bros. Brawl tournament is now down to just two competitors, both of which are brand new to the Smash Bros. universe. To recap, in the first round of the tournament, we saw Donkey Kong bitch slap Zero Suit Samus, Wario pass some gas on Link, Fox McCloud outblast Metaknight, and Solid Snake methodically eliminate Mario.

In round two, Wario once again used his flatulent ways to emerge from the battle of the heavyweights, ousting the formidable Donkey Kong. Metal Gear Solid’s Solid Snake, on the other hand, used his field experience to his advantage, outwitting, outmanuevering, and ultimately out-beating (is that even a word?) the Arwing-touting Star Fox McCloud.

Today, we will witness the grand finale. The two combatants took very different paths, utilizing very different strategies, but only one will emerge from this fight for the ages. It is the lying and cheating of a fat tub of lard — Wario — against the conniving and strategy of a military expert — Solid Snake. May the best man win.

Wario vs. Solid Snake
Solid Snake, being the methodical combatant that he is, studied tapes of Wario’s earlier battles. He watched his every move, analyzing the steps that the anti-Mario took. Solid Snake worked long and hard to find a weakness. Wario, on the other hand, spent the week hanging out in a Wario Ware universe, playing a variety of mini-games and munching on some doritos. His sweet tooth got the best of him: Wario actually stole candy from a baby. When the time came, Solid Snake was prepared. Wario thought he could just throw his weight around and once again emerge the victor. Unfortunately for fatty, Solid Snake had a full gas-mask in tow, rendering Wario’s greatest weapon — his explosive flatulence — absolutely useless. Snake disposes of Wario in the most secretive, stealthy, and sneaky of ways: with a speedy knife stab in the back.
Winner: Solid Snake

Eight entered. Only one remains. A hearty congratulations goes out to Solid Snake for surviving this grueling Super Smash Bros. Brawl tournament.

Look for Super Smash Bros. Brawl on the Nintendo Wii in late 2007. No firm release date has been announced by Nintendo at this time.

I was reading through the weekly flyers this afternoon and I came across a pretty decent deal that I thought I’d share with the rest of the video game loving community. If you’re an owner of a Sony PlayStation 3, you can head on over to Best Buy (Canada) and buy Resistance: Fall of Man — the must-have title for the PS3 — for just twenty bucks. The downside is that in order to take advantage of this price, you need to also pick up the new FPS “The Darkness” for $65. I’ve been hearing good things about The Darkness, so it might be worth picking up anyways.

I got tagged by my dot com pho buddy Ed Lau last week, so I guess I should get this done sooner rather than later. One of the easiest ways that you can improve your search engine optimization is to participate in this Bloglines link/feed train. Apparently, by exchanging subscriptions, we get ourselves ranked better in Google. Hey, it can’t hurt, right?

Here are the rules to the game:

***Start Copying Here:***

Here are the rules:

1) If you don’t have a bloglines account signup for one, if you do have a bloglines account sign in to your account!

2) Write a short introduction paragraph about what how you found the Bloglines list and include a link to the blog that referred you to the list.

3) COPY the Rules and ENTIRE List below and post it to your blog. To avoid duplicate content and increase the amount of keywords your site can be accessible for, go ahead and change the titles of the blog. Just don’t change the links of the blog.

4) Take “My New List” and move them into the “The Original List”.

5) Add 3 Blogs that you’ve just added to your Bloglines List to the “My New List” section. Remember to also add the “List the Site link next to your new blogs (i.e. http://www.bloglines.com/sub/http://www.theblogurl.com/feed)

6) Add Everyone on this list to your Bloglines List by clicking on “List the Site.” Those who want good kharma will list you back. If not, you will for sure get the benefits of readers from the bloggers who continue this list after you.

credit: Darin Carter

My New List

Stephen Fung - List the Site
Funds Zine - List the Site
Dy Phan - List the Site

The Original List

Freelance Writing - List the Site
Stunt Actor - List the Site
Awesome - List the Site
Nathan Drach - List the Site
Jane May - List the Site
My Money Blog - List the Site
Golf Score - List the Site
Idiot Brain - List the Site
pyxlb0mb - List the Site
Derrich - List the Site
Search Engine Marketing - List the Site
Gary Lee - List the Site
Dosh Dosh - List the Site
David Culpepper - List the Site
Just Another Ego Blog Site - List the Site
Darin Carter - List the Site
Big Rayvin - List the Site
Jon Lee - List the Site
Samanathon - List the Site
Jason Neuman - List the Site
Make Money - List the Site

***End Copying Here***

Video game graphics have come a long way since the days of Space Invaders and Pac-Man. Then again, this isn’t necessarily a good thing, as evidenced by the Screw Attack editorial video shown below. Check out the top 10 worst 2D-to-3D video game transitions. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

You may have noticed that I have been running the Buy Me a Beer plug-in for the last little while, and well, it hasn’t exactly been the most lucrative venture I have attempted. In fact, up until yesterday, I did not receive a single beer from any of the 100 or so RSS subscribers nor did I receive a beer from any random visitors who found Beyond the Rhetoric through a search engine. That changed last night.

You might know venture capitalist Dan Rua from his affiliation with PayPerPost, a blog marketing service that pairs bloggers (they call them “posties”) with paid advertisers so that said bloggers can publish sponsored posts on their websites. In exchange, the team at PayPerPost takes a small commission for providing the middle-man service. It’s a great system for blogs who don’t have all that much traffic, and thus, cannot make that much money through Google Adsense, AuctionAds, Kontera, and other (CPC, CPM, and CPA-based) ad networks like them.

Well, Dan was nice enough to buy me a beer for three bucks. He’s the first (and I hope he won’t be the last). Interestingly, the booze that he provided was not fully out of the goodness of his heart. Oh no. Just like nearly everyone else on the Internet, Mr. Rua had ulterior motives. As I mentioned above, Dan has a vested interest in PayPerPost and in a separate email, he was encouraging me to try PayPerPost Direct, the direct (if you’ll pardon the pun) competitor to ReviewMe. Here’s his message:

I saw your speedlink post tonight and appreciate your reference to PayPerPost as one you’d recommend. Dosh did a good job summarizing them all.

Give the PPP Direct widget a try for awhile to see how it works for you. Heck, try it side-by-side your other badges and see which gives you the best results. At your currently advertised price of $50, you would pocket $50 with PPP Direct and fee to advertiser would be $5. An even better win/win, you can offer a lower price with PPP Direct like $40, resulting in more reviews but you pocket $40 instead of $25 per review. No-brainer?

If you do try it, I’d love any feedback you can share on the widget…

Take care Michael!

I haven’t really decided what I’m going to do about this situation, but what I might end up doing is removing the ReviewMe “buddy” icon from the sidebar completely. No, I’m not going to replace him with a PayPerPost Direct widget. Instead, I could try plunking both of them in my official advertise here page. This way, any potential advertiser will have a choice. I’ll probably include some sort of link to my contact page as well, in case they want to do a private ad sale.

What do you think? Should I pick just one or allow them to compete with one another on my site?

     

Perhaps one of the most ironic things of all is that this post is a paid post. I know I said that I’d avoid post offers sponsored by PPP itself, but I thought I’d give them another chance, given that I apparently have Dan Rua on my side. I’m not promoting or advertising PayPerPost, per se, but I figured because I was going to write a post about me getting my first beer, I might as well get paid for it too. It’s only ten bucks, but that’s enough for a couple more beers.

Thanks again, Dan Rua, for the beer. I’m going to enjoy this.