CHINA: A handsome and fearless Canadian Grade 1 teacher announced earlier this week he is taking a break from his online life. The Stevo, aka Sti Fu, aka Teacher-teacher!, aka that prick with the camera, has temporarily hung up his spurs. Chief Editor and bottle washer of the hugely popular China Travel Blog, asianramblings.com said his health has been affected by logging too much computer time.

“Who knew staring at a small screen could be bad for you,” he said, “I suppose the next bombshell will be that smoking and booze aren’t good for you either.”

Sti Fu, after being diagnosed with a neck malady which resulted in limited use of his left arm and hand, issued a statement informing all and sundry that asianramblings.com will start publishing quality articles and photographs for its huge base of readers. With the help of the best writers and photographers in the blogosphere, the site will publish material with fewer grammatical errors and typos, and will continue to do so until feeling returns to his arm, the pain killers run out, or he get really really bored.

“I’ve taught Grade 1 for so long I have a very short attention span,” he said, “Four minutes, maybe five, and I have to do something different. That’s what’s great about…. About…. What were we talking about?”

Stay tuned, he urged the million readers that visit asianramblings.com each month. Good stuff is on the way.

Who doesn’t want a free trip to Peru? Thought so.

Want to see the ancient Machu Picchu and and eat baked papas? Are you creatively bent and headed out to do a little vagabonding? You could:

Win a trip to Peru with World Nomads

Take Sanchez, World Nomads’ intrepid icon, on a travel adventure and you could win a trip to South America!

Enter your most creative photo or video of Sanchez and you could win a 15 day Intrepid trip to Peru, cool travel gear, World Nomads Travel Insurance and an iPod! Get your hands on Sanchez and enter today!

Monthly prizes will be awarded for the most creative photographs or videos. Entries close at the end of each month until October 31, 2008, with the major prize announced on November 10, 2008. See the Find out more »

What’s better than one Lonely Planet book? Two, for the price of one. The preeminent publisher of travel tomes has extended its Lonely Planet Buy One Get One Free promotion until the end of October.

Christmas is coming, and Lonely Planet books are always great stocking stuffers. Hot off the press are best sellers such as the New Zealand and Mexico guides, and the new full color Hawaii guide.

A getaway to Koh Samui sound or a visit to the ancient Angkor Wat Temples in your future? All covered in the new Regional Encounter Guides. Melbourne, Rome, New York and Singapore all have shiny new Lonely Planet City Encounter Guides rolling off the presses.

Some “professional” travelers scoff at Lonely Planet guidebooks. They do so at their own peril. There is always one in my pack. There is no better packable resource. I recommend the Lonely Planet China Guidebooks, I use them often when planning excursions.

The Lonely Planet Buy One Get One Free promotion ends October 31st.

TinEye is a new image protection program

TinEye: A possible way to protect your online images

It’s happened to a good many of us: Stolen blog posts. Have you been scraped? If you haven’t you’re among the minority. While Copyscape deals with text-based plagiarism, detecting the theft of images has been something of a conundrum. Until now. TinEye is a new image search that detects copies based on pixels, not on text. Users upload an image and TinEye searches its database for probable duplicates or derivatives.

Jonathan Bailey at PlagiarismToday posted a great review of the possibilities and current limitations of TinEye. This is technology that all photographers with a web presence should be interested in.  Don’t get scraped, protect your online images.

Taiwan Photographers moves to WordPress

Carrie’s and her global mind in Asia, has moved her brainchild, Taiwan Photographers, to WordPress.com. Citing the considerable power of WordPress compared to Blogger (boo, hiss!) Taiwan Photographers now has a brand new bag.  Stop by and see both Carrie and the new/revamped Taiwan Photographers.

Lonely Planet Photo Contest
Lonely Planet Guides and photo-sharing site Pikeo have announced a travel photo contest. Have your travels taken you to London, Paris, Barcelona, or Istanbul? Did you take a stunning photo of the city? Submit it! Four winners will have their images featured on the covers of upcoming Lonely Planet’s new ‘Encounter’ guides for each locale.

And as they say on game shows, that’s not all. Winners will also be jetting off to India, Russia, Morocco, or Kenya. Runners-up and commended entries will also receive prizes.  The Lonely Planet Photo Contest is open to residents of UK, France, Spain, USA and Canada. For details see http://lonelyplanet.pikeo.com.

Change of Address
Erica at blissfultravel.wordpress.com has moved to travelblissful.com. One of the great travel sites on the web, she now enjoys her own, stunning domain. Stop by her new digs and read what’s ahead for the revamped site.

SEO Tips
RT Cunningham, an ex-Marine in the Philippines, has written a great 7-Part series on Search Engine Opimization (SEO) for your blog. Need the skinny on SEO, SERPS, building backlinks, and generating more traffic? Need SEO Tips that work? Read RT’s UV SEO Series to get the 411.

That right, as of June 1, China has banned plastic shopping bags. Well, not banned. They’re still available, but now you have to pay for them.

From the CBC:

China’s State Council said the ban will start June 1. Firms that continue to sell, make and distribute bags thicker than 0.025 mm thick will be given fines and authorities may seize goods and profits, the State Council said.

“Our country consumes huge amounts of plastic bags every year. While providing convenience to consumers, they have also caused serious pollution, and waste of energy and resources, because of excessive use and inadequate recycling,” the government said in a statement, according to Reuters.

“We should encourage people to return to carrying cloth bags, using baskets for their vegetables.”

From my former province, from The Toronto Star:

Ontario won’t follow China’s move to reduce pollution by banning plastic shopping bags, Premier Dalton McGuinty said today.

However, during a morning visit to Kitchener, the premier also said the Chinese plan is a reminder that the west should be “rethinking” its reliance on the bags.

I applaud the initiative. Every little bit helps. My problem is forgetting to bring bags with me to the store. In my rush to shop each morning, before the army of old women descend on the produce section like biblical locust, I often forget to grab the lovely bags Mrs. Stevo purchased for our use. I came home today with potatoes stuffed in my pockets.

Live and learn.