Yahoo launches Shine a site for women

Shine is a site for the 40 million women between the ages of 25 and 54 who visit Yahoo every day. Shine is actually a blog that has some limited Yahoo functions.

The blog has ten topics Fashion + Beauty, Healthy Living, Entertainment, Parenting, Love + Sex, Work + Money, Food, At Home, Astrology and Speak Up.

And like any blog Shine get it share of comments full of spam, there where a couple of “I like it, look at this video” but apparently they deleted those comments, but it doesn’t matter some will replace those comments, but I don’t think that the women visiting Shine are interested to buy Viagra.

This year Yahoo has made many upgrades and has launched four new services, is Yahoo trying to get more money from Microsoft’s?

50 Cent has a social network

50 Cent has more than 1 million friends on MySpace and decided to start his own social network Thisis50.com.

Thisis50.com is build on the Ning platform, the website isn't meant to be a fan club, but rather a platform for 50 Cent to showcase his music and the music he likes, and comment on news and user profile pages. Thisis50.com users can create profiles and friend lists, but 50 Cent has direct access to the site's users and their e-mail addresses.

Chris "Broadway" Romero said "The thing that separates Thisis50 from MySpace is we control the e-mail database. We can e-mail members if we want to."

Kylie Minogue, Ludacris and Pussycat Dolls have launched their own social networks. Gina Bianchini, CEO of Ning said that artist use MySpace and Facebook as funnels for their social networks.

And it's relatively inexpensive to create a social network if artists use one of the companies that provide the tools and hosting. Artists also tend to pay for labor to run the sites, but if fans get involved and add things to the site to share with others, it can reduce the need for staff to constantly provide new content.

uPumpItUp with Mandy Moore

 

Kraft Foods has launched a social network promote by Mandy Moore. uPumpItUp is social network for women, where they can find the inspiration they need to complete different challenges.

The site has the four sections connect, express, inspire, and explore, where members can participate in other challenges or can create their own challenges, connect with others members, ask for help and write comments.

uPumpItUp isn’t a true social network, because it doesn’t have all the necessary features and it looks more like a forum.

Mandy Moore is one of the site experts that contributes with comments, tips and challenges. There are four other experts:

Erika Lenkert is your go-to gal for all things social.

Bobbie Thomas shares stylish ways to express your creative side.

Mandy Ingber helps you tune out distractions and tune into yourself.

Cynné Simpson shows you ways to explore the amazing world around you.

Using the uPumpItUp social network Kraft tries to promote a healthier lifestyles through Crystal Light.

 

 

Buy or Sell Books at BookHabit.com

BookHabit.com is a site where writes can upload their books and sell them. At BookHabit you can find unpublished books of fiction and non-fiction, scripts and plays.

The starting price for a book is $2.50 and increases if a book becomes popular. Writes pay nothing to add their books, and they will receive 40% of the sale price. The books can read on computer, mobile phone, PDA, or e-reader.

At BookHabit you can find unknown authors or books that are not published or promoted by mainstream publishing companies. You can even upload your own books and when you have reached the minimum windrow limit of $50 after 45 books sold you can receive the money through PayPal.

This is nice website but it doesn’t have many visitors and buyers, so even if you write a good book you won’t get any money out of them very soon.

Read the Wall Street Journal for Free

 

You can read The Wall Street Journal without paying the $79 annual fee for free. Wall Street Journal allows Google and other search engines to index its articles, and it also allows Digg and other news aggregators to link to their articles.

So if you search for a title on Digg or Google and click that link you will see the full article, the problem is that you will not be able to read the all the articles but you can read them if you use one Firefox add-on.

You can read Wall Street Journal articles using a couple of methods:

1. Search an article on Google or on other search engines and if the article is indexed you have access to the full article.

2. Search an article on Digg and if some one submitted the article you can see the full version of the article.

3. Install Firefox and the spoof add-on.

The last method allows access to all the Wall Street Journal articles, and it requires lees work that the first two methods.

To use the third method you need Firefox and an add-on, the add-on can be found here.

After you have installed the Firefox browser and the add-on, go to the Wall Street Journal website, and in the refspoof toolbar you will find “spoof:” and a field, write in the field digg.com, click the R icon and select "static referrer".

Now you can read any article for free and the Wall Street Journal thinks that you are visiting the articles from Digg.

Buy and sell links with TNX

TNX is an advertising system that facilitates the selling and buying of text links at a low price. This system was created for advertisers that want to increase their website ranking in search engines fast. This system is different from other advertising system because website owners that are TNX publishers are actually selling their site ranking, and the advertisers don’t want visitors, they want to increase their website rank.

The TNX code is “very simple” and comes in two versions PHP and Pearl, and because of this spider will not detect the code easily.

For publishers TNX has some benefits, because this is an automated system, publishers don’t have to approve every link that appears on their website, but if you don’t want to link to a certain sites you can easily ban that link. Unlike other advertising systems with TNX you sell different ads (links) on every page of the site that may bring more money that the usual ads.

TNX advertisers get to improve their site ranking for certain key words by buying thousands of non-reciprocal links to their site at a very low price.

TNX advertising is based on points, publishers earn more points if they have many page with a high Page Rank, and because not all pages have the same rank the number of points that you receive will not be the same for every page. Also advertisers pay more if they want links from websites with high Page Rank, but with the same amount of points they can buy more links from websites with a lower Page Rank. The points a member accumulates can be sold to other members or sold back to TNX, from the transactions TNX takes a 12.5% commission from all its members, advertiser and webmaster.

 

If you decide to use TNX you must know that if Google will find that you sell or buy links it will penalize your site.

This system poses some dangers for publishers and advertisers, if an advertiser buys too many links for a new website, Google will figure out that he is buying links and the site will get sandboxed. Publisher will get punished if they have too many links to websites that are not related with their site content, but Google will also punish the advertisers. All do TNX has some filters publisher will get some unrelated links on their site, and advertiser will get links on unrelated pages, this can’t be stopped unless more publisher will join TNX.

If you have decided to use TNX take it slow don’t buy too many links from the start and you will pas under the Google radar.

TNX.net website isn’t indexed by Google because the Googlebot isn’t allowed to crawl the website, so al the rumors that Google banned TNX.net aren’t true.

 

Free stuff from Google for Non-Profits

Google launched Google for Non-Profits Portal that offers tools to non-profit organizations.

The portal is a shop full of free stuff, like Google-hosted email at your own domain, Google Checkout with no transaction fees until 2009, free online advertising through Google Grants and the usual Blogger and Google Docs account.

This program is only for non-profit organizations and to use some of them you need to prove that you are a non-profit and Google Grants are available only in a couple of country’s and even if you live in one of those countries Google will review your application.

Yuwie Social Network

Yuwie is a social network with a twist; Yuwie pays their users like myLot but between them are major differences. Both Yuwie and myLot are making money from advertising and they share the profit with their users, but the way a user earns money differs.

Yuwie users earn money from the page views they get from other Yuwie users and myLot user get paid by the number of discussion they start and by how others users rated their replies.

Yuwie is like all the other social networks, members can create personal profiles, add friends, add videos and pictures, create clubs (groups), and can create blogs on Yuwie’s blogging platform. In eleven moths Yuwie has become a “big” social network with more that 500,000 members and the privilege to get all links that go from MySpace to Yuwie blocked.

A user earns money from referrals and from impression they get from other members that view their profile, blog, comments, picture and shared layout. Also when a user views his own control panel is counted as 1 page view. The minimum payout is $5 and they send the money through PayPal or a check.

I have found something interesting if you search myLot scam and Yuwie scam you can find two websites that link to each other and they tell the story of a myLot user that got banned and when he moved to Yuwie he found the Holy Grail, I don’t know if this is a true story or just a way of promoting Yuwie, you can decide for yourself.

AboutUs Wiki

AboutUs is a very useful wiki that automatically creates an about page for any websites.

To get listed all that you have to do is to write a website address and a robot will crawl the website. If someone searches for a website that isn’t in their database a robot will quickly gather information about the website, and thumbnail image is taken, additionally they provide external links to Alexa and to a WHOIS domain search.

This website can help you to get a higher Page Rank, and build some backlinks. Because this is a wiki you can edit the page so it can provide more information about your website and for the same reason if someone wants to spam you it can do it very easily.

When I searched FUKBlogger.com the first time my blog wasn’t in their database, a page was build and after 10 minutes I got the “Adult Content” message.



Although my blog doesn’t host any adult content the domain name “FUK” resembles with “fuck”.

I will send them a message to fix this.

myLot Scheme

myLot is a “growing” community of individuals that enjoys starting hundreds of discussions in the hope of getting $10.

myLot is social network with over 122,900 users (most of them are inactive), that uses a revenue sharing scheme, user get paid if they start discussion and respond to other discussions, user earnings are related with the number of visits and ad clicks his discussion gets.

Users get paid if they have a minimum of $10 in they account, this could mean hundreds of started discussions and replays.

Analyzing myLot I come to the conclusion that this isn’t the best way to earn money and is the last place to promote your blog.

Get your fake magazine covers at MagMyPic

MagMyPic gives you the opportunity to appear on magazines covers. Now you don’t have to be famous to appear on the cover of big magazines, in one minute you can appear on 22 magazines.

MagMyPic creates fake covers of 22 magazines, you upload an image, they add the magazine template and you’re ready to do something else or show the cover to your friends. This is a simple website and with over 5 million covers created you would expect that the ads to be blended with the rest of the page but they are so obvious that they are annoying.

RIAA encourages Piracy

 

RIAA has accepted that it can’t stop piracy and tries to makes money by introducing a new tax. RIAA wants to collect a $5 fee per user per month from the internet service providers (ISP).

The money will be used to compensate the performers, music labels and songwriters, the collected money will be divided according with the artist popularity on P2P networks.

If they manage to surcharge the ISP, this would mean that downloading music from P2P is legal, and if all internet users will be charged it will be mandatory to download music. This tax will make music cheaper, who will buy an iTune for 99¢ when they already pay $5 and can download millions of song.

There are many unknowns about this tax, will all the internet user have to pay or only those that download illegal content, how will they verify if a user is downloading a game or an album. Because of this question I doubt that the tax will be applied.

Source: Wired News

$21M for One Widget!!!

ShareThis is a widget that allows readers to share your content and has raised a total of $21M. $6M in Series A round in 2007 and $15M in a Series B round.

$21M is a lot of money for a simple widget, you can submit articles at only 14 websites, it has a tracking system and the only thing that makes it different from other widgets is that you can send the page link and a message via email, AIM, and SMS.

Widgets like AddtoAny and AddThis have more integrated website, AddtoAny has 79 integrated websites and AddThis has 35 websites and a tracking system, and there are more widgets like this that are created by users, anyone can build this kind of tools.

Conclusion:

To make money you need to build something very simple and to have around 10 million views a month.

Now I only need an idea.

Google Sells SEO Services

Google acquired DoubleClick, and DoubleClick’s Performics service offers “natural search solutions to improve search engine crawlability”, Link Building and Content Optimization.

Google offers a service to game the Google search engine, now you don’t need any “black hat” knowledge to get a high Page Rank, you simply buy from them some link farms and you’re done.

If they keep this service publishers will take a hard hit, because Google will continue to modify the Page Rank algorithm and those that don’t use this service will get penalized.

Some are wondering why EU allowed this to happen; they bribed the right person, who doesn’t need a couple of millions. Microsoft didn’t pay the right people and got a €899 million ($1,359 million) penalty, this should be a lesson for them.

The next step Google will make is to sell Page Rank.

Who wants 1,000 Entrecard credits?

For those that need Entrecard credits fast or are too lazy to drop 300 cards a day I have created the Entrecard Credit Shop, with the lowest prices on the market.

You can buy Entrecard credits, in packs of 1,000 or 2,000 credits. The price for 1,000 credits is $8 and for 2,000 credits is $14. Although I have a limited number of credits, I don’t plan to raise the credits price.

If you decide to buy, leave your Entrecard email address and website, and you will receive the credits in maximum 12 hours, if you have any questions send a mail or leave a comment.

The transactions is made throw my associated, he takes care of all the financial aspect of this website. After you buy, he sends me a mail with your data and I will send you the credits. 

For the shop I use the PayPal Storefront Widget, as you can see it looks nice and dose a good job, but still it has some bugs.

Watch videos and get paid at Buzzshed

Buzzshed is a video bookmarking site, this is different from other bookmarking website because you get paid $0.30 for every video they send you to rate. When you sign up there are three types of memberships: BuzzClip member, non-BuzzClip member and Advertiser.

Only the BuzzClip members can get paid and to be a member you need to live in one of their 40 country’s list. As an Advertiser you can create campaigns for targeted audience and one video view costs $0.49. I don’t thing that Buzzshed is very useful for advertiser because the majority of the members only want their $0.30 and don’t care about the advertised products.

And apparently there aren’t many advertiser interested in their service.

Republican Tim Couch is Communist

Kentucky Representative Republican Tim Couch filed a bill to make anonymous online posting illegal.

The bill would require anyone who comments on a website to register with their real name, address and e-mail address. And a website owner will have to pay a fine if people post anonymously on his site, first-offense fine will be five-hundred dollars, and after that one thousand dollars for each offense.

This bill was created to stop the “online bullying”, also known as freedom of speech. He had problems in Eastern Kentucky district, but now he has problems every where.   

Let’s assume that people will use their real name and address to post comments, this will not stop people from swearing him, but after you write on some blog that someone is stupid, a person that doesn’t like your comment will knock at you’re door and beat you, or you may be sued. This bill wants to create fear, Tim Couch thinks that he is some big shot and people shouldn’t criticizes him, people from Kentucky should remind him who he is, the one who will not get elected.

If the bill passes it will be used against the people, it will be a step towards a Communist USA, isn’t USA fighting for freedom. I am curios what will happen with the bill.

For those who want to comment this article, don’t use your real name, email address and website. And tell the world what you thing about Tim Couch bill.

I am back again

I got a new motherboard, this year the computer will be running at full speed. My backup computer crashed four days ago, the backup was my old computer so it is no surprise that it crashed. Now I have to get a new backup computer, this will happened some time this year. I hope that the computer won’t crash again, because I am tired of fixing it.

The Scratchback System

Scratchback is basically an advertising system, they call it tipping jar to stay way from the Evil Google. They use the "nofollow" tag on all the links and images so you will not pass Page Rank.

This advertising system is special because peoples can tip you and can get a link to their website. However, the widget owner has no obligation to show any link on his website, this is what makes Scratchback different from other advertising systems. Therefore, if a one of your visitors decides to "tip" your blog, and you do not like the link, you have no obligation to show that link and you keep the money, there is no refund because this is a tipping jar not advertising company.

The link can be text or an image it is your choice what you show on your blog, also it shows a custom message on mouse over, you can show only one widget per page but you can show any number of widgets on your website.

The payout limit is $25 and they pay through PayPal, from every tip they take a 10% fee, this fee is set for the beta trail, at the end of the trail, they will change the commission.

The Scratchback widget can be customized, there are a couple of designs from which you can chose, but if don't like them you can create your own widget that must be approved by the Scratchback team or you can pay a one-time fee of $50 to get the Scratchback team to create the widget for you.

The Scratchback system is a good combination between a donation and an advertising system, although I don’t like any of their widget designs, this seems a good advertising system.

I Own the Larges Diamond in the Universe

I have claimed the larges know diamond, the diamond is actually a crystallized white dwarf with the name BPM 37093. The dwarf star was discovered back in 2004, and is very close to home at a distance of 50 light-years from the Earth in the constellation Centaurus, it is 2,500 miles across and weighs 5 million trillion trillion pounds.

The 1967 Outer Space Treaty signed by both the United States and the Soviet Union establishes that no signatory nation may claim sovereignty over any territory on planets beyond Earth. I do not know if this applies to dwarf stars, but the first one that reaches the star owns it and my Space Diamond Lander 1 just landed there.

Now that I am the richest man on earth, I don’t know what to do next, I always wanted to get rich and now that I have accomplish my goal I feel a huge relief.

Is someone interested in buying the Star?

The diamond is for sell, the bid starts at £20 billion pounds, and I do not provide the any means of transportation, you will have to get there on your own.

PayPal Storefront Widget

PayPal has launched last year a widget, which allows anyone to show a storefront on their blog sidebar, or on any website that allows you to embed a HTML code.

The widget has many useful features:

Storefront display- you can show images of the items that are for sell.

Item navigation- back and forward buttons.

Sold Out message.

Store Closed message for temporarily close stores.

You can change the widget theme and colors; you can show your own logo and store title, also you can add to each product a description, a picture and a price.

The widget is very easy to use, it supports 17 currencies and customers can rate their buying experience and review your storefront.

I will use this widget here in the sidebar, I always wanted to have an online store, I have a couple but this will be special, people will actually buy from me.

Get in the top search results with Realmee

Realmee is a website where you can create a page about yourself, something like the White Pages. There are many websites that do the same thing, but the Realmee team will do everything they can so your page gets in the top search results.

Realmee doesn’t use cloaking, linkfarming or anything else that may be considerate “black hat SEO”, you can check in their FAQ. There you can find “we will do anything we can to rank your website high in the search engines”, I searched a bunch of people from their index, those that are on the first page are also in the top search results, but people that are on the rest of the index pages don’t appear very often in the top search results. This may not be their fault, you can’t get all the time in the top search.

In a page you can add information about yourself, your address, phone number, email address, a link to your website (they follow), where do you work. You can also add 10 widgets from other websites, your blog RSS, a video, and some pictures. Right now there aren’t many features but in the future they will add more.

This is a useful website it can help you to increase your page rank, being in the top search results won’t do you harm.

 I will pay close attention to this website, who knows what they will do next.