Foursquare To Start Sharing More Of Your Data

Foursquare has been sending out an email to its users informing them that as of January 28, it will add in two new items that will reveal more user data than before: the use of full names and the ability for businesses to access longer data logs for individuals.

Why the entertainment industry's release strategy creates piracy

As The Guardian points out, if companies refuse to release films or TV shows in US and UK at same time, they only have themselves to blame for piracy.

This may sound a bit harsh but if you want people to buy media, you have to offer it for sale. If it's not for sale, they won't buy it, but many of them will still want to watch or hear or play it, and will turn to the dark side of the internet to get – for free – the media that no one will sell to them.

This isn't a surprising research finding. Everyone who's ever run a business or worked in any kind of sales job knows that rule one is to make a product that people want and then offer it at a price they're willing to pay. Doing this won't always make you rich, but no one ever got rich without starting from there.

PayPal Bans Hosting Provider PRQ

PRQ, the infamous ISP created by Fredrik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm of The Pirate Bay, has been nuked by PayPal.

PayPal ended their relationship with the so-called bullet-proof hoster by freezing the company's funds for up to 6 months. On PayPal's advice PRQ opened a second account to get by while the dispute was being sorted out, but, according to TorrentFreak, PayPal seized those funds too.

This isn't the first time Paypal has closed accounts of companies providing services that are popular with Bittorrent users. In June, Paypal banned TorGuard, a company that offers VPN and proxy services. In the case of PRQ however, things are more complicated than that. PRQ has long a long history of defending the freedom of speech of its users and had as such gained a reputation as a safe harbor for whistle-blowers and political activists.

D-root is changing its IPv4 address on the 3rd of January

There is a scheduled change to the IPv4 address for one of the authorities listed for the DNS root zone and the .ARPA TLD. The change is to D.ROOT-SERVERS.NET, which is administered by the University of Maryland. The new IPv4 address for this authority is 199.7.91.13. The current IPv6 address for this authority is 2001:500:2d::d and it will continue to remain unchanged.

Don't use the Google Disavow tool

Matt explains why:

Essentially the Google Disavow tool is nothing more than a glorified crowd sourcing project.

Why try to identify low quality links via algorithmic signals when you can get an army of millions of webmasters around the world to do it for you?

And what better way to motivate that army than by telling them if they do all this work it will help

them?

It's nothing more than a bulk snitching tool dressed up as a solution to a problem it doesn't actually solve.

Freelancer.com acquires vWorker

After their recent acquisition of Scriptlance, Freelancer.com now also acquired vWorker (former Rent-a-Coder).

VWorker account holder received the following email:

Freelancer.com is proud to announce that we have just acquired vWorker, and we are delighted to welcome you to our vibrant freelancing marketplace. We have a suite of great features that will be of benefit to you, including our Rewards system and our great UI.

Our Rewards system is our way of recognising your professionalism and performance, and as you gain experience points, you will unlock unique benefits for your account, badges for your profile, and Freelancer.com credits. Basic, Standard and Premium members can then redeem these credits for rewards, including highlighted bids, a Freelancer T-shirt, and even a Skype session with the CEO!

Our UI is clean and intuitive. Gone are the days of tearing your hair out trying to manage a project. Freelancer.com streamlines and simplifies communication between employer and freelancer, taking the stress out of managing and working on projects.

Your vWorker account has been migrated into our marketplace. Included in this migration is your profile, balances, reputation, messages, existing and past projects, feedback, attachments and more. The migration of your feedback, attachments and past projects may take up to two weeks. During this time, your reputation may vary slightly - but after two weeks, it should very closely match the reputation you had on vWorker. We will also be giving you a unique vWorker Foundation Member badge!

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Wikipedia founder takes 'a lot of credit' for collapse of SOPA

At RSA Europe, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said the site's blackout played a key part in defeating the USA's controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

The English version of Wikipedia, Reddit and hundreds of other smaller websites coordinated a notional service blackout for a day in mid-January to raise awareness of SOPA. Wales described SOPA as introducing a Chinese-style blocking system in response to complaints about copyright infringement. In response, Wales said, 10 million people contacted Congress (an unnamed senator told Wales) and the bill was pulled days later.

Jimmy Wales:

I am quite anti-piracy. This was a strike against bad legislation.

20% of online newspapers now have paywalls

More than one-fifth of U.S. newspapers now require a paying subscription for full digital access, twice the number that did a year ago.

That's according to News&Tech, whose growing list of newspapers with metered paywalls or some other form of digital subscription plan has surpassed 290. There are 1,387 daily newspapers in the U.S. as of 2009, says a Pew study published earlier this year.

Girl Gets Locked Up For Saying LOL on Facebook

One teen's misguided sense of humor earned her jail time when she posted a Facebook status update LOL-ing at the fact that she was cited for DUI.

Kentucky teenager Paula Asher had one too many that fateful night she decided to drive, and she sideswiped another car as a result. Though there were four people in the car hit, thankfully no one was hurt. Asher was cited by police for driving under the influence.

The 18-year-old laughed about driving drunk on her Facebook page after the fact, posting a status update reading,

"My dumbass got a DUI and hit a car LOL."

The judge presiding over Asher's case found little humor in a crime that results in, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 28 deaths each and every day. Asher was ordered to shut down her Facebook page as a result, and when she refused, the judge held her in contempt of court and had her thrown in jail for two days.

Asher's told her local NBC affiliate,

"I didn't think LOL would put me in jail."

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Unitary patent brings back the software patents debate

The Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI) of the European Parliament is preparing these days in view of the discussion on unitary patent on 17 and 18 September 2012. The issue of interest is whether these discussions will bring back the return of software patents as it seems to be the case, having in view the recent patent wars in the US (like that of Apple against Samsung). There is also the threat of letting companies monopolize the market thus preventing innovation and the introduction of new products.

Several groups, like April and FSFE, call for a general mobilisation to contact all MEPs, so that the European Parliament finally tackles the issue of the software patentability.

Gérald Sédrati-Dinet, April's patent advisor:

"Software patents are a real scourge for companies and software developers. They do not contribute to innovation whatsoever, but prevent us from developing new products while exposing us to ever increasing legal uncertainty."

Although European laws prohibit software patents, the European Patent Office (EPO) has been trying for years to legalize software patents and, under the new proposal to be discussed, the power and control on the law on patentability would be left to an organisation, without any democratic control or the opinion to go before an independent court.

Under the current proposal, the European Patent Office has the right to award a patent, but also takes the final decision on whether it remains valid when someone complains.

Spanish website gets back seized domain names... After 18 months.

After a one year and a half battle with the US authorities, the sports streaming and download Spanish site Rojadirecta has succeeded in winning back its domain names, after the authorities dropped the lawsuit against it on 29 August 2012.

The .org and .com domains of Rojadirecta were seized in January 2011 as part of operation Operation In Our Sites, on a very questionable basis of intellectual property rights violation, and without any court order. The site had already been considered as legally operating in Spain by two Spanish courts.

This is not the first case of this type. In 2010 music blog Dajaz1 had its domain name seized which was returned after more than 12 months. It turned out that the seizure, initiated by the RIAA, was a mistake.

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Facebook could crumble overnight

Facebook is not like other companies that have hard assets and an established user base that will be there even when the company disappears. Facebook is not Apple nor Microsoft nor IBM nor Google nor GE nor Samsung. Those companies have hard assets and an established user base.

Just one day of bad trading, could easily set up a domino effect for more bad days with Facebook stock, and soon thereafter, it would be in its deathbed. Companies such as RIM and Nokia, would take a lot longer to dwindle down to nothing. A Microsoft or an Apple or a Google, would take a long longer, and, their death spirals would have triggered by some very huge mistakes in management.

You may like Facebook and so do many millions of people, but, what Facebook offers, is not a critical product or service that people couldn't live without, and that's what most people fail to realize. Facebook's core business is not its social networking platform. It's the sale of advertising space to advertisers. The millions of Facebook users are not Facebook's clients. The advertisers are. The social networking platform is a MEANS to gather viewers and information about those viewers so those eyeballs can be sold to advertisers. And that's where the problem lies. So far, Facebook has been good at attracting visitors, but they fail at keeping their real clients, the advertisers, happy. And a client who isn't happy is a client who won't be back and will spend his money elsewhere.

Facebook has no steady stream of income and has maneuvered itself in such a position where it has to be extremely careful about how it plans to force more ads on its visitors... or it might end up being the next MySpace.

BitTorrent Users Beware. You Are Being Watched.

BayTSP and Peer Media, two prominent anti-piracy companies that are expected to participate in the U.S. six-strikes anti-piracy scheme are already monitoring thousands of torrent files. Statistics obtained by TorrentFreak show that BayTSP and Peer Media have been increasing their activities in recent months.

The BitTorrent activity of these two companies is three times greater than that generated by all customers of a smaller ISP such as Sonic.net

For years BayTSP and Peer Media have been hired by movie studios and record labels to track the IP-addresses of file-sharers so these can be reported to their Internet providers.

In the U.S. this process is about to change as it will soon be formalized with the upcoming six-strikes anti-piracy scheme. Under this mechanism customers of five large ISPs will receive so-called copyright alerts. Besides being warned, repeat infringers face a variety of punishments under the new regime including temporary Internet disconnections. The MPAA and RIAA may eventually use the collected data to sue file-sharers even though New York Judge Gary Brown has already ruled that an IP-address alone is not sufficient evidence to identify copyright infringers.

Facebook director Thiel cashes out

Last Thursday and Friday, Facebook Inc director Peter Thiel sold roughly $400 million worth of Facebook shares, according to a regulatory filing. Thiel sold his shares at average prices ranging between $19.27 and $20.69 per share after the end of the first lockup, which barred early investors and insiders from selling shares following the IPO.

Thiel, who co-founded PayPal and was among Facebook's earliest backers, still owns roughly 5.6 million shares of Facebook.

Thiel, the libertarian entrepreneur who pays students $100,000 each to drop out of school and pursue business ideas, is one of Silicon Valley's more prolific investors. After selling his then-startup PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion, Thiel bankrolled Facebook in its early days.

Mt Dew had to shutdown a public poll to name new soda

Mt. Dew had a "Dub the Dew" campaign to let Internet users choose the name for a green-apple infused soft drink... Awfully optimistic.

The Mt. Dew marketing team forgot just what they were dealing with. After all, they were asking the same people who exiled rapper Pitbull to a Walmart in Alaska for advice. As could have been expected, the results of Dub the Dew were so offensive and useless that the entire promotion needed to be shut down.

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Microsoft drops the ball with outlook.com

Engadget reports:

So Microsoft launched a new email service today -- not a redesigned version of Hotmail, but a completely new, built-from-the-ground-up service. It's called Outlook.com, and for now, at least, it will exist separately from Hotmail, as Microsoft attempts to distance itself from Hotmail's bad rap.

So far, so good. But when we visit outlook.com, what is the first thing that happens? We get redirected to a live.com login page. The help section there is not dedicated to the new outlook.com site, but it's the generic live.com stuff.

Why would I want to sign up for an outlook.com account, if you can't even visit outlook.com without a live.com account? What features does does an outlook.com account have? I don't know because outlook.com doesn't even have a "features"-page or a "faq"-section. Or maybe it does, but unless I first sign up for a live.com account, I'll never know.

After reading the engadget article, I was curious and wanted to find out more. Two seconds after visiting outlook.com, it looks like Microsoft dropped the ball again. But then again, when was the last time Microsoft didn't drop it when they developed an internet service?

Leaked Report Reveals Music Industry's Anti-Piracy Strategy

A confidential internal report of the music industry outfit IFPI has been inadvertently made available online by the group itself. Penned by their Head of Internet Anti-piracy Operations, the report details the global strategy for the major recording labels of IFPI. Issues covered include everything from torrent sites to cyberlockers, what behavior IFPI expects of Internet service providers, the effectiveness of site blocking, and how pirates are accessing unreleased music from industry sources.

The IFPI report says it has 5 possible reactions to a threat:

1. Take down
2. Disruption
3. Investigation
4. Lobbying
5. Litigation

IFPI splits illicit content availability into two sections:

1. "content held on users' computers" and distributed via P2P networks such as BitTorrent, Gnutella, DirectConnect, eDonkey and Ares.
2. "content held on central servers", including file-hosts and cyberlockers.

IFPI is also keeping a close eye on the downloading and sharing of content across mobile data and other wireless networks. IFPI worries that these networks are providing here-and-now streaming of content via all-you-can-eat plans. Making matters worse is that IFPI reports challenges when it comes to matching an IP address to a subscriber.

The recording group also reports that Apple and Android architectures are encouraging the creation of 3rd party music apps. IFPI say they are crawling both the App Store and Google Marketplace and are focusing on "quick take down agreements" with Apple, Google, Microsoft, Nokia and Palm to remove apps they don't like. They are also mulling an expansion of their "payment provider program" to target "rogue" Android app developers.

Unauthorized music sites

IFPI say they have identified in excess of 50 Russian and Ukrainian pay MP3 download sites. The group reports that law enforcement authorities have "secured evidence that the illegal sites are annually stealing hundreds of millions of dollars" which is creating opportunities for money laundering and tax evasion investigations. IFPI say their next steps will include strangling the sites' finances with the help of payment processors, recovering proceeds of crime, and developing asset confiscation.

Disruption of revenue streams

IFPI's advertiser strategy is based around the "disruption of revenue streams" to unauthorized sites by several methods. In the report they speak of a "structured notice and take down program targeting Google's AdSense and DoubleClick advertising networks," plus "out reach" to IASH and IAB to implement "comprehensive infringing block lists." IFPI says it also initiates direct contact with advertisers to flag when their ads appear on infringing sites. Agreements are said to be in place with VISA, MasterCard, PayPal, CTIA, Monitise, PaySafeCard and PhonePayPlus to strangle finances to unauthorized sites.

EU ignores will of the people after ACTA was rejected

The European Parliament rejected ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, with a large majority on 4 July 2012, but just one week later the EU is trying to push back the rejected agreement through the back door, that is, through CETA, the EU–Canada trade agreement that includes measures similar to ACTA.

The negotiations between EU and Canada on CETA started in November 2009 and will probably be ended by the end of this year. Just like ACTA, the trade deal has been drafted in secret but leaked documents, dated February 2012, have shown parts of ACTA being introduced in this new agreement.

MEP Nigel Farage drew the attention over the similarities between ACTA and CETA:

If the commission has a glimmer of respect for the voice of the people it would change CETA as soon as possible and stop trying to bring ACTA into legislative life by stealth. ACTA is like a Frankenstein which has been bolted together and keeps on moving. It is dangerous and must be brought to an end immediately.

Michael Geist:

The backdoor ACTA approach creates enormous risks for Canada's trade ambitions. Given the huge anti-ACTA movement, the Canada-EU trade deal could face widespread European opposition with CETA becoming swept up in similar protests.

Porn IP complaint attorney gets fined

In January, a federal judge in Dallas imposed $10,000 in sanctions on the Texas-based lawyer Evan Stone and required him to pay $22,040 in attorneys' fees. Mr. Stone, in his zeal to get the names of those who illegally downloaded a German porn flick Der Gute Onkel, had knowingly sent out subpoenas without the court's permission.

From The Wall Street Journal:

U.S. District Judge David Godbey used words like "wanton" and "grave" to describe Mr. Stone's conduct. The judge accused Mr. Stone of transforming the use of subpoenas "from a bona fide state-sanctioned inspection into private snooping."

Mr. Stone appealed the sanction to the New Orleans-based Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. On Thursday, a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit swept Mr. Stone's arguments aside, saying he never raised them in the lower court so they weren't preserved for appeal. The court was unsparing in its criticism of Mr. Stone:

No miscarriage of justice will result from the sanctions imposed as a result of Stone's flagrant violation of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and the district court's orders. Stone committed those violations as an attempt to repeat his strategy of suing anonymous internet users for allegedly downloading pornography illegally, using the powers of the court to find their identity, then shaming or intimidating them into settling for thousands of dollars, a tactic that he has employed all across the state and that has been replicated by others across the country.

Blowback from IP Imperialism

TechDirt warns us about the dangers of patents and how China is using them to harm foreign competitors:

For many years, US companies and government officials complained publicly and privately that China just didn't "respect" patents. They would point to how various Chinese companies were famous for making knockoffs of various products as evidence of this, and they'd put strong diplomatic pressure on China to both "respect" foreign patents more and beef up its own patent system. Of course, for years, we've been warning about just how stupid this is. China recognizes that patents are really a protectionist tool, and is using them as such. It has certainly increased its patenting effort... but nearly every single major patent lawsuit in China has been about punishing foreign companies and blocking competition to domestic Chinese companies.

Chinese companies and politicians must be laughing at just how self-defeating the Americans and Europeans are. Despite it being obvious that patents harm the economy, American companies and politicians will still continue to insist that China needs to "strengthen" its patent system and EU Commissioners like Karel De Gucht continues to promote ACTA. If ACTA (the so called Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) would come into play, Chinese companies would be able to enforce their patents in the US, Canada and the EU, harming even more companies.

Freelancer.com acquires scriptlance

Freelancer.com just acquired Scriptlance and merged all Scriptlance accounts into its site. Scriptlance users can log into the freelancer.com site by using the password recovery option on that site. Fill in the email address you used to sign up with Scriptlance and freelancer.com will send you a new password. Your username remains the same.

EU rejects ACTA, but fight is not over.

Good news for anyone making money online in an honest way. ACTA, the controversial trade agreement that was drafted in secret between the US, Canada, Japan, the EU and a few other countries, was rejected by the EU Parliament after a long anti-ACTA campaign by online activists.

As Dave Neal from The Inquirer wrote:

This is a victory for everyone except corporate cartels

Open Rights Group:

This victory was thanks to your continued pressure which helped ensure that at every step of the way Europe's representatives voted to reject the provisions within ACTA. We know that MEPs have been inundated with emails and calls from people who, just like you, have fought tirelessly in the defence of our freedoms

ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, was officially intended to fight online piracy, but as liberty advocates, privacy groups, bloggers, lawyers, quickly pointed out, the overly broad language of ACTA would have made it possible for politicians to use ACTA against political opponents and activists. ACTA would also have allowed major corporations to harass and ultimately shutdown its smaller competitors through the use of questionable patents. And it would have made it possible for corporations or politicians to silence news outlets when those outlets wanted to release information damaging to the corporations or politicians.

No matter how hard the pro-ACTA lobby tried, it could not stop the waves of opposition that the draconian treaty attracted and as more and more people protested so it became harder for supporters to convince anyone that ACTA should be approved.

Now What?

We will have to remain vigilant. EU commissioners like the Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht have already stated that they will not let this slide. Chances are the Commission will reintroduce ACTA, possibly with some tiny cosmetic changes, on a later date. Apparently, the internet and the freedom to communicate, exchange ideas and do business with people all over the world, is so threatening to the EU Commission that it is willing to ignore the will of the people.

Mail-order houses

Until round 1940 it was possible to buy a house by catalog. In 1908, Sears Roebuck started to offer house kits in their catalogs. The kit, which included the entire house, with numbered parts and instruction booklets, paint and nails. The first mail-order house is credited to Aladdin Company, who started offering the houses in 1906. I wonder if someone is selling house kits online these days.

Twitter Marketing Myths Exposed

You don't get instant Twitter traffic from a huge follower count unless you are a somebody and people actually read your tweets. In the short run, you get traffic from Twitter with retweets. In the long run, tweets containing your urls will help you rank your site in the SERPs.

Going on twitter and adding a ton of people (who you hope will add you back) is an idiotic strategy. You will have all of these people shitting up your stream, so you probably won't read anything they are saying. They don't read their stream, and you don't read your stream, so who exactly are you knuckleheads actually talking to?

If you don't read the people you are following, you can't build relationships. No relationships, no one is reading you, clicking links, or retweeting.

Twitter marketing takes time and work. You can't treat it like spammy fire and forget link building project if you want to get a real benefit from it. You have to put in time, work and dedication.

PayPal Bans BitTorrent Friendly VPN Provider

According to TorrentFreak, TorGuard, a company that offers VPN and proxy services, has been banned from using the payment processor because of "its affiliation with BitTorrent". Thousands of dollars belonging to the company have been frozen.

In response to new Internet surveillance initiatives there is a growing interest in privacy enhancing services such as VPNs and proxies. TorGuard is one of the many companies catering to this demand. As the name suggests, TorGuard has several plans specifically targeted at BitTorrent users who prefer to hide their IP-addresses from the rest of the world.

Being a BitTorrent-friendly VPN appeals to a wide audience. However, the company has also learned that it has a downside. Without prior warning or detailed explanation, PayPal decided to ban TorGuard for promoting their services to BitTorrent users.

The following email was sent by PayPal:

When we reviewed your account, we noticed that your activity violates some of the agreements you have with us. Because of this, we've limited your accounts and can no longer offer our services to you. You'll still be able to log in to view your transaction history, but you won't be able to send or receive money.

Apparently, PayPal is going down the same route as Apple, where everything related to BitTorrent is simply a no-go. Over the past years the payment processor has already thrown out many cyberlockers and BitTorrent trackers that linked to infringing content, but to our knowledge this is the first time that a VPN service has been banned.

Despite the setback, business continues as usual for TorGuard and TorGuard's owner Jason commented:

Those who are serious about private payment solutions should consider one of the many alternatives like Prepaid VISA cards, OKPAY, Bitcoins, and other ewallet services.

Google plans to shut down Meebo

Just 5 days after buying social-messaging and advertising company Meebo for a rumored $100 million, Big G is beginning to shut down the company's various products.

On July 11, Meebo Messenger, Sharing on Meebo, Meebo Me, and all of Meebo's mobile apps will be shut down, according to a blog post on Meebo.com. Google is folding Meebo's staffers and technology into its fledgling Google+ social network.

It may seem a waste to buy a company for $100 million just to shut it down, but from Google's perspective it makes perfect sense. Google has been struggling to get its social media platform off the ground. At a time when people are already starting to count Google+ amongst Google's other failed projects (who even remembers Google Audio Ads, Google X or Google Lively?) and no one besides a few Google employees and clever SEO specialists seem to be using Google+, buying up the competition and shutting it down may be one of the only moves Google has left.

Remove Facebook Timeline Scams Still Target Dissatisfied Users

Every time when Facebook makes a big change, a good portion of the user base freaks out for a little while and then scammers try to take advantage of that. this time it's the Facebook timeline feature. a lot of users don't like it and now scammers are targeting them with "tools to remove the timeline".

According to WebProNews:

A recent survey showed that many users (up to 88%) are concerned about their privacy with the new Timeline, and another survey suggested that an overwhelming percentage of comments surrounding the Timeline on Facebook have been negative.

No wonder scammers continue to use the timeline to target victims.

Peter Shumlin at it again

Peter Shumlin, the no-new-tax Democratic Governor of Vermont, who signed the online affiliate tax bill (that he had indicated he would not sign) is now taxing dentists for giving away free toothbrushes to children.

Facebook malware works across major browsers

Researchers at Kaspersky Labs have analyzed an interesting worm. LilyJade, as the piece of malware is called, uses Facebook to propagate itself (it spreads by publishing spam messages about Justin Bieber from compromised Facebook accounts), but uses the Crossrider cross platform API to install itself on ALL OS platforms. Quite clever. It spoofs clicks on Adsense and other ad networks whenever the infected user's browser shows sites with those ads.

Facebook raises share price range after strong demand

Facebook has raised the price at which it hopes to sell its shares from $28-$35 to $34-$38, potentially putting its total value above $100 billion. Trading in the shares is expected to begin on Friday. A valuation at this level would make the social networking site worth more than Disney, Ford and Kraft Foods.

IP address alone is not enough to sue

A month ago we mentioned how Lightspeed Media's mass-lawsuit was likely to fail. New York Judge Gary Brown has now ruled that an IP-address is not sufficient evidence to identify copyright infringers. In his recommendation order the Judge labels mass-BitTorrent lawsuits a waste of judicial resources. For a variety of reasons he recommends other judges to reject similar cases in the future. This doesn't bode well for Lightspeed.

Payment Options At GetACoder

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Zombaio, RedPass and the Epassporte Trick

Back when ePassporte was still and business (before Chris Mallick ran off with the money and used it to bankroll his Middle Men and Columbus Circle movie projects), a popular trick amongst adult pay-site owners was to lower the scrub and use fresh ePassporte virtual visa cards to get the chargeback ratio under control. They would fund those extra joins themselves and then recuperate the money on the other side.

Interestingly, Zombiao, a billing company, launched an ewallet service last year: RedPass. RedPass users can order a RedPass MasterCard and fund it using their RedPass wallet. On GFY and JBM a few users hinted at the possibility that Zombio could be planning to use RedPass cards in the same way the old ePassporte virtual visa trick was used to get chargeback ratios down. Given the stricter MasterCard regulations, I highly doubt this is the case or even possible.

ZonaJobs Commercial

Outsourcing tasks over the internet is a good way to save money and make better use of your time. As internet marketeers we regularly find ourselves doing tasks that can easily be automated. However, sometimes setting up the whole automation process itself might cost us more time and money than it's worth. Especially when the task is a bit more complex and does not always follow the same pattern. In that case outsourcing is the solution. But as many of us have learned the hard way: finding the right people is not easy. Those of you who're tired of hearing the same excuses over and over again, will get a chuckle out of the following commercial:

What is Dwolla? How does it work?

The answer is simple: I have no idea.

Well, that's not entirely true. It know it's some kind of payment system. I know some bitcoin exchanges allow you to use Dwolla to buy or sell bitcoins. But that's about it. Today, I visited Dwolla's website, dwolla.com, hopping to learn more. Sadly, there wasn't a whole lot to learn.

On their front page they have a "How it works" button, so obviously I clicked that. The result:

How Dwolla works

Dwolla is a new payment network that works with your financial institution to offer a cheaper, safer, and overall better payment experience.

* Dwolla for Personal use
* Dwolla for Merchants and Non-profits
* Dwolla for Developers

Ok, so Dwolla is a new payment network. That, we already knew. Wanting to learn even more, I click the "Dwolla for Personal use" link and get:

Dwolla works with users and their banking relationships to offer a cheaper, safer, and overall better payment experience.

* Send money to friends through social networks
* Pay for stuff with your phone
* Shop easily, and safely online

Find out more about the experience

So we are already 3 clicks deep in the Dwolla site and we still haven't found anything useful. Next, I click on the "Find out more about the experience" link. This leads to www.dwolla.com/personal, a page that is filled with buzz words and no useful information whatsoever. We learn that Dwolla is a next generation payment network, that Dwolla is somehow more secure than plastic which carries sensitive financial information inside the 16 digits on the card, that it somehow taps into the mystical power of mobile devices to bring you the new tools, services, and overall convenience that you've grown to expect from 21st century technologies and that the people behind Dwolla are dedicated to building smarter technologies (whatever that may mean).

So even after reading all that I still have no idea what Dwolla is or how it works. Is it an ewallet like Paypal, Paxum, RedPass or OKPay? When I visit those sites, I at least immediately understand what it is they are offering. How does it work? Do I open an account? How do I fund it? How does it differ from other ewallets? If it is even an ewallet of course.

When people can't clearly describe what it is they are selling or offering and prefer to use a lot of marketing buzz words instead, an alarm goes off: *Snake Oil

The Dwolla site reminded me of a scene from the movie Ideocracy. Brawndo's got what palnts crave. Dwolla taps into the power of mobile devices. *sigh*

An attorney's opinion on Lightspeed's claim

Last week we already talked about Lightspeed's fishing expedition. Yesterday, the Fight Copyright Trolls site published an article about how Lightspeed's claim is vulnerable to motions to dismiss:

The claim brought under 18 USC 1030 is a farce. Any first year attorney can run a truck through the hole in their pleading.

Breasts lead to arrest of Anonymous hacker

According to CNET, police allege that an Anonymous hacker posted a picture of his presumed girlfriend's breasts as a taunt to US authorities. The picture allegedly contained GPS information that led the FBI to her. The photograph of the breasts linked authorities to Ochoa -- because, taken with an iPhone, it contained GPS information.

- Exif Reader: Read the EXIF meta-data stored in your images.
- Exif Cleaner: Remove the EXIF meta-date from your images before you post them online.

One last big score for Lightspeed?

Steve Lightspeed used to be one of the big dogs in affiliate marketing. Somewhere along the line LightSpeedCash gave up on creating great content and updating their sites. The prince became an old dinosaur. And the dinosaur is looking for easy cash. He's obviously had to stop quasi blackmailing IP addresses of people alleged to be downloading his content, so now he's taking the copyright-troll route to riches. In what can only be described as a fishing expedition, Lightspeed is going after the names of 6500 internet users that supposedly shared their passwords with others. In 2000, password sharing may have been a problem for membership based sites. In 2012, password trading can easily be detected and automatically be blocked. If Lightspeed prefers to let password traders run wild so he can sue them, we must assume that Lightspeed no longer cares about it sites, but has gone in full time Troll mode.

One Year Later: Azoogle Still Owes People Money

It looks like Epic (Azoogle) is still having major cash flow problems. From what I can tell, they are paying some of their affiliates (but with a huge delay). But this seems to be limited to those that still send them traffic. Affiliates that have stopped sending them traffic have not been getting the money they are owed. So if you are still owed money and you don't want to risk wasting your quality traffic, you might want to consider sending them some cheap feeder traffic instead.

ICM Registry applies for 3 more adult tlds

ICM registry, the company behind the failed dotxxx top level domain, has applied for 3 more adult tlds: dotsex, dotporn and dotadult. Four months after its first tld went live, ICM Registry is struggling to stay alive. Registration numbers are far below their initial projections. ICM Registry had hoped to make over $200 million in its first year. They'll be lucky if they end up with 10% of that. Meanwhile, their application for 3 more adult tlds will without a doubt dilute whatever value their original dotxxx domains may have had. The writing is already on the wall as many registrars have been forced to lower their prices on dotxxx registrations. Discounts of up to 30% or even 40% are becoming common these days. And as if all of that wasn't enough, both ICM Registry and ICANN have been sued over the dotxxx tld.

Mobile Marketing Becomes a Hotspot for Hiring

In the last 90 days, recruiters posted more than 6000 online ads for marketing professionals with mobile marketing skills. That's a 26% growth compared to last year.

Testing custom OpenX plugin

We developed a new Openx plugin to auto-adjust banner weights based on ctr. It's the first step in building a new system that displays ads based on thematic clicking patterns. Everything users do on our sites builds a "sales profile". That way users will only get to see ads for products in niches they have already shown interest for.

Trafficholder now supports Liberty Reserve

You can now load your Trafficholder account using Liberty Reserve. It's also possible to cash out your earnings (money you've made from selling clicked traffic to Trafficholder) using Liberty Reserve.

For webmasters that sell traffic and need Liberty Reserve, but don't want to use a third party exchanger, this should be great news.

Tech blogger set to make $200 MILLION

Pete Cashmore, the blogger who started Mashable, one of the world's biggest social media websites, from his bedroom because it was 'something to do without getting out of bed' is set to become a multimillionaire amid the likely sale of the site to CNN for $200 million.

Cashmore, now 26, created Mashable.com from his room when he was just 19 in an attempt to escape the boredom of his studies.

Seven years later, the tech news site now has its head office in New York and Cashmore is set to become one of the world's wealthiest men.

Android Market is now Google Play

Google renamed the Android Market to Google Play. First impression is What's up with that logo?. Frankly, it looks like the 6 year old kid of some Google exec was allowed to design it. Second thing to come to mind is: Why is Google dumping the Android brand and why did they use the word Play instead of Market? Surely "Google Market" would have made a lot more sense than "Google Play". Unless Google is planning to move into the gaming console market! Think about it for a second. Google phones, Google tablets, Google TVs and Google gaming consoles all using the same or similar OSs and using the same cloud store.

Be weary of experts

Beethoven was told by his music teacher that he had no talent for music. This teacher said: "as a composer he is hopeless".

FatWallet moved to avoid the new tax imposed by Illinois on affiliates.

A year ago, Fatwallet, packed and moved to avoid the new tax imposed by Illinois on affiliates. This new law would effectively made it impossible for them to continue running their business in Illinois.

OpenX Acquires LiftDNA

OpenX CEO Tim Cadogan announced that Supply-Side Platform (SSP) LiftDNA will become part of OpenX:

As the only yield optimization technology to work completely within an ad server, LiftDNA by OpenX increases revenue for publishers by using a breakthrough approach, delivering an average revenue increase of 50%-150% to publishers. "Building yield optimization directly into the ad server breaks the mold of remote, third party services, dramatically increases revenue and aligns perfectly with OpenX's vision of providing publishers with a comprehensive revenue serving platform. We're delighted to be able to bring this superior monetization solution to publishers around the world, starting today!" said Mr. Cadogan.

Keep your face out of LinkedIn ads

Google has a new privacy policy, Facebook is rolling out its Timeline feature, and the FBI is looking for help to monitor all the social networks. All that has people feeling a little twitchy about their personal information that is available online. And now ZDNet is reporting that LinkedIn may be using some of your information in their advertising campaigns.

Female Libido Enhancement Niche Boom In 2012

A good affiliate marketer is always on the lookout for new niches with low competition and high demand. The biggest niches are weight loss and anti-aging followed by products men can use to enhance their "performance".

A niche that has been mostly neglected, but has a lot of potential and has been growing a lot of the last year is the market for "Female Libido Enhancement" products.

Thanks to attention from the mainstream media, this niche is growing faster than any other niche out there. Even major talk shows have featured the subject and reviewed some of the products. As the subject becomes less taboo, I expected the niche to grow even more. Webmaster Guide blogged a list of affiliate programs that sell these types of products. I recommend SellHealth, but it's always a good idea to diversify and send traffic to several different programs at the same time.

Best way to ship precious metals

The most reliable way to ship gold coins and other precious metals is not FedEx or UPS, but USPS. USPS Registered Mail insures up to $25.000 per package. You are sending collectibles and not gold coins or "money". Once the coins have been graded, they instantly become collectibles.

Granted it can take up to 21 days for them to deliver the package, but it will be fully insured if it gets lost.

Extra tip: Make sure you double or triple box it, in good boxes. Or even put it in a strong plastic container, then double box it.