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Nice quite beach, shouldn't we be here?
A perfect effect with the sun. :D
FCC acts to create a more open U.S. wireless network
Alexa Rank: 24,189 Compete Rank: 6,405 Page Rank: 8/10
Alexa Rank: 3 Compete Rank: 2 Page
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Alexa Rank: 1,448 Compete Rank: 93 Page
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Aug 1st, 2007
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission moved cautiously toward creating a more open national wireless broadband network, handing a partial victory to Google, which has pushed for more competition in
cellphone services.
The agency approved rules Tuesday for an auction of broadcast spectrum that its chairman, Kevin Martin, said would promote new consumer services. The rules will let customers use any phone and software they want on networks using about one-third
of the spectrum to be auctioned.
The commission did not approve a provision that would have required the winner of the auction to sell access to its network on a wholesale basis to other companies. Google favored the rule as a way to hasten competition and innovation in the
cellphone industry, a market it is eyeing.
While the language of the ruling has not been made public, it appears that any company that buys the new spectrum will have to leave it open to devices it does not approve or control. If, for instance,
Verizon Wireless were to buy spectrum, consumers would have to pay Verizon for access to its network but
they could use devices of their own choosing on it.
At present, the carriers decide what devices are used on their networks and therefore control many of the services and software available to consumers. The carriers assert that this lets them control the quality of the customer's experience.
The ruling does not affect the existing spectrum, controlled by major companies like Verizon. But it appears to signal a shift in how policy makers and, in turn, companies, will approach access to and control of the wireless networks of the future.
The ruling did not go far enough for some consumer-activist groups, who had wanted more open access to those networks, but even those groups applauded parts of it.
In recent weeks, Google and other technology interests pressed the commission to create an open-access wireless network - in contrast to the current closed cellular networks - and to permit owners of the spectrum to sell portions of it wholesale to other companies. That would loosen
the carriers' grip on service offerings and might also open the door to new entrants like Google.
The 700-megahertz wireless band has been referred to as the "last beachfront property" in the radio spectrum. It is being made available for new digital wireless services, including emergency communications, by television broadcasters moving to digital television transmission in
February 2009. By law, the auction must start no later than Jan. 28, 2008. It is expected to raise $15 billion or more for the U.S. government.
Google called the decision an indication of progress at the commission. The agency adopted two of the four openness standards that Google proposed this year, including open access to software applications and devices.
"The Federal Communications Commission made real, if incomplete, progress for consumers this afternoon," said Richard Whitt, Google's
telecommunications and media counsel in Washington.
In trying to influence the commission debate, Google had said it would bid at least $4.6 billion if the commission approved all its proposed rules. However, Whitt said it was not out of the question that Google might still bid. The company plans to study detailed rules the agency is
expected to release in the next two weeks and talk with potential partners before making a final decision.
Google's efforts also drew attention to the debate over the pace of innovation in the wireless market.
Speaking before the commission Tuesday, Jason Devitt, co-founder and chief executive of Skydeck, a Silicon Valley wireless content firm, said the U.S. cellphone industry had failed to innovate. "Ten years and we have ring tones," he said.
The commission tried to strike a balance between the interest groups, Martin said. "The commission needs to decide what is in the public interest, not what one company advocates," he said.
Public interest groups and Silicon Valley technologists said they were disappointed with the ruling. Public interest groups said the $4.6 billion minimum auction price set by the commission might discourage bidders. The rules say that if the reserve auction price is not met, the open
access provisions adopted by the commission will be dropped in later bidding.
The meeting, which was scheduled to begin at 10 a.m., was delayed into the afternoon because of last-minute negotiations over the open access provision, an industry executive said. The limited open access agreement resulted from a compromise between Martin, a Republican, and two
Democratic commissioners, Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein, who favored the wholesale rule that Google proposed.
Shows an unfiltered list of the top search terms on most search engines (NSFW)*.
*NSFW = Not safe for work!
Remember niche search engines? If not, check out past mentor calls, this is a great list of them!
Major
Search Engines:
Wikia, the commercial site led by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, is taking the next step toward launching its open source, human-assisted Web search
tool, Search Wikia.
Speaking at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) last week, Wales announced that Wikia has acquired Grub, the distributed search
spidering technology previously owned by LookSmart, and will begin using it to build an index for the
Search Wikia
project.
Grub, which LookSmart bought in January 2003 for $1.4 million, is a distributed crawling service that LookSmart had implemented as a screensaver that would use idle CPU time on a user's PC to crawl the Web. The data was used to supplement its own centralized crawler's indexing
efforts.
LookSmart formerly crawled the Web to create its own index with its Wisenut crawler, acquired in 2002. The company's fortunes took a turn for the worse when Microsoft dropped them as search provider for MSN at the beginning of 2004.
Since 2005, LookSmart now solely operates as a directory, either via its paid LookListings, its non-commercial Zeal directory, or the publisher-focused FindArticles.com. LookSmart also offers
a white-label search-targeted and contextual pay-per-click advertising platform and bookmarking services to publishers, most notably Ask.com, Local.com, and Reed Business Information.
Wikia will immediately release Grub to the open source community, and make both the crawler and source code available at
Grub.org. Users who download the application can run it either as a
screensaver or a background process while other applications are running.
Specifics of the deal were not revealed, though it is part of a larger advertising deal between Wikia and LookSmart which was
announced last week.
Under the deal, LookSmart will provide text and display ads in Wikia's
freely hosted wiki communities, and eventually on the Search Wikia site, Wales said. Ads will be sold by Wikia on either a cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM)
model. Inventory not sold by Wikia will be back-filled by ads from LookSmart's distributed ad network.
Wales' Search Wikia project began garnering interest in December, when Wales let some details slip in an interview with London's
Times. Since then, Wales has been in discussions with
both the open source community, and with commercial partners, Wales said. In May, the project brought on Jabber creator Jeremie Miller as technical lead on the project, and today the project is moving to the next phase, Wales said.
Grub's modular design allows developers to extend and add functionality to the crawler, improving the quality and performance of the entire system. By combining Grub's distributed processing network with the power of a
wiki to form social consensus, the project has taken the next major step towards a future where search is open and transparent, Wales said.
The Search Wikia project is a mix of open source and commercial interests. The site itself will be commercial, monetized by LookSmart's ads. The technology that is created by the effort, as well as the index of Web sites, will be available under a free license. "We're basically
creating its own competitors," Wales said.
The project also incorporates several aspects of community, Wales said. For developers, the project presents a programming challenge that will help both Wikia and the open source communities around search applications like Nutch and Lucene, which Wikia will incorporate into its search
engine.
The general public can participate first by downloading the Grub application to begin creating an index with the unused computing power. An early version of a Search Wikia search engine should be available in beta by the end of the year, Wales
said, but users should not expect the completed product by then.
"When I opened Wikipedia, it had three articles, yet it was called an encyclopedia. That's how we plan to do this: publicly and openly," Wales said.
Once the Search Wikia site is up, users will have several social elements to participate in. They will be able to rank sites and pages, provide feedback, get into editorial discussions – many of the same activities that they would at
Wikipedia. As with Wikipedia, Wales envisions a core group of editors will lead the activities at Search Wikia.
Wales thinks adding a human element can help solve some of the issues with spam and deceptive content showing up in search results. "It's easy for people to tell what a good result is, and what's spam or deceptive. If you have a trusted
community, you have a way to manage the process," he said.
Search Wikia will be different than the human-edited directory approach of Mahalo, he said. Besides the fact that Search Wikia is an open source project, Wales notes that the biggest
difference is that Mahalo is about "paying people to write a Web index and supplementing it with Google."
"It's not particularly game-changing," Wales said.
Wales' goal is to eventually supplant Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask as an everyday, broad Web search engine. "I don't know yet if we can do that. We're going to try to get something up by the end of the year. I don't know how good it's going to be, or how long it's going to take to
get good, but we're going to
Social Search Engines and Information
Where is the trend with Wiki this and Wiki that?
WEB TOOLS
make your business building more effective:
7 Clever Google Tricks Worth Knowing
Below I have compiled a list of 7 clever Google tricks that I believe everyone should be aware of. Together I think they represent the apex of the grand possibilities associated with Google search manipulation tricks and hacks. Although there are many others out there, these 7 tricks
are my all-time favorite. Enjoy yourself. 1. Find the Face Behind the Result – This is a neat trick you can use on a Google Image search to filter the search results so that they include only images of people. How is this useful? Well, it could come in handy if
you are looking for images of the prominent people behind popular products, companies, or geographic locations. You can perform this search by appending the code &imgtype=face to the end of the URL address after you perform a standard Google Image search.
- Examples (notice the differences in each URL):
2. Google + Social Media Sites = Quality Free Stuff – If you are on the hunt for free desktop wallpaper, stock images, Wordpress templates or the like, using Google to search your favorite social media sites is your best bet. The word “free” in any standard search
query immediately attracts spam. Why wade through potential spam in standard search results when numerous social media sites have an active community of users who have already ranked and reviewed the specific free items that interest you. All you have to do is direct Google to search
through each of these individual social media sites, and bingo… you find quality content ranked by hundreds of other people.
3. Find Free Anonymous Web Proxies – A free anonymous web proxy site allows any web browser to access other third-party websites by channeling the browser’s connection through the proxy. The web proxy basically acts as a middleman between your web browser and the
third-party website you are visiting. Why would you want to do this? There are two common reasons:
- You’re connecting to a public network at a coffee shop or internet café and you want privacy while you browse the web. You don’t want the admin to know every site you visit.
- You want to bypass a web content filter or perhaps a server-side ban on your IP address. Content filtering is common practice on college campus networks. This trick will usually bypass those restrictions.
There are subscription services and applications available such as TOR and paid VPN servers that do the same thing. However, this trick is free and easy to access from anywhere via Google. All you have to do is look through the search results returned by the queries below, find a
proxy that works, and enter in the URL of the site you want to browse anonymously.
4. Google for Music, Videos, and Ebooks - Google can be used to conduct a search for almost any file type, including Mp3s, PDFs, and videos. Open web directories are one of the easiest places to quickly find an endless quantity of freely downloadable files. This is
an oldie, but it’s a goodie! Why thousands of webmasters incessantly fail to secure their web severs will continue to boggle our minds.
5. Browse Open Webcams Worldwide – Take a randomized streaming video tour of the world by searching Google for live open access video webcams. This may not be the most productive Google trick ever, but it sure is fun! (Note: you may be prompted to install an
ActiveX control or the Java runtime environment which allows your browser to view certain video stream formats.)
6. Judge a Site by its Image – Find out what a site is all about by looking at a random selection of the images hosted on its web pages. Even if you are somewhat familiar with the target site’s content, this can be an entertaining little exercise. You will almost
surely find something you didn’t expect to see. All you have to do is use Google’s site: operator to target a domain in an image search.
7. Results Based on Third-Party Opinion - Sometimes you can get a better idea of the content located within a website by reading how other websites refer to that site’s content. The allinanchor: Google search operator can save you large quantities
of time when a normal textual based search query fails to fetch the information you desire. It conducts a search based on keywords used strictly in the anchor text, or linking text, of third party sites that link to the web pages returned by the search query. In other words, this
operator filters your search results in a way such that Google ignores the title and content of the returned web pages, but instead bases the search relevance on the keywords that other sites use to reference the results. It can add a whole new dimension of variety to your search
results.
Bonus Material:
Here is a list of my favorite Google advanced search operators, operator combinations, and related uses:
- link:URL = lists other pages that link to the URL.
- related:URL = lists other pages that are related to the URL.
- site:domain.com “search term = restricts search results to the given domain.
- allinurl:WORDS = shows only pages with all search terms in the url.
- inurl:WORD = like allinurl: but filters the URL based on the first term only.
- allintitle:WORD = shows only results with terms in title.
- intitle:WORD = similar to allintitle, but only for the next word.
- cache:URL = will show the Google cached version of the URL.
- info:URL = will show a page containing links to related searches, backlinks, and pages containing the url. This is the same as typing the url into the search box.
- filetype:SOMEFILETYPE = will restrict searches to that filetype
- -filetype:SOMEFILETYPE = will remove that file type from the search.
- site:www.somesite.net “+www.somesite.net” = shows you how many pages of your site are indexed by google
- allintext: = searches only within text of pages, but not in the links or page title
- allinlinks: = searches only within links, not text or title
- WordA OR WordB = search for either the word A or B
- “Word” OR “Phrase” = search exact word or phrase
- WordA -WordB = find word A but filter results that include word B
- WordA +WordB = results much contain both Word A and Word B
- ~WORD = looks up the word and its synonyms
- ~WORD -WORD = looks up only the synonyms to the word
- More info.
A word of caution: for the sake of completeness, we’ve included a small number of sites that have been criticized for their ethics. If it sounds too good to be true, it generally is.
Get Paid To Write
Weblogs, Inc. - Apply to blog for one of their ninety plus blogs or submit your own topic idea. They will pay you per post that you write and you must meet their minimum post requirements.
PayPerPost - Get paid as much as $500 or more a month writing articles and reviews of their sponsors on your blog.
Blogsvertise - Their advertisers pay you to mention and talk about their websites, products and services in your own blog.
Review Me - After your blog has been accepted in their network, they will pay you $20 to $200 per post that you write.
Smorty - Earn $6 to $100 dollars per post you write on your blog. Amount paid for each post depends on the overall popularity and page rank of your blog.
SponsoredReviews - Write reviews for their advertisers’ products and services on your own blog. They charge a 35% transaction fee for their services.
LoudLaunch - Blog about the advertisers campaign releases that meet your interests. They pay once a month.
Blogitive - Get paid weekly via PayPal for posting stories that interest you.
BloggerWave - Select the advertiser opportunities that best suit your blog and write reviews on their products and services.
InBlogAds - Write about websites, products, services and companies on your blog and get paid for it.
BlogToProfit - Make $250 dollars or more by writing new posts on your blog.
Creative Weblogging - Write 7 to 10 posts per week for their network and they will pay you $225 per month.
WordFirm - Make money publishing books as a freelance writer from home.
451 Press - Write for a blog within their network and receive forty percent of all generated revenue.
Digital Journal - Network of bloggers that get paid to report on newsworthy articles through their blogs.
BlogBurner - Sign up for a free blog and get paid for writing new posts. Your commissions are generated through Adsense clicks.
Squidoo - Earn money by writing your new blog, or choose to donate your earnings to charity.
About.com - Become a paid guide writing articles for About.com. Compensation depends on the growth of your page views.
DayTipper - Earn $3 for every short tip you write and get published.
Helium - Earn a share of their advertising revenue by writing articles in their channels.
Dewitts Media - Get paid to write your own blog. This site requires you have a minimum page rank of 3 to sign up.
BOTW Media - Make money writing a blog for their blogging network.
CreamAid - Get paid to submit blog posts in their directory.
BlogFeast - Generate revenue from pre-installed Google Adsense ads when you blog in their network.
Mashable - Mashable hires freelancers and new staff, offering one of the largest platforms for tech bloggers.
Advertising Programs
Google Adsense - Most popular pay-per-click advertising provider. Make anywhere from $0.01 to $5.00 plus per click on site relevant ads.
Text-Link-Ads - Approve or deny the advertiser links that appear on your site. They pay you 50% of the sale price for each text link sold on your website.
BlogAds - The average blogger makes anywhere from $50 to $5000 dollars a month selling blog ads. To participate in this program you will need to get sponsored by someone in their network.
LinkWorth - Here you will find eleven different options to fit your advertising needs. Choose from text based advertisements, sponsored ads and paid blog reviews to name a few.
CrispAds - Access to over six thousand advertisers in their pay-per-click program. You choose the advertisers that suit you best.
Chitika - Offers six types of advertising to fit your needs.
AzoogleAds - Delivers targeted advertisers to their network of publishers to bring you the most profitable solutions.
Vibrant Media - Offers in-text contextual based advertisements.
MediaFed - Place advertisements in your blog’s RSS feed to generate additional revenue.
Qumana - Embeds ads directly into your posts. Ads are generated from keywords that you select. Not particularly popular with readers.
PeakClick - Austria based pay-per-click provider. Provides automatic insertion of site targeted ads.
DoubleClick - Offers a full suite of products for publishers that enable you to forecast, sell inventory, serve ads and analyze campaigns online and through other digital channels.
Tribal Fusion - They offer reliable payments, free ad-serving technology, a dedicated account manager and up-to-date, real-time reporting, with a 55% payout. Must go through an approval process.
AdBrite - Approve or reject any ads purchased for your sites. Also gives you the ability to sell ads direct with “Your Ad Here” links.
ThankYouPages - Shows ads based on demographics and relevancy. Majority of traffic must originate from U.S.
Clicksor - Inline text link advertising, underlines words directly in your posts making them clickable advertisements. Once more, we’d say that inline ads are not popular with regular blog readers.
TargetPoint - Contextually and search targeted pay-per-click ads.
IndustryBrains - Place relevant contextual text listings and graphical ads on your site.
BloggingAds - Post one-time ads on your site. Pays via PayPal.
BulletAds - Performance based online advertising network.
AdsMarket - Match your traffic to handpicked advertisers with top-converting products and services.
ROIRocket - Targeted campaigns specific to your marketing needs.
AdKnowledge - Offers complete outsourcing of your advertising management. Runs ads in websites, email and search engine inventory.
Yes Advertising - Payouts for running ads from their sponsors. Also offers a referral program that pays 20% of the referred webmasters earnings.
RevenuePilot - Offers pay-for-performance and pay-per-click advertising for your sites.
SearchFeed - Integrates paid advertisements into your site’s search feature.
Bidvertiser - Display text ads on your site and advertisers bid for placement.
Pheedo - Monetize your RSS feeds with this program.
ValueClick media - Generate revenue by displaying ads through banners, pop-unders and rich media. Be warned that pop-unders are unpopular these days.
OneMonkey - Another text based advertising program.
Yahoo Publisher Network - Use the internet giant, Yahoo, to display targeted ads on your site.
Q Ads - Monetize your site by placing ads anywhere you can add a picture.
Affiliate Networks and Programs
Amazon Associates - Link to Amazon’s products and services and earn up to 10% of the sale price. Converts well for product-focused sites.
ClickBank - Over 10,000 products to promote with commissions as high as 75%.
Commission Junction - Promote the advertiser’s products and services in exchange for a commission on leads or sales.
LinkShare - Pay-for-performance affiliate marketing network. Gives you the ability to use individual product links on your site and generate revenue from sales.
Affiliate Fuel - Serves as a middle man to bring publishers and advertisers together to promote products and services.
LinkConnector - Affiliate marketing network that offers a zero tolerance fraud policy to keep you safe while conducting business.
LeadPile - Affiliate network that allows you to generate and sell trade leads to the highest bidder.
Forex-Affiliate - Affiliate program that allows you to earn commissions from trading Forex (currency exchange) online.
incentAclick - CPA (cost-per-action) affiliate program that guarantees the fastest ROI in the industry.
AdPlosion - Earn revenue by selling leads, clicks and products from their advertisers. Also runs an incentive points program in addition to your commissions.
AffiliateFuture - Another affiliate program that pays you for generating leads, sales and clicks.
ClixGalore - Affiliate network consisting of 7500+ advertisers for you to choose from.
ThinkAction - Affiliate network that claims to have the top payouts and the possibility of earning over $100,000 dollars per month.
RocketProfit - Affiliate network, pays via check after your commissions reach $25 dollars.
CafePress - Earn affiliate commissions by selling your personally branded merchandise.
Avangate - Make money selling popular computer software titles through your site.
Paid Social Media Programs
Dada.net - Social site with a revenue sharing program that pays you for referring friends and driving traffic.
Jyve - Pays you to provide answers, advice and peer support to people in need of some help.
Cruxy - Specializes in social video, but serves as a venue to sell your digital media.
BitWine - Get paid to give advice and answer questions for people, on subjects of your interests and choice.
Ether - Make money answering questions for your peers over the phone. You set your rates and call availability.
UpBlogger - Social network site that pays you based on the amount of visits you receive to your uploaded content.
JustAnswer - Help others solve their problems and earn money for your knowledge.
MetaCafe - Upload your videos and earn money based on the number of views you receive.
ChaCha - Get paid to offer support to members of their community.
AssociatedContent - Earn money by uploading your videos, text, audio and images to their site. Earnings are determined by the exposure you receive from your content.
myLot - Pays you for posting, commenting and using their social network.
KnowBrainers - Another site that pays you to get involved with the community and answer questions. Optionally you can answer questions through the RSS feeds on your own blog.
Everything Else That Pays
Google User Research - Google Pays you money to participate in their user research studies online.
Microsoft Research Panel - Get paid from Microsoft for providing feedback on their products.
Amazon Mechanical Turk - Amazon pays you to complete simple tasks that their computers can’t understand. Payments are
a matter of cents.
eJury - Earn $5 to $10 dollars per verdict rendered as a mock juror for practice trials.
WorkingSOL - This company pays you to handle technical support for many large companies. You can work from home on the computer or by phone and decide what times you are available.
Appingo - Always looking for experienced copy editors and proof readers. Must submit a resume.
IntelliShop - Pays you to shop at stores in your area and write a review of your experience.
Mahalo Greenhouse - They pay $10 to $15 dollars per site you submit to their directory.
Focus Pointe Global - Get paid to join their focus groups and voice your opinion. Available to teens and adults.
Agloco - Sign up, download their toolbar and get paid to surf the internet. This site has been criticized as a “pyramid scheme”, although the founders deny the allegation.
Arise - Make money providing phone, web and email support and sales for 40 plus companies in their network.
CraZoo - Earn money for starting new threads and posting in online forums.
Tutor.com - Get paid to tutor people online.
ForumBoosting.com - Make money posting in forums across the internet.
Share-A-Pic - Earn money by uploading and sharing your pictures on their website.
Opuzz Voice - Earn money by doing voice overs for their clients online.
SlashMySearch - Get paid to search the internet with their search engine.
Includes: browser, bittorrent client, ftp client, chat program, email client, blogging client, anti-spyware, and a lot more.
Checking in again this week:
Google's HOT Trends.
What News Corp Owns -- it'll freak you out!
RELEASED Aug 1st, 2007
A detailed list of all the books, newspapers, magazines, radio stations, studios, TV channels, satellite networks, cable networks, internet ventures and other assets owned by News Corporation.
The BEST 404 PAGE EVER!
RELEASED Aug 1st, 2007
Usually when you go to a non existing page on the Internet you get a 404 error. Well, this site
has a different idea of a 404 error page. It's mysteriously relaxing... you almost feel as if you're
there. I know, this isn't news, but it sure is inspiring for being creative!
Scientist successfully jumpstart a human brain!
PC Magazine - Released Aug 1st 20071 hour ago
A man with severe brain injuries who spent six years in a near-vegetative state can now chew his food, watch a movie and talk and MORE!
Microsoft HD Photo Format considered for Standardization by JPEG
RELEASED Aug 1st, 2007
Microsoft has announced that the Joint Photographic Expert Group (JPEG) is considering the standardization of the company’s HD Photo file format.
EBay Experimenting with Ads on Voice Alert Calls
RELEASED Aug 1st, 2007
Newly launched mobile company UnWired Nation, with its partner Apptera, is enabling eBay and others to not only contact customers with phone calls using a voice interaction system, but to play them.
FOOD for thought...
"One must learn by doing the thing, for though you think you know it,
you have no certainty until you try."
- Quoted from Aristotle.
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