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If It's on Super Wall, It May As Well Be Public Record

In December of 2007, a judge, U.S. Magistrate Judge Patty Shwartz, ordered the plaintiffs in two cases (Beye v. Horizon, 06-Civ.-5337 & Foley v. Horizon, 06-Civ.-6219 were consolidated for discovery) to turn over their children's online emails, diaries, and other writings to the court. They had until January 15th to comply. The plaintiffs fought the order, saying the online writings were therapy tools and not meant to be shown to others. However, Shwartz was not swayed.

Horizon believed that the children's writings on their social networking sites and emails could show that their eating disorders are wrapped up in emotional causes, and therefore not the insurer's responsibility (since N.J. law says only biological mental illness must be covered).

On Jan. 24th, Horizon claimed that the Jan. 15th set by Shwartz come and gone with no disclosure on the plaintiffs' parts, even though Beye's parents had turned over the child's Yahoo emails. But the Foleys had yet to disclose their daughter's emails. Horizon insisted the plaintiffs turn over not only the children's emails, but also the corresponding emails and the email accounts of the girls' families. They also requested a mirror-image copy of the hard drive for each computer in the plaintiffs' family.

When it came to disclosing the writings on both Facebook and MySpace, David Mazie, the Beye's lawyer, stated that they have produced what documents they can and they have no Facebook or MySpace pages to turn over. The Foley's lawyer, Bruce Nagel, says "he believes his clients have no Facebook or MySpace pages."

However, anyone who knows a 15-year-old girl, knows that that these statements were likely false, and the lawyers were just trying to buy some time.

As it turned out, Horizon moved to dismiss Beye and Foley cases on the ground that the court should abstain from ruling due to pending state legislation would resolve the issue for good. While the new legislation may provide respite in these particular cases, those who are interested in internet privacy laws and protection are now feeling a knot in their stomach over what may have been.

What You Say Online is Not Private

The internet is not like a diary, although many people use online journals, blogs, and social networking sites to share their innermost thoughts, feelings, and secrets with the world. With a hardbound diary, you only had to be afraid of your little brother finding it under your mattress; but with the web, the words you write are etched in stone for the entire world to read. And even when you remove your accounts and disable your profiles, you may not really be gone. With Google's caching, the Way Back Machine, and even the websites themselves, your data is retained for a lot longer than you may have realized.

Take for example, the U.K. user who realized that he was unable to fully delete his Facebook profile. It seems users wishing to remove their Facebook profiles are only given the option to deactivate their accounts. These accounts become inaccessible, but still remain in Facebook's database. To really wipe out all information, Facebook advises users log in and manually remove all data from their profile before deactivating their account. This greatly concerned Dave Evans, the senior data protection practice manager at the U.K.'s Information Commissioner's Office: "One of the things that we're concerned about is that if the onus is entirely on the individual to delete their own data," he told BBC Radio 4."An individual who has deactivated their account might not find themselves motivated enough to delete information that's about them, maybe on their wall or other people's site."

Only months earlier, the ICO had been warning social networker of possibly jeopardizing future careers by posting explicit photos or pictures of them "partying."

So What's a Social Networker To Do?

Reputation management companies have stepped in to fill the void in defending users' online reputations. A site like ReputationDefender, for example, will search all information about you (or your child) on the internet, provide you with a report, and then destroy whatever information you deem inappropriate or slanderous. Through non-legal means, the company works with the site owners where your data resides to get it removed. Claiming a thorough process that can remove data from almost anywhere online, ReputationDefender, and those like it, are poised to be the next major companies of the Internet Age. As the GenY and the YouTube Generation enters the workforce, a place still dominated by many Baby Boomers and others who grew up sans internet, the potential damage those MySpace photos could cause will then become much greater.

In the end, the best you can do is think carefully before you post photos, before you blog, and even before you send an email because the internet is more of a permanent record than anything your teachers ever threatened you with back in school.

In the digital age we must all be aware that the illusion of privacy is just that: an illusion. And you may never know went it could come back to haunt you.

(Sources: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml?xml=/connected/2008/01/21/dlface121.xml and http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1201779829458)

Britney Spears' Iconic Awards-Show Performances

Watch the star's career-defining moments on the international stage "... Baby One More Time" and "Tearin' Up My Heart" (1999 at the MTV Video Music Awards with 'NSync) Want more? Click here for a guide to Spears' entire music-video catalog, here for a photo timeline of her whole career and

Watch the star's career-defining moments on the international stage

"... Baby One More Time" and "Tearin' Up My Heart" (1999 at the MTV Video Music Awards with 'NSync)

Want more? Click here for a guide to Spears' entire music-video catalog, here for a photo timeline of her whole career and

Andrey Golub :: Networking: It's easier than you think!

Effective Networking Is Easier Than You Think

Networking is not what most people think it is. It's not a contest for the largest Rolodex. Effective networking is more akin to friends helping friends make new friends.

Last week I gave a presentation at a leadership seminar sponsored by the IT Executives Accountability Group. The purpose of this organization is to create small groups of peer executives who can mentor each other, act as sounding boards for ideas and concerns, and provide real-world connectedness in an increasingly virtual business world. Because the members of this organization are committed to forging bonds that they hope will last their entire careers, they understand the importance of earned trust and mutual support.

Earned trust and mutual support distinguish what I refer to as a “neo-Rolodex networker” (e.g. someone with a long list of superficial contacts in email or on LinkedIn) and a truly effective networker.

Prior to email, a large Rolodex was the sign of a well-connected person. Back then, getting to know people took time, effort and a personal touch: face-to-face meetings, phone calls and hand-written letters. Those connections were so vital that some corporate heads of sales and marketing organizations negotiated ownership of their Rolodexes in their employment contracts.

Today, building a very large list of contacts is exceedingly simple with email and social networking systems. The problem is that many executives try to equate their electronic “neo-rolodex” of names with successful networking. They think the bigger the list, the better. However, almost any sales leader will tell you that large lists of easily gathered contacts are simply “prospects” and that it is only through building a relationship with each contact, one at a time, that you can turn them into clients. The old Rolodex was valuable because of the time and care the owner put into building and cultivating the individual relationships those cards represented.

So if an effective network is not a large list of contacts, what is it?

The IT Executives Accountability Group is on the right track in building on the power of relationships. You build relationships through communication and earn trust by following through on commitments and holding confidences. But the core of an effective network is extending the power of your relationships into what the Chinese refer to as “gu?nxì" (can someone help with a pronunciation for this), which translates to “networks of mutual support.” That is, when you offer assistance to others without demanding them to reciprocate, you create an intrinsic bond with the recipient of your favor, and that bond builds a desire by the recipient to help you and others as well. Gu?nxì is so central to Chinese culture that the standard acceptance response to an apology is “meiyou gu?nxì,” which roughly means “doesn’t have gu?nxì (implications)”.

Interestingly, the Chinese also refer to gu?nxì as the larger network of networks, all connected together in support of one another. It's similar to the Russian “blat”, the Middle Eastern “wasta”, and the more recent American concept of “pay it forward,” whereby the recipient of a good deed repays the a favor by assisting someone other than the original giver. It is this unanticipated reciprocity that is the strength of an effective network: As you help others, you build your network, and those who help you may not be the same ones you have helped.

The Chinese philosopher Confucius described this benefit in a proverb: “Is it not a great joy to have friends coming from afar?”

So an effective leader builds and relies on an effective network, which is focused more on relationships than on organization or structure.

Which brings us all the way back to effective networking being like friends helping friends. When meeting new people, whether on a Web 2.0 online interface, on LinkedIn, at work or at a technology conference, you will build a more effective network if you spend time with each person and start to build relationships with them than if you simply gather tons of business cards. The next step is to follow-up with each new person you meet to thank them for spending time with you and to cement your nascent relationship by referring your new contact to an article, website or lead related to your initial conversation. As you continue to share helpful information back and forth, you build that bond of gu?nxì that is the strength of your effective and growing network.

Thank you again for all of your comments and ideas!

Cruiser Flores Outpoints Wilson

Undefeated BJ "El Peligroso" Flores had the chin and the speed needed to withstand Darrel "Ding-A-Ling Man" Wilson assaults for the entire evening. Flores used his reach, movement and accurate left hands to pound out a 12 round unanimous decision over Wilson in a IBF cruiserweight title eliminator than was much closer than the scorecards revealed.

In space no one can hear you scream... but they can "hear you now"

Filed under: Cellphones

Did you know that NASA was building a base of operations in the south pole of the Moon? Did you know colonists would be living and working there? Did you know that plans are in motion to establish a satellite phone network which would allow said colonists to communicate with one another? Well, it's all true... and more! According to a report, NASA and the British National Space Centre (BNSC) are preparing a trial phone network to be deployed on the Moon. The system, called MoonLite, will be comparable to the satellite phone networks of the 80's and 90's here on Earth, and will be used to facilitate communication between occupants on the base and robots and workers which are out and about. The satellites will handle data as well as voice communication, with 3kbps downstream and 2kbps up -- though we're told Verizon will control the entire system, with plans to bottleneck speed at will.

[Via PHONE Magazine]

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The Ashton-Drake Galleries Linda Webb Loving Baby Emily So Truly Real Lifelike Baby Doll Collection

Extraordinary Baby Emily Dolls by Linda Webb to Love and Hold - A Collecting First - Once you see them, touch them, and hold them you'll agree that acclaimed doll artist Linda Webb's baby dolls are amazingly lifelike. "So Truly Real", in fact that you may want to send out birth announcements (six FREE "birth announcements" are included)! "Welcome Home, Baby Emily", an exclusive Ashton-Drake collectible doll shown here, will be followed by three other masterpieces of realism that re-create the experience of watching a real baby as she begins to experience the world around her. Baby Emily has won the Dolls Award of Excellence sponsored by Doll Magazine, the DOTY award, sponsored by Doll Reader Magazine, and she has also won the NALED Doll of the Year. Don't miss these incredible babies. Order your Ashton-Drake Loving Emily collectible doll collection today! 2003 Ashton-Drake This exclusive Ashton-Drake collectible doll collection features: * Baby Emily has won the Dolls Award of Excellence sponsored by Doll Magazine, the DOTY award, sponsored by Doll Reader Magazine, and she has also won the NALED Doll of the Year * The extraordinary artistry of master doll artist Linda Webb * Handcrafted in Ashton-Drake's RealTouch vinyl skin with lifelike creases and folds - the FIRST "So Truly Real" doll from Ashton-Drake * Hand-applied hair and eyelashes and carefully designed finger and toenails for incredible realism * "Emily", the first doll in the collection shown here, is dressed in a delicately knit two-piece sleeper and wrapped in a baby-soft receiving blanket * Hospital bracelets are personalized with the doll's name * Each comes with six FREE "birth announcements" and a Certificate of Authenticity * "Emily" measures 22" long Ordering a Collection by Subscription Plan is for Smart Collectors: * Reserves the entire Ashton-Drake Loving Emily collectible doll collection in your name so you never risk an increase on the price of other collectibles in this collection, or miss a single issue in this collection * Subsequent issues will be shipped to you about one every month or two (pending availability) and charged to the credit card on which your order was placed. No need to order each one separately * You may cancel your collection at any time with no obligation * "Welcome Home, Baby Emily" the premiere doll, will be followed by "Loving Eyes" where Emily takes a first look at her new world, "...And Angels Danced" when Emily gives us her first smile and Emily's first party in "Celebration of Life", $149.99

Gadgets and Cross-Browser Development

We are working hard to improve the Gadget framework documentation. In the meantime (and as we improve documentation), I am working on a series of short tutorials, tips, and highlights introducing how to use the Gadget framework and the underlying APIs.

I am going to start with our compatibility layer. After exploring various third-party gadgets being developed for Live.com, I discovered that many developers are still struggling with the API differences between Firefox and Internet Explorer. Most common, I see various tricks to handle the event model differences where IE uses a global event object and Firefox passes the event object as an argument to your handler.

This is not necessary when you build Gadgets. Instead, you should be leveraging the underlying compatibility layer that is part of the overall Gadget framework.

As I posted last September, as we develop our properties, almost none of our application logic contains browser specific code. Instead, we develop once to the Internet Explorer API and our code runs without modification in Firefox. This occurs because we download a special script that emulates the most useful IE’isms inside of Firefox and in a few cases, Firefox/W3C’isms in Internet Explorer. In this article I highlight the most useful methods and properties of this layer (I promise we will develop a full reference in the near future).

Event Model

This is easy – always attach events using attachEvent and detachEvent. Do not assign event handlers using function references (e.g., myElement.onclick = doThis) nor use the addEventListener approach.

In your event handlers, don’t worry – you will always get the global event object. For example:

function doClick()
{
  alert("You clicked on a " + event.srcElement.tagName + 
     " element");
}
document.body.attachEvent(“onclick”,doClick);

Also, as a general practice (I will cover this more in later articles but this is extremely important), when writing Gadgets, be sure to detach any event handlers in your dispose handler. Otherwise, your Gadget will leak memory due to known browser issues.

What can you do with this event object? You can check out the MSDN reference as most properties are exposed. In addition to the standard properties, below are the list of properties we added to Firefox:

srcElement
cancelBubble
offsetX
offsetY
x
y
returnValue
button (few issues as Firefox does not properly distinguish between the left button and no button)
fromElement
toElement

We have also gone further and extended Firefox with the very useful mouseenter and mouseleave events. As long as you attach these events using the attachEvent and detachEvent methods, these events fire just as they do in Internet Explorer. These events are very useful for quickly and easily detecting when a mouse enters or leaves a specific element. Again, check out the MSDN reference for more details.

We even have a reasonable emulation of mouse capturing. However, this is most useful in the context of an entire web-page not within a simple gadget. This is because mouse capturing in Firefox only fires within the context of the browser client area. Regardless, when using mouse capturing (setCapture and releaseCapture methods), the mouse events fire properly on the correct elements.

We also fixed the Firefox onclick event to only fire for the left mouse button (Firefox fired for all mouse buttons). This little difference could cause you grief in your application. (For those of you who noticed that we also accidentally prevented the ability to open pages in new tabs via the middle button, that will be fixed real soon).

Useful Element Methods

Internet Explorer also supports a number of very helpful methods and properties on every element. These APIs simplify day-to-day programming and are very useful for building your application. Below are the list of element functions we added to Firefox. Again, check out MSDN for the details (linked for each item below) on how they work.

The currentStyle property returns the value actually being applied to the element. We currently support a subset of CSS attributes that we have found useful: border, margin, padding for Top, Left, Right, and Bottom; position; height; width; zIndex; color; and direction. We will most likely extend this list over time.

Useful style properties

We also extended the properties available on the style object with the extremely useful pixel* properties. These allow you to easily manipulate the dimensions of the element (assuming you are working with pixels). We also added the cssText property which gives you a serialized representation inline style.

XPath Expressions

When dealing with XML documents the ability to query for specific nodes is especially useful. Trying to decipher the difference between IE and Firefox for querying XML can be extremely painful. So, we provided support for two very straighforward IE methods, selectSingleNode and selectNodes.

Creating xmlHttp Objects

When you need to create a new XML Http Object, you can now simply use the standard approach, var y = new xmlHttpRequest(). However, as I will cover in future articles, I highly recommend you leverage our built-in network stack for all your network requests.

Parsing XML

Last, but not least, you have a string that you want to load into an XML DOM - just use the standard DOM Parser object:

var dp = new DOMParser(); 
var xmlDom = dp.parseFromString(yourXMLString);

This concludes my very brief and fast introduction to our compatibility layer. We are continually expanding the functionality. For example, we have basic IE filter support (alpha filters assigned via script will also apply in Firefox). I will cover these in later posts. For now, resist the urge in your Gadgets to author code differently for each browser. Instead, take the easy road and let our compatibility layer do all your heavy lifting.

Last, since it will inevitably come up, see the following post on why we support or don't support other browsers (while the post talks about start.com it is relevant to all properties on our framework).

What we learned building Live.com (or why are we slow)?

Over the last 18 months, we have explored how to build a highly-interactive, customizable, and extensible portal. The first iteration was a simple portal on Start.com. We created various iterations (start.com/1, start.com/2, start.com/3) which have evolved into the first fully extensible portal on Live.com. Today, from Live.com to the Kahuna (Hotmail) beta to MSN Spaces, and so-on, we are investing heavily in building very rich, interactive experiences. With these investments, we are learning a great deal on the right and wrong ways to engineer rich, interactive web-sites.

Underneath all our Windows Live properties, we share a common framework for how we engineer our client experiences. The framework is very client-centric where we composite most of the page client-side. For example, if you were to view Live.com’s HTML, you will notice that it serves a web-page “shell” and meta-data that describes the content. This meta-data is interpreted by the Live.com application and then rendered. This approach is extraordinarily flexible as we can quickly enhance and extend the application without any heavy server lifting. However, as we have learned and is being evidenced by our customers, without care, performance degradation can quickly outweigh all other benefits.

As you examine Live.com, and for the technically savvy, explore the underlying browser technology, it is easy to question whether we as Microsoft and the industry as a whole are pushing the browser too far. The current crop of rich applications while cool and interactive are starting to fare poorly performance-wise against their traditional brethren. So much so that an often posed question is, where do we go from here? And is it time to reexamine building rich applications?

First, let’s step back and very briefly look at the web versus traditional software. With traditional software, you would go through various design phases starting from specifications, to architecture documentation, to development, to usability testing, to testing, and eventually to ship. The entire approach had a fairly long lead time (up to years). Once released, updating the software was difficult and many times very cost prohibitive. This created a very high-bar. The web has removed almost all those barriers. On the web, we can now experiment and develop software with near real-time feedback and very fast release cycles.

I view the Web 2.0 phenomena as being very early in the development lifecycle. I am not prepared to dismiss any approach, pattern, or methodology as we are still in the learning phases. In the case of Windows Live, as we push the browser, we are also learning a great deal. Examining performance specifically - when I look at Live.com today, I see incredible innovation. We are pushing the limits of extensibility (gadgets), reuse (shared frameworks across all our properties), and are taking chances to drive new user-experience standards (look at how we present search results). On the contrary, I also see an application whose performance is starting to become painful to use. The page currently takes a long time to load, especially on the first visit. Beyond our user’s feedback (we do read all messages), broader industry pundits are quick to throw in the towel on the entire technology.

We are taking a different approach to this problem. We are challenging ourselves to prove that we can architect a performance driven, rich extensible experience. We are leveraging our gained knowledge shipping the many iterations of Start.com and all the beta products we are developing to improve our shared architecture and drive best patterns. Using the current Live.com as a simple case study, below I illustrate a few of the performance-oriented technical issues that we are working on quickly addressing:

Manage your Connections Carefully

If you were to examine Live.com at the network level, a reasonable person would quickly conclude that we are making too many connections. We decomposed this issue as follows: First, we are hitting an IE 6 issue that causes un-cached images applied dynamically via script to download on each reference. This issue typically manifests itself on slower connections – the time when bandwidth is most at a premium. We are baking a solution to this problem directly into our frameworks so that we pre-cache dynamically applied images before reuse. Next, every RSS feed and Gadget manifest is a unique request. This creates a web-page that is very “chatty” – an AJAX characteristic that you should work to avoid. We will solve this by intelligently batching multiple requests into a single request (and are exploring even more efficient means for the longer-term)

Parsing XML is Slow

We have also learned that merely parsing the RSS XML can be expensive in the browser. When we parse RSS, we are merely translating it into Javascript structures to be further manipulated. Since our server’s are already normalizing feeds to a standard format, instead of serving the RSS feed directly, we are going to translate the feed directly to JSON (Javascript structures). As a simple benchmark, on my fast developer machine we went from 400ms to parse 150K of RSS to 15ms to “execute” the JSON response.

Caching and Connection Management is Essential

Network bandwidth and connections are a scarce resource. Managing them is essential to providing fast experiences (especially for subsequent loads). We are evaluating the optimal approaches for splitting resources across multiple servers to leverage as many simultaneous connections at once (the browser is limited to 2 active connections per domain). We are also reviewing all resources to make sure they are set with appropriate expirations. In general, almost all content should have expiration, even a very short one (e.g., if the user leaves the page and hits the back button, the page should be re-rendered entirely from the cache).

Staging the Application

One of the biggest challenges with a very rich web-application is deploying the code. The richer the site, the more code that is needed. In the case of Live.com today, the entire application deploys before anything renders. However, our underlying framework supports dynamic and prioritized deployment – we just were not properly leveraging it. We are now focusing leveraging this pattern so that we can “stage” the application. We will be able to deploy the minimal code necessary to retrieve content and render the page and subsequently download features in priority order (e.g., render, then get drag-drop code, then get the RSS image rotator code, etc). For features not yet in use or visible, we can deploy those last or even on demand. Staging an application is fundamental to maintaining high-degrees of perceived performance.

Server versus Client Rendering

Traditional web-pages are generated via the server. Live.com and many of our properties are very client-centric where the client constructs the web-page from the user’s meta-data. In general, the first time a web-page loads, a server-generated page will almost always be faster. However, with a properly architected web application, we are discovering that our subsequent loads on a client-side generated page (especially when we stage the application) can be much faster than a server-oriented page. This occurs because our client-oriented approach is highly cacheable and loads asynchronously, even off the cache. The only content we need to download is the user’s meta-data. The rest of the page, scripts, and behaviors are cached indefinitely.

This summarizes a few of the performance-driven challenges we are addressing. Internally, we have developed a complete prototype that validates we can build a high-performance, scalable version of Live.com that load and run near-instantly to within seconds (on broadband). We are working on integrating these improvements into the shipping site as quickly as possible. Over the coming weeks and months, expect to see continuous noticeable improvements.

Update: Beyond performance, the Live.com team just posted the goals for the Live.com page.

Talking about: Ric Merrifield on the Motion Initiative

Prior to rejoining MSN/ Windows Live, I spent a few years trying something completely different. I was an architect on an incubation project (Virtual Enterprise Team) exploring and bringing together SOA with how businesses work. Ric continues driving this work. I guarantee you will learn something new and different in this Channel 9 video.

Ric Merrifield - Microsoft gets down to business with Motion initiative

"Ric, director of strategy on the top secret Motion Incubation team, runs the Motion initiative. What's that? It's a group at Microsoft that studies how businesses work and looks for opportunities to help them do their business better. They made an entire map of how business works.

Motion's research led to the acquisition of Great Plains, too (which led to the Dynamics suite of services/applications).

Enjoy this look into a team you've never heard of before today and see how Microsoft approaches new markets and new acquisitions, and how it learns from other businesses."

Competition filter

Within your Adsense manager, you have the option of using the "Competition Filter" which allows us to remove certain websites from the ads being displayed regularly. This is going to be an on-going optimization task in the future. Without filtering the ads being displayed within your website, you might find yourself with ads unrelated to your industry and possibly some ads that have a negative effect within your site.

If you don't remove all the unwanted ads being displayed on your website, you might end up hurting your Adsense performance online. The more targeted you can get your Google Adsense ads to display on each page, the better your chances at being able to make more money. Try to take a moment every week to study the ads being displayed on your website.

Open up a note pad, or word document and record all the websites you don't want to be displayed anymore. Add these sites to your "filter list" within your Adsense account.
Remember to add the website (within your filter list) like so: smartads.info - without the www. Adding anything after or before the url will only prevent the company from displaying one of their many ads like so (www.site.com/ads/1.html). This way you stop anything from the entire website from showing up within your Adsense campaign online. The more you optimize your Adsense filter, the better your performance will pick up and the less non-related ads will be displayed on your website.

Staring at vs Participating in the Nervous system of the Web

The FriendFeed vs Twitter debate has got me thinking about the nervous system of the mesh. The activity streams that show all the events, tasks, pings that originate from your friends. I pitched this feature to Mark Pincus and Tribe.net but he wouldn’t do it. Now that Facebook, Twitter and Friendfeed have each taken the idea [...]

Now that Facebook, Twitter and Friendfeed have each taken the idea and ran with it - in slightly different directions - I thought it would be fun to see how people are using these features.

1. Yes - it’s just a feature, not a product unto itself so I sure as hell hope FriendFeed is planning on providing something more than just voyeuristically gaping at what your friends are doing. Commenting is nice, but that does not make up a product or service. CoCommnet found out about that. Twitter is a micro-blogging platform and we know Facebook has all SORTS of activities and things to do. But what do you DO with FrendFeed?

2. Presence and IM communication is key - and I think that’s how a lot of people use Twitter as some sort of multi-user chat room kind of way. I certainly do. Its really like a IRC channel to me. I remember the early days of teh #Joiito IRC channel. It was quite a scene.

3. So if just looking at activities is only a feature and communication is key - where does that leave subcribing to people? Isn’t the action of ‘following someone’ the same as ’subscribing to their feed’? And how is this different from ‘friending’ someone? I’m sure danah boyd will do an entire dissertation on these subtle differences but to us simple practioners, I submit that in fact there is NO difference between these features/terms. Not that it really matters.

4. One things for sure - we know humans sure as hell want access privileges and control over whether they’re automitically included into anything. I wonder if Facebook has learned this lesson by now - or not? THAT’s what Sarah Lacy SHOULD have asked Zuckerberg at SXSW. So this whole subscribing to - process - needs to have access and control filters added into the mix:

AT THE POINT OF SUBSCRIBING/FOLLOWING SOMEBODY - we need a way of deciding just WHAT I’m subscribing to. Maybe I like your photos and blog posts, but I’m not interested in what your friends are doing or even who they are - or what Groups you’ve joined. Just photos and blog posts - please. That would clarify the process and make it clear what you’re interested in.

AND WHEN YOU MAKE YOURSELF AVAILABLE FOR SUBSCRIBING TO - I really think this is when the access controls and filters have to be set up. Anyone can subscribe to my blog, photos and profile changes, but ONLY my friends can subscribe to my friend status changes and Group anythings, and ONLY my family can see my videos.

If open is the new black, then Opt In and Access controls are the new Orange accessory.

Mid-March ‘08 blogging

When is a social network NOT a social network? When its part of Ning’s 200,000 social networks! Give me a break Gina and Marc! STOP bragging about how many people have clicked and created a network. How come you have NEVER posted anything on: how many networks have 5 or more people in them? How [...]

When is a social network NOT a social network? When its part of Ning’s 200,000 social networks! Give me a break Gina and Marc! STOP bragging about how many people have clicked and created a network. How come you have NEVER posted anything on: how many networks have 5 or more people in them? How ’bout 50 people in them? Or 500 people? Bragging about200,000 networks with one person in it - is absurd. And I don’t even care if they’re porno networks or not! But they’re NOT networks if they’re less than what? 5? 10? 25 in them? You’re obviously pimping yourself up for a sale. Give us all a break - please!

Steve Gillmor has a new blog. He’s rapping about Twitter.

Structure 08 seems like a coolio conference

This Spyhunter homage takes me back to when I created the soundtrack for the FIRST licensed music for videogame - ever. Henry Mancini had to personally approve of my bits. 6800 assembly language programmed.

Speaking of my past - Bob Ostertag and I went to Oberlin together and built Serge Synthesizers together. Along with Frank Eaton.

Even more past comes back - Mark Stephen Pierce - co-founder of MacroMind and now CEO of SuperHappyFunFun - announced ‘The Return of Dark Castle’

Health is the new black

So where’s the 250 list - Paul? Don’t be talking shit without backing it up!

Its kind of funny for me to watch investment bankers, VCs and so-called money guys - watch their entire system crumble in front of their face. But don’t worry ’bout none of those guys - they all got nest eggs stashed away.

What! You mean the Jimmy Wales furor won’t go away and that he’s not all that he’s cracked up to be? My own experience in wikipedia tells me - that there’s more than meets the eye - there.

Its coolio that alpha geek bloggers like Anil Dash are thinking about embedding things in blog posts.

Are MySpace photos fair game that anyone can copy and use?

I guess the Second Life hype bandwagon got outted. How many of those publicized marketing promotions inside Second Life were successful? How many re-upped for a second year?

Offering lots of CASH always helps a viral campaign.

Four technologies for portability between social networks - apparently there was a good panel on this at SXSW
FriendFeed feedback

Patents suck

Transclusions and Xanadu are back

Roo, Y! Buzz, RetailMeNot, Helium,

StumbleUpon - Demographics and Returning Traffic Spikes

Posted by Jane Copland

Like most SEOs I know, I have a couple of sites that act as my side projects. They aren't monetised and I plan to keep them that way: I like to keep an eye on them for the purpose of experiments. By this, I mean that I like to mess around with them and if one of them drops completely from every search engine, loses all of its PageRank and its server catches fire, it doesn't matter all that much.

Given the experimental nature of the sites in question, I was intrigued this morning when I was doing my regular rounds of the Internet and came across this:

What happened? Did the little blog, whose mantra is thus, suddenly become twice as interesting overnight? Since its content is updated infrequently - once weekly at best - I doubted it. I had a fairly good idea as to the source of this extra traffic, and I was right. StumbleUpon, my fair weather friend, had returned.

This is not a huge increase in traffic by any means - when a really big StumbleUpon day happens, the chart looks a lot different. However, the interesting thing is not the fact that StumbleUpon happened, it's that it keeps coming back to the same page and yet that page's reviews never change.

While Google Images has a long-term love affair going with the site in question, StumbleUpon visits about once every few months, and always to the same URL. Funnily enough, Google Images prefers the pictures on this particular page as well. The really strange thing about the on-again-off-again relationship that StumbleUpon has with this piece of content is that the reviews don't change and, as far as I can tell, few people are particularly impressed with the page. According to its reviews, only three people like the site and it has only been written about twice. And yet, every once in a while, StumbleUpon is back outside, throwing stones at the window and asking us out.

I know that the StumbleUpon reviews pages are supposedly far from accurate: the service has always been a bit cute with its numbers and I've never seen a review page that has accurately portrayed how much traffic the site in question will receive. However, it amuses and surprises me that StumbleUpon does not work like most other social media sites, which will not "re-promote" content after it has been popular. So far, StumbleUpon has revisited this page four times.

It's great for us - writers, publishers, linkbaiters, and SEOs. The do-or-die aspect of Digg is negated by the notion that not only is StumbleUpon popularity and traffic not a ticking clock, but that even once the first wave of SU traffic dies away, it may return again. I am not entirely sure what sets off the subsequent influxes of stumbles (I assume it is a tag or a thumbs-up from a prominent account), but there is one theme in common with each wave of Stumble traffic: every time it comes back, it brings with it more visitors.

However, my analysis of StumbleUpon traffic has been really interesting for more than just the fact that it can't leave my one page alone. A common idea I've heard from the Internet marketing community - and one that I used to spread - is that StumbleUpon is the everyman's social media site. "Regular" people - people who don't get FAIL or Rick Rolls and who squint at me when I go out in this tee-shirt - were thought to use StumbleUpon, at least in higher volumes than they do any other social media mainstay.

I can tell you from my little blog's stat counter that this really isn't as true we we'd like to believe. This morning, I went through the stats and analysed my StumbleUpon audience in comparison to my regular visitors.

Firstly, the graph of browsers is telling. I check this graph relatively often and rarely does Firefox 2.0.0 come out on top. In fact, the last time Firefox eclipsed Internet Explorer 7 was the last time StumbleUpon showered us with affection. Needless to say, the MSIE 5.5 users (yes, omg wtf, etc) were not Stumblers.

That search traffic, visitors referred from non-StumbleUpon sites and people accessing the site directly or via bookmark aren't using Firefox is plainly obvious. Normally, Internet Explorers 6 and 7 battle it out for supremacy. I broke the last two days' worth of visitors down by browser further, showing Stumblers next to their "regular" peers.

StumbleUpon makes a toolbar for Internet Explorer browsers. Either no one uses it, or StumbleUpon serves different content to people based upon their browser. I highly doubt the likeliness of the latter scenario.

People who didn't arrive via StumbleUpon show the regular distribution of browsers for the site. In my opinion, my Firefox visitor count is higher than normal as well, since I've linked to the site from SEOmoz and most of my SEOmoz traffic comes in using this browser.

Without making too many sweeping generalisations, I'd say that the Firefox dominance from StumbleUpon suggests that StumbleUpon is still catering to a very web-savvy audience - a far more savvy audience than I'd previously thought. This isn't such good news, because the content on StumbleUpon always suggested that more and more regular people were using the tool. Since it's "regular people" we're often trying to reach, it's a bit disconcerting to realise that StumbleUpon isn't as diverse as we'd like to think. The blog I'm citing in this post isn't in the least bit "geeky" and I'm now thinking that the Stumblers who've found it interesting are simply typical social media users who happen to also have an interest in my non-geeky content.

I don't want you to think this is a new lesson to me, as anyone who's seen social media traffic has seen this type of thing before. What strikes me as interesting during the latest couple of rounds of StumbleUpon traffic is the complete lack of diversity in users' browsers. Even previous Digg and Reddit outings didn't result in this complete Firefox domination.

Do forgive the dual topics of this post: it can be said that I've investigated two entirely different StumbleUpon phenomena in the recent past. The things I've learned in playing with Google Images recently are a different post entirely.

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A Deeper Look at Vertical Search - Interview with Iri Amirav & Amir Leitersdorf from iMedix

Posted by randfish

I've talked in the past about the various possibilities of the future of search engines and the biggest threats to Google's dominance, and today I've been able to follow up on some of that prodding into that "vertical search fracturing" possibility.

iMedix is one of the more exciting vertical search engines on the market. Not only are they a recipient of the Best New Startup Award from the Crunchies, they're also very highly regarded in the marketplace by a lot of smart players. Not everyone's a fan, but they're in an area of high opportunity and have executed remarkably well from both a development and marketing perspective.
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The biggest "difference" that iMedix offers is the inclusion of a social network that integrates with the search results. Above, you can see I searched for allergies, and along the sidebar are people who share that interest and are interested and willing to talk about it. This takes advantage of some big psychological strengths in the health field - namely the need to "not be alone" when dealing with health issues. I'd imagine that iMedix's community is held together by stronger bonds than most, and that, potentially, gives them a powerful edge.

Last week, I got the opportunity to interview Iri Arimav and Amir Leitersdorf frrom iMedix (CMO & CEO, respectively) about they're progress to date and some of their search technology issues:

For those of us who aren't familiar, can you give us a background about iMedix - how it started? What are the goals of the company and what is the business model?

iMedix started because of a personal health need for both of us. Since we both love the Web, we saw it as an untapped resource for people looking to make better health related decisions. We felt that searching alone using the popular horizontal search engines was definitely not the right way to find and share health information. Not only were the results irrelevant in most cases, they also left us unaided and with a strong sense of anxiety. We knew that there was excellent information online, but it was organized poorly. At the same time, it was difficult for us to communicate easily and quickly with other people that had valuable personal health experiences and knowledge. We decided to build a health search engine that will be powered by the patients for the benefit of patients. We built a prototype that improved into an alpha version that upgraded to what you see today on iMedix.

From a vertical search perspective, do you see an ability to pull search traffic mindshare away from Google/Yahoo!/Live? Do you think people will ever come on the web and think - "I need to search for health/medical issues, so I'll use iMedix, not Google."? Or is your strategy more like WebMD - to build a portal and attract search traffic from the major engines?

We believe that the experience of finding and sharing health information on the Web is about to change dramatically. An exceptionally different and valuable experience can pull traffic mindshare away from traditional web properties. The experience iMedix offers to consumers is very different than Google/Yahoo or Live. People nowadays are attracted to communicating with each other and engaging in various ways. People want more than search and browse. The growth of social networks that took substantial traffic from traditional portals in the last 3 years is a good example. We are experimenting with an innovative marketing approach now and it looks very promising. We are continuously introducing new features that allow for the creation of valuable user generated health content and most importantly listen to the needs of our fast-growing community. We believe that if you create value and a worthy experience, the rest will follow.

It appears that iMedix crawls and indexes websites, just like the major search engines, but rather than indexing the entire web, you've limited your search to only domains pertaining to health. A few questions on that - do you hand select the domains to be included? If so, do you worry that the information is more narrow, or do you think searchers will feel confident knowing the results include more authoritative sources and fewer blogs, scrapers, etc.?

iMedix crawls a subset of the Web to index the most informative and relevant health articles available. Using our patented technology we crawl and index numerous Web directories and medical databases resulting in almost any known medical site in the English language. This way, we are able to cover all of the symptoms, conditions and treatments known to medicine.

In terms of building a search engine crawler, did you custom develop something yourself or use a technology like Nutch? Does iMedix maintain all those inverted-keyword databases or do you use third party technology? And, how many pages (approx.) do you have in your index?

Our crawler is a multi threaded, distributed computing technology that was developed in-house and is capable of crawling hundreds of Web sites in parallel. Our crawler relies on a high bandwidth network and while using a single database maintains an average rate of crawling half a million pages per hour without burdening on the crawled site's performance.

The crawler detects similarity between pages thus avoiding "over crawling" and is also capable of detecting frequency of change in a site's content so to optimize the crawl scheduling and gain maximum data update for each crawl session.

The indexer was developed in-house, while relying on open source projects for representing documents in a space vector model, we developed a grid computed application based on divide-and-conquer algorithms that provide the ability to index hundreds of documents per second into binary files that can be instantly searched while the indexing is continued in the background.

The number of documents in our index varies a lot since we are constantly increasing the number of sites crawled, while deleting pages that were flagged as irrelevant both automatically (by heuristics of the crawler or indexer) and also by manual processing that is done by our staff. In our recent versions we have used indexes of 10-20 million health pages depending on the factors stated above.

As a follow-up with regards to the ranking algorithm - is it something you've done in-house? Did you end up using a modified version of something like PageRank? TrustRank?

Our IP resides with our ranking algorithms that analyze the feedback received from our users in order to recognize patterns of useful pages. The ranking formula is constantly and automatically updated according to the users' feedback. The learning machine itself is built upon an ensemble of modern algorithms in the machine-learning field. The classifying algorithms are focused at bringing very high precision in predicting the probability of a page being a good match given a certain query. Our proprietary technology is also developed with the assistance of our chief scientist, Prof. Yuval Shahar who is the head of the Medical Informatics Research Center in Ben Gurion University and has more than 15 years of experience in the most advanced health information retrieval and artificial intelligence technologies. Prof. Shahar holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University in Medical information Sciences and is a certified medical doctor.

iMedix, in addition to being a search engine, leverages users to help build a community - what made you choose that path and how have your users been responding?

We decided to choose this path because we felt that people want to be empowered and can contribute so much from their experience and knowledge. If we build the right tools we can organize and leverage this collaborative effort. Although we regularly read Forrester, Jupiter Research, eMarketer and all the other major research companies we believe that listening to your users is the most important thing regarding building successful products. Our path is really a reflection of our conversations with our users. We are fortunate that our users like to use iMedix and that the Internet community decided that we are worthy of winning the Best New Startup of 2007 at the Crunchies worldwide competition.

iMedix has obviously been a hit in its first year, winning the Crunchies award for best new startup - with regard to publicizing the product, what have been your strategies to date and where have you seen the most success?

Thank you very much for your kind words. We feel very fortunate to be in the right place at the right time. One of the strategies that worked well for us was to truly spend time learning and understanding the products that existed out there and get to know our audience. Not just read reports, but engage in an honest and an open discussion with bloggers, opinion leaders and patients. We were in contact with hundreds of these people and we learned together with them and with the help of our users what we needed to develop. I believe these people enjoyed the process and decided to share it with their friends and readers. This had a tremendous effect on our visibility and traffic.

Finally, with high expectations and a startup environment, I imagine things can get fairly overwhelming - how have you and the rest of the iMedix team done with work/life balance? Any recommendations you have for a startup - things you'd change or do differently the next time around?

The startup environment is indeed very demanding. The past year has been pretty tough for all of us. We’ve worked around the clock and had a hard time balancing our personal lives. Eventually, we are all happy and satisfied but several lessons were learned along the way.

We would recommend the following to every start-up CEO/founders:

Have 1 day every week in which you do NOT check your emails.
Understand that people are the most important resource in a start-up company. Make sure that they spend time with their families and encourage them to take vacations.
Keep your employees informed in the company’s progress and activities. If you expect everyone to share the effort then you definitely need to share the fruits.
And finally.... Celebrate! Even if you don’t have the time. Don’t let those wonderful moments pass you by.

Thanks, Iri & Amir - I'm not entirely sure I can live up to all of those suggestions, but will certainly try. Much appreciated!

BTW - Some interesting thoughts to consider for search marketers:

How do you target content towards vertical search sites that could potentially be whitelisting domains?
Are you currently seeing any significant search traffic from vertical engines outside the major properties?
Is traffic from a site like iMedix potentially more or less valuable/focused to site owners?

My biggest concern is that marketers who don't pay attention to potential future landscapes may miss out on big opportunities to leapfrog the competition when those changes do occur.

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Yo SMX, Where My Devs At?

Posted by rebecca

Jeff, our CTO and lead developer-with-a-beard, had recently expressed to me his desire to speak at conferences and events. Fantastic! ...except for one problem. There are no developer-centric tracks at any SEO conferences. SES? Zip. SMX? Zilch. Pubcon has had a smattering of developer-related sessions that were, according to Jeff, weak sauce. SXSW is the only conference to offer developer sessions, but that series is more tech than SEO-oriented.

Why no love for developer sessions? No matter what conference I attend, ultimately I'll hear a question from an audience member who is clearly a developer or is in some way directly involved with his company's site's back end. And, most of the time, the panelists dodge the person's question because they lack the knowledge to be able to provide the person with a quality response.

Case in point: at SMX Social Media in New York (back in October 2007), my fellow link bait panelists and I all stressed, in three separate presentations, the importance of ensuring that your server can handle the massive influx of traffic coming to your site as a result of a successful link bait campaign. That was all well and good...until we got to the Q&A portion of our session. Every third question we were asked had to deal specifically with server issues and what back end-specific changes you should make in anticipation of the traffic stream. We didn't know exactly how to answer because none of us are developers--we just write and promote the content, right?

I was asked to reprise my speaking role at SMX Social Media Redux in Long Beach, California. The only problem is that I ended up getting double-booked with speaking appearances, as there's an Ecommerce Summit in New Orleans I got invited to speak at. I needed someone to take my place at SMX Social Media, so I emailed the Third Door folks and pitched Jeff to assume my spot. He could talk about how to prepare your site for link bait, and I thought it would be really valuable for audiences to get the link bait perspective from a developer's point of view. Plus, he could answer all of those pesky server-related questions. Their response? They asked if Jane (who I also recommended in case they didn't warm to Jeff) was available to take my place. Aww. (To be fair, Jane's more than competent to speak about link bait and, in fact, gave a well received presentation at SMX London. I was just hoping for a little dev love this time around.)

My point is, why doesn't a conference series (SMX, I'm looking in your direction--it'd be a nice way to differentiate yourself from SES) offer some sessions that are development-focused? Not even a separate track, mind you--just a session or two. Maybe one on "Web Developer Resources." Jeff raves about Firebug, a web dev toolbar. This sort of information is bound to be valuable to advanced SEOs, right? Or what about "Get to Know Your Programming Languages"? People can find out which ones do certain things better than others. Or, simply enough, "Ask a Developer"? Put a few devs on a panel and let the audience pepper them with questions. How would that not be a popular session?

Okay, say people don't want a developer-centric session. What about putting a dev on an SEO panel to provide an alternative perspective, like my link bait suggestion? I know lots of extremely talented developers (Matt, Cesar, Dave, and our own Jeff, to name a few) who I know would be really great speakers and can provide extremely valuable information. It's just too bad that SEO conferences have no love for devs--in my opinion, this is a huge missed opportunity, and if implemented properly, would provide great value to a conference series.

Postscript: Danny Sullivan commented below about how SMX Advanced will have an entire Developer Track. Woo hoo! Thanks for your input, Danny!

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A Hint of the Future in the US: Completely Open Carrier

In a move that we could only hope for in the US, European based wireless carrier KPN Mobile announced that it will become a completely open platform, opening access to its network to developers to deliver wireless services to KPNs 27 million subscribers, who will be able to choose any applications and services they wish to use on any phone. Wow, sounds too good to be true. Our jobs at Movaya would become drastically easier (and our bank accounts fatter) if any of the 4-5 major US based carriers took this attitude.

From a press release:
KPN will deploy Artilium?s ARTA Connected Mobile Services platform that will allow developers to build and design applications that take advantage of its convergence capabilities to tie into any network?s operations support and billing systems and wireless ecosystem. Importantly, developers can build on the Artilium platform?s new presence capabilities to create and deliver new context-aware services that unite mobile commerce, mobile advertising and social networking, among other possibilities.

The Artilium platform is built entirely on Microsoft?s .NET framework and uses Microsoft Visual Studio, something developers know well, which will allow developers applications to work on any wireless carriers? networks who deploy Artilium?s platform in the future.

Full article here

Purchasing a New Vehicle: Lease Vs. Buy by Brad

Essentially, Leasing is just an alternative way to finance a new vehicle. We know that when purchasing a new vehicle the down payment, sales tax and license fees are required to be paid up front. However when leasing a new vehicle you are required to pay only the first monthly payment, a security deposit (usually same as monthly payment), and the license fees. The sales tax (which is based on the capitalized value of the vehicle) is actually amortized over the term of the lease in most states. In other words, the taxes are included in the monthly payments.

Capitalized Cost

Essentially the capitalized cost of a new vehicle is the actual price you have agreed to pay for the vehicle.

Gross Capitalized Cost

The gross capitalized cost of a new vehicle includes the selling price of the vehicle (which is the capitalized cost plus acquisition fees, extended warranty, accident & health insurance, dealer title fee, payoff on your trade-in, credit life insurance, gap insurance and any other fees the dealer decides to charge you). Buyer beware; that most people really don't ever know what their capitalized cost is because it is buried within the gross capitalized cost and the dealer doesn't actually reveal this number unless he has to. Most car deals made at auto dealerships are negotiated on the basis of payment rather than price. This applies to both leasing and purchasing. Don't get caught in this trap! Make the dealer reveal the selling price for every payment offer he makes you!

Adjusted Capitalized Cost

The adjusted capitalized cost of a new vehicle is the gross capitalized cost minus (-) your down payment, net trade-in amount, rebates, license fees and taxes along with any other deductions given.

Depreciation/Residual

When purchasing a new vehicle your payments are based on the full value or selling price, plus extended warranty, tax & license, minus (-) rebate, down payment and net trade-in value. However, when you lease a vehicle your payments are based only on the "depreciation or your use" of the vehicle during the entire term of the lease. The depreciation is actually only a portion of the capitalized cost of the vehicle and is determined by the term of the lease, number of miles driven and condition of the vehicle at the end of the lease. The payments on a lease are based on the deprecation money factor (which is a form of interest rate) and the amortized taxes. Therefore, you can actually drive a more expensive vehicle with a lower payment if you lease. Please note that the depreciation is actually estimated and set at the inception of the lease.

The residual is the portion or balance of the adjusted capitalized cost after the deprecation has been deducted. The residual is just put aside in limbo until the end of the lease. The higher the residual - the lower your monthly payment. At the end of the lease you have two options. You can either turn the vehicle back into the bank or leasing company, or you can buy the vehicle outright for the residual balance. You can even refinance the residual. But keep in mind if you turn in the vehicle with more mileage than allowed on your contract, you will be charged any where from .12¢ to .25¢ for each extra mile. In an auto lease you are limited to a specific number of miles in your lease contact. The average would be from 12,000 to 15,000 miles per year. You may drive any number of miles in any given year but you cannot exceed the number of allotted miles or you will be penalized. If you purchase the vehicle the charge for the extra mileage will normally be waved. Most banks and finance companies will allow you to add an extra 15,000 to 20,000 miles to your lease contract depending on the term of the lease. However, the cost of the extra miles will be added to your gross capitalization cost and your monthly payment will be increased accordingly.

Ownership

When you have entered into a lease contract you cannot terminate the lease or turn-in your vehicle prior to the ending date of the contract. If you do this the bank will report this as a voluntary repossession on your credit record. On an auto lease the vehicle is actually registered and titled to the bank or leasing company. Therefore you do not own the vehicle, the bank does. You get to use the vehicle and are legally responsible for the upkeep and maintenance. Please note, if you don't maintain the vehicle during the lease you will be penalized for all excessive wear-and-tear when you turn it in. Also, if you really needed to get out of your lease you can buy out of the lease if you can get the financing or you can get someone to take over your lease. Of course, they will have to qualify.

Vehicle Warranties

The average new car warranty is 36 months or 36000 miles, which ever comes first. It is not recommended that you enter into a 4, 5 or 6 year lease contract because they are not economical. Even with a four-year lease it is common for the residual to be higher than the actual value of the vehicle at the end of the lease which makes it very hard to refinance. If you are like a lot of people you can lease a new vehicle every 2 to 3 years and never have to buy an extended warranty. The only time it would be beneficial to buy an extended warranty is if you knew you were going to buy the vehicle outright at the end of the lease.

Gap Insurance

Gap Insurance is basically insurance coverage on the difference between the actual value of your vehicle and the balance you owe on the lease including the residual. This kind of protection is needed in case your vehicle is involved in an accident and is declared a total loss. Gap Insurance is important especially for people who lease vehicles. The lease on a vehicle is actually designed for the balance owed to be upside-down in relation to the actual value of the vehicle until approximately the end date of the lease term. At this time the residual should fall in line or be equal to the vehicle's actual value. Gap Insurance is good for purchase financing as well. The gap is not as large as in leasing, but you still stand the chance of having to put out a great deal of money.

Final Advice

Remember, there are two main factors you must consider when you are thinking about leasing an automobile. The first is how long you intend to keep the vehicle and the second is how many miles you travel annually. If you intend to keep the vehicle a maximum of three years and you only average 15,000 miles a year, then you should definitely consider leasing. If you want to keep the new vehicle for more than three years, you should consider purchasing.

When you lease a vehicle, you very rarely have to put any money down, so lease a new vehicle every two to three years and you won't owe any money on the old vehicle, plus you'll never have to buy an extended warranty. Also, you will have spent a ton of money less for each vehicle than if you had purchased them. If you want to keep a vehicle longer just buy it at the end of the lease.

Remember, don't let the dealer try to sell you on the basis of payments. Negotiate on the price only and when you have agreed on the price then tell them you have a trade-in. When you have agreed to your trade-in value then tell them you want to lease the new vehicle. Now you know what to do from here. Also, dealerships have a tendency to quote lease payments without the monthly tax. This makes a big difference in the monthly payments. If you don't control this you will be sadly surprised when you go into the finance manager to sign the paperwork. One more thing - when you are signing the lease contract, be sure to verify that the trade-in value you have agreed upon is actually deducted from the capitalized cost. Otherwise the dealer could wind up purchasing your trade for pennies and you would never know.

Visit My site http://www.autopurchasesecrets.com for more free information on the secrets the dealerships don't want you to know.

About the Author

Brad spent thirteen years in the Automobile business, specifically auto sales and worked for several Dealerships. He held positions from Retail Salesman up through New Car Manager and Fleet Manager. During this period Brad received an excellent education on what goes on inside the Automobile Dealerships. You can visit and communicate with Brad at his website http://www.autopurchasese

Third World Poverty: The Real Solution by Keith Wymer

Third World Poverty: The Real Solution

Aid to Africa

We all welcomed the campaign to address poverty in Africa and Tony Blair's commitment to it. When it was launched, the emphasis was on reducing debt and increasing aid from the rich Western nations. The priorities stated were to tackle disease, especially aids, and to generate economic activity.

At the time Blair retired, after 10 years as prime minister, progress in terms of contributions from the West had been extremely disappointing. The debt issue has been addressed in only 25% of the countries where relief is needed, and the aid contribution (separate from debt relief) from the rich Western nations to African countries has actually fallen.

Today, much more is being done by China, while India is becoming increasingly involved. A key factor is that, unlike Western finance, the aid from China comes without strings. Because the Chinese are happy enough with the trade which flows from their involvement, they make little effort to impose their culture on the recipient countries.

Self-Defeating Conditions

Apart from its inadequate volume, aid from the Europe and the USA has limited impact because of the conditions imposed with grants; notable by the USA and the UK. An obvious absurdity is the 'no abortion' condition imposed by the Bush administration on grants to tackle aids. (Fortunately, this condition is not applied to some of the grants from the USA non government sector - for example, the Gates Foundation.)

A second restriction, more generally applied - especially by the UK - is the insistence on privatisation. The failure, in terms of value for money for the public, of Thatcher, Major and Blair governments' private finance initiatives (PFIs) does not appear to have dampened the enthusiasm for applying them to other countries.

In some African countries this has resulted in people becoming worse off than before the aid was granted. An obvious example is an increase in the cost of water as a result of privatisation. As with most privatisation, what appeared to be a short-term benefit has been more than wiped out by longer-term disadvantage.

What Must Change?

So the first change must be to remove the privatisation requirement. It is recognised, of course, that private firms which have succeeded in developing countries have valuable expertise. However, this should be used in the context of public control; control on behalf of indigenous people by leaders democratically elected to represent them. Although it has to be accepted that private firms exist to act in their own interests, as their obligations to shareholders require, they must recognise that their interests are not the priority with grant-aided projects. The most they should expect is a reasonable, commercially calculated, return.

Second, steps must be taken to ensure that a much smaller proportion of aid is devoured by consultants in the donor countries. These consultants are often involved in negotiating the grants: some are paid more for a week's work than an African's annual income. And, too often, the focus is on the trade benefits to the donor nations, rather than on the needs of the recipients.

Unless radical, and urgent, changes are made, the West will continue to lose influence in Africa. Europe and the USA will not be able to compete with China and India, or other emerging powers such as Venezuela, if they persists with trading agreements and arrangements which favour the rich nations.

A New Strategy

In terms of strategy, the most urgent change is to shift the emphasis to job creation; integrated with education and training. For the longer-term, literacy and social and political education is as necessary as training in the skills required by the jobs directly related to the projects. Too often the requirement (in the conditions imposed with the grants) to complete projects in a specified period ignores the issue of permanent benefit.

The key to bringing about real improvement for the poor is to ensure that investment is used to release the resources that the countries already have. The most important resource is the expertise that people have acquired from their life experiences. Millions of Africans have to be entrepreneurs to make enough money merely to survive: many who fail in this respect are no longer of this world.

Those who are still with us have gained valuable knowledge about the obstacles to success in their environments - and have devised strategies to overcome them. It is the habit of the West to seek to impose its own structures, rather than support the recipient countries' own organisations. A typical example was when Blair set up his African Commission, instead of supporting an African initiative: the recently formed New Partnership for Africa's Development.

Another valuable resource is, of course, the fund of knowledge accumulated by businesses which have figured out how to succeed in difficult trading circumstances. In being able to turn a profit, such enterprises have acquired valuable insights into the varying operation of markets in different countries.

Although private companies are entitled to a reasonable return for their contributions to projects, they must recognise that the projects are not run for their benefit. Thee needs of the recipients are paramount but, as the Chinese have recognised, benefits flow without the imposition of strict conditions.

In other words the focus must be on the longer-term benefits which can occur only with the involvement, on an equal basis, of the people themselves. Providing the approach is to integrate education and training with economic development, this can lead to the evolution of processes for democratic participation.

Ending Waste and Corruption

These changes would make a major contribution to ending waste and corruption. Although these are usually highlighted as problems in developing countries, they apply at least as much to agents operating on behalf of the donors. In how many cases have individuals and businesses from the donor countries become more prosperous as a result of their involvement, but have left the recipient countries poorer?

Paul Wolfowitz, the leader of the World Bank who is no longer with us, identified tackling corruption as his priority. His demise resulted from focusing on corruption in the developing world, while ignoring it closer, much closer, to home. From his words and actions, it could be concluded that he believed that the same standards should not be applied to the rich in the West as to the poor in developing countries.

The assumption in the West that the main, or in some circles entire, problem is with the developing countries is not sustainable. This is not to argue that they do not have problems of corruption, but to quote John Christenson (The Guardian 30/5/07): 'For each dollar of aid that goes into Africa, at least Five dollars flows out under the table.'

Keith Wymer

June 2007

About the Author

40 years experience in further education

manager of international projects in many countries, including USA, Russia,Denmark, South Africa.

campaigner for equality and democracy and against racism

Volkswagen Sees Increased Sales In China by Anthony Fontanelle

German Volkswagen Group expects to sell more than 800,000 vehicles in China this year, encouraged by its strong sales in the first half.

The projection, made by Volkswagen's China chief Winfried Vahland, is up from 711,298 units it moved in the world's fastest-growing major auto market in 2006. Its January-to-June sales on the mainland and Hong Kong rose 24.6 percent year-on-year to record 431,369 units, including 379,705 Volkswagen-brand cars, 49,267 Audi vehicles and Skoda 2,274 units.

The German company's record sales figure is likely to help it remain the top seller in China's passenger car segment though its rivals, such as the General Motors Corp. and the Toyota Motor Corp., have yet to disclose their first-half results in the territory. "This (record sales) indicates that our 'Olympic Program' has been yielding good results in China," Vahland said in a recent interview in Beijing.

Volkswagen, the sole automotive partner of the Beijing 2008 Olympics, flagged off the program in 2005 to launch 12 to 14 new models by 2009 in China. The automaker also intends to cut costs by 40 percent by 2008 and to improve sales and service networks.

Vahland predicted that China's entire passenger car market would reach five million units this year, up from the company's previous forecast of 4.6 million units. In 2006, 4.2 million passenger cars were sold in the country. "However, we will not slacken our efforts to cut costs and improve customer satisfaction, although we performed well in the first half," he said. He warned that interest rate rises and soaring oil prices in China are likely to have a negative impact on the car market.

The VW turn signal alerts the automaker to a greener pasture. The German automaker now runs a joint venture with First Automotive Works Corp in the northeastern city of Changchun. The venture is responsible for the production of Bora, Caddy, Jetta, Golf and Sagitar, as well as the Audi A6 and A4. Additionally, the venture will launch a 1.8-liter turbo Magotan sedan next week.

The Mangotan also features Fuel Stratified Injection in nearly every petrol version. It ranges from 1.6 to 3.2 L, but the multivalve 2.0 L TDI is the most sought out version in Europe. In the United States, it features a 200 horsepower 2.0 L turbocharged I4 as the base engine, or a 280 horsepower 3.6 L VR6 engine as the upgrade and six-speed manual and automatic transmissions.

An Tiecheng, the venture's general manager, said that it plans to roll out at least two new models under the Volkswagen and Audi marques annually in the next five years to lure increasingly sophisticated auto purchasers.

The VW Mangotan, also called the Passat, follows the latest design philosophy first introduced on the VW Phaeton luxury car. The new styling is a dramatic departure from the styling of the B5.5 Passat. Although the new design using improved VW parts is somewhat controversial, sales have improved over the old model.

For the full year, VW, which operates car manufacturing ventures with leading Chinese auto maker SAIC Motor Corp. and FAW Group, aims to increase its sales by roughly one-fifth and maintain its 17 percent share of the world's second-largest auto market, a senior company executive said.

The venture will have a "minimum" profit growth of 25 percent this year from 2006, said Joachim Wedler, its vice-president in charge of finance. But Wedler did not reveal how much the firm, in which FAW holds a 60 percent stake and Volkswagen 40 percent, will earn this year.

The Wolfsburg-based company is one of the world's biggest producers of passenger cars and Europe's largest automaker.

About the Author

Anthony Fontanelle is a 35-year-old automotive.buff who grew up in the Windy City. He does freelance work for an automotive magazine when he is not busy customizing cars in his shop.

buy a car by jay pleas

Buy a car anytime you want, but I would tell anybody today that applying for a car offline is one of the worst and tiresome things I have done in my whole entire life. There was a man trying to explain the rates to me in a rushing manner. He even tried to force a particular car on me that I didnt even want, and the finance company that they deal with tried to push my rates close as 13 percent which is outrageous. I felt like I was being suckered into a deal so I turned towards the internet to get some information which is the best way to be successful in buying a car in todays world in my opinion.

I searched for days online looking for some great resources. There were many websites that showed you how to buy a car, but I needed to know the important points when I buy a car. Finally, I came upon some great websites that shows you everything that you need to know in order for you to apply yourself to buy a car successfully. I learned a ton of things, such as, the great loan company that I talk about on my website that you can easily apply for to buy a car anytime you want. What I liked about that loan is the rates and the time it takes for you to get a loan. It takes up to 24 hours for you to get a loan from them and the rates is the best on the net. The rates are very low. You would pay 7 percent at the most. Take out a loan because if you financed through a car dealership you probably would have to pay 9 or 10 percent interest rates to buy a car through a dealer.

When I was searching for a car, I also tried the car quote websites that, and they are great. I simply filled out the form and got quotes back to back in no time. There is four different websites for you to choose from or compare together. First I used edmunds, which is a pretty coo carl quote website, but personally, I like the other free car quote websites because it's easier to operate and quickerto obtain. You will get back some car quotes back in the same day. I used this for myself because you can make an educated decision of what price you can afford, and make or model of the cars. You can have local dealerships calling you to buy a car that fits your budget.

You can buy a car cash if you want. After I bought my car, I discovered some great auction services that allows me to buy a car from my own state and area. This is my main source when I buy a car now. The great news about buying auctioned cars is that you can get some really nice updated, running cars really cheap in your own local are. The bad news is that you have to react on these deals quickly in the process. I have posted some great car auction websites for people who want to buy a car cash instead of paying monthly rent. These are my jewels that I use here on out. I no longer have car bills to pay. I use most of my time buying 3 cars a month and selling them for a little more. Alot of the cars that are offered on the sites are in tip top shape. Many of the cars are under $1000. It's really easy to navigate your area. All you do is type in your area code and it shows you all the auctions going on in your area, contact info, etc.

***Remember before you buy a car to check and make sure mileages and price matches correctly. Check out my website and see how I calculated this for myself and do it for yourself too.***

About the Author

My name is Jay Pleas. I'm an auto mechanic and interior designer that spends most of my time buying autos and detailing them for many customers. At this time I make $100,000 a year maintaining my own car interior buisness. I live in Florida. I'm 28 years of age

www.squidoo.com/buy_a_car

Simplify Media now Available in App Store

One of the more frequently used apps I had on my iPod Touch prior to upgrading to 2.0 was the Simply Media application. It allowed me to access my entire music library on my computer without having to transfer the songs and eat up the remaining free space on my measly 16GB iPod Touch. That [...]

It’s a good thing, though, that Simplify Media is finally available through the App Store, and it’s free. I’m not too sure if they’re serious about it being free of charge only to the first 100K iPhone users, but nonetheless, I didn’t take any chances and downloaded it immediately. Now, I enjoy the same benefits as I did before and have totally forgotten those jailbreaking days of the past.

They’ve added some new a features such as artist info (by Last.fm) and song lyrics (by LyricWiki). The album art, unfortunately, is now also updated by connecting to an online database which is erroneous at times probably due to the wrong search criteria. In the past, it would just display whatever album art I had in my iTunes collection, but I guess they decided to change it in this latest version.

Remote access is still limited to audio files so you won’t be able to watch your favorites TV shows and movies through it. However, you can connect to the libraries of your other Simplify Media contacts which, in turn, will give you access to more-than-your-average fill of music.

A desktop version needs to be installed first for you to gain to access your library, but that’s probably the most tedious part of the whole process. Once you’ve got everything set up and you’re friends are hooked on it as well, get ready to enjoy countless hours of music fun just as long as you’re connected to a network (Wi-Fi, 3G, or even EDGE).

It isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty good for the most part, and best of all, its free!

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Canada's industry boss: don't like incoming text charges? Switch carriers

Filed under: Messaging, Bell Mobility, Telus Mobility

We're not sure what sort of mind-altering tricks Bell and Telus pulled on him, but Canada's minister of industry, Jim Prentice, is taking an entirely less confrontational tone after meeting with the carriers following their decisions to start charging 15 cents for incoming text messages. He'd originally sounded pretty fired up over the plans -- which involved absolutely zero collusion whatsoever, we're sure -- but now says he "would encourage consumers dissatisfied with existing plans to seek alternatives" after being assured by both Bell and Telus that customers charged for spam texts would be able to get the charges removed. Given everything we know about billing issues and customer service calls, that's... shall we say, not exactly reassuring.

[Via MobileSyrup]

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The Samsung Eco E200 - it’s (kinda) made of corn!

Fine - it’s made of bioplastic, which is derived from corn. Same thing, right? Plus, it’s better than the other title I was considering: “The Samsung Eco E200 - it’s corny!” While the definition of bioplastic varies widely depending on who you’re talking to, the important part is that it’s a material made (at least partially) [...]

Fine - it’s made of bioplastic, which is derived from corn. Same thing, right? Plus, it’s better than the other title I was considering: “The Samsung Eco E200 - it’s corny!”

While the definition of bioplastic varies widely depending on who you’re talking to, the important part is that it’s a material made (at least partially) of some sort of vegetable oil rather than petroleum. It’s also supposed to be a good amount more biodegradable than traditional plastics.

However Samsung is defining “bioplastic”, the E200 is entirely encased in it. Check it out in all of its green guilt-curing goodness over at Crunchgear.

Round 12 ShoeMoney Answers

Storm asks: Aside from great content, and if you had to pick one, what would you choose to concentrate more on in an effort to build traffic. Similar site backlinks Core SEO (page descriptions, tags etc) Social Networking (Digg, Stumble,Twitter) Cheers, Storm ShoeMoney: I would probably say the next priority would be getting people in front of the site. I [...]

Storm asks:

Aside from great content, and if you had to pick one, what would you choose to concentrate more on in an effort to build traffic.

Similar site backlinks
Core SEO (page descriptions, tags etc)
Social Networking (Digg, Stumble,Twitter)

Cheers, Storm

ShoeMoney: I would probably say the next priority would be getting people in front of the site. I would say social media.

Dom asks:

hey Jeremy,
If you bought a site from someone, would you think it more beneficial to:
a) have a homepage with a high pagerank, and very low/0 for other pages
b) have a homepage with a lower pagerank but other pages with a decent pagerank
and why?

Thanks

ShoeMoney: Site links to all the pages, then I would hope the page rank would flow to those. If they aren’t doing interlinking, then I would hope the main page would have high pagerank.

Joe asks:

What are some good verticals that have your attention right now?

ShoeMoney: UFC mixed martial arts, mobile, and international mobile. Dating, etc.

Bulbboy asks:

How many pairs of shoes or footwear do you own?

I have about 10.

ShoeMoney: 2

Allen asks:

If you simultaneously became bankrupt and where then told by the doctor that you can only work for 2 hours per week or you will die, what would you do?

ShoeMoney: I would basically call up any company in the space and tell them I would do consulting for two hours a week. But if I went bankrupt, then what I’m doing isn’t really working, and I’m not worth anything. I would just do consulting or just blog.

My Awesome Blog asks:

If you had to start an online business completely from scratch with a maximum $5,000 budget, do you think you could get the business up to $100 a day (I know, the magic number)?

If so, what would you recommend for others to do the same?

ShoeMoney: Yea of course.

Jeff asks:

Are you a Husker fan? I’ll assume you said yes…. Do you have a sky box or do you sit with the rest of us? I’ll assume you said yes again. Can I hang out in your sky box for the West Virginia game?

ShoeMoney: No. I have actually had tickets one time, but never made it. I like to tailgate, and that’s it. I used to be into sports in my early 20s, but not anymore.

Keyword Anchor and Do-Follow Blog asks:

In your opinion, is it still possible to make a lot of money online?
Thanks Shoe!

ShoeMoney: Yes.

Michael D asks:

What methods do you engage to keep yourself and your crew focused on achieving goals and not getting burnt out on the dayd to day activities of your sites?

ShoeMoney: 1. We choose to do things we are excited about, and feel we would use ourselves. Like fighters.com site, we are huge fans of the sport. 2. We feel it’s a service that is badly needed. We are creating what we want, as fans. Basically we are building our own house, and selling it to everyone else. With shoemoney tools, we have used and are using now, and building it for other people. You can avoid a lot of those pitfalls, by hiring people that aren’t in it for the money so much, but more in it because its what they want to do. Its what they are interested in.

Giles asks:

- From starting an unknown site to one that pays for itself, how long would it take you (without publicising it on SM)

- What do you spend your money on?

ShoeMoney: We do a lot of things with no budget, that I never talk about or wouldn’t talk about on shoemoney.com. From way back when I first started, it took me 3 years. Now with the experience, I think with in a couple months I would be able to create a pretty profitable site. There are many opportunities now, like with wordpress you get free hosting.

Greg asks:

Shoemoney, you said in a previous post that one of the keys to your success was creating great content — and making it easy to share.

What are the best ways to make it easy to share, and how do you encourage people to share?

ShoeMoney: Give them an easy way to refer it to friends. And also with news readers and twitters, stumble this, dig this. Create those buttons and make it easy for people to share.

JBagley asks:

Hey Shoe,

Ever been to South Africa? Yes or No, what do you think of it?

ShoeMoney: No

Nick Throlson asks:

Hey shoe what is your opinion on Market Leverage where do your see them in 5 years?

ShoeMoney: As far as personalities go, they seem very aggressive. They seem to understand how to get their name out there. From talking to some of the people behind the scenes, they are working on some really revolutionary things in the space. They got their name out there which is key, now they just need to back up everything they have been talking about. Which they are doing a great job at. They seem to be dominating the buzz throughout the blogosphere.

JumboCasher.com asks:

looks like… from the quality of posts comming around!

ShoeMoney: Pass

Joe asks:

Which fighting discipline do you think is the best to take and why.

ShoeMoney: I’m a big fan of jujitsu or judo. They are kind of closed combat styles. Odds are most fights if somebody would attack you, it will end up on the ground. Some form of advanced wrestling would be the most helpful.

Paulo Faustino asks:

Hello Shoe,

I would like to ask you what is your favorite sport of the Olympic Games, and if you think that China could beat the USA in the medals board, this year?

Bye

ShoeMoney: I don’t think China will place in the top 50%. I don’t know, but I love watching basketball. The USA team is the most incredible allstar team assembled. Watching Lebron and Kobe is like watching the Harlem Globetrotters playing around with their opponents.

Andrew asks:

I was reading your post about the robot.txt file and I notice with your robot.txt you have User-Agent: Googlebot listed twice, along with several identical disallows like /page/ , /feed/ and /category/ listed twice, is that how it should be?

ShoeMoney: Probably just a mistake.

Ricker asks:

I hope I can squeeze TWO easy/shorties in here:

1) What are your best methods you use to get a user to share your site with someone else ?

2) How many active websites (making money) do you own ?

Thanks.

ShoeMoney: I think you need to have something worthwhile to share in the first place. Great content to start with. And a method to share.
More than I can count. A lot of them don’t make much, and some don’t make anything. This is more of a question for a one person operation, which I used to be. But now I just look at monthly reports.

Dexter | Tech At Hand Dot Net asks:

With reference with your experience as an Affiliate MArketer, What kind of product would you believe that there are lots of opportunity of earning online.. Ie, Computers, Camera, Service, E-bok etc..

ShoeMoney: I would say all of them. There is opportunity in all of those areas. The ebook thing is probably less than any of them, but its pretty saturated.

Paul U asks:

I want to buy a website but I don’t know a thing about it.

What is a BIN?

How does it works?

ShoeMoney: BIN in an auction setting, is Buy It Now. You just stop the auction now for a set price.

zxj asks:

I want to know more about how to make advertiment. I am a new learner here.

ShoeMoney: Pass

Ganesh asks:

What is the biggest disadvantage of being a teen entrepreneur?

ShoeMoney: I was never a teen entrepreneur. I was busy sleeping in and playing video games. I would imagine most of them have trouble dealing with companies because they aren’t 18. If you are a teen, go play, don’t be an affiliate marketer.

netmeg asks:

Pardon me if this has been asked before, but who created your avatar? I’ve admired it for some time.

ShoeMoney: Dave Naylor. He’s an artist and really good friend of mine.

JumboCasher.com asks:

I would think it is more because of the content and the daily blog readership, rather than just the RSS count. BTW the RSS count can be jacked up anyways…

ShoeMoney: Pass

Ari asks:

where do you go to fix bugs in your wordpress blog? sometimes I get SQL errors or plugins that I want are acting up and conflicting and I don’t want to remove them, I just want them fixed!!

ShoeMoney: Most of the plugins I have written myself, or hacked. We have modified all the plugins we run, to do what we want. Between us, we squash all the bugs.

Dave asks:

GSP or Penn? And are you the webmaster for matt hughes? I read you guys were working with him, then Dellanave said he lost him as a fan, then hughes gives you two a shoutout on his blog.

ShoeMoney: GSP wins that fight.

We’re not his webmaster. He has a guy named Nathan Rosario. We just host his site, provide the bandwith. Matt Hughes is an interesting guy, and recently gave us a shoutout on his blog. Which was cool.

nkog asks:

I’d like to know what was the fastest you ever gotten a page to #1 search position in google? and how much work did it take you to get there. whats the first thing you should do to market a new site.

ShoeMoney: Its probably happened a lot faster than I’ve noticed it. Especially since Google has their minty fresh indexing. I’ve written things on my blog that have ranked number 1 for a pretty competitive phrase. As far as a new site, with our McLovin ID generator, it was ranking top 1 to 3 for McLovin and still does.

Shanker Bakshi asks:

Hi Shoe,
In his recent post John told his readers that how you surpass his RSS readers counts in a contest held in October 2007. Is that true, did you really use “that” evil way to cross his RSS mark by creating fake number of 4000 RSS subscribers in a single day. I guess you haven’t told anything about that yet. Would you like to answer it now?

ShoeMoney: Even John doesn’t know exactly how it happened. I waited till the last day and exploited a small thing in feedburner. I did email feedburner, and told them what I was going to do, and got a reply from the vice president that said it was ok. It was a small hole in the way they verify emails. And they asked me not to talk about it, until they had fixed it. And last I checked, it still wasn’t fixed. There are quite a bit of holes in feedburner that are being exploited now.

ShoeMoney Suport Line. haha asks:

Wanting to add a blog to my existing e-commerce site. A. is it better to put a blog on it’s own domain or does it matter. can I put it as a sub domain off my e-commerce site? which is better as we get a lot of traffic to our main domain, but not sure what is best for adding a blog. adding a navigation tab for the blog off the main site, or starting with a new domain that the main site points too.

ShoeMoney: I would yield to Matt Cutts on the subject. You should always do it as a subfolder of the website. Like http://www.mattcutts.com/blog. For an SEO purpose many people will link to your main url and your blog url. From a navigational perspective, you should only use sub domains, if its clearly a separate part of the site.

JC asks:

Shoe, have you ever flipped a house to make money?

ShoeMoney: No

Jonathan Villiard asks:

Mr. Showmaker,

for the very first time, I will meet a big client (a bank) for a SEO proposal. I am very excited and stressed about all this. Would you be so kind as to wish me good luck?

Thanks

Jonathan

ShoeMoney: Good Luck.

Israel asks:

How often to you workout, and what do you do specifically during those workouts…cardio, lift, etc.

Eating wise, are you a stickler for what you eat or do you eat anything (limited due to the surgery you had)?

ShoeMoney: I haven’t worked out for over a month. But I am going to get back into the routine starting today. Partially due to my new kid being born. Mondays I do chest, benchpress, overhead press and a few other exercises. Wednesdays we do legs, mostly walking lunges, squats, and straight leg deadlifts. On Fridays we do back, which is pullups, and seated rows, etc. Cardio is kind of hit or miss, try to run twice a week.
I don’t really have a restrictive diet. But I try to keep away from the fat, because with the surgery I had my body doesn’t absorb fat.

wesley asks:

Name a niche you are wanting to get into.

ShoeMoney: We pretty much do anything we want, so…

Jerry asks:

Shoe,

How would you advise new bloggers on gaining back links? What are some of the techniques you would recommend?

ShoeMoney: Write passionately. The more you can write honestly and from the heart, people will want to link to your content. For one it will be original, because its your own thoughts. For the most part, be you. If you are just trying to write for money, you probably won’t get anywhere. I wrote on shoemoney.com for a year and half without ever thinking I could make any money off of it.

Melvin asks:

Jeremy when do you consider nofollowing or dofollwing a link on a blog post? any explanantion?

ShoeMoney: Its almost like an endorsement, so sometimes when I want you to easily get to the site but I don’t want to be associated with them I will use a nofollow. It tells the search engine that hey I’ve met this dude, but I’m not vouching for him.

Johny B asks:

Adwords question - if some of my keywords become inactive due to google required minimum bid becoming higher than my maximum bid - what should I do with them?
Delete, pause or something else?

ShoeMoney: If you aren’t going to change anything else, I would delete it. If you are going to change the ad copy to get a better click through ratio, you’re going to have to pay more for a while. But eventually it will come back down. If you can pay more, then do it. The only thing that is going to bring down the quality score is spending more money to get that click through ratio to get your price down, or improving the user experience to get the quality score up.

Myron McDaniel asks:

We are launching a new site and need some sponsors. The site is hbcuighlights.com we links open for podcast, blogs, partners section. Would you like sponsor our site with fighters.com or another one your properties?

ShoeMoney: Possibly. Demonstrate what is in it for us and we’ll talk.

River Girl asks:

When and where is the next elite retreeat?

ShoeMoney: I don’t think it makes sense to have it anywhere other than San Francisco. Unless somebody wants to put up the money to do it. We sold out the last one in San Fran, but we don’t have any plans to do another one. But I get asked once a week when the next one will be. I think it will sell out in 48 hours. It would probably be next Feb – March, in San Fran. Unless somebody wants to put up some money and have it somewhere else. We could try it in Vegas, but you want people actually at the event. We’ll have more on that at the end of this year. I know there is a big demand for it. I don’t know that we can top the last one, but we could definitely still do it.

Jim asks:

besides craigslist, what job listings boards have you found to PERSONALLY work for you for recruiting employees? Please do not answer with monster.com, hotjobs, etc where the fees are in the hundreds. These cannot be virtual people, like elance etc, but professional (i need teachers) in the US?

ShoeMoney: Husker Hire Link

zxj asks:

why can not I see my comment?

ShoeMoney: Read my post on comment spam and the comment system. If you have never commented before, it will be in the comment moderation cue.

David G. asks:

Shoe,
Your recommendations
1. Wordpress or Blooger or Other.
2. The Best Web Hosting Companies.
3. Any Recommendation for Auction Software for web based auction.
4. Did you check out PicLens?

Thanks

ShoeMoney: Wordpress
We haven’t used a web hosting company for years
No
No idea what piclense is

SalutaryBlog asks:

Would you recommend stealing videos and branding them as your own?

ShoeMoney: Obviously no. But I think on the other hand, you see a lot of people stealing my content and branding it as their own. You want to always respect copyrights of everyone.

Robert asks:

What did you think of how TAC (top affiliate challenge) came out?

ShoeMoney: I think based on the fact that they had absolutely no money to spend on it, the producers. Thor didn’t have a very extensive marketing background, and a company that produced wedding videos. It has gotten more buzz than anything that I can remember. There are a number of things that need to be improved. People always bring it up. I know they were happy with the amount of revenue that the producers got out of it, and the winner got out of it. I don’t know that I’ll be apart of it again, time wise, it was just taking up a lot of time. I’ve been approached about it, but I’m kind of saying no for now. It was pretty successful. I haven’t seen past the third episode, but people will ask me about it, and tell me that it gets so much better. It received a lot of negative press, but they had a lot of how they would do it differently. So I don’t know that it was that negative. They have kind of volunteered to help out with the next one. I agree there was a lot of room for improvement, but at the same time it was one of the biggest success stories we’ve had in a long time.

Ted asks:

Shoe say you have a website selling a physical product. What do you think a manufacturer/wholesaler of said product wants to hear in order to give you the best discount (and thus a greater re-sale margin for you)?

ShoeMoney: I think the representation of the product is a big thing. If you can show you have a budget for advertising, they will give you a better margin. If you have a reputation in the space for sales with similar products, and showing you are not just going to waste their time. Will all result in a better payout.

browie asks:

if you had the name browie, what would you call your new company when you started to bring in enough revenue?

ShoeMoney: Something else, I would call it something else.

George @ Micro Marketing asks:

If you can start all over again… would you still build a blog or go for the static webpages…

here’s another question… which utility o software you will not be able be without or lose its application… which is the most important to you?

ShoeMoney: I would start my blog again.
Terminal, without terminal I would be in deep trouble. With no access to command lines, it would be a real issue. I use skitch a ton as well.

James asks:

Do you have a dog? If so whats the dogs name and male or female…..

ShoeMoney: Baxter, male

Victor asks:

Can a blogger starting now possibly have the same kind of success you and John Chow have had, with all the competition today?

ShoeMoney: Yes. I think it depends on what you determine as success. As far as the blogosphere, John Chow and I are both in the top 100 Technorati. We are just regular guys. I think anyone can do it. I graduated with a 1. Something GPA, anyone can do it. I write anything from how I used to be fat, meeting paris Hilton, and people find that interesting. So you can do it too.

mr K asks:

What are the 3 biggest mistakes you’ve made in your online marketing journey?

ShoeMoney: 1. I had an oral contract with a company, and they broke the agreement and there was nothing we could do about it.
2. I’m a horrible manager, so I should have hired a CEO a while ago. I’m a marketer and some what of a programmer. For me to be a CEO and run all of these different sites and do marketing, but I think I still should hire a CEO to run all of these companies.
3. Newsletter. I should have started a newsletter years ago. And people tried to tell me, but I never listened.

Justin asks:

How is Below A Buck doing? Traffic? How many successful bids/ACRU is it doing in per a month?

ShoeMoney: Belowabuck is a site that we created in less than 24 hours. We did it on less than $500 budget. In the first month it did a couple thousand dollars. But we haven’t even changed the links to the new CJ links, so it does absolutely nothing. Its actually blacklisted in google, because another site was causing a duplicate content issue. We’re actually trying to get that cleared up.

Mike asks:

How do you usually start driving traffic with new projects or affiliates and how much money do you usually take in the hand?

ShoeMoney: Organically is nice. Usually I use low hanging fruit. So if I know someone in that space. Say we have a baby product, I would ping a lot of the mommy bloggers. Just go after low hanging fruit.

Glenn S. asks:

What do you consider the best pay-per-lead affiliate programs?

ShoeMoney: The poker industry, if its legal for you to do so, still has incredible payouts per lead. Mortgages pay really really well if you have quality stuff. Financial industry. It depends on your quality of leads, and how you build the leads.

Ryan asks:

Sometimes I find myself in a “mental block” when trying to think “outside the box” to come up with new keywords. What tips can you provide us with, to allow our minds to break free from the block?

ShoeMoney: I did a post one time on harvesting your own internal data. For instance on nextpimp, which is our mobile community site. People will type in artist names, and typos. And then bid on that in our keyword set. We have our own keyword generation tool, and keep them fresh all the time. You can subscribe to shoemoney tools, for $100 per month right now in the beta. The only thing you can do unique, is your own data.

JumboCasher.com asks:

how would it feel to ask john ths question?

ShoeMoney: Pass

Dave asks:

If you had a full-time job (that you don’t hate) and your online income was about 1.5x what your job makes, would you quit or stick with it? On the one hand, I could probably grow it quite a bit since I’m only spending about 8 hours a week on it now. On the other hand, when I don’t rely on the online income as much I outsource more (less work for me), save more, and spend more on fun stuff. Think if you didn’t get fired you would’ve kept your job?

ShoeMoney: If they are happy, just do what makes them happy. There is a certain level of security with working for someone. And having benefits. Most people want to know at one point should you quit your day job and pursue. I think it just depends on how much you believe in what you are doing.

Reid asks:

Shoemoney-

Did you ever have a time in your life where you wanted to give up on your internet ideas, or what gave you the push to become a successful internet entrepreneur?

ShoeMoney: I never wanted to give up. Its like a hobby to me, to try different things. Like playing the game of life. Being that it doesn’t cost anything to do it. The push really to do it, was a position of opportunity meets preparation. I basically got fired from a job, and my girlfriend at the time had decent enough income to support us as I tried this.

JumboCasher.com asks:

How would a search engine rate a single landing page against a small say 10 page website?

ShoeMoney: If all the links are going to the primary page and isn’t linking to the internal pages then it doesn’t matter. If all the links are going to an interior page, than that main page isn’t going to rank as well. I’m not an SEO.

terminator69 asks:

What is the coolest thing you have with the shoemoney logo on it? (excluding the swimming pool).

ShoeMoney: When I was 12 years old, I took a fluorescent plastic that goes over light fixtures. I did that logo in duct tape, and then spray-painted it. So when the light was on, it would shine through the logo.

Craig asks:

If timing was different how do you think you would have done on the TAC, it would have been really interesting to see all 3 gurus battle it out.

ShoeMoney: It wasn’t a battle between the gurus. We were there as just a resource for the contestants. It would have been interesting to see if we had a competition between us 3 gurus.

Geiger asks:

What’s it take to get to the top of the Free T-Shirt Friday Queue?

ShoeMoney: I don’t really see the shirts, till Tigh hands them to me. So maybe a $20 to Tigh and Susan.

Bryn Youngblut asks:

Are you less motivated with your blog lately?

ShoeMoney: The thing with my blog , is its my blog. So if I want to write, I can. If not, then I don’t have to. I’m more excited about the blog than ever. But unfortunately the blog has always taken a back seat to our other company stuff. The company is definitely low on the priority list. We do have a new design that will be rolled out this week.

JumboCasher.com asks:

Shoe, what are the 3 biggest mistakes that you have made on this blog!

ShoeMoney: 1. The newsletter, not having one.
2. Redone the URL structure. But I like the way it is now, and by the URL structure you and tell by what dates the post was made.
3. I wish I would have implemented some of things I do now earlier. The behind the scenes thing, those are fricken awesome. Absolutely love doing those. Wish I would have done that earlier, and we have quite a waiting list of companies that we’re doing. I think I just took too long doing something things.

Mitchell Blatt asks:

How does it feel to have a Wikipedia page about yourself while John Chow doesn’t?

ShoeMoney: I actually have a huge list of all the things I’ve done that John Chow hasn’t. I actually didn’t even know that he didn’t have one. And my page lists me 2 years older than what I actually am. I’m not going to lie, it is cool to have a wikipedia page. But I still have to work tomorrow.

Martin Muehl asks:

You once mentioned that you track your website traffic with your own analytics tool. Do you track any key metrics other than the usual?

ShoeMoney: Depending on the site and the goal. For instance on our webmasters tools stuff. We track what tool people use, and devoting the most amount of time on what people are using.

samn asks:

How do you get a “Great” quality score on a single page landing page.

ShoeMoney: Click through ratio has to be very good. The user experience is very vital, and so the user doesn’t immediately click back right away. As much as you can answer the keyword, and your ad copy has a lot to do with it. Read some of my old posts on paperclick.

Mitch asks:

Whenever I try using an image ad (CJ, Common Connect, etc) on the side panel of my Wordpress blog (my server, but their software), that entire side is suddenly at the bottom of the screen on the browser instead of on the right side. What could the issue be?

ShoeMoney: Sounds like you have a fixed width issue. Your website is a fixed width, and that image is too big.

Coaster asks:

I am new to this site.
Where should I start reading on your site? It seems to be a bit all over the place to me and I don’t know what to read first!

ShoeMoney: At the bottom is a previous questions and answers, there are over 1,200 Q&A’s. I would start there.

Chris Edwards asks:

Can I become a rep of yours someway over here in California (Los Angeles)?

ShoeMoney: Absolutely.

team ray asks:

auctions ads how long did it take you to put it together and in what programming language did you use?

ShoeMoney: Dave Dellanave wrote it in a couple days, for the core of it. Maybe less than a day. It was derived from a product called Shoemoney Ads.
PHP

mcQ asks:

Do you think Bruce Ivin’s is the anthrax guy? or he is being used as a scapegoat?

ShoeMoney: Not familiar. Sure.

Geiger asks:

Choose one…
Rock, Paper or Scissors?

ShoeMoney: Rock. Because I’m built like a rock.

JumboCasher.com asks:

nice question!. I have about 14 and counting…

ShoeMoney: Pass

elsewhen asks:

i presume that you are well connected to people who have successful internet businesses. can you disclose the annual profits (not revenues) the top tier are making in different internet business categories… like people who specialize in running adsense sites, affiliate marketers, people selling digital goods, i am not asking you to disclose names, just something like, i know three guys making approx 1.5million/year with adsense or whatever. thanks!

ShoeMoney: I know 3.5 million guys making a dollar a day. If they just want to be inspired, I saw a guy log into his CJ account, and he was doing 2 million a month. That is pretty impressive. The adsense question is interesting, because most of the people making money from adsense, don’t know any better yet. This excludes digg, myspace, etc. Adsense is a great starting point, but it leads you to other things. It lead me to affiliate marketing. We were doing 100k’s per month, and led us to affiliate marketing years and years ago. I don’t know a lot making much with adsense, because it’s a little embarrassing that they are making much. I don’t know anybody making over $5 a month on adsense.

JumboCasher.com asks:

making a little money is one thing… what about sustaining that income over a long period of time.

ShoeMoney: That would be good. I agree. That’s how I started with adsense and paperclick stuff. You are rich, and you’re poor. We have grown the staff and entered more stable markets.

Lawrence asks:

I have a number, it’s in the range of 1-10….make a guess:

I want to check if we see eye-to-eye

ShoeMoney:5

Mark - The Niche Store Builder asks:

If you had a stellar idea for a new website… what are the first 5 things you would do? AND, if you were somewhat new… where would you turn for guidance?

ShoeMoney: Turning for guidance, go to my site. We have 3 core things we look at: 1. Business model, is there a way to make money. 2. A needed service, is it something you would want to use, and going to use 3. Is there a viral component, will it grow without spending money. If they aren’t there for your stellar idea, you should probably can it.

Kacper asks:

What is your biggest online success so far in this year?

ShoeMoney: The Elite Retreat was big. We launched Fighters.com. I guess it depends on what is “success”. We are hitting all of our goals with fighters.com, but we’re just not profiting. I would say fighters.com is our biggest. Or the tools system, I’m really impressed by how many people have signed up already. We have a great feedback thing now, where people can submit suggestions. And we let members vote on it, and if everybody wants it, then we’ll build it. Its still too early in the year, we usually do the best in the 4th quarter. The 1st and 2nd quarter we suck. 3rd and 4th look very promising.

Dan Schawbel asks:

How do you charge advertisers on your blog? Is it by the number of RSS subscribers you have?

ShoeMoney: No. We charge, because we’re capitalist pig, we basically let the market set itself. The advertisers are locked in at that price, but when they stop advertising we charge more for the next advertiser. We increase the price 5% each time, until nobody wants to advertise then we’ll bring the price down.

BigPappa asks:

Can I buy you a beer next time I am in Lincoln?

ShoeMoney: Probably not. Only because between work and family, I can’t remember the last time I went out to a bar in Lincoln. Except for one night with the TAC. I can’t even name a bar in Lincoln.

JumboCasher.com asks:

what according to you is going to be the next big thing about the internet?

ShoeMoney: The internationalization of the internet will be the next frontier. When you look at the market, and many people use the internet in other countries. If affiliate marketing is there, then adsense will be there. There are just so many people that aren’t on the internet yet, and the mobile, international stuff. Most people in other countries use their phones more than their computer to access the internet.

Charlie asks:

Would me buying at a great hibachi grill here in Vegas be a fair trade for some time to discuss a couple projects I have been working on? And when are you going to be in Las Vegas again? (pubcon I assume)

ShoeMoney: I’ll be in Vegas for the DMA, in October. Taking me out for dinner, I just don’t have time for that. I appreciate the offer, but I just don’t plan lunches and dinners. I usually just go with the posse. Unless you want to buy dinner for 20 people. Usually Neil Patel buys for everyone. I’m free to talk, just tag along with.

Joe Hall asks:

Best online business: subscription based service, or for sale product? And i also want to know what your thoughts are on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but if i have to choose, I want to know about the online business first.

ShoeMoney: Subscription is the win. Ongoing subscription is timeless. Blockbuster and netflix monthly subscription models, they absolutely kill it. With some of our sites , we have subscribers going back 5, 6 years. That’s awesome revenue. Even with our shirts, we lose money on the shirts. The shirts cost us $7, and $5 to ship. So we lose money on them. We have people call about wrong sizes, or shipped to wrong address. I’ve never cared to actually have a physical product.
I think they’re cool. They don’t have to dress up, they just have their shell. Each has their own specialty.

Allen asks:

If you had very limited time and resources, what would you do to make money in the least amount of time?

So let’s say you wanted to make $50/day and had 8 hours to set it up what would you do?

ShoeMoney: I would probably put $10,000 and 5% interest on that. Whatever would give me $50 in interest, I would put that much money in the bank. By the time you get all the paperwork done, it would take less than 8 hours.

meethere asks:

why dont you post a monthly income report similar to johnchow

ShoeMoney: Honestly, because I would just be guessing. I actually run several other companies and projects. I’m not that guy sitting at home in his underwear anymore. I have one person does all accounting, Tigh does all the operations, and Dave does all the programming. And I do the marketing. I know we do good revenues. The blog should bring in about $300k, $400k this year. Probably 90% is profit. Most of the advertisers don’t want to share, and some have a good rate, some don’t. We have to make $1,400 just so we’re in the green, because we have employees. And in some projects we have investors, which would not want us disclosing the financial info.

TEKFIRM asks:

- Content is king
- Viral
- Service

ShoeMoney: Pass

TEGS asks:

Hey Shoe,

I sent you a picture of me and a affiliate check but you never posted it!
I’ll admit it was a little over the top and not like the rest of the images in the gallery but I was kinda disappointed.
Didn’t you think it was inappropriate or did you just not receive it? I bet you get allot of spam.

Either way, love the site!
And thanks for your insights.

Thanks!

ShoeMoney: Send in a pic of yourself with a check. And people started sending in pics with their dog and a check, car and a check. And it might have just got tagged a spam. Send it again.

Geiger asks:

How does one start their own ringtone site?

ShoeMoney: A lot of affiliate companies have API’s that you can start right away. Years and years ago, people could generate their own ringtones upload and share them. That would be hard for you now though. I’m assuming you don’t have a very good marketing team, programming team.

corey asks:

the website that is the most enjoyable for me to run and create content for is in a niche that is not a huge affiliate arena. only a few of the online stores have affiliate programs. have you ever motivated a company to start a program? is it a lot of trouble for a seller to get setup with one of these networks?

ShoeMoney: We have motivated and written affiliate programs for companies. If this company has something you believe in, have them contact us and we can implement one for them. They can go with CJ, they charge like $5k off the top, and hold $5k. We custom write them, and the way we do it is pretty slick for SEO value. It has better tracking than most affiliate companies. And its more hands on. When people are blocking CJ cookies, and links. You won’t be affected by that.

Andrew asks:

Do you have a college degree? Is it valuable these days for someone who aims to live off the internet or is it a waste of precious time ?

ShoeMoney: Like Tigh, he has a 4 year degree in Mathematics. But he is also from a very small town. When people are from small farming communities are usually very hard workers, and good work ethic. That combined with his education was hard for me to ignore. I don’t have a degree, I just don’t learn very well in an educational setting. I learn better from experience. If you are already doing this, and learning, and getting experience from it. I don’t know what school is going to do for you. But if you want to be an accountant, or marketing wise you can learn a lot from school. I benefited greatly from classes I took like business law and marketing. More key classes, and less degrees. I’m not a degree person.

Melvin asks:

when you started out putting ads on this site, whats the average price of an adspot?

ShoeMoney: I think around $200 a month.

Jump Start Websites With Jumpchart

Diagrams play a very important role in planning and communicating a site’s architecture. They help you visualize a project before developing and piecing things together, leading to smarter design decisions. Unfortunately, for a client, Information Architecture and diagrams can be very intimidating, not to mention appear impractical. Because of this, many web teams end up leaving a client out of the whole process and resort to other means of learning what they want on their website. The end result? A mess of emails, Word documents, links to websites, and so on. Jumpchart, currently in private beta, hopes to put an end to all of this.

Jumpchart provides an easier way to plan and visualize content with clients. Forget wireframes and flowcharts and instead allow clients to browse through an interactive sitemap with pages and sub-pages of content. Let them illustrate their needs and add all the content you need in one simple location. Meanwhile, discuss and make changes as needed until the content planning stage is complete. I don’t necessarily see Jumpchart as a way to replace your existing Information Architecture process, but I do feel it makes a nice addition by allowing you to quickly gather and perfect content with groups of people. Invite the whole team: designers, developers, copywriters and clients; and make better decisions easier and faster.

Jumpchart’s interface feels in many ways like a content management system or website builder. You create a site, add pages and sub-pages, fill in content, and attach files to pages just like you would in a website builder. Jumpchart also produces a preview website, or as they put it, an interactive sitemap, which you can browse through and send to clients. You can even down the entire website in pure XHTML and CSS. You cannot, however, change the design of the website that Jumpchart creates - not a major loss considering the client only needs something to help visualize the end result. Users can leave comments on pages, and if permitted, edit content and reorder the site’s navigation. Additionally, each site gets its own RSS feed containing information about recent content changes, page additions, and navigation reordering by other users.

Jumpchart uses Textile Markup Language for editing content, but something tells me my clients won’t want to learn a language to fill in their own content. They’d rather use a WYSIWYG editor. That’s what the average person is familiar with and that’s what will allow them to copy and paste content without losing formatting. My preference? I’m a Textile kind of guy, so I’m happy with their decision. Besides, it gives Jumpchart more flexibility. To explain, after uploading an image, Jumpchart lets you insert that image in your content by adding (image_name). Additionally, linking to other pages within Jumpchart can be done by inserting, "Page Link":[page_name]. Again, maybe a little much to expect a client to write out. You can also build basic non-functional forms with Jumpchart’s custom syntax, enabling you to easily mock-up contact forms, registration forms, login forms, or whatever you may need. You just type out the form elements as they are: [input], [checkbox], [textarea], [submit] and so on.

Just last week, Jumpchart introduced a new feature, Snippets. When you create a site snippet, you are essentially creating content that is meant to be repeatedly used throughout a site. For example, you can create a snippet for a newsletter form and include that form on any page with the syntax [[newsletter_form]]. It saves you from typing the same thing over and over again and also makes it easier for other collaborators. It also enables you to add blocks of content to pages which can be globally changed throughout the site by editing a single snippet.

What I like most about Jumpchart is the simplicity in the product. It helps save time collecting and formatting content and gives clients something to visualize before having the real thing. However, I don’t feel Jumpchart is the best solution for large scale websites. It works well for small and medium sized sites that require a minimal amount of content planning, but if you have a site containing possibly hundreds of pages, things could get dicey. Jumpchart can improve on this by allowing me to search or filter through pages and perhaps offer a one page dashboard showing recent activity. Maybe even collapsible page navigation would help save room.

On the same topic, check out WriteMaps to create and share simple sitemaps online. Rev2.org has more on Jumpchart.

Tags: jumpchart, information, architecture, content, planning

Tags: jumpchart, information, architecture, content, planning,

Taking MyMileMarker For A Spin

Still tracking your car mileage with spreadsheets and scrambling to gather old gas receipts? Try MyMileMarker, a new service by Sidebar Creative that allows you to track and analyze your car mileage online through a browser or mobile phone. It’s extremely easy to use and unlike some services which require you to record every mile you drive, MyMileMarker only asks that you record when you fill your vehicle with fuel. After a few fill-ups at the gas station, MyMileMarker calculates your averages and predicts future mileage and costs.

Getting started with MyMileMarker is as simple as creating an account (OpenID support) and listing each vehicle that want to track. MyMileMarker then creates individual pages for each vehicle where you can log your mileage and view your history. You are also able to record your mileage on a mobile phone using MyMileMarkers mobile friendly website or Twitter, enabling you to access your account from any location. Adding a record with the mobile interface works much like the browser-based version, but if you are a Twitter user, you can very quickly log your mileage by sending a one-line Twitter message. Just add the official MyMileMarker Twitter user as a friend and send a direct message in the format, “D mymm [miles] [gallons] [price]”, and MyMileMarker will handle the rest - even make a guess at which car you filled up based on the mileage you entered.

MyMileMarker Add Record

When adding an entry, MyMileMarker requires that you fill in your vehicles current mileage, the amount of fuel you filled it up with, and the cost of fuel per gallon. There are also a few optional questions that MyMileMarker asks so it knows when you last changed your oil and filled your tank. Furthermore, MyMileMarker is location based, so when filling in your information, it will either ask for either miles and gallons or kilometers and liters depending on where you’re from. You can pick your location in the account settings area. Lastly, be sure the information you enter is correct the first time because you can only remove the latest record from your history. In other words, if you make a mistake three records back, you will have to remove the last three records and add them back again just to correct the one entry. (Feature request: edit past entries!)

MyMileMarker History

After logging your mileage a few times, MyMileMarker will begin to show graphs and make projections based on the mileage and fuel costs that you have entered. It will try and project the amount of miles your car will have and how much you may spend by the end of the year (or any set date). It will also show line graphs plotting your miles per gallon (MPG) and total vehicle miles helping you learn about your fuel economy. Additionally, MyMileMarker estimates your vehicles overall MPG and allows you to view your entire vehicle history. Sadly, I could not find any method of exporting my vehicles history.

MyMileMarker Projections

MyMileMarker is off to a good start. What I like most is that you only record your mileage after filling up your vehicle, unlike many services which have you record your mileage every time you drive. It’s also nice being able to log your mileage from anywhere using a mobile phone. Additionally, I found MyMileMarker’s projections of year end costs and mileage to be useful and a real eye-opener. There are a few things that I don’t like though. For starters, there’s no way of importing or exporting your vehicles history. It would save a lot of time if you could import a spreadsheet or some kind of CSV (comma separated values) file. Also, you can’t edit past entries and fixing a mistake involves deleting old records and adding them over again. Otherwise, I like MyMileMarker for its simplicity and accessibility and plan to continue using it.

Tags: mymilemarker, gas, fuel, travel, expense

Tags: mymilemarker, gas, fuel, travel, expense,

iPhone events

Yesterday I walked into the local phone store because the “Temporarily Unavailable” sign had been removed from their “Get your iPhone here” poster. To my utter surprise they had six (6!) entire iPhones for sale, and no, there was no waiting list. I walked back home with a shiny new gadget, impatient to start testing it.

Meanwhile I’ve done some tests; now it’s time for a report.

Before we continue, let’s get the bad CSS news out of the way: Safari on the iPhone does not support position: fixed. Certain Other Browsers were ridiculed for this lack; Safari won’t be.

I’ve updated the CSS Table, the Core Table and the Events Table. In this entry I’m going to talk about JavaScript events on the iPhone. They’re — interesting.

Simplify Media Streams Your Entire iTunes Library to Your iPhone [Featured IPhone Download]

iPhone/iPod touch only: Simplify Media streams your entire iTunes music library directly to your iPhone or iPod touch over your Wi-Fi or cell network. Considering that the largest iPhone currently weighs in at 16GB and most of our music libraries are significantly larger, this one's got all kinds of obvious potential. We already saw Simplify Media for jailbroken devices, but with this release Simplify Media is officially legit. Apart from your own library, you can also access up to 30 of your friends' libraries. The app displays album art, lyrics, and artist bios, so in addition to the extra music access, it also provides some nice features you won't get from the default iPod app.

You'll also need to download and install the Simplify Media desktop client on whatever computer you want to stream music from. Happily, Simplify Media supports Windows, Mac, and Linux, so nobody's left out in the dark. Simplify Media for the iPhone and iPod touch is free for the first 100,000 downloaders, so hit the link below to get it while it's hot. Thanks Jeremy!

RSS On Your Mobile Device in 30 Seconds

Okay maybe it’ll take 60 seconds. The process for getting NewsGator Go! on your mobile device used to be somewhat cumbersome. You had to create an account using NewsGator Online, request a download link in NewsGator Online, wait for an email with instructions, and the proceed. Well, that’s old news. Now the entire [...]

Well, that’s old news. Now the entire process can be done from your device in just 2 steps (it is in beta, so keep that in mind).

Got to http://mbeta.newsgator.com/d (don’t forget the /d for download) and grab the installer. Once the process is flushed out completely, we’ll drop ‘beta’ from the url:

NewsGator Go!

Fire up the client. If you already have an account you’re done and off to the races. If not, just enter a username and password and you’re done (we’ll create an account for you on the fly):

NewsGator Go!

If you just created a new account, you’ll be teed up with a mobile starter pack.

NewsGator Go!

At this point, you are good to Go! with mobile RSS! That was easy, yeh? You can always add more feeds or tweak your settings from Go!, NewsGator Online, or one of our awesome and FREE clients (FeedDemon, NetNewsWire, or Inbox). Thanks TD for helping with the html and artwork.
Enjoy!

Nokia - Press Release : Nokia N77 multimedia computer starts shipping - Live TV in your pocket / Mobile Marketing

Espoo, Finland - Finland is the first to experience optimized mobile TV with the Nokia N77 multimedia computer. Later this month also Vietnam and India will start shipments of the Nokia N77. Consumers will now be able to keep up to date with news and sports and enjoy their favorite TV shows live on the move. The affordable Nokia N77 comes in a stylish and pocketable form factor with complete Nokia Nseries functionalities.

“The Nokia N77 takes TV out of the living room,” said Jonas Geust, head of Nokia Nseries Players Category, Multimedia, Nokia. “The wide 2.4″ flat screen and high quality stereo sound makes it the ideal personal mobile device for enjoying TV programs on the go.”

The dedicated TV key on the Nokia N77 gives users direct access to a world of TV programs. It even remembers the last channel viewed when switched off the TV. Viewers can also set reminders to alert when a program is starting and access it at the push of a button.

The Nokia N77 also offers the advantage of 30 second replay and live TV watching continues after the replay clip. Through the Program Guide in the mobile TV application viewers can see program information up to seven days, browse TV channels, purchase new channels if desired and select the TV program they are interested in.

With practically all the features people would expect from a true Nokia Nseries multimedia computer, including MP3 player, 2 megapixel camera (1600 x 1200 pixels), web browsing, email access, calendar and to-do lists, the Nokia N77 is much more than just live TV and entertainment - it’s the key to an entire world of multimedia computing.

The Nokia N77 is based on S60 3rd Edition software on Symbian OS and is offered in markets where commercial mobile TV services based on DVB-H technology are available.

A full list of Nokia N77 features is available at www.nseries.com/n77
Product photos are available at www.nokia.com/press/photos
For more information on mobile TV, visit www.nokia.com/mobiletv

Nokia - ShowPressRelease

technorati tags: mobile, mobile alley, mobile news, mobilemarketing, mobile marketing, marketing mobile, interactive marketing, marketing interactif, marketing, Nokia, Nokia N77, N77, Nseries, TV, Mobile TV, Mobile Advertising, Nokia Multimedia, DVB-H

Tags: mobile, mobile alley, mobile news, mobilemarketing, mobile marketing, marketing mobile, interactive marketing, marketing interactif, marketing, Nokia, Nokia N77, N77, Nseries, TV, Mobile TV, Mobile Advertising, Nokia Multimedia, DVB-H,

Filo, the line that joins your dots [CnC]

About one week ago I wrote a post with a similar title on my Italian blog. It was to announce the “beta” of Filo, a small service (well, more like a weekend project) that I developed a while ago, and that turned out to be a good testbed for experimenting a bit with design [...]

What I’m giving you here is an introduction to the project and an overview of its features, I’ll update my dev blog with more in-depth articles about the techie stuff.

What is Filo?

Filo is a website that allows you to keep track of what you want to read (and don’t have the time to do it right now). It was heavily inspired by Instapaper, a web service by Marco Arment (one of Tumblr’s developer) and basically started as an exercise to bend Instapaper’s behaviour to my needs.

Wasn’t del.icio.us / ma.gnolia / $othersocialbookmarkingsite enough?

Yes and no. Other existing services are mainly aimed at people who want to share their bookmarks with somebody else or who want to tag / archive with their own tags.
This is awesome, but requires that you actually know where to put that document!
Filo instead provides you a simple, strictly first-in-last-out list of items you want to remember.

How does it work?

Items to read in Filo are called knots (that’s a little linguistic joke, as filo means line in Italian). You can create Knots either manually (using a form accessible from everywhere on the site) or using a bookmarklet that you can drag in your browser’s bookmark bar.

Using the bookmarklet is very easy: you just browse to a page you want to “remember” and click the bookmarklet. It will contact Filo in the background and create the new knot automatically.

Once a knot is created it will be available from the website and in your personalized RSS feed.

Once a knot is accessed (either clicking on it on the website or clicking it’s title on the feed), it will be marked as read and archived. It is possible to mark archived knots as “to be read again”, as it is possible to trash knots entirely. At the moment, there is no way of bringing items back from the trash (but it will be possible in the future).

How to access the service

The procedure to sign up and sign in have been reduced to a bare minimum: when accessing the site, you’ll be prompted for an email, just type in yours; if it’s recognized as an existing user’s, you’ll be asked for your password, otherwise a new user will be instantly created so you’ll be able to start generating knots!
You’ll also receive an email to confirm your address. You’ll need to click on the link provided in it to fully activate the account (and be able to log in again in the future).

users are prompted for their email address

email not recognized, will register a new user

email recognized, will ask for password and log in

Note, the über-simplified registration process was first presented as an idea by Davide Casali at the recent ExperienceCamp.

Localization

As of today, Filo supports English and Italian.

Mobile version

Filo is already designed to be used from mobile devices (well, actually the CSS still needs a bit of love). Moreover, there’s an iPhone/iPodTouch version available at http://filo.m.bzaar.net/ (well, you can go there with any browser, but with the iPhone is cooler ;) ).

Reading from a feedreader

Filo creates a personal RSS feed for each user. This feed may be imported in any feedreader. Every time you access a knot form your feed reader, it gets automatically archived in Filo (and will disappear from the unread feed at the next refresh).

Boring Technical Details

Filo is written in Ruby, builds on the Ruby on Rails framework, and stores its data in a couple of MySQL tables.
Front end logic is powered by jQuery and the whole thing should degrade gracefully. The iPhone version uses the iui library.

Potential Troubles

. Filo is hosted on DreamHost. Now, don’t get me wrong, DH is great and considered what I pay for the hosting, the service I get is just awesome. BUT it’s not really inteneded for hosting Rails applications: we’re running on Apache + FastCGI and, well, the whole thing tends to “feel” quite slow.
The good site of it is that I put some decent effort in optimizing the code, so when eventually Filo will move to a more rails friendly service it will possibly scream (well, maybe just whistle :) ).
. The whole thing (and especially the integrated login + registration) is not thoroughly tested on a number of different environments (e.g. IE and javascript-less)
. CSS needs some love, and the same is true for the user settings page.

Where next?

Some ideas for the future:
. OpenID support
. “social” stuff, as being able to read and comment your friends knots.
. suggested reads
. offline storage of long articles

Is NASA relying too much on Russia?

Experts are growing increasingly concerned that the United States will have to rely entirely upon Russia to take astronauts to and from the international space station for at least half a decade.

Goodbye Carbonite, Hello Mozy

A couple of years ago I made an impassioned plea to all the readers of our sites to implement a solid backup solution, preferably an off-site one. I figured it was time for an update on my solutions, and a refresher for everyone on the importance of backing up their data.

I was a Carbonite user for a couple of years, but last year I discovered something quite ugly: Carbonite filtered out EXE files, ISO files, and a few other file types. I have a few small ISO files I keep in my documents folder; these are boot CDs I might need to duplicate in the future. And as for EXE files, I purchase digital software quite often, and these EXE files are required if I need to re-install the software. I consider both ISO and EXE files to be part of my data - things that, if I lost, I'd be very upset because they'd be difficult to get back or re-create.

Carbonite considers these types of files non-user data. Shouldn't the user decide what constitutes the data they want to back up? I understand why Carbonite might automatically filter those types of files out - clueless users might try to back up their entire Programs directory thinking it would help them if they had a hard drive crash - but ultimately the user should have the final say over what they want to back up. I still recommend Carbonite for most of my friends and family, because I know they don't have ISO and EXE files to back up, but it was no longer the right solution for me.

I had experimented with Mozy [Affiliate] last year, and liked what I saw, so I signed up with them for a two-year plan, using the coupon code of the month (it's just the name of the month) to save 10% off the total. That works out to only $3.89 per month - tough be beat that! The screen shot above shows the beginning of my 180 GB backup from a few weeks back...as of today, I'm about 40% through the total backup. Backing up 180 GB of data at 1 Mbps upstream is a slow, slow process - and I have a technical cap of 100 GB total transfer per month with my ISP. Once it's finished though, I'll be comforted knowing that all of my photos, documents, music, and software is safely backed up off-site. I still user FolderShare to shuffle my files around and maintain multiple backups of my documents/pictures, and I have a local backup running to an external hard drive, but Mozy completes the circle by offering me off-site protection for my data at a very low monthly rate.

If you're not backing up your data on a regular basis, I'll leave you with a quote to think about from my review of the HP SimpleSave Photo product:

"I encountered one such woman recently: she came to me quite upset because Windows XP on her computer had become corrupted somehow, and a technician re-installed it for her, but she was missing several years worth of pictures of her child when he was a baby. She'd never run a single backup in four years, and despite my efforts using undelete software I was only able to recover a fraction of the photos she'd lost. It was heartbreaking to have to tell her that several years worth of photos were lost forever."

Even if you have a great backup solution yourself, what about friends and family? Don't let them suffer the heartache of losing their digital memories - help them implement an easy to manage off-site backup solution.

Jason Dunn owns and operates Thoughts Media Inc., a company dedicated to creating the best in online communities. He enjoys photography, mobile devices, blogging, digital media content creation/editing, and pretty much all technology. He lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with his lovely wife, and his mostly obedient dog.

D'Oh...The Simpsons Go Lego

The opening titles to The Simpsons are refashioned entirely out of Lego.

Runtime: 00 hrs 01 min 26 sec

Bikini Wrestling!

Gentlemen, prepare to witness the greatest sport in the history of the entire universe.

Runtime: 00 hrs 01 min 44 sec

Touchscreen BlackBerry Storm Caught on Video

The BlackBerry Storm / Thunder, which should be coming to Verizon sometime in November for $199, has finally been caught on video! At roughly 2:55, BREW Ninja whips out the touchscreen-y smartphone and shows off some of its apparently underwhelming (to him, at least) features—an accelerometer, a screen that functions as a button, and an ugly-as-sin on-screen keyboard. Watch the entire video for more info on the HTC Coke (which seems to be taking a couple of design cues from the Diamond) and LG's fashion clamshell for Sprint, the Lotus. [BREW Ninja via CrackBerry]

Nokia Opens Music Store In France

Nokia mobile phone users in France now have access to the Nokia Music Store. Nokia’s music store has over 2.5 million titles from top French and International artists. “The music industry isn’t just about selling songs; it is also-and especially-a way to share new musical experiences. Nokia aims to provide the best music experience by [...]

Nokia mobile phone users in France now have access to the Nokia Music Store. Nokia’s music store has over 2.5 million titles from top French and International artists.

“The music industry isn’t just about selling songs; it is also-and especially-a way to share new musical experiences. Nokia aims to provide the best music experience by building services into its mobile devices to satisfy users who want to be able to access their music collections anytime, anywhere, and for a reasonable price,” explains Eric Munier, music activities manager, Nokia France.

“The opening of the Nokia Music Store will also be an opportunity to introduce Nokia to the music industry in France. We look forward to cooperating with French labels and artists. In this context, the Nokia Music Store will allow artists to talk about their musical world and what they’re working on. Free songs will also be available each week in order to discover new talents.” continued Munier.

Downloads will cost EUR1.00 per song and albums will start at EUR10.00. With a EUR10.00 monthly subscription, users will have unlimited access to listen to the entire catalog on their PCs.

Giselle gets more Tom Brady than she expected.

Tom Brady is out. He tore his ACL which will need to be surgically repaired and will take at least a year to heal. The star quarterback must be deeply saddened that he now has to spend his days laying around and healing with a supermodel. The AP says, The 2007 NFL Most Valuable Player will [...]

The AP says, The 2007 NFL Most Valuable Player will miss the entire ‘08 season with a left knee injury that needs surgery, the team said Monday. That leaves the Patriots without one of the game’s great quarterbacks and severely damages their hopes of a return trip to the Super Bowl.
Coach Bill Belichick would not say what the injury is, but the play, Brady’s reaction and the prognosis all point toward a torn anterior cruciate ligament.

Firm that lost prisons data is sacked

Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, has sacked the firm that lost the personal details of the entire prison population, and information on thousands of offenders.

08/27/08, 20:18:03
Dead Sea Scrolls to be put up for display on the Internet

The Dead Sea Scrolls is considered to be one of the most intriguing finds ever to be discovered. Unearthed in the late 1940s in caves east of Jerusalem - near the Dead Sea, hence the name - it contained the earliest known copies of every book of the Hebrew bible.

The 2,000 year-old Dead Sea Scrolls also provided a peek into the rituals of a Jewish sect at the time of Jesus, as well as apocryphal texts. Now, it is the Dead Sea Scrolls' turn to be peeked at by modern society, all thanks to the Internet.

The Israel government is finally sharing the Scrolls to the world - or at least photographs of it - by digitally capturing every fragment of it, and afterwards to upload it all on the big Net. Scientists and technicians are working with high-powered cameras and lights that do not emit heat and ultraviolet rays.

What's particularly exciting about this is the technology being used could uncover potentially huge findings, especially in those sections that were previously deemed illegible. In all of its discovered history, the Scrolls were only photographed once (in the 1950s) using infrared. These collection are now stored in a climate-controlled room, a precautionary measure for preservation of the Scrolls' contents as some of the fragments have already been lost. The infrared collection will also be scanned to include in the new collection.

Phina Shor, head of the conservation department of the antiquities authority, says of the endeavor:

The project began as a conservation necessity. We wanted to monitor the deterioration of the scrolls and realized we needed to take precise photographs to watch the process. That's when we decided to do a comprehensive set of photos, both in color and infrared, to monitor selectively what is happening. We realized then that we could make the entire set of pictures available online to everyone, meaning that anyone will be able to see the scrolls in the kind of detail that no one has until now.

The project has already begun, although it would take about another couple more years before it can be made ready for public display online.

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‘Fringe’ Numbers - New York Times

E! Online

‘Fringe’ Numbers
New York Times - 1 hour ago
“Fringe,” Fox’s new science fiction drama series from the producer JJ Abrams, garnered winning ratings on Tuesday but not by much.
• Why Did 'Fringe' Unravel? Blame It on the TV God Washington Post
New Fox drama "Fringe" enjoys solid debut Reuters
E! Online - Entertainment Weekly - AdAge.com (subscription) - Variety
all 21 news articles

Lindsay Lohan, Samantha Ronson inch closer to coming out - New York Daily News

E! Online

Lindsay Lohan, Samantha Ronson inch closer to coming out
New York Daily News - 12 hours ago
By KORIN MILLER Click to see Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson at the Charlotte Ronson Spring 2009 fashion show. Their relationship is the worst-kept secret in Hollywood, but Lindsay Lohan and her girlfriend are (very) slowly becoming more vocal about ...
Lindsay Lohan Looks Grumpy, Feels Happy E! Online
Lohan: 'Dad Should Grow Up' San Francisco Chronicle
Actress Archives - The Gossip Girls - Sify - MSNBC
all 180 news articles

If you didn’t know this already, Big Brother has 360 vision

Today ImmerVision, the supposed expert in 360 Panoramic Imaging Technology, released a press release to simply toot its own horn. The only announcement found in the document was the fact that surveillance companies are using its technology. Duh! Companies are adding the IMV1-1/3 lens to existing security setups to add complete situational awareness. You can go [...]

Companies are adding the IMV1-1/3 lens to existing security setups to add complete situational awareness. You can go to ImmerVisions website to see a video of it in action. It’s like a live version of Google’s street view.

MONTREAL–(BUSINESS WIRE)–ImmerVision, the expert in 360° Panoramic Imaging Technology and inventor of the IMV1-1/3 panomorph lens, reports that a growing number of small and large organizations are adding ImmerVision’s 360-degree optics to complement their existing video surveillance installations. These companies already use numerous fixed and PTZ cameras to capture quality images of individuals entering their premises, however, they still can’t relate events and people in one single coherent view.

Today, the IMV1-1/3 lens added to existing CCTV analog or IP cameras, coupled with ImmerVision Enables DVR/NVR’s provide the quickest and most efficient way to add complete situational awareness to video surveillance systems.

Panomorph optics provides consistent 360-degree viewing, live or playback, of an entire area — critical in the banking, gaming, retailing, petroleum, public transit, manufacturing and government sectors. “Video surveillance ‘blindness’ is dangerous and costly”, said Yves Messier, ImmerVision Vice-President Video Surveillance Applications. “End-users are demanding to ‘see everything, anywhere, at anytime’ in order to detect perimeter intrusions and threatening behaviours, manage traffic and crowds, to track interactions between individuals and to be able to rapidly reconstruct the sequence of events in the case of an incident”.

Security experts and end-users can find superior 360° performance and compatibility within a growing number of ImmerVision Enables’ DVR/NVR/VMS from manufacturers such as Aimetis, Chubb, Cieffe (A March Network Company), Petards, Salient Systems, Sentry 360, Silicor, Stanley, and Verex. ImmerVision prides itself on the quality and reliability of its Panomorph lenses and continuously tests new cameras from a number of leading manufacturers. Some of the qualified cameras that meet the IMV1-1/3 requirements are available from Axis, Bosch, IQinvision, Panasonic and Pelco.

About ImmerVision
ImmerVision’s revolutionary Panomorph technology is the recipient of the 2007 Frost & Sullivan Award for North American Technology Innovation of the Year. Under the leadership of Pascale Nini, President and CEO, ImmerVision has a mission to “invent and bring panoramic technologies to the world.” ImmerVision develops Panomorph optics and software algorithms to enable panoramic functionalities for any video device application used for security, video conferencing, consumer electronics, automotive, medical, aerospace and defence. To date, ImmerVision has established six (6) worldwide patents for its visionary panomorph optics technology and software. ImmerVision is based in Montreal, Canada. For more details www.immervision.com

Audi Launches iPhone Game

Audi of America today announced the release of the first ever iPhone application from an auto manufacturer. "Audi A4 Challenge" is a driving game that utilizes the iPhone's accelerometer to steer a digital version of Audi's entirely new 2009 A4 through a series of progressively challenging courses.

The application is now available free of charge on the iPhone App Store. The 2009 Audi A4 will be available in Audi dealerships nationwide starting in September of 2008.

"The iPhone is an ideal platform to help introduce the entirely new Audi A4 to the public," said Scott Keogh, chief marketing officer, Audi of America. "Audi customers are smart, sophisticated and technologically savvy. As a brand, we are committed to progress and innovation at every turn. We're very excited to be the first automotive manufacturer to connect with our audience through the iPhone."

Send us a note if you play it and let us know what you think. If the game is good this is a smart marketing move by Audi. Adver-gaming is a standard operating procedure for mobile games but usually companies charge for these games - giving it away for free to push product awareness and car sales makes a lot more sense.

GARWER WasteXchange News

GARWER WasteXchange News

CO2 impacts of transporting UK's recovered paper and plastic bottles to China

Posted: 09 Sep 2008 05:32 AM CDT

Exports of recovered materials for recycling overseas have grown at a rapid pace over the past decade. In 2007, 4.7 million tonnes of recovered paper and half a million tonnes of recovered plastics were exported. The principal destination for these exports was China. The environmental benefits of domestic recycling are well understood. However, one question often asked in respect of exports is whether the benefits of recycling are outweighed by the emissions associated with transporting the material to China. To provide guidance on the subject, WRAP recently commissioned a study to quantify the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions associated with the transport of recovered paper and plastic bottles from the UK to China. [b]Methodology[/b] The study identifies real-world export routes and modes of transport including land emissions both within the UK and China and shipping emissions and calculates CO2 emissions for each transport stage. A number of scenarios have been assessed to produce a range of estimates and sensitivity analysis has been undertaken to test the robustness of the conclusions. [b]Findings[/b] The CO2 emissions associated with transporting one tonne of recovered paper from the UK to China are estimated to lie between 154kg and 213kg of CO2. The emissions associated with transporting one tonne of recovered plastic bottles range between 158kg and 230kg of CO2. These CO2 emissions levels represent less than a third of the carbon savings from recycling identified by a majority of the life cycle assessments (LCAs) reviewed in the study (Table E1). This suggests that there are CO2 savings to be made from recycling, even if the recovered materials have to be transported to China. This conclusion becomes even more compelling if the reverse haulage nature of recovered materials export is taken into account. Due to the trade imbalance between the UK and China, the majority of containers heading back to China are empty. The conventional method of calculating transport emissions is to include the emissions associated with transporting the entire vessel weight ('absolute' emissions), not just the cargo. However,since the ship and containers will be returning to China, regardless of whether or not the ship is loaded with recovered materials, thecase can be made that only the emissions incurred in shipping the incremental cargo weight ('marginal' emissions) should be considered.

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