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News Bytes Wednesday, January 31st 2007, 12:04pm EST The Rest of the News - Updated Continuously. Kidnap And Beheading Plot Thwarted In UK News Article Wednesday, January 31st 2007, 12:03pm EST FTC Announces Settlment with TJ Web Productions. An alleged marketer of online porn has agreed to pay a $465,000 penalty to settle spam charges, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission said Tuesday. Under the settlement, TJ Web Productions has also agreed to adhere to federal spam laws, the FTC said in a statement. This means the company has promised to use the phrase "sexually explicit" in message subject lines and ensure that the initially viewable area of the message does not display explicit images. Additionally, TJ Web Productions has promised that any unsolicited commercial e-mail will include an opportunity for recipients to opt out of receiving future e-mail and provide a postal address, the FTC said. The promises are all required by the FTC's Adult Labeling Rule and the Can-Spam Act. The FTC and the Department of Justice went after TJ Web Productions as part of a crackdown on X-rated spam announced in July 2005. Seven companies have been charged with violating federal laws. Settlements with five of the operations have resulted in civil penalties totaling $1.62 million, the FTC said. TJ Web Productions, based in Nevada, operated an "affiliate marketing" business through which it induced others to transmit commercial e-mail messages on its behalf, the FTC said. The settlement also requires that affiliates comply with it, or they will risk immediate termination from the program, the FTC said. News Article Wednesday, January 31st 2007, 12:02pm EST Tracking the Russian Scammers. Dmitry Ivanovich Golubov, a 22-year-old Ukrainian who went by the nickname "Script," was considered one of the godfathers of Eastern European carding rings. As one of the leaders of CarderPlanet, authorities say Golubov facilitated the theft and international trading of millions of credit and debit card numbers that resulted in multimillion-dollar losses to banks and merchants over several years. So when Ukrainian police finally nabbed Golubov in the summer of 2005 it was a coup, representing the culmination of dogged investigative work by U.S. Postal Inspector Greg Crabb and other law enforcement officials in the United States. "Golubov was such a high-profile target," Crabb told Wired News. "The Secret Service, FBI and myself were working Golubov in different districts over the United States trying to get some inroads into where he was coming from." Twenty-two year old Dmitry Ivanovich Golubov, known as "Script", was arrested in 2005 by Ukrainian police, who provided this photo to the US Postal Inspection Service. The USPIS says Script was one of the godfathers of East European carding rings. News Article Wednesday, January 31st 2007, 12:00pm EST SF Mayor Puts a Kink in Armory Purchase. The San Francisco Armory building that was purchased by Kink's Peter Ackworth now is under political fire. Ackworth bought the 200,000-square-foot building for $14.5 million in December 2006. However, Mayor Gavin Newsom's administration on Monday released a somewhat cryptic message that stated, in part, that "the Newsom administration announced today that it will seek a partnership with the Planning Commission and neighborhood groups to ensure adequate community input for the future use of the building." But, there was no declarative statement that Ackworth could not move his company, which produces adult content, into the armory. News Article Wednesday, January 31st 2007, 11:56am EST Why We Can't Trust Click Fraud Numbers. Back in December, I caused a little bit of a ruckus when I posted information from Google that suggested click fraud rates were a fraction of a percent. The majority of readers and linkers suggested that the rate was far too low and that you couldn't trust data supplied by the search engine. Fast forward six weeks and we find ourselves confronted with new data from Click Forensics that suggests industry click-fraud rates have increased to 14.2 in Q4, versus 13.8% in Q3. Bids for amounts over $2.00 achieved click-fraud rates of 20.9%. So let me ask you this, who trusts these numbers? If most of you don't trust numbers supplied by Google, can you trust numbers supplied by a company that has a vested interest in seeing click fraud grow? They may counter that they sampled 3,000 advertisers, but surely the sample set is biased. If you walk into a hospital and ask 3,000 patients, "Who here is feeling unwell?", wouldn't you expect a biased result? Marketing Wednesday, January 31st 2007, 11:56am EST Market on Myspace by 'Becoming Friends' with Your Customers. As someone who has spent over ten years marketing on the Internet, I’ve seen wave after wave of “the latest thing” in Internet marketing as advertisers try to find the most effective way to capture new customers online. The latest version of this online hunt for new clients is the rapid proliferation of online social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook and Friendster. With over 130 million people worldwide using MySpace and with a monthly page view count that surpassed Yahoo in November to claim the #1 position on the Internet in terms of Page Views, MySpace.com has established itself as the leader in this most recent “latest thing” and is becoming more and more a coveted advertising hot spot to reach new customers. News Article Wednesday, January 31st 2007, 11:55am EST Firefox 2.0: Subtle Changes, Big Difference. Most of the new features in Mozilla's Firefox 2.0 aren't readily apparent, even to a seasoned Firefox aficionado. Once a user digs a little deeper, however, the new tools and capabilities become more obvious. Phishing protection automatically investigates suspect e-mail, an enhanced search tool suggests additional terms and Session Restore can save the user after a crash. News Article Wednesday, January 31st 2007, 11:54am EST Google loses European GMail trademark battle. Google has failed to win the right to register the term "Gmail" as a wide-ranging European trademark. The Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (OHIM), the body which is responsible for European community trademarks, rejected Google's appeal after a stiff battle with German-born venture capitalist Daniel Giersch. Giersch, who has held his trademark for six years, has been fighting this battle since Google launched its email service in 2004. The German entrepreneur founded a same-day mail delivery service called GMail designed to offer a swifter alternative to the Deutsche Post. News Article Wednesday, January 31st 2007, 11:53am EST Web giants ask for feds' help on censorship. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft representatives on Tuesday implored the U.S. government to help set ground rules for complying with demands by foreign law enforcement agencies for user records or censorship. But a key question that remains after the U.S. Department of State concluded its inaugural global Internet freedom conference here is how to determine when such requests are "legitimate" and warrant compliance. That issue took center stage last year amid reports that Chinese authorities had succeeded in silencing--and in some cases imprisoning--cyberdissidents, thanks to cooperation from Yahoo and Microsoft. "We can't just go...snooping through e-mail accounts to figure out whether we like what they've been engaged in or not." Even under U.S. law, corporations aren't expected to make moral judgments about the legitimacy of FBI or other authorities' requests for information about their users, so they shouldn't be expected to do the same on an international level, suggested Michael Samway, Yahoo's deputy general counsel. "That's why we need the government's help," he said. News Article Wednesday, January 31st 2007, 11:52am EST Priceline, Travelocity, Cingular Pay Small Change to Settle Adware Case. As part of the settlement of a lawsuit brought by the New York State Attorney General's Office over the use of adware as a marketing tool, Priceline, Travelocity and Cingular agreed to pay $35,000, $30,000 and $35,000, respectively, to New York to cover penalties and investigatory costs.  News Article Wednesday, January 31st 2007, 11:51am EST PC World says farewell to floppy. Computing superstore PC World said it will no longer sell the storage devices, affectionately known as floppies, once existing stock runs out. New storage systems, coupled with a need to store more than the 1.44 megabytes of data held by a standard floppy, have led to its demise. Only a tiny percentage of PCs currently sold still have floppy disk drives. "The floppy disk looks increasingly quaint and simply isn't able to compete," said Bryan Magrath, commercial director of PC World. News Bytes Tuesday, January 30th 2007, 12:06pm EST The Rest of the News - Updated Continuously. Emergency Shutdown at Russian Nuke Plant. News Article Tuesday, January 30th 2007, 12:04pm EST Boob Tube Rejects Booble: CBS Denies Porn Site's Super Bowl Ad. Advertisers buy Super Bpwl spots for maximum visibility. But if they want attention, rejection may be the way to go. For years, spending millions on the Super Bowl meant getting press for what went along with the campaign, including related contests, Web site extensions and the unusual or daring creative. Now, an advertiser may get the same press mileage--by getting turned down. An adult-content search Web site, Booble.com, seems to have picked up where GoDaddy left off. It said in a press release that CBS rejected its commercial. It didn't give a reason. Bobble's claim was that its creative was "far tamer than the controversial GoDaddy" commercial, according to Bob Smart, the founder of Booble. The Booble.com commercial featured a woman catching her husband trying to secretly look at a few adult sites. Some marketing executives wondered whether companies such as Bobble.com really intended to buy a Super Bowl spot. Booble did offer one seemingly outrageous proposal: "At one point, I offered $50 million," says Smart, in his press release. "The Eye never called us back." Working Smarter Tuesday, January 30th 2007, 12:04pm EST Turning Problems Into Business Opportunities. People pay money to create a problem and then somebody else turns that problem into a business opportunity. How do we do this? First step is to examine and define in great detail what exactly the problem is? Then look at innovative ways to turn the problem into a business opportunity. Problem - We are eating a lot more then we should. Opportunity - exercise classes, weight loss diets, larger size clothes & diet drinks / foods. Think of traffic, then think of bottlenecks! Problem - a lot of people stuck in traffic. Opportunity - Billboard advertising & more demand for entertainment on the move. News Article Tuesday, January 30th 2007, 12:03pm EST FBI turns to broad new wiretap method; Internet surveillance. The FBI appears to have adopted an invasive Internet surveillance technique that collects far more data on innocent Americans than previously has been disclosed. Instead of recording only what a particular suspect is doing, agents conducting investigations appear to be assembling the activities of thousands of Internet users at a time into massive databases, according to current and former officials. That database can subsequently be queried for names, e-mail addresses or keywords. Such a technique is broader and potentially more intrusive than the FBI's Carnivore surveillance system, later renamed DCS1000. It raises concerns similar to those stirred by widespread Internet monitoring that the National Security Agency is said to have done, according to documents that have surfaced in one federal lawsuit, and may stretch the bounds of what's legally permissible. News Article Tuesday, January 30th 2007, 12:02pm EST 2007 GAYVN Awards Nominations Announced. "With 14 nominations in as many categories, Michael Lucas' La Dolce Vita is the most-nominated movie of the year," said GAYVN Editor Doug Lawrence in announcing the list of nominees Thursday morning. Following closely behind La Dolce Vita with 12 nominations each are Big Rig (Buckshot Productions), Justice (Hot House Video), and The Velvet Mafia 1-2 (Falcon Studios). All are also nominees in the Best Picture category. The other Best Picture nominees are Arcade on Route 9 (Titan Media), Boot Black Blues (Buckshot Productions), Delinquents (All Worlds Video), Fire Dance (Kristen Bjorn), Going Under (Jet Set Productions), and Lords of the Jungle (Raging Stallion Studios). News Article Tuesday, January 30th 2007, 12:01pm EST Prosecutors seek phone, e-mail records of slain gay porn producer. Investigators plan to review the phone, e-mail and text message communications of a producer of gay pornographic movies in the week before he was found stabbed and slashed to death in his burned home, court filings indicate. Luzerne County Judge Peter Paul Olszewski Jr. granted a search warrant application by the county District Attorney's office seeking the electronic communications of Bryan Charles Kocis, 44, also known as Bryan Phillips. Kocis' body was found by firefighters responding to a blaze Wednesday night at his home in Dallas Township, north of Wilkes-Barre. An autopsy showed his throat had been slashed and he had been stabbed 28 times in the torso. Investigators said the house was set on fire after he was killed. Security Tuesday, January 30th 2007, 12:00pm EST Preventing a Brute Force or Dictionary Attack. To understand and then combat a brute force attack, also known as a dictionary attack, we must start by understanding why it might be an appealing tool for a hacker. To a hacker, anything that must be kept under lock and key is probably worth stealing. If your Web site (or a portion of it) requires a user to login and be authenticated, then the odds are good that a hacker has tried to break into it. In terms of processing power, it is expensive for a Web site to require authentication, so it is usually only required when the site stores valuable private information. Corporate intranet sites can contain confidential data such as project plans and customer lists. E-commerce sites often store users' email addresses and credit card numbers. Bypassing or evading authentication in order to steal this data is clearly high on a hacker's priority list, and today's hackers have a large library of authentication evasion techniques at their disposal. News Article Tuesday, January 30th 2007, 11:59am EST Patents for dynamic Web pages to get another look. U.S. patent examiners are poised to take another look at two controversial patents that critics say may sweep up the dynamic Web page systems commonly used by search features, online merchants and millions of other sites. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office announced the move last week in letters to the Public Patent Foundation, which last November requested the re-examination. PubPat, as it is known, is a public interest legal group whose directors include free and open-source software advocates. News Article Tuesday, January 30th 2007, 11:58am EST Paris Hilton is going after the website that is displaying possessions she forgot to reclaim from a storage lockup, saying she was “appalled” her personal items were being exploited for commercial gain. The parisexposed.com site includes personal photos and videos, as well as Hilton’s passport. It was launched last week by one Bardia Persa, who apparently paid $10m for the items. He bought them from two individuals who had bought them for a measly $2,775 when a storage firm sold off the contents of Hilton’s storage locker after bills went unpaid. According to AP, Hilton’s suit says that a removals firm was responsible for paying the bill for the storage locker. The items were in storage while Hilton and her sister were between houses following a burglary.  News Article Tuesday, January 30th 2007, 11:57am EST EU Parliament votes today on new IP laws. The European Parliament's committee for legal affairs meets today to vote on proposals for criminal penalties to be imposed on those who infringe intellectual property (IP) rights. The vote today will determine whether or not a person who downloads a single unlicensed track of music could be sent to jail. The scope of the directive has been the subject of much debate, with an array of amendments being tabled to either limit or broaden the remit of the proposed legislation. The level of penalties set out has also caused division between groups of MEPs.For example, while the proposal refers to all kinds of IP rights, some MEPs want patents specifically excluded from the directive, arguing that most European states have sufficient civil remedies for such infringements. News Article Tuesday, January 30th 2007, 11:56am EST Outsourcing won't save you money. Although the outsourcing market has matured rapidly in the last couple of years, we still encounter many companies that see outsourcing as a cost-saving exercise. These companies are often the ones who then lay blame at the outsourcing provider's door, saying the savings weren't big enough (if they existed at all), that the outsourcing company was inflexible, that it didn't respond to the company's needs and so forth. But hang on - why should outsourcing be any cheaper? In the olden days, an organisation could identify specific tasks which could be outsourced and shared with other companies, so gaining a degree of cost saving. News Bytes Monday, January 29th 2007, 12:16pm EST The Rest of the News - Updated Continuously. Two lights circling in sky over Honolulu. News Article Monday, January 29th 2007, 12:15pm EST Canadian Phone Company Selling Porn. The telecommunications company Telus Corp. began offering adult content to its Canadian cellphone customers this month. Available on a "pay-per-download" basis, the service introduced on Jan. 8 will allow cellphone users to download pornographic photographs and videos, charging them an average of $3 to $4 for each item. Jim Johannsson, a Telus spokesman, said yesterday that pornographic material was already widely available on mobile phones equipped with Internet browsers."So we've introduced -- in a very responsible way -- adult content that's in behind proper age verification and that's compliant with provincial standards and regulations," he said. News Article Monday, January 29th 2007, 12:14pm EST Moniker and Internext Auction Brings in $220K. Following a successful run beginning at Internext Las Vegas, Moniker's and Internext's silent domain-name auction has ended, bringing in almost $220,000. Out of 2,700 domain names, nearly 100 were purchased at the silent auction. "The final sum for the entire silent auction will not be officially declared until all sums have been received," Director of Marketing Genie White said. Search Engines Monday, January 29th 2007, 12:13pm EST Search Engine Copywriting Made Simple. Do you write your own copy for your business website? Could you be doing it better? Many people have “heard somewhere” that “SEO” or “search engine optimization” is important…but they’re not sure why, or how to go about it. And the thought of hiring a big fancy firm to take care of it for thousands of dollars makes them scared. Does this sound like you? Well take heart, if your site has existing copy, this article explains how you can make simple changes yourself that will help your site grab more targeted traffic from search engine rankings. News Article Monday, January 29th 2007, 12:12pm EST Mobile Phones Flooded With ‘Timeshare’ Spam. Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan filed suit in federal court against Neela Pundit and Charles Rossop for sending 5 million spam text messages to mobile phones, reported The Associated Press.The SMS read "We have someone interested in buying or renting your Time Share." It then alerts consumers to visit two websites that were connected to Pundit and Rossop. News Article Monday, January 29th 2007, 12:12pm EST Windows Vista Upgrade edition doesn't permit "clean" installs. Arstechnica is reporting that Windows Vista Upgrade edition will not permit "clean" installs like all previous versions of Windows Upgrade editions. Will Microsoft pick up the extra hour tab from Geek Squad?This is another one of those "what were you thinking" moments for Microsoft management similar to their bone headed decision to lock the retail version of Vista to one hardware migration. Microsoft backed out of their ridiculous license change after Ed Bott sounded the alarm and others picked up on the story. So Vista Upgrade Edition should really be called Vista "Not Clean" "time waster" Edition. [Update 4:10AM - A reader clarifies that you can technically do a clean install by telling Vista to wipe the hard drive before installing after it confirms a full copy of Windows XP is installed. This however is still lame because you can't just install Vista on a freshly formatted hard drive and it will still be a huge time waster.] News Article Monday, January 29th 2007, 12:11pm EST Internet Gambling - Washington Gambling Law Challenged. Washington State Representative Chris Strow and his House Bill 1243, believe that online gambling in the United States should be legal in the privacy of your own home. In 2006, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act was signed into law by President George Bush, which makes online gambling conducted in the United States a Class C Felony. Chris Strow plans to change this law after introducing House Bill 1243 to correct what he considers an inappropriate penalty for an activity responsible adults should be allowed to do in the privacy of their own home. Strow said, "While I do see the need for protecting our citizens from online gambling that may be scamming innocent victims, I do think that there is also a level of accountability, as an adult, to do as he or she chooses in his or her own home." "Most certainly choosing to gamble, or play a game of skill such as poker, should not have been made a crime equivalent to possessing child pornography or threatening the Governor," he added. Marketing Monday, January 29th 2007, 12:08pm EST Branding your business is simply giving the public and your customers an image of your company. By knowing how your company is perceived by the rest of the world, you can use your image to instill trust, loyalty, and stability within your customers. When you think of Lowe's Home Improvement you should think of a hardware store that focuses on low prices. When you think of Home Depot you should think of a hardware store that focuses on customer service. Lowes customer base is more interested in finding low prices for their hardware and supplies while the Home Depot customer base is more interested in having help finding what they need for their projects.  News Article Monday, January 29th 2007, 12:07pm EST Utah 'Games As Porn' Bill Halted For Third Time. Central Utah newspaper the Daily Herald has reported that the state House committee has voted to hold the infamous “games as porn” bill for a third time, following continued concerns over freedom of speech issues. Republican Kay McIff, not the original sponsor of the bill, has announced plans to draft a substitute bill to replace the now thrice defeated original. McIff’s new bill would call for a House Resolution directing the attorney general to file a “friend of the court” notice on behalf of other states currently attempting to introduce anti-game legislation, despite the same constitutional blocks. The original bill attempted to amend an existing law preventing the sale of pornography to minors by categorizing violent video games as obscene, and has previously been approved by the Utah House of Representatives, only to stall at House level. News Article Monday, January 29th 2007, 12:06pm EST I figured I would have no problem installing my version of McAfee ViruScan 2006 10.0 today. After all, the company said last November that McAfee VirusScan Enterprise 8.5 would support Vista. I was unpleasantly surprised. When I tried to install version 10.0, I got this message: News Article Monday, January 29th 2007, 12:05pm EST One in three businesses uses niche ISP. Almost a third of businesses in the UK use small internet service providers (ISPs), according to communications regulator Ofcom. Only five per cent of consumers use small, or niche ISPs, the research found. The companies have 1.3 million customers or customer organisations in the UK, despite the fact the ISP market contains some very large competitors with significant marketing budgets. Ofcom's research found that the market for smaller ISPs is worth £1.15bn a year. Niche ISPs, which are defined as those with fewer than 150 employees, were the subject of research carried out by research company Recom for Ofcom. Most of the niche ISP business is in serving other small companies: 88 per cent of the ISPs serviced the micro-company market of firms with fewer than 10 employees, while 86 per cent serviced the small company market of firms with up to 30 employees. News Bytes Saturday, January 27th 2007, 11:56am EST The Rest of the News - Updated Continuously. Ex-Russian Spy Poisoned With Cup Of Tea. Search Engines Saturday, January 27th 2007, 11:55am EST Guide for Writing Optimized Text The following is part of our company’s internal operations/job manual. This is from the section providing guidelines for writing optimized text. Optimized text (OT) is first and foremost marketing copy for the website. Each optimized page must be written with the client’s products or services in mind. They are not general information pages, but pages designed to provide the visitor with the information they seek which compels them to take the desired action. Most clients provide some initial verbiage for OT pages as a starting point. This information can help us better understand the client’s perspective on their products or services and therefore should be an excellent resource for the text. Clients also provide answers to written questions pertaining to their website, business, marketing perspectives, etc. This information should be considered during the writing process for all OT pages. News Article Saturday, January 27th 2007, 11:53am EST I have already begun to receive some fabulous e-mails in response to the story today chronicling the community backlash against porn filmmaker Kink.com moving into the old armory on Mission Street. Here's a little sample (most have been in favor of Kink becoming part of the 'hood): "odds they stop porn studio: 1,000,000 - 1. Why? Pols & big media love bondage." "Oh please, the indignation of neighbors over a legitimate business buying up the property, left dormant for decades, is absurd in light of what else goes on in that neighborhood and has for years unabated. Those impotent neighborhood activists should refocus their limited abilities on stopping the drug dealing and gun slinging." "Doesn't all this hubbub ignore the fact that the power station (sex club) is practically right next door to the armory? Why stir up all the fake indignation and direct it at a strong business model? It's economic bondage that hurts..." News Article Saturday, January 27th 2007, 11:52am EST Another Word zero-day bug used in attacks. Another previously undocumented, yet-to-be-patched security vulnerability in Microsoft Word is actively being exploited in cyberattacks, Microsoft said Thursday. The vulnerability is the fourth zero-day vulnerability to arise in the Microsoft application in two months. Microsoft hasn't provided patches for any of the flaws, despite acknowledging that the holes are being used in attacks on its customers. "There have been very limited attacks reported that are attempting to use the reported vulnerability at this time," a Microsoft representative said Thursday in a statement about the latest problem. The company is investigating this latest report and may issue a patch, if needed, the representative said. News Article Saturday, January 27th 2007, 11:52am EST There's a long standing debate in the search marketing industry about links versus content. Which is better? On the one hand there's the perspective that if you create great content, people will link to you naturally. That's true, but it's a bit misleading. On the other hand there are those that say links are the answer. You can get pages to rank well based purely on links. Again, that's entirely possible, but such a statement does not give you all the facts. When I read or hear people ask whether links or content are better, I liken such a question to asking, "What's better, air or water?". Links and content are both necessary for competitive search marketing efforts. Emphasizing one over the other depends on the situation. Excelling at both is the ideal. News Article Saturday, January 27th 2007, 11:51am EST A Google search for "miserable failure" no longer returns the official biography of George W. Bush. Until yesterday, pranksters, activists and the like were able to manipulate the Google search algorithm so as to associate a specific site with a chosen query by creating a sufficient number of Web links pointed at the target site -- a practice has come to be known as "Googlebombing." Google yesterday said that it had improved its analysis of the link structure of the Web to defuse Google bombs. Using Googlebombed keywords now generally returns links pointing to news sites discussing the Googlebomb rather than the target site. In the past, the company has dismissed Googlebombing. "We don't condone the practice of googlebombing, or any other action that seeks to affect the integrity of our search results, but we're also reluctant to alter our results by hand in order to prevent such items from showing up," said Marissa Mayer, director of consumer Web products, in September 2005. "Pranks like this may be distracting to some, but they don't affect the overall quality of our search service, whose objectivity, as always, remains the core of our mission." News Article Saturday, January 27th 2007, 11:46am EST Thwart the three biggest Internet threats of '07 The same Internet connection that lets you reach out and touch millions of Web servers, e-mail addresses, and other digital entities across the globe also endangers your PC and the information it contains about you. Here's how to stymie the three gravest Internet risks. Internet Explorer heads the list of top Internet security attack targets in the most recent joint report of the FBI and security organization SANS Institute . One reason: As the most widely used browser, IE provides the biggest payoff for malicious hackers who set out to exploit its flaws. The biggest problem with IE is its reliance on Microsoft's ActiveX technology, which allows Web sites to run executable programs on your PC via your browser. Security patches and upgrades, including Windows XP's Service Pack 2 and the recently released IE 7, make ActiveX safer, but the inevitable flaws that allow malware to circumvent those security measures -- combined with the reality that we computer users are often a credulous lot -- make ActiveX a risk not worth taking. Happily, with very few exceptions (such as Microsoft's Windows Update site), you can browse the Internet effectively without ActiveX.  Traffic Saturday, January 27th 2007, 11:45am EST Five Effective Ways to Get Traffic from Social Networking Sites. Start with creating a profile that is well made simple which reflects you brand personality. You can be from any industry but you must be able to present your profile with ease and tell users how that are going to benefit by coming at your profile. News Article Saturday, January 27th 2007, 11:44am EST Porn king opens club in Australia.. US porn king Larry Flynt plans to turn a Brunswick nightclub into the latest addition to his global empire of Hustler nightclubs. Flynt, famous for his gold-plated wheelchair, will visit Melbourne in the next few weeks to relaunch Crystal T's club as a Hustler club. Along with his magazine and video empire, Flynt holds the franchise on a dozen fantasy-theme strip joints in the US and Europe. New York, Paris and now Sydney Road. How did this happen? "That's easy, darl. I signed a very big cheque," says Maxine Fensom, the long-time queen of Melbourne's stripping scene, and now Australia's first Hustler nightclub franchisee. News Article Saturday, January 27th 2007, 11:43am EST Church Hosts 'Porn and Pancakes' Event. It's not your typical church breakfast. An event billed as "Porn and Pancakes" is being hosted by a church in rural upstate New York. The breakfast discussion on the pornography industry in America is planned next month at the Living Word Assembly of God Church in the town of Ontario, about ten miles east of Rochester. A billboard advertisement near the church shows the words "Porn and Pancakes" written in syrup on a stack of flapjacks. Organizers told a Rochester TV station that the event on February 10th will be an honest discussion about pornography and its impact on society. The discussion will be led by Triple-X Church, a group of youth ministers who travel the country talking about porn and the porn industry. News Article Saturday, January 27th 2007, 11:41am EST A stream of movies, sort of free. If there's one sure thing about the future, it's that it always takes longer to arrive than you think it will. Here we are in 2007, and the interstellar space travel depicted in 2001 is still a sci-fi fantasy. Heck, we haven't even reached the society of mind control imagined in 1984. (Insert your own joke about politics or advertising here.) So when the pundits tell you that the death of the DVD is imminent, that we'll soon get all our movies instantaneously from the Internet, some skepticism is in order. Already, you can buy movies from iTunes, for example, but the selection is tiny (250 movies), and you pay about as much as you would for a DVD. CinemaNow and MovieLink offer online movie "rentals" for about $4. But again, the selection is fairly small, at least once you subtract the mind-boggling gigabytes of B movies--more like C or D movies--like Addicted to Murder III: Bloodlust and Witchcraft XI: Sisters in Blood. The copy protection is a bit overbearing, too. You can download a movie, all right, but it self-destructs 24 hours later. All of these services permit you to start watching a movie after only a minute or so, before it's been fully downloaded--but you can't fast forward (or, in some cases, even rewind) until you've got the whole thing on your hard drive. Last week, a new contender entered the field with a radically different approach to Internet movies: Netflix. News Bytes Friday, January 26th 2007, 12:33pm EST The Rest of the News - Updated Continuously. U.S. Military authorized to 'kill or capture' Iranians inside Iraq. News Article Friday, January 26th 2007, 12:32pm EST GoDaddy pulls security site after MySpace complaints. A popular computer security Web site was abruptly yanked offline this week by MySpace.com and GoDaddy, the world's largest domain name registrar, raising questions about free speech and Internet governance. MySpace demanded that GoDaddy pull the plug on Seclists.org, which hosts some 250,000 pages of mailing list archives and other resources, because a list of thousands of MySpace usernames and passwords was archived on the site. GoDaddy claims its customers own about 18 million domains. GoDaddy complied. In a move that Seclists.org owner Fyodor Vaskovich said happened with no prior notice, the company deleted his domain name--causing his site to be effectively unreachable for about seven hours on Wednesday until he found out what was happening and removed the password list. News Article Friday, January 26th 2007, 12:32pm EST A convicted sex offender who owned a company that produced gay pornographic movies was dead at the time a fire ripped through his township home, authorities said. The burned body of Bryan Charles Kocis, 44, also known as Bryan Phillips, was found by firefighters Wednesday night after they responded to the blaze at his home at Midland Drive. The fire was reported around 8:30 p.m. Consalvo said Kocis died from multiple stab wounds and was dead before the fire broke out. The coroner based his determination on the absence of burnt particles in the victim’s pharyngeal airway and lungs. District Attorney David W. Lupas and state police Lt. Frank Hackin, the criminal investigation unit supervisor for Troop P, said Kocis’ background and his business is being looked at as a motive to his murder. Kocis’ company, Cobra Video, with an address on the Dallas Memorial Highway, produces and sells gay pornographic movies. Established in 2001, the company sells films and clothing on its web site. Traffic Friday, January 26th 2007, 12:31pm EST Video Syndication Equals Free Targeted Traffic. When article directories became the rage a few years ago, now with hundreds, even thousands of them all over the web, syndication became a serious business. Once we had several hundred sites to submit to we were more then eager to find solutions for syndication that didn't require us to submit articles by hand to each article directory. And the solutions came screaming at us. Now it is unheard of to submit your articles by hand to all the important directories. Services abound to help you with article syndication today.Enter Web 2.0. Video is all the rage, YouTube.com sells for a billion and change, and video search engines are popping up everywhere. Everyone wants to be next. And they are throwing free video sharing and streaming at their visitors to attract a following. News Article Friday, January 26th 2007, 12:29pm EST The producer of a new porn DVD showing off the delights of Israeli girls has been attacked by a New Jersey Rabbi - for using a kosher foodstuffs stamp on the cover, without permission. Rabbi Yehuda Rosenbaum, whose company KOF-K Kosher Certification authenticates food like meat, grains and dairy products for the Jewish market, insists Oren Cohen had no right using his stamp on Assraelis. Rosenbaum's lawyers have fired off a cease and desist letter to Cohen and his Van Nuys, California production company Tight Fit. They maintain Tight Fit is using the symbol "illegally" in violation of State and Federal Law, and they threaten to sue Cohen if the situation is not rectified "as quickly as possible". News Article Friday, January 26th 2007, 12:29pm EST UA scrub shuts pornography links from Web site. Hundreds of Web links to pornography were discovered on two University of Arizona file servers Wednesday. Officials traced the Internet protocol address posting the material to Romania - but that does not mean the computer was in Romania, said Michael Torregrossa, director of UA's Center for Computer & Information Technology's computing services. The discovery led to one server being shut down and the other being cleaned. UA's Large Binocular Telescope Observatory and philosophy department Web sites were the only divisions known to be affected as of Thursday afternoon. Campus officials on Thursday said they still did not know when the links to pornography were posted and who the culprit is, though officials say they suspect an external user used the UA systems to post links to the pornography. News Article Friday, January 26th 2007, 12:28pm EST It's almost as common as texting, and apparently given out with about as little thought for the consequences. Let's not be polite. It's the blow job, and a new survey reveals that teenage girls are dispensing them with a frequency that would shock their parents. An online survey of 300 Australian teenagers has found that 24 per cent of girls who took part in the survey first had oral sex at the age of 13 or 14 – and 3 per cent at the age of 11 or 12. And by age 16, more than 50 per cent of girls and 65 per cent of boys had either given or received oral sex, or both. The survey, conducted last year by scriptwriter Joan Sauers, also found that oral sex has changed the "sexual sequence", with many of today's teenagers having oral sex before they first experience intercourse. (However, 42 per cent of girls and 22 per cent of boys, aged 13 to 19 who responded said they had never tried oral sex.) News Article Friday, January 26th 2007, 12:27pm EST Another Word zero-day bug used in attacks. Another previously undocumented, yet-to-be-patched security vulnerability in Microsoft Word is actively being exploited in cyberattacks, Microsoft said Thursday. The vulnerability is the fourth zero-day vulnerability to arise in the Microsoft application in two months. Microsoft hasn't provided patches for any of the flaws, despite acknowledging that the holes are being used in attacks on its customers. "There have been very limited attacks reported that are attempting to use the reported vulnerability at this time," a Microsoft representative said Thursday in a statement about the latest problem. The company is investigating this latest report and may issue a patch, if needed, the representative said. News Article Friday, January 26th 2007, 12:26pm EST Botnet 'pandemic' threatens to strangle the net. Networks of of compromised PCs are threatening the smooth operation of the internet, the World Economic Forum was told this week. Up to a quarter of online computers are virus-infected components in botnet networks of PCs under the control of hackers, according to net luminary Vint Cerf. Cerf, who co-developed the TCP/IP protocol, compared the spread of botnets to a disease that has reached "pandemic" proportions. Cerf estimated that between 100 million and 150 million of the 600 million PCs on the internet are under the control of hackers, the BBC reports. "Despite all that, the net is still working, which is pretty amazing. It's pretty resilient," he said. News Article Friday, January 26th 2007, 12:25pm EST Paris Hilton laid bare on net. If you feel the overwhelming desire to see Paris Hilton cavorting naked in a bubble bath, partaking of a broad spectrum of narcotics or pleasuring herself with sex toys, then ParisExposed.com is the place for you. The website - launched earlier this week - offers voyeurs Hilton's private videos, photos, diaries (and more) which the highly-talented heiress rather ill-advisedly left at a Los-Angeles based storage facility. When she allegedly didn't pay the $208 bill, the stuff was sold to an unidentified buyer and eventually ended up in the possession of one Bardia Persa - the brains behind ParisExposed.com. News Article Friday, January 26th 2007, 12:24pm EST Sex Toy Shopping Should Be Fun. Sometimes I need to slow down and remember what it's like to walk into an adult store and see what's actually on the shelves for general consumers. I get so immersed in the up-and-coming technologies that I lose touch with what is available, what the buyers thought would sell, what you are likely to see -- and not see -- on your next shopping trip. So in the past few weeks, I've visited one website and four retail stores in search of a few basic supplies: condoms, lube for sensitive skin, a leather flogger and a dildo with a horsetail attached. And just like sex with an internet buddy in the Best Buy parking lot is different from sex in the spa suite at a luxury hotel, both of which are different from the private sex rooms in Red Light Center (NSFW), my shopping experiences varied significantly with the venue. News Bytes Thursday, January 25th 2007, 12:11pm EST The Rest of the News - Updated Continuously. Israel's president refuses to resign. News Article Thursday, January 25th 2007, 12:10pm EST The FBI on Wednesday morning visited the offices of Wicked Pictures to inspect its 2257 record-keeping, company President Steve Orenstein confirmed to AVN.com. "The standard number of agents visited us…about six," said Orenstein, "and they stayed for about an hour and a half. It was all very standard stuff." Orenstein said the agents had a list of titles that they were interested in seeing. "And we provided those titles for them. [The agents] did mention that they had to finish up the visit back at their offices, but they said that I should feel comfortable with saying the inspection went perfect." Search Engines Thursday, January 25th 2007, 12:09pm EST How to Maintain Rankings After a Redesign. As an SEO I am asked a number of questions covering a broad range of SEO related topics and one question in particular is asked quite often. This question holds answers which, when ignored, could see a once well ranked website spiral into depths of the search engine rankings forever. "I am in the process of redesigning my site, what should I look out for in order to maintain the SEO (and rankings)?" In a word, the answer to this question is relatively straight forward, but depending on the intensity of the redesign, it can become very complex. In most cases there will be specifics for each site, and it is near impossible to cover all scenarios in a single article. With that in mind I will describe the process that would apply in most cases for a site which is currently enjoying great rankings that they do not want to disturb. News Article Thursday, January 25th 2007, 12:08pm EST Paris and porn star team up for reality show. Paris Hilton and porn superstar Jenna Jameson have been invited to take part in a new reality TV show called Virgin Territory. The series will feature real life virgins and follow their quest to have sex for the first time. Paris and Jenna will help to educate the uninitiated contestants. Producer Kevin Blatt said: "Paris and Jenna have been contacted about participating in the show."We will be unveiling giant billboards in Time Square and Los Angeles advertising for virgins to take part in the show. "Finding virgins in New York or Los Angeles is no easy task." Blatt is the man who turned Paris's homemade sex tape with ex-boyfriend Rick Solomon, which was originally leaked onto the internet, into the best selling porn DVD One Night In Paris. News Article Thursday, January 25th 2007, 12:07pm EST House renames Indonesian pornography bill. The House of Representatives team responsible for the "anti-pornography and pornoaction bill" have changed its name to the "pornography bill". "After the team removed the terms 'anti-' and 'pornoaction', the bill's name is now officially the pornography bill," Balkan Kaplale, who heads the special committee for the bill's formulation, said Wednesday at the House. "Terms and conditions for pornoaction are now stipulated in one chapter of the bill since the essence of pornoaction is now part of pornography," Balkan was quoted by Detik.com news portal as saying. The bill, he said, also encompassed chapters that ruled on child protection and criminal law supporting that protection. News Article Thursday, January 25th 2007, 12:04pm EST Why the .xxx would anyone want a top-level domain for porn? The idea of a ".xxx" web suffix for porn sites is the internet's vampire: it seems nothing can kill it. Censors often oppose it because they believe anything that can be construed as legitimisation of pornography will hinder their efforts against it. Civil libertarians oppose it on grounds such as the threat of it being used to marginalise a wide range of material having to do with sexuality. Adult webmasters widely view it with suspicion, as anyone who has a ghettoisation scheme to "help" them usually isn't doing them a favour. In fact, it is very difficult to find any lobbying group in favour of .xxx, with one notable exception. Namely, a company called ICM Registry, which would hand out .xxx site registrations, and would be given a money-making machine. The .xxx vampire has risen again because Icann, the organisation in charge of top-level domains, recently revisited the question of whether it should approve it as a "Voluntary Adult Top-Level Domain". Too much of the punditry about this consists of repeating clichés about kids and red lights. But, leaving aside where one stands on issues of censorship, the .xxx domain is a bad idea purely from a business standpoint. To begin with, it provides no additional technical value. Labelling schemes have been around for years, and there already are systems that provide all .xxx could do. Putting such a label into a domain extension accomplishes nothing useful and gives the registry a monopoly. News Article Thursday, January 25th 2007, 12:03pm EST Porn Web Site Operator Fined Over Libel. A man who ran a porn Web site named after an actor has been fined 10 million won in a libel case. The Seoul District Court yesterday fined a man identified by his family name Kim, over using actor Twist Kim¡¯s name for a porn site ``Twist Kim¡¯¡¯ and promoting it as if the actor actually ran it. The man opened the Web site in December 2003 and posted promotional sentences such as ``This porn clip is provided by Twist Kim¡¯¡¯ on its boards. Twist Kim, whose real name is Kim Han-sup, has been using the name for more than 40 years. The court said that the accused¡¯s behavior could have misled the Web site users to think that the actor Twist Kim was managing the Web site. It also said that the accused seemed to be fully aware of the possibility and did this on purpose. This is the first case of the court fining someone for using a celebrity¡¯s name on a Web sites irrelevant to them. Earlier cases were dismissed because there was no related law to measure them. Legal Issues Thursday, January 25th 2007, 12:02pm EST Introduction to Copyrights, Patents and Trademarks. What is a copyright? Can everything be copyrighted? A copyright is the expression of an idea. The idea itself is not copyrighted. Ideas can be patented and I will talk about patents later. Let's consider the example of a story: a poor man who found lots of cash on his way back to his home from his work. He decided to keep the cash to improve his financial situation. But he could not sleep at night because he was haunted by strange voices that told him to find the owner and return the cash. This idea cannot be protected. Anybody can write a short story based on the idea. What is protected is how the author expresses the idea in the form of texts, illustrations, drawings, photographs, etc. Once an expression is copyrighted, others can still use it for fair use. You can tape a few 15 seconds video clips from a copyrighted TV program and post it in your video blogs about a commentary on the program or broadcaster, etc. This will be considered a fair use and you will not infringe the copyright. News Article Thursday, January 25th 2007, 12:01pm EST Russell Hoult has been starring in a private porn video that has now made it into the public domain. Former Rams goalkeeper, Russell Hoult has been embarrassed by a video of himself and another man having sex with a woman, not Hoult‘s wife. Hoult had been filmed while the sex act was being performed but the mobile phone on which it was captured was lost. The film was quickly sent via Blue Tooth far and wide. News Article Thursday, January 25th 2007, 12:00pm EST Prostitutes' Fashion Line Hits Brazilian Streets. Prostitutes from Davida, a Brazilian organization that defends the rights of sex workers, walked through the streets of Rio de Jeneiro on Sunday, donning their new line of fall/winter clothes, according to a recently published report. According to a recent report in Reuters, the brand's name is Daspu, and Gabriela Leite, a founder of the clothing line, told the publication that it was no mistake that her show was running on Fashion Rio's biggest night. News Article Thursday, January 25th 2007, 11:59am EST How Bad Hires Can Hurt Your Business. Companies can become almost desperate to hire someone, but filling a position with a "warm body" can be worse that leaving the position vacant. I once worked at a not-for-profit where a management position was vacant. The company was small, resources were limited, and they were having a very difficult time filling the position; they just couldn't find the right person. Finally a gentleman was hired, but he only stayed a few weeks. He had taken the job even though he hadn't really wanted it, and when another position came along, he took it. Ironically enough, he left right about the same time that his business cards arrived. It sounds funny, but it was a devastating situation. Now, we've all contemplated settling for a position while we kept our eyes open for the one that we really want, but what impact does that have on the company? In this situation, the company spent time and resources on a search to fill the position, training and orientation, business cards and other supplies, salary, and work not completed - only to have to do it all again. News Bytes Wednesday, January 24th 2007, 10:11am EST The Rest of the News - Updated Continuously. Beirut Recovering After Violent Protests. News Article Wednesday, January 24th 2007, 10:11am EST Jerseyites Have Right to Protect "ISP Address". New Jersey residents have a constitutional right to privacy that far exceeds federal laws when it comes to computer data held by a third-party, according to a New Jersey appeals court ruling make public Monday that overturned a subpoena directed at a hacker. In fact, according to the ruling, New Jersey residents have informational privacy rights in the little known "ISP address." 27B couldn't make this stuff up if we tried. Traffic Wednesday, January 24th 2007, 10:10am EST Getting the Best Out of Article Syndication. We all hear how important articles are - especially when used as a tool to help boost search engine rankings. We often read many articles a day about our industry or about something we are trying to learn. However, when it comes time to write articles to promote our own business - we are stumped. Let's break down articles and look at everything you need to know about why they work, how to properly write and syndicate articles and all the other fun details. News Article Wednesday, January 24th 2007, 10:09am EST Cybercriminals Favor Web Browser Attacks. Bad news outweighs the good in the new "Threat Report 2007" issued Monday by Sophos , the global IT security company. The good news, which might provide significant hope, is that computer users are finally refraining from opening attachments connected to unsolicited e-mail . Because of that, according to Sophos, hackers are moving away from the devious practice of using those attachments as conduits for virus attacks. Sophos said it found only one e-mail for every 337 was infected in 2006, while one in 44 were infected in 2005. News Article Wednesday, January 24th 2007, 10:08am EST Google Accidentally Exposes User Data. Google unwittingly disclosed sensitive login and password information of more than a dozen users, opening up a can of worms for the search giant by exposing a flaw in its anti-phishing tool. The security snafu was discovered in Google's anti-phishing extension for the Firefox Web browser, according to security vendor Finjan, which first discovered the vulnerability on Jan. 3. The extension accidentally gathered some users' e-mail addresses and passwords, and then posted the information on the company's online phishing blacklist, which consists of thousands of fraudulent URLs reported to Google's anti-phishing tool. News Article Wednesday, January 24th 2007, 10:07am EST China to Beat US in Online Users? Reportedly, China is on its way to overtaking the US as the nation with the most number of Internet users. As per the China Internet Network Information Center (CINIC), a state-controlled agency, in the next two years, growth in Internet usage would pick up as computers get cheaper, and people adopt more mobile lifestyles. In a statement, Wang Enhai, an official with the CINIC, said that they believe it will take two years at the most for China to overtake the US. An increasing number of people are now getting hooked on to the Web as PCs and Internet access are becoming affordable, and Internet-based offerings diversified. According to reports, China saw strong growth in wireless Internet use, with about 17 million people online on mobile phones out of a total of nearly 461 million mobile phone users in the country. The country also saw its Internet population soar by 23.4 percent last year to reach 137 million. And, while about 210 million out of the total 300 million people in the US are online, in China, it is estimated that the corresponding figure will reach 210 million users in two years, if only the country keeps up with its 24 percent annual online growth rate. Processing Wednesday, January 24th 2007, 10:06am EST Website Payments - the UK Perspective. Accepting electronic payments is essential to an ebusiness. The UK is Europe's largest ecommerce economy with 27.7 million UK having shopped online -- and it is growing fast. For many smaller businesses setting up shop online and finding the best way to accept payments is a confusing and frustrating task. How can you join in by accepting payments online? What do you have to do? Online payment systems can be challenging to implement and understand, but overcoming the 'barrier to entry'; created by this can give you a competitive edge. There are three major ways to accept online payments. News Article Wednesday, January 24th 2007, 10:05am EST Silent Domain Auction Continues. Moniker's silent domain name auction began Wednesday, Jan. 17, and ends noon Wednesday Jan. 24. Up for bids are a total of 2,700 domain names. Included in the silent auction are domain names ending with .com, .net, .org, .mobi, and other top-level domains. "We're expecting [together] that the live and silent auction will bring in about $2 million," said Genie White, director of marketing for Moniker. "Essentially, we're targeting small-business people who understand how important it is to have a marketable domain." News Article Wednesday, January 24th 2007, 10:05am EST Is Dakota Fanning in Kiddie Porn? Hounddog premiered at the Sundance Film Festival Monday, despite controversy over its depicted rape of a character played by 12-year-old Dakota Fanning. Online petitions have demanded the arrest of Fanning's mother and agent, alleging that the film could be considered child pornography and asking federal prosecutors to investigate the matter. Is Hounddog kiddie porn? No—it's free speech. According to federal law, you're not allowed to show anyone under the age of 18 engaging in a sexual act. You're also forbidden from creating a scene that even appears to depict a real kid having real sex; in legalese, you're in trouble if "an ordinary person viewing the depiction would conclude that the depiction is of an actual minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct." (Similar rules can be found in the penal codes for California, which governs most big-budget Hollywood productions, and North Carolina, where Hounddog was filmed.) Hounddog does contain a sex scene involving a real-life minor. But for the film to run afoul of the law, an average viewer would have to think that Dakota Fanning really did engage in sexual intercourse on the set during production. |
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