Blog News Watch

When you are blogging, you eventually, run out of ideas to put on your blog, and eventually you also run out of ideas for youtube videos. This is when you go searching the web for more ideas, or even blogs to see what other people are doing.

Sometimes, just out of curiosity, I’ll take a look at some random wordpress & Blogger blogs to see what in the world people are writing about. And sometimes, I come upon ideas that others have written on, and want to write on myself.

However, its unethical to post exactly what they posted on, in my blog, but you can’t really link to their blog just yet, because you don’t know the validity of it yet. You don’t know if they are just making up nonsensical things to waste their time.

So, then, I will pour out to google to find out other people who have written about almost the same thing. Fortunately, when I find some credible source, I link to that. So, what do you think? Is this an ethical issue of infringement, or is it completely legit?

I would say that it is ethical, mostly because I’m not exactly copying what the other blogger wrote about, nor I am not linking to where I found the actual source or links to my article.

I am simply finding something interesting in a minor blog, and then finding it in a major blog, and taking my opinion into the idea. The most important thing to know is that taking your own opinion of an idea that other people have already written about is what makes your blog (post) conformable.

So, you know how I was talking about how to avoid all of the blogging scams out there in the world wide internet:?:

Well, I think I found a very good blogging scam to debunk, but first we have to keep in mind the whole point of the post: Knowing the enemy before you face it will always be better than not knowing the enemy: in this case the enemy is scamming blogs.

THIS is a scamming blog. Sure it looks all colorful and whatnot, but thats only their for your viewing pleasure. Inside all of the beautiful colors is a scam completely a WASTE OF TIME.

First thing we want to note is who the author of the blog is: It says that the post was written by “Movie Star.” People who don’t put there names on their blogs only do it to remain in their Privacy. They remain in their privacy so that other people can’t actually find out who they are.

Unfortunately, one needs to keep a lookout for these kinds of things.

The next thing that one needs to look for is the quality of the links: linkage. The linkage is a vital part of finding out whether blogs are scams or not. DON’T click on the link, but just move your mouse over the link to see where the link takes you.

What I mean by this is that when you move your mouse over the link, in the bottom left corner of your Firefox window (or Internet Explorer, but I don’t think this works for Mac users, sorry), you will see that the “click” link on the scamming websites shows us this

http://bux.to/?r=indianrupee67

If you’ve ever been to sites like these, you will understand that the “r=indianrupee67″ is a referral link. Any referral link only gives the referrer a 100% commission, in this case at the site bux.to.

The next thing we look at is the reliability of the posts. One way of doing this is seeing all of the posts written by this author: Movie Star, and also by seeing the feedback this author gets. Just like all scamming blogs, this blog has no comments written to it, and it only has a few posts written all in the same topic.

What this guy is really doing is persuading you to click on his links so that he can make money without actually looking at the links. So, whatever you do, don’t sign up. In fact, if you could, go to this website and at the top of the page, click on “FLAG BLOG.”

This is it for now, but I warn thee: Beware of the scam artists out there, like every profession, they are good at what they do, which means that you have to be careful as to what you do.

Take care now, and Happy Surfing.

To see a forum of a scam that wreaks controvery: Click here.
Dont worry, the link is not a scam, test it for yourself

You ask what considers a blogger to be good and one to be bad. Well, a blogger, a real blogger, is one who updates his blog daily (weekends if he likes to) and also has a plethora of different types of posts to encourage his readers to keep reading the blog, or if its just for the bloggers purpose, has a vast knowledge of what to write about.

Along with the good assortment of bloggers comes the bad. There are a lot of blogs out there simply trying to make money, pay per post companies are one of them (including PayPerPost.com). Also, there are blogs that make other blogs have a bad reputation. For example, they get a pick a random site which a person is allowed to “earn” based on viewing a website for 30 seconds. (adbux & bux are just 2 examples).

With such sites, they are given a referrer information, in which they are allowed to attract other people towards their site. The more referrals a person has the more money they make on viewing ads. Of course this itself is not a scam.

The scam comes in when they make their Post headings saying that they will give out something if they click on the referral link and view the 30 second ads. The scamming comes in when the writer of the blog has no intent on giving out anything that they say the will.

Watch out for these sites because you make a bad decision and waste your time if you think that you are going to get something that the blogger says. Fortunately, these bloggers only limit themselves to remaining undiscovered. All of their information is falsified, therefore, they can only blog under Bloggers, Wordpress, or typepad.

And then, here is a image for your pleasure. Well, for some of you.

Click on the image if you dare

Like the Wraith of Stargate Atlantis (I just revealed my nerdishly huge appetite for good sci-fi), Google are showing themselves more and more to be sucking the life out of the Internet, attacking those who would make an honest living out of it, despite many of those sites having great content (and on that topic, here’s some irony).

All the while, the splogs abound, supported by income from Google AdSense, while the company singles out legitimate AdSense publishers and cancels their account without paying out the balance for no real known reason.

It seems to me that Cory Doctorow was right on the money when he wrote his short story, Scroogle. Maybe in the near future the frightening events he describes will come to pass.

Also scary is that the need for a service with the same name as Doctorow’s story exists in order to protect your privacy; since Google keeps your search data for two years, one man created a site that accesses Google through his own servers to keep your search terms anonymous.

I recently posted an opinion article here on Google’s attitude towards site ranking which flies in the face of the very nature of the Internet and the values it was founded upon as an open forum free of nearly unbreakable entry barriers; something quite unheard of in the rest of our materialistic and corporacratic world.

Well, I’m sorry, but I’m just sick of Google’s monopoly on the Internet and its privacy-endangering habits. I am sick of Google sucking the life out of the Internet, especially after the news of the past few weeks regarding paid text links and the trouble it has caused for reputable services for honest website owners like Text Link Ads and PayPerPost.

Google is a company that was started in a garage, and that the citizens of the Internet once loved. It used to deserve that love, and it made the Internet a whole lot more accessible for everyone.

What happened to the “Do No Evil” policy that once set it apart from thousands of other corporations that really don’t care if their dollars came to them through evil or good?

I wish good luck to anyone who is actively trying to break Google’s monopoly, such as the RealRank endeavor.

From the LA Times:

Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and other providers of blogging technology
in China agreed to try to sign up users under their real names and to
censor their posts, a journalism advocacy group that condemns the
accord said Thursday. Under the accord with the Internet Society of China, an offshoot of the
Information Industry Ministry, the companies are “encouraged” to
register users under their real names, Reporters Without Borders said
in a statement. The companies may be forced to censor content or
identify bloggers, the Paris-based group said.

This might be the price of doing business in China but it’s dirty business, and I don’t think it will play well over on this side of the pond.

Yahoo, Microsoft asked to censor Chinese blogs - Los Angeles Times (Aug. 24, 2007)

Technorati Tags: censorship of blogs, china, yahoo, microsoft

An earlier draft of a Chinese government policy had required blog service providers to register bloggers under their real names, thus effectively banning anonymous online blogging - a ruling with serious privacy and civil rights implications for that troubled country. Now, apparently, the requirement has been amended to “encourage” such disclosure, but not require it, thus amounting to a self-policing standard imposed on the blog operators and providers.

Chinese blog providers ‘encouraged’ to register users with their real names, International Herald Tribune (Aug. 22, 2007)

Technorati Tags: chinese civil rights, blogging in china, anonymous blogging

I’ve had some interesting experiences with comments lately.

First came this post, impacting as it did comments in the two blogs which were the focus on that post, which also prompted some comments of its own. Then, at one of my other blogs, I posted a “debate” style series of posts about the use of online applications by lawyers, which attracted a comment by someone associated with a particular online app (judging solely from the URL the commenter provided). That comment prompted me to write my first-ever comments policy, found here (scroll down to the second H3 tag, “Comments Policy.”

That got me thinking about comments and comment trolls - you know, the commenters who post a comment to your post designed, it would appear, solely to poke, tease, prod, and provoke an emotional response. The old wisdom is “don’t feed the trolls.” In other words, if you ignore them, they’ll go away. But more and more I find people are actually taking more proactive steps to remove such comments. In my case, I even attempted to “legislate” them away with my comments policy, for which I’m sure I’ll get some criticism by those “open access” fans who would consider such restrictions akin to censorship.

Did I take a correct or worthy approach? Or is it doomed to failure, either by killing comments altogether or proving impossible to enforce fairly? What is a good, fair comments policy nowadays, post-Kathy Sierra?

Talk back!

comments policy on blogs, kathy sierra, comment trolls

Jonathan Bailey writing for The Blog Herald has some helpful tips on following up after a C & D letter doesn’t get action from a scraper or plagiarist. Check it out, and this is definitely one to bookmark for future reference.

Technorati Tags: blog plagiarism

Yes, says Wired. The new rules go farther than simply to require advance clearance prior to posting on Blogger, though. They also cover internet message board posts, and even “resumes and letters back home.”

For real? This is - pardon me - bogus. Is it really a problem of military security? I can’t fathom soldiers acting so blatantly in disregard of their own self-preservation interests as to disclose confidential information on a blog - even anonymously, as we all know nothing’s really and truly anonymous on the web anymore. Identities can always be uncovered, especially with the tools of the US Government backing you up (I’d think the IRS would be at the top of that game, but you have a veritable alphabet soup of likely entities who can suss you out - CIA, FBI, ICE, TSA …)

So what gives, really? Is this simply another attempt to control the damage? Are the PTB (powers that be) finally waking up to the fact that more and more, Americans simply aren’t buying the whole “you have to support the war if you want to support the troops” message, and its corollary “criticism from back home about the war makes our soldiers cry” - it would seem to me that soldier blogs would pretty effectively put the lie to that.

But regardless of the political ramifications, the truly serious issue here is one of First Amendment protection smacking headfirst into military secrecy interests. It seems to me that there must be a better way of reconciling the two than to bog down field commanders with yet another job - acting as line-item editors for every written communication the men and women in their command put to paper, or screen. Don’t they have IEDs to disarm, or insurgents to rout, or something?

wired, army bloggers, first amendment, censorship of blogs

There’s been a lot - a lot - written lately about the code of conduct proposed by Tim O’Reilly in response to the hateful abuse heaped on poor Kathy Sierra of Creating Passionate Users recently. (Lot of links in that one little sentence. You should see the links I left out. Go on - see for yourself.) And by far, most of the responses seem to fall pretty close to the “don’t tell me what I can say and can’t say in my own blog” point along the spectrum. (A few notable exceptions - Scoble, who thinks it might have some merit but doesn’t like the proposal - Scoble was one of the first to support Sierra with a silent protest on his blog, something I shamelessly copied on my own legal practice blogs as well.)

I have a different opinion. (You had a feeling, right?) I think it’s a great idea. And frankly, I’d be reluctant to frequent any blog whose owner didn’t agree to it. It seems to me the protests generally miss the point. A code of conduct isn’t designed as a form of advance censorship. First of all, it can’t be censorship if you’ve agreed to it in the first place (a point generally lost in the discussion). But putting that aside, what does such a code - any code - really say about the people adopting it? More importantly, who’s the code really for? Hint: it’s not for the blogger.

I think this is getting lost in the discussion because of the fantastic way this all started - with death threats against one well-known blogger. The protests against the code seem to be howls against restrictions, which is awfully misplaced. We’re not talking about feeding trolls here, despite what the more vocal opponents would suggest. We’re talking about death threats. Criminal conduct.

And we’re not talking about censorship, either. We’re talking about agreeing in advance to certain minimal standards of human decency. And if you can’t agree to that, and agree to take some minimal effort to enforce that in your comments, then why would I want to play with you?

At this point, I need to make this clear: I’m not writing specifically about O’Reilly’s proposed code or anyone else’s for that matter. Rather, I’m addressing solely the idea of such a code, in general. Unfortunately, there is no argument to the point frequently made that the blogs that don’t adopt a code will be “more interesting.” (See Scoble link above.) That’s probably true, in a trainwreck sort of way. But here’s the decision we have to make individually and as a society: what kind of world are we building here? We don’t get to complain and sit on our butts and do nothing to change the world we’re complaining about. (Well, we do, but that kind of sucks, frankly.) Nobody can change any situation without putting forth the effort to make a different choice. You can’t quit smoking if you don’t eventually make the choice not to pick up that cigarette. You can’t lose weight if you don’t eventually make the decision to get off the couch (or more likely for this audience, the computer desk chair) and exercise. Similarly, we can’t change the blogging world without at some point making the decision to (A) behave differently and (B) spend our time and effort on blogs that also behave differently.

It’s just that simple.

blogging code of conduct, tim o’reilly, kathy sierra, scoble