Internet Business Daily

I was recently reminiscing with my friend about how funny some of the things we used to do on the Internet were. If we tried any of that stuff today, people would laugh at us for how simple and ridiculous some of the ‘hacking’ methods were. I decided to list all of the hilarious hacking, phreaking, phishing, and other illegal activities everyone who knew anything about the Internet did back in the day (early to mid ’90s). Take a look at the list and if you have any additions please submit them through comments.

1. Anarchist Cookbook – What could be more old-school than this? This was the original tool people used to learn about how to do everything from making black boxes, to explosives. I could not find the original downloadable document, but the Wikipedia definition is given and i’m sure with a little searching you will be able to find it. This book was especially important to me because it taught me how to get free payphone calls for years (by putting a paper clip in the mouthpiece and touching the metal wire attached to the phone). That worked great until one day I electrocuted myself and never tried it again.

2. Phreaking – Just another phone-hacking method. Basically people would try every possible thing to mess with phones and phone companies. There were so many different ways to get free phone calls it was ridiculous and for years the phone companies sat back and could do nothing. Although the phone calls were free, the amount of time/money one would put in to phreaking would counteract any savings made on phone calls.

3. Phishing – Phishing is definitely still around today, however it is much more advanced. In the old days, when most people did not realize that AOL would not ask for your password, thousands of people would fall for phishing. This was so easy to do it was not even funny anymore. You literally just had to type up a semi-professional looking e-mail or IM and send it to someone and they would send you back their username/password. Today though, phishing is much more sneaky. People have learned not to give their user/pass to anyone. Hackers will setup ‘false’ sites like ebay in the hopes you will type your password in. It is very easy to fall for this so be careful where you submit your password to.

4. AOL Channels – This was the original way to download illegal software. During a time when AOL was still dominating the Internet market, all someone had to do to get their favorite software was go into one of the channels in AOL and type some simple commands and the files would start pouring in. The files didn’t always work, and it was somewhat tedious to put all the files together, but in the end it was the best way to download illegal software.

5. IRC – Yes I know this is still around and very much alive today, and no they don’t actually distribute news (I know some of you think that). The reason I decided to add this to the list is because it was just as good back in the day! It was much more difficult to find IRC channels that worked and did not have a huge line, but it was still very easy to use and very reliable. Today, the site packetnews.com

Google seems certain about click fraud on my site so I am forgetting about it for now. Let’s continue with the posts and hope for the best.

I am a huge fan of Apple. My PowerBook G4 (I know it’s old now) doesn’t leave my sight. I also love Dashboard and discovering new, helpful widgets. I decided to take a look at some of my favorite widgets and share them with everyone. Here’s the list:

1. iStat – great monitoring Widget that keeps an eye on your CPU, memory, hard drives, IP and external IP, bandwidth, CPU temperature, and more. Cool graphics and easy to use makes this Widget a must-download.

2. YouTube – YouTube on your Dashboard, sweeeeeet.

3. SingThatiTune – Ever want to know the lyrics of a song you are playing with iTunes? Now it’s easy with this widget.

4. Sudoku – Yet another game. Just like everyone else I am a Sudoku freak, I can play for hours on end. Here is a great Sudoku widget that will drain days from your life.

5. Mirror2.0 – Wanna see how you look for that new intern? If you don’t want to go find a mirror, just press your dashboard button and this widget shows you what’s on your iSight.

6. Wikipedia – Exactly what it says, Wikipedia in your dashboard.

7. Radiotuner – Listen to all your favorite Internet radio channels from this simple widget.

8. SendSMS – Program that let’s you send text messages to any service provider. There is a better version, which I could not find that is actually free. I thought this was it but I was wrong.

9. MineSweeper – What’s better to have on your dashboard then games, well nothing. Here is a great widget featuring the most old-school computer game ever. Great for those boring days at work.

10. AlbumArt – Find the album art of any song you are currently listening to. Connects to Amazon, iTunes, and many more sites to try to find the art. Good for all those CD’s that you can find using iTunes album art.

These are all essential widgets, especially the games. If anyone else has some cool widgets that they would like to share, please do I would love to discover some more of them.

So if everyone can’t tell my Google Ads are not there anymore. Yes, I am as surprised as you. I thought to myself, how could this be? So after reading the email Google had sent me, they informed me that I had committed click fraud! No other details than that were given. I could not understand how this could have happened, so I started thinking. I had just started this blog not more than two weeks ago, and I really only had 1 day of a huge traffic spike because of this one article that made the front page of Digg. Could my getting banned from adsense have to do with the Digg effect? Maybe, but i’m not sure.

All I had to determine why they had banned me was one simple email stating that they think my site has committed click fraud. The only thing I could think of was that they were confused by the one day that I had 20,000 hits and then the next day I had just a few hundred. So I started this post to see if anyone else had an idea of what happened. Has this happened to anyone else?

The worst part of the whole situation is they took all the money I had earned away! All the money I earned from the one front page article is gone, and they had no second thoughts about stealing my money. I have appealed the ban and we will see what happens but it probably won’t be a good ending. Let me know if anyone has input on this situation.

One of the main reasons Digg has been so successful is due to the demographic it appeals to. One of the best demo’s to have on the Internet is rich, successful people in the tech industry. Not only do they use the Internet the most, they also buy a lot of electronics and other expensive gear. So what is Digg? Digg is news for these types of people. Digg is about programming, video games, technology, some politics, and other geek stuffs. This is a huge factor in Diggs’ bright future.

I decided to take a look at some exact demographic numbers and to see if this was actually true. I did not want to start making this a large project by analyzing the numbers, so instead I will just give you the raw details. Here are the results according to comScore:

Digg has 1,324,000 total uniques. The majority of Digg users are 35+ and between 18-49. 35-64 is also a huge demographic for Digg. Males account for about 800,000 of the uniques and surprisingly females are at 500,000. The age range for females is about the same as males. Digg gets the most value out of its’ customers because they are for the majority, wealthy. Here is a look at the incomes of Diggers (thousands):

As you can see, most Digg users make $100k+ per year. This is a huge positive factor in Diggs’ future. Some other facts include most Digg users having household sizes of 3 or more (900,000 Diggers). The most interesting fact to me though was the race demographic. More than 1,200,000 Diggers are white, and other races like black, asian, and ‘other’ only add up to 100,000 combined! I wanted to see the average education of Digg users but the majority fall under the category of unknown.

From what we can see from this data, most Diggers are white, rich, and in the tech industry. I don’t think anyone had doubts about this fact, but now we can be certain about these numbers. This is one of the best demographics to capture on the Internet and Digg has done it. Even though Digg is barely breaking even with their revenue stream right now, I am certain they will figure out ways to optimize their inventory and finally take home a profit. The company is worth $200 million even though they don’t make money, and their demographic is the reason.

Recently released was Yahoos’ new product: Yahoo! Bookmarks. It basically combines all the new Web2.0 sites including del.icio.us and Digg. Users will submit links and ‘save’ them to their account. Then other people will be able to see these links, check them out, and save them as well.

Just like Digg, the more saves a link has the quicker it will reach the front page. Is there going to be a Yahoo! Bookmarks effect just like the Digg effect? In all honesty, probably not.

As big as Yahoo! is, they did not try to accomplish anything new. The layout of the site isn’t bad, but at the same time nothing really stands out. Just like the new Yahoo! mail, all of the cool looking features just make the site run slower. The main question is: why are they trying to compete against themselves? They had just acquired del.icio.us recently and already they are rolling out a product that competes head-on with it. Why not put some more effort into improving your already successful new company.

The most obvious missing feature from Yahoo! Bookmarks is a number that reflects the amount of saves a bookmark has received. How is a person supposed to know how well their link is doing? From what I can see, there is no real way to tell if your bookmark is going to reach the front page or not. This was a huge mistake by Yahoo!. The best part about Digg is watching the Diggs rise. Clicking the ‘digg’ button and seeing that cool fade out/in effect is the most satisfying feeling on the net today. This just shows that your vote matters. With Bookmarks, you save a bookmark and that’s it, nothing else happens. I want to see my vote count! I want to watch my story go from one Digg to thousands. This missing feature will be one of the biggest mistakes Yahoo! makes on their new Bookmarks site.

So Yahoo! is now the first big gun to try to take on Digg, and by the looks of things, they are going to lose the battle. Who will be next? MSN or Google? I’m sure both companies will try their hand at the success of Digg-like sites, and like always, Google will come up with a better version of Digg and eventually take over (or buy Digg). As everyone can tell I am a huge Google fan (who isnt?). Unless Digg is going to be bought by Google (which is likely not to happen), Digg may have a huge battle on it’s hands.

*EDIT: These ‘digg this’ buttons are not working very well. So click the little ‘digg’ button above it to digg it. Sorry.

According to Bill Gates, there will be no more car accidents within 10 years. This is a direct statement from the software giant himself. Here is a blurb straight from the mouth of Gates:

“One of the Microsoft researchers has a goal that there be no car wrecks, no crashes of cars, because by having software that can take over whenever a driver makes a mistake. His view is that we’ll be able to eliminate even that source of death. I was very glad to hear that because, as we solve all these medical things, in fact, these car accidents actually is a fairly significant factor that it’s wonderful that software in 23 years, software can do a lot.”

No more accidents within 10 years is a fairly optimistic statement, even by the king of computers. In this article I will discuss the technology needed (and lack of) to accomplish Gates’ dream.

There are currently two ways for cars to become ‘smart.’ The first way would be to have on board computers with hundreds of sensors to detects every little obstacle one may face on the road. This would drive the costs of already over-expensive automobiles even higher. Within fractions of milliseconds, a car would have to sense and react to the spontaneous maneuvers that drivers of today pull off. Is this possible? Well there is currently a contest going on, sponsored by the pentagon, that is giving $2 million to the first team of engineers that can successfully build a car that can do just that. The car must be able to navigate through ‘real’ traffic (here is an article on the contest). The contest will end after a year, which shows that this type of technology will be available soon.

Bill Gates’ statement was “no more accidents,” not “no more accidents for the rich people who can afford the technology.” If his statement were to become true, technology that is out of reach financially for 99% of Americans today would have to significantly drop in price. The only thing I do not doubt is the software behind his theory. I do believe that Microsoft is capable of writing the ‘brain’ to control these new-age cars.

The second method to accomplish “no more accidents” is with a central ‘brain’ controlling cars that are basically drones. What I mean is the cars themselves will not actually be sensing what’s going on around them, but rather a supercomputer than can tell where exactly each car is in relation to the others. This method is much more out-of-reach than the previous. Even if our satellite systems could be quick enough to send data back and forth between the supercomputer and the automobile, there is not enough bandwidth provided by satellites to accommodate the amount of data required to be transfered. In all reality, this is just not a feasible option.

No matter which method Bill Gates decides to use, everyone already knows his Microsoft logo will be everywhere and he’ll offer some sort of “Genuine Advantage,” which basically means your car will be disabled by a false-positive of stolen software. I don’t think I am alone in hating the Genuine Advantage, and I know it has nothing to do with this article but I just thought I would mention how bad it will be.

So Bill Gates, you have a huge challenge ahead of you, get to work!

I was recently looking around for some business related articles I could read about and came across this very interesting piece published on Time.com (article link below). Basically what happened is these two guys tried to steal trade secrets from Coca-Cola (which could be worth enormous amounts of money) and sell them to Pepsi. This is both humorous and frightening at the same time. This was funny to me because honestly, how could these guys possibly have got caught? They must have been either very stupid to get caught, or very smart to come up with the idea in the first place. This is scary at the same time because let’s say these guys accomplished what they set out to do, Pepsi could have easily taken over Coca-Cola’s domination on the market with one simple trade secret stolen. Are these huge multinational corporations really this vulnerable to sabotage? If so any hacker could steal anyones trade secrets and make millions!

I continued to think about this situation and then I thought of something else. Does an enormous company like Coca-Cola (who’s brand image is number one in the world), tribute it’s success to a few trade secrets? Can their entire operation come crumbling down because one disgruntled employee decided to screw over Coca-Cola? I was just wondering about all these questions and decided to make a post where people can give me their input. So take a look at this story (here it is) and post some comments. Let’s get a discussion going about this.

There is an easy way to greatly increase your ad network revenue. I will explain in detail both the theory and implementation of putting ad networks in a ‘daisy-chain’ format. There are many ways of doing this, so you should play with the numbers a bit to see what works best for your site. After reading this article you should have a clear understanding of how daisy-chains work.

Introduction:
The first thing to understand when discussing a daisy-chain is, what the hell is it? The simplest way to put it is: a daisy-chain is a specific way of setting up multiple ad networks on one site to maximize revenue.

Theory:
Revenue is maximized by allowing ad networks to basically ‘fight’ over your impressions (pageviews). These ad networks are setup linearly from one to another. Let’s use Casale Media, ValueClick, and Google as our example networks (in that order). A person (let’s use the name Mike) comes to your website and instead of your one-and-only ad network serving Mike an ad for whatever ecpm (effective cost per thousand) it wants, your three ad networks decides which one is the best. What I mean by this is that your daisy-chain decides which ad network can serve Mike an ad for the highest ecpm and therefore serves Mike that ad. For example, Casale can serve the ad for .40 cents ecpm, ValueClick serves .60 cents, and Google can serve .45 cents. Mike will be passed from Casale to ValueClick, where ValueClick decides it will serve the ad at the highest ecpm.

Google is a little different however. Since Google is more of a marketplace, it has virtually unlimited advertisers. What this implies is that if Google were anywhere on the daisy-chain besides for last place, the daisy-chain would automatically end there because Google would have unlimited ads to serve. I wouldn’t worry too much about the specifics of this part, just remember that Google always has to come last on the daisy-chain.

Implementation:
Ok so here comes the fun part, implementation. Take whatever ad networks you like and attach them in the following way (Heres a list of ad networks). I am going to use Casale and Google as my choices because I am familiar with them. Go through all of the normal steps to sign-up for both ad networks. Now get the tags (code needed to see the ads on your site) from Casale and place them wherever you want on your web page. Now here is the part where you actually ‘connect’ the ad networks together. Get the same ad size tag from Google Adsense and copy the code. Within Casale (may be different for other networks) there is a button on the right side of each ad size that says ‘defaults.’ Click this button and it takes you to a page where you have to enter a few pieces of information (should be the same for every ad network). The 3 pieces of information you have to enter are: image URL, click URL, and creative HTML (Names may vary from ad network to ad network). The first two URL’s are there just in case someone has a very old browser (or javascripts diabled). This banner will appear if someone can’t see your ad. The important piece of information is the creative HTML. This is where you placed that piece of Google code that you copied before. Now that you are done with that, there will be an option in Casale’s site manager called ‘auto-approval.’ Within that there will be an option to set your minimum ecpm. This is a good place to set a static minimum ecpm, which should be Google’s maximum ecpm that it can serve. You may have to play around with these numbers to maximize ecpm and therefore maximize revenue.

Conclusion:
Now what will happen is that Casale will receive the impression and decide if it can serve your ad for higher than Google, if not it will pass the impression on to Google. And there you go! Your done! If you have any questions or my explanation doesn’t make as much sense as it did in my mind, feel free to comment or email me and I will get back to you asap.

Hope this provides a good explanation of what daisy-chaining is and the benefits of it.

In the past few weeks there’s been a lot of hustle and bustle over Apple Computers and everyone seems to be seeing dollar signs, but why? With the touch screen iPod and iPhone in the rumor pipelines and iTV very much on its way to a store near you, everyone is expecting a huge increase in the sales being made by Apple and its affiliates.

We all (hopefully) know by now that Jobs just released the quarterly earnings last Wednesday after the close of trading which resulted in six percent increase in the value of the stock on Thursday morning, up $4.46 a share. This is due mainly in part to the record sales of Apple Computers in the history of the company and the continuing success of the iPod, this quarter alone saw the sale of 1.6 million computers and 8.7 million iPods which brings the fiscal year totals to 5.3 million and 39 million units respectively.

This obviously isn’t the only reason analysts’ at UBS and CNBC’s Jim Cramer of Mad Money are all screaming BULL MARKET! (Bull Markets are associated with investor confidence with expectations of higher capital gains, whereas Bear Markets are associated with pessimism). So let us examine these expectations of higher capital gains.

We will start with the substantial, iTV. This was a very unusual move for Apple to pre-announce its new product like this, but there is method to the madness. Not due until late first quarter or early second quarter of 2007, the iTV (current project name subject to change) will offer wireless and high definition transmission of your favorite media content from your computer out to your home theater system, and just in case you don’t have wireless there is an Ethernet jack to hardwire the device into your home network. This is a must buy for anyone that is taking advantage of the iTunes music/video store because now with new movies being added to the collection of media, everyone is going to need a means to view them on a screen larger than 1.5 inches. Now the only reason I can see why Apple is spilling the beans a little early on iTV is purely profit based. The two main competitors to iTV are going to be Windows Media and Slingbox (access iTV from anywhere, I’m willing to bet so) and Apple is letting consumers know that they might just want to hold out for a product from a company known for its stability. But more-so Apple is sending up a flare to movie and television studios that have yet to sign with iTunes and are looking into the Windows alternative and saying you may just want to wait to make your final deal. So at $299 a unit and $9.99 – $12.99 a film from iTunes we are only spelling out massive revenue for 2007.

Now the iTV isn’t the only surprise we have in store for the new year. For the last six months everyone has been talking about the next step in the evolution of iPod with its sixth generation incarnation, the current iPod video being the fifth generation or 5G. The time is almost upon us for the unveiling of the iPod Touch screen based on the numerous leaks at patent filings on the Internet. Apple has yet to comment, but do you really think some color nanos and a 80GB iPod is all that’s coming? I think not. One researcher whose article was pulled claimed to be in contact with an unnamed executive of an unnamed Apple affiliate who has a hand in making iPods. This mystery executive claims the new iPod will be out before the end of this year. Now I can’t really give much sustenance to something like this, but we can face the facts, the iPod Touch screen is coming and it is not even November yet. We could very well see its launch just in time for the holiday season (can you say dollar signs?) or it may stay tucked away until Macworld in January in which case we may not see it until much later in 2007.

Other patent filings hint at Wi-Fi capable iPods that could permit the iPod to record samples of music from thin air, transmit the samples to a service that identifies the song in question and then allows the user to purchase that song from iTunes. In addition to that there has also been filings for a program being dubbed MacXM, which would allow Mac OS X to control an XM satellite device. So there is no shortage to the potential of future iPods.

But that’s not all coming from our friendly local patent office. There have been filings that make reference to interfacing with AT&T’s mMode and just last month Apple trademarked “iPhone” making us all believe that the project is in its final stages of conception and also a Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster said in a research note there is more evidence of the existence of the iPhone in the resource files in the new iTunes 7. Its no surprise that Apple would chose AT&T to launch its smart phone with, AT&T Wireless has an international market where as competitors like Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile do not. Don’t fret though because Apple is not one to play the exclusion game, but then again who knows what terms AT&T is setting if Apple really is getting into bed with them.

New products isn’t where the buck stops either for Apple, there are many new market innovations that will add to the flow of cash coming into the company. To name a few, Apple has just been granted permits to build a three-story state of the art retail store in the center of the Boston Shopping District that will be the model for future Apple stores across the country. Apple has started School Nights at the Apple retail stores where not only are kids getting the chance to learn the use of Apple products like iMovie, iPhoto, and Garage Band to name a few, but it gives them a positive forum to showcase their digital projects, a program that over 2000 schools have already participated in.

But perhaps the biggest news for the marketplace is the new union of Apple and Best Buy. For anyone that lives in Southern California, you may have wandered into one of the seven local Best Buys that were selected to market Apple Computers in addition to the iPods it had been selling for Apple for years now. After evaluating the seven-store program that began last spring, Apple is ready to expand the project and Best Buy is more than ready to incorporate the program to a majority of its 900+ stores if the project proved to be successful, which it has. This move is expected to generate an additional 400 million dollars per year in Apple sales. There have been talks with Circuit City in trying a similar program, but there has yet to be any definite response from the Best Buy competitor.

So with new products, new deals, and new means of consumption all coming in the very near future, all I can say now is buy in now before Jobs makes most of this official at his keynote address in January at Macworld. After that analysts believe the stock will climb to $105 a share by April and as history has dictated for Apple, we’ll see a nice stock split and start this process again for the coming years. Bottom line, if Apple had ever fallen off, its back in full force to take command of the digital media revolution.

Yes that’s the actual title Gizmodo has given this hilarious video that I thought I would share. They hook up 4 GPS systems in a car and drive around with some funny results. The ending gets very funny when all the GPS units try to talk over each other. Check it out.

*NOTE: Not sure why the ‘digg’ link isn’t working. If you like the video, goto digg.com and digg it!