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A federal court has ordered the giant of all Internet companies - Google, to hand over documents concerning YouTube’s viewing data to another media monster - Viacom.  Viacom and Google are currently entangled in a no-holds barred lawsuit, concerning allegations of infringement of intellectual property rights. Viacom wanted the viewing data to help it determine the extent to which YouTube’s success was built on the popularity of copyrighted clips that were illegally posted to the site.  Google contended that YouTube’s viewing data should be kept from Viacom to protect the privacy of its users.

Unfortunately for the millions of people who view YouTube videos, the judge granted Viacom’s request.  The court’s ruling has caused many advocates of privacy rights to cry foul. For the following reasons, I believe the federal judge was correct in ruling against Google.

The Court’s powers to access records cannot be denied.

Like millions of Americans and other people around the world I love Google.  I can say without a doubt that Google has been very good to me and my family law practice.  And if Google wants to be viewed by it’s customers as the champion of privacy rights, so be it.  But, let’s get real . . . , the court’s access to private records under appropriate circumstances cannot be denied.  We cannot let people hide behind their computers to commit crimes or torts.  It would be absurd, for example, to give a child molester safe haven to either post or view child pornography.  It would be equally absurd to give a person safe haven to infringe upon the property rights of another, to commit defamation of character, or to violate someone’s privacy rights Read the rest of this entry »

The SEO paradigm shift has already started kicking in. As search engine algorithms evolve, more weight is placed on trust-based factors and topical-relevance forcing marketers to sharpen up or lose their edge. Keyword density, perfect anchor text alignment and sheer volume of link equity will not cut it any more.

Mainstream Media Engagement

If marketers are working with brands that have an established off or online presence they already have a key advantage. Mainstream media and B2B publications with established trust will likely link to your website, and stimulate others to do the same through simply discussing your operations, strategies, successes and failures. This is a foot-print that’s hard to manipulate. Gaining mainstream coverage can (usually) only come with an established brand presence or exciting angle. If SEO clients don’t have this in place, chances are that they will be swimming against the tide. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s really annoying when you turn on your computer and sit there, for what seems like forever, waiting for it to load up. Finally it does and you click on a program and wait again for it to get going.

When the computer was newer it wasn’t like that. Everything loaded quickly in a fraction of the time it takes now. What is wrong? Well over time the computers registry has become bloated with a lot of useless bits and pieces of information. This slows down the operating system as it picks its way through the maze of fragments of data. Usually this is accompanied by freezing problems also. The answer is to clean your registry and remove all the material which is not needed. Read the rest of this entry »

If you truly want to speed up vista, you need to approach the issue from a few different angles. Simply installing an anti-virus tool or anti-spyware tool isn’t going to cut it. That being said, start considering different methods of speeding up your computer — examine what techniques can be used and how they can actually help to improve your PC’s performance. Luckily for you, here are a couple PC speedup tips that will get your Vista PC back up to speed. Read the rest of this entry »

Organize your data so it is easy to back up. 

You want all your data files (e.g. Word documents, Excel documents, email, etc.) to be in folders that are all inside a single folder on your hard disk. Windows provides you with a folder named “My Documents” designed for this purpose. In Windows 95/98/ME there is a single My Documents folder shared by all users while Windows NT/2000/XP creates a separate My Documents folder for each login account.  Backing up the “WinNT\Profiles” folder in NT 4.0 or the “Documents and Settings” folder in Windows 2000/XP will back up the My Documents folders for all users if you are logged in as an administrator.

Many programs default to saving files in the My Documents folder and programs that can’t can usually be set to do so. You will probably want to create new folders under the My Documents folder to keep data from different applications or projects separate. You may need to read the documentation to learn how, but you should set each program to open documents from and save documents to the appropriate folders you have created under the My Documents folder. If you do this consistently you will know where all your data is on your hard disk and won’t accidentally miss backing up important data.

Choose what device you will use to back up your data. Read the rest of this entry »

Professional and social networking sites like LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook, and Squidoo are effective outlets for finding new readers, but it is easy to find your message spread thin if you don’t choose the right strategy. Many businesses settle for sparse profiles on various sites, never discovering the other powerful marketing tools many of these social networking platforms have to offer—most of them for free.

To avoid the scattershot approach, choose one or two social networking sites that fit your business well and invest the time to maximize your presence in them. Let’s explore what that might look like if Facebook is one of your choices.

Prepare your best information before you start.

Avoid the “I will go back and fill that in later” trap. Have all your necessary information on hand, ready to copy and paste on the spot. Complete a worksheet containing:

1. Key Terms: Read the rest of this entry »

EBay has been the ideal home based business for years. Most of us started with the ‘clean out the garage’ model, and over time graduated to dropshipping, and in many cases, it has turned into a pretty significant fulltime income.

Over the last several weeks, several VERY disturbing changes have taken place at EBay as EBay seems intent on wiping out the very business base that built the behemoth, to focus on the corporate clientele that have taken a much larger position on EBay over the past couple of years, using EBay to sell off their excess inventory directly, rather than selling to the large discount chains as was the previous habit.

Here’s an overview of some of the most significant - and damaging - changes that affect you and I, the folks that have built home businesses around EBay…. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a list of the Top 10 Social Sites
(According to Alexa, a world-wide page rank informational website that tracks statistics.  Sites are “rated” and a lower number means a higher ranking.)

YOU TUBE:   A video-sharing website.  YouTube ranks among the Top 10 Websites of any kind on the Internet right now.  Users can upload, view, and comment on videos.  In April 2008, reports indicated that the site is host to over 83 million video clips, boasting more traffic than any other site.  Ordinary computer users began to form networks and followings through YouTube; people can subscribe to your video uploads easily and provide feedback

MY SPACE:   The most popular social networking site for teens and adults. MySpace allows users to develop an interactive personal profile, network with friends and contacts, maintain blogs, and share photos and music.

FACEBOOK:   Facebook organizes networks according to city, workplace, school, and region.  Members can interact by sending messages to one another.  Users can be members of multiple networks and even have access to their friends’ profiles.

ORKUT:   An online social community designed by Google (and named after its creator, Orkut Büyükkökten) to help you maintain and expand your social life.  Interacting with people you know more easily, sharing pictures and videos, and posting messages is easy.  Networks of friends based on hobbies and interests, and even dating groups, are available.  While Orkut’s original target audience was the US, it has become the most-visited site in Brazil, and the second most-visited site in India.

FLICKR: One of the earliest Web 2.0 applications, Flickr was originally intended to be an image and video hosting site.  Flickr continues to be a popular image sharing site, and bloggers frequent this site that ranks photos by popularity and voting.  Using tags, photos are categorized for easy sorting, and visitors and members can vote on their favorite shots.  Photos can be stored publicly or privately, allowing publishers to decide if only their in-network friends can access them. Read the rest of this entry »

A very common fear in the minds of computer users is the occurrence of file corruption, accidental deletion of files or a virus attack.

The good news is that there are many good hard drive recovery software programs available to use to recover these lost, corrupt or delete files. Many of these are available as free downloads or sometimes even as freeware. In this article in the paragraphs below is a list of some of these free hard drive data recovery programs available nowadays.

PC Inspector File Recovery: Even when the boot sector of your computer has got damaged or deleted, this data recovery program is still capable of recovering lost files and of locating partitions automatically. This software can recover lost data even when a file’s header entry is no longer available. It can retrieve data with the original date and time stamps. You can save the recovered files on network drives by using this data recovery software. And surprisingly this hard drive data recovery software is still available as a free download. This is very popular software. 

VirtualLab Data Recovery Software v4.8.8: It is a remarkable free hard drive data recovery software. This data recovery software connects to a powerful recovery server and employs ‘artificial intelligence’. It compares your system condition with previous data recovery sessions and updates its solution methods. VirtualLab Data Recovery Software v4.8.8 is quite versatile and works with FAT 12, FAT 16, Fat 32, and NTFS file systems. It can even find the disappearing data from Jaz disks, Zip disks and digital camera media as well as from a computer hard drive. Read the rest of this entry »

You have something fabulous to announce to the world! So, what online press release distribution service do you use?

With so many to choose from, it’s hard to know where to start. If you do a search for newswire services it’s easy to become overwhelmed by the possibilities. You might either give up or go overboard, spending lots of unnecessary money and duplicating your efforts.

Before you do either, first consider what you want your press release to do for you. Do you want it to be primarily a public relations tool to get your news out? Or would you rather that it be a search-marketing tool that can provide search-engine visibility and target prospects? If you’re thinking like a savvy businesswoman, the answer is:  both. Read the rest of this entry »