Is Microsoft collaborating with the Chinese government to build an ever-more sophisticated system of Internet censorship and control? When you search MSN China for words like freedom or democracy, you get a warning about “forbidden speech” now that Microsoft has banned these words from the site.

I usually don’t get political or too anti-Microsoft on this blog, but I just couldn’t pass this by! Read the whole article on today’s Good Morning Silicon Valley blog.

————————————————–

Brought to you by Free RSS Resources: RSS feed directories, podcast directories, blog directories, blog pingers and RSS marketing tools, kept fresh and up-to-date. Powered by iPowerWeb, amazing web hosting for just $7.95 a month. Come learn how to increase your blog and website traffic, and profit by setting up and marketing your own RSS feed. My free 2005 e-book shows how.

According to a recent news article by Antony Bruno, Forrester Research estimates that 300,000 podcasts will be available by the end of this year, with 13 million by 2009.

If they’re anywhere near right, now’s the time to create some unique and worthwhile content, get your podcasts up on the web, advertise them in all of the podcast directories, and get people excited about them, before they’re lost in the clutter.

Bruno points out that Apple is adding podcast support to the next rev of the iTunes Music Store, while Clear Channel Radio, Infinity Broadcasting and Microsoft are showing lots of interest of their own.

Read the entire article here.

———————————————-

Brought to you by Free RSS Resources: RSS feed directories, podcast directories, blog directories, blog pingers and RSS marketing tools, kept fresh and up-to-date. Powered by iPowerWeb, amazing web hosting for just $7.95 a month. Come learn how to increase your blog and website traffic, and profit by setting up and marketing your own RSS feed. My free 2005 e-book shows how.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

How To Avoid Spam Robots

- by Jim Edwards

© Jim Edwards - All Rights reserved
http://www.thenetreporter.com
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Despite the fact that Federal legislation (the CANSPAM act) made it illegal, harvesting email addresses from the web using automated robots remains alive and well.

Spammers who need fresh email addresses release software spider programs that comb the Internet and suck email addresses off Web pages, guest books, and anywhere else you might post your email address.

Once they get your email address, spammers will trade it around like 5th graders with a new pack of Pokemon cards at recess and you can expect the avalanche of email to begin flooding your inbox.

In order to combat this still rampant practice of stealing email addresses from websites and sending people email they don’t want, the following tips should help protect you.
(more…)

How do you choose the products you buy? Do you simply accept as gospel truth all the good things a merchant says about their own product? Or, do you ask your friends’ opinions and look for independent product reviews before opening your wallet?

If you’re a savvy consumer (which of course you are), then you put more stock in your friends’ opinions and independent product reviews.

As affiliate marketers, we become much more successful when we approach our site visitors as friends and take the attitude that they too are savvy consumers.

From that standpoint, an affiliate’s real work is to pre-sell our merchant partners’ products by writing fair and balanced reviews, also known as endorsement letters.

Sure, writing a review for each product takes a little time and effort, but it’s an activity that sets the super affiliates apart from their less-super counterparts in terms of rewards… read ‘income’.
(more…)