Googlemaniacs

"It's not my homepage, but it might as well be. I use it to ego-surf. I use it to read the news. Anytime I want to find out anything, I use it."
- Matt Groening, creator and executive producer, The Simpsons

"Google means that I no longer have an excuse to be ignorant. You can't go into meetings unprepared anymore! I have a Google sticker on my computer that, when I go through airport security and take out my PC, the security guys see and act like I have a cute baby or something: 'Ooh, Google!'"
- Esther Dyson, chair, EDventure Holdings

"Writers of the past had absinthe, whiskey, or heroin. I have Google. I go there intending to stay five minutes and next thing I know, seven hours have passed, I've written 43 words, and all I have to show for it is that I know the titles of every episode of The Nanny and the Professor."
- Michael Chabon, author, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

"Actually, Google has had zero impact on my life."
- Steven Brill, Court TV founder and magazine entrepreneur; author, After: How America Confronted the September 12 Era

"I can't imagine life without Google News. Thousands of sources from around the world ensure anyone with an Internet connection can stay informed. The diversity of viewpoints available is staggering."
- Michael Powell, chair, Federal Communications Commission

"Google rocks. It raises my perceived IQ by at least 20 points. I can pull a reference or quote in seconds, and I can figure out who I'm talking to and what they're known for - a key feature for those of us who are name-memory challenged."
- Wes Boyd, president, MoveOn.org

"Google has improved my sex life, tightened my abs, and brought me closer to God. (I keed.) Actually, as a working gossip columnist, I appreciate Google as a rough - very rough - research tool. The Internet is still the Wild West."
- Lloyd Grove, columnist, New York Daily News

"My version is exactly what it is now. Google has got it right."
- Edward Tufte, Yale Professor of political science, computer science, statistics, and graphic design

"Google is my rapid-response research assistant. On the run-up to a deadline, I may use it to check the spelling of a foreign name, to acquire an image of a particular piece of military hardware, to find the exact quote of a public figure, check a stat, translate a phrase, or research the background of a particular corporation. It's the Swiss Army knife of information retrieval."
- Garry Trudeau, cartoonist and creator, Doonesbury

"Within the last seven days, Google has altered and augmented my perceptions of tulips, mind control, Japanese platform shoes, violent African dictatorships, 3-D high-definition wallpaper, spicy chicken dishes, tiled hot tubs, biological image-processing schemes, chihuahua hygiene, and many more critical topics. Clearly, thanks to Google, I am not the man I was seven days ago."
- John Gaeta, visual effects supervisor, the Matrix trilogy

Comment Spammers

The first arrivals drifted in innocuously, like the stray seagulls lurking during the early minutes of Hitchcock's The Birds. They were mostly phrased as salutations and praise, posted to the reader comments area of many popular blogs. Harmless notes, at face value, but they harbored a secret menace.

The bloggers hit with these strange messages were victims of an insidious new species, now called "comment spam." But this was a strange sort of spam: Why would someone go to the trouble of spamming thousands of blog pages to deliver only glad tidings and hollow compliments?

The answer, oddly enough, is that the spammers weren't trying to win the attention of the bloggers or their readerships. They were trying to win the attention of Google, like the high school bully beating up the class nerd to impress the homecoming queen. The nerd feels violated, but the truth is that it isn't really about him at all.

The spammers were exploiting the fact that open comment forums on the Web let bloggers post HTML for free. And not just any Web pages: These are heavily valued by Google's PageRank algorithm, thanks to the chronic interlinking of the blogosphere. If you could convince one of those bloggers to link to your new site, you'd have instant credibility. And if you could persuade dozens of bloggers to place links, you'd be an overnight PageRank sensation. Because so much of the Web's traffic now funnels through Google's search engine, that higher ranking translates directly into more "customers" for the spammer.

The (evil) genius of the comment spammers came when they realized that actually persuading the bloggers was unnecessary. All you have to do is post some benign text in the comment field and include a URL for your gambling site or Viagra emporium in discreet HTML. It doesn't hurt that some popular blog formats - notably Movable Type - have a standardized URL for posting comments, making it much easier to automate spam creation. The ultimate goal, of course, is to win the PageRank arms race against your competitors so the next time some hopeful soul types "penis enlargement" into Google, your site will arrive at the top of the list, having been validated by the sudden flood of links from the blogging community.

Comment spam proliferated throughout the blog sites with amazing speed. One blogger had 120 posts spammed over four days. Thoughtful discussion spaces were besieged by meaningless posts, sometimes in broken English, sometimes with bizarre keywords inserted into otherwise prosaic comments in a sort of spammer Tourette's: "I greatly appreciate atkins diet the comments here."

Skilled technicians who were angered by the incursions, the bloggers began to fight back. Within weeks of the comment spam explosion of late 2003, the blogosphere had strategies for stopping or neutralizing the invading hordes, most notably a plug-in created by blogger Jay Allen that blocks all comments that include text culled from an ever-expanding blacklist of spammers. In January, Movable Type's creators released a special update that contained fixes designed to thwart comment spam, including one that makes URLs posted in comment threads invisible to PageRank.

In a way, the rise of comment spam confirms what many of us have felt for years: Google has become part of the Web's infrastructure, as central as HTTP or packet switching. The centrality has been a boon: PageRank has let us feel that information we seek is at our fingertips. But in a kind of dialectical progression, that very success has bred its own antithesis. Build a universe where linking determines relevance and where relevance leads to financial reward, and sooner or later people link in bad faith. Can PageRank learn to tell the difference?

It's an MAd, MAd, MAd, Ad World

When Sergey Brin and Larry Page were raising funds for their startup, the biggest challenge was convincing venture capitalists that Google could actually make money serving up minimalist, fast-loading, text-only ads. It was 1998, after all, the heyday of elaborate splash pages and animated, brand-touting banners that danced at the top of every portal. Sure, pages took longer to load, but broadband hookups would soon solve that problem.

Google didn't buy in - a stubbornness that proved brilliant. Six years later, those skinny little text-based ads are a huge moneymaker, accounting for more than $600 million in revenue last year, according to Forrester Research. And Google, once simply the world's best search engine, is fast reinventing itself as an advertising company.

At the heart of the new Google is AdWords, a self-service ad server that uses relevance-ranking algorithms similar to the ones that make the search engine so effective. Advertisers tell Google how much they want to spend, then "buy" pertinent keywords. When users type in a matching term, the ad appears near the search results under the heading "Sponsored Links." Each time a user clicks on the ad, Google subtracts the cost-per-click from the advertiser's account. When the account's daily budget is met, Google stops displaying the ad.

So far the system has proven easy to use and remarkably effective. Roughly 15 percent of ads displayed adjacent to Google searches (at the company's own Web site and on Google-powered sites like Yahoo! and AOL) result in clickthroughs - more than 10 times the click rate of the average banner ad. These clickthroughs are the golden leads of online commerce. One Dow Chemical business group reported 25 percent of its traffic comes through Google. Designer Hospital Gowns, a health care industry Web site, boosted sales 20 percent in six months.

AdWords has worked so well that last year Google began offering the system to other sites as a way for them to provide targeted ads. The new service, AdSense, places ads on Web sites of all stripes, from ABC.com and The New York Times on the Web to quirky blogs like Bananathing!

Why are we here?...

In our astrophysics class, a student once asked, "Why are we here?" The answer was as amazing to us as it was to the class:

We are here because, more than ten billion years ago, the universe borrowed energy from the vacuum to create vast amounts of matter and antimatter in nearly equal numbers. Most of it annihilated and filled the universe with photons. Less than one part per billion survived to form protons and neutrons, and then the hydrogen and helium that makes up most everything there is. Some of this hydrogen and helium collapsed to make the first generation of massive stars, which produced the first batch of heavy elements in their central nuclear fires. These stars exploded and enriched the interstellar clouds that would form the next generation of stars. Finally, about five billion years ago, one particular cloud in one partcular galaxy collapsed to form our Sun and its planetary system. Life arose on the third planet, based on the hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and other elements found in the protostellar cloud. The development of life transformed Earth's atmosphere and allowed small furry mammals to take center stage. Primative men and women evolved and moved out of Africa to conquer the world with their new knowledge of tools, language, and agriculture. After raising food on the land, your ancestors, your parents, and then you consumed this food and breathed the air. Your own body is a collection of the atoms that were created billions of years earlier in the interior of stars, the fraction of a fraction of a percent of normal matter that escaped annihilation in the first microsecond of the universe. Your life and everything in the world around you is intimately tied to countless aspects of modern astrophysics.

yahoo google or ??

Do you Yahoo!? Of course not - you Google. But for how much longer? Just as the search giant stole the thunder and traffic from big Web portals, competitors are set on becoming the next Google. Inktomi and AlltheWeb are racing to beat it with bigger, fresher indexes. Teoma and Viv�simo organize results by subject, so a search for "explorer" separates pages about Ferdinand Magellan from those about Ford's SUV. As the stakes get higher, Yahoo! is buying up companies to arm itself with better technology. Microsoft, thinking bigger, discussed buying Google last fall. Any company that really wants to beat them should quit messing with small improvements and shoot for the moon with these search strategies.

Crawl 'em all
Google has 3 billion pages in its database, with AlltheWeb and Inktomi close behind. But there may be a trillion more pages hiding in plain sight - in online databases such as WebMD and The New York Times' archive, and they can't be reached by hopping from one link to another. To get at them, a search engine needs to submit a query to each site, then consolidate the results onto one page. CompletePlanet lets visitors search more than 100,000 such databases, but only a few subjects at a time. No current service is powerful enough to churn through all trillion possible results at once.

Keep 'em all
Google is fast replacing Lexis-Nexis as the research tool professionals turn to first. But Google lets you search only its most recently crawled version of the Web. Pages that were changed or deleted prior to the last crawl are lost forever. The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine preserves a fraction of the Web's page history. What if you could search every version of every page ever posted?

Follow the feeds
News sites and blogs are supplementing their pages with RSS feeds - a service that pushes new content to subscribers as soon as it's published. Google doesn't track RSS feeds, and bloggers gripe that their posts take two to three days to show up in search results. An engine to which Web site owners could upload RSS would provide the latest version of every page.

Don't give away the formula
When Google debuted in 1998, its search results were free of the marketing pages that clogged other engines. Even though Sergey Brin and Larry Page had published their PageRank formula while at Stanford, it was tougher to fool than other scoring systems. In 2000, Google gave out a free PC toolbar that displayed the PageRank value of any Web page, unwittingly handing Google gamers a cheat sheet.

Blogging for money

Writing paid post is perhaps the most straight forward ways to earn some revenue from blogging. The way pay post works hasn’t changed much; after reaching mutual agreement with advertisers, you write about them, they pay you. And if there is a 3rd party (middle man company) involve, they take cut. Most middle man company provides marketplace for advertisers to look for publishers, vice versa.

If you firmly believe that writing pay post is one good way to revenue from your blog, here’s a list of web services that pays you to write for them. This list will be updated periodically, so if you have a paid post service I’ve missed out I’d like to add them to the list. Necessary credits will be given.

1. 451 Press

   

   451 Press is always looking for bright, talented writers who want to have their voices heard. We are looking for writers with unique voices to contribute to our growing network of blogs. Our blogs cover a wide range of topics. If you have a passion for a subject then we just might have a place for you.

   [FAQ] [Sign Up]

2. Be A Guide (About.com)

   

   All About.com Guides are freelancers who work online and set their own schedules, giving them the flexibility to log on from anywhere in the world whenever they have the time. With no timesheets to fill out and no timecards to punch, working for About.com gives you the flexibility to write when you want, even if you have a full-time day job.

   [FAQ] [Sign Up]

3. BlogBurner

   

   So here’s how it works:

   • You create an account with us.
   • You create an account with Google Adsense.
   • You login and write content to your "blog" on our site.
   • You try to write as often as you can.
   • We publish your content to our site.
   • We serve ads on the pages that have your content.
   • Half the time you make money on the ads. Half the time we do.

   [FAQ] [Sign Up]

4. Blog Feast

   

   We are a blog community that:

   1. Host your blog for free
   2. Provide you with readers and traffic
   3. Serve your Adsense ads 90% of the time
   4. Helps you to make money blogging
   5. Leading you step by step to earn $1,000 a month!

   [FAQ] [Sign Up]

5. Bloggerwave

   

   We’ve got advertisers that would like you to write about their products or services. So you do. In your blog. And get paid!

   [FAQ] [Sign Up]

6. Blogitive

   

   Once you are approved to the Blogitive system, you are given access to opportunities from companies to post about their news releases. You are paid per posting.

   [FAQ] [Sign Up]

7. Blogsvertise

   

   Once approved, your blog goes into the assignment queue. The blogsvertise administrator then assigns writing tasks for what our advertisers want you to mention in your blog.

   [FAQ] [Sign Up]

8. Blog To Profit

   

   We connect you with advertisers that are interested in sponsoring your blog, you post to your blog and get paid!

   [FAQ] [Sign Up]

9. BOTW Media

   

   If you are an experienced writer and/or an avid blogger, can write passionately about a topic, and enjoys working as part of a group, you may be a good candidate for a BOTW Media author.

   [FAQ] [Sign Up]

10. CreamAid

    

    Anyone can start using CREAMaid by inserting a CREAMaid Conversation widget inside her post. (more info) Your post will most likely be selected as long as you abide by these rules. Once selected, your post will be syndicated to all the participating posts through their embedded Conversation widgets. When your post is selected, you will be able to instantly collect a royalty
    for your contribution.

    [FAQ]

11. Creative Weblogging

    

    Get paid to blog with us at Creative Weblogging! We are one of the largest blog networks, with over 135 blogs in five languages.

    [FAQ] [Sign Up]

12. DayTipper

    

    If you have a tip that is insightful, helpful, and original, we will publish it and pay you $3 (US). You write the content. We share it with the world.

    [FAQ] [Sign Up]

13. Dewitts Media

    

    Blog publishers are based upon a bidding system, so therefore if blog publisher 1 has only done 1 post, but blog publisher 2 has done 2 post it would be blog publisher 1 turn. Our bidding system will keep the rotation up, and the pay out will be pretty fair with then certain categories.

    [FAQ] [Sign Up]

14. Digital Journal

    

    Unlike most websites where bloggers post for free (and the company takes in all the ad revenue), DigitalJournal.com shares a portion of its advertising revenue with all Citizen Journalists. With an always-growing cash pool, every single Citizen Journalist gets a chance to compete for a share of the cash pot. The more you contribute, the more you earn.

    [FAQ] [Sign Up]

15. Helium

    

    Earn a share of the advertising money earned here at Helium. If you write well, and write often, you earn even more recognition and reward.

    [FAQ] [Sign Up]

16. In Blog Ads

    

    You’ve been writing about web sites, products, services and companies for years, now you you can also get paid for it. With our system, you get paid for each post request you fulfill.

    [FAQ] [Sign Up]

17. Link Post of Link Worth

    

    Unlike some other services, we pay our Partners up to 70% for each LinkPost written. Access to thousands of advertisers hungry for reviews. A variety of payment options. Receive payouts monthly by check, PayPal, direct deposit, or Wire. Automated advertising management. An easy way to sell paid blog posts.

    [FAQ] [Sign Up]

18. LoudLaunch

    

    If your blog and interests are aligned with an advertiser’s campaign then you can do your own research and write about them in exchange for pay—not in exchange for a pre-determined outcome but for a fair assessment.

    [FAQ] [Sign Up]

19. Pay Me To Blog About You

    

    Our messaging system allows bloggers and advertisers to negotiate directly with each other instead of working through advertising agencies or middlemen and we provide a secure way of transacting advertising compensation via Paypal.

    [FAQ] [Sign Up]

20. PayPerPost

    

    PayPerPost is an incredible new self-service marketplace that allows you to get paid to blog about the products, services and websites you love. You can easily earn $500 per month or more with your current blog!

    [FAQ] [Sign Up]

21. Review Me

    

    Get paid $20 - $200 to review products and services on your site. You control what you review.

    [FAQ] [Sign Up]

22. Shvoong

    

    The more abstracts you post at Shvoong, the more chances to attract readers. Create link to your abstract elsewhere(on blogs, forums, your personal homepage, or other sites). Spread the word by joining our “Invite a friend” and/or “Affiliates” programs, and earn bonuses equivalent to the invite members’ royalties, upto $100 for every new writer.

    [FAQ] [Sign Up]

23. Smorty

    

    Get paid for blogging. Write your opinion about peoples products, services and websites on your blog. Get paid weekly.

    [FAQ] [Sign Up]

24. Sponsored Reviews

    

    Earn cash by writing honest reviews about our advertiser’s products and services. Write reviews in your own tone and style, and gear them to your audience’s interest.

    [FAQ] [Sign Up]

25. Squidoo

    

    Every lens carries Google AdSense ads. Those are used to generate royalties for the whole co-op (ie, everyone gets a cut). If you want to increase your direct royalties, though, you should consider adding commercial modules that the visitors to your lenses will appreciate.

    [FAQ] [Sign Up]

26. Weblogs Inc

    

    Looking to get paid to blog about subjects you love? Tell us what you’re passionate about and let’s find out if there’s a fit!

    [FAQ] [Sign Up]

27. Wise Bread

    

    WiseBread.com is one of the top 5 personal finance blogs. We give our bloggers 100% of the advertising revenue they earn on their blog posts.

    PS: Thanks Fab

    [FAQ] [Sign Up]

28. b5media

    

    We’ll pay you to write about what you love. We’re the one of the largest blog networks in the world. We want to be the biggest. Want to help? It’s easy to apply.

    
    

Paid to Click Programs (PTC)

These are a type of HYIPs "high yield investment programs" designed to lure people into making easy money through the internet, and they are all basically a SCAM.

They pay or give credit to people who would simply "click" ads posted in their site.



PTCs, a scam or not?

The call to make money online, whether through scamming other people, gambling, or plain hard work will be the driving force of anyone.

but why PTC?

simply because it is the easiest!!!

but the downfall is it is the one that posts the greatest risk.

People continue to take those risks. Why?

because they believe they will succeed
because they believe they know how to succeed
because they believe they are better than those other clickers
because it is fun as well (for those who have nothing better to do)

and they get paid using
alertpay and paypal
How do PTCs work anyway?
PTCs gain members by offering them compensation for every click they make, either through points, cash, free ads etc.

The would-be advertisers then buy those clicks in the form of advertisement. The advertisers are very much aware of the fact that the site pays its members to click their ads.

Since both parties, the clickers and the advertisers are well aware of their roles, where is the scam part?

There are a few advertisers who would end up paying these clickers. In short, the number of clickers clearly outnumber the advertisers. In order to give its members their compensation, PTCs need to come up with a source of funding other than from the real advertisers.

Briefly...
1. Gold, premium, or upgraded membership - the members will pay the PTCs a certain amount so that each of their click will be earning higher than usual and gain other, if any, benefits.

2. Selling unreferred of self-referred members to other members - PTCs pay for referral clicks.

I listed just two for they are the most obvious

PTCs continue to advertise on how much more they will pay its members by upgrading and by buying more referrals. In this way, PTCs gain funds from its members, and from these funds, they pay the other members.

The cycle will continue wherein members will be investing through upgrading and buying referrals.

For a time everything will be okay, until the PTCs dry out all the possible members or until the rate of payment to members exceeds the rate of investment.

and when that time comes, the owner runs away with the remaining money...
A few of the PTC Sites
These are examples of the known PTC sites. I will try to update and categorize them every week or as often as possible.

BUX SITES

the fast paying sites (usually in less than 24 hours)
neobux
buxout

the not so fast paying sites (almost a week or more)
thinkbux
crewbux
isabelmarco

AURORA-TYPE SITES
clixmakesense
clixncash
incentria
persianptc
clicksia

other HYIP/autosurf sites

megalido
coinsurf
15dailypay
12dailyforever
fxstable
finofex
bristolcapitalgroup
Tips on how not to be SCAMMED
DO NOT JOIN PTCs???

Yes, I think that is the best solution.

But if you do think you are better than the rest of us, then by all means please do so.

But still, somehow I feel responsible for you so...

1. Read the forums first.
A lot of the posts are made by the creators themselves so please take time to read them. If they do not have any, then how will you know if they really pay?

2. Find out who runs the site. Known scammer site owner simply just create a new one once the last one has closed down.

3. Find out how long the site has been running. Remember that they do not have any products to sell other than clicking their self advertisements. If it is too "old", it will soon close down. If it is too "young" it might not grow old at all.

4. Read the TOS (Terms of Service), especially on the getting paid part.

5. It is better to find real referral than buying bots. It is free.

Getting referrals is your form of investment. Either you buy or refer others. You could also advertise the site to get your referrals.
How to earn through PTC sites?
There are several methods how to earn in PTC sites, and it does not include solo clicking because if you do, you would end up clicking and clicking and clicking but not get paid at all.

If you do not have cash to spare or too afraid to invest, try the following:

1. Be a downline. It does not sound too good but this could be your first step. Find a good upline that would pay you back for your clicks. You will be able to earn faster if you could negotiate to be a referral on most (if not all) PTCs your upline has. You can then negotiate to your upline to combine your earnings and be paid. This is a lot faster than waiting a month or more to get to the minimum payout for a single PTC.

2. Advertise the site. Post your referral link to forums. It's free.

3. Refer real people or friends. This option, however, might make you the escape goat if you and your friends got scammed.

If you have cash to spare, you can do any or all of the following:

4. Rent/Buy referrals. This is of course a gamble. You might end up wasting money on inactive referrals or end up buying referrals again and again only to lose all you investments. Be strict on your budget.

5. Buy advertisement on other PTCs either by banners, links, or paid to sign ups. This is little cheaper than buying referrals but with less yield.

6. Referral cash back program. Offer money to people who would want to be your referral, and pay them.

7. Find reliable lists of paying sites and reliable lists of scam sites

Infosys to recruit less people this fiscal

In a clear sign of slowdown in the IT sector, Infosys Technologies on Tuesday said it planned to hire about 25,000 people in the current fiscal, nearly 29 per cent less than the total recruitments done last financial year. The IT giant had recruited 35,000 people in 2007-08.

Addressing a press conference here, Infosys Senior Vice-President, and Group Head of Human Resources, Nandita Gurjar, said the company was planning to hire 25,000 people in the current fiscal out of which 18,000 would be hired through campus recruitment.

Ms. Gurjar said the company had not made any changes in hiring plans due to global slowdown. However, she said that the impact on hiring could be visible in the last two quarters of the current fiscal. “The third and fourth quarters would be the time when the firm tends to tighten up its hiring,” she added.

Noting that the company would have liked more people to come in, Ms. Gurjar said the reason for lower numbers was not just due to economic slowdown but many other factors, including infrastructure and business plans. According to statistics provided by the firm, it had 3,372 trainees for the quarter ended June 30, 2008, whereas the same stood at 5,070 in the corresponding period a year ago. On attrition rates, she said levels had come down in recent times and was hovering at little over 13 per cent. As on the first quarter of this fiscal, the attrition was 13.6 per cent, marginally lower than 13.7 per cent in the year-ago period. Infosys, in a first of its kind initiative, would be introducing promotion for its employees twice-a-year. “The new policy would not add to our wage pressures as the process has already been factored into our HR structure,” she added.



In an effort to address the shortage of skilled workforce, Infosys is looking to form a consortium along with other top five Indian IT hirers to nurture talent in engineering colleges. “We are in discussions with other players and look forward to create a consortium with top five hirers...and also hope to get things rolling by the end of this year,” Ms. Nandita Gurjar said. However, investment details for the planned consortium were not disclosed.