As mentioned in an earlier post, the blogging world is abuzz with the changes that Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will impose come 1st December, 2009. Since the bombshell finally dropped earlier this month, I have read many bloggers’ opinions on this issue.

These changes will only affect bloggers in America and it is certainly understandable why they are jittery even though they are not doing anything wrong. After all, a US$11,000 fine per violation is not a joke and it is not going to be easy to prove that one did not receive compensation in any form for writing a blog post.

Anyway, I read that some bloggers have chosen the drastic move to migrate their blogs to web servers outside of the United States just to be on the safe side. Don’t get them wrong, they will still be writing reviews as honestly as they have been doing but they are just not taking any chances with the FTC. Moreover, the United States is a champion of free speech and to disclose or not is really up to the blogger.

Web Hosting Choice has compiled a list of top ten web hosting companies with more information on each hosting company in one page than you could find going from one individual website to another. You can also find a hosting review for each of these top ten companies.

A friend informed me that Google PageRank seemed to be missing from her Google Webmaster Central account already. Curious, I did a search online and quite a few people have blogged about it already.

Apparently, Google says that they are removing Google PageRank because too many webmasters are obsessed with it already. Moreover, it is no longer as important or relevant when it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Google PageRank used to be a pretty good yardstick to measure the importance of a website but due to “statistical imbalances” it is removed.

I personally think that while we are no longer able to see this data, it is still available somewhere in Googleville. We just can’t see it, hence there’s no chance for us to be obsessed with it any longer.

You know, since Google bombed the PageRank of all my blogs and websites, some even became victims by association I no longer cared what PageRank my blogs and websites have. I do admit that I was pretty obsessed at first, especially when I first started to understand the importance of it and but that Google PageRank bomb was an excellent cold turkey cure. Frankly, at this point, whether Google PageRank is still here or not no longer makes a difference.

My friend told me that he has to switch to another web host again after getting a warning from his current web host about a violation to its terms of service. This guy runs a very popular adult website. Well, these days, only adult and gambling sites seem to continue to make money. Even though my friend’s website is “mild”, the host still wanted to shut down my friend’s website because it is not family-orientated. Anyway, it’s now taken offline until my friend could find another host. Meanwhile, his online income is affected.

Actually, running adult websites is sensitive business. Not all web hosts allow this. I know my hosts don’t and if I were to start an adult website, I definitely will have to open a separate hosting account with another web host, a host that supports adult websites.

Even though I have no plans to run an adult-orientated blog or website, just to make it clear, I did a search online to see if there are adult web hosting companies. There aren’t many but guess what? It looks like Web Hosting Choice has found the best adult web hosting company. I am actually surprised that it is so inexpensive to host an adult website since adult-orientated online business is a multi-million dollar concern!

On its blog, YouTube was proud to announce that the website now receives a billion views daily. That’s a fantastic figure for a website that was only started in 2005, but was acquired by Google, and had access to Google’s funding and advertising machinery for US$1.65 billion in 2006.

Although I also use YouTube to host my videos to share on my blogs, I haven’t taken on to YouTube as much as some of my friends. Don’t get me wrong, I do sometimes check out videos, especially music videos, on YouTube and once logged in, I would spend quite a long while there too.

But I know there are people who would make YouTube a part of their online life, like some people would do with Twitter, MySpace and Facebook. Someone I know would spend a few hours every night watching videos on YouTube, clicking on one link after another as if he was chasing television dramas. LOL

I really don’t know what he watches or what’s so nice to watch on YouTube that could grab a person’s attention for hours, but it is this attraction that keeps a person stuck to YouTube on end, multiplying this with millions of people around the world who all contribute to the billion daily views.

A couple of weeks ago, my friend, May, suffered the agony of changing ALL passwords across websites. She had to do this after discovering that her credit card information has been compromised and there were charges to the card from online purchases which she never initiated.

May is only one person in millions who are victims of cyber fraud. One thing that most of us internet users do is to use the same password for all websites that we are registered to, including email accounts, social networking accounts and worst of all, PayPal and internet banking accounts. May was sore and I didn’t dare ask her if this was what she did but she now knows that she has to use a unique password for each and every website she logs in to.

Google Blog has a post on choosing smart passwords although all the points are common sense that we already know but never take the trouble to put into practice. This post is a good reminder for us to do so. We definitely do not want to be forced to do it like May, do we?

P/S: “National” here means the United States.