All posts by The Artist

FTC Keeping An Eye On New Media Advertising

In the past week, blogs and social networks have been abuzz with the revisions that have been made to its advertising practices rules to include online and blog advertising and product endorsements by celebrities. Basically, this new set of rules applies to everyone and anyone who endorses a product or service in any form or medium.

From 1st December, 2009 onwards, the Federal Trade Commission’s new rules will come into effect and bloggers who have been compensated for a blog post will be fined US$11,000 is there is no disclosure. No, bloggers are not TOLD what or how to write, they are just told to let readers know that they have been paid for the post(s), if that is not obvious enough. Of course, this is what advertisers DO NOT want.

Fair or not is not for me to say but there’s no denying that there’s a lot of gray areas here, just like what happened to some blogger friends who blogged about stuff without compensation but were accused of receiving compensation by PPP and hence received rejections for their posts.

Well, let’s just see how this will be implemented.

Google Wave

Google’s latest product known as Google Wave, was rolled out to 100,000 pre-release testers last Wednesday who are responsible to turn the product inside out to look for bugs and what-not and feedback the company.

Each of these 100,000 testers are allowed to invite up to five people to try out the product, though of of them were found to be selling their invites on eBay for cash consideration instead.

Google Wave, which you can preview at http://wave.google.com/, incorporates email, instant messaging and microblogging. I have read some pretty negative comments so far but then I guess it takes time for a new product to grow on its users.

If you would like to try out Google Wave, you can bid for an invite on eBay, or you could request for an invite by placing your email address with Google. Whether you will get one before Google Wave rolls out to the masses depends on luck, I guess. In any case, a three-in-one product sounds really interesting but may be too distracting for my liking.

Gold For Long Term Investment

My friends and I are always on the lookout for new investment options. Thanks to access to the internet, we are able to do intensive research on various forms of investments before putting our money down. Because of age factor, most of us are in favor of long term investment and because we are all busy working, our preferred investment is something that requires the least maintenance. Some investments require a lot of time and attention, some requires additional financing. I can’t speak for the rest but for the time being, I am not able to put in more money that what I have currently saved up.

We have been contemplating investing in precious metals, particularly in gold. Gold is an extremely viable investment because it does not require any additional “top up” of capital if we are not able to. It also does not require the kind of attention that stocks do or carries as high a risk. In addition, the price of gold has been holding strong for generations already. Even if gold is not something we like investing in, gold makes valuable family heirloom too.

A good time for gold investment is actually now. Although the price of gold is on the high side, a correction is expected soon and that is a good time to go in. Although some people may say that gold has already hit its high with over a thousand dollars an ounce, I think that with the stock piling of gold and other commodities by super economies like China, the price of gold will hold, if it doesn’t go up as quickly as an investor would like it to.

We could make or break investing in the commodity market provided we ride on the tide, seizing opportunities as they present themselves. And thanks to China’s massive investments and takeovers of mining and mineral companies around the world, interest in commodities have remained strong these past couple of years which caused prices of all commodities to skyrocket despite a weaker economy.

I’ve been thinking that since gold investment involves quite a large sum of money, a good way to see profits is to pool our capital together. I don’t think this should be a problem since we all have the same investment goal.

Yahoo! Kills Xoopit For Gmail Users

If you are a Xoopit user, which in my opinion is an awesome media browsing application that pulls media files and attachments from our Gmail account, then I am afraid that Yahoo! has bad news for you.

Xoopit has been acquired by Yahoo! about two months ago and now, they are going to disable Xoopit’s integration with Gmail accounts. This of course, means that someone would come up with a Gmail Lab that does something similar.

On the other hand, Yahoo! has plans for Xoopit and Yahoo! Mail users. I expect to see Xoopit in my Yahoo! Mail account soon enough but I am unsure if I will be using it.

If this affects you, do note that you have until 13th November, 2009 to download your media from Yahoo’s servers if you have deleted them from your Gmail account already.

Online Security Scanner

Most people know me as a blogger but I actually also run a personal website and an eCommerce store. Although I am not a technical person, I am lucky to have friends who willingly help me, or at least point me to the right resources to use to keep my slew of blogs and websites running smoothly.

As a webmistress, my main concern is the security of my websites. This is particularly true for my eCommerce store which accepts payment from buyers by credit card. According to a report by SANS The Top Cyber Security Risks Sep 2009, 60% of hacks are targeted towards websites. According to Verizon Business Data Breach report 2008, 70% of websites are vulnerable to hack attacks. You can bet that I cannot afford any loopholes for hackers to exploit.

A few days ago, I was told of this online website security scanner called Powerfuzzer and managed to try out scanning my eCommerce Store. Scanning my domain was a simple affair. I just had to place an order, pay with it via PayPal and then sit back while Powerfuzzer does its work. If I were to write a Powerfuzzer Online – review, it would be a lengthy affair but to cut the story short, I now know where the weaknesses lie on my website and will have the opportunity to make changes to keep my website more secure before a hack attack happens.

Powerfuzzer charges US$59.99 per domain scan but it will be well worth your money, especially if you run a commercial website. Did you know that there are many websites that offer similar services at a far higher price? Don’t be surprised that some would charge you thousands for doing something similar! Powerfuzzer is able to help us keep cost low thanks to its usage of open source technologies and human touch!

Project 10^100 Vote NOW

received an email from the Project 10^100 Team yesterday reminding us to vote for the best idea in Project 10^100. First of all, I have to say that this email shouldn’t be a “reminder” because we were not invited to vote in the first place. And secondly, this has been a long time coming.

Did you know, the call for entries was in October last year, which means that it’s almost a YEAR since then. With only approximately 150,000 entries from around the world, one has to wonder if they really needed this long to short list our entries.

Another thing that disappoints me is that based on the items that are open to our votes, it looks like the Project 10^100 Team has grouped together multiple ideas to come up with groups of ideas.

If you ask me how they are going to select the winners or distribute the prizes based on this list of short listed ideas, I have no idea. In fact, I went and read through the short listed group of ideas and found NONE of them truly worth my vote. None of them hit the right note, if you know what I mean, and so I withheld my vote.

If you would like to cast a vote, visit this link before 8th October, 2009: http://www.project10tothe100.com/vote.html

Annual Family Vacation

My friend, Stella, is one lucky lady because her husband treats the family to an annual vacation abroad every December. Stella told me that it’s time to start planning now even if it’s only just September but I think that even if she does all her vacation research and planning online, it is still a lot of hassle as the family increases in size.

I think that the family should just go on one of those All inclusive family vacations where the only thing they have to worry about are air tickets! I know I would certainly take this easy way out if I have the chance to get away like they do annually!

With everything planned for holidaymakers in an all inclusive vacation, Stella would enjoy her holiday more without the stress that comes with organizing a family vacation!