Registerfly Thursday, Oct 26 2006
Domains 12:03 pm
Registerfly gives ICANN accreditation a bad name.
Halloween Special at BOTW (Best of the Web) Friday, Oct 6 2006
Directories and Promo Codes 1:08 am
Best of the Web, aka BOTW, is probably the best overall deal for a paid directory out there–and the deal is even better during their Halloween special. Enter SPOOKY as the promo code during the sign-up and you’ll save 15%. Plus, each submission that uses that promo code will enter you in a chance to win a 42″ Panasonic Plasma HDTV.
Bitacle.org – Content Scraping Scumbags Saturday, Sep 23 2006
WTF? 3:50 am
Bitacle.org gets my vote for the Dirtbag of the Year award. Scraping is bad enough, but Bitacle is stealing content, putting their own copyright on it, injecting it with their Adsense, adding comment forms that submit to their site and generally just doing whatever they can do to make it look like it’s theirs. They even added the buttons to Digg it as theirs.
They’re already making a lot of friends.
Yesterday, they were modifying the content and putting their Adsense in the middle of the stolen articles, but today it looks like they moved it to the top of the page, with two more ad units at the bottom.
The site: command shows 995,000 pages indexed in Google. Hopefully, they’ll handle this and change it to zero, as well as yank the Adsense account.
What to do if they steal your content? You probably won’t have much luck getting them to take it down… but you could probably send an email to adsense-abuse@google.com and let them know what’s going on, as well as fill out the Google spam complaint form.
Other ideas:
- Block them (or mess with them) using .htaccess, redirects, etc.
- Trash their version of your site with the comment form they added. Maybe start off by posting a message that it’s stolen content, advise readers to report it, then go ahead and give yourself a link to your site.
- I believe they steal images, too. If they’re hotlinking your images, you could show something different when loaded from their site. I’d recommend something offensive that breaks Adsense’s TOS… then report that violation.
- I added some code to the header that checks to see if people are referred from there. If so, they get a message about the Bitacle dirtbags, advice to report them, then a link to this post.
I’ll probably update/edit this later–I just wanted to get something up, so I’d have something to redirect to.
Linksys WRT54GL Wireless Router Review Friday, Sep 22 2006
Product Reviews and Wireless Routers 2:38 am
As I mentioned in my Netgear router review, I had ordered a Linksys WRT54GL to replace it. I gotta say that after being a happy Netgear user for many years, a few months of using this router has made me a Linksys convert. Note: If you don’t care about messing with the firmware, you can save a few bucks and buy the WRT54G instead.
There’s really not much to say about the WRT54G/WRT54GL that hasn’t already been said in the thousands of other reviews out there, but I do want to mention a few things…
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Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby Sunday, Aug 20 2006
Movies & Music 1:28 am
Talladega Nights is a great movie! Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly worked great together in this one. Some people said they really didn’t care for the movie or think it was funny. I like to call those people “liars.”
Other recent movies that were definitely worth seeing:
AzoogleAds Toolbar For Firefox and IE Friday, Aug 11 2006
Firefox & Extensions 10:14 am
Azoogle is a great CPA network. If you haven’t already heard of them, give them a try.
If you already have an account with them, and missed the announcement, check out the Azoogle Toolbar for Firefox and IE. You can contact them for the beta release.
I just installed it with the latest version of Firefox and it looks good so far. Clicks, leads, payout & eCPC at a glance, similar to what Adsense Notifier does with Adsense. You can also set it to display monthly or daily stats.
I have a bunch of other extensions installed, none of which seem to conflict with the AzoogleAds Toolbar.
Nice work, Azoogle!
Transferring Domains Away From Yahoo Friday, Aug 11 2006
Domains 8:53 am
This isn’t a post saying that you should transfer away from Yahoo.
I’ve read several posts claiming that you can’t transfer away from Yahoo, stating that they lure you in with the sale prices, then trap you so you have to renew at full price.
Just for kicks, I figured I’d try to transfer a Yahoo domain to my Directi account. I unlocked the domain and initiated the transfer on 8/6, which completed today. Not the world’s fastest transfer, but it was problem-free and they didn’t try to hold me hostage.
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Adsense Notifier – Firefox Plugin Sunday, Aug 6 2006
Firefox & Extensions and Google 1:50 am
If you use Firefox and have an Adsense account, you probably already know about the Adsense Notifier extension.
Great extension. I didn’t realize how often I look at it until it was crippled by a recent change in the login procedure by Google. This was bad timing, as it happened at about the same time that Firefox released v1.5.0.6, making it look like it could be browser problem. Anyway, thumbs-up to the creator for quickly fixing it!