Check this out: Blogvertise. From their how it works page:

Once your account is registered you will then add your blogs for review and approval. Once approved by the administrator your blogs are inserted into the assignment queue, where you will then be emailed tasks/new assignments to write about in your blog. Please read our rules At that point you should login to see the user service and how it works.

When the task assigned to you, You will be emailed a website url along with a brief note. Your task will be to mention the website in your blog and provide at least 3 links to the website in your blog entry. Your entry must be permanent and should not be deleted in the future. Note: You do not have to endorse the website’s products or services, just mention it, discuss it, or relate to it somehow in your blog/journal entry.

This is far more evil than Pay Per Post. At least PPP allows you to pick who you mention, these guys email the stuff through.

Jason Calacanis posts on what he’s calling Media Philanthropy. Oddly enough I love the sentiment. Indeed, once I start getting an income from b5media (shortly I’m promised, I did after all sign on a dotted line in relation to formal employment contract) it’s something I might consider for the $100 odd US dollars this site makes a month.

Of course the hard thing then becomes who to give the funds to. It’s always an interesting debate. It’s something we’ve discussed b5media doing to some extent as well into the future. However personally I tend to remain highly skeptical of most so-called charities.

Very few Australians would forget the scandal of the Australian Red Cross taking millions in donations for the victims of the 2002 Bali Bombings, only to find out later that the Red Cross held on to half of the funds.

Other charities such as World Vision do, in my mind, little good. Not only are significant amounts of donations gobbled up by “administrative” fees, the money on the ground does little to actually help these people in the long term. What’s the old saying, give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach him how to fish and he eats forever…something along those lines. Feeding some poor third world child isn’t going to change their community for the better, even if it helps clense some sort of white middle class guilt for thousands of Australians.

Other so-called charities, such as Oxfam and Amnesty are far too political in their goals, interfering in countries such as Australia whilst ignoring some of the other horrors in the rest of the world because their ideological brethren run those countries.

Which leaves me with a few choices. I can remember Robert Kiyosaki of Rich Dad, Poor Dad fame was involved in a charity that looked at providing teaching and tools to kids worldwide in how to understand money etc…to me that’s a fish catching exercise and would be worthwhile. Question I guess, is there something like that in Australia. The other alternative is to put the money back into the Open Source movement. I already fairly regularly make donations to various open source movements, I’ve given small amounts to WordPress and Mozilla for example, and on other occasions donations to similar open source writers and movements. It’s a movement I believe strongly in, even if some of it’s members seek to equate open source with communism…the copy left and the Soviet imagery used doesn’t sit well with me at all, and yet it’s a movement I’ve launched a 100 + websites off the back off.

Lots of food for thought.

Im the guest on this weeks Blog Herald podcast. Aside from saying Ummm to often, I think I did ok, at least I held relatively held myself back when asked an interesting question towards the end 🙂

Firefox is great, right? but you can make it better.

1. Downthemall

The one thing Mozilla can’t seem to get right with Firefox is the downloading feature, although having said that it’s not like Internet Explorer is any better either. Downthemall powers up downloading in Firefox. Not only does it speed your downloads up, it includes pause and resuming support and the ability to download all images from a page should you so desire. 110% recommended.

2. Forecastfox

OK, so I’m a weather junkie. There is actually quite a few different addons available for Firefox to add weather to Firefox, however all in all Forecastfox works for me, particularly because most plugins are far to US centric and don’t tend to provide decent support for those in the rest of the world, where as Forecastfox does.

3. Search Status

The essential tool for getting details on websites quickly. Right click support for quick whois look ups, SEO tools + probably the most important feature for me: it supports sending Alexa stats, which obviously helps with making sure you’re own websites get a look in at Alexa given there’s no Alexa Toolbar for Firefox…indeed, it’s actually better than having the Alexa toolbar, all the benefits without the other rubbish included.

4. StumbleUpon

Do you ever get bored with the internet? come on, admit it, sometimes it’s nice to spend some time not working and just finding some great new sites. StumbleUpon delivers this and more. I don’t use some of the social network aspects of the toolbar, but in terms of just surfing sites for the fun of it, based on topic interest, it’s great, indeed sometimes it’s hard to stop using it 🙂

5. Web Developer

According to their website, The Web Developer extension adds a menu and a toolbar to the browser with various web developer tools. For anyone working with templates or designing on any level, it’s a must have. Can’t remember what part of site relates to in the CSS file, use it, want to be able to look at code behind the scenes, use it…there are probably 100 other reasons to be using it as well and I’ve probably only personally used 10% of it’s functionality, but these days I can’t live without it.

6. Video Downloader

Ever visit YouTube or a similar site and watched a clip and thought wouldn’t it be great if you could download a copy, then this plugin is for you.

7. Viamatic foXpose

If you’re like me sometimes you forget what you’ve got open in each of your tabs. foXpose comes to the rescue by adding an Opera style show all tabs in the one window feature. Sure, you’re not going to die by not having this, but it’s nifty and you’d be surprised how often you end up using it.

8. FoxyTunes

Control your music from with Firefox, you need not go another screen again!

9. Converter

If you’re like me and you’ve got no idea what a square foot is, this plugin is for you. You use it to convert imperial measurements to metric ones, or vice versa.

10. IE Tab

If you absolutely must view a site in IE because some moron has decided that web standards don’t matter, IE Tab is for you, allowing you to render any page/ link in Firefox, but using the IE rendering engine, basically like having IE inline in Firefox for you to use if you need it.

That’s the list. There are heaps of others out there as well. I would have liked to have added FireFTP and Chatzilla to the list, but I’m not convinced either are totally up to scratch, even if I do use them on occasion.

Tags: Firefox, Firefox Add-ons, Firefox extras, Firefox plugins

Sometimes I find it’s difficult to know what to write for my weekly column at The Blogging Times, and then I just threw out the rule book.

Here’s a side thought though, is there a word to describe this style of writing? Chartreuse does it best, I’m literally a pale imitation, and yet it’s somewhat liberating. It’s fun even when I poke fun at myself..the hidden part is the “functionally illiterate” part, it’s one of she who must be obeyed’s favourite ways of describing me, but hey, I’m not the PR guru she is. For starters I tend to be too honest with people, even when it’s probably to my own detriment. 🙂

Congrats to b5’s Successful Blogger (literally) Liz Strauss on news that’s she’s joined me and the party that is happening at The Blogging Times.

I’ve got nothing to disclose at this point about the site, I don’t own a share in it, but I do get paid a small retainer to write a weekly column at the site…but I digress. As a strategy Minic and Char keep bringing in cool people to add to the site, and as a value ad strategy for me it works. Got to say I’m enjoying Mr Angry’s angry rants, Howard’s posts (when he posts) and Erin continues to improve like a fine wine. I also might be a bit old fashioned when I say this, but I actually like the idea also in terms of it mimicking a MSM publication which has it’s set opinion section..although I’m still not sure Minic what you’re doing with your URL structure set…for example I’m not sure why each post seems to have two actual entries and comment sections therein…but you can’t win them all.

Over at my old stomping ground The Blog Herald Matt’s going really well with the podasting side of it. Touch wood I’ll be, if and when we sort a time out, next weeks guest on the podcast. Different strategy to The Blogging Times, but as a consumer it works for me as well, both blogs have different styles and in many ways have become more complimentary to each other.

And for the record, no. b5media isn’t interested in (ever) reentering the blog reporting space. Personally I don’t want to die of a heart attack at the age of 31. After years of playing that game I just enjoy seeing others do it now.

Bill’s Poker Blog has the best rap up of the current state of play in terms of Online Poker and the results of the absurb decision by the US Congress to ban online gambling (via SEO Black Hat). Having said that, it’s technically illegal here as well. SEJ covers the story as well. b5 isn’t exposed to gambling programs at all, indeed although we’ve been offered money before for gambling related advertising we’ve always said no to it. I’ve run the programs myself before in the past and still have affilate accounts at a couple of the sites. Suffice to say the decision is beyond stupid. It’s not like the US Government is taking a stand and saying gambling is bad…indeed, casino’s and other forms of gambling are, as the local saying goes, a dime a dozen in the states, it’s just because they can’t tax online poker sites properly. America the land of contradictions. World’s biggest porn producer and yet it’s also fastly becoming the land of the not so free should you wish to gamble online.

Ok. so Im playing with the Google Gadget things.. but this is sort of fun.

The odd thing though is that the sizing doesn’t want to work…odd.

Just what the world needs, more plugins for webpages…although having said this the flexibility with some of these is pretty good.

James Martin has launched Google WatchDog with this post.

It’s too late James and Lynn. Google already is big brother, or didn’t you get the memo 🙂 Looks like another blog to add to Bloglines.