Patrick and Andy over at Text Link Ads have announced the launch of the Text Link Ads Calculator, which can be viewed here. Very handy tool if you’ve ever wondered what sort of money you can get from TLA. Certainly I’ve been having a lot of success with them lately, both personally and with b5media, so I’d recommend it, although sign up here after you check out the calculator.

Xedant has the details on how people are gaming Adsense using Adwords and made for Adsense sites. We’ve all seen them before, but these guys spell it out far more clearly for the beginner through to the most experienced online Adsense star.

I’ve stayed pretty quiet on the BlogHer crowd for a long time, since maybe 12-18 months ago at The Blog Herald, but now I read this rubbish at the Contra Costa Times and I can’t help but comment again.

You see, there’s an agenda at foot, and it isn’t about empowering women to blog.

Their motto: “where the women bloggers are” is condescending and self serving to start with. If I was a female blogger I’d find the motto offensive. They’ve got about 2800 members, at congrats to them, it’s a great figure for any sort of organisation, but clearly the women bloggers aren’t at BlogHer, they’re every where.

They’ve at least now admitted that there are more women writing blogs than men (in the past they claimed the opposite) but then they fall back on the tired and tested rubbish of obsessing about “the A-List” and a lack of female representation.

Without going back over the whole history of the development of blogging, the so-called A-Lists are a historical quirk that is changing every day, and has changed rapidly since BlogHer first opened it’s doors. Sure, there are more men on it, but men were pretty much there first, amongst the geeks who first started blogging, and have the advantage of time in building things like traffic and in-bound links.

But the problem for my liking is this “victimhood” mentality that women are hard done by on the blogosphere. It’s crap….complete and utter crap, because at the end of the day an A-List of any sort is just that, a list, and lists really don’t mean anything in the long tail that is the blogosphere.

Let’s take my own b5media for example. We have more women bloggers then men. I couldn’t give you an exact figure, because I don’t really care about our ratio of women to men. See, we hire bloggers based on their skills, not their gender, race, sexuality, disabilities or any other criteria.

Continue Reading…

My brush with D List Fame: Elise from Big Brother:

Lots of Extra probably totally uninteresting photos coming to my Flickr account shortly….once I deal with the 1281….1282….whoops they are still downloading….emails 🙂

Tags: Big Brother

OK, so the whole ask Duncan thing didn’t work so we’ll (I’m still open for q’s) but Darren ask’s as good question:

“Why do you love Big Brother so much?”

Well Darren, the short answer:

I live in the Country.

The long Answer:

I live in the Country.

Seriously though, we don’t get Channel 10 locally where I live. I saw the first two series of Big Brother when I lived in Mandurah, about 100km North of where I am now, which could get Perth TV no probs.

Where I am now, you’ve got to have a bloody great big antenna to get Perth TV. Our first house we bought down here did, but we were about 5km North of Bunbry, and reception was variable. Sometimes we got it, some times we didn’t. It was too hard for the 3rd series. So I gave in.

Then she who must be obeyed decided we should build a house. So we moved into a rental property whilst the new house was being built. It had NO antenna at all. Getting local TV involved a balancing act with Rabits Ears. So I didn’t see any of series 4 or 5. WIN does show it late at night, but I’m not one to be up at 11:30pm to watch it.

So we come to today. I’m in the new house. Another 5km North again, and we’ve got “community” TV, ie, cabled TV to all houses on the estate so no one has to have a TV antenna (indeed, they aren’t allowed). It’s a huge mast, maybe 15-20m high (just a street away) and now I can get (most of the time) Perth TV. And hence I can watch Big Brother. I’ve not watched it for years, so I’m totally hooked. If I’d watched it every year I’d probably be sick of it, but I haven’t. And I quite like this year’s crew. Hence, I’m going on Holidays, and I’m going to a Big Brother Eviction. Yep, it’s wacky, but why not. You only live once, and I’m hoping Camilla is evicted only so I can ask her “why don’t you think you are dirty when you love to do a spit roast” 🙂

They say only in America. And only in America could law makers, elected representatives, put forward legislation that would punish and ban those under 18 from joining Social Networking sites and blogging, whilst totally ignoring the very people they are concerned about: online predators. I suppose in a society that allows every man and his dog to have a gun, that punishing the innocent whilst ignoring the guilty (or socially deviant in this case) makes sense.

From News.com:

MySpace and other social-networking sites like LiveJournal.com and Facebook are facing a new threat: a proposed federal law that would effectively require most schools and libraries to render those Web sites inaccessible to minors, an age group that includes some of the category’s most ardent users.

“When children leave the home and go to school or the public library and have access to social-networking sites, we have reason to be concerned,” Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican, told CNET News.com in an interview.

Fitzpatrick and fellow Republicans, including House Speaker Dennis Hastert, on Wednesday endorsed new legislation (click here for PDF) that would cordon off access to commercial Web sites that let users create public “Web pages or profiles” and also offer a discussion board, chat room, or e-mail service.

That’s a broad category that covers far more than social-networking sites such as Friendster and Google’s Orkut.com. It would also sweep in a wide range of interactive Web sites and services, including Blogger.com, AOL and Yahoo’s instant-messaging features, and Microsoft’s Xbox 360, which permits in-game chat.

That’s right. Punish the 16 and 17 year olds who are using these services, but the few sick people who might be a threat….well who give’s a rat you know what about them, because it’s all the kiddies fault. I’ve got to ask, do these people also think that a rape victim is responsible for their rape because they wore a short skirt? Funny really, here in Australia Muslim preachers recently said that exact thing. So the US Government, fighting their crusade against the Muslim World, is now basically trying to implement the same fanatical laws you do find in radical Muslim Countries.

Nuts really.

Just got my hands on a beta invite to the new beaut Aussie Blog Search Engine Gnoos, and I find this article.

Now of course people always find it easy to attack behind a cloak of anonymity, and there’s no way of commenting on the site, so I’ll comment here.

1. I couldn’t give a rats arse if you don’t like (who ever you are) what I write here at duncanriley.com. As I’ve written in the past, I couldn’t care less about the traffic. Honestly. I even turned on full feeds, against the advice I have give to others for years, because I don’t really care. This is my personal blog. If it has 10 readers or 1 million, I don’t care. I’m not making much (if any) money from this blog, I’m doing it for fun. I might start up a new blog in the future (although time with working on b5media is a premium these days) on a particular topic, but my personal blog is just that. Random thoughts, observations, even the occasional bit of crap. Some days, or even weeks you’ll see a ton of posts here, other times you will see hardly any. I’m blogging here because I enjoy it, and no amount of crap talk is going to spoil that for me.

2. In relation to link baiting. The stuff about Scoble is honest to god thoughts. I’m not seeing much traffic off of it, so if it’s link baiting I must be failing, and I can tell you, if I really wanted to link bait I’d be doing it properly. As for Seth, again, just an observation. The guys hyped, he’s backed a dud, it’s going to be interesting seeing how he will handle the situation. That’s my opinion, you don’t have to like it.

3. As for your comments about The Blog Herald….what can I say, jealousy is an awful thing.

4. Black Sheep of b5….yeah probably, but not for the reasons you think.

I’m taking a more back seat role these days, working with b5media, helping others, and building something bigger than me, and more importantly I’m enjoying myself a lot more than I was, say, at this time last year. No amount of bullsh*t from an anonymous blogger is going to spoit that, you see, I might not always be right, but I’ve at least got the guts to put my name to my opinions, and allow others to comment on them.

Update: read this blog some more, he or she is a Collingwood supporter, need I say more 🙂

This from a Media Post Email:

As Shari Thurow points out, AdSense creates A LOT of so-called search engine spam, which refers to the myriad link farms and other bogus sites appearing in natural listings that make their money off a combination of AdSense and high natural search placement. Link farming is the process of exchanging links with other Web sites in order to boost your natural ranking. Google considers this a form of spam, and bans sites that have deployed the tactic.

(I added the bold for emphasis).

I’m guessing that they’ve taken this too far in defining it, but it’s scary none the less. Swapping a link or two with a like minded site isn’t just about gaming Google, it’s essentially free advertising for your sites and helps with traffic as well.

Reports Online Media Daily:

CONTROVERSIAL ADWARE COMPANY 180SOLUTIONS AT the end of last month quietly began offering streams of two shows distributed by Warner Bros. Online. The shows–the soap opera “Deception” and the animated show “Medical Island”–were created specifically for the Web.

Both programs are available online exclusively on 180solutions’ consumer site, Zango.com. Visitors to the site can only view the shows if they agree to download the company’s ad-serving software, which serves up to six pop-up ads daily, based on Web-surfing behavior.

First Sony and a Root Kit. Now Warner Bros and Popup ads. What next? Microsoft and Spyware???

Tags: warner bros, 180solutions

I’m really, really trying to be positive about new tools lately, but after playing with Google Trends, I can’t really get excited.

According to Steve Rubel:

Google Trends analyzes a portion of Google searches to compute how many searches have been done for certain terms relative to the sum total. It includes a news-volume graph too that shows you the number of times your topic appeared in Google News stories. Unfortunately, unlike Google Finance it does not include blogs. This is a lost opportunity given Google’s interest in furthering peer-to-peer media. You can compare up to five terms by separating each term with a comma.

But it appears to be quite an inconcise science at this stage. For example, try a comparison between Weblogs Inc and Gawker Media, it’s nearly impossible, limit it down to Weblogs v Gawker, and you get this:

Yep, apparently more people in Iran read Gawker Media and Weblogs Inc, at least according to Google.

It’s a start I suppose. Anyone want to take bets about how long this one stays in beta? 🙂