slamboard

Hi, thank you for coming here to read my blog. I appreciate every reader. I enjoy your feedback and I like to think that I am writing something that you will enjoy. I do not, at this time (January 15th, 2008), make any money as a direct consequence to your welcomed visit.

If I had Net Audio Ads on my blog, you would hear a 5 second audio advertisement from someone who had bid for placement in the network in much the same way that advertisers bid for Google ads. NetAudioAds™ Pay-Per-Play advertising has been up and running for a while and the HUGE difference with these ads is that a webmaster or blogger gets paid for everyone who visits.

I listened to the sales pitch for the affiliate program. This program is FREE, but they are only accepting signups until February 1st.

I am tempted… and I am going to think long and hard about the concept. I suggest that anyone reading this who has a blog or website check it out as well. If you start a discussion about it, I predict that someone will suggest that the ads will reduce your return readership. I remember a lot of complaining about Adsense ads in the beginning, too. There were lots of webmasters who rode their high horses around for years about it. I think the VAST majority of internet users accept them as a normal and ubiquitous part of the landscape now. Just like with TV and radio ads, some people take notice of them and some people ignore them. It is kind of sad that so many of us bloggers include contextual ads on our sites when they only generate pennies for most of us. I like the idea of being paid when an audio ad is played on my site regardless of whether or not the reader is listening. I am still apprehensive about the possibility of offending my readers. I know that I don’t like it when I accidentally run the cursor across those stupid smileys that scream Oh My GOD, No WAY?!?!?

If you have the same sort of opinions on this, you should go in as far as the long sales letter because there is a link to some actual ad clips there. They are actually pretty easy on the ears. Obviously, I was expecting to hear them, but I think they are carefully designed to be a moderate intrusion.

This needs to be seen.

I am posting this because of it’s implications about how big business is in control of how news is reported. I don’t want to be alarmist about the story that FOX killed at the behest of Monsanto. I have a degree in agriculture and I was part of a big discussion about the use of hormone injections in the dairy industry in one of my classes. My professor was very much in favor of the practice. This was during the period of time in which it was unclear which way the Canadian government agency was going to swing on this issue. The use of low levels of antibiotics in feed for animals that are raised for meat production is, in my mind, a much greater human risk and it is a practice that is widespread.

Canada prohibits the use of rbST because of its adverse health effects on cows, not humans.

Do you have a message that you would like to have printed on a tiny piece of paper and dropped onto the heads of drunken New Yorkers? Act fast this page that allows you to submit a New Years Message to be delivered in this unique fashion has a fast approaching deadline.

A drawn out writers strike may become a catalyst for the implosion of American network television. Television is driven by advertisement and it is filled with as much advertisement as people can stomach. Once viewers tune out the ad money will dry up followed by a accelerated deterioration in program quality. I think this will happen. I also think that much like what happened with AM radio, television will not disappear. What will happen is that it will become something else. I don’t watch television and I haven’t for about 3 years. There are a few guilty pleasures that I view on YouTube now and then but I am mostly unaware of what is on television now.

Conrad Black may be more well known in Canada than in the US, where he has been convicted of fraud. He was the poster child for media monopoly in Canada for many years. He also made quite a stir when he renounced his Canadian citizenship so that he could accept a noble title from Great Britain.

I haven’t been following his trial at all because I knew that it would be an excruciatingly drawn out affair. The discussion in the media today is about whether his lack of remorse will be a factor in sentencing. I think the judge will must know that the sentence will be appealed and he will therefore aim for a sentence length that is long enough to make the judge look tough and short enough to make Conrad look girlier than Martha Stewart.

I am glad that the Kimkins story has been the subject of several news segments on the local Fox news in LA. The most recent episode contained seemed to involve the news team taking a bit more credit for many of the discoveries that were actually made by people who had been working on exposing the fraud long before it came to the attention of TV news. I’m OK with that. I have seen a lot of incidents in the world of politics and business where information coming from the blogosphere is discounted simply because it is coming from bloggers. I would rather see KTLA run with the story than have it stay at a slow crawl on the Internet.

I have an old school memory involving an elderly substitute teacher who was hopelessy out of his depth when it came to operating the film projector. I really felt sorry for him. The episode made him appear incompetent in front of the students, but I think that part of the problem was that the projector was poorly maintained and didn’t work right to begin with.

Presentationmart.com is a website that can help you get the right projector lamp bulbs and other supplies needed to maintain a dependable AV supply for you business. The standard equipment has changed a lot since I was involved in academics. Overhead projectors using transparencies are still used by some people but DLP and LCP projectors are becoming more commonplace all the time. This economical projector model costs about $550. Replacement lamps cost over $200, so you certainly want to be sure that you are ordering the right model. The price range of projectors is amazing, I am quite curious as to what kind of differences there are in quality, performance and features between a $559 projector and a $27,000 projector.

Here is a fluff piece on FOX. At about the two minute mark, the product called Age Intervention Eyelash gets some very positive press. This is the product that was confiscated from a San Jose factory this past week.

The FDA is recommending that anyone who may still have Age Intervention Eyelash stop using it and discard any unused product. The FDA is also advising consumers to consult health care professionals if they have experienced any adverse events that they may be related to the use of Age Intervention Eyelash by Jan Marini Skin Research, Inc..

Source for this story: MSNBC

Conspiracy Theory is a term that has been effectively made innocuous. You should try to look past the generality that is put forth about how conspiracy theorists are all nuts and that the theories are all wildly implausible. The fact is individuals and corporations WILL conspire when it is in their interests.

You may have conspired at some point. Are you a parent? Have you been telling a small child about Santa Claus? Is your spouse backing you up?

This animated short was aired during a live broadcast of Saturday Night Live, but edited out of subsequent reruns. GE owns NBC.

Lorne Michaels has stated that he had the controversial piece removed because it didn’t work. There is, of course, a theory that he bowed to corporate pressure. I wonder if this would be on YouTube if NewsCorp owned it?

There is some very bad hacking going on related to popular MySpace pages. I would advise people to simply stay away from the site.

Security and functionality exist in an inverse relationship…

– Exploit Prevention’s Chief Technical Officer Roger Thompson

The current situation does not involve American teens hacking passwords and replacing your text with the word gay. This is from a Chinese malware site and software is placed on your computer that makes your computer prone to future attacks. Pages of popular musicians are the main targets. Users that have typical protections on their computers are asked to download a codec that is not a codec.