Twitter Toolkit

While I'm waiting on certain websites to come back online so I can continue writing on other projects, I thought I'd write a short article about Twitter and the tools I use on there to help me keep up with it and make my tweets.

Although opinions on Twitter are divided with many people not using it, I find it invaluable for news updates that often come faster than mainstream news sources.  I don't keep up with trending topics, as these are more often than not peoples personal feelings on their own life to be shared with a select group of friends, but ends up in a worldwide audience that then has to be filtered through to see if there is anything worthwhile - a time consuming process that can sometimes be pointless.  Twitter is a bit like a web based chat and a simple tool to post brief, but extremely fast moving content.  The vast majority of it is needless junk and spam, but if you can filter through that and follow who you want you can be rewarded.  Twitter is a great way to get updates on server status, news events, and ongoings that you might not get elsewhere - even through email or RSS feeds.

Moving on to the toolkit, the most obvious shortfall of Twitter is the fact that posts must be made in 140 characters or less.  This requirement is actually something of an art form, just watch celebrities as they make sentences or jokes in a coherent manner and you'll see what I mean.  This can be done without resorting to acronyms, but I still find it difficult and is one skill I have yet to master.  This is why the first tool in my Twitter Toolkit is Twitlonger.

Twitlonger.com


Twitlonger takes all the text you can type (unlimited) and sticks it in a single tweet, with a single "(cont)" at the end, showing viewers that the rest of your text is on a shortened URL (more on those in a bit) and can be read on their site.  I often find it annoying to have to go through a message I want to tweet and substitute letters, words -- even entire thoughts and ideas and reduce it to fit in the confines of 140 characters.  Twitlonger lets me say whatever I want with correct punctuation and grammar and still makes it palatable to the average Twitter user.  Although putting your full message makes it slightly less accessible to mobile viewers, it makes your content a lot more coherent and reduces the need for multiple tweets to expand upon the same message.  Twitlonger does show ads on their site, which is a bit of a drag, but they are providing a service and obviously they are trying to make a profit doing so (nothing wrong with that).

Bit.ly


URL shortening is essential on Twitter.  This goes without saying as the character limit and the need to post off site links are in the majority of Twitter posts. Bit.ly is the king or URL shortening service and although their URLs are steadily becoming longer, the main advantage they offer over competing shorteners is the availability of tracking statistics to each shortened URL.  By appending a plus sign to the end of any bit.ly URL you are able to see an overview of each click.  Some of the stats it shows are country of origin, where traffic came from, along with whose talking about it and what they're saying.  They also have site specific shorteners for a wide range of sites such as Amazon (shortened to amzn.to).  As mentioned, the main problem with bit.ly is its widespread usage is causing their URLs to become ever longer, negating some of the advantages of shortening.  The other shortener service I use, qoiob.com, gives you much shorter URLs with the novel advantage of one character domains that come out as an arrow, chess pieces, telephone, smiley face and other non-traditional characters.

Yfrog


Yfrog is an image hosting service from well known free image host ImageShack.  Very simply, it takes images you upload to host them and gives you back a shorted URL to post on Twitter.  As of late, they have a new interface on their page that lets you integrate directly with Twitter to see threaded posts and keep track of photos you've posted, giving you an entire new user profile for Yfrog.  Although some people prefer its well known sister site Twitpic, being a long time Imageshack user, Yfrog is just a natural move.

Other Tools


There are many other Twitter apps that give you access to posting and viewing content on Twitter.  Many of them are specific to certain uses such as posting whenever you favorite a Youtube video or listen to a song.  However, I find a lot of this tedious and unnecessary.  Tweeting every time you listen to a song can make your followers rather bored and can lead to people choosing to unfollow you as you clog up their main Twitter page with random songs you listen to or videos you like.  I scrobble all the songs I listen to from my desktop to the web to last.fm using both their scrobbling service and like.fm through a browser extension.  I do this so last.fm can keep track of my music and then recommend me new music I may like through their radio player that I use on the web, in their client, and on my Xbox 360.  However, I realize people don't want to see everytime I play a song, but I like to still post about my music interests.  I use Tweekly.fm which integrates in both Twitter and last.fm and then posts the top 3 artists I've listened to during the week on Sunday (you can customize the day).

Without going over every Twitter application in existence here are a few others I've found useful.

• Twitpoll - Post a survey or a poll on your Twitter for your followers to answer
• Twitrbackgrounds - Customize your Twitter page with a personalized background and color scheme to make it stand out from vanilla Twitter options
• Twitition - Create, share and sign online petitions through your Twitter account
• Disqus - A great commenting system that integrates with most major blogging platform (included on here) and allows you to login and post through a variety of methods, Twitter included
• Scr.im - I always like novel ways to post your email that prevents spammers from reading it.  Scrim gives you a customized link that will display your email address once a CAPTCHA is solved.

As you can see, there are many additions to Twitter that can save time and make it more useful.  I haven't scratched the surface of what all can be done with this social network & microblogging site.  If you have any other useful apps feel free to post them in the comments!  Don't forget to follow me!

TinyChat Responds to Inquiry Regarding Public IP Disclosure

This is a follow up to the story TinyChats Privacy Policy and IP Disclosure

I requested information from Tinychat regarding what their policies on disclosing members IP addresses publicly when a chat room is closed and they claim it is specifically to allow law enforcement to see IP addresses when a room is terminated.  Here is what I asked them:

1. Why do you feel the need to display users IP addresses of individuals in a room that has been closed by Tinychat staff/moderators?
2. How long does this list containing users IP addresses remain up on your server for?
3. Is it possible for an individual to request to have their IP removed from this list?
4. Do you feel you are acting responsibly and providing safety and security to your users by publicly displaying their IP addresses in a room that has been closed?
5. Do you believe there is any security risk or privacy concern by displaying individuals IP addresses publicly in this way?
6. Do you have any further comments on why you have this policy at Tinychat and if you plan to continue to do so in the future?

Their response:

Room closures can happen when a federal or state law enforcement officer contacts us, requesting us to do so. Regrettably, the option to close or not close a room is not always in our hands, as we have to obey requests from law enforcement just like any other company. We would of course like to never have to close a room but as I said, this is not always in our control. We have been publicly posting the IP's for the ease of the LEO Agent in those situations, however I do agree that this data should not be posted publicly and I will be discussing internally and with law enforcement ways that we can continue to obey their requests without publicly showing this data . Additionally, if you can give me the room name in question, I can expedite the removal of that from public view. 

Regards

-Tinychat 

So, Tinychat claims that their room closures happen when law enforcement contacts them.  I do not believe this is always the case, as I'm sure law enforcement officers aren't sitting back and waiting for girls to get nude on Tinychat so they can close a room a post IPs.  Furthermore, if violations do occur and law enforcement requests information about a room, there is no distinguishing information as to who was active, who was displaying a cam, who was moderating the room or etc, making it nearly impossible to determine anything relevant that could be used as an investigation or a prosecution.

I believe Tinychat simply does this to embarrass users and discourage them from returning.  Obviously Tinychat wants to run a clean service that does not include nudity or issues of persons under legal age, which brings up a whole host of problems for a site like this due to COPPA, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act.  I believe Tinychat is technically in violation of COPPA since they allow unregistered users to display themselves on camera in public chat rooms viewable by other anonymous visitors.

At this point, I do not believe anyone in the misc who was in a Tinychat room and has had their IP publicly posted should be concerned about being contacted by law enforcement.  But, I will try and determine more about the situation from Tinychat directly.

If any user wanted to continue to use the Tinychat service, regardless of their highly questionable privacy policy, I would recommend using some form of proxy tool, such as Anonymizer, to mask their IP address from being viewed and logged by Tinychat.

It is a plus on Tinychat's end that they are reviewing this policy internally, as they say, and hopefully will mend their ways.  I will contact them back further and post more updates as they come in.  Feel free to add your comments, questions, concerns and input.

UPDATE: TinyChat failed to respond to my further inquires about their policies, as did the EFF when I put the question to them regarding the legality of TinyChat's policies.  I have heard no further updates or complaints from users about having their rooms closed and their IPs posted, so this issue may have been resolved.  However, if you know otherwise, please let me know by leaving a comment or sending me an email through my contact link on the right.  It appears that TinyChat is no longer publicly posting users IP addresses when rooms are closed.  If you find information showing otherwise, please let me know.

TinyChats Privacy Policies and IP Exposure

TinyChat is a service that provides users with a web based chat room and the ability to stream multiple live webcams in their rooms.  Their service is very simplistic and uses an IRC like interface, similar to Justin.tv, which the exception of the ability to have more than one cam streams going at a single time.  Like most cam sites, they have terms of services and privacy policies that disallow certain behaviors, such as vulgarity or nudity on cam.  But, TinyChat goes a step further with their polices when they feel that users have misbehaved and punishes them by not only closing the room, but publishing a list of all the users who were present when the room was running along with their full IP addresses.

Tinychat may terminate any user's access to the network, Web site and service and remove any content posted, for any reason. Tinychat reserves the right to modify or discontinue and portion or component of the service at any time and with or without notice. Tinychat shall not be liable to any user or any third-party for any termination or modification of service. By using the tinychat service you agree, that should any room be closed for any reason that all users data who may be in the room may be disclosed publicly.

 TinyChat Privacy Policy and Terms of Service

This is an abhorrent practice on TinyChat's part to expose any members IP address publicly without any way for the user to request it be removed.  This information can give away a users location and allow individuals with malicious intent to potentially attack the IP address using denial of service attacks or port scans to look for vulnerabilities or holes in the users system.

The Misc Incident


Last night on Bodybuilding.com's Misc section a user started a thread that linked to a Tinychat room with him and a female companion.  According to the user, franchise16, no nudity was recorded on cam during the chat session, but in the end, the Tinychat staff felt it necessary to close down the room and then proceeded to display the IP addresses of all the users who were currently in that room at the time.

As of the time of this posting, Tinychat still has left this information up.  As a further example of the abuse potential this opens up, a number of users took the entire list of IP addresses and claimed to post them on 4chan, to allow the members their to potentially exploit the list for nefarious purposes.  I cannot verify this claim however.

I spoke to the user who started the Tinychat room, franchise16, and asked him for an overview of the events. Here is a summary of what he said happened:

Made thread bout POF [Plenty of Fish] girl comin over

[She] Came over, had webcam open and screen off on macbook, told them mac was for music

Carried it around with me

Brought on to porch where we fooled around, was too dark to see

Had about 500 users viewing it in the room

Brought it inside and into the room

We made out for a big on bed

Took titties out, no nudity was recorded I dont believe

[The feed] Was cut about 2 min after mac was brought into room

Rest happened off cam

All IPs were posted in tinychat room but for some reason not me or any other canadian brahs

I asked him if there was any nudity shown on cam and he responded that there was not.  He also confirmed that the girl was of legal age (18) and was therefore not any sort of situation of child pornography.  franchise16 said that no Tinychat staff warned him in advance that he was violating in terms of that he should stop the cam feed before the room was closed and all the users IPs were posted.  Regardless if there even was nudity displayed on cam in the Tinychat room, Tinychat should not endanger it's users security by publicly "outting" them by posting their IP addresses when a room is terminated.

Because of this incident, I would recommend that no one use Tinychat.  The risk of having your IP posted without any warning or notification is not one that you should be willing to risk.  When using IRC servers that do not obfuscate IP addresses, users are aware that their IPs are being displayed publicly, but Tinychat doesn't do this openly or have any sort of whois command so that users IPs can be displayed to other users, outside of Tinychat staff.

I will contact Tinychat's support and report back with their response.

UPDATE: Tinychat has responded to my inquiry.  See the post TinyChat Responds to Inquiry Regarding Public IP Disclosure  for the follow up.

How to Syndicate my blog or Subscribe for Updates

This article describes several simple methods of how to syndicate the content of my blog to your website, including specific categories of posts. I also discuss how you can subscribe to my content yourself so you can be notified if I post a new article.

Syndicating my RSS Feed

I provide RSS feed of my sites post through Feedburner. The URL of my feed is http://feeds.feedburner.com/pogue972 By clicking on that URL (depending on your browser settings) you will be taken to my feed page where you can subscribe to my feed in your default RSS reader. If you are using Firefox 2 or IE7, it should give you the option of adding my feed to your internal browser feed reader through the bookmarks function. Otherwise, you can add the feed however you choose.

If you wish to publish my feed on your website, you are welcome to do so, as I provide this function to anyone who wants to under a Creative Commons license to use it freely, even in commercial projects, although it is still copywritten and you may not copy and paste my entire articles for usage. No modification or sale of my material is allowed either.

Depending on what type of web site you have, you may be able to do this through an internal RSS feed syndicater that is provided with the software, such as most content management systems (CMS) provide. Alternately, you can try and find an addon for your system or install a reader such as Magpie RSS through your web site's control panel (contact your hosting service for more information on this if you aren't familiar or don't know how). If you are unable to do this, the simplest way to to syndicate an RSS feed is by using Feed2JS, or Feed to JavaScript, which you can install as a PHP script, or use one of their many free mirror servers to do this. Using this method is the quickest and the easiest for anyone. Here quick overview of how to do it.

On the mirrors page, pick a mirror closest to your web servers location or just use the default one. One there, click the "Build" link at the top of the page. The first field is "URL Enter the web address of the RSS Feed" which is where you will enter my Feedburner URL. The next option is "Show channel?". If you choose yes or title, it will cause "Pogue's Blog" to show up as the first link if you choose title. If you choose no, it will only show the articles. The third option is "Number of items to display". This lets you choose how many of the articles you want to display from my blog. If you leave it at 0, it will display the 7 most recent articles, which is what I currently have as my limit. I keep mine at only three (see the news section on the side of my blog) so I can publish more than one feed without taking up too much space.

Next is "Show/Hide item descriptions?". Choosing 0 will just show the article's title, and 1 will show the first 500 characters of the article. You can also tweak this if you wish to show less than 500 characters. "Use HTML in item display?" depends on how you have your site setup and how you want the output to be. Try no and then hit the preview button to see how it looks, if you don't like it or it doesn't work on your site, try yes. After that is the option to "Show posting date" and then choose the time zone. If you choose yes, it will show the time and date the post was published, and then using the time zone option you can leave it as "feed" for my time zone or -6, for example, would be Central Standard Time. "Target links in the new window?" simply causes each article link to use the target="_blank" to open the link in a new window (or tab) if you want visitors to stay on your page and visit the article in a new window. "UTF-8 Character Encoding" allows the feed output in Unicode, which is the character set I use, so it's a good idea to enable this. "Podcast enclosures" should be no, and "Custom CSS" is optional for your site. After this, hit preview and a popup window will open with what the feed will look like in the settings you've chosen, if you don't like it, change one or more of the options and click Generate JavaScript and just copy and paste the code into your page where ever you would like it to go.

Feedburner also provides some very nice animated GIFs which display my Headlines. Here is the code for an image in 468x60 with the default color set. If you would like any other sizes or colors, please let me know and I will be happy to provide them for you.

Syndicating Categories

I use del.icio.us to tag all my posts for categories. The link to my categories on my blog is http://del.icio.us/pogue24 If you wanted to use delicious to syndicate my feed, just look for the orange RSS button at the bottom of the page which will link you to the feed output for that specific tag or category. So, for example, if you just wanted to syndicate all my articles for supplements you would go to http://del.icio.us/rss/pogue24/supplements
Each time I publish a new article on supplements, I tag it with the supplements tag and it will show up on delicious and on any RSS feed that is reading it.

Subscribe by Email

For email subscriptions, I use FeedBlitz which is owned and operated by Feedburner. Every time I publish a new article, you will receive an email. The emails are only sent once per day, so if I published five articles in one day (I wish) you would still only receive one email. No spam is sent and neither I nor FeedBlitz share, sell or rent your email address for any other purpose than to be automatically notified when a new post is made to my blog. To subscribe, there is a link on the right side where you can fill in your email address, and there is a link at the bottom of all my posts where you can also click to make a comment. You can also click here and subscribe and get updates to your email, Skype, AOL or Twitter.

If you have any questions or need some help syndicating my feed, feel free to leave a comment or contact me (see the link on the right just above the recommended services box).

Search to Win!

With the ever expanding list of search engines to pick from, there are now several that give their users more than just good results as an incentive to use them. Like what, you might ask? Prizes, points, gift certificates, and cash, in some instances. This new concept in search engine marketing is winning over a wide audience as they have learned from the mistakes of some of their predecessors, like iWon, and have avoided the annoyances of spyware, spam, and over-advertising. Currently, there are two search portals that allow users who sign up to their site to have the ability to win a prize just by doing a search - something all internet users do during their normal course of being online. Searching the internet, like checking your email, chatting with friends, watching videos and downloading files is all part of the daily routine of millions of people who now have included "surfing the web" as part of their daily lives. Companies want to take advantage of this huge market of searchers, and giving people the chance to win something for doing something they will normally do anyway is just a simple choice for most.

A Little History

Before the days of the world wide web, browser wars, and dot coms, there was just the gopher protocol. A sort of plain text web site that was developed at the University of Minnesota. It was a precursor to the hyper text transfer protocol that has come to dominate the web today. But, at the time, it was sort of like a text based FTP that contained no graphics and had no way to stylize it, it was just essentially a way to post information - which is what the post-military internet was mostly about. The main way to query gophers was with search engines like Archie, Veronica, and Jughead. However, once the internet was opened up to people outside of university, military and purely technical institutions, the gopher crawled back in its hole, as a whole new audience came onboard.

Not soon after, the dot-com bubble started expanding, and companies started to create companies based entirely on a model under the assumption that advertising, through banner ads mainly, would pay for just about anything you wanted to give away for free. Once that idea failed, it was back to square one for most companies who relied on the standard business model for internet based businesses. You either had to sell something or provide a service, and non-search companies like Amazon and eBay showed the potential of a strictly internet based company making it big.

Fast forward to today, and big search engines and advertising have come back in a major way. With Google and the contextual advertising concept, content has started to be provided for free once again and people are making real money off it.

Okay, so how do I win stuff?

Right now, there are two popular sites that give you the chance to win prizes. The first is Blingo, which was purchased in the summer of 2006 by Publishers Clearing House. Blingo retrieves its search results directly from Google, so searching Blingo will turn up the same results if you searched for the same term on Google. Prizes are given out randomly throughout the day, and the first 25 results per user are eligible for a prize. These include gift certificates to Amazon and movie tickets as the most common prizes, but some of the larger prizes include electronics like iPods and large cash prizes that would be similar to the amount you might expect to win from a scratch off lotto ticket. Blingo is easy to integrate into your usual search by using their toolbar or search plugin (for IE and Firefox).

Blingo also has a referral program, so you can let friends sign up under you. You can sign up as many friends as you want, and the more friends you have, the more you have a chance to win because each time they search and win a prize, you win the same prize. This month, a single friend I had signed up won twice. My first prize was the choice of a $5 Amazon gift certificate or a free movie ticket, which is what most people will end up winning. However, yesterday I got an email notifying me I had won my choice of a 80-hour TiVO with one year of free service or $250 cash!



With Blingo your chances of winning are totally random, and so it's hard to know when or how often you can win a prize. However, there is another search engine using a similar model that gives you a little more flexibility in how and what you can win.

Read more about Blingo:

• Win with Blingo: About.com
• Blingo - Wikipedia
• Blingo Buzz - The Official Blingo Blog
• Tips for winning on Blingo

Winzy is another search engine that lets you search and get prizes at random times. Winzy retrieves its results from Ask.com. However, it has a few more options that give you chances to win than Blingo. Winzy uses a points based system that gives you points everytime you search. There are also different levels of membership (which are all free) based on how you use Winzy. When you start out, you are at the basic level. But if you set Winzy as your homepage or search from their toolbar or the search box (in Firefox or IE) you become a Gold Member, which gives you more benefits.

Benefits of Gold Star membership include:

• Your first 50 searches each day are eligible to win an instant prize
• You now earn 2x Points for each Winzy search
• You can now earn up to 100 points each day
• You are automatically entered into the month-end iPod Giveaway limited to Gold Star members
• You should see a gold star Upgrade next to your account status

You can also upgrade the level of the "Winzy Fan Club" by having a friend join under you. Like Blingo, Winzy also has a similar feature of allowing friends to join under your referral program and if they win, you also win. The points you earn can be used to play games in their arcade, such as Rock, Paper, Scissors, a slot machine type game for Gold members and a roulette wheel for fan club members. You can choose how many points you want to "bet" in the game and winning can give you more points or prizes.

So, Winzy also gives you the chance to win each time you search through them (up to 50 searches per day for Gold members). You are also entered into sweepstakes and random drawings, giving you more chances to win. They also encourage you to invite more friends, which gives you more chances of winning if your friends use Winzy. They give you a wide range of options to invite friends which include sending an email that comes with a free game that lets a friend win points or a prize instantly, buttons and banners you can place in your signatures on forums or email, your own web site, and etc. You can also add a search box for Winzy on your website. Their referral links are a lot 'cleaner' looking than Blingos, which is made up of a series of random letters and numbers. Winzy's link just has your username after their domain (ie: http://www.winzy.com/pogue)

So what's the catch?

Well, as I mentioned earlier, these new search engines have learned from earlier sites that attempted similar methods of giving away prizes. Both have sites have strict privacy policies and you only have to provide your name and address for being sent prizes. You don't receive any spam, junk mail or telephone calls from either company nor is your name sold, shared or rented to anyone for marketing purposes. The only time you'll get an email from them is for notifications you select, such as when a friend signs up or you win a prize. Their toolbars don't have any hidden spyware or garbage in them, although I just use the search box plugins for Firefox, since I use the Google toolbar. But how can these companies work to give away so many prizes and loot? The simple answer is the basic advertising model that worked so long ago, but is now based on contextual ads. These are shown in every search engine you use, normally at the top and the side, labeled as "Sponsored Results". Since these ads show up results based on what you're searching for, you're more likely to click on them and they make money. Advertisers pay good money for targeted results that people are actually interested in, instead of just some random ad that may or may not have any interest to the person viewing it. Blingo is owned by Publishers Clearing House, a very large company that has plenty of money to give away and invest in this new business model.

In the future, we're likely to see more of these search engines that give away prizes, or maybe even more. Right now, InboxDollars just added a "Paid Search" function that pays you 2¢ just to search on Snap.com. Although that isn't really worth investing a lot of time in using, their search results are actually pretty good and it just goes to show that if search engines are willing to pay people just to perform a simple search, there is clearly a lot of money to be made in the search business.


So, give Blingo and Winzy a try and see how you do. Searching is something you do anyway, so why not get something back for doing it? Feel free to post any comments or if you have had any luck in winning anything!

Quick Tips for Saving Money When Shopping Online

Whenever you visit an online store and make a purchase, you'll often see an open box towards the end of your purchase that says "Promo Code/Coupon". This is a box specially reserved for coupons and codes you can enter to save money on your purchase. Sometimes the store you're buying from will send you codes and coupons like these in a mailing (either email or postal) if you subscribe to their newsletter. Most of the time, if you're a new customer, you might get a free shipping discount or some other special promotion. Other times they might have a special going on that only select people know about or you have to hunt for online. So what do you do if you don't have one of these promotional codes or coupons for the store you're shopping at?

Three Sites to Find Hidden Promotions or Coupons

There are three easy to use sites that you can use to find promotional codes or coupons that are sometimes only available to certain people, but you might not know about. Let's use overstock.com as an example of a store that we might be shopping at, but looking for a coupon for to save some money on a purchase.








RetailMeNot.com (RMN) is brought to you by the same people who created the BugMeNot site and uses the same basic idea. RMN has two basic ways it works to bring you discounts for stores. First, people who have or know about special coupons (often that might expire soon) can enter them into the free online database and share them with anyone who wants to use them. The other factor is that they are an affiliate with LinkShare, a large company, which I am also an affiliate with. LinkShare represents many large companies in promoting their products online to pay out a referral fee or commission to sites who link to their online sites or stores. Often times these merchants give out discounts and coupons only available to their affiliates, which they in turn post on their site in order to drive traffic to the merchant, and thus make the affiliate money. So, with RMN you get both. I noticed right away when I visited the RMN site on the front page there was a button with a link to get 8% off a purchase of Overstock.com - a company which has an affiliate program through LinkShare. So, when you click the link, you get the discount and RMN makes a commission - a win for both people.

But, I went ahead and searched the RMN database for "overstock.com" (without the quotes) and found two other coupons. One was a code to save $5 off a purchase of $45 or more, and one that didn't specify exactly what sort of savings you got. At the top was RMN's link for the 8% discount, which was stated as "Guaranteed to work". Any other user entered coupons can be voted on whether the coupons work or not and have a red indicator if people have not been successful in using the coupon or green if they have. RMN doesn't say whether or not they remove coupons if they go past their expiration date or if enough people vote on it to indicate it doesn't work or not, but I suspect that they eventually purge their database of old and outdated coupons.

Secret-Coupons.com (S-C) is another site that has coupons for many online stores and merchants. They too appear to be an affiliate with LinkShare and have many coupons and promos for lots of major online stores. Unfortunately, S-C is a little tricker to navigate. Although they have a listing of a lot of stores on the front page, they have everything divided up into categories. This allows you to browse if you want to find a store that has a product you're looking for that might have the best deal at the time. But what if you're looking for a coupon for a store you're already at? Although S-C has a Google search box on the top of their page, this only searches other websites, and not their own. So, in order to search their site for a particular store, you need to use the Google Site Search "Domain Search" function. This is simple to do, especially if you have the Google toolbar. If you are using Firefox, while you are at the S-C site, just enter the merchant you want to look for in the search box, click the down arrow to the right of the search button and choose "Current Site". In IE, you do the same thing, except you click the arrow to the right of the Google "G" in the search box and choose "Current Site". To perform the search manually, all you would do is type in the name of merchant you want to in the search box, followed by the name of the the S-C domain. So, it would look like this "overstock.com site:www.secret-coupons.com" (without the quotes). The first hit you'll get will show you the Overstock.com page on S-C, which includes many links for discounts and promotions. As with RMN, S-C had a button on their front page which offered a 10% discount on Overstock.com (for new customers only). So clearly, you want to make sure and search all the coupon sites (including the one I mention below) for the best deals before you hit the "Confirm Order" button. An important thing to remember is that in order to get the discounts, you have to first click on the link on their site, and then go through placing the order. This is because it has to set a cookie in your browser in order to give you the discount. If by the end of your purchase you don't see the discount, you may have cookies disabled or blocked in some way. Many anti-virus software, firewalls, anti-spyware programs and other software block cookies, so you may have to disable this before using the links or you might need to use another browser. Also, if you already have your shopping cart full, you might have to go through and re-add the items to your cart again and place to order to receive the savings.

InboxDollars.com (IBD) is somewhat different than the other two coupon sites mentioned above. IBD is what is called a Get Paid To (GPT) site, which means you GPT read emails, sign up for offers, play games, and do other things like shop online. You have to sign up and become a member in order to use IBD, but it's easy to do and you get $5 free just for registering. If you recruit a friend with your affiliate link, you make $5. It's not a pyramid, since membership is optional, and you can cancel anytime. It's not multi-level marketing or anything like that, since levels below you who sign up under your friend don't make you any money. Basically, with IBD, you are just given a variety of options to make cash. But, the reason I mention it in this article is because they have a HUGE list of online stores that they have promotions, coupons, or cash back offers when you shop with them through IBD.

Basically it works like this. After you've signed up for IBD, you can visit the section of the site labeled "CA$H Shopping" on the left, then click the "LET'S GO SHOPPING" button. Then, click "All Stores" on the menu on the left. In your browser, hit the CTRL key plus F and the "Find" box will open up. Just type in the name of the merchant you're looking for and if IBD is affiliated with it, it will find it within the page.

So, IBD also has discounts for Overstock.com. It has the coupon for 8% off your entire order when you click their link and make your purchase, and you also get 2% cashback to your IBD account when you complete your order. They also have a discount and cashback bonus for the Overstock store in Canada. It generally takes a day or so for IBD to credit the cashback to your account, and you'll receive an email once you receive the cashback bonus. If your order is really large, the cashback discounts can really add up. As with the S-C site, you need to click the link on the IBD site and make sure you have your cookies enabled to make sure you get the discount and cashback bonus.



There's a couple other important things to know about IBD. IBD requires you to receive emails (normally daily) that you must click the link on, which takes you to a page that you need to view a small advertisement for. Each time you do this, you get paid (normally about 20-30¢). Not much, but it is required to keep your account active. You must continue to click the links in these emails during the time you wish to keep your IBD up. Along with the payments you get for shopping, there are many other ways to make money in IBD. For example, if you are not a member of eBay, they will pay you $6 to sign up as a new member. There are other trial offers, free offers, surveys, and things that you can sign up for and get paid a varying amount of money. You can also play games through SkillJam to make some money through their system (games like Solitaire, trivia games, and other stuff - not gambling), then IBD pays you an extra percentage of your winnings. So, there is a lot more to IBD than just shopping, but you have to keep those things in mind if you decide to become a member there. You aren't required to do anything except to keep clicking the emails if you want to withdrawal the money you earn there. Clicking the emails normally take about 10-30 seconds, so it's not hard, and you aren't overwhelmed with emails or spammed, so it's not something problematic. Once you decide you want to withdrawal your money from IBD, you simply click the "Request Payment" on the left side of the menu on the main IBD page. They will then send you a check for your earnings, which normally takes a month or so.

There are numerous other ways to find coupons and promotions online, but those are three of the easiest ways to find them. Anytime I make a purchase online, I always check those 3 sites, which normally takes a couple minutes, and if there are any discounts or coupons, I save some money, or even get a cashback reward. That combined with a reward program that many credit cards have nowadays, you have the potential to not only save money, but earn money (or points).

Keep looking around, and you'll find all sorts of other deals on the web. The TalkGold forum has a special section for Freebies and Hot Online Deals that constantly has special deals and cool freebies posted daily. Often a Google search will turn up some matches too. If you have or know of any other cool coupon sites, feel free to email them to me or post them in the comments!

FBI & New York Police on the Trail of StudioTraffic

StudioTraffic was once one of the largest paid to autosurf sites on the net. It had existed for several years and was branded as one of the safest and most long lasting investment sites on the net, somewhat akin to AllAdvantage. StudioTraffic paid out a 1% daily investment on whatever money the user inputted into their account through their own payment processor system, StudioPay. All they had to do was run the auto-surf script everyday to make their 1% income. Investors were assured that the money put into StudioTraffic was being used, by their other companies, such as an upstart record label, a web hosting company, an internet cafe was in the discussion of being open. All the while, the investors did not know that what they were participating in was an age old scheme known as a prime bank fraud and ponzi scheme.

This was the time of the auto-surf boom, and another company just springing up was 12DailyPro, which paid out at a rate of 12% cycles over 12 days of a persons investment. In the end, the SEC shut 12DailyPro down and most of the last investors are left with very little money to be had, and not expecting much from the government.

At the end of StudioTraffic, it crumbled slowly. A hacker broke into StudioPay and posted online thousands of pictures of individuals who had submitted their drivers licenses and other personally identifying information. It is not know what has become of this data and what other security risks might have been brought from that incident. However, the staff at StudioTraffic sent out an email to it's members which seems to insinuate that they not only did not know what happened, how to fix it, or what action to take.

Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2006 12:52:47 -0600 [02/21/2006 12:52:47 PM CST]
From: service@studiopay.com
To: xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Hello

Dear Member

Security issues have been our priority recently following claims
from an individual that he/she hacked the StudioPay information on some
members accounts.

At this point in time we are investigating this issue and
working closely with authorities worldwide to trace this person.

In the following link you will find some advice about identity theft,
how to discover it, who to contact and also some preventative measures.

http://www.fightidentitytheft.com/identity_theft_learn.html

This information is specific to USA, but any member can enter "identity
theft" into a search engine and get information specific to their
own country.

Until our investigations are complete we feel that we should treat these
allegations seriously. To this end we recommend that you take any
steps you feel necessary to protect yourself.

Our recommendations are:

Report to your local police station the possibility that your
identity information has been compromised. In the event that this
does arise then there will be a record for you to refer to.

Make a report to your credit card company if you used your credit card
statement to verify your account. By doing this your credit card
account will be noted and both you and the credit card company can w
be vigilant and watch for unusual or suspicious transactions.

If you used your bank account statement to verify your account submit a
report to your bank, again this will ensure that your accounts
are noted.

Please follow any advice that your bank or other companies you contact
give you.

At this point in time we are unable to determine how much, if any,
informaton [sic] this person has obtained. As stated earlier, we are
working closely with authorities in different countries try and track
this individual.

We are introducing some new security features. You may recall that you
were asked to change your StudioTraffic password recently. The same
security feature, planned for StudioPay, has now been introduced ahead
of schedule and we would ask that all members change their StudioPay
password immediately. You will be prompted to change it every
three months (every 6 months in StudioTraffic). In doing so please
ensure that you use a strong password that cannot be easily worked
out.

Any steps you take now may be of huge importance in the future. The
security and safety of our members is our utmost priority and we
urge you to err on the side of caution and follow our recommendations.

Should any of our members experience fraudulent use of their personal
information into the future please contact us and we will work with
you and the authorities to resolve the situation.

For now we will continue to investigate the situation and should we
be able to pinpoint any members that may be targetted we will
contact those members directly.

Regards

StudioPrograms Admin Team

Soon, members of the inner circle of StudioTraffic began to break ranks and posted the truth behind ST and it's sister companies. Although it was clear that ST was on it's way out, some people still heldfast to the belief that StudioTraffic could make it, and continued to donate to it to keep it alive, all to no avail in the end.

The StudioTraffic website was taken down with the help of members at the talkgold forum, by contacting the administrators of the ISP who was hosting the site. They decided that the manner in which ST operated was not in compliance with their Terms of Service and/or Acceptable Use Policy. Prior to that, the anonymous John Horan, owner of the site, sent out an email to all users regarding the situation.

After that, all went quite for several months. User's submitted their complaints online, and we did not hear much about it since then. In May 2006 I received a call from the
Onondaga County Sheriff's Dept. requesting information on my interactions with StudioTraffic and StudioPay, which seems to have been registered in Brookport New York, and was operating as an illegal unlicensed money transfer service. I spoke to a detective with the Sheriff's department and told him everything he knew. His name was John Scarson and, with his partner, Jamie Bloomer, they were investigating the StudioPay lead. They told me they had gotten my number off the complaint I filed at the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). After that, I hadn't heard much, until I got this email in my inbox a few weeks ago.

Date: 20 Dec 2006 18:08:07 -0500 [12/20/2006 05:08:07 PM CST]
From: Do not reply
Subject: Studiopay/Studiotraffic investigation

Dear xxxxxxxx:

Studiopay/Studiotraffic is the subject of an ongoing investigation by the FBI and Onondaga County Sheriffs Department. Investigation of this matter has developed information that you have had financial transactions with one, or both, of these companies. If you have been victimized by either of these companies please file a complaint with the Internet Crime Complaint Center at the following website:

http://www.ic3.gov/

Please reference Studiopay as the subject of the investigation when filing your complaint. Provide as much detail as possible pertaining to monies invested, individuals contacted, method of contact (telephone, mail, E-mail etc...), amounts, and dates of payment and any amounts received from Studiopay. If possible, include dates of contact, the Studiopay employees contacted and brief summaries of the conversations.

I verified that this email was actually from the FBI's IC3 department by examining the headers of the email. So, now it seems that the FBI and the Onondaga County Sheriffs Department are dedicated to tracking down the operators of StudioTraffic and bringing them to justice for their crimes fraud, deceit, and total disregard for anything but their own selfish money stealing scheme.

So, if you have further information about StudioTraffic or StudioPay or any of their related dealings, please send them to the IC3 site above. You may also contact the FBI at their HQ in Washington, DC. At the time I spoke to the Onondaga County Sheriffs Department their phone number was (315)435-1401 and fax (315)435-1402, although I am not sure these two numbers are still valid.

You can find more information about the legacy of StudioTraffic on these sites.

• Studiotraffic.co.uk: living memory of one of the biggest Internet scams
• StudioTraffic Scam
• Wikipedia's entry on StudioTraffic
• Many old posts with quite a bit of information (albeit very disorganized) can be found in the TalkGold forum archives. Simply do a search for "StudioTraffic" in that section and you will come back with many results.
• Internet Archive: StudioTraffic & StudioPay
• Two Better Business Bureau in Canada's reports on ST at two different addresses. BBB Reliability Report: Studio Traffic (1) BBB Reliability Report: Studio Traffic (2).
• Many reports on Ripoffreport.com on StudioTraffic

With your help, we can put the owners, operators, and propagators of StudioTraffic where they belong and finally bring this criminal regime down to smoke, ash, and to the rust bin of history.

Cool Random Links of the Moment

Here are some cool links that I've found or discovered that don't have much to do with each other or anything, just that they are cool. So, here they are with descriptions beside them.

• TV Links: A collection of television shows that you can watch online. The site is essentially a directory of a collection of a variety of different shows that range from regular comedies, sitcoms, dramas, and cartoons from recent to old and anime. The site doesn't actually host the shows itself, it just links to them on one of the many various video sites that have sprung up lately in the wake of all the Youtube clones. However, I have a feeling that once the copyright owners see this, they will probably have a fit, so this site might not be around for very much longer, so enjoy it while you can. UPDATE 11/30: As predicted, this site is down. However, a mirror has popped up, along with a discussion about the original site.
  
• RetailMeNot: This is by the creators of the popular username sharing site, BugMeNot. It's got a similar concept in that it works off user contributions. But, RetailMeNot has coupons for sites, and not logins. So, the next time you want to buy something from a retailer, like Amazon for example, just type in the site name and you'll get back a list of coupons that are available. InboxDollars has a similar list of coupons and rebates from companies it's affiliated with, but are only available if you're a member. On InboxDollars, you have a listing of hundreds of companies and a discount you'll get when using them. Both are free services.
• HardToFind800Numbers: Basically, the name says it all. This site contains a collection of phone numbers for companies that generally don't list their phone number, or hide it very deeply. Although the site is small, anyone can help by submitting numbers for companies they've found. If you need to call PayPal or Yahoo you can find their number here.
• OldVersion.com: If you've ever been looking for an older version of some software you're using, this is the place to find it. OldVersion keeps copies of older versions of a lot of popular software hosted on it's own servers, so the links will always be good. Some of the software there is there because maybe the newer versions of software that still work perfectly well have added features that you may not like. Other software, like Napster, I assume is just kept their for historic purposes, like a software museum, of sorts.
• Optimize Guides: This is a very well put together site with guides for helping PC users to Optimize XP and Windows 2000. It includes tips, free software, guides, and a list of myths that are debunked. It also contains a section on Firefox myths, which is a bit controversial and not all people agree with. However, most of these myths are technically true, I still find Firefox my preferred browser, even over Opera or IE7, if nothing else, for the fact that it has a huge collection of free extensions.
• NOD32 Online Virus Scanners List: A well maintained list of all the best free online virus scanners. It contains scanners for a variety of potentially malicious viruses, trojans, spyware and others. Most of the scanners require IE and ActiveX, but it's always good to have these available, even when you have anti-virus software installed, so you can scan your system and get a second opinion. Try scanning with ewido or Panda, you'll probably find something that your regular scanner hasn't found.
• ThingsYouNeverKnewExisted.com: You might have seen their catalog, or remember this company from when you were a kid. I used to love to order stuff from TYNKE, most of which was weird, whacky or just junk. They have all sort of joke and gag items, magic stuff, and all sorts of other neat things you don't particularly need, but would like to have. Just looking through their catalog is fun, you can order a free one today.
• MenuetOS: This is a nifty little operating system that has a lot of features and is written in pure assembly language, something you don't see much today. But what's really novel about it is the fact that it will fit on a 1.44MB floppy. You have to see it to believe it, if you your computer still has a floppy drive, that is. Another cool portable operating system is PCLinuxOS which you can download as an ISO and burn it to a CD-R, and then boot to it. It includes all the tools you would need to run a full fledged operating system, but you don't need to install it at all, although you have the option to do so. It's got a very simple Windows like interface, so anyone could use it. Try it out if you've ever been curious about Linux but didn't want to or didn't know how to install it.
• FunTrivia.com: Like trivia? If so, or any type of word games, crosswords, check out FunTrivia. They have a quiz on just about any topic in existence, and it's easy to take them or create your own and accrue up points to move up the ladder and challenge other members. Any topic you know about, they most likely have a quiz about it - check it out and see what you come up with!
• Streamload: Want 25GB (yes, that's GIGABYTES) of free storage online that you can share with your friends? Streamload offers it! Great for backing up online files. Xdrive, recently purchased by AOL, offers a similar solution, but only has 5GB. Xdrive has the plus of coming with software that allows you to schedule backups and acts as a separate drive letter too.
• vNES: The virtual NES emulator that has a collection of online ROMs that you can play through a Java console in your browser, without having to download an emulator or hunting around for ROMs. Very cool and fun, but like the TV shows site, might not last too long.
• SDF Free Public UNIX Shell: Remember the days of having a UNIX shell with your ISP or hosting account? Maybe not, but if you do you'll appreciate this site. The SDF gives away free UNIX shells which you can maintain if you donate $2 through the mail or $36 PayPal. If you don't want to pay, you can use it just to learn the experience of what a UNIX shell account holds. They have tons of apps installed and you can do most everything you can do on any shell account (with the exception of running eggdrop bots and trying to crack passwords, of course).
• Free Linux Disks: The FLD project gives away free Linux CDs of most of the popular editions of Linux, including SUSE, Fedora, Mandriva (formally Mandrake), Gentoo, Debian, Knoppix, and Ubuntu.

Well, that's all the links for today. If you have any other cool links to share, feel free to post them under the comments or email them to me. Enjoy!

Comodo Offering a Wide Array of Freeware Security Products for Windows Users

Comodo, a company that has seemingly come out of nowhere, has released a suite of applications for Windows end-users that are completely free and do a variety of security related tasks that other companies charge a great deal for. One of their most popular products is their firewall, which is well received due to the recent halt in production of several free firewall products, such as Kerio and Sygate. They also have a suite of other security products that are free for Windows users.

Comodo Firewall
Free lifetime license

Comodo Firewall, rated by PC Magazine Online as an Editor's Choice, constantly monitors and defends your PC from internet attacks. It's easy to install and use and passes the industry's most stringent firewall "leak" tests. Unlike some other 'free' firewalls, this is not a stripped down version but is the full, completely functional product. This free solution comes complete with continual updates that are free forever!

Comodo AntiVirus
FREE lifetime license

Eliminates Viruses, Worms and Trojans from Windows XP and Windows 2000 computers. Features on-demand & on-access scanning, email scanning, process monitoring, worm blocking, full scheduling capabilities and more. It's easy to install and configure; will not slow down your PC by hogging system resources and the full program is free for life to the end user.

Comodo BackUp
FREE lifetime license

Comodo Backup is the straightforward and powerful utility that allows users to quickly and easily create backup copies of critical files. Free of charge, it includes complete file and folder-duplication to local network drives and FTP servers, intelligent incremental backups, e-mail reporting, extensive report logs, real time back ups with “synchronization” mode, advanced rule-based filtering, flexible scheduling of backups, space-saving archiving capabilities, and more.

Comodo Verification Engine
FREE for life

VerificationEngine anti-phishing and identity assurance tool for Microsoft Windows offers an extremely simple way to differentiate legitimate web sites from fraudulent ones. Place your mouse cursor over a site logo. If it is authentic, a green border will appear around your browser. So if you really wish to be sure you are looking at the real www.paypal.com site rather than a clever imitation created to steal your identity, install VerificationEngine now!

Comodo AntiSpam
FREE license

Install Comodo AntiSpam for free and reclaim your inbox. Our powerful challenge-response technology authenticates the sender of every mail – a system that automated spam bots can’t get around. This is the full product, not stripped down ‘cripple ware’ and is free forever to the end user.

Comodo iVault
FREE license

iVault saves time by providing instantaneous logins to any username/password secured web pages such as online banking and email account sites. It also doubles up as a 256 bit secure storage for private and confidential information such as credit card details and social security numbers and protects against the very latest key-logging Trojan Horse viruses.

Their anti-virus software seems to have subpar ratings from most, and is probably not recommended for most people. So far, one of the best free anti-virus solutions is still Grisoft's AVG Anti-Virus. I also have not tried their backup software. Since AOL has been on it's spree of giving everything away, they have developed XDrive as a free online backup option for anyone who has an AOL screenname. You receive 5GB of online space with free desktop software that allows you to have the system as an extra drive letter (X:\). Still, Comodo's intentions seem well placed, and any free suites of security software are always welcome, even if it needs more time to develop. Comodo's main way of making money looks to be by selling Enterprise solutions and SSL certificates. Feel free to post any comments on how the software works for you.

Comodo Free Desktop PC Security

Solutions for Web Sites that Force Registration to Access Content

We all come across pages online that require you to register. Sometimes these are straightforward, just asking for your email address and a username so you can post on a messageboard with other information being optional. But some sites want more, like your name and address, date of birth, and lots of other details you might not want to give out. Even if the site says it won't sell or give out your details, how do you know they won't? There is no obligation for web sites to follow or even implement a privacy policy. While most sites will ask if you want to sign up for their newsletter, sometimes they automatically subscribe you without your authorization, forcing you to opt-out, or worse.

So what can you do to bypass these forced registrations?

The first and easiest solution is to use bugmenot.com. Bugmenot is a community oriented site that stores usernames and passwords for websites that require users to register to read content. It's a public database that anyone can access, and when you come across a page that asks you to register, all you do is find the link indicating that you have already registered and that you want to login. Lookup the site on bugmenot and input one of the usernames and passwords. They also have a voting mechanism to get rid of old or invalid logins. Making the whole process even easier is the BugMeNot Firefox Extension that automatically retrieves the data from bugmenot.com and inputs it into login forms. Just right click on the empty login field and choose "Login with Bugmenot" and it goes at it. It will even continue to input usernames if one or more fails and prompts you to go and get more if all the ones it tried have failed. If you've come across a site that doesn't have any logins, you can contribute your own username and password for others to use.

The best way to create a new login for bugmenot, or any other site that requests your email address that you don't want to give is to use a disposable email account. Since most sites often require you to activate your account by sending an email to the account you specify and clicking a link within the email to ensure less abuse of their registration system. Disposable email addresses are simply email addresses that are created on a system that have no password, but a username with the domain as the @ extension. So, to login, all you do is go to the site and put in the username, and the email will show up. One might think that this would obviously be the opposite of private, but the object is not to create an email address for you to use permanently, only temporarily. These accounts can only receive email and not send them, so you simply use them to get the validation email and, depending on the requirements of the site you are attempting to register for, the email address itself becomes the username.

A few services that provide disposable email addresses are:

• mailinator (I haven't had much luck with this)
• jetable.org
• tempinbox.com
• sneakemail.com
• spamgourmet.com

You can also find a directory of disposable email addresses at about.com and dmoz.org. Among the several email addresses I use, I have a commercial Yahoo account that came with my DSL connection, which includes a feature called AddressGuard. This feature allows a user to create up to 500 disposable email accounts. All the accounts have the same beginning, such as abc123, followed with another word or phrase that you can use to associate with the site you're using, and ends with the @yahoo.com address. So, for example, if I wanted to create an account on CNN, I could use abc123-cnn@yahoo.com. I can send and receive from the email address, and specify a color I want to show when an email from that address comes to my inbox. Other email providers, like Gmail, allow you to add a plus (+) onto your email to track where your email would be coming from, such as janeroe722+cnn@gmail.com. Unfortunaly, many sites do not parse the plus symbol properly and when you attempt to register using an address in the above example, it will come back with an error asking you to submit a valid email address after you submit the form on the server.

Finally, if a site requires you to put in your name and address, there is a site to remedy this problem, without having to pull a random name out of a phone book or create a completely bogus address. The Fake Name Generator will create a fake name, address, city, state, and a selection of countries, along with a phone number, a mothers maiden name, birthdate, email address, and even credit card number. The last feature I cannot see what the purpose is. In any case, the credit card that it outputs would not work on any modern system for the intention of fraud that I am aware of. According to the site's FAQ, the data it generates is essentially random, so you won't hopefully put some total stranger's name into a database of potential spammers.

All of these concepts were originally created out of the needs I describe, essentially in order to bypass annoying and cumbersome web registration when a user simply wants to look at a news article or something related. One of the first people to put this concept into practice was Marc Majcher, with his Random NYTimes Login Generator. This was created of a need to read articles on the Nytimes site without having to register and give out private information. It has evolved into sites such as bugmenot, so it can benefit both groups. The NYTimes will not be overloaded with bogus info in their database, and users who know about these functions and don't want to give out private info can use public accounts for this purpose.

What about the potential for abuse?

With things like this will come the potential to be abused. Bugmenot allows sites who don't want to allow logins with it to request it using an online form. Of course, there will always be methods to attempt to break the rules anywhere one goes. A user can use a proxy to login to a site and post abusive messages, or use a proxy to post anonymous information about a legitimate topic that they might not have otherwise. So, the potential for abuse is always there with systems such as this. It is just up to the community and site operators in general to decide on how best to work around problems and find solutions that will work out best for everyone. If a website operator finds that most of it's registration data is bogus, then they can either disable the need to register to access an article or completely remove access to those articles. Obviously, decisions like those and the discussion of abuse is beyond the scope of this article. If you have any comments to add, feel free to post them.

AOL Offers Free Streaming XM Radio

AOL, in a move to offer more free services and cut back less on it's dial-up internet subscriber base, which has been losing significant amounts of money since the introduction of widespread broadband use, causing a drop in AOL dialup subscribers.

AOL, or America Online, has become a culture icon in the years since its inception. Both lamented by some for it's excessive mailings of unwanted software CDs, to being the premise for a title of a movie. In 2000 the company was purchased by media giant Time Warner and has never been the same since. Still, AOL has maintained a large presence in the online world, being one of the largest internet service providers in existence, it has tried an enormous variety of tactics to keep itself alive. It has seen the purchase of Netscape and it's open source spinoff, Mozilla, Nullsoft, makers of Winamp, and other companies providing a laundry list of products and services, sometimes related to the companies goals, and sometimes not. At one time, AOL was rival only to Microsoft in it's battle for internet dominance, and there was talk of it purchasing RedHat to create an operating system to directly compete with Windows.

With AOL's recent decline in providing paid internet services, it has modified its business model to allow for a large variety of free services. Billing itself as "The New AOL" it has begun to offer a free version of it's internet software, that includes a free AOL email address and a Security Suite. However, the client has brought significant skepticism from privacy advocates, akin to other so called "free software" that comes with hidden adware not mentioned anywhere except in the pointless EULA. It's been well known that most of the recent versions of it's AIM Instant Messenger client include built in spyware and adware that cannot be removed easily, leading many to opt for alternatives like GAIM or Trillian. For those wishing to use the official AIM client, a free AIM Ad Hack is available to not only get rid of the banner ads, but completely strip it of all the unwanted addons. AOL has also recently come under fire for publicly releasing search data from all it's subscribers. A public relations headache for AOL as it's still unveiling all it's new services from its "free AOL" concept business strategy.

Even before AOL offering up their free services, they allowed anyone with an AIM screenname a free webmail address at aim.com with 2GB of space and antivirus/antispam functionality to rival Yahoo and Gmail. These accounts seem to have been, at least partially, converted over to the newer Free AOL Mail accounts, so it appears that they can be used and possibly even created without installing the new AOL software client. When I went to open my mail, a rogue window of Windows Media Player opened for some reason and then Firefox crashed.

Now, AOL has unveiled their video service, AOL Video, an attempt to mirror services like Google Video and YouTube. Even better, AOL Radio offers anyone with a freely available screenname to listen to streaming XM Satellite radio, virtually uninterrupted by ads, and with a long list of stations, previously only available to people who paid for an expensive and cumbersome radio unit & receiver, along with a monthly fee for the service. Yahoo! Music, which plays ads unless a subscription is paid, also allows skipping songs (to some extent in the free version) and the creation of customized stations based on listeners preferences. AOL's XM Radio doesn't allow any skipping, and rating songs data supposedly only goes to the stations DJ's to "help them choose music". One problem with both AOL Video and Radio is that they require installation of their own players into the users browser. When I attempted to use these services in Firefox, I was prompted to load a "Mozilla ActiveX Plugin" that never worked and does not show up under my Extensions list, making me wonder if it just didn't get installed, or if it installed on my system somewhere without my knowledge and not having the ability to remove it. I had far better luck using the AOL services in Internet Explorer, but still, other services do have an advantage of using preexisting players to stream media, such as Macromedia Flash or Windows Media Player.




It's hard to understand how this new business model for AOL is expected to work. The Dot Com bubble that burst in the late 90s was a model that was somewhat similar, relying on converting high traffic to view advertising and paid subscriptions. The days of AOL may truly be limited now, but it's demise has been predicted many times in the past, and part of AOL's legacy is it's longevity and ability to act as a chameleon in constantly changing landscapes. At least we can all enjoy the free radio while we're waiting to find out AOL's fate.

XP-AntiSpy Now Includes WGA Disabler

Windows Genuine Advantage, or WGA, is a tool that has met which much scorn since it was first released a few months back. WGA is a background utility that is required to be installed on all Windows XP machines in order to download manual updates. The program checks to determine if the copy of Windows is properly registered and has a valid license key. If it doesn't have the proper credentials, it won't allow the user to run Microsoft Update and in some instants nags the user that they are using an invalid copy of Windows and they should purchase and install a correct one. This can happen to not just people who are knowingly pirating copies of Windows, but individuals who might happen to buy a computer from a non-licensed Microsoft Partner or one that includes a copy of Windows on a retail PC that comes with a false OEM version of Windows .

The other main concern about WGA is from privacy advocates. WGA purportedly sends data back to Microsoft on each boot of the machine and it is unknown what this data is or why it does this. It has clearly annoyed enough people that the main discussion on WGA is how to disable or crack the program. One site which was mentioned in a article on C|Net News was forced by Microsoft to remove the links to the cracks they had posted, but a simple Google search will turn up others.

However, now, a popular program for removing background and foreground annoyances in Windows XP, XP-AntiSpy, has included a function for a work around to the WGA issue. The program now has an option included in it's latest version to "Disable [the] WGA check at logon" which it describes as:

If you see this setting it means you installed the WGA check utility through a windows update. This check utility contacts the microsoft website everytime you logon to your Windows OS. If you don't want that to happen, disable this setting. If you want to get this setting back to work you have to install the WGA update again.

I'm unsure exactly what it does to disable the WGA check, but it is either a registry hack or it somehow uninstalls the utility. XP-AntiSpy has many other useful functions for privacy and security, such as disabling the automatic sending of data back to Microsoft in the form of error reports, Windows Media Player data, and it's time server. It allows users to completely uninstall MSN Messenger, which is otherwise unremovable.

Hopefully, Microsoft won't pressure the publisher of the software (who seems to be located in Germany) to remove this feature of the program, as it is an extremely needed one.

Download XP-AntiSpy 3.96-2 English

UPDATE 9/5: I've come across another program that has a similar function to disable the WGA Notifications. It's called RemoveWGA and simply disables the data that the WGA tool sends back to MS, but doesn't have any effect on the authentication of XP's validity.

Enables you to remove the Microsoft "Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications" tool, which is calling home and connect to Microsoft servers every time you boot (pilot version), or every two weeks (current release).

Once the WGA Notification tool has checked your OS and has confirmed you had a legit copy, there is no decent point or reason to check it again and again every boot. Moreover, connecting to Microsoft brings security issue for corporate networks, and privacy issues for everyone. It is also unclear which information are transmitted (Microsoft published an official answer, but an individual study brought some questions). All of that, along the fact that Microsoft used deceptive ways to make you install this tool (it was told you it was an urgent security update, whereas it is a new installation giving you no extra security) makes me calling this tool a spyware.

Also, Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications is different than Windows Genuine Advantage Validation. RemoveWGA only remove the notification part, phoning home, and does not touch the Validation part. As the time I'm writting this, the Validation part is mandatory for some not critical downloads from Microsoft, but the Notification part is not mandatory at all, and you are able to install all of the security updates without installing this one. This may change in the future thought, I don't know what are the Microsoft plans.

Note : once the WGA notification is removed, the Automatic Update will bug you about installing the update again. This is normal, and out of the scope of RemoveWGA (since at this point, the WGA notification is uninstalled from your system). If you are concerned about tweaking Automatic Update to prevent Microsoft trying to push the update on your computer.

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