Facebook and Twitter to be closed down!

No, this isn’t some viral scare story with no foundation in truth.  This could happen, and it could happen soon.

The American government, at the request of the Hollywood movie moguls, are debating a bill, SOPA, which if passed would give the power to immediately close down any site that it wants.  Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr etc. are particularly at risk.

The internet giants, including, Google, Twitter, AOL, eBay, Yahoo and Facebook have joined forces to kill off this bill.  In an open letter to the US House Judiciary Committee they say;

“We are concerned that these measures pose a serious risk to our industry’s continued track record of innovation and job-creation, as well as to our Nation’s cybersecurity. We cannot support these bills as written and ask that you consider more targeted ways to combat foreign “rogue” websites dedicated to copyright infringement and trademark counterfeiting, while preserving the innovation and dynamism that has made the Internet such an important driver of economic growth and job creation.” 

Google spokesman, Matt Cutts has this to say; 

“If SOPA becomes law, it could stifle the innovation (and jobs) that the technology industry creates. That’s why Facebook, Twitter, Mozilla, Google, Yahoo, eBay, AOL, LinkedIn, and Zynga all oppose SOPA. This is not a Democratic or Republican issue–Red State thinks SOPA is a bad idea too.”

So what can you do? 

Sadly, for those outside of the US the answer is very little, other than contact all of your American friends, family and colleagues and ask them to contact their congressman to register their protest.

For those in the US there are a few more options.

First you can contact your congressman and express your concerns that this bill can, and will do serious harm to the internet.

Or you can sign the online petition here, KILL SOPA BILL which is hosted on the Whitehouse server.

And then again here: American censorship  

Finally, webmaster you can, (and should) link to American censorship, black out your logo and give details on how you oppose SOPA. 

This bill WILL affect us all, I urge you to act now.

STOP SOPA

House spud gun

The 150th episode of House features Thirteen and House participating in a spud gun competition.

I don’t know about you, but I *REALLY* wanted one of these awesome potato guns.  But… yup, you guessed it, you can’t buy them

Luckily, for me (and for you too) I found some videos online that I could watch which took me by the hand, and showed me step-by-step on exactly how to build my own House spud gun.

And it was really easy to build and way cheaper than I tought it would be.

My House spud gun can blast a potato over 100 yards and anyone can build one of these suckers! And the great thing… I bought everything I needed from Home Depot, there was nothing to order off the internet and no ‘specialist’ parts

Just watch this video and see how quick and easy it is to create your own House spud gun.

Before I watched these videos my potato gun was just popping spuds a pathetic 20 yards or so. But now my House spud gun fires my missiles well over 100 yards, time after time. And it was really easy to build and unbelievably cheap!

Here’s just a few of the things that I learnt from these fantastic videos;

• The best fuel to use to launch potatoes at jaw dropping velocity.
• The worst possible fuel to use, which happens to be what most people trying to use
• The one type of pipe that you MUST use to build the ultimate House spud gun
• How to discover the optimum pipe to chamber ratio, without this your spud will just plop to the ground 10 feet in front of you
• Even the best type of spuds to use – choose wisely to avoid embarrasing misfires

Check out how to build a House spud gun now

Check out how to build a House spud gun now

House spud gun

Auto-Blog R.I.P.

For a long time confusion has reigned about the subject of duplicate content.  Some would have had us believe that publishing content from sources other than that by your own hand would lead to a slap by the mighty ‘G’.  This was never the case.

What Google did frown up however, was publishing the same content on the same site.  This is the reason that auto-blogs worked so well (If they were implemented correctly). On a number of occasions I have seen my own content scraped and posted on an auto-blog, ranking higher that my original article!

But… That is about to stop.  In fact, with today’s announcement by Matt Cutts, it looks like the era of auto-blogging has come to an end.

This is what he said..

“My [Matt Cutts] post mentioned that “we’re evaluating multiple changes that Read the rest of this entry »

Hi guys,

this is just a quick post to tell you about a new free plugin I’ve just had an e-mail about.  It’s called the Authority Squeeze Generator plugin and it is to promote a new product by Alex Goad and Bryan McConnahea.

I haven’t really had a look at the product that is being sold, however the plugin looks great.

A lot of these Guru guys are offering free  software as an appetizer for their package, and a lot of it is pretty good (if you wanted to show how good your product was, would you give away something crap as a loss leader?)

Anyway, here is the bumph off their page, and you will have to opt-in to get the free squeeze page generator.

• * Click and choose from our highest converting landing page templates all pre-tested and Read the rest of this entry »

Free Social Bookmarking Tool

We know how useful social bookmarking can be, for instance when you have just created a new post, there is very little that will get Google to sit up and take notice as quickly as firing off the URL to half a dozen social bookmarking sites.

However, we also know how time consuming and tedious social bookmarking can be. Even using a free social bookmarking tool like ‘Share This’, the time spent logging into all those bookmarking websites is time that could be better spent writing a new post, creating a new product or building a new website.

So when something new comes along, which claims to take away all the tedium of bookmarking, and do it automatically. Then that Read the rest of this entry »

eBay Discount Coupon November 1st – 14th

You can always tell when the run up to the Christmas shopping season starts as there are always lots of discount vouchers issued.

Perhaps the most useful are those offered around this time every year by eBay.  This year is no different as they have just announced an early eBay Discount Coupon Event. Seventeen different sellers will be honoring their eBay discount coupon and you could get up to 35% off from selected items.

The eBay discount coupon promotion runs from today, November 1st to midnight on Sunday November 14th 2010.

It is good to know as well that each eBay discount coupon isn’t just valid for one purchase, it can be used again and again.  A few of the retailers are using a special sales landing page, I have made a note of the address next to the effected sellers.

Anyway, here is a note of each eBay discount coupon Read the rest of this entry »