This week, another SPLOG popped up that included stolen copyrighted content from one of my other blogs. This time, I was pretty annoyed. Normally, when I discover that a splog has stolen content from one of my sites, I’ll request they remove the content with a CC to their host. I don’t really go after them in the pocketbook because most of these sites are clearly from people who don’t know any better. Their contact info is easily accessable, revealing that they are not trying to hide from anyone.

This guy not only had Google AdSense ads all over the site, but also Kontera’s In-Text links.

You’d Think Both Google and Kontera Would Screen Their Publishers!

As the thief had clearly hidden their identity both on the site, and through their registrar, I decided this one was worth nailing; he was clearly hiding from people like me and he needs to be busted! In addition to contacting his host, DreamHost, to let them know, I also emailed both Google and Kontera to inform them of of the violations to their respective TOS and demonstrated how and where this guy was stealing my content. Some people create SPLOGS without knowing that they are doing wrong. This guy clearly knew it and took all the proper steps to make sure no one could find him . . .

Now, I’m waiting to see who takes care of this thief:

1. His host, DreamHost
2. Google (AdSense)
3. Kontera

Who do you think will nail this Jerk first?

• I’d like to thanks CNN for sharing with me the incredible AvoidDelays, which is brought to all of us from our nation’s air controllers. This site is chock full of awesome data about flying in the US, including airports to avoid, worst time to fly to certain cities, and much more. If you travel at all, this site is a must for your bookmarks!
• Thanks to ComputerWorld, I learned that Google recently launched Google Trends, an improved version of their previous Zeitgeist. Googe Trends has an awesome feature that allows you to search the 100 fastest rising search terms in the US, which should come in very handy for those bloggers and others who target popular keywords. You can also look at cool trend & historical charts of different terms, something that is pretty fun to fool around with.
• On the other hand, in a more ominous story, apparently, Google doesn’t think it has invaded our personal lives enough, and wants to delve deeper. In a story I learned about from Drudge, the Financial Times interviewed the Google guys and they revealed their EXTREMELY FRIGHTENING plan to take over the world:
  Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, said gathering more personal data was a key way for Google to expand and the company believes that is the logical extension of its stated mission to organise the world’s information.

  Asked how Google might look in five years’ time, Mr Schmidt said: “We are very early in the total information we have within Google. The algorithms will get better and we will get better at personalisation.

  “The goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask the question such as ‘What shall I do tomorrow?’ and ‘What job shall I take?’ ”

  I’m not sure about the rest of you, but I’m absolutely more afraid of Google then I am the US government under the Bush/Cheney regime. If the government knew as much about everyone as Google did, we’d all be up in arms! I already discussed how they use private data to get better results from Google Blogsearch in the past, and this is just another step towards a complete invasion of all of our privacy. Sadly, people are embracing their efforts instead of fighting them.

  Do you really want any one company to know that much about you? It is indeed a Brave New World and we don’t even realize it!

One thing every blogger, web-designer, and entrepreneur has in common is that we all have some kind of office that we work out of. For some of us, it is a lounge chair on the beach, for others, a cluttered mess.

What Does Your Office Look Like?

Here’s a look at mine. I call it “Organized Chaos!” As you can tell, there are papers on the floor (they don’t last there long . . . my dogs get to them and shred them eventually), the all-important trail mix, scattered electronics (digital camera & camcorder), notes everywhere, and the centerpiece, my iMac (if you haven’t tried switching to Mac, I would highly consider it!).

Group Photo Contest

Now that I’ve shared my home office with all of you, let’s see what your workspace looks like!

While I don’t have any prizes to give out, I thought it might be fun to see how chaotic or immaculate the offices of the rest of you are.

Here’s what I propose:

1. Take a photo of your workspace (without cleaning it up first - we want to see how it looks in reality).

2. Post it on your blog in a post about your workspace.
3. OPTIONAL, But it would be great if you did: Link to this post somehow (I deserve credit for the idea, don’t I?).
   
4. Contact me via my contact form and point me to your post . . . I’ll add a link to your post from this one.

5. Visit all the other interesting workspaces of your fellow bloggers. Feel free to comment on the photos.
6. Feel free to tag your fellow bloggers if you’d like!

If anyone has some sort of prize they want to give away, we can always transform this into a fun contest. Anyone?

If no one decides to participate in any way, at least you all now know what kind of environment I work in.

So . . . Share Your Office / Worspace With The Rest of Us!

Disclaimer: This was partially inspired by all the group writing contests out there.

Here are The Offices / Workspaces of Our Friends Out There

• David Pitlyuk’s Cool Multi-Screen Office
• Blog-Op’s Workspace Exposed
• Francesco Mapelli’s Bedroom Office
• Alison’s Workspace Revealed
• Melt du Plooy’s Workspace
• Claire’s Workspace Exposed
• The World Around Us’s Workspace
• Minddriven’s Workspace
• Workspace of the author of the Banalita Blog (italian)
• Brandon Hopkins’ Workspace Video Tour
• Andrew Flusche’s Workspace
• Mark Shead’s Sparkling Workspace
• Nirmal’s Cubicle Workspace

Here are some important news stories from the past day that are worth a look:

• Gonzales proposes new crime: ‘Attempted’ copyright infringement (CNet News.com)
  This could affect every blogger and person with a website. An important read.

• Russia accused of unleashing cyberwar to disable Estonia (The Guardian UK)
  Looks like we’re possibly seeing the first state sponsored cyber-war between nations. This is potentially a very scary situation!

• Details emerge on IRS plans to tax eBay auctions (ars technica)
  The big-dogs of Ebay may soon hate the IRS more than the rest of us!

Introducing Technorati’s WTF aka Where’s The Fire

I don’t think it has quite caught on yet, but Technorati has built it’s own answer to Digg, Reddit and the rest of the social news and bookmarking sites. It’s called Where’s The Fire or WTF and covers “What’s Hot, and Why.” Considering the popularity and resources of Technorati, it seems like this should be more popular than it already is . . .

WTF Manipulation

Unfortunately, it seems like people are already manipulating the system. I was just looking and there were 4 stories on the front page of the site all promoting some blog (that is a huge POS). Each story had 15 votes and they were all in different categories for added exposure. WTF’s competition already has methods for dealing with situations like these, and if Technorati doesn’t handle the problem FAST, then it is likely that this application will turn out to be a complete flop.

User Manipulating Technorati’s WTF

If Technorati hopes to gain any ground on the competition for social bookmarking/social news, then they need to get a grip on this ASAP. In addition, publicity is going to be key . . . if no one knows about WTF, then it will never become popular (pretty obvious, I know).

Meanwhile, feel free to vote on and support some of the articles I’ve posted to WTF, or just submit some yourself!

I am!

I actually expected to be in the online encyclopedia for something else, but I guess I’ll take what I can get. It seems that someone felt that my post, the Real 2008 Political Internet Sensation: Ron Paul, about how Ron Paul is making strides in the 2008 Presidential Election by grassroots online support, was worth more then just a Digg. The post is referenced in the Ron Paul Wikipedia Entry, under the heading “2008 Presidential Campaign,” and the entry quotes me:

According to Joshua Dorkin at TimeForBlogging.com[26], “As you can see, this candidate (Ron Paul) is fast becoming a real internet sensation, not a manufactured one. He generated passion and curiousity and the people took over from there. I don’t really foresee this guy ripping off his supporters by stealing their MySpace support page (really stupid move for Obama).”

26 ^ “The Real 2008 Political Internet Sensation: Ron Paul” TimeForBlogging.com

I have seen a fair amount of traffic from this new link, but more than anything else, it is a bit flattering (seems like I’m using that word a lot lately . . . see my other post today). I’ve even been contacted by volunteers working on the campaign to get involved more. Seems that my neutral post about the emergence of a candidate has been taken as an endorsement, despite my disclaimer that I am not a supporter.

Back to Wikipedia . . .

Of course, Wikipedia is one of the most trafficked websites in the world, and getting a link on the site is good for anyone’s website. People try gaming the site to put up irrelevant information, but the editors are quite good at catching SPAM. I wonder what it takes for the site to feel that a person, company, brand, or website is worthy of addition. Anyone know?

I do hope to someday soon have an entry in Wikipedia for the website I founded, BiggerPockets® Real Estate Investing Community. The site, I believe, is deserving of being listed. If there are any Wikipedia editors hanging around here . . . please think about it!

Are You in Wikipedia? What for?

I’m not sure whether to be annoyed or pleased . . . I’ll go with flattered, yet bothered.

Someone Plagerized and Translated My Post!

It seems that someone has decided to plagerize my Top 77 Mistakes That New Bloggers Make Post. The catch is that they didn’t simply copy it, but translated the entire thing into Spanish.

Copying anyone’s content without their permission is simply violating their copyright. While it seems that taking a post and translating it would also constitute a copyright violation, I’m left thinking that this is somewhat of a grey area. Normally, when someone steals my content, I go after them with a vengeance, however I’m not exactly sure how to handle this situation. Had the author simply asked my permission to translate my post, I would have probably told him it was okay to do, but he should have asked me.

What Would You Do?
I feel very torn in this situation and would love your feedback here! For now, I’m not going to link back to his post, but I will send a trackback so he knows I’m aware that he took it. What are your feelings on the matter? Should I ask him to take the post down or just let it go? What do you think?

With that in mind, since he was so kind to do the translation, I think it is a must that I share the translated version of my post (which took many hours to write) with my fellow Spanish speaking bloggers.

Los 77 errores que un blogger no debe cometer

Dominios y Alojamiento
1. No tener tu blog alojado como Dios manda ( servidor propio o compartido, pero nada de free hostings)
2. Registrar un dominio para tu blog que tiene copyright o riesgo de entrar en conflicto con marcas establecidas
3. Registrar un dominio largo e imposible de recordar, y sobretodo de teclear.
4. No tener un dominio propio para tu blog

   Estilo, Diseño y elementos basicos de un blog

5. Mantener el diseño original que venia por defecto con el blog
6. Usar un fondo negro, que brilla, tiene lucecitas, se mueve o molesta a la vista de alguna forma
7. Usar musica de fondo
8. No actualizar el blogroll que viene por defecto con el blog
9. No usar correctamente los permalinks
10. No protegerte del spam usando alguno de las decenas de plugins disponibles
11. Desaprovechar el potencial de los plugins que tienes instalados
12. No incluir informacion de contacto del blogger ( si te quiero hacer una donacion millonaria, ¿como te lo digo? )
13. No incluir informacion basica sobre el autor ( a todos nos gusta ponerle un perfil a quien leemos )
14. No crear el sitemap para buscadores ( la de visitas que te puedes perder por ello! :-))

    Comentarios del blog

15. Mantener el primer comentario de prueba que viene con el blog (hay que ser cutre… )
16. Forzar a tus lectores a que se registren de alguna forma para poder dejar comentarios
17. Comentar en otros blogs diciendo solo “que guay!”, “me gusta lo que has escrito” u otras tonterias que no aportan nada
18. Comentar en otros blogs generando spam y llenando el texto con las urls de tus paginas
19. No molestarse en comentar en otros blogs lo suficiente
20. No estar al tanto ni seguir que es lo que se comenta en otros sites o blogs
21. No responder a los comentarios en tu blog
22. Pedir directamente a otros bloggers por enlaces hacia tu blog en los comentarios
23. Recoger direcciones de email a saco e introducirlas en una lista que usaras para spamear a todos (violacion de la privacidad)
24. Usar enlaces de afiliados cuando comentas en otros blogs

    Enlaces

25. Contactar a todo el mundo pidiendo intercambio de enlaces
26. No enlazar hacia otros blogs /fuentes de informacion suficientemente
27. Usar enlaces incorrectos o rotos ( que no llevan a ningun sitio)
28. No usar los trackbacks para saber quien te enlaza y desde donde

    Contenido del Blog

29. Crear SPLOGS ( spam!)
30. Crear falsas expectativas respecto al contenido y calidad del blog y luego no llegar ni a la mitad de los esperado
31. No aprender un poco de la cultura y el lenguaje de los blogs antes de lanzarse a la blogosfera
32. No escoger un buen tema y audiencia antes de ponerse a escribir
33. No mantener el blog enfocado en ese tema y desvariar
34. Copiar el estilo y la filosofia de otro blog ( para eso me leo el otro blog )
35. Bloggear sobre absolutamente nada interesante
36. No revisar la ortografia de nuestras entradas
37. No hacerse un hueco en la red y experimentar el “blogger burnout” ( toy quemao !)
38. Robar contenido de otros blogs
39. Bloggear sobre algo que no tenemos ni idea
40. Copiar posts enteros de otros sitios y pensar que con un simple enlace de vuelta quedamos bien ( eso es robar! :-))
41. No atribuir el credito necesario a las fuentes de donde sacamos nuestras ideas y contenidos
42. Ocultar o modificar nuestra personalidad haciendonos pasar por quienes no somos en nuestro blog
43. Escribir titulos que no tienen ningun interes
44. Escribir interminables bloques de texto sin espacios, orden, negrita, etc.
45. Escribir de forma demasiado irregular
46. Olvidar que escribes para tus lectores, no para ti mismo
47. Escribir cosas en el blog que pueden perjudicarte en el futuro (sobretodo si pones a parir a tu jefe :-))
48. Ser poco profesional
49. Atacar a otros bloggers a destajo solo para ganar atencion
50. Compartir informacion confidencial o privada en tu blog
51. Compartir EXCESIVA informacion personal ( puede ser peligroso)
52. No tener propio criterio y propio lenguaje al escribir
53. No motivar al lector a que participe en los comentarios
54. Escribir mucho blablabla sin llegar a decir nada
55. Escribir sobre lo que todo el mundo escribe ( a no ser que seas el primero en hacerlo :))
56. Crear concursos con premios y no proporcionarlos

    Promocion de blogs y generar trafico

57. Hacer publicidad del blog en cualquier sitio ( hay que saber escoger )
58. Promover un blog que no llega a los 10 posts
59. Usar aplicaciones de trafico (software) para incrementar tus rankings
60. Usar otros metodos dudosos para incrementar tu trafico
61. Enviar tu blog una y otra vez a sitios sociales ( tu blog hasta en la sopa vaya…)
62. Enviar entradas pesimas a estos sitios sociales ( meneame, promoting blogs, etc….)
63. No hacer publicidad de tus mejores posts
64. No participar en Blog Carnivals para atraer mas trafico
65. No incluir un enlace hacia tu blog en firmas de mails, forums, etc
66. No responder a emails y comentarios de otros bloggers

    Generando ingresos con el blog

67. Preocuparte de como generar ingresos antes de tener un contenido de calidad
68. Poner tantos anuncios como se pueda de cualquier estilo, clase, red de anuncios, etc
69. Hacer click en tus propios anuncios
70. Permitir que cualquiera se anuncie en tu sitio ( un poco de criterio hombre! :-))
71. Escribir entradas patrocinadas de cualquier forma ( esta genial sacar dinero escribiendo para ReviewMe o PPP o el que sea, pero hay que hacerlo bien! )

    Feeds

72. Infra utilizar las posibilidades de tu feed
73. No disponer de un link claro desde el cual subscribirse a tu feed en el blog
74. No usar feedburner para optimizar y hacer publicidad de tu blog ( tiene cientos de posibilidades para ello)
75. No uses el contador de lectores de Feedburner si no tienes al menos 50 lectores
76. No sindicar el contenido total de tu blog en las feeds
77. Saturar tu feed de anuncios