Napster's DRM-free MP3 music store launches

Posted May 20th 2008 9:00AM by Brad Linder
Filed under: Audio, Internet, Web services, web 2.0

Tags: drm, mp3, music, napster

Napster's DRM-free MP3 music store launches

Posted May 20th 2008 9:00AM by Brad Linder
Filed under: Audio, Internet, Web services, web 2.0

Tags: drm, mp3, music, napster

Now Domalewski is severely disabled, left with brain damage after being struck in the chest by a line drive that stopped his heart while he was playing in a youth baseball game.

His family plans to file a lawsuit Monday against the maker of the metal bat that was used in the game, against Little League Baseball and a sporting goods chain that sold the bat. The family contends metal baseball bats are inherently unsafe for youth games because the ball comes off them much faster than from wooden bats.

Family files lawsuit in metal bat injury case

18 hours ago

WAYNE, N.J. (AP) — The family of a boy who suffered brain damage after he was struck by a line drive off an aluminum baseball bat sued the bat's maker and others on Monday, saying they should have known it was dangerous.

The family of Steven Domalewski, who was 12 when he was struck by the ball in 2006, filed the lawsuit in state Superior Court. It names Hillerich & Bradsby Co., maker of the 31-inch, 19-ounce Louisville Slugger TPX Platinum bat used when Steven was hit.

The lawsuit also names Little League Baseball and Sports Authority, which sold the bat. It claims the defendants knew, or should have known, that the bat was dangerous for children to use, according to the family's attorney, Ernest Fronzuto.

"People who have children in youth sports are excited about the lawsuit from a public policy standpoint because they hope it can make the sport safer," Fronzuto said after filing the suit Monday morning. "There are also those who are skeptical of the lawsuit and don't see the connection between Steven's injury and the aluminum bat."

Little League denies any wrongdoing, as does the bat manufacturer. Sports Authority has not responded to several telephone messages seeking comment.

Steven was pitching in a Police Athletic League game when he was hit just above the heart by a line drive. His heart stopped beating and his brain was deprived of oxygen for 15 to 20 minutes, according to his doctors.

Although he was not playing in a Little League game, the organization is being sued because it gave its seal of approval to the bat, certifying it as safe for use by children, Fronzuto said.

Blogging 2.0 and Professional Blogging

There’s been some amazing reaction and discussion around Blogging 2.0 in the last 24 hours. I don’t mean to write on the topic every day, but there is one aspect I didn’t tackle in the earlier post that others have raised: blogging 2.0’s affect on professional bloggers.

One argument against blogging 2.0 is that in taking the conversation away from blogs exclusively, professional blogging will become extinct, on the presumption that blogging 2.0 reduces page views.

Old models die hard

There is no argument that the traditional blogging 1.0 professional blogging model around maximizing a blog as the center of the conversation is a model that has served blogging and professional bloggers extremely well. But it’s a model that pre-dates the rise of social networks and really Web 2.0 itself (blogging was co-opted into being a part of the 2.0 movement, but its functionality is older). Blogging 1.0 has revolved around insular communities in walled gardens, with nothing other than the occasional link out or pingback as any recognition of a greater conversation.

The reality is that Web 2.0 is finally catching up to blogging. The walled gardens of singular blogs are making way to social interaction across multiple platforms.

Blogging 2.0

If blogging 1.0 was about enabling the conversation on each blog, blogging 2.0 is about enabling the conversation across many blogs and supporting sites and services. The conversation has matured and no longer is it acceptable to believe that as a content owner you hold exclusive domain over conversations you have started. Users/ readers today demand more than a conversation on one site, and blogging 2.0 facilitates this.

Acceptance

I’ll be the first to admit that accepting the new paradigm of blogging 2.0 isn’t easy. I started this site still firmly entrenched in the thoughts of blogging 1.0, having not run my own large blog in two years, but likewise having been schooled in blogging since it first came to prominence in 2002-2003. I’ve come to the conclusion that what is happening in blogging 2.0 is something that I can’t stop nor change, so it is something I’m going to fully embrace, for all the inherent risk part of me is telling me it represents. I accept that others will rally against this: it’s human nature to do so, but no amount of protest will change the evolving reality of blogging 2.0. My advice to others: embrace it, or miss out.

In 1988, when I was 11 years old, my father owned an aircraft sales business and operated out of a small airport named, Outlaw Field. I was given flight lessons by one of his hired pilots during downtime. Even though my hours couldn’t be officially logged because of my age, I managed to log in over 15 hours of flight time. My dad purchased a pilot log book for me and even signed, dated it and wished me luck with flying. I remember the airplane that I trained in like it was yesterday. It was a 1975 Cessna 150. From that point on and until the day I die, I will never forget the tail number on that airplane: N6177K. So anyway, one day if the airplane is still airworthy and if the current owner wants to sell it, I want to buy it. My dad died four years ago and it would mean a lot to me to own it. Still to this day I have the Pilot Logbook my dad gave to me. It is in mint condition and it would be great if I could one day continue my flight training in the same airplane that my dad owned almost 20 years ago.

Having shared that little cheesy and sappy story… check out the FAA’s N-Number Inquiry section. You can follow THIS LINK to view the file on the 1975 Cessna 150 that I used to fly when I was 11 years old.

Here are some pictures for reference:

This is a 1976 Cessna 150. This isn’t the plane I flew back in 1988… this one looks much nicer!

Here is a picture of my pilot logbook that was given to me from my dad in Oct. 1988.

Steve Ballmer Gets Egged in Hungary

Steve Ballmer egged at Hungarian University

12 Traits of Successful Bloggers

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 0 comments

I was just doing an interview on an Aussie radio station and was asked to name some traits of successful bloggers. My initial reaction was to giggle - because no two successful bloggers are the same - however as I began to answer I realized that there are some common traits among bloggers who gain popularity.

A social network is a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as values, visions, idea, financial exchange, friends, kinship, dislike, conflict, trade, web links, sexual relations, disease transmission (epidemiology), or airline routes. The resulting structures are often very complex.

The Internet completely changed the way people used to communicate and interact, so it was a natural step to create virtual social networks, or social networking websites. Back in 1979 Usenet, a global Internet discussion system, was already attempting to accomplish this.

Then in 1995 you had perhaps the first online social network as we known them today, ClassMates.com, which the purpose was to allow school mates to connect.

Answers to Questions Round 6

Welcome ProBlogger Readers

Understanding the Blog Lifecycle To Prevent Common Downfalls

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 25 comments

In this post Jeff from BuzzMyBlog.com examines the life cycle of a blog and gives some tips on how to buck the trend and keep your blog growing over the long haul.

The average blog does not stick around for a long time. Sure, a couple big name blogs continue to reach new heights year after year. Out of the 175,000 new blogs created each day, however, very few will make it past three months. In order to figure out why the blog mortality rate is so high, I thought it would be a good idea to take a look at the life cycle of a typical blog. Perhaps by studying common blog activities that occur over time, we can get a better idea of why blogs fail and what can be done to keep them alive and growing.

What is OIOpublisher?

OIOpublisher is aimed at blog owners and webmasters. It is being continually developed into a complete advertising solution, which means not only creating the ultimate sales solution, but also focusing on traffic and content development.

• No commissions taken by greedy middle men
• Full control over what and how you sell
• Keep 100% of your earnings

Signup Download Enjoy!

What can I sell?

The sales platform offers webmasters a number of options, all of which you can view at a glance here. To allow for the greatest flexibility, you can sell directly from your site, any combination of the following:

• Sell links, reviews, inpost ads; even digital downloads and services
• Inbuilt affiliate program enables your readers to get involved
• The most flexible sales platform around, anywhere

Live Demo Admin Options Test Drive!

What other services are offered?

Our advanced API platform let you instantly connect your blog to a number of different services, including central marketplace purchases, our upcoming ad network, and even social content development through our unique group conversation system!

• Build the OIO brand, and take your share of the revenue (more)
• Interact with other bloggers via group conversations
• Get noticed within your niche; quality sells

Labs Social Interact!

Development Team: Simon Emery

The BioTrainer Online Monitoring Program

Auto Repair Scam Guide

Get Paid To Shop Online at DollarFrog.com

Tired of pixel-by-pixel painting, trying to create seamless stripes textures?

Here we are!

Enjoy using stripe generator!

Unleash your personal style, experiment and download the tile. You can use it directly in your css file or as pattern in Photoshop®!

If you like our tool, feel free to credit stripegenerator.com by linking us with our banner :)

Whois lookup and Domain name search

Enter a Domain Name to Lookup

Domain Tools supports many other types of searches besides whois records: - Search domain names using partial word(s) in Domain Search. - Partial word(s) searching on active domain names ("bill gates") - IP address searching ("66.218.71.198") - Invent a new domain with our domain suggestions ("ny apartments") - Domains for sale searching ("power") - Searching domains at auction ("tree") - Full domain ("nameintel.com" goes directly to whois)

All information from WHOIS service is provided 'as is'. We take no responsibility for any error or omission in WHOIS data. The data in WHOIS service is provided to you for your information only. You agree not to use high-volume, automated electronic processes to access or query WHOIS service.

By submitting a WHOIS query to us, you agree that you will only use the data obtained from a WHOIS query for lawful purposes, and that you will not: (a) allow, enable, or otherwise support the transmission of mass, unsolicited, commercial advertising or solicitations by e-mail, telephone, or facsimile; or (b) enable high volume, automated, electronic processes that send queries or data to our system.

You also agree that the copying, reproduction, translation, compilation, re-packaging, dissemination or other use of the data in WHOIS service is prohibited without our prior written consent. We reserve the right to terminate your access to our WHOIS service at any time, and for any reason, including (without limitation) if you fail to comply with any provision of these Terms of Use.

We may modify these Terms of Use at any time without notice by our amending the Terms of Use on this web page. You agree that your use of our WHOIS service following any modification to these Terms of Use will constitute your acceptance of these Terms of Use (as modified from time to time).

Check out the free World Wide Telescope by Microsoft. The WorldWide Telescope (WWT) is a Web 2.0 visualization software environment that enables your computer to function as a virtual telescope—bringing together imagery from the best ground and space-based telescopes in the world for a seamless exploration of the universe.

WorldWide Telescope is created with the Microsoft high performance Visual Experience Engine and allows seamless panning and zooming around the night sky, planets, and image environments. View the sky from multiple wavelengths: See the x-ray view of the sky and zoom into bright radiation clouds, and then crossfade into the visible light view and discover the cloud remnants of a supernova explosion from a thousand years ago. Switch to the Hydrogen Alpha view to see the distribution and illumination of massive primordial hydrogen cloud structures lit up by the high energy radiation coming from nearby stars in the Milky Way. These are just two of many different ways to reveal the hidden structures in the universe with the WorldWide Telescope. Seamlessly pan and zoom from aerial views of the Moon and selected planets, as well as see their precise positions in the sky from any location on Earth and any time in the past or future with the Microsoft Visual Experience Engine.

Responses to “Which Social Bookmarking Site Would You Prefer to Hit the Front Page Of?”

• Damien Franco

  May 17th, 2008 2:09 pm

  Stumbleupon has given me the best results. My site doesn’t really work for digg and I don’t think I’m that interested in that type of traffic. My understanding is that it doesn’t last. While I appreciate the spikes I do get from Stumbleupon, I enjoy my site growing organically.

• Keith Dsouza

  May 17th, 2008 2:12 pm

  I prefer StumbleUpon as Stumble users provide a better conversion rate to regular readers.

  Secondly SU traffic is not hit and go, you keep getting stumbles for a long time unlike Digg.

  Digg just provides spikes and does not last for even one full day, the only satisfaction you can get is watching a towering graph in your stats service for the day you were Dugg.

• Mark Lancaster

  May 17th, 2008 2:17 pm

  I’d say Yahoo Buzz.

  It would be crazy.

The best of the best - chosen by people like you.

• The buzz can be about anything - a great story on a major news site, an extraordinary bit from an obscure site, an intriguing video, or a fantastic blog that shouldn't be missed.
• Instead of editors, people like you determine the top-rated stories.

How it works.

• First, we determine the most popular topics that people are searching for on Yahoo!.
• Then, we showcase the most popular stories within those topics, based on activities like voting and emailing stories to friends.
• Stories with most Buzz may be published on the Yahoo! home page - you can impact what millions will see on Yahoo!.

Buzz gets your content on the Yahoo! network.

• Buzz pulls in content from publisher partners across the Web.
• Users vote for that content on Buzz and on publisher sites, which helps surface the most remarkable stories to the top of Buzz.
• The best content may be featured on the Yahoo! homepage, potentially driving millions of clicks to your site.

Partner with Buzz.

Want more traffic to your site? Make the largest audience on the Web your audience. We’ll be accepting new publishers on a rolling basis. Join our mailing list for updates.

Yahoo Buzz has actually overtaken Digg with nearly 7 million monthly unique visitors in the U.S.

As always, these metrics must be taken with a grain of salt; also, one must take into account is that Yahoo is one of the top 5 sites overall according to most metrics, and that all their projects get a really nice kickstart from all that traffic. But still, I didn’t expect such stellar growth for Yahoo Buzz, which seemed - it still does, in fact - like a lightweight version of Digg for less tech-savvy users.

Join The Club

The Ten Things Every New Internet Marketer Should Know

Maybe you are like I was hundreds of man-hours ago: Interested in Internet Marketing, but completely overwhelmed by all the information that the internet has to offer about making money online. There are so many different ways to try to make money online, and so many people claiming to set you free with a $97 eBook. Most of their claims seem too good to be true.

The thing is, most of their claims are too good to be true. I was where you are now. Based on that experience I have complied a 20+ page summary of the things that I wish I had known when I was in your shoes. Amazingly, my eBook is free. Simply sign up below to receive Join The Club. As an added bonus, your be subscribed to my free internet marketing news letter. I hate spam as much as you do, so rest assured you’ll never get any spam from me.

Danny Sullivan AKA godfather of SEO:

An SEO is someone who understands how people search for information (on the web and in other ways) and ensures that they or their clients are visible in the unpaid listings that are provided. A search marketer, by the way, is someone that ensures listing in both paid and unpaid listings.

Matt Cutts: No response.

Tim Mayer: No response.

Rand Fishkin:

SEO is the combination of tactics and strategies, including, but not limited to, optimization of information architecture, usability, content focus, audience targeting, design, development, keyword research, keyword placement, link building, social media marketing and any other online or offline branding/marketing elements that support the goal of receiving more traffic from search engines.

Neil Patel:

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the art of understanding search engines and and using that knowledge to make a website rank high on search engines.

Andy Beal:

Making changes to the on-page and off-page relevance of a web page in an effort to increase the volume of quality traffic from the search engines.

Lee Odden:

Whatever can be searched on can be optimized. Optimization for bots improves content discovery, indexing and trust (algorithmically). Optimization for the user experience improves clickthroughs, conversions and community. People that called themselves SEOs in the past are really just online marketers leveraging a mix of technology, creative and fundamental marketing expertise to make sales online. They’re more marketing consultants then SEOs even though the “SEO” moniker persists.

Definitions of SEO will change as search channels and user behaviors change, so it’s a waste of time to try and create a standing definition - in my opinion anyway.

Michael Gray:

Search Engine Optimization: The process, of building, designing, creating, or updating a website, or it’s contents, with the goals of increasing visibility within search engines, and improved placement on search engine results pages, for a desired set of keywords terms or market segment.

Marcus Tandler:

The practice and methods of improving a website´s ranking in the organic results of searchengines.

Dax Herrera:

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

The SEO’s mission is to organize the client’s information and make it robotically accessible and profitable.

Patrick Gavin:

The art and science of raising a web page’s natural search engine rankings. SEO is broken into two distinct buckets: on page factors and off page factors. On page factors including such items as: a website’s crawl-ability, internal linking set up, keyword selection and placement, meta tags, etc. Off page factors being building link popularity (inbound links) into your website. I believe link building to still be the single most important part of the SEO equation.

Aaron Wall:

SEO is the art and science of publishing and marketing content in a way that brings significant profitable and targeted traffic to your website. As the web has grown and Google has become more sophisticated, the field of SEO has been aggressively merging with traditional marketing, with emphasis on branding, framing, story telling, user engagement, viral marketing, and public relations.

Abraham Lincoln once said “With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.” That is where profitable sustainable SEO is headed.

Rebecca Kelley:

In my opinion, SEO is simply a facet of traditional marketing that focuses on the Internet medium. It involves implementing strategies and changes that make your website both search engine and user friendly — search engine friendly so that your site ranks well in search engine results for appropriate keyword searches, and user friendly so that you can provide a solid customer experience and yield high conversions.

Darren Rowse:

How do I define SEO? Good question - there are a number of thoughts that come to mind:

1. the right answer - SEO is something that helps a website to increase it’s ranking in a search engine.

2. my ‘historical’ answer (ie what I would have answered a few years ago) - SEO is about manipulating Search Engines in order to get them to send you as much traffic as possible.

3. the ‘in practice’ answer (ie how it impacts me these days) - SEO for me these days is a combination of:

• about knowing some of the general principles that help a site or page to rank well in search engines
• building the best quality site that I can with content that meets the needs of readers (and as a result attracts links from other sites).

I guess I’ve come to learn that when you build a high quality website that SEO tends to largely look after itself.

Ted Murphy

SEO is the art of optimizing an online presence in order to maximize relevant search engine traffic.

Stephan Spencer:

In our view (here at Netconcepts), SEO is the application of techniques that make websites and web content more findable for particular keywords being searched on by search engine users. While SEO is not a hard and exact science (there is definitely an art to it), SEO experts do seek to apply rigorous logic to reverse engineer the “black box” that is the search engines’ algorithms, in order to “deconstruct” (identify, quantify and qualify) the hundreds of factors which play a part in search engine ranking. From those factors, SEO practitioners derive methods to engineer webpages whereby search engines will favor their content in the rankings. Classically, SEO addressed more simplistic factors such as the “spiderability” of sites/pages and the tuning of technical factors found directly on the pages and within the website’s architecture (such as URL structure). However, as the search engines continue to evolve, advanced contemporary SEO practices increasingly need to include attention to off-page factors which address meta-data about the linked content. These include, among other things, more subtle and indirect strategies such as syndication, viral marketing, social media “optimization”, and community-building efforts.

Joost Devalk:

Search Engine Optimization is the practice of improving a sites’ content, code, server settings, internal structure and external linking, with the intent of making the site rank higher in the search engines. If done well, SEO is a part of each (online) marketing act, resulting in the improved visibility of the site.

Note that I do NOT think that a site should rank higher than “it’s meant to be” if there IS such a thing. In the end, SEO should make a site WORTHY of a higher ranking, not push it beyond what it’s worth. In practice, this means that if a site is sh*t, link building for it is neigh to impossible, so it won’t work, and we’ll tell people to improve their site. That means that in the end, an SEO is more off a total online marketer and site consultant than just someone pulling some tricks to quickly make a site rank better.

Quadzilla aka Seo Black Hat:

“ Web spam SEO is when somebody tries to cheat or take shortcuts so that their Web site shows up higher [in search results rankings] than it deserves to show up,” - Matt Cutts QuadsZilla

Todd Malicoat:

SEO is an evolving marketing school of thought born from the desire to rank high in search engines…not a process. It is the art and science of blending user experience, conversion, monetization, and search-ability for optimal web site performance. The irony with SEO is that the acronym is poor marketing created by a new generation of marketers - it should be WSO - Web Site Optimization.

Tamar Weinberg

SEO is a form of internet marketing that entails designing websites for search engine awareness and visibility as well as for user friendliness (especially with regards to relevancy). SEO is on-page optimization that focuses heavily on improving the site’s content with an emphasis on keywords in the site’s architecture, which includes link structure, navigation, title tags, and other on-page elements.
Thanks everyone for participating.

Chris Winfield:

SEO is a component (one of the most important) of Internet marketing. Good
SEO entails (a) giving a search engine spider what it wants (b) creating, or
optimizing, great content and (c) getting quality websites to link to your
website. Good SEO will result in targeted traffic and will drive sales.

Definition of Organic Landing Pages

This type of a page is created with the basic intention of getting a search engine ranking for a specific keyword, and is one of the basic fundamentals of internet marketing.

There is a ton of debate as to whether this type of page should be written with visitors or search engines in mind. The answer seems pretty easy and obvious to me - it should be written with both in mind.

Creating a landing page that doesn’t have the keyword in the right places would just be stupid and creating a landing page that didn’t make sense or help a visitor is also not a good idea. If a Google engineer came across the page you could be banned or penalized. On the other side of things you could also get a benefit from people naturally linking to a solid page if it helped people that were searching for the information found there.

Step 1: Planning Is Pivotal

I cannot stress how important I believe this step to be. In order for your blog to be as successful as possible, it is important that you treat it like a small business (if its not already an actual business). The same rules of business apply to blogging. There is supply and demand (relevant content within your niche and readers with interest), there is competition from other bloggers, and there are incomes and expenses. No right-minded business would venture blindly into the marketplace without a solid Business Plan. Those that do often fail. The same is true of blogging. The consequences of failing may not be as catastrophic in blogging - you aren't going to lose your house or anything. But if you don't plan, it is easy to become frustrated, lose interest, and give up. Following a clear plan, on the other hand, can help keep you focused and in the game.

What is Split Testing?

Also sometimes called A/B testing, split testing means that you run two different versions of an AdSense ad unit on your blog so that you can see which one performs best. You serve one version of the ad to one visitor, and then another version to the next visitor.

If you do this over a large number of visitors you’ll get a bit enough sample to be able to draw some conclusions about which ad design works best in that particular ad position.

How to Run a Split Test on Your AdSense Ads

Split testing sounds complicated but it is relatively simple to set up. In short, all it really involves is setting up a couple of channels within your AdSense account so that you can track the results and then inserting a little extra code around the AdSense code in your blog’s templates.

The start of the death of SEO:

As Google started getting more and more data on sites the need for webmasters to help them greatly decreased. This Googleguy disappeared from forums but about the same time a engineer from Google named Matt Cutts appeared. His blog soon became the voice of the Google search team and instead of really giving tips and answering questions he laid down the law. In particular to paid links and paid reviews as well as other items which make Google look stupid.

The death of SEO is not going to happen overnight but it is close. I personally believe that Google will achieve their original goals and not allow humans to influence its algorithms. I know it sounds like SEO… well actually the definitions are the same thing. The difference between SEO and spam is what Google allows. There is no future in SEO and we will very soon all go back to being spammers. There is no black or white there is only SEO.

So, what is Article Marketing?

Article marketing refers to a traffic generation method that depends on submitting informative “articles” to sites called “article directories.” These articles generally consist of an article body that has generally useful information, and an article resource box that contains links back to the author’s site. This technique is sometimes mistakenly called “Bum Marketing.”   Actually, as pointed out by Josh Spaulding, Article Marketing is one of the tools that Bum Marketers use (so named since it is so easy even a bum could do it.)

Good article directories have great traffic and strong Google page rank, so publishing your information there increases the chance that people will see and read what you have to say. Additionally, article directories allow people to copy and republish their articles, provided the article is unchanged and the resource box is preserved. This means that your article with your links could end up on multiple sites with lots of exposure.

 This is my Google Notebook. I am going to put a few interesting things in it. You might want to subscribe to it or read it often.