I'm starting an experiment to see if I can strip out the Blog tools from the AdSense Ads on this site. We'll see. At the moment, AdSense seems pretty slow about actually using the "URL FIlter"

[from: del.icio.us]

The NPD Group: Digital Music a Prime Opportunity for Music Industry, But Challenges Remain : By comparison to CD sales, in which sales of new releases are the most crucial marketing component, catalog titles that were released more than 18 months prior are a key point of focus for consumers looking to purchase digital music. Sixty-seven percent of the content acquired from P2P is catalog, versus 33 percent for new releases. Similarly 63 percent of the content acquired via paid music services were catalog titles, versus 37 percent for new releases. "Catalog sales are a much larger part of digital music than they are in the physical-music realm," Josephson said, "For some consumers the numbers suggest that digital music is filling a content void created by the limited shelf space available to brick-and-mortar CD retailers.

More proof (if it was needed) of Long Tail effects in digital music distribution. As I've said before the music industry should be digitising and offering online their entire catalogue including deleted items as fast as possible. Since the capital costs were long since paid, there should be no problem with selling it at an extreme cut price. This is inventory that simply isn't available elsewhere (although it may be at Amazon) so isn't earning any money right now.

From a post on Ecademy.

I was wondering if anybody had advice on the best ways of tailoring the adverts being displayed via Adsense. I am running a test on my blog site at the moment where I have added in the Adsense code to display adverts on my site. However, to date, the adverts only seem to display links to other blogging software products - I would prefer them to show adverts for the things I tend to blog about, e.g. gadgets / software development / comedy etc.

You've just hit the problem with Google AdSense. It seems that either Google doesn't have enough Ads, or they are not good enough about finding context, or the blog companies are spending huge amounts of money on AdSense and so swamping the real Ads. I also have a suspicion that Google forms a view of a particular site and uses that as the context until it has indexed the specific page. Which means that the problem is that Google isn't indexing blogs fast enough. (which they don't).

Whatever, the net result is the same, AdSense doesn't seem to work very well on blogs. I have exactly the same problem. I write about all sorts of things, but all I ever seem to get is Ads for Blogging Systems. And just because it's a blog doesn't mean that every person viewing it is looking for a way of building their own blog. Quite the reverse in fact.

Here's an example. I wrote about Win XP being 0wn3d in 200secs a week ago. If I use the Google preview adsense tool (IE6 only, yuck!) on that page, Google is suggesting 12 Ads of which 11 are for blogging systems. Bizarrely, I go back to the same page, 5 minutes later and the ads have changed and now 7 out of 12 are for blogging systems. WTF?

Secrets of Firefox 1.0 is a good starting point if you want to try hacking Firefox defaults and making subtle changes to the way it behaves.

Haven't tried Firefox yet? Download it now. [from: JB Ecademy]

Essential [from: del.icio.us]

Not so much, "Hed Phone Sex", as "Tiki For Sex Heds" [from: del.icio.us]

I thought that wasn't possible.. [from: del.icio.us]

A good list of the Best Firefox Extensions Haven't tried Firefox yet? Well do yourself a favour and try it now. [from: JB Ecademy]

GigaDial.net is a new approach to radio programming. You can use it to create and subscribe to podcast-powered stations composed of individual episodes from your favorite podcasters. [from: del.icio.us]

iPodder.org : Adam is a high profile blogger actively involved in PodCasting. He's recently moved to the UK and is on the Epsom road near Guildford. Broadband is absolutely essential to what he does.

He's being given the run around by BT who claim that the equipement in his local exchange is full and the best he can do is wait for one of the current customers to cancel and free up a port. This sounds pretty strange.

Right now he's broadcasting his daily radio show, via PodCast from the Starbucks in Guildford centre, 2pm every day.

So can anyone in Ecademy help Adam get broadband? [from: JB Ecademy]

Lots of interesting integration between MSN Spaces and the new Messenger V7.

Now why doesn't Messenger respect the default internet browser? Sometimes it launches it for some activities but for others it always uses IE6. [from: JB Ecademy]

0wn3d in 200 seconds | The Register : An unprotected Windows XP machine was breached within four minutes, and became a zombie in less than ten hours, tests conducted by USA Today show. The paper set up six honeypot PCs and monitored the results.

An XP PC running SP1 was breached by an intruder through a hole that the Sasser worm used, only four minutes into the test. Within fifteen minutes two intrusions took place, one using the MS Blaster hole. Within ten hours hackers had established an irc channel and the machine was broadcasting its vulnerabilities to the world at large. A Windows Small Business Server was similarly compromised, with the intruder uploading a program which gave full control of the machine.

Never, never, plug a brand new PC onto the internet without a firewall between it and the net. If you've already got a network and router in place this is all fairly easy. What worries me though is the average home user this christmas who finally splashes out on Broadband and a PC. Most of them will just plug it in, find it works and go and get a cup of tea. The machine may well start automatically downloading and installing SP2, but the machine will be attacked and 0wn3d well before they ever get to installing it.

This problem is solvable. Just not this year and not the way PCs currently start up from being taken out of the box for the first time.

I was checking my incoming logs a week ago, and I'm getting attacked 2 or 3 times a minute. I wondered why the cable modem light was on pretty much continuously these days. This is not going to get better any time soon. [from: JB Ecademy]

http://p2pnet.net/story/3180

I love it!

Comes pre-loaded with classic Negativland
# Points (1981)
# Free (1993)
# Fair Use (1995)
# Dispepsi (1997)
# Happy Heroes (1998)
# The ABCs of Anarchism (1999, with Chumbawamba)
# Deathsentences of the Polished and Structurally Weak (2002)

Somebody just sent me a message saying they'd screwed up a club home page and could I retrieve a backup. So I did a Google search for that page, and Google had a copy of the old page in the Google cache. It's comparatively easy to then cut and paste it back in.

Occasionally somebody manages the same thing on their profile. This is a good line of first defence.

Lovely, Google is your friend! [from: JB Ecademy]

Have you got a Microsoft Passport? If you use hotmail or MSN Messenger, you have. Well now you can have your own Blog run by Microsoft.

Here's my test one. It took all of 5 minutes to build. VoidStar

The whole service is cut down and you definitely won't have the flexibility of running Movable type or wordpress or even Blogger but it's not bad and quite full featured.

[from: JB Ecademy]

for small websites and people in the content generation business [from: del.icio.us]

Times Online - Newspaper Edition : ECADEMY www.ecademy.com

A multi-faceted online business exchange which boasts free membership as its biggest carrot, Ecademy runs various networking forums divided according to location and theme (there are networks for women, recruitment and the intriguingly-titled Beyond Bricks). Working as a cross between an online forum and a weblog, the format takes a while to get used to but is simple to use once you do.

Also mentioned
BRITISH CHAMBERS OF COMMERCE
MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP COUNCIL
ACTIVE PLACES
PEER RESOURCES: MENTORING
HR ZONE
[from: JB Ecademy]

Times Online - Newspaper Edition

THE Apple iTunes music store has refused to sell the charity Band Aid song Do They Know It’s Christmas? because it would damage the company’s dominance of the download market.

The track costs £1.49 on other major online sites which have agreed to donate their profits to relief efforts in Africa. Apple sells individual tracks at 79p but has refused to raise its price for the charity song.

Because of iTunes’s dominance of the online market, Apple’s refusal to sell the track could reduce the revenues raised through online sales by 70 per cent. Millions of iPod owners will not be able to play the track over the Christmas period.

Unbelieveable! They're quite happy to break EU law by having differential charging between EU countries. They're quite happy to overcharge for a pretty poor product. And now this.

Come on Apple. Do the right thing. [from: JB Ecademy]

Blog Torrent is software that makes it much easier to share and download files using the bittorrent protocol. Blog Torrent is easy to install on your website: we don't use MySQL so installation is as easy as uploading a folder to your web host, and all ad [from: del.icio.us]