So earlier today I tweeted about Second Harvest’s Lunch Money Day – it’s this year on February 16th. Basically LMD is a grassroots campaign that asks us to support Second Harvest, Canada’s largest food rescue organization.

The idea is simple: donate your “lunch money” so others can enjoy what many of us take for granted … food. Every $10 donated provides enough food for 20 nutritious meals.

Please visit http://SecondHarvest.ca and http://LunchMoneyDay.com to pledge your support.

*** BRIBE ALERT ***

Now you can donate and never tell a soul … or if you want, you can donate and tell me.

If you forward a copy of the email receipt (you get one after donating) and tell me your Twitter userid (mine’s @jamesburchill), I will tell the Twitterverse what a good egg you are!

Look, all kidding aside … being hungry sucks. I can’t feed everyone and I can only do so much alone. But if sharing your twitter ID with my ~15K followers helps you help the hungry, I’ll do it.

PS. And don’t over think this “should I or shouldn’t I?” … “what will people think of me?” Seriously folks … many smart businesses help charities and announce it. It’s not about bragging, it’s just smart to let people know you actually care enough about others to give a damn and do something about it

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For complete details goto http://bfmp.kajabi.com/

Or click the image…

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Here’s something I wrote called the Whistleblower Report: A Short Story of Success With A Long Tail

It ruffled a few feathers when I published it because it outlines my approach to marketing and how I convinced CAA clients that aliens were responsible for a rash of dead car batteries at Christmas.

I even explain why eBay staff thought they had a corporate mole they heard about my special coupon marketing idea. All fun stuff.

No opt-in required. You can download it from Scribd. Enjoy, and remember if you like it – share the link on your social network.

Thanks!

James

PS. If you like this content, SUBSCRIBE to my email list for more.

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They’re calling the project the Hackerspace Global Grid (HGG) and are building plans for a grid of ground stations and communications satellites that would be independent of governments world wide. Long-term, if the initial project succeeds, they’d like to further prove the model that governments aren’t the only answer by staging the first moon landing since the Apollo missions.

The Challenges

Beyond the obvious challenge of funding, the technological feats here would be huge. So far, hobbyists and amateurs have only managed to put low-orbit satellites into space for short periods and tracking has proved nearly impossible without a large budget to afford complex and costly hardware.

Most of these attempts have been made with balloons with only a few successful rocket attempts having been made. Most amateur rockets that do make space are not capable of carrying a payload as large as a usable communications satellite.

Of course, none of this means that HGG would have to launch their satellites themselves. Or even make the satellites to be launched. All could be purchased from professionals already in the game, many of which are private and not government.

That goes back to funding. A satellite and launch can cost in the millions. Nick Farr, the hacker-activist (not the same as a ‘hactivist’) behind the HGG project, has only just begun asking for donations in August. So the project is still in its infancy.

The Ground Network Will Be Toughest

The toughest part of the project will be the ground network. Since virtually all land on the earth is claimed by one or another government, any buildings or equipment used to track and communicate with satellites in orbit would be subject to their laws (and enforcement).

Conceivably, a looser network of activists without a solid location could accomplish this in an underground fashion, but long-term, this is not likely to be a solution.

To counter this problem, the HGG project is proposing a ‘grid’ of small stations – something that could be in a person’s home, backyard, or even stashed on an abandoned property – that would act as a sort of reverse GPS. Rather than using a satellite to track geo-locations, the grid would use geolocation systems to track satellites. If the sites are fixed and in precisely-known locations, this would be easy and would not require expensive hardware.

HGG Overall

The total plan is ambitious, interesting, and definitely fun to speculate about. Would it make reality? That depends entirely on the will of those who are on-board with the project. Larger things have been accomplished by dedicated groups before. There’s no reason this one should be any different.

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Amazon proudly announced they sold over 4 million Kindle devices during the Holiday shopping season (late November through December). Over a million Kindles a week were purchased while e-book sales jumped 175% over last year.

More interesting information comes out of these figures. It’s not just about Amazon success. In fact, Amazon is suspected to have been losing money on every Kindle Fire sale (that can be read more than one way), but the huge increase in e-book purchases may have made up for that.

Kindle Sales Figures

The big news, from Amazon’s perspective, was in Kindle device sales. All three Kindle family products (Fire, Touch, and standard Kindle) held the top 3 spots on Amazon’s bestsellers list for the entire month of holiday shopping. The Fire was the most wished for and gifted product on the site this season as well.

Overseas, it was the top selling product in the UK, France, Spain and Italy.

Further, Amazon was prepared and had no back order issues this year and actually outpaced Apple’s iPad in sales as well.

E-Book Winners and Losers

With e-book sales up over 175% from last year, many authors and publishers made out very well this season. Interestingly, the number one and number four best selling electronic books this year were both self-published by the author independent of publishers via Kindle Direct Publishing. That’s an amazing statistic and shows something important: the old paradigm of publishing houses is falling.

E-books as gifts followed the sales trends, with year-on-year numbers matching sales growth. Christmas Day was the largest day ever for Kindle book downloads, which makes obvious sense.

The losers? Big publishing houses. Most of them count on hard-copy book sales during the holiday season and their sales figures this year were not so good. They remained relatively constant with little growth. Amazon reported that more e-books than hardcover books were sold during December and self-reported numbers from publishing houses seem to corroborate this with last year seeing more e-books sold than hard copies, as of February 2011.

Third-party Amazon.com Sales

Third-party sellers, now a big part of Amazon.com, also made out well this year. Third-party sellers experienced record holiday growth with 44% more $5,000+ sellers on Amazon than the year before. This makes sense, given the new, expanded, and easier-to-use seller platform Amazon rolled out and has been advertising heavily.

Bestseller Of All?

The best seller of all, according to Amazon numbers, was Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography. By a landslide. It was the most-browsed, most bought, and most gifted thing on Amazon ever.

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Who then owns the profile?

A lawsuit happening in a U.S. District Court in Pennsylvania is asking just that question.

The Back Story

Before we look at the suit itself, let’s look at the story behind it. A startup called Edcomm was purchased by another company, Sawabeh. Shortly after the buyout, the founders of Edcomm were fired. This quickly lead to a lot of lawsuits.

The lawsuit dealing with a social media account specifically involves Dr. Linda Eagle, PhD. Other allegations include breaches of contract and so forth. It seems that there may have been an agreement with Sawabeh that Edcomm would remain autonomous and retain its corporate officers (namly Dr. Eagle and two others).

The social media account in question, though, is Dr. Eagle’s LinkedIn account.

The Allegations

Both sides have different stories. Sawabeh says that it was Edcomm policy to create and maintain, at their own expense, social media accounts on behalf of their employees – specifically corporate staff and sales. Eagle says the opposite is true and that the account is hers.

The other founders involved in this case also had LinkedIn accounts, but are not, apparently, being included in this case because neither of their accounts were accessible by Edcomm employees when the company terminated them. Eagle’s however, was.

Sawabeh alleges that when Eagle left, she continued to use her LinkedIn account (which they claim as theirs) and that she took other items associated with it (a phone number she transferred to another phone, etc). Again, Dr. Eagle denies these claims and says the phone number was hers as was the laptop they say she took.

What’s really at stake here are the contacts made and networking achieved through Eagle’s LinkedIn account.

Social Contacts and Ownership

The real issue, as far as the LinkedIn account is concerned, are the contacts it has. When Eagle left, the company immediately changed her profile to hold the name of another employee and their photograph. This was what started the lawsuit. The company claimed ownership of the account, but was not claiming ownership over Eagle’s likeness or profile, just her contacts list, it appears.

That says something. The issue isn’t whether or not someone owns their LinkedIn profile, but whether or not they own the networking contacts that can be made through it. In a more broad sense, this would apply to all business-centered social media accounts.

So what do you think? Should a company be able to own the contacts lists their employees have on their social media accounts if those accounts are maintained at company expense? How far does this reach? If you are accessing your social media from work and even contacting business clients through them, you are in many ways using corporate resources for those accounts. Doesn’t that mean they have some kind of ownership interest in them? Or not?

These are hard questions, but it’s obvious that they’re going to become more and more common with the rise of social media in our daily personal and business lives.

Technorati Tags: employment, marketing, social media

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Data + Interpretation = “Meaningful” Information

Without ‘parroting’ the obvious, content (meaningful information) is what people seek online. And in all fairness what people really seek is an answer to some question. Further compounding the challenge is the fact people use words and phrases natural to them – not to a computerized search engine.

It’s quite the conundrum… What key unlocks the door to untold ’search’ riches?

Cornerstone Key Phrases

Keyword phrase demand and supply is at the cornerstone of content provision and armed with an understanding of the search terms, and the modalities of the user’s presentation (how a person perceives the world), you can begin to provide answers to their questions in the form of articles, white papers, blog postings, forum inserts and so on.

Writing is an art, and although most people think writing is easy they’d be incorrect in that assumption: bad writing is easy, good (or great) writing is hard work.

The Artful Dance

And writing to balance the needs of a human with the needs of a computer is an artful dance for sure.

But there is some relief, since the dawn of the Internet the search engines have aimed for purity of search. In other words the engines are attempting to understand the true meaning of your question so they can return the best possible answer.

This means that so long as you write truly to meet the needs of the people (and keep an eye on the engine requirements) you will undoubtedly be rewarded for your efforts.

The ‘Real’ Reason

Writing content so the engines find you is great, however the real reason for this publishing process is the embedded links back to your select sites. As you publish and share your content, those that pick up your work and republish it will also republish your links to your selected websites.

Article marketing (for this is essentially what this is) is incredibly powerful and results in a strong and wide web of connections and links back to your sites.

Of course you need to provide content that people want to read and share…

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This is a guest post by Sidney Terrell. Sidney is an associate editor with http://www.ovlg.com/. She is also a guest columnist, blogger, and a small time entrepreneur. Sidney writes on a wide range of topics including debt consolidation, debt settlement, bankruptcy, and investment opportunities.

These days, there are various money making options that are available online. Even when you don’t have a suitable job, you can earn some cash through a range of options over the Internet. You’ll find numerous free online programs that can aid you in earning some extra money. Once you start making money online, you can pay off your credit card debts quickly.

Following are a few options available to make money online.

1. Writing – You can earn some quick money by writing relevant articles for blogs and websites. A number of companies require the writers to submit an application, together with a few instances of your work. You needn’t be a professional writer to write for these companies, but you ought to have excellent knowledge of grammar and should also be capable of writing clearly, keeping in mind every company’s rules and systems. With online writing, you may be paid on a per project rate, per piece rate, or on the basis of the profits made by your article or web posting.
2. Affiliate programs – This is perhaps one of the most common money making options available on the Internet. With this program, you’ll be required to join as an affiliate and aid people sell their products, thereby receiving payment on the sales.
3. Surveys – You are generally paid from $1 to $25 and sometimes even more for finding out your choices on everything from consumption products to movie promos. Of course you can’t make a living out of these surveys, but they could be a source of added income. For this, you’ll be required to tender an application to the survey corporation. Certain companies keep a record of surveys on their website. As soon as your application gets approved, you can start conducting surveys. When others feel that a survey fits their requirements, they may contact you via email.
4. Blogging – If you’re a blogger, you can earn money by selling advertisements on their blog, or through profit sharing contracts with organizations that post ads on your blogs. The income of a blogger depends on the popularity of the ad. You needn’t pay any registration fee, but you’ll be required to pay a certain sum for monthly web hosting and the site name for your blog. According to Ernie Zelinski, the best way to earn money from a blog is to offer new and entertaining content on a subject that you’re passionate about. Readers who share the same level of interest will return over and again and it’s more probable that they’ll click on ads related to their passion.
5. Market research – Focus groups conducted by the market research organizations collect opinions of customers on existing items, new items, ad promotions and even political matters. Though most of these focus groups are carried out physically, few are also conducted online through Internet bulletin boards and Internet chat. You’ll be required to apply to the market research organizations and they might contact you if they feel that they have a study that goes with your information. You might also be asked to conduct a screening review to see if you’re able to participate. If yes, you’ll be provided with the chat room or address of the bulletin board and a particular time to report.

###

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Who’s at risk?

Anyone who owns a dot com, net, or org website is potentially at risk. The way ICE seizures work is simple: they go after the domain itself, not the website. The domain is a piece of property under law and ‘privacy’ concerns do not affect it, since the domain is not the website or its contents. So ‘JamesBurchill.com’ is not the same as the website you view when you go there.

So seizing the domain is relatively easy and only has one guardian: the registrar who holds the domain registration. They show a court order and take control of the domain. They then redirect it to a new server (change the domain name services, DNS) and display their seizure logo.

Anyone with a domain that can be accessed in the U.S. and is subject to U.S. copyright law (goes through Network Solutions) can potentially be seized in this way.

How this will be used.

How would SOPA and PROTECT IP be used then? We have current examples under the way ICE now handles these seizures, which would be expanded under both of these new pieces of legislation in the U.S. House and Senate.

An example is a site called Dajaz1.com, which is a blog about hip-hop music. It was one of the most well-known and heavily trafficked blogs in the genre and had very high rankings. So much so that artists and even record labels would approach it as they would any print media outlet and even pre-release some special tracks and cuts to the site to help promote artists and album releases.

It was that latter that started all of this. A new investigator at ICE saw the song posts and immediately figured them for piracy, since the songs were available on albums that could be purchased from record labels. The young attorney went to RIAA with the information and RIAA, not knowing the details (and not caring to ask), said the site was obviously in violation.

There’s your first clue. The investigator was going to the people who’ve got the most to gain from seizures of this sort – the Record Labels’ most ardent defender and anti-digital group, RIAA.

So the attorney filed with the court to seize the domain and it went through. ICE then took Dajaz1.com off the Internet.

An attorney representing the website’s owners contacted ICE and was told it was seized for piracy and that paperwork for forfeiture would be filed in court within 60 days. After 60 days passed, the attorney contacted them again and was told that the judge had granted ICE an extension. The attorney asked for copies of that and verification and was told that it could not be given because it was under seal. No reason for a court-ordered seal (or proof of such) was given. For over a year, the government continued to claim that extensions, under seal, had been given. To this day, no one knows if that’s the truth or if it was just a lie.

Meanwhile, government spokespeople for ICE claimed that no one was contesting the seizures, giving the impression that they were legitimate (other sites other than Dajaz1.com were seized as well). This was an outright lie.

Finally, after the heat had died in the media over the seizures and things moved on to other subjects, ICE quietly gave the domains back to their owners without any apologies or explanations and slunk away.

For over a year – about 14 months – the domains were seized and under the control of ICE. During that time, they lost all ranking, most of their readerships, and were basically destroyed as assets. All for reasons unknown. Except one thing: it’s become obvious that someone at ICE, namely the attorney who filed the case originally, made a big mistake. It’s plausible that this person’s superiors saw this and, afraid of the implications were they to admit an error of this scale, instead tried to bury it.

Obviously, this can only be guessed at since nothing official has come out of ICE or Justice.

But it does show what can happen.

An extreme case? Possibly, but extremes have a funny way of becoming the norm after they’ve happened a few times. Under SOPA and PROTECT IP, these extremes could become much easier.

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