Twitter is the most popular micro-blogging platform and is drawing attention from marketers looking to take advantage of the system. While Twitter has yet to announce a revenue model, services are popping up looking to take advantage of the reach it can provide. Be-a-magpie is one of the first to try. 

I wanted to give be-a-magpie a whirl and see how quickly you could set it up. I decided to try and market a site most people on Twitter would never write about to see how the crowd would react (and to see if they would even notice). I went to the campaign creation page, input ‘lawsuit’ into the keyword field and then clicked a few of thier suggestions that automatically propogated the field. I then added the title ‘lawsuit funding’ and then filled in the ad text ‘http://www.lawsuitfunding.com for Plaxico”, hit save and the ad went pending. The site requested me to add funds to my newly created account through a provided paypal link (the paypal link goes to the german site and the text is in German). After adding funds to my account I waited and checked the time, 3:30pm it took about 2 minutes all told. Here are a few screen shots of the process. 

The site did take some time to load once I hit save but it eventually went through. 

I am curious to see if anyone picks up on the paid tweet ‘http://www.lawsuitfunding.com for Plaxico’ as it should be pretty easy to spot and at the same time keeps in line with some current news regarding the New York Giants wide reciever, for those outside of the US he is a sports athlete who recently shot himself in the leg. 

After 17 minutes the ‘waiting for approval’ section updated to approved and it looks as though the campaign is live. An email also was sent to update me on the approval.

Two Hours later the system still shows as 0 ads served. Anyone out there see the spot yet? If not I will need to adjust the budget to kick this off more.

3 hours and nothing yet…

 Filed under stupidity:

1. I know better
2. I know better
3. I know better

Last night I popped in an SD card to transfer an important Excel file and when I opened the drive everything was gone. I went through the progression in my head on when the last time I saw the needed files and if they could of been backed up anywhere else and the answer was an unpleasant one, nope.  I then remembered I had heard of some memory card recovery programs on the Tekzilla podcast and did some searching. I tried the ones that give you a trial in the way they will fully run and show you the missing files but not allow you to save them until you pay them a heft 80 bucks (this was the program recommended by Tek) and then a few others that seemed to only look for jpg’s and other image formats.  I then went to Google and found PC Inspector Smart Recovery that was free and gave it a whirl. It too only found images so I went to the publisher and checked to see if they had another version for more complete recovery and they did. 

PC Inspector File Recovery:

Recover deleted files from your hard drive, memory cards, even formatted or damaged drives.

This seemed perfect. I ran the recovery console and it pulled in about 15 excel files. Perfect! Now I went to open them and guess what, they are all corrupt. 

Great, back at ground zero. To be continued I hope….

Side note: The original machine was sold on Craigslist that day and is the reason why the files were put onto the 4gb SD card. I have contacted the person who purchased the laptop and asked to see if I could swing by and run the recovery program but haven’t heard an answer yet. Wish me luck.

**Update**

I was able to get a hold of the guy that purchased the laptop and he was kind enough to let me take a look at the machine and run a program to restore deleted information from the recycle bin. The program took about 45 minutes to run and after a few minutes narrowing down the search field I was able to find the Excel file from over 65K files that were recovered.  

So my advice is to stay persistent and you may be able to get back those files!

This is a bit off topic but the Dow Jones Industrial average jumped nearly 900 points today mostly in the last 2 hours of trading. While this is good for everyone that is currently worried about their 401K’s I would caution that things may not be as they appear. 

Take a look at this pic from from the early 1930’s to see how the market performed then. The market went up about 10% today and if the chart below is correct we could assume we could see another 15% jump before we start the downward trend again. 

Hopefully for those who are dependant on their 401k’s this chart is nothing but ‘old news’. 

If you are curious what the Dow looks like adjusted for inflation over the last century take a look at this or this if you think there is someone behind the curtain.

Tags: finance

No longer free after 10 years:

New License Model

Note to free users

Unfortunately, after offering a free product and a free service to millions of users for more than 10 years we are no longer able to do so. We would like to thank you for using SmartFTP and we hope to welcome you as a customer in the future. Thank you for your understanding.

To read more about the license please visit the purchase page.

License Example

A single user license – which can be used on any computer – for the Home Edition is 36.95 USD. This is a one-time fee. Included in the license is technical support and free upgrades for one year.

It may be a stretch to call this ransom but like many I have data stored within the program that I no longer have access to while being forced to pay this 36.95 to have access (ftp logins are stored within the program). This should be a warning to anyone using a free solution that the copmany can pull the rug out from under you after many years of a faithful relationship. While they have succomed to the allmighty dollar I will not forget this transgression and will look for a new provider. 

*Update* I did indeed pony up the dough as I didnt have the login info for an account and had to use the program. So maybe this was there plan all along, they got me. I will begin switching things over to filzilla for now unless I come accross a better solution.

I ahve been wanting to write about this for awhile and havent found a use yet. I stumbled upon this article detailing the process and thought I would share. ill try to summize this at a later time but didnt want to forget about it.

Read about it here.

Where do you get your information on political matters? Where do you do your research before voting? Most likely you use the internet for some of this and there is a good chance you used Google to find that information one way or another.  Google really does make information easy to find (and much harder to hide for some unscrupulous figures) and along those lines they have made it easier to find the actual voting booth.

Google will be adding a mapplet to Google Maps that will offer polling location information before the big day in November. for all those unsure where to go to vote.

The site will provide users with voting locations and registration information with all voting location information being made available by mid-October.  Until then, please check with your state or local election officials to verify your voting location if you need to know before hand.

What do you think about Google and how much of a role do they play in your political education?

The blog hasn’t had much focus (or writing) over the past few months and I was thinking it may be time to let this one go and turn the reigns over to a political blogger that could turn the site into a political discussion and corruption site. Most of the comments in the past have been focused on the few complaints I have had whether whether they were directed at products or customer service or something completely absurd.

I am thinking that the political arena is full of sites at this time so I may just have a political section though I would worry about that taking away from the general discussion that used to take place here. I am still undecided so if anyone has any ideas please leave a comment and all suggestions will be taken into consideration.

I have begun the quest to start working on getting a specific firefox extension developed. So far my Google searches have turned up little fruit in this search. Are there any companies that specialize in this sort of development? If anyone has any insight or pointers dont hesitate to send them my way.  The extension in question was already developed for previous versions of firefox but is not compatible with the current 3x.

Tags: firefox extentions

I have been a listener of Pandora for the past 3 years and it has grown to be my favorite site on the internet.  The RIAA has been pushing SoundExchange to increase royalty rates for web based radio and were successful in increasing this rate substantially thereby threatening to end all web based radio streaming as we know it. While there are new efforts to save net radio they appear to be hitting a wall.

So what happens to all that data Pandora (The Music Genome Project) has amassed? I would like to be able to download all the data and use in some future use. It would be a goldmine of data for the music industry. Imagine knowing what your customers like and dislike. Imagine having the ability to see exactly what types of music your customers are listening to. While I hope Pandora is able to survive I also hope that if they are forced to shut their doors the data they have accumulated isn’t locked behind that closed door.

I would love to hear other ideas on how the data could be released and used.

Tags: Internet Radio, Pandora

Some Comcast lobbyists start better ponying up the dough as Kevin Martin from the FCC wants free internet for everyone within the US.  Could this have something to do with the whitespace initiative getting closer to acceptance.

So maybe the tiered internet wont be much of an issue after all. (see post below)

More Here.

Tags: FCC, Kevin Martin, WhiteSpace