Hornswaggled

If your answer is yes then this is all you need to wipe away that frustration with a good laugh. Just take this foam brick and toss it at that annoying colleague or even at that new plasma TV that you shelled out 3k for when the signal drops from 1080p to 480i, nobody likes that.

This is one of those things that every office should have. A word of caution though, I would suggest throwing this at someone who has heart problems. I dont think that causing heart failure is something you want to be responsible for.

These foam bricks can be yours for about 20 bucks. Click the image to go to the fake brick homepage.

Scottsdale is becoming one of those destination spots. The home values here have been all over place. A-list celebrities have been moving here for years and they have not spared any money when they build their homes. You see celebrities like Eva Longoria shopping here at stores like ELL wearing Voom dresses on the news. ELL is an online retailer based here in Scottsdale and have been in the local news with their additions to Westcor Malls around the valley and their over the top fashions.
SFP features this home to the right and caters to that high end crowd for future Scottsdale home owners. They have a private One on One package that keeps high end clients confidential. With Websites like Trulia popping up left and right the realtor market needs to differentiate itself from the competition and this is one way SFP has done this. Maybe they could take their celebrity clientèle shopping afterwards too.

The first round was won by Payperpost but Google has recently updated their algorithm and it looks like the PPP ads are not working like they used to. I have been an advertiser with PPP for almost a year now (the beginning) and their paid ads worked great in the serps. As of a few days ago the listings started to decline and for many people the listings that were obtained through PPP have dropped.

This may be a normal fluctuation but I don’t think so. As an advertiser I will be monitoring this pretty closely, I have about 20 current and former clients to use as examples. So far all the top 5 results have dropped to the second and third page in just the past 3 days. I have also noticed that the PPP community is pretty close group with many of them linking to each other. It is possible that this is now considered a bad neighborhood in SEO terms.

My advice is if you haven’t used PPP yet stay away for now. I will not be funding the account until I see some positive results. I will also keep this blog updated with the info.

Just an FYI it looks like Google has just updated the pagerank that their toolbar shows. This is not a rankings update but more of an update just for the people who use this toolbar. These updates are typically done quarterly.

This site went back to a PR5 with this update, would be great if it mattered to me. I guess I can sell ads easier now if I want to go that route but probably not going to happen any time soon.

I have been able to see just the initial stages of ManagerAssistant’s new product, HRweb. The site at hrweb.com is down but the screen shots seen below clearly show that ManagerAssistant will be launching a web based hr product.

I don’t have any more info more that the screen shot below but this should be launched within a month or two. ManagerAssistant is one of the leaders in desktop based HR Software specializing in performance reviews and appraisals, this move continues the shift in web 2.0 trends by moving software online.

Just when you think the news is over regarding stumbleupon and the eBay purchase Google throws a wrench into the whole thing. Google is launching a stumbleupon feature into their toolbar. Wow.

I think eBay just crapped their pants.

One of the more interesting things about this is the stumbleupon community. The community is one of the more important features of stumbleupon allowing you to see who submit sites and who likes and dislikes them. Without a community the Google product will not be as successful as stumbleupon.

Now if Google is planning on building a community around this then this may be the biggest news of the year.

Techcrunch just reported that ebay has purchased StumbleUpon for 40-45 million. Why? It seems the consensus is a large ad buy. If thats this case this is horrible, both from an advertiser on Stumble and a user.eBay hasn’t really shown any innovation nor do they improve any of the properties they acquire. Skype, Paypal and the others are relatively unchanged since they were acquired.

This sucks.

On a positive note I guess I can discard my posts about who would be best to acquire this little gem.

With a stunning ruling the CRB denied all motions to keep internet radio in the US afloat. This affects all US based internet radio and specifically the much loved Pandora music service.

There is a lot of information on this subject but the basics are that the RIAA pushed for royalty increases in an attempt to shut down internet radio as they were not in control of the music distribution. The royalty rate hike was approved without much fanfare and once people realized what was going on it was too late, the appeal was just denied minutes ago. This blow to internet radio will force people to go back to the standard methods for listening to music, allowing the RIAA to once again control the music airwaves within the US.

Read more here: SaveNetRadio.org, and here: Gizmodo.com

Im not sure how this affects Last.fm but I will be looking for a replacement as soon as the site is down. Good luck to Tim over at Pandora, it was refreshing for a CEO to be so in touch with the users.

There are a lot of tools to build keywords, Digital Point, Word Tracker, Overture Keyword Tool, etc. One that doesn’t get much exposure but is very good at keyword development is GoodKeywords.

This free downloadable software pulls data from Overture and allows you to do many things with that data that Overture does not provide themselves. Much like Statsaholic uses Alexa and provides a supior interface, Goodkeywords does the same.

Main Features:

• Keyword Phrase Builder
• Misspelled Words generator
• Web Page Explorer
• Site Popularity Meter
• Link Popularity Meter

The thing that I like about this tool is that I can export the data easily to Excel and work with it.

Allofmp3 is down again. Is this the final chapter for this company or just another long outage?

They have been under enormous scrutiny and pressure from the WTO, RIAA, and the US government to shut down. They have been on life support for months as it has been almost impossible to add funds to accounts as major credit card companies, paypal and many other sources have blocked the site.

It would be interesting to see what happens with them legally. They have been sued for 1.65 trillion, yes thats right, trillion.

**Update: The site is back up but still has the same financial limitations as before.**