Maiselog

Yes it is true, a Russian based chat bot nicked named, "CyberLover," is fooling chatroom goers into giving it there personal information in an attempt to steal their identities Note that this is just another reason not to mess with Russia, or they will send their CyberLover bots out in swarms to seduce you out of your social security card and bank PIN numbers.Security software company PC Tools warns that the bot can easily be used for malicious purposes. The company said that the program's ability to mimic human behavior to dupe chatters is worrisome, and could readily be used to collect all manner of information. The creators of the bot are denying that it was intentionally created to do these evil acts.

For that one assignment way back in the beginning of the year about the bloggers evaluation, I posted an entry about a blog titled Cobalt Blue. I looked at the amount of posts, comments, and people on the Cobalt Blue blogroll to better understand how blogs worked. I was just checking Google Reader to sees what today's RSS feeds brought to me, when I noticed that Cobalt Blue had recently posted a new entry on a Youtube video.

Cobalt Blue has posted about three or four posts a month since my analysis. I still have never seen more than one or two comments on each of his posts, but that doesn't mean people don't read his blog. Basically all of his posts are videos or audio clips. His blogroll has a couple more people than it did than last time. He also updated his profile as well. It appears that his blog has experienced a small amout of growth in fan base. His content also steadily is added as well.

A company in China has taken Google to court over copy right infringement. Google's name translated into Chinese is "Guge," the company claims to have that name patented.

According to the case, which was heard by a court in Beijing this week, Beijing Guge Sci-Tech Co. was officially registered at the Beijing Municipal Industrial and Commercial Bureau on April 19, 2006, but Google didn't register the name "Guge" in China until Nov. 24 of that year.

Both companies claim that they were the creators of the word, and both say they have different meanings.

All that I have to say about this...these idiots in China are going to get what is coming to them. Google is going to unleash the wraith and fury of its thousands of patent lawyers, and harness the energy and power of its web presence to wipe this company of the face of the internet.

As they once said, "Don't Mess with Russia."

the new saying of the wise is, "Don't Mess with Google."

I have only realized that the skiing industry has really been on ball with emerging web technologies and has gone all out on web design, podcasts, blogs, and even wikis. I think that it is great for skiers to take advantage of information technology and spread the joy of the sport. Ultitizing these kinds of information services makes the sharing of information very fast and concentrated. Every month I wait for all of the skiing podcasts that I subscribe too come out, so I can find out what the Pros are up too, how the season is going in various places, how big the parks are out west, and how much pow was dumped out in AK in the most recent snow storm. This makes it really easy for skiers like me who can't get out all the time to know what is going on in the skiing world.

And now some good stuff...if you skip over this entire blog at least watch this video. This is a twelve-year old kid out in Mt. Hood Washington last summer:

William Kamkwamba has a dream: to power up his country one windmill at a time.

Kamkwamba is a 20 year-old resident of Malawi a relatively small country in Africa. In the past couple of years he has devised a couple of windmills that power his family's house: three light bulbs, one radio, and one television. At first, his family thought he was crazy with his idea of using a windmill to create electricity, but after studying a windmill in a magazine, he was able to build a 39 foot windmill out of blue-gum trees and used bicycle parts. With no prior education, Kamwamba electrified literally and metaphorically his neighborhood, and now with the publicity that African bloggers have gotten it, nation. What amazes me with this story is that it was because of African bloggers that this story was pushed throw the pipeline. After this news hit the blogosphere, a group of independent investors decided to fund Kamkwamba's education.

I have learned more about Adwords over the past few weeks in preparation for the competition next semester. I am finding it to a very good tool to get publicity and drive web traffic to organizations websites. An Adword campaign usually takes place over a set period of time. A campaign manager chooses certain keywords, and sets bid prices for each these words. A bid price is the amount of money the manager is willing to pay Google when someone clicks on their ad after a search using those keywords. The goal for the Adword campaign manager is to get his or organization to appear at the top of the sponsored list on the search result page. There are a couple factors that determine the position of each ad. The quality of the landing site (the web page the ad takes the user to), clickthrough rate (how many times do users click on the ad), and also the amount of money (bid) that is placed on certain keywords. These variables are ultimately used to determine the position of the ad on the search results and also how much money that it costs to the Adword campaign when a user clicks on the ad. Sometime campaigns with ads in higher positions pay less money than those in lower positions depending on their quality.

I've been teleporting throughout the various islands of SL, and I have been looking for a romantic island to take a special someone out on a date. So far, I have been very disappointed. Most of the "romantic" islands that I have found turn out to be tacky, virtual, soft-porn orgies. I am looking for a quiet peaceful island where my date and I can get a bite to eat in an upscale restaurant, and then go take a walk on the beach, be out in nature, or chill in some sort of karma inducing location where my date and I can cuddle. I want detail to be put in this island, and don't mind spend a couple hundred lindens. I did a little research online through sltree.com. This pointed me to a couple of romantic getaways. Midnight Reflection, Aphrodite's Waterfall & Caverns, and The Lost Gardens of Apollo all caught my eye. When I searched the three of these in SL, I found out that they were all credible places that didn't allow mature content. The Lost Gardens of Apollo was overcrowded, and I couldn't teleport to the island. The other two seemed to be very nice places to go on a date. I think that I have a better idea now of where I want to go.

Next semester I will participating in the Google Online Marketing Challenge in an independent study with Dr. Jim Jansen. This is the first year that Google will be running this challenge. The challenge is targeted at university students in online marketing related fields (such as IST). Students must first find a business to do a campaign for. They must has less than 100 employees. Over a period of three weeks students will run a marketing campaign on Google Adword to drive potential customers to their clients website. Google limits each teams budget to $200. Teams of students throughout the world at different universities will be competing against each other for regional and global prizes. There are still a few spots left in this independent study. If anyone is interested, get in contact in Jim Jansen.

Here is a link to Gomcha, a social networking site for students involved in the challenge.

In order to run a business on Second Life, one needs to have a general understanding of the SL economy. The currency in Second Life is referred to as Linden Dollars. Linden Labs makes the economy independent of pricing by freezing the exchange rate on a market-based currency exchange with US dollars and other international monetary currencies. Linden Labs reports that the Second Life economy generated about 3.6 million dollars in the month of September 2005. The 2006 Second Life gross domestic product (GDP) was 64 million US dollars. Estimates of the 2007 GDP are between 500 million and 600 million US dollars. If you would consider Second Life a country of its own, that would rank it at 166 just below Grenada. Second Life has a larger GDP that 20 other countries. The Second Life economy is no joke. The estimated economic activity in 2007 will create about 550 million US dollars. Money can definitely be made on Second Life.

Linden Labs has a very intersting exchange system set up. They call it LindenX. To control LindenX Linden Labs has set up “circuit breakers.” They are market mechanisms that basically freeze the exchange levels if market acts in certain ways. If the average exchange rate in any given day increases or decreases more that 10% the Exchange market freezes for one hour. 20% for two hours. 30% until noon of the next day. These circuit breakers help keep the exchange rate stable. One thing to look out for is Linden Labs handling of monetary policy in Second Life. Linden Labs maintains a currency peg of about L$270 for $1. This is similar to what the Chinese do with Yuan. This practice could be argued to inhibit change in value. Currently, the exchange rate is US$1.00 US dollar for L$267. L$51 million changed hands today.

The Second Life market is a free market or laissez-faire economy. There are two types of costs to to be taken into account when doing business in Second Life: Membership plans and Virtual Land Use Fees (Tier Fee). In order to own land in Second Life, a Premium membership is required. A Premium account comes with advanced technical support and a 512m2 parcel (if you donate 512m2 to a group). These issues are really insignificant compared to the amount of space. If the Penn State Library were to move onto Second Life they would need at least a 1/4 Region or more. An entire region costs $1675 US dollars and an additional $195 per month in Tier fees.

From this brief economic analysis of Second Life, one can assume that the Second Life economy is growing at a stable rate, and under the eyes of Linden labs, the exchange rate between Linden dollars and US dollars has stayed the same over the past few years. This makes it a safe environment for businesses. The facts about increasing annual GDP also prove that profits and revenues are possible.

So I am back up at school right now, and I have set up the Blue Beast. I ordered some parts for it before I left home. I got a Hitachi 500GB SATA HD. I had to look up some information about my motherboard because it was so old. It can only have serial ATA hard drives. I also bought more RAM memory. 2 GB of Kingston DDR will double the current amount of memory in the Blue Beast. I will also replace the sound card with a basic Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy card. I placed the order for these parts last Thursday. Hopefully they should be here in a couple days so that I can install them. The owner’s manual to the Dell XPS was my guide for the most part when I bought these parts. While the motherboard and CPU are still good, they have already been outdated. Once I get these parts installed I will partition the 500 GB HD, and put two more operating systems on (Linux and Mac).