Ouch. “Allegedly Michael Bayard, a Belkin Business Development representative was hiring people off Mechanical Turk to post excellent, 5 out of 5 reviews for Belkin products listed on Amazon and other sites. The result is higher user review ratings and therefore, more sales. And all at the cost of just $0.65 cents a review.“ Asking customers for a review is … Read More
Folding toilet paper and marketing
Most hotels make their guest’s beds and clean their rooms on a daily basis. It’s one of the very few perks to staying in a hotel. And if you’re unfortunate enough to stay at a lot of hotels for business, you’ve probably noticed that many of them will fold the end of the toilet paper into a little triangle. Why? … Read More
Mac OS X Closing Market Share Gap with Windows
According to Net Applications, a leading IT research company, in just the past two months Apple’s Mac OS X gained almost 1.5% in the operating systems market. When November began, OS X had an 8.21% market share, and ended 2008 with a 9.63% share of the operating systems market. OS X’s gain might seem insignificant when compared with Microsoft Windows’ … Read More
Your “Google AdWords” Approval Status
“Thank you for advertising with Google AdWords. After reviewing your account, we’ve found that one or more of your ads or keywords does not meet our guidelines. You can see your disapproved ad(s), the reason for disapproval, and editorial suggestions, from the Disapproved Ads page within your account.“ You’ve probably seen this sort of email before, but this one isn’t … Read More
Spendthrift competition hurting your Google AdWords account?
If you have any real experience working with PPC, you’ll already know that there are two ways to “do well” in Google AdWords. The first way is to simply throw money recklessly at your bids. Hint: bad idea. The second way is to work the Google AdWords system to your advantage. Guess which is the more common strategy? Admittedly the … Read More
Going offline for a few days
Even the most enthusiastic of online marketers need some time-off. From myself, Aaron, Karin & Michael, I’d like to wish all of you a happy, healthy and restful holiday. I hope you manage to get away from your desks and PCs, and spend some quality time with family and friends. See you next week… yes it’s brief, but better than … Read More
Prison for pirating software
Good news for the software industry: prison for pirating software: “Three defendants were sentenced to prison today for their roles in an online copyright infringement scheme involving the sale of counterfeit software worth $2.5 million, Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Friedrich of the Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton for the Western District of Texas announced. … The court … Read More
Palamida Names Top 25 Open Source Projects
Like many professionals during these difficult economic times, software developers are being asked to continue producing the same quality end product but with significantly reduced budgets. What is a software developer to do? One of the best ways for struggling developers to get more out of their diminished funds is to take full advantage of all the open source software … Read More
Google Offering a Development Phone Based on Android Mobile OS
Google has announced that they are making an unlocked version of the G1 phone available to members of the Android developer network. The phone, which costs $400, is intended to provide mobile software developers with a “real world” hardware environment in which to test their applications. The G1 is the first mobile device to use Google’s Android mobile operating system. It’ll be interesting to see … Read More
Upload.com – new look and functionality
If you haven’t visited CNET’s upload.com recently, you might be surprised by their new look. They’ve also made some changes that you might find interesting. Firstly, CNET’s download.com and VersionTracker.com appear to have combined forces so you can now upload your listings for both sites from within your Upload.com account. This should be a good time saver. And in a … Read More
