Facebook In Reality

This is what happens when Facebook turns up at your door. So true.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrlSkU0TFLs

Does Anyone Know If Money Laundering Pays?

I got an e-mail today inviting me to be a money launderer. Does anyone know if it pays? Dental plan too?

"We are looking for canadians who would like to work from home in an administrative support function for businesses. I have a large amount of funds on numerous bank accounts which needs to be laundered. I need your help to do that. Many of our clients are small businesses and executives who are busy and on the go. Your job will be to: 1) Process payments and disburse to payment officers under you. 2) To send weekly reports on status of payments of transactions. Administrative Assistants can work full or part time."

I'm glad there's a part-time option as I'm already busy with my arms-dealing business.

CaseCamp Toronto 7

Really wish I could attend CaseCamp in Toronto, but I have a leaving drink the same night.

How Social Networking Could Kill Web Search As We Know It

A very interesting prediction from a "tuned-in venture capitalist" who says that we will be using our social networks more frequently in the future to find the information we seek.

I think it may happen too, actually, but not quite yet. How many of you have asked your friend on Facebook, "Hey Paul -- check out my photos of the trip to Vegas, and by the way, what's the capital of Denmark?"

OK, that's a stretch, but Google is still my first choice for finding information fast. The first result may not be what I'm looking for, but it generally leads me around the Web until I do find what I need. I love digging deeper into sites, checking out Whois.sc for extra leads about who is up to what, and generally using my gut instinct to know when it's all smoke and mirrors.

It's all about Web Who.0 baby!

Here's Tomorrow's News Today: Churnalism

"The Churner Prize (churnerprize) is now following your updates on Twitter."

Yes, I got an e-mail today that The Churner Prize is following my updates on Twitter. Notice how I just cut and pasted the above statement, again? That's called Churnalism, and it's when hacks are too lazy to research their stories and just copy what's out there already.

"The Churner Prize is brought to you by a crack team of UK journalists and, um, the odd churnalist."

That's lifted straight from their site as I'm currently on a deadline ... to get to the pub before last call, so haven't got time to research the people behind the The Churner Prize and find out whether it's kosher. [Legitimate; permissible: "consolidating noneditorial functions of the papers, which is kosher" (Christian Science Monitor).]

I copied that from Answers.com; only took a few seconds, pretty easy.

Great for traffic. Just goes to show you gotta be in the right place at the right time.

Grow A Pair

An excellent post from Rick Segal. Not working out? Grow a pair, step up and sort it out.

http://ricksegal.typepad.com/pmv/2008/04/when-you-apolog.html

[Disclaimer: I know Rick. Listen to the guy. He makes sense.]

John Carson
makejohnnycash@gmail.com

Nice To Win An Award

My team has been pushing the e-strategy at the College for a while, so it was nice to hear today that we won The Canadian Council for the Advancement of Education's 2008 PRIX D’EXCELLENCE Bronze Award for Best E-Innovation in University Advancement.

Nice Work If You Can Get It

[Snip from another site starts ...]

Have you ever wondered how much a Google employee makes?

Well this data isn't extremely easy to find, if you don't believe me just search Google. However, here is some interesting statistics.

Google Programmer in Phoenix - $174,000/year
Google Programmer in California - $197,000/year
Google Programmer in Chicago - $222,000/year
Google Programmer in New York - $242,000/year

[... Ends]

I'm curious how that stacks up to Facebook employees, and what sort of perks they get. Anyone got any info to share? Even anonymously?

http://www.cherryav.com/articles/technology/30-The-Googlenairs.html

Gels Gone Wild, Fake UFOs And Zero Budget

I have a lot of crazy ideas for videos, but zero budget, so tend to make them myself. Here's a couple I made for a laugh just to see if I could get some traffic to my website.

The Clearest Fake UFO Video Ever
I took this video last summer on my patio, with a pan lid and some string. No script, cheap digital camera, and no CGI used at all. (I know, it's hard to believe, it looks so real. Believe.) I stuck it on YouTube, Metacafe and Revver. It's had nearly 19,000 views so far from those sites, which is not bad for 20 seconds of bad filming. It's also been picked as the "fakest UFO sighting clip" by this site, which helps my traffic too.

Gels Gone Wild
I made this in 50 seconds with no production value whatsoever. The Girls Gone Wild creator (Joe Francis) was in jail, and making the news, so I knew people would be searching for that term ... and would make spelling mistakes in their searches. Lucky I had the props and technical know-how to get all the right camera angles on this one. Over 5,000 views, with my website URL front and centre. [Disclaimer: All the gels in this video consented to being shown, and signed consent forms.]

My point is that anyone these days can make a video, stick it on the Internet and drive traffic to their site. Just seed it in the right places. Not rocket science. It's fun too.

Secret Microsoft / AOL E-mails Found On Yahoo Search!

I've been following the Yahoo bidding non-war with interest, so thought I'd do a quick search on Yahoo itself to see what else I could dig up. I was quite surprised at the search results that came back.

Click on the image for the shocking results:

Meet The Internet Stars

The Star Wars Kid, Numa Numa Guy and Dramatic Gopher are all "stars" that had millions of views on their -- sometimes unintentional -- videos.

South Park, in its usual fashion, features some of them when the kids try to collect what they think is owed to them at the Department of Internet Money. Hmmm ... think I know that place! [insert knowing winking smiley icon here, I refuse to.]

Meet The Internet Stars

Quite Possibly The Fakest Viral Attempt Ever

Take two terrible actors, an obvious plot, throw in some gratuitous lingering shots of the company's name and you have the fakest viral video I've seen in a while.

What are you doing? What are you doing?

This Rick Roll Just Keeps Rolling Along

The Rick Roll. The viral joke of 2008 so far. I've been caught a few times, with links disguised as other things, such as "cool photos of my trip!" or "check out the sales figures for Q1!" or "here's a great recipe for muffins!"

[One of those is a lie by the way.]

So, I won't try and deceive you. Here is a link to a Rick Roll. I'm not disguising it. Just don't click it, you will regret it. But you will learn the words to Never Gonna Give You Up ...

www.internetisseriousbusiness.com/

UPDATE JANUARY 17, 2009: A lot of people are coming to this blog because of the Rick Roll. I am keeping the link up above in case the creator brings it back. In the meantime, you may enjoy the Benny Hill version here too:

http://james.nerdiphythesoul.com/bennyhillifier/speedup.php?id=oHg5SJYRHA0

UPDATE NOVEMBER 26, 2009: Thanks to Joe Scatamato for alerting me to this Rick Roll you can't exit easily:

http://www.rickrolling.com/

Also, this demonstrates how I can get website traffic from popular items of the day. I can do it for you too on a freelance basis, click here for more info.