internet

Beware of SOPA, Despite Its Intent

by on January 11, 2012

in consumer

Consumer Bits on Brusimm 200w logo, [Consumer News, advice and reviews]It seems that of all the “social” circles I travel, I seem to be seeing nothing but bad news or poor opinions of this SOPA act.

SOPA stands for Stop Online Piracy Act.  Its intent is to protect copyrights and defeat copyright infringements.  IE:  Those internet movie pirates that believe they’re entitled to steal content without paying for it.

So the premise is to protect the major players of the entertainment industry.

But it would seem that the way it was written, there are catches that seem, per so many perspectives being made on the web, to threaten even the smallest web entrepeneur…  you.

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The concerns are that websites can be shut down, even if you’ve done nothing wrong yourself.  IE:  A site visitor leaves a comment with a link out to something…  BAM, your site is done!

(Suggestion:  I have this site set up to not allow links in comments.  They all have to be approved.)

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The Pursuit of Good SEO While Building Your Internet Presence

by on January 7, 2012

in consumer

SEO website practicesI Love this DIYThemes Call Out of TMZ and Pointing Out Bad SEO

For the aspiring webmaster who wants to create a blog and make it big, they have to generate website traffic hits.  Web surfers don’t come on their own, that’s for sure.  And it’s an interesting learning curve on what a website owner can learn about the all-important world of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and other related issues.

As you delve into this seemingly easy world of the web, you’ll start noticing that there are good ways and bad ways to try and trick Google and other search engines into liking your website.

There are the basics that ProBlogger and DIY Themes can teach you.  And as you grow, you’ll notice that different sites do different things to capture traffic.  Some nice, some tricky.  Some sites use open-ended questions in their titles to bait the curious.  Some will use titles making you think they have certain content in the article, but all you get is a “to be posted soon” notice in the article.  Then there’s something like what DIY Themes made note of in how TMZ had reported one event many months back.

DIY makes mention of ‘white hat’ and ‘black hat’ SEO practices in their article.  That is, doing article creation like a human might do or say it, using all the right key words, but using catch phrases when appropriate.  Then there’s ‘black hat’ techniques… that would be like stuffing your titles or web paths or images with keywords, trying to capture traffic.

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Is SOPA Really That Good For Everyone? It Doesn’t Seem So, Despite The Intent

by on December 20, 2011

in consumer

Consumer Bits on Brusimm 200w logo, [Consumer News, advice and reviews]Once again the many can thank the few for having potential freedoms taken away and/or restricted.  In this case, I’m thinking about movie piracy, but this is not limited to just that one industry.

(This is a quickie article, shot from the hip, talking about the major outline points I’ve noticed about this SOPA bill.  It’s not intended to be the end-all of anything, except my venting a little bit about movie piracy and the cavalier attitude digital pirates carry with them. I’ve provided source links at the bottom of this rant if you want further information from different sources.)

The SOPA bill is the Stop Online Piracy Act, also known as H.R.3261. (Which is getting voted for on December 21st, 2011.)

This bill was introduced in the United States House of Representatives on October 26, 2011 and it basically looks to expand the long arm of the U.S. law and copyright holders in their abilities to fight the online trafficking and theft of copyrighted property, or copyright infringement.

SOPA would allow the U.S. Department of Justice and  copyright holders the ability to get court orders against websites involved or, more accurately, accused of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement.

I don’t have any issues with the spirit of this new bill.  But there seems to be a lot of freedoms granted in the exercising of the protection of the copyrighted materials…

For instance, the potential ramifications from a website that is discovered to be facilitating copyright infringement (knowingly or not) can include

  • Barring advertising networks from doing business with infringing websites;
  • Barring search engines from linking to suspected sites:
  • Requiring ISPs to block access to suspected infringing sites.

This bill also makes unauthorized streaming of copyrighted material a felony.

And the peer-pressure aspect of this bill will give immunity to ISPs that voluntarily take action against suspected websites that seem dedicated to copyright infringement.

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It Pays To Do Consumer Research, Because It Pays Yourself!

by on December 19, 2011

in consumer

Consumer Bits on Brusimm 200w logo, [Consumer News, advice and reviews]This is a consumer advice piece about how smart shopping can save you a lot of money, if done right.  Read on and check out how I just saved almost $90 buying simple, ancillary items for my electronics!

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If I were to be ask you if you would like have an extra $30 today, would you say yes?  What if I asked you if you would want to have an extra $60 in your pocket?  Would you say yes to that?

$60 can go a long way towards any number of things these days.  Gifts for the kids, the wife, um, yourself…  or even taking the family out to a nice dinner experience and knowing it won’t hurt the wallet too much because you literally have an extra $60 in your pocket.

Wouldn’t that be awesome?  I think so.

Now what if I told you that you can actually give YOURSELF that extra $60?  No joke!  And no, I’m not talking loan sharks.  I’m talking about forming consumer habits that can help you save that kind of money as a consumer.

Here’s my first example of saving that kind of money:

Here under my Consumer Bits column, I wrote up an product review of a Sony Bravia LED TV.  Near the bottom of that article I made an interesting observation about the cost of peripheral cables for TVs or Blu-ray players.

I had noticed that while looking at TVs & Blu-ray players and such, that the HDMI cables that go between my TV and a Blu-ray player. cost anywhere from $45 to $75.  But I knew from my own research that I could get the same type of cables on the internet for $2 and up.

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Avatar Lawsuit Triggers A BruSimm Thought on The Competitive Business of Ideas

by on December 10, 2011

in bruce's thoughts

Thoughts on Brusimm logo - Opinion on News and Current EventsI’m reading about a lawsuit where an individual is suing James Cameron because he says Avatar was his idea.  He argues that he presented his idea and was told it wouldn’t sell.  Then Avatar comes out.  Depending on how you look at this issue, some things seem interesting, the least of which is timing and such.

Seriously!  He wants credit for the Pocahontas retelling?  (And that was no disrespect towards Cameron at all.  Almost everything on screen could be called a retelling of something else these days.)  But deciding who’s right or wrong is not for this article.  But it did spark an interesting perspective on some things I’ve observed over the years.

Idea “thefts” or plagiarism happens everyday, everywhere.  Ideas are all out there for the taking.

I remember in my stand-up comedy days, I’d perform at a particular comedy house that had a rep for snagging original material from up and comers and selling them to the “name” comedians.  And I have to say, it’s a bit of an honor to watch some big name star spout your material on an HBO special!

I’ve also seen where ideas I’ve started here on Brusimm.com pop up on other sites after I’ve started them.  (I’m sure it was just great, comedic timing… and that’s totally possible.)

But it doesn’t really matter who comes up with what, when.  What does matter is who acts on them.  Or better yet, how one entity can spread or deploy the premise better than someone else!

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An Internet Virus Warning For TWILIGHT Movie Fans

by on November 14, 2011

in Entertainment

Twilight Breaking Dawn werewolves

My buddy Tim sent me an interesting tidbit and I felt it compelling enough to share you everyone out there…

If you’re a Twilight fan and you’re trying to find any and all info that you can on the latest Twilight movie, Twilight: Breaking Dawn – Part 1, tread carefully out on the internet!

Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson in 'Twilight Breaking Dawn'

It seems that internet searches are pulling up evil-doers traps and such.  Fans may do web searches and see all kinds of results, but what folks are being warned about is that some results are malicious websites.

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My “250×250 Geo Key” Title Problem with Google+ Fixed!

by on November 14, 2011

in consumer

Consumer news, Consumer alerts and a Consumer's opinionFor a while now I’ve been battling this issue with updating a Google+ page for my site and having the following phrase tacked on to the end of every single link I provided:  “250×250 Geo Key“  This is how one of my example titles looked like:

“Syfy ThanksGiving Weekend Marathon Schedule250x250 Geo Key”

Seriously!  I couldn’t get around it and no matter how I searched for this trauma, I was not finding any results.

I initially felt dependent on Google developers and then on my advertising affiliates as I started hitting up those sites for assistance or insights.  But regardless of where I went, I did not see any bulletin board posts or support focused on the issue at hand.

I even dropped hints out on Twitter and Facebook & my personal Google+ page, right in the faces of my many ‘digital’ online friends, but no one piped in.  But that was OK, I sort of expected that.  But hey, one could hope!

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So, in some cases, like they say, if you want it done right…

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Zing: War of the Webs; Entertainment Site Battle

by on October 4, 2011

in bruce's thoughts

Thoughts on Brusimm logo - Opinion on News and Current EventsNo, War of the Webs is not a movie.  It’s an online battle between two large websites.  The Wrap is calling out Deadline‘s Nikki Finke for some underhanded, behind the scenes stunts they claim she’s pulling.

I’m not sure why The Wrap is airing their angst, but if it turns out they are warranted, then more power to them.  But then again, a few weeks ago, Deadline trashed on The Wrap, calling them out for allegedly putting some heavy weight industry names on an advisory board.  And previously, they’ve also sent a cease and desist letter to The Wrap for copyright protection issues.  Then, of course, The Wrap replied.

It’s a dizzying battle, that’s for sure and I have to wonder if it is hurting or helping either site.  The other point is that, despite the huge structure of their business entities, this is business on the web!  Though this is a bit more blatant than most issues out there, there it is.

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Curious SEO Traffic Stats And Chasing Google Traffic, Despite Attracta

by on September 27, 2011

in consumer

Consumer news, Consumer alerts and a Consumer's opinionPart of the battle of internet or website SEO and such is keeping tabs on things and going-ons in and around the site you run.  It’s crazy to try to keep a certain pace up, but somethings do need to be taken care of.  If you don’t pay attention, sometimes things get clustered!

The other day I was tooling around underneath my website and checking on some things under the hood so to speak.  Glad I did.

A few months back I was tooling around with another SEO helping process called Attracta, I didn’t give it another thought for a while.  But then last week they sent me an email telling me I needed to update my site map.  Wha???  Why would I need to do that.  Google and other search engine entities come by most every website at least once a day with their crawler bots to check on automatically generated sitemaps.  I gots me a plugin that keeps me honest with that.  (A sitemap is just a huge table of contents of your website.  That’s all.)

But what the heck, why am I submitting a new sitemap to Attracta?  What do they have to do about anything?

Well wouldn’t you know it, Attracta hijacked a file that the search engines look at and had a redirect line in that file that pointed all the search engines to a sitemap that I built over there on Attacta’s website months ago.  A three month old sitemap.  Thanks Attracta!  Now I am presuming that this redirect line had been screwing me over because site traffic had been slowly quieting down.

Eery time I tinker with a site or service that offers help in building traffic, all they do is f*! you up or take your money!  There’s nothing better than old-fashioned elbow grease to get the job done right.

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The Rapture Prediction and Some of the Silly I’ve Seen

by on May 21, 2011

in bruce's thoughts

I don’t claim to be an expert in this Rapture thing, but I guess some believe the world is ending, or going to start to end, starting the 21st of May.  Of course the guy that predicted this, had already done this before back in 1994, and was wrong then.  The power of the internet has kept him honest though, so we know what his track record is so far.

I’ve been reading some interesting things in the newspapers.  Folks attempting to kill all their pets before the rapture.  Some folk have gone and blown through their entire life’s savings in anticipation of this event.  I can’t imagine what else has taken place in preparation of this event.

I gotta say though, that there are two distinct demographics based around this belief.  Those that do believe and those that don’t.

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