It seems as though V7 Tech has been banned by Digg. Several people have reported that they’ve tried to Digg some of our stories, and are given the message that this URL has been reported. So if you find one of our stories so fascinating and cool that you just have to share it with the rest of the world, forget Digg - they don’t want us. Well guess what Digg, we don’t want you either.

An alternative to Digg is ShoutWire, in which users can submit stories and “Shout” them much in the same fashion as you can “Digg” a story on Digg. So what does ShoutWire have that Digg does not? It’s not as overloaded with crap and corrupt as Digg.

StumbleUpon is another site that you can use to share sites that you find to be interesting with others. It’s not quite the same as Digg or ShoutWire, but is very similiar, and is my favorite of the bunch. Not only is StumbleUpon not run by a bunch of immature teenie boppers, but it also tends to cater to a more targeted audience. Check out the “Buzz” page for the latest hot stories and sites.

So there you have it - the two best alternatives to Digg. Shout and Stumble, but just don’t Digg it.

One of my clients is an executive coach. Building her keyword campagin tonight I discovered that the Yahoo Keyword Selector tool is no longer a spam virgin. Searching for entrepreneur yields:

entrepreneur entrepreneur entrepreneur entrepreneur internet internet internet internet ——–ntrepreneur.auto——-.com.- (I refuse to give them any more attention hence the blot out). Yes, someone might have spazzed at the Yahoo search box, but 3 variations of that 692, 662 and 647 times?

Has seach marketing gotten so incestuous that desperate authors are using the Yahoo Keyword Selector Tool to sell to me? Is there a big market among people who use that tool for buying entrepreneurial internet whatevers? That’s not guerilla advertising, that’s just litter.

Nothing is even remotely sacred. Why don’t you just tatoo your ad onto my eyelids.

With more and more of the younger generation spending their time on computers and less time in the traditional young adult hang-out spots, the military decided that it was time to modernize their recruiting tactics and market themselves and their causes in the online world. 

As if staking out high school lunchrooms, hanging out at malls, and calling students at home wasn’t enough - you can now find the Marines on MySpace.   Their profile has been up for about five months, and remarkably it seems to be going over well there.  The Marines are hunting down new “friends” and being added to others’ friends lists just like they are “one of the gang”.

The Air Force advertises on MySpace, but does not have a profile page, and the Navy has no presence on the site at this point in time.  The Army’s profile page is apparently being worked on now by its ad agency, and according to military personnel, it should be up soon.

The MySpace effort on the part of the Marines (and soon the Army) is a part of the millitary’s broader effort to use the Internet to find new recruits. Since the launch of the profile, they have gained over 12,000 “friends, and report that 430 have gone to their site and signed up to be recruited. Simply recruiting online, however, is only just the beginning. Don’t think that they’ve stopped at MySpace. 

Their efforts also entail spending $1 million a year on banners and profiles linked on popular sites like sportingnews.com and gamespot.com.  They hope that this will drive more traffic to their websites, and in turn, help gain more recruits.

And now, it has been revealed that the military is using our hard-earned tax dollars to fund military personnel surfing the net.  Just what do these net-surfing millitary folks do?  Well, apparently they are fond of leaving blog comment spam, and infiltrate popular web forums and online discussions.  Allegedly, they have a special affinity for politically and militarily inclined discussions.  The purpose of these efforts is again to drive people to their website, showcase the efforts of the military, and to correct people from sharing so-called incorrect information. 

They also work with about 250 bloggers to disseminate “news about the good work being done by U.S. forces in the global war on terror.”  Through this, they are reaching a total target audience of around 17 million people.

Don’t believe me?  Check out the U.S. Department of Defense website where they openly talk about their online blog efforts.

Welcome to the 21st Century.

The Department of Telecommunications in India has sent a notice to ISPs operating in the country to block around 18 websites. The DoT will not release the names of the websites, although users in India have already figured out that sites such as Blogger, Typepad, Dalitstan.org, Clickatell.com, Hinduunity.com, Hinduhumanrights.org, and more are amongst those rendered inaccessible.

The government alleges that the sites that were requested to be blocked all spread extremist views. However, instead of blocking only the blogs that the government has found to be offensive or problematic, they’ve gone ahead and blocked all blogs - angering many throughout the country.

The ordered banning of these websites was issued on June 13, and more ISP can expect to receive notices soon. The Government alleges these blogsites were fuelling hatred and communalism.

The government has assured the people, however, that they are not attempting to censor free speech. The request to block the sites follows the deadly Mumbai serial blasts which killed 200 people, and marks the first time that the government has ordered the blocking of such a large number of sites.

Under the Information Technology Act, 2000, an entity called the Computer Emergency Response Team, or CERT-IN, was created. Its main task is in the domain of Internet security, but it also oversees Internet censorship under a clause that seeks to ensure ‘balanced flow of information.’ Any government department seeking a block on any web site has to approach CERT-IN, which then instructs the DoT to block the site after confirming the authenticity of the complaint. Web sites can be blocked if they contain pornography, speeches of hate, contempt, slander or defamation, or if they promote gambling, racism, violence or terrorism.

Bloggers are hopping mad, and are uniting in an attempt to get a list of the blocked sites released. The Indian Government, however, doesn’t yet seem to realize that they have effectively blocked not just 18 websites, but thousands of blogs, as a Hindustan report makes evident:

“Officials defended the decision saying, ‘We would like those people to come forward who access these (the 12) radical websites and please explain to us what are they missing from their lives in the absence of these sites.’”

Those looking for ways around the ban, may wish to consult this website put together by Indian technology blogger Amit Agarwal who has made a list of ways to get around the blocks (but good luck accessing it if you’re in India because its a Blogger/Blogspot blog). Another option is to use pkblogs.com, a site that was set-up to help Pakistani readers circumvent a Blogger.com ban in place in their country.

I never visit Technorati, but I did today.  I guess I was bored or something.  So when I got there, I was checking out incoming links to this blog.  Interestingly, I found a link from Pc-news.us and clicked on over.  I found that all of my posts from here, the V7 Tech Blog, were being republished in full-text over there.  Not only that, but they were hotlinking the images. 

I wasn’t quite sure how they were doing it; I just thought they were copying and pasting the articles.  But as Colleen pointed out, it turns out that they are stealing the content via RSS feeds. 

The purpose of RSS feeds is to allow your visitors to subscribe to the feed, and be alerted when there are new posts.  The intentions of RSS were never to give free content to piece of shit webmasters.  You may think that because you can access the full content via RSS that it’s okay to republish it on your site, but it’s not.

Scroll on down the bottom of this blog and you’ll notice a little statement that says “Copyright 2006 V7 Inc, All Rights Reserved.”  For those that are a bit slow in the brain, it means all content published on this site belongs to V7, and to republish it without the express written consent of V7 is a violation of copyright law. Copyright “protects ‘original works of authorship’ that are fixed in a tangible form of expression,” which would include these blog posts.

The absence of a copyright notice, however, is not a green light to go ahead and steal content: “Copyright [is] Secured Automatically upon Creation.” So unless you see a GNU Free Documentation License, or Creative Commons License outlining the authorized use of said content, back off and write something original.

Hotlinking to our images is also another form of theft - bandwidth theft.  Steal that and you might just end up with the image above appearing on your site.

To avoid pissing me off and getting a call from a lawyer, don’t steal our content. 

(Note: The above image belongs to JuggoPop.)