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.

Today, the Swedish Pirate Party launched a new Internet service that lets anybody send and receive files and information over the Internet without fear of being monitored or logged. In technical terms, such a network is called a “darknet”. The service allows people to use an untraceable address in the darknet, where they cannot be personally identified.

“There are many legitimate reasons to want to be completely anonymous on the Internet,” says Rickard Falkvinge, chairman of the Pirate Party. “If the government can check everything each citizen does, nobody can keep the government in check. The right to exchange information in private is fundamental to the democratic society. Without a safe and convenient way of accessing the Internet anonymously, this right is rendered null and void.”

They are offering a neutral IP on top of your existing ISP service through a strongly encrypted VPN connection. The service is available for 5 EURO (6.40 US$) a month and is delivered through a company called Relakks.

That sounds like an interesting opportunity for people who are using P2P Networks or other kinds of Sharing Networks.

Read the full press Release here.

As you may have noticed, the posting has been a bit sparse around here this week. I was out performing my civic duty, aka jury duty. I’m on vacation (meaning, not at work) for the next 10 days, so you can expect many more posts now.

I would like to thank Carolyn and Andreas for picking up some of the slack in my absence. Thanks guys!!

In yet another failure to take that left toin on Albuquerque, the AOL Thought Police gathered and published 10 million queries from 657,426 AOL users.

Unique numbers identify the searchers, but since many of the surfers ego searched and ran their own social security numbers some identities are easy to piece together.

The massive privacy breach is irretrievable as the data is already bit-torrented outside of AOL’s control.

Zoli’s Blog revealed the disaster on Aug 6, the day it occurred. Elliot Back did some quick egreps to find approximately 200 social security numbers. Researchers identified and outed at least one formerly-anonymous AOL user. Since AOL is now a re-branding of Google search marketers are using the data to refine AdSense ventures (ring tone, ring tones, ring tones for cell phone, ring tones for cell phones, ring tones garth brooks…).

I found several dozen references to “suicide” and “murder.” Presumably these terms correlate with the fact that the searchers are AOL subscribers.

 

 

The C Channel is building a multi-interest website that brings together 3 distinct sites - Travel, Shopping and Weddings. Each one features articles, destination profiles, vendor profiles and a whole load of new tools to attract a global audience. This includes the still young Travel Forum, and the Wedding Agenda, a promising tool that will be completely free and is due out in late 2006.

The C Channel network has also recently introduced The C Directories, 5 user-friendly directories of websites, blogs, online retailers and other sites categorized under thousands of differnet subjects. Only a month old, it attracts new registrations every day of eBusinesses eager to become part of The C Channel Network. For example, in our Tools for webmasters directory, we tell you about the places to find Niche articles, keep track of your backlinks with Link Checker, and Buy text links. We also feature other directories like the Alive Web Directory, Free Web Index and Submit Dot Com. Plus there’s other great links like Paid Survey online, which claims to tell you how you can make some extra cash.

A new one pops up every day!  From niche directories, to all-encompassing general directories, directories continue to be hot commodities.  And while they may be growing expontentially (or so it seems!), the market is not yet oversaturated. SEOs and webmasters are continually seeking out new places to get their sites listed and linked, so until that slows down, directories will continue to be big.

Looking to start a directory of your own?  Check out the directories below for inspiration!

• V7N Directory (General)
• Umdum (General)
• SEO Directory (Niche)
• Games Directory (Niche)
• Multimedia Directory (Niche)
• Graphics Directory (Niche)