We all love contests, and there’s a big one brewing right now. Two of the blogging industries respected sites are competing to see which can gain more RSS subscribers in the month of October. Both are hosting contests to gain subscribers and they’re both giving away some serious cash and prizes.

Shoemoney.com -vs- JohnChow.com

When Shoemoney.com asked for sponsors, I jumped on the opportunity. JoeTech.com, as well as one of my fun sites, Pic.gs are each contributing as contest sponsors, so go check the contests out.

I am optimistic by nature, but there are so many people out there who try to change that. It’s not that I hate people in general. It’s that so many people these days are too lazy to put their trash in a trash can or too inconsiderate to think of how their actions may affect others. Enough about that. I’m planning a new blog just for my rants. What I really want to talk about is the Waterhobo. Take a look:

What is a Waterhobo? In short, it’s a motion activated sprinkler that will nail any lazy little “rabbits” who cut through the yard of a frustrated Tim Higgins. In a broader sense, it’s the true nature of a programmer. A problem made itself evident and Tim came up with a great solution. Watch the video for a laugh.

Now if I can just figure out how to stop “rabbits” from jumping the wall by my house.

I love being able to express myself by way of posts here on JoeTech.com, but I also enjoy building (and sometimes selling) niche sites on the side for fun. When these sites get enough traffic, why not monetize them with some form of unobtrusive ads?

Recently, I found out about a site called TNX.net. The network has over 28 million pages on it, each of which can display from one to four links. They’ve only indexed a fraction of one of my sites, so I imagine the potential pages to sell on is probably closer to 50 million plus. They just launched to a U.S. market, so it takes some time to handle all the new pages, I guess. What makes this different from Adsense is that they’re putting a relatively new spin on an old model: CPM (cost per 1,000).

Here’s how it works for an Advertiser:
1. Sign up
2. Buy “tnx points” from the house or from other people.
3. Browse the directory for pages to put your link on.
4. Use points to purchase a campaign of links across the sites/pages chosen

And if you want to sell links on your pages:
1. Sign up
2. List your site/sites
3. Wait for approval of site/sites
4. Wait for pages to get indexed
5. Earn points when people buy links on your pages.
6. Sell points back to the house or to other people.

The house buys at the day’s rate per thousand points which seems to be going up about one cent every few days. It’s $0.63 today. So if you earn 10,000 points a day, that works out to around $6.30 per day.

Personally, I’ve found that the system is a bit slow in regards to getting approved, getting pages indexed, etc. After all, I have almost 250,000 pages to index and only about 5,000 were indexed in the first week. Also, only about 10% of my pages are selling links, but that’s to be expected as my pages on w3t.org vary in quality and language (it’s a URL shortener). I think that I could make up to $1,000 per month with my pages at best, but again, the better the quality of the pages, the more you’ll sell. The upside is that I seem to be selling my links faster as time goes on. I started with about 120 pages indexed and only a few links sold. When I started this article, I had (I think) about 450 links sold and after checking again, it’s up to 522 (still about 10% of my indexed pages).

The real test will be the payout. When I’ve earned a few more (thousand) points, I’ll do a payout and see that I get my money, but these guys have been around a while in other countries, which is why they’re so big already. Time will tell, as I often say, but I think this was another good find for me.

Dear Microsoft,

Over the years, you have repeatedly made unwanted advances, and I have repeatedly turned you down. Regardless, you keep at it, and it really needs to be addressed. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about:

One of my email clients noted that email they are sending to one of your email clients is being blocked because of some violation of your terms of service. Of course there’s no indication of the violation, but your email points out that you MIGHT be blocking my server’s IP address and that I am welcome to visit https://postmaster.live.com/snds/index.aspx to check. When I visit the page, I click the link offering “just a few clicks later you’ll see a wealth of historical data on those IPs’ mail volume, spam-related and other statistics”. I typed in the IP I wanted to check and it asks me to log in with my Windows Live ID. I don’t have one and I don’t want one.

This isn’t the first time you’ve tried to force yourself on me, either. Over the years, I’ve tried to sign up for MSN a handful of times and each time, it has been a horribly designed, cumbersome process. It’s not the fact that I have to have a Live ID that bothers me. It’s the face that you keep trying to force me to use hotmail.

Hotmail? Really?

You already cram the widely hated Internet Explorer down everyone’s throats. Isn’t that enough? Do I really need to sign up for Hotmail just to check the history of my IP in your spam rules? Then I’ll never use the account and in six months or a year I’ll have to get a new one because I never wanted the old one in the first place, so I promptly forgot the information.

Just let me use my own email address. I like it, I’ll remember it, and it doesn’t waste your resources. See. Isn’t that easy? Oh. Wait. I forgot I was talking to Microsoft, here. Nevermind. I’m sure you’ll just keep doing it your way until everyone just gives in.

There’s a lot of grumbling in the MySpace community about “hacking”. Technically, the problem is really phishing. More on that below. The amount of spam floating around in MySpace (in large part due to compromised accounts) has also been a big concern. Keep reading to not only protect your own account, but to help put an end to MySpace spam in general.

Dont be a Phishee: Don’t log in again if you’re already logged in and always type a site’s URL into your browser if the site requires you to log in.
I keep company with some pretty smart people, yet a few of them have given their login details away to spammers. This is an easy trap to fall into if you’re not looking for it. Some of the specifics would only help other spammers learn how to do it, but here’s the general idea: The spammer adds you as a friend or otherwise entices you to click on something within MySpace. The page you end up at is designed to look just like the page shown below, telling you that you need to log in. If you enter your account information in this page, it goes to the spammer and you are redirected back to content on MySpace, letting you think you’ve just logged back in.

Use a secure password: A mixture of upper and lower case characters as well as symbols and numbers works best.
If your password is “password”, “1234″ or the same as your username, stop reading for a second and go change it right now. A password should be hard for anyone else to guess. Don’t use your first, last, or middle name. Don’ t use a series of consecutive numbers or your address. The name of your child, spouse or pet is also forbidden. From now on, your password should be a mixture of upper and lower case characters, numbers, and symbols. Your password should also be at least six characters. An example of a secure password is “23sp@mSuxx” or “D13SPammeR$”. If you want more examples of BAD passwords or just want to read up on it some more, take a look at this article

Don’t turn a blind eye: Report anything that looks wrong to MySpace and others.
It’s easy to just delete spam or not fall for a phishing attempt, but we need to make the attempts stop. Next time you get spam from a stranger, report it. If it’s from a friend, call that friend and tell them about it. After all, you would want your friends to tell you if your account was compromised and sending spam to everyone, wouldn’t you? Finally, if you are ever sent to a page outside of MySpace that is made to phish your information, report it to MySpace, to the site’s hosting provider and to authorities. Usually, an email to abuse@myspace.com and abuse@[the host's domain name] will take care of it. If you have a minute, take the extra step and report the abuse at http://www.ic3.gov/, too.

Don’t encourage spam: Stop clicking on spam and/or signing up for stuff.
So you get spam for “free money answering surveys” or that “free Macy’s gift card”, and maybe you think it’s worth doing even thought it’s spam. Don’t do it. Don’t visit their sites, buy their goods, or sign up for their free offers. When enough people respond to a “marketing campaign” of any kind, it lets the person running that campaign know that it is working and they will continue that campaign until it no longer provides the profit they require. If nobody responds to the spam campaigns the way the spammers would like, they have no reason to continue those campaigns.

Leaving? Leave for good: If you no longer use your account, delete or disable it.
Sick of Myspace or just don’t have the time for it anymore? Disable or delete your account. If you aren’t logging into your account, nobody should be able to.

In summary, if you memorize these five rules, you will be part of the solution.
1. Dont be a Phishee: Don’t log in again if you’re already logged in and always type a site’s URL into your browser if the site requires you to log in.
2. Use a secure password: A mixture of upper and lower case characters as well as symbols and numbers works best.
3. Don’t turn a blind eye: Report anything that looks wrong to MySpace and others.
4. Don’t encourage spam: Stop clicking on spam and/or signing up for stuff.
5. Leaving? Leave for good. If you no longer use your account, delete or disable it.

It should be noted that these rules can be applied to most sites that require you to log in.

If you want to really make this work, Digg or Reddit this article and then copy the HTML below and post it in a bulletin on MySpace so others can read it, too.

UPDATE: MySpace bulletins keep breaking my link, so just forward the URL along:
http://www.joetech.com/2007/10/11/5-easy-ways-to-end-myspace-spam