A Legal Alternative To Online Gambling

Here's a business model for you: Give people money and let them place any bet they'd like. If they win, they get to keep the spoils; if they lose, give them more money to play with.

No, we're not talking about the subprime mortgage business. We're talking about a new--and perfectly legal--online gambling outfit called Centsports.com, founded by budding Webpreneur Victor Palmer in College Station, Texas.

Online gambling has always been illegal, even though people got away with it for years. In 2006, U.S. federal prosecutors started cracking down on payment processors, making things a little harder, even for off-shore virtual casino operators and their customers.

Palmer skirts this pesky problem by banking his customers. Three elements have to be present to violate most state gambling laws--namely "prize, chance and consideration," says attorney Chuck Humphrey, a gaming-law specialist and author of the Gambling Law U.S. blog. Because Centsports.com doesn't allow users to bet their own stash, no "consideration" is involved, and thus all is kosher. Quips Palmer: "Congress assumes if you’re dumb enough to give away money, then go for it."

Here's how the site works. Each user starts off with 10 cents in his or her account, provided by Centsports. (You need only register a name and password.) From there, they can bet on any event for which Las Vegas bookmakers set a line.

Once users accumulate $20 in winnings--the equivalent of doubling your money eight times, or striking gold on a 200-to-1 long shot--they can cash out a minimum of $10 and receive an actual check in the mail. (In terms of "consideration," winnings on that initial 10-cent stake don't constitute ownership until actually cashed out.) Losers risk nothing--except perhaps a touch of pride--and get immediately restaked with fresh dimes.

Cashing out is not exactly straight forward. To ensure he can always pay the electric bill, Palmer puts the breaks on payouts (talk about having a house edge). Users compete with each other to snag their winnings from a community pot; big winners get preference.

Users can also earn money by referring friends to Centsports.com. The incentive: 5% of any winnings their friends rack up.

How does Palmer aim to turn a profit? Hungry advertisers--which thus far include Skype, Pizza Hut and the National Basketball Association--and a meager marketing budget consisting of those 10-cent initial stakes and a few teaser videos on YouTube. (Most of Palmer's initial investment went to cover a mere $5-a-month lease on a computer server.) So far, so good: Palmer says his registered user base, now at 200,000 strong, is nearly doubling every month.

Palmer's not your average 26-year-old. He began college at Lubbock Christian University (in Lubbock, Texas) at age 11. He graduated at 16 with a BS in mathematics; soon after began working on a Masters degree in physics at Texas Tech University; and in 2006 bagged a Ph.D. in computer science from Texas A&M University.

That résumé notwithstanding, Palmer is more frat boy than power geek. On the phone, he jokes freely about girls and alcohol. With any luck, he may soon have plenty of reasons to raise a glass.

E-Commerce on Facebook

E-Commerce on Facebook

Facebook said today that it is working on an e-commerce platform that will let users pay application developers for virtual goods, premium services and other offerings.

Ben Ling, who runs Facebook's platform, said that "a transaction mechanism will enable new business models" for developers. He shared the news today at O'Reilly's Graphing Social Networks conference held this week in Crystal City. A lot of local social media companies, representatives from Silicon Valley companies and a few venture capitalists were there.

The developer community has been waiting for a development like this so they don't have to rely on advertising to make money. Some of the most popular applications are earning advertising revenue, but it hasn't been easy to get big marketers to experiment. Some gaming applications already sell virtual goods so users can dress up their characters, and Slide sells "premium pokes" to give paying users a more exclusive selection. An e-commerce component would give developers a more stable way to make money--that is, if consumers actually buy the goods.

And that's what a lot of investors are looking for these days. I had a quick conversation with Wagish Bhartiya of Grotech Ventures, a venture capital firm based in Vienna. He's looking into making an investment in the social media space, but has a skeptical eye. He said he's only interested in companies that have a solid revenue model, not just sites or applications that have a lot of users.

Ling said he couldn't give a time frame for the e-commerce release, and it's unclear whether it will even happen this year. But he said it was definitely something Facebook is working on.

Top Googler

	Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google

SAN FRANCISCO -

Eric Schmidt has become the tech world's premiere pundit. As such, his observations on his company are both lofty and, well, a bit opaque.

In a wide-ranging conversation with New Yorker writer Ken Auletta on Wednesday, the Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) Chief Executive chatted about advertising, YouTube, the pace of change in technology and those pesky allegations that the Internet giant is trying to thwart a deal between Yahoo! (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people ) and Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ).

Auletta--whose lengthy profile of Google last spring rankled company insiders because of the paucity of quotes from executives--kicked off the conversation by asking Schmidt about how the Internet giant plans to make money from its myriad projects and businesses. Right now, virtually all the Mountain View, Calif.-based company's $16.6 billion in annual revenues come from online search advertising.

Schmidt delivered this lofty sound bite: "The goal of the company isn't to monetize everything. The goal of the company is to change the world."

Next, Auletta honed in on YouTube, the video-sharing site that Google acquired in 2006 for $1.65 billion. Advertising hasn't taken off on YouTube because advertisers are worried that their brands will appear next to questionable content. Schmidt admitted that Google hasn't figured out how to make lots of money from the video site.

So how does Google judge YouTube's success? Schmidt gave a vague response: "Because of the way the company works, we'll know. We measure everything to the millisecond. We can tell."

Schmidt added that unlike most companies, Google doesn't have to worry about making money from all its ventures since its search advertising business is a cash cow. "We have the luxury of time," he said. "Most people in the business are so pressed for time. They have to make money now."

Then Auletta asked Schmidt about his "good friend" Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer, saying that Google is trying to block the software giant from acquiring Yahoo!. Schmidt sidestepped the question and made a joke. "That decision is up to Yahoo!, not Google. Am I missing something?" he said.

After trying to acquire Yahoo! for three months, Microsoft dropped its offer in May in part because the Web portal was also trying to hash out an advertising partnership with Google. Microsoft said such a partnership would prevent it from acquiring Yahoo!

Auletta asked the question again. Schmidt got serious but still sidestepped a direct answer. "We've said an independent Yahoo! is better for competition and innovation," he said. "We think it's in the market's interest and the end user's interest."

Asked what he worries about most, Schmidt assured Auletta it's not the competition. "It’s not competitors' moves that screw up a business," he said. "Because of our market position, we have an opportunity to define ourselves as we go forward. There are many obstacles to continued success. We hope to be a great company some day."

In other Google news, co-founder Sergey Brin paid $5 million to research a seat on a future flight to space. The money went to Space Advertures Ltd., a privately held venture that sends groups of people into space. In 2007, Microsoft billionaire Charles Simonyi paid $25 million for a 13 day trip. (See "Billionaires in Space.")

Heading out of the atmosphere should give Brin an even higher-minded point of view on the mundane business of making money on earth

How u can make money with junk on ebay(read on a wonderful experience)

I Never Would Have Guessed People Would Want My 'Junk'!

It started one day when the battery charger on my cordless phone died. I checked with the manufacturer and they wanted $70 for a replacement! I thought I could get a better deal from an internet reseller so I did a Google search for the batter charger. In the Google results I came across an eBay listing for what I was looking for, and it was only $5! I made a bid on that $5 item and won the auction. By using eBay I saved myself $65 !

Winning That ebay Auction Got Me Thinking

The person that sold me that battery charger on eBay probably thought it was a piece of junk, but to me it was gold. I wondered how much 'junk' in my closet might be gold to someone else? So I spend the next weekend going thru my closets, garage, and basement looking for all those things I had that were too good to throw away, but not quite good enough to use.

I Was Surprised How Much Stuff I had

Here are the results of what I found during my eBay 'junk' search:

• My old collection of comic books from when I was younger
• Camera equipment from my photography hobby days
• A spare part from my car that was still good
• An older digital answering machine
• Some old cordless phones
• Several old toys, dolls, etc

None of these things seemed particularly valuable, or even useful to me but my experience with the battery charger had taught me that these things would be worth something to the right person. Make no mistake, these things weren't 'garbage' - everything was in good condition and clean. If anything was dirty I did my best to clean it up.

LINK

Microsoft counter move on Mac

AFP/GETTY

Bill Gates says interaction with computers will change dramatically

Windows 7 aims to build on the success of the touch screen systems developed by Microsoft's rival Apple's iPhone.

Microsoft users will issue commands by touching the screen rather than by the traditional keyboard and mouse combination, which has dominated since the 1970s.

Windows 7 is due to be released in 2010 and is Microsoft's attempt to catch-up with Apple, whose handheld iPhone has proved exceptionally popular.

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Phone, iPod, and Internet in one fast 3G device. Starting at $199.iPhone 3G Mac

iPhone 3G

Mac Launches on july11th iPhone 3G. With fast 3G wireless technology, GPS mapping, support for enterprise features like Microsoft Exchange, and the new App Store, iPhone 3G puts even more features at your fingertips. And like the original iPhone, it combines three products in one — a revolutionary phone, a widescreen iPod, and a breakthrough Internet device with rich HTML email and a desktop-class web browser. iPhone 3G. It redefines what a mobile phone can do — again.

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Newspaper Funny items

24 Hour Animal and Pest Control. Look at all the animals and pests you've got! How many baby traps do you put out a day?

Hey, here's a deal! "Tombstone: Standard gray, a good buy for someone named Grady."

"County to pay $250,000 to advertise lack of funds." Look, we want people to know we don't have any money!!

Good luck with this! "Volunteers search for old Civil War planes." Lemme know how that works out, okay?

"Gentle eye remover." Ow!!!

Wow! That's going to be a healthy baby!

"Look ravished for the prom." I think you want to look ravishing, don't you? You look like you've been ravished!

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SteEm scooter Invention

SAN MATEO, CALIF. -

More than 60,000 people gathered over the weekend for the annual Maker Faire. The fair showed the work of more than 500 "makers," backyard scientists and craftspeople with a brainy bent. Here are some of the event's most memorable sights.

Fritz Grobe is working fast. He doesn't have long before he and Stephen Voltz will drop 624 Mentos into 104 liters of Diet Coke, unleashing enough energy to pump artificial sweetener and carbonated water all over a crowd of hundreds of cheering onlookers at the annual Maker Faire in San Mateo, Calif.

Look at a Mentos candy under a microscope and you'll find its surface is dense with nooks and crannies, the lab-coated Grobe explains as he screws a nozzle loaded with Mentos onto a bottle of soda. Drop the Mentos into the bottle, and carbondioxide bubbles latch onto the surface of the candy as it drops to the bottom. It's a process called nucleation. The same phenomenon causes clouds to form as water vapor condenses around particles of dust and pollen.

The reaction is explosive--and lots of fun. (More than 5 million viewers have watched a clip of Grobe and Voltz unleashing hundreds of Mentos-Diet Coke geysers at once.) "Speaking as someone who has taken quite a few liters of soda to the face, it's not particularly dangerous," Voltz says with a grin. "It's all about trying it at home."

Power of failure JKRowlings Comments

J.K. Rowling's terrific commencement address at Harvard is available as a video, MP3, or text.

The fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure....

I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality. So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life. ,...Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way....Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned....

LINK:link

Blender free(opensource)Animation tool

Mike sez, "To show off the open-source animation program Blender, a small team just finished a great ten-minute cartoon, 'Big Buck Bunny.' They were funded by foundation support and pre-orders of the DVD by the Blender community. What's more, the whole thing is Creative Commons-licensed, and all the files for the animation are available. Here in Worcester MA, our local TV station took advantage of the licensing and broadcast the thing last night in prime time
LINK:http://blender.org

How bloggers make money

My Personal Income Streams

As an update to this post I’ve more recently written one on How I make Money Blogging which highlights the most profitable ways that I use blogs to generate income. I’ve also written extensively on how bloggers make money in ProBlogger the Book.

How do bloggers make money from blogs?

I’ve been reflecting this week about the amazing diversity of opportunities that are opening up for bloggers to make money from blogging.

I’ve long advised that bloggers seeking to make money from blogging spread their interests across multiple revenue streams so as not to put all their eggs in one basket.

The wonderful thing is that this is becoming easier and easier to do 2005 has seen many options opening up. I thought I’d take a look at some of the methods that bloggers are currently using to make money through blogs.

Income Streams for Bloggers - How to Make Money Blogging

Advertising Programs - Perhaps the most obvious changes in the past few months have been with the addition of a variety of viable advertising options for bloggers looking to make money from their blogs. The most common way bloggers seem to earn money online is via the contextual ad program from Google - Adsense. A more recent addition that many are using successfully are Chitika’s eMiniMalls and WidgetBucks, Text Link Ads.

Azoogle Ads, Intelli Txt, DoubleClick, Tribal Fusion, Adbrite, Clicksor, AdHearUs, Kanoodle, Pheedo, TextAds, Bidvertiser, Fastclick and Value Click (to name just some of the options) and there is a smorgasbord of options. Of course there is more to come with MSN Adcenter and YPN both in beta testing and with a variety of other advertising system currently in development (YPN is only available to US publishers).

Lastly there’s BlogAds - one of the first blog specific ad networks.

RSS Advertising - The past 12 months have seen some advances in RSS Advertising also. I’m yet to hear of any bloggers making big money blogging through it to this point - but as improvements are made to the ad programs exploring this I’m sure we’ll start to see examples of it being profitable.

Sponsorship - In addition to the array of advertising programs that are available to join there is a growing awareness in the business of the value and opportunity that exists for them to advertise directly on blogs. I’m hearing more and more examples of this and have been fortunately to have a couple of ad campaigns of my own in the past month - one with Adobe a couple of weeks ago and another just completed with Ricoh for a new digicam over at my Digital Camera Blog. These are not isolated cases - as I say I know of many blogs exploring sponsorship with advertisers at present and suspect we’ll see more of it in the year ahead. Sponsorship is also happening on a post by post basis with some bloggers being paid to write on certain topics by companies - either in one off or a regular fashion - and they are able to make big money from their blogs doing so.

Affiliate Programs - There are larger affiliate programs like Amazon, Linkshare, Clickbank and Commission Junction but also literally thousands of others from the large to the very small.

Digital Assets - Increasing numbers of bloggers have been developing other digital assets to support and add revenue streams to their blogs. By this I mean that I’m increasingly seeing e-books, courses and tele-seminars being run by bloggers. My recent foray into this with the first series of the six figure blogging course that Andy and I ran a few weeks ago and have just released the study version of. This type of activity will only increase in future - in fact this week I’ve seen numerous examples of bloggers running courses.

Blog Network Opportunities - with the rise in popularity of Blog Networks - bloggers are also being presented with more places to earn an income from their blogging - by writing for and with others. While it might be difficult to get a writing gig with one of the bigger networks - there are plenty who are always asking for new bloggers to join and who are willing to pay bloggers using a variety of payment models. While there are distinct advantages of blogging for yourself - blogging for an established network who will handle a lot of the set up/promotion/admin/SEO etc has it’s advantages also. More and more bloggers are combining writing for themselves on their own blogs with taking on blog network blogs as additional income streams.

Business Blog Writing Opportunities - as blogging has risen in it’s profile as a medium more and more businesses are starting blogs. Many of these companies have internal staff take on blogging duties - but an increasing number of them are hiring specialist bloggers to come on and run their blogs. I know of a number of bloggers who in the past month or two have been approached for such paid work. Check out Bloggers for Hire if you’re looking for this type of work.

Non Blogging Writing Opportunities - Also becoming more common are bloggers being hired to write in non blogging mediums. Manolo’s recent coup of a column in the Washington Post is just one example of this as bloggers are increasingly being approached to write for newspapers, magazines and other non blog websites. Along side this is the rise of bloggers as published book authors - this is to the extent that one blogger I spoke with this week complained to me that they were one of the few bloggers than they knew who didn’t have a book deal!

Donations - Tip Jars and donation buttons have been a part of blogging for years now but this last year saw a number of bloggers go full time after fund raising drives. Perhaps the most high profile of these was Jason Kottke of kottke.org who through the generosity of his readership was able to quit his job and become a full time blogger.

Flipping Blogs - Also more common in 2005 was the practice of ‘Blog Flipping’ - or selling of blogs. This has happened both on an individual blog level (I can think of about 20 blogs that sold this year) but also on a network level (the most obvious of these being the 8 figure sale of Weblogs Inc to AOL).

Merchandising - My recent attempt to sell ProBlogger.net T-shirts wasn’t a raging success, but it is an example of how an increasing number of bloggers are attempting to make a few extra dollars from their blogs by selling branded products through programs like Cafepress. While I didn’t have a lot of success with merchandising - quite a few larger blogs are seeing significant sales - especially blogs with a cult following. I’m not at liberty to discuss details - but I know of one largish blog which will see sales over $20,000 in merchandise for the calendar year of 2005.

Consulting and Speaking - While it has been popular for established consultants to add blogs to their businesses we’re also starting to see bloggers with no consulting background able to make money by charging readers for their time in consulting scenarios BECAUSE of the profile that their blogs have built them. Blogging has the ability to establish people as experts on niche topics and we all know the value of being perceived as an expert. I spoke to one blogger last month who charges himself out at over $200 an hour for speaking and consulting work - his area of expertise was something that he knew little about 18 months ago - but through his blog he’s become a leader in his field and a minor celebrity in his industry.

As time rolls on there are more and more ways that bloggers make money from their blogs opening up. Feel free to suggest your own ideas and experiences in comments below.

Update: Looking for more information on how to make money blogging? Here’s a post I wrote talking about my own experience - particularly looking at the top ways that I make money from blogs.

Also check out ProBlogger the Book for a comprehensive guide to making money from blogs.

Future of Internet

Nick sez, "Jonathan Zittrain gets so many things right in his book, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It about what he calls 'generative technology' and why it's so important. It's chock-full of all sorts of issues that make Boingers salivate - freedom of speech, copyright, open source software, digital rights activism, privacy, censorship - put together into a very convincing argument in favor of unbridled innovation. This is definitely a book that you don't want to pass up. It's licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike 3.0 license and freely downloadable from the book's website." The iPhone is the opposite. It is sterile. Rather than a platform that invites innovation, the iPhone comes preprogrammed. You are not allowed to add programs to the all-in-one device that Steve Jobs sells you. Its functionality is locked in, though Apple can change it through remote updates. Indeed, to those who managed to tinker with the code to enable the iPhone to support more or different applications,4 Apple threatened (and then delivered on the threat) to transform the iPhone into an iBrick.5 The machine was not to be generative beyond the innovations that Apple (and its exclusive carrier, AT&T) wanted. Whereas the world would innovate for the Apple II, only Apple would innovate for the iPhone. (A promised software development kit may allow others to program the iPhone with Apple’s permission.) Jobs was not shy about these restrictions baked into the iPhone. As he said at its launch: We define everything that is on the phone. . . . You don’t want your phone to be like a PC. The last thing you want is to have loaded three apps on your phone and then you go to make a call and it doesn’t work anymore. These are more like iPods than they are like computers.6
Link:
http://futureoftheinternet.org/