South Florida Web Marketing Blog

How Spammers Use Low-cost Labor to Solve CAPTCHAS
Workers in Russia, Southeast Asia, and China are paid a pittance to solve millions of CAPTCHAS.

What can only be described as an epic new analysis by a cadre of researchers at UC San Diego has uncovered the seedy underbelly of a sophisticated, highly automated, world-wide network of services that help email, blog and forum spammers get past the CAPTCHAS that are designed to keep them out.

Read more…

I think Yahoo and Microsoft are moving closer to the transition where Microsoft will be running Yahoo’s Advertising. This E-mail I recently received explains a little more about this transition:

Dear Advertiser,

As your transition to the Microsoft Advertising adCenter platform approaches, we have more details to share to help you prepare for the changes to come.

Considerations for your upcoming transition

adCenter account
Soon, you’ll need to either create a new adCenter account, or link an existing adCenter account to your Yahoo! Search Marketing account. Later this month, you’ll see an “adCenter” tab within your Yahoo! Search Marketing account. Clicking there will take you to the beginning of the account transition process, where we’ll walk you through the simple steps to create or link accounts.

Budgeting
Once you create your adCenter account, it will be active and your ads will be eligible to serve on Bing right away. As a result, you’ll be managing both your new adCenter account and your existing Yahoo! Search Marketing account in parallel until ad serving for Yahoo! traffic transitions to adCenter, so plan to budget accordingly.

Microsoft Silverlight
With Silverlight installed, you’ll be able to see and address key differences between your Yahoo! and adCenter accounts as you transition. Download Silverlight now.

Organic search transition
Yahoo! organic search results will be powered by Bing as early as late August. If organic search results are an important source of referrals to your website, you’ll want to make sure that you’re prepared for this change. For more details, check out this blog post.

As we’ve stated previously, our primary goal is to provide a quality transition experience for advertisers in the U.S. and Canada in 2010, while protecting the holiday season. However, please remember that as we continue to go through our series of checkpoints, if we conclude that it would improve the overall experience, we may choose to defer the transition to 2011.

We are committed to making this transition as seamless and beneficial for you as possible. We appreciate your business, and look forward to bringing you the benefits of the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance.

Sincerely,
Your Partners in the Search Alliance, Yahoo! and Microsoft

photograph by Lee Smith / Smitty’s Holdings, Inc.

It’s dinner time – 5:26pm – I get a phone call on my office phone  – called ID says “Unassigned”

I did not answer, but the system left a voice message just the same.

The automated message stated they were marketing their website – the greatest bla bla bla. This is a ridiculous way to market a website. How many people want to be bothered at dinner time with a phone call for visiting a website?

I’ll never post the website, but I will post the do not call.  If you get a call you can report it.

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Update 7/16/2010 - Got a phone message from the person that was listed here. They claim they never do any automated marketing and that I was I am mistaken.

First, I do not take any of this lightly and do not post crap because I need more drama in my life.

I have two choices:

Either remove the listing of the individual based on the fact they called and left a sincere message about the issue in a way that seems they are more of a victim of this nonsense automated marketing call.

Or this person is trying to cover his butt.

I am inclined to believe he was sincere, although I did get a automated call advertising his website,  this could also have been a competitor trying to cause him problems as well. Who knows..  I decided to remove his contact information from this post because he sounded sincere about not using automated calling.

We did speak by phone and now realize he is a victim of this  crank call.

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If you are on the do not call list – you can register a complaint:
https://complaints.donotcall.gov/complaint/complaintcheck.aspx?panel=2

I think they should make it illegal to use any automated calling systems.

Unwanted Telephone Marketing Calls

http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/tcpa.html

Congress first passed the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) in 1991 in response to consumer concerns about the growing number of unsolicited telephone marketing calls to their homes and the increasing use of automated and prerecorded messages.

the FCC’s rules prohibit the use of autodialers in a way that ties up two or more lines of a multi-line business at the same time. All artificial or prerecorded telephone messages must state, at the beginning, the identity of the business, individual, or other entity that is responsible for initiating the call. If a business is responsible for initiating the call, the name under which the entity is registered to conduct business with the State Corporation Commission (or comparable regulatory authority) must be stated. During or after the message, the caller must give the telephone number (other than that of the autodialer or prerecorded message player that placed the call) of the business, other entity, or individual that made the call so that you can call during regular business hours to ask that the company no longer call you. The number provided may not be a 900 number or any other number for which charges exceed local or long distance charges.

The FCC can issue warning citations and impose fines against companies violating or suspected of violating the do-not-call rules, but does not award individual damages. If you receive a telephone solicitation that you think violates any of these rules, you can file a complaint with the FCC. There is no charge for filing a complaint. You can file your complaint using an on-line complaint form found at  esupport.fcc.gov/complaints.htm.

You can also file your complaint with the FCC’s Consumer Center by:

• e-mailing fccinfo@fcc.gov;
• calling 1-888-CALL-FCC (1-888-225-5322) voice or 1-888-TELL-FCC (1-888-835-5322) TTY;
• faxing 1-866-418-0232;
• or writing to:
  Federal Communications Commission
  Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau
  Consumer Inquiries & Complaints Division
  445 12th Street, SW
  Washington, DC 20554.

What to Include in Your Complaint

The best way to provide all the information the FCC needs to process your complaint is to complete fully the on-line complaint form. When you open the on-line complaint form, you will be asked a series of questions that will take you to the particular section of the form you need to complete. If you do not use the on-line complaint form, your complaint, at a minimum, should indicate:

• your name, address, e-mail address, and phone number where you can be reached;
• the phone number where you received the call, and whether this number is on the national Do-Not-Call list;
• the date and time of the call;
• whether the call advertised or sold any property, goods, or services;
• any information (including a caller ID number) to help identify the individual or company whose property, goods, or services were being advertised or sold, and whether any of this information was provided during the call;
• whether you or anyone else in your household gave the caller permission to call;
• whether you have an EBR (Established Business Relationship) with the caller (specifically, whether you or anyone else in your household made any purchases of property, goods, or services from the individual or company that called, or made any inquiry or filed an application with the individual or company prior to receiving the call);
• and whether you or anyone in your household previously asked the caller or individual or company whose property, goods, or services are being advertised or sold NOT to call, and when you made the request.

It is obvious to me that they do not study the guidelines nor care whether they adhere to them.

The New version WordPress 3.0 – otherwise called “Thelonious”

The thirteenth major release of WordPress and the culmination of half a year of work by 218 contributors, is now available for download

Major Changes:

• New default theme called Twenty Ten
• Theme developers have new APIs that allow them to easily implement custom backgrounds, headers, shortlinks, menus (no more file editing), post types, and taxonomies.
• Developers and network admins will appreciate the long-awaited merge of MU and WordPress, creating the new multi-site functionality which makes it possible to run one blog or ten million from the same installation.
• New lighter interface
• The contextual help on every screen,
• 1,217 bug fixes
• Feature enhancements
• Bulk updates so you can upgrade 15 plugins at once with a single click

Adobe warns over unpatched PDF peril
By John Leyden – theregister.co.uk

Hackers are exploiting critical, unpatched vulnerabilities in Adobe Reader, Acrobat and Flash Player.

Read more…

Before jumping into a new venture, do a feasibility study
By Rhonda Abrams, USA TODAY

You’ve got what you think is a great idea for a new business. You’ve told a couple of your buddies, and they slap you on the back and tell you it’s a winner. You’re ready to jump in. But does your business idea really have a good chance to work?

Read more…

I had a conversation with a client today CaddyForACure.com and during the discussion I stumbled across  a rather discriminatory practice by Google with their Pay Per Click marketing.

It appears that the problem is based on browsers.

I conducted a search for a famous PGA Golfer – Sergio Garcia with Firefox Version 3.6.2. The Natural Result came up but no PPC ads – my client has an PPC ad with the keyword Sergio Garcia. Even after refreshing the Firefox browser 10 times – still no PPC ad.

Then I tested the Microsoft Browser version 8 and ran the same query for Sergio Garcia. The PPC ad for Sergio Garcia came up on the first try and every try there after.

Firefox:

Microsoft:

Try it yourself. Why does the Firefox Browser not see the same results as the Microsoft Browser? Is it some sort of discriminatory practice, or a software glitch?

If you got nothing to do – this is a fresh way to watch Social Networking in action:

http://spy.appspot.com/

Spy can listen in on the social media conversations you’re interested in.

It is powered by:

• Twitter via Twitter Search
• FriendFeed via FriendFeed
• Flickr via Flickr
• Blog Comments via BackType
• Yahoo News via Yahoo! Search BOSS™
• Blogs (RSS) via FriendFeed
• Google Reader via FriendFeed

spy.appspot.com was created by Ben Hedrington

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Technorati is one of the larger Social Networking sites on the Internet. Getting your Blog posts listed on it can really help your rankings and getting your blog posts found.