Hey readers, Webvisible just raised a bunch of money and Spotrunner just bought Weblistic.  I am curious if any of you out there have used any of the local search engine advertising solutions like ReachLocal, Webvisible, OrangeSoda, etc. and what your experiences have been.   If you have some thoughts please email them to me at localseo at localseoguide.com.  Thanks.

Also if any of you are at SESNY and want to connect please drop me a line.

IN 1991, Stewart Alsop, the editor of InfoWorld and a thoughtful observer of industry trends, predicted that the last mainframe computer would be unplugged by 1996. Last month, I.B.M. introduced the latest version of its mainframe, the aged yet remarkably resilient warhorse of computing.

Today, mainframe sales are a tiny fraction of the personal computer market. But with the mainframe facing extinction, I.B.M. retooled the technology, cut prices and revamped its strategy. A result is that mainframe technology — hardware, software and services — remains a large and lucrative business for I.B.M., and mainframes are still the back-office engines behind the world’s financial markets and much of global commerce.

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There is lots of money to be made with flipping websites. Flipping websites for profits is an easy way to earn money online with no or less work. People usually flip websites with good content. With unique and quality articles, it is easy to sell a website for nice profit. You can easily make around $50 - $200 by flipping any website with just 5 – 10 unique keyword rich articles. People who buy this type of websites will use it for making money with Adsense or to promote affiliates. This is the gap between the people that look for instant profit and people that look for long term profits.

You may feel I’m not talking anything related to this post’s title. Here comes the Vlog part. Vlogs or Video Blogs are blogs which are stuffed only with videos from video whores like Youtube, metacafe etc etc… With Video blog sites you don’t need to create any orginal content. I flipped a Vlog about Casino Guides for $25 at DP forum. My investment with this Vlog is just $3 for the domain name. My profit is $22 which is not bad for NO WORK.

Check this thread where I sold my CasinoGuide Vlog.

How to create a Video Blog?
To start with a Video blog, you need to select a niche for your Vlog. Let’s say you selected Music as your niche. Categorize your blog with different categories, like Pop, Rock, Country etc etc…

Now make the categories with a wordpress blog. I’m not going to tell you how to install wordpress and so… It is pretty simple and self explanatory.
Next select a proper theme which matches to your Vlog. I suggest you to search for free themes at www.freewordpressthemes.com

Once you’re satisfied with your theme, move on to the next part; getting videos from youtube. You’ve to install a simple wordpress plugin called tubepress to get videos from youtube. Try this plugin by your own. It is pretty simple to use. You can Download Tubepress here.

While flipping Vlogs for profit, you must concentrate on your video niche. Select a good niche which people love to see it as a video. Music videos is a popular and best niche because, people like to see music videos for FREE. But this niche is already saturated. So try to search for any other niche. Be creative and the boundaries are endless.
The next important thing to keep in mind is the wordpress template. Select a template which perfectly matches with your niche. Definitely you’ll find one at www.freewordpressthemes.com

Once finished your Vlog, submit it to some Social Bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon, Digg etc… Sell it at DigitalPoint forum or any other place for profit. You can sell this type of Vlogs at ebay too.

 From a piece in the NYTimes:

Three things come to mind:

1. Social networks like MySpace are among the most visited sites on the Internet. That’s a lot of page views.

2. Ad inventory at MySpace isn’t working out. That’s a fact according to a quote of Sergey Brin within the article where he acknowledges a failure to monetize.

3. Has the flood of inventory at MySpace and other social networks negatively affected the supply and demand ratio of average-joe publishers, resulting in lower earnings?

Let the theorizing begin!

Actually, anyone expecting major revelations along the lines of “What’s in the hatch?” were probably disappointed by “Lost’s” fourth season premiere. Titled “The Beginning of the End,” the episode didn’t establish any new directions for our favorite castaways that weren’t already introduced last season.

Instead, we got a bit of a breather, which gave the characters time to deal emotionally with the events of last season’s finale. Hurley gave a nice speech memorializing his pal Charlie (Dominic Monaghan). In a show that has myriad dangling plot threads, dozens of major characters and just 48 episodes left to bring it all to a satisfying conclusion, you have to admire the fact that they took this hour to commemorate a dead character. It was a nice character moment and it seemed to have a lot of feeling. One thing “Lost” has never been afraid of is reaching for the big emotions. It may be safer to appeal to the mind, but sometimes the heart needs to be fed too.

Not that Charlie is completely gone, mind you. 

The flash-forward we saw last May appears to be a trend, as this episode featured Hurley in his post-island life back in a mental ward. And just as he once saw visions of his imaginary friend Daniel, poor Hurley is now seeing Charlie. But this time Charlie appears to be working as an advocate of sorts for the island, almost begging Hurley to return.

We should also take a moment to puzzle over the appearance of guest star Lance Reddick, formerly of HBO’s “The Wire.” Though he presented himself to Hurley as an attorney for Oceanic Airlines, I don’t think I’m going out on a limb to say that there seems to be more going on with him than meets the eye. I’m sure we’ll see more of him, though with that piercing stare and creepy, knowing half-smile, I’m not sure I want to. His appearance, combined with Jacob’s scary shack in the jungle makes me wonder if “Lost” is leaving the sci-fi behind in favor of out-and-out horror.

The episode’s biggest unanswered question, of course, is who are the rest of the Oceanic Six? We know Jack, Kate and Hurley got off the island, but who are the other three? The person in the coffin, no doubt. But what about Michael and Walt? If you’re a credit reader, you’ll notice that Harold Perrineau, who plays Michael, is back in the opening credits. Though he didn’t make an appearance in this episode, my money says he’s on that freighter with the rest of the so-called rescuers.

It appears we’ll find out for sure next week, when we’ll finally get to meet these freighter people. The “Lost” community needs to hurry up and come up with a shorthand name for them, similar to The Others or The Tailies. How about the Freighter Fakers? The Not Penny’s Boaters? I’m open to suggestions.

And I would be remiss if I didn’t call attention to one of the worst ideas ABC has ever attempted with its real-time pop-up commentary that ran with the rerun of last May’s season finale on Wednesday night. Across the bottom of the screen, a constant stream of text, mostly describing the action above it, served to distract and at times infuriate viewers. What were they hoping to accomplish with that? I only made it through 10 minutes before I went screaming for the DVD. Maybe it’s a tactic in the ongoing writers strike? If their goal is to make reruns completely unpalatable to watch, they may have found the magic touch.