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Let me pose a question that at one time could have been considered hypothetical but in today’s world is becoming more of a reality.  If the world was going to end and you had the chance to escape to another planet what is the one thing you would bring with you? Here is your chance to stay ahead of the game and send a piece of you off to space before the planet earth dies.  Be a part of

Operation Immortality has taken preservation to the next level.  This real life project set to launch in October 2008 has been put together to preserve human life and hopefully thwart human extinction should our planet go poof from a giant asteroid or sociopathic dictator with a trigger happy finger on the nukes.  The goal is to put together a package of sorts that will contain lists of our greatest achievements, digitized DNA from the world’s greatest minds, atheles normal every day people and written messages from you and I and send it off to the Internatioanl Space Station.

This package will accompany Richard Garriot to the space station. He’s the driving force behind the free online MMORPG video game Tabula Rasa and who’ll also be the 6th private citizen ever yes thats right only the 6th person not an astronaut to go to space.  This is your chance to send a piece of you into space and let Richard be your escort.

Get in line ’cause there’s thousands of us who want in!  Visit Operation Immortality: Leave your mark. Save Humanity. Check out one of the coolest looking sites I’ve seen in awhile and read up about this neat project.  Download the free game Tabula Rasa and defend Earth!  No credit card or payment required.  Every week during the month of August 8 random players will be chosen to submit their DNA to be digitized and sent off to space!!

Now to wrap this up and answer the question of what I’d take with me if the world was going to end and I had an out….  That really hot girl I had no chance with who once told me that if I was the last man on Earth she might sleep with me!  Because I bet she never thought that day would come.

tech news »

I’d like to point out that Ron, an employee of Swagbucks was kind enough to visit the site and address some of the concerns I had with the program and I have to admit I was impressed that they took the time to do some damage control. Please read the Swagbucks response to the post. I am now using the system and testing it out.

My original intention with this article was to write something positive about a search engine called Swagbucks.  As the name suggests the site gives out random swag bucks as you use their search engine just as you would use any other.  The thing that drew me to to this unique concept was the fact that they use the Google Search engine to bring you your results.  I’ll be honest in that while I may not agree with all of the ways that Google assigns rank for search results they do have the most extensive searches and usually provide fairly accurate results.  Their sponsored results are also kept fairly out of the way and are easily identifiable.  Sponsored results appear at the top of your search and on the sides only, never in between searches.

How Swagbucks works is they provide you with a search page similar to any search engine landing page with a box provided to enter your search term.  Hit enter or click the search button to be on your way.  Randomly throughout your searching you may win swagbucks.  You know you’ve received some because they insert a small notice at the top of your search page advising you of how many swagbucks you’ve won which can range frmo $1 to $5.  You can then trade in yoru swagbucks for merchandise at their own shop.  The merchandise can range from a $5 Starbucks gift card to a $50 Best Buy gift card to a wide variety of other interesting gifts.

One $5 Starbucks Gift Card would cost you 60 Swagbucks.  Examples of some of the gifts you can receive from Swagbucks

I thought this was a golden idea.  I spend 12-15 hours a day on the computer and have Google as my homepage and if I could earn a few extra bucks while searching then I figure why not.  It was the fact that I could get a free cup of coffee once a week or even save up for a new mouse or keyboard using a Best Buy gift card even if it took a few months.  Great so I signed up for an account which is obviously free and started to check it out and get familiar with it and right away I noticed the problems.

While it looks like they have completely styled their search results to look like Google they appear to be providing filtered custom results with injected sponsored listings.  I opened google in one window and swagbucks in another window and ran the same search.  The number of results was drastically different.  Here are my beefs with this new search engine.

1.  Drastically different number of results returned although they claim they are using Google’s search engine for results.  I searched for the term “Fight Club” in both engines and this is what I got back:

Swagbucks:

Google:

Now… This may not necessarily be a problem.  As we all know Google usually has tonnes of duplicate search results so swagbucks may be omitting the duplicates automatically.  That would be cool IF there was a way to even see that many results.  Just like the normal Google Search Engine Swagbucks has pagination at the bottom which lists how many pages of search results there are.  At the bottom of a Google search page you usually see numbers from 1…….10 with a Next button.  Swagbucks, despite telling you there are 4 million results for “Fight Club” will only let you see up to 4 pages of results.  If you click the 4th page on swagbucks thats it.  The end of the road.  No more pages after four no matter how many results were found where on the other hand with Google if you click the 10th page it just adjusts and shows you the next 20 pages.  Swagbucks has limited you to only 4 pages of the millions of possible results.  Big no no!

2.  Swagbucks injects sponsored search results inbetween the normal results.  This is deceiving and I hate visiting websites that trick me into clicking their ads.  Everyone needs to make money especially sites providing services.  There are high costs and such hosting fees and technical support & upgrades where needed however tricking your customers into clicking your sponsored results is sneaky and just plain wrong.  With some of the more reputable search engines such as Google their advertisements are clearly labeled as such and are removed from the actual search results.  The advertisements do not appear highlighted.  I did that on the image to illustrate where they are placed.

3.  Now even if the first two things discussed above were non-issues, this last point here would almost definitely turn me off from Swagbucks.  On the search page they have a banner labeled, “Be the next winner! Winning Tips.”  So you’re thinking great… they’ve got some tips on how I can earn more swagbucks while surfing and searching.  They offer 8 tips on how you can win more swag.  I’m not going to get into the first 7 because in my opinion their 8th tip trumps the previous 7 by a longshot.  It goes like this

TIP #8

Doing a TON of Searches Will Not Help You Win.

Really. While you may think it will help you win, it will actually ensure you won’t. Only your first 20 searches in a given day make you eligible to win a Swag Buck. The best way to win is to use swagbucks.com - search & win whenever you need to search the web. Clicking links, whether they’re sponsored links or search results, will not help you win. swagbucks.com - search & win offers no incentives or rewards for clicking on them.

Now come on.  Their 8th and final tip is that by using their search engine too much it will ensure you won’t win anything.  So the more I use the site the less likely I am to win anything until it gets to the point where they make sure I don’t win anything.  Now where’s the incentive there?

That last paragraph there just about sums it up.  Since when do companies penalize you for using and enjoying their service or product.  Thanks swag for saving me the time of wasting my time!

In the Media »

Zara Phillips, the next in line for her hotness… I mean her heiness.  Zara who?  Yep.  I had no clue who she was either by name but then again when do names matter then you look as hot as Ms. Philips.

Sorry ladies that was rude but I couldn’t think of a way to begin this post.  Zara Phillips is the first woman in direct line to the throne (the royal one) to appear in any sort of commercial advertisement.  You can catch her teaching some lame bloke what Horsing Around is. I’ll give you a hint. He’s covered in slimy gooooooo!

Web Hosting »

Let’s face it whether you are sitting in your basement trying to think up your next blog or you are the CEO of XYZ and need a place to put your corporate website it can be a tough decision to find a reliable and affordable web host.  I think the biggest mistake people make when choosing a host is searching for bad reviews online by using searches such as hostingcompanyname sucks or hostingcompanyname complaints.  While those web pages definitely serve as valueable information they don’t always reflect the actual services you may receive.  Every company regardless of its reputation good or bad will have negative reviews online.  With the size of the internet and the ease at which anyone can put their thoughts online it makes for a large result in searches therefore influencing your decision.

Take for example my experience with domain transfers and 1and1.  You can bet your life that I will never deal with 1and1 for any services I need and I have made my opinion graphic and vocal.  But for just as many bad documented experiences with certain companies that are just as many good undocumented experiences.  Had I used a review site last year and had seen these poor reviews about 1and1 I definitely would have avoided them.  It is also a rare occasion for people to take the time to report positive relationships with businesses.

I’ve recently begun looking for a new host for my own site due to the increase in traffic and resource consumption and as I’ve learned from my mistakes I chose to research my host this time although I still want to find cheap web hosting while maintaining quality and value.  Webhostinggeeks.com has quickly become a heavily weighted independant review site for various web hosting companies.  They provide a simple interface for us to browse through with areas such as hosts that offer Free Google Adwords coupons and choices for Best Blog Hosting.  There is room for individual user reviews for each hosting plan and company.  You can gain an unbiased review from other users as it is not restricted to one persons opinion.