MTV Buying RateMyProfessors.com

Apparently MTV has agreed to buy RateMyProfessors.com. The deal is expected to be done by March 2007 and be a part of mtvU.com. From the CNET article I’m more interested in the mention that MTV previously bought College Publisher in August 2006. They are a service that operates the online version of many college newspapers, including The Signal at TCNJ. It looks like MTV is rapidly expanding their college operations. What’s next?

Source: CNET

Jim Cramer on the Colbert Report

Jim Cramer was just on the Colbert Report last night. There wasn’t too much substance to the interview, but I thought I would practice uploading it. Youtube took it right down so I put it up on DailyMotion. He does go over his new book and talks about his show Mad Money. The book deals with how you can maximize your results from the free advice he gives on his show; how you should handle it.

I Should Have Bought Apple’s Stock

For years I have followed Apple’s stock price (AAPL), never quite feeling comfortable about spending the cash. In recent months and weeks I continually talked myself out of buying the stock. I had a good feeling the iPhone was coming, but did I know it would be so good? If I had bought a few shares early this morning I could have made myself a few hundred dollars. But can you ever be sure the market will like a stock? There could be good or bad news tomorrow and the stock could tumble a few dollars. The high price of the iPhone ($499-$599), it’s exclusive tie-in with Cingular, and it’s reliance on GSM (no CDMA or 3G here) could all sour the offering and the Apple stock.

The stock market is a risky game. Investing in stocks is very high-risk. Mutual funds have less risk, but they are still risky. I should have listened to Jim Cramer when he said Apple was his #2 pick for growth in 2007. Of course I should have been listening to my gut a long time ago when the stock was half the price it is today. Hindsight is 20/20.

Sony Shipped 1 Million PS3s, but Did They Sell?

Ever since I took a Statistics course a few years ago I have been wary of announcements and fuzzy math. CNET reports that Sony held a press conference at CES where they announced that they “had shipped 1 million PlayStation 3 units into the North American retail channel by the end of December.” That does not mean they sold 1 million PS3s. They could have shipped a few hundred thousand PS3s to warehouses and that would still be considered in the retail channel. Also, there have been many reports of people returning PlayStation 3 units because they couldn’t sell them on eBay. Stores recently had plenty of units in-stock. So that may not bode well for the future of the PS3.

Performancing/PayPerPost Deal is Off, Metrics to be Opened

A few days/weeks ago it was announced that PayPerPost was buying Performancing’s Metrics blog statistics package and their Performancing Exchange which is a classifieds marketplace where people find professional bloggers to employ. The deal is apparently now off, and the Metrics script is going to be open sourced. That means I get to play around with it and customize it for my own needs. Sweet. No word on the future of the Exchange.

In other related news, the great site editor extension Performancing for Firefox is being renamed ScribeFire. I use the extension for most of my site posting, unless I need to add pictures to a post. I’m using it even as we speak. It lets me collect information from multiple sites and compose the post in the bottom-half of the browser.

Performancing’s news post: Metrics goes Open Source - PayPerPost Deal is Off
PayPerPost’s news post: Performancing Deal is Off

Death of YouTube?

According to a Forbes article, YouTube has begun accepting pay-for-placement. The promotion of Paris Hilton’s new album on their homepage is an example of this. Now that YouTube accepts payment for promoting videos to the homepage and creating custom channels and profiles, can they be trusted? How long will it be until they decide to accept payment for top placement in search results? And once that happens is the site no longer run by the community?

What do you think? Am I right? Am I wrong? Is YouTube no worse than other companies trying to capitalize on the social networking buzz? Is money more important than an altruistic need to serve the public? Are video sharing sites poisoning the minds of the youth and offering no service of substantial substance? Or do I just like using big words?

Source: Forbes

Feedster Gets New President and Money

Om Malik reported that Feedster has raised a new round of funding, and announced a new president. He then goes on to speculate that Feedster will make a push to the Asian markets based on the history of one of their ex-Googler supporters.

Frankly, Feedster news doesn’t interest me. I haven’t used it since it first began. For blog search I either use Google’s Blog Search or Ask’s Blogs & Feeds Search (which is one of the fruits of their labor from their Bloglines purchase). I just take every opportunity I can to remind you that I made the Feedster logo (and then they added that green border to the right side), and made nothing from it. I don’t even get any credit for it anymore, especially since the people who knew I made it have been long gone. Do I sound bitter? Nah.

Source: GigaOM

Wired News to Reunite with Wired Magazine

Conde Nast Publications, the owner of Wired magazine, is buying the Wired.com news website from Lycos for $25 million. Lycos will retain control of HotBot, Hotwired and Webmonkey. The Wired News staff has been operating from the same building as the Wired magazine staff, but with a smaller staff since Lycos layed off a big portion of them.

In a statement Tuesday, Wired Editor in Chief Chris Anderson said that reuniting Wired News with the magazine was a long-cherished goal.

“Wired’s focus on innovation and how technology is changing the world can now be matched with our own innovation and experimentation with new ways of doing media online. We’re bursting with ideas and can’t wait to put them into practice,” he said.

I’m excited to see them do something interesting with the website. It has languished for years and it looks like it may now be in good hands.

Source: Wired News

OfficeMax Getting Rid of Mail-In Rebates

OfficeMax said it will eliminate its mail-in rebate program beginning this weekend. They plan do do away with them in favor of in-store discounts. This is a great move for the company, as mail-in rebates are a pain and sometimes don’t result in payment. I am always extremely careful when filling out a form, and I generally receive my rebates (I think). Too bad they closed the OfficeMax that was practically right outside my house.

I also read that Best Buy said in 2005 that they would end their rebate program in two years. Now we just need to get Staples, Circuit City, and any other big stores to end their programs. Mail-in rebates are all a sham to make products look more attractive while they gain interest on your money. And most people don’t even send them in when they are for less than $50 (1/3 of shoppers according to the article). If the rebates are from $50 to $100 shoppers will send away for 50% of them.

Source: CNET News, WSJ

Pay Per Post

PayPerPost lets bloggers earn money for posting. I found out about it through a recent CNET News post, and thought I would take it for a spin. There are ethical issues, but I plan to only take opportunities that I would have been blogging about anyway. When you accept an offer and post following its requirements, if they approve your post you will be paid in 30 days if the post is still up. I’m not sure if it works, so I plan to find out. You can check it out at http://www.payperpost.com. You can view the current opportunities without actually signing up. They seem to have some reputable offers such as Spiderman 3 and Superman Returns. So why not profit from something you were going to do anyway?

this post will hopefully eventually be paid for by PayPerPost.