You Are The Worst dot Com

I stumbled upon this neat site detailing the nature of Facebook’s privacy policy which may be a little shady and I suggest users not to post everything little part of their life unless they want their identities stolen one day. I know this is common sense but from my brief counter on the site, females especially, place every single aspect of their lives be known to the world and there whereabouts and activities at that moment in time.

Here’s an excert from their privacy policy:

Facebook may use information in your profile without identifying you as an individual to third parties. We do this for purposes such as aggregating how many people in a network like a band or movie and personalizing advertisements and promotions so that we can provide you Facebook. We believe this benefits you. You can know more about the world around you and, where there are advertisements, they’re more likely to be interesting to you. For example, if you put a favorite movie in your profile, we might serve you an advertisement highlighting a screening of a similar one in your town. But we don’t tell the movie company who you are.

We may use information about you that we collect from other sources, including but not limited to newspapers and Internet sources such as blogs, instant messaging services, Facebook Platform developers and other users of Facebook, to supplement your profile. Where such information is used, we generally allow you to specify in your privacy settings that you do not want this to be done or to take other actions that limit the connection of this information to your profile (e.g., removing photo tag links).

Anyhow, click here for the link that details the evils of Facebook.

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An American tourist was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked.

Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The tourist complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.

The Mexican replied, “Only a little while.”

The tourist then asked, “Why didn’t you stay out longer and catch more fish?”

The Mexican said, “With this I have more than enough to support my family’s needs.”

The tourist then asked, “But what do you do with the rest of your time?”The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos, I have a full and busy life.”

The tourist scoffed, ” I can help you. You should spend more time fishing; and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat: With the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats. Eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor; eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You could leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then Los Angeles and eventually New York where you could run your ever-expanding enterprise.”

The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, how long will this all take?”

The tourist replied, “15 to 20 years.”

“But what then?” asked the Mexican.

The tourist laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right you would sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions.”

“Millions?…Then what?”

The American said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.”

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The Chrysler Group recently stated they would now offer a “lifetime” powertrain warranty on almost all of its new vehicles to increase sales and address a longtime concern of dealers. The warranty covers the engine, transmission and drive systems on Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge models for as long as a first-time owner drives the vehicle. It replaces the automaker’s current three-year, 36,000-mile or 60,000 km warranty.

Chrysler and other U.S. automakers have said that improved quality has not been fully recognized by American consumers. It joins larger competitors in offering more generous warranties to raise consumer confidence. Chrysler’s U.S. sales were down about 1 percent in the first half of this year as it relied on industry-leading incentives, including interest-free financing, to move an aging line-up of pickup trucks and minivans.

Conditions

The extended warranty, not transferable if a vehicle is sold, was being offered as of Thursday and supported by a TV and newspaper advertising campaign starting on Friday, the automaker said. Furthermore, the new “lifetime” warranty would also exclude Chrysler’s diesel-driven vehicles and its performance-oriented SRT line of vehicles.

Impact

This is a big statement brought forth by the Chrysler Group and is historical in nature. The author is hesitant whether this “lifetime” warranty program will help the company profit as the majority of their gross margins come from servicing and providing repairs for out of warranty vehicles. The true test is whether the company can put their money where their mouths are and provide sustainable long-term plan of selling improved quality and in turn reliable vehicles to the general public. In the short-term, Chrysler will boost vehicles sales instantly swaying customers from foreign manufacturers and the other big 2 domestic companies. Furthermore, it may also seem that the company is turning itself around as this marketing strategy comes as Cerberus Capital Management prepares to take Chrysler private in a $7.4 billion deal with DaimlerChrysler AG. Whether the company can shed away from its two decades of producing lackluster and scoring below-par in reliability test, remains to be seen.

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Had a little time off so I went and changed the layout of the theme more to my liking. The format remains the same however the colour scheme and wider areas allow for more content as well as advertising. Best part of the layout is definitely the calendar date post and the huge RSS feed button to the top right. Furthermore, the Ferrari Enzo is now replaced with my dream vehicle, a Porsche 911 Turbo.

Is the new design scheme a hit? Can’t tell yet but from preliminary suggestions, it sure will be!

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The Federal Reserve’s interest rate 50 basis point decision drop has come and gone and even though the impact on the financial markets has been substantial, many are pondering how will this affect fellow Canadians and Americans traveling north of the boarder? The past week has marked various milestones in the global markets:

• The U.S. Dollar has plummeted to an all-time low against the Euro by breaking through the key 1.40 barrier.
• The Canadian Loonie approached parity with the U.S. currency for the first time in 31 years.
• Gold has hit a 28-year high as dollar sinks reaching $735.85 today, with the likelihood of $800 by years-end a favourable outcome.
• Crude Oil is hovering below record highs after U.S. inventories fell more than expected and as the threat of a storm gathering near Florida reignited supply concerns.

The Canadian Case:

The loonie, which has been gaining on its American counterpart since bottoming out below 62 cents in early 2002, has recently been on a spectacular run, up from 95 cents at the start of September and from under 90 cents last spring and its recent ascent is mainly caused by the surprised large cut in interest rates. Soaring demand for Canadian commodities, ranging from oil and wheat to coal, gold, nickel and zinc – have helped propel the currency, while a weakening American economy has dragged down the greenback, the world’s most widely held and traded currency.

Advantages:

The high dollar may make U.S.-made goods cheaper to buy in Canada due to the rise in purchasing power and is a boon to Canadians traveling in the United States, especially cross-border shoppers and those looking to book winter vacations to Florida or Arizona. Those trips are suddenly much cheaper than they were a month ago. On the other side of that, importers will also win big as the costs of bringing goods into Canada gets cheaper, as will whole sellers – the “middle men” in the economy.

Negatives:

But the high loonie will continue to put pressure on domestic manufacturers, who have to try to sell goods south of the border at a discount or have been priced out of U.S. markets. Manufacturers such as lumber exporters, which have not had some insulation from commodity prices, and automakers will be particularly hard-hit, as the rising Canadian dollar makes exports less competitive at the same time that the shrinking U.S. housing market is making demand for housing weak. Tourism in Canada could also be affected, as travel to Canada becomes more expensive to Americans – a drop that will likely ripple through the hospitality industry. While the manufacturing sector has lost 289,000 jobs since late 2002, the economy has created more than one million jobs in resources, construction, services, health care, education and financial industries, leaving the national jobless rate at 30-year lows.

Forecast:

With only two more Federal Reserve rate decisions on the calendar, we expect 25bp rate cuts in October and December with another half point cut may not be entirely out of the question if economic data remains weak. This spells trouble for the U.S. currency however we are heading into unchartered waters with records being posted galore so we must proceed with caution even though the U.S. economy and currency look to be in the brink of disaster. The Canadian currency will definitely trade at a premium by years-end and, possibly sooner than expected; consumers will be in joy for the upcoming x-mas season.

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Have you ever asked yourself that question? I didn’t until I stumbled upon other blogs which had this banner posted on their site specifically displaying the net worth of their blog. Nowadays you hear about major multinationals buying sites for millions and billions of (i.e. Google bought YouTube for 1.65 billion), it makes you wonder what fraction of that could you possibly make (just for shits and giggles, of course).

You too can value your blog by clicking here.

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It’s been a great week long learning experience starting up this blog especially dealing with the difficulties of learning the Wordpress interface. I have had prior web designing experience so all things are coming together slowly and updates are becoming easy and breezy. As my blog’s intention is to attempt to show you, the reader, how to profit off the internet all the while being entertained with the latest news, it is my duty to list every Friday my earnings for the week.

I am still tinkering with the placement of the ads however from general feedback, the advertisements do not seem to bother most and the majority found the ads to neatly blend in with the content and layout. I still have not submitted my site to popular sites nor have applied any search engine optimization techniques and any marketing campaigns at the moment are non-existent as I am relying strictly on word-of-mouth referrals to generate traffic for the time being.

Items to be addressed in the next short while:

• Fix RSS feeds issue.
• Fix sidebar display error with Internet Explorer due to the MistyLook template’s unique layout.
• Submit the website URL to popular search engines.
• Add links after each blog entry for users to bump to popular social networking sites: digg, technorati, etc.
• The most important issue would be writing more detailed articles dealing with money.

Total Payouts to Date Since September 9, 2007:

• AuctionAds: $25.00
• Google Adsense: $4.62
• Bidvertiser: $3.81
• Text Link Ads: $0.00
• AGLOCO: 7 Signs-Ups to date
• Grand Total: $33.43

I expect this number to dramatically improve as traffic and the site grows complementing an effective affiliate and marketing campaign. Stay tuned for regular continuing status reports on my earnings.

Furthermore, be sure to check out the “Make Money Online Now” tab at the top of the screen to begin your journey into capitalizing off the internet and feel free to leave comments and suggestions!

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