Here are the rules:

• Contest begins April 1st.
• No rules on functionality, purpose, etc. Just has to be a working plugin.
• The plugin has to be completed and in the WordPress repository by midnight on April 30th.
• Once completed, we will allow a week for voting.
• Loser pays winner $1.
• That’s pretty much it.

Wish me luck! On April 30th Andrew and I will be tweeting and emailing a link where you the public can vote so make sure to pay attention to this blog, Andrew’s blog and both our Twitter accounts. @joehall & @norcross

The Dell Mini 9 shipped with an optional Ubuntu OS. Which was one of the main reasons I got it. Overall its been a great netbook. However the model I got only has a 3.8GB hard drive. Which means everytime I update Ubuntu the amount of free space gets smaller and smaller. So to read my Kindle books I opened up FireFox and went to the Kindle cloud reader, which allows you to read your Kindle books inside a web browser. This worked really well for awhile. But I hated having to read on such a small screen, it felt as if the size of text I selected and the orientation of the screen made it so I could only read about 10 lines on each page. But then I remember, YOU CAN FLIP THE SCREEN ORIENTATION in Ubuntu! 90 degrees is all I needed to flip the screen to show more text.

Now the netbook holds like a regular book and is roughly the same size! Looks like I won’t be buying a Kindle anytime soon!

Before we get dirty with the details, I want to add a disclaimer: I have absolutely no relationship to any of the entities mentioned in this post. I do not have any relationship to any blog/link network or organized spammer.

By now I am sure that most of you have read about the demise of Build My Rank. When I first read that article, I felt sick (that is not a hyperbole). As an entrepreneur I can’t imagine what it must feel like to realize that in a matter of days your company is finished. I don’t want to get into the specifics over this incident, but it appears that Google’s moves against them were a result of a blog post and ensuing public debate that outed them as a link spammer.

Link spamming is not a viable strategy for SEO. Yes, you can see short term results, but by and large, these services aren’t for long term growth. Even though I think these services are a waste of money, I could care less if others use them, as long as they know the full risk involved. Many rave about lobster, but I like crab more, and that won’t stop me from having dinner with them.

But the problem with SEO outing isn’t just a difference of opinion on strategy. The problem with SEO outing is that no one assumes the full consequences of their actions. Let’s take the BMR incident as an example. How much money did they lose as a result of being outed? Do their employees have families? How many of their clients are now seeing revenue lost? How many SEO agencies contracted with them? And how many of their clients are affected? How many innocent business owners that don’t know the risk involved with these networks are now suffering? How many people are now on unemployment?

It’s easy to write me (and this post) off as “sensational link bait”. I am sure it’s a heck of a lot easier than considering your own actions. To prove that I could care less about links, I have set this post to “noindex nofollow”.

I mentioned in the beginning that I use to not understand why outing was so wrong. What changed my mind, is meeting client after client that has suffered bad SEO advice and has seen a substantial loss. Outing, only exacerbates this process by raising the level of risk.

When people engage in questionable SEO practices they are taking a risk. Many of them know the risk they are taking, but many of them don’t. Either way, it’s no one’s place to make that risk even greater. If your paycheck doesn’t say “Google” on it, it’s not your job to police the web.

So then what is your job? Your job is to keep a high standard for yourself. Your job is to keep a high standard for those you do business with. Your job is to continue educating the public on what good SEO looks like. That is how we build a better industry. That is how we build a better community. That is how we build a better web. Outing does none of that. What outing does do is create dramatic blog post that allows for the author to take a moral high ground while potentially ruining innocent people’s livelihoods. It makes me sick.

[photo credit]

If you thought this post was half way interesting, you might want to follow @joehall on Twitter. Hes a total nut bag over there, but worth a laugh.

Don’t break the chain app: http://dontbreakthechain.com/

HTML Code For Mash-up Page: http://pastebin.com/isFb338D

Download FeedBurner FeedSmith 301 Redux

Hope you enjoy!

Here’s what the bill proposes in short:

• No new taxes.
• Applied only to taxes already imposed by the states that are not being collected.
• Provide states with the clear authority to require retailers to collect sales taxes already owed.*
• Treat all retailers equally regarding sales tax collection.
• Release consumers, currently expected to calculate and send in the taxes themselves.
• Exemption for small online retailers.

We need to look past the rhetoric in the dialog and focus on the bigger picture. For example framing this issue as leveling the playing field for offline retailers is ridiculous. Shipping and handling cost often times outweigh sales tax. So to assume that retailers are choosing e-commerce to avoid a sales tax is not grounded. Consumers are using e-commerce more and more for many different reasons. Some are shopping more online because the internet has mastered the “long tail” approach. Some are shopping online because online retailers can offer a completely customized shopping experience. Many are shopping online because they are just lazy.

But like I said we need to look past the rhetoric and move past this issue so that more business owners have the opportunity to succeed online. The only way we are going to do that is a federal solution that lays a ground work for how online retailers collect taxes across the country.

I also think that this legislation will put to rest the debate in the affiliate marketing space. With this type of legislation we wouldn’t see Amazon or other large affiliate programs pulling out of states to avoid sales tax.

Ebay is coming out against this bill citing that it would harm small online retailers. I am concerned with that as well. I would be interested in an amendment that take’s the concerns of small business into account.

*I am not a big fan of this provision. I mean that could be like a decade of taxes for some companies. I am willing to bet it was thrown in to appease a state supporter, but Durbin is willing to use it as a bargaining chip if he needs to.

Luckly I have discovered a cool way to integrate your blog and many popular social networks into Google+ very easily. The trick is to use the under appreciated, “post by email” feature found in many social services. Basically the way this works is a social network assigns you an unique email address. Every time you send an email to that address it is automatically posted to your network. This feature is commonly used to integrate mobile devices that can only send text messages. But we are going to use it to tie in Google+.

Post To WordPress From Google+

1. To start off you are going to want to go to Gmail or any free email provider and get an email address. Make sure you make it something that no one would ever guess. Something like 32v4n8o8h@gmail.com. Also while you are there find out the POP3 address of the provider.
2. Next login to your WP dashboard and go to Settings > Writing.
3. Scroll down til you see a Post to Email section that looks like this:
4. 
5. Fill this form out completely including the POP3 address where it says “Mail Server”.
6. Next go to Users > Add New and add a new user with the email that you just created. Make sure that the name and email are the email address and give the user ‘admin’ rights.
7. Because WordPress doesn’t want blogs constantly bombarding mail servers, they require that you load a script to prompt email/post retrieval. You can do this by either having a cron job ping example.com/wp-mail.php or you can include this simple HTML in your theme’s footer.
8. Finally go to Google+ and create a new Circle. You can call it blog, WordPress, or whatever you want. Go to add the email address that you just created and tied to your blog, to the new circle.
9. Now when ever you want to share a Google+ post on your blog as well, just add your “blog” circle to the list of users you are sharing with. Make sure that “Also email 1 person not yet using Google+” is checked, and hit Share.

You can use this technique to tie in more than one blog, you just have to tie in that same email address to all the blogs.

Post To Twitter From Google+

Because Twitter doesn’t provide a post by email feature by default we are going to need the help of Posterous.com.

1. Create an account at Posterous.
2. Under the Auto Post section make sure to tie in your Twitter account.
3. Grab the email address that looks something like yourname@posterous.com
4. Head over to Google+ and create a new circle.
5. Add the email address that you just got from posterous, to the new circle.
6. When ever you want to share a Google+ post on Twitter as well, just add your “Twitter” circle to the list of users you are sharing with. Make sure that “Also email 1 person not yet using Google+” is checked, and hit Share.

The really cool thing about using posterous like this, is that you can incorporate many different networks along with Twitter.

Post To Facebook From Google+

1. Login to Facebook.
2. Go to facebook.com/mobile/
3. Towards the bottom of the screen you will see a section called “Upload via Email”.
4. Copy the email listed is that section. It should look like something@m.facebook.com
5. Head over to Google+ and create a new circle.
6. Add the email address that you just got from Facebook, to the new circle.
7. When ever you want to share a Google+ post on Facebook as well, just add your “Facebook” circle to the list of users you are sharing with. Make sure that “Also email 1 person not yet using Google+” is checked, and hit Share.

If you don’t want to setup a new circle for each network, you can setup one and call it something like, “outside network” or “everyone else”. Anyways, good luck!