YouTube have apparently banned two educational videos about how to detect testicle and breast cancer, featuring a well known British TV doctor. Err, yeah, that didn’t sound right, but as far as the story goes this Dr. Chris Steele actually is a real doctor.

Dr Steele told El Reg: “These are videos that I have produced at my own expense to help educate the public. I know for a fact that people find this material very helpful, as they are often provided with minimal support information when they enquire about these procedures.”

The reason for banning the vids? Well, might be offensive to kids, 18+, yadayada. Sounds ridiculous if you ask me. The Register have the story, with creepy pics (NSFW).

Via Shiny Shiny

Originally posted on February 15, 2007 @ 11:09 am

The MyBlogLog service, owned by Yahoo nowadays, was exploited to spam its users this weekend. There was a hole in the invite to co-author system, and it was promptly used. A lesson hard learned for the team, as can be read in a recap blog post.

This is not the first time MyBlogLog is spammed, but at least it didn’t affect the actual MyBlogLog widget on the sites using it this time around. It’s one of the problems of using hosted services like this. People can use it for bad things, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

That’s why you should always consider hosting your own solutions. Sure, they can break and be exploited as well, but at least you’re in charge.

Originally posted on February 20, 2007 @ 4:20 am

Easton Ellsworth over at Business Blogwire have a great post up for beginner bloggers wanting to make some cash: his personal cheatsheet.

1. AS YOU SOW, SO SHALL YOU REAP.
2. HAVE A BACKUP PLAN BEFORE YOU BEGIN.
3. TIME IS MONEY.
4. DEVELOP AN UNQUENCHABLE THIRST FOR IMPROVEMENT.
5. CONNECT YOURSELF TO OTHERS IN MEANINGFUL WAYS.
6. START WITH PROVEN REVENUE-GENERATING SOURCES.
7. ATTENTION AND TRAFFIC CORRESPOND TO HIGHER REVENUE.
8. BE DIFFERENT.
9. FOCUS.
10. DO AS PROFITABLE BLOGGERS DO.
11. MAINTAIN AS MANY GOOD BLOGS AS YOU CAN.
12. THERE IS NO EXHAUSTIVE GUIDE TO BLOGGING FOR PROFIT.

Don’t you just hate it when people do lists in all capitals? Anyway, in-depth on each of these twelve points in the post.

I find his bonus challenge more interesting though, since I’m past that starting out phase:

Here’s $1,000 – you must spend it all toward your objective. The question is, what do you do with the $1,000 and the 30 days?

I’m not sure which way I would go, but I’m looking forward to some brilliant thoughts and ideas in the comments.

Originally posted on February 14, 2007 @ 2:28 am

A study among the music industry executive conducted between December and January points to resistance to DRM on an industry level as well, not just among consumers.

• 54% thinks the current DRM system is too restrictive
• 62% thinks that losing DRM would improve digital music’s standings
• 58% of the “larger record labels” thinks that dropping DRM would boost sales
• 73% outside the record labels thinks that dropping DRM would boost sales

Right. So why is DRM still here? Well, we all know the answer to that: Fear of copy-craziness and the need to control the products. Still, DRMs are easily cracked and a quick search online gives us access to lots and lots of music. In my opinion, record labels needs to embrace digital music and offer downloads for a reasonable price, in any format or bitrate I prefer. Seriously, I wouldn’t even consider to buy a MP3 file in 192 kbps. Give me lossless, and let me worry about the size on my hard drive.

BBC News have more on the study. Mind you, it was made after Steve Jobs post Thoughts on Music, so I’m guessing we might see other numbers if the study was conducted today. What Steve says goes, right?

Originally posted on February 15, 2007 @ 10:53 am

I’m an open source buff so whenever I see lists like this, with great free software for anyone to run or develop, I just get happy. Most of the open source software is hosted over at SourceForge. Daily Cup of Tech lists the top 25 SourceForge projects, taken from a newsletter.

Among the fine software choices in this list we find great tools such as phpMyAdmin, Gaim, 7-Zip, FileZilla and Notepad++. Whatever memory munching bittorrent client Azureus does there is beyond me though, but hey, I guess it’s hard to find a good one.

Full list over at Daily Cup of Tech.

Oh, and SourceForge have relaunched their website. It’s been a while since I was there, but if my memory serves me right it’s a great improvement.

Originally posted on February 15, 2007 @ 10:36 am