Times are Tough and Penny Auctions exposed

Times are tough and every penny counts. Some people are taking that idea to a new level through auction sites where pennies could get you a camera or even a laptop.
If you are willing to wait for a great deal, penny auctions are a great solution to saving a few bucks. There's an online penny auction based in the metro that's growing by the day where you can bid on everything from gift cards to MacBooks.
The Nevada company foopile.com started just a few months ago and it's gaining popularity.
Think of it as an online auction but you're bidding by the penny. And even though each bid costs 49 cents, you can still grab a good bargain because it can save you from paying the full value of an item.
"My best deal was MacBook Pro for $19.62, took three hours to get through, but definitely worth it," said penny auction user Joseph Bruschie.
Another customer got a $300 digital camera for only $50.
But we here at Penny Auctions Exposed are a little skeptical and aren't sure that we've seen any real proof that these online penny auctions are such a great deal. So we decided to put these websites to the test. What better way to find out the truth than to conduct our own study?
To get started, I have been using normal online auctions regularly for the past 6 years so I volunteered to be the guinea pig. I created an account at foopile. While there are a few penny auction websites online, foopile.com is one of the most credible and trustworthy websites in the marketplace. They gave me 3 free bids just for joining and did not try to fool me into agreeing to additional hidden offers, purchases, or fees. Another reason why I chose foopile is because it is the most practical and easy to use website I found.
Here is what foopile claimed on their website...

•All Auctions Start at 1 Penny

•Each time you bid the item price increases

•The last person to make a bid wins the auction

•When a bid is placed, the timer increases

•If you don't win the auction, you can buy one full price and redeem your bids placed for full credit.

We were pretty skeptical, but wanted to find out for ourselves if this website could actually worked as it claimed and if we really could get a great deal.
Putting foopile to the Test

The foopile.com signup was quick and painless and took me literally 10 seconds to get signed up.
In order to give myself the best chance of winning, I opted to buy their 250 bids package for $122.50 Update: On sale right now for $99
My Test - Try to win any auction on the site no matter the cost:
My Results
Day One
The first day I decided to go after one of the items which I thought would not only be a little easier to win, but useful as well.
A 100 Bid Voucher.
If you win, you get 100 extra bids added on to your account - great, I could use that to continue my test.
I waited for the timer to reach down to the 5 second mark and placed a bid. 10 seconds later another user bid above me. I placed a bid butler order for the next 10 bids, which seemed to go by pretty quickly. Okay - 11 bids down.
I decided to let a few other bidders battle it out for awhile until the price got up to $1. Thats when I set my bid butler for 50 bids.
About 20 bids down the road the other bidders gave up and I won! Great, 100 won bids by only using around 30 of my bids - what a deal.
Day Two
Today I decided I would go for something a little more active as far as bidders. An iPod Shuffle.
Again I went in with the idea of spending as many bids as I needed to in order to win the auction. And if I didn't win, then I would simply exercise my Buy One Now option.
This time I waited for the price to reach above $1 and also waited for bidding activity to slow to a crawl.. I put in a couple bid snipers, and when they started firing I knew that it was time to jump in. I set my bid butler to 100 bids and sat back to watch

72 Bids later - I was the winner of a new green iPod shuffle. That means that I got a $55 product for only $36 - sounds like a great deal to me.
Day Three
Now I was getting really bold. Today it was time to bid on something even bigger - I had my eye on an iPod Touch.
This time I waited until the price reached $2, then started placing a few bids to test the waters. There still seemed to be alot of activity, so I set my bid snipers and waited. Eventually it reached $3, and the bidding was starting to slow. I jumped in and set my bid butler at 100 bids.
Another user apparently had the same idea and we got into what is called a 'bid butler war'. This is where the timer moves quicker because the bid butlers are bidding against each other. Normally the timer increases 10 seconds with each bid, but a butler war it only increases 1 second per bid
Needless to say the 100 bids went pretty quickly. I placed another 100 bid butler, then another 50 bid butler after that. After getting to that point and still not winning, I decided that my best option was to use the Buy One Now.
So in the end I ended up getting a product worth $184 by spending $184 - not a super deal, but I certainly didn't lose anything.
Day Four
Today I decided to purchase a 1000 bid pack for $490. This was mainly because there was a new iMac on the website worth $1800 that would look great sitting on my desk. So to start off, I had about 1075 bids to work with.
Once the counter reached down to 5 seconds it was like a feeding frenzy, people were bidding like crazy - sometimes it seemed that 10 bids where hitting at exactly the same time. Definately not the time for me to start bidding - so I waited
The price quickly got to $10, and the bidding slowed down a bit but not by much. I set my bid sniper in case I snoozed too long while I was watching the auction and missed out.
The price got to $20, then $30, then $40. Thats where the bids started to slow down and I decided it was time for me to jump in. I set a 100 bid butler and watched it go, then another, and another. 300 bids down.
I played normal bidding and bid snipers for awhile - price reached $50. I put in two more 100 bid butlers.. 500 bids down.
600, 700, 800, 834... WIN
I had to do a double take - I couldn't believe I actually won an iMac at a final auction price of $67 + shipping, plus about $400 worth of bids. So for an $1800 iMac, I only had to spend $500. Now if that isn't a steal, I don't know what is!
I couldn't be any happier with the results.

I spent at total of $700 and received products valued at over $2000, plus I still have 200 bids left over.

Conclusion Like us, here at Penny Auctions Exposed, you might be a little doubtful about getting a good deal from a site which may seem too good to be true. After conducting our own personal study we are pleased to see that people really are getting great deals if they stick to their guns and bid to win (myself included :) )!
Good Luck with your auction bidding,
Source:Jennifer Huggins- Consumer Reports
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Facebook co-founders give $170K to pro-pot measure

          
                                                                                                                                                                                         SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — California's ballot measure to legalize marijuana has a new friend: Facebook co-founder Sean Parker has given $100,000 to back the proposal.
Parker's donation was reported in Proposition 19 campaign finance filings this week.
And he's not the first big Proposition 19 donor with ties to the social networking site. Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz has made two donations totalling $70,000, including a $50,000 contribution last month.
Neither Parker nor Moskovitz are still with Palo Alto-based Facebook, but both still have ownership stakes. Recent estimates put the value of the privately held company as high as $33.7 billion.
"What's interesting here is that (Parker) is a member of the generation that really gets it," said Stephen Gutwillig, a spokesman for the Drug Policy Alliance, the main beneficiary of Parker's contribution. "We think he's pivotal to the future of drug policy reform in the country."
The 30-year-old served as Facebook's first president and helped transform the company from dorm-room project to big business. Parker and Moskovitz have become household names since the recent release of "The Social Network." The film chronicling the contentious origins of Facebook was No. 1 at the box office last week.
Pop musician and actor Justin Timberlake plays Parker in the movie, which portrays him as a hotshot who convinces Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to push out his friend from the burgeoning company.
In a recent Vanity Fair profile, the media-shy entrepreneur is described as a computer-programming prodigy with an uncanny knack for anticipating online trends and a penchant for designer clothes and partying.
At age 19, Parker helped develop Napster, the music-sharing software that turned the recording industry upside-down. He is now a partner at Founders Fund, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm.
Parker did not immediately respond to e-mails seeking comment.
About $1.5 million of the $2.4 million raised so far in support of Proposition 19 has come from the measure's main sponsor, Oakland medical marijuana entrepreneur Richard Lee. The only other six-figure donation not from Lee came from adult entertainment entrepreneur Phil Harvey, who gave $100,000.
Parker's donation came shortly after the Yes on 19 campaign committee reported having meager cash on hand heading into the final weeks before the election. The money from Parker and Harvey went to a separate committee to fund the Drug Policy Alliance's work on behalf of the measure.
Much of the money will go toward a get-out-the-vote campaign targeting young voters and voters of color, Gutwillig said.
Facebook recently came under fire from some marijuana advocates who claimed it was turning away advertising on the site in support of Proposition 19. Facebook said in a statement that company policy prohibits images of drugs, drug paraphernalia or tobacco in paid advertising but that ballot measure supporters were still free to advertise using different images.                                                                                                                                                             Be Sure to Leave Your Comments! Also be sure to subscribe to my feeds http://feeds.feedburner.com/dotblogger and Follow Me on Googles Friends connection Recommend @lilruth to @MrTweet on Twitter....

Blogging Tips on bringing more traffic to your Blogs

                   There are probably people out there who want to read your blog--maybe thousands of them. How do I know this? Think about it—at any given moment, there are millions of people online. Chances are, some of them are interested in what you have to say (or write, or post). I’m assuming, of course, that you are posting high quality content.

But what if you have no advertising budget for your blog? No problem! Here are some free methods you can use to get more traffic to your blog.
1. Social Networks:
Most of you are members of social networking sites (such as myspace, facebook, friendster, etc). If not, you should be. This is one of the easiest ways to get your core group of readers started. Just announce your blog or post your updates in shout-outs, bulletins, etc. Those in your network already have some kind of connection to you (even if they are just “chat mates”), so many will take the time to read your blog.
2. Blog Directories


If you look down on the right side of this blog, you’ll see all of the blog directories I’ve registered with (such as blogcatalog.com).
Blog directories help you in a couple of ways. Your blog will get hits from those searching the directory (especially from other members of the directory). In addition, adding your link to a directory helps improves your blog’s ranking in search engines (SEO).
Most directories only require a reciprocal link or banner. The registration takes a few minutes, but it is a worthwhile investment of your time. Once you get registered and put the banner on your blog, the work is over. The directory does the rest—most of them will list your recent posts in the directory.

3. Forums/Message Boards
There are multiple online forums for every imaginable topic. Find a few that are related to your blog’s topic and join. Many forums allow you to put your blog address in your “signature.” Many allow you to post links, especially if you post an article that is related to the discussion. Just be sure to follow the forum’s rules and do not flood it with irrelevant links.
4. Entrecard

Entrecard is basically a banner exchangeservice. You earn nd use credits which are used to buy banner ads on other users blogs....
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Google has an URL Shortner

It’s called Goo.gl, and according to Google it has several advantages over competing services. Here is a quote from the Google announcement .
There are many shorteners out there with great features, so some people may wonder whether the world really needs yet another. As we said late last year, we built goo.gl with a focus on quality. With goo.gl, every time you shorten a URL, you know it will work, it will work fast, and it will keep working. You also know that when you click a goo.gl shortened URL, you’re protected against malware, phishing and spam using the same industry-leading technology we use in search and other products.
 Goo.gl is connected to your Google account, so it will track clicks for you automatically.

Check it out if you haven’t yet.
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Facebook inches past Google for Web users' minutes

           
 U.S. Web surfers are spending more time socializing on Facebook than searching with Google, according to new data from researchers at comScore Inc.



In August, people spent a total of 41.1 million minutes on Facebook, comScore said Thursday, about 9.9 percent of their Web-surfing minutes for the month. That just barely surpassed the 39.8 million minutes, or 9.6 percent, people spent on all of Google Inc.'s sites combined, including YouTube, the free Gmail e-mail program, Google news and other content sites.



U.S. Web users spent 37.7 million minutes on Yahoo Inc. sites, or 9.1 percent of their time, putting Yahoo third in terms of time spent browsing. In July, Facebook crept past Yahoo for the first time, according to comScore.



In August of last year, Web surfers spent less than 5 percent of their online time on Facebook, about the same percentage of their time on Google and almost 12 percent on Yahoo. In August 2007, Facebook captured less than 2 percent of U.S. surfers' total minutes. Google accounted for less than 4 percent, and Yahoo for just over 12 percent.



To be sure, there's wiggle room in these estimates, which comScore bases on a combination of reports from a panel of two million users around the world and data from websites' servers. But the time spent posting photos, updating status messages and scrolling through news from friends has at least grown to rival just about everything else people do online.
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Gagets-Apple Rolls out your Holiday shopping list

Just in time for the holiday gift season, Apple is launching another wave of those things your kids just absolutely will want to have. And there’s a chance you might want them, too.



On September 1, Apple rolled out three new versions of the iPod. The top of the line is the new iPod Touch, which Apple CEO Steve Jobs jokingly referred to as “the iPhone without a contract”. It packs in most of the features of the iPhone 4, but without the phone.




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How to create your First Blog

                                       You’re ready to become a blogger by writing your very first blog post, an entry, for your new blog. Fortunately, the mechanics of writing a blog post aren’t much different from writing an e-mail.

Most posts are quite short and are written directly and conversationally, but you can make them as long as you want. Every blog takes on a personality and life of its own.
If you’ve used a Web-based e-mail service like Gmail, Hotmail, or MSN, blog software feels very familiar. Creating the post is simply a matter of filling in the appropriate fields in a form, formatting text, and then sending it off to its destination — in this case, to your blog, rather than a friend’s inbox.
Enlarge1Go to the Blogger publishing screen.

If you just finished signing up for your blog, click the Start Posting link to start a blog post; the publishing screen appears. If you’re coming back to Blogger, log in. Blogger takes you to the Dashboard — a kind of control panel showing you the blogs you have set up — giving you access to tools like posting, help resources, or even creating another blog. Click the New Post link on the Dashboard to get to the Publishing screen.

Enter a title for your post in the Title field.

Titles are a lot like newspaper headlines: catchy and informative so that they encourage visitors to your blog to continue reading.
Write your post in the large field.

Consider writing your blog posts in a standard word-processing program, such as Notepad or Microsoft Word, and saving the document. Many bloggers have spent hours composing right in the entry field of their blog software only to find that their Internet connection has failed or another technical problem has occurred, resulting in a lost post.
Format your post.

Blogger’s entry field includes icons across the top that let you change the font and font size, apply bold and italics to text, and create common formatting styles like lists. To use these features, select the text in the field that you want to modify by clicking and dragging over the text; then click the appropriate icon or select an option from the desired drop-down list.
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Spice Up Your Blog with Google Gadgets!

                                                



Fresh out of Blogger's own testing ground, Google Gadgets have now been enabled for all layouts blogs. This new interface allows for the integration of iGoogle Gadgets directly into your sidebar, with an array of customization options for easy tweaking. Also built into Gadgets is our robust Gadget Directory, which lets you browse through thousands of cool gadgets and add them to your blog with a simple click of a button.



You can access Gadgets from your dashboard under the Layout
Gadgets tab (the tab formerly known as "Layout
Page Elements.")



Gadgets have built-in configuration for easy integration into your layout. All gadgets are automatically sized to match the width of your sidebar, and their height in pixels can be adjusted using the Gadget's built-in options. Our large list of Gadgets is constantly growing and evolving. You can browse them all from our comprehensive Gadget Directory, which runs the gamut from sports updates to site counters, and flash games to local information tickers. To bring up the Gadget Directory, just click Add a Gadget from your layout. Have an idea for a gadget that isn't listed? Then build it yourself! We are always on the lookout for great ideas, so please submit your own creation to the iGoogle Gadget Directory, and then let us know about it in our Help Group— we may just add it to our 'Featured Gadgets' Section.
Be sure to sign in and join my Google Friends Connect Gaget and be a friend here. Also Please Click on My Adgitize ads to help fight against animal cruelty.
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Black Friday Facts! Do you think you know what Black Friday is?

                        
Think you’re an expert on Black Friday? Here are some fun facts you probably didn’t know:
Many people mistakenly believe that the name Black Friday is derived from the fact that it’s the day when most stores’ revenues rise out of the red (net losses for the year) and into the black (net profits). The truth is that the name Black Friday probably comes from a tongue-in-cheek comparison to the chaos and confusion of Black Tuesday (the day the stock market crashed in 1929).

Black Friday is generally considered to be the busiest shopping day of the year, but this is not always the case. The last Saturday before Christmas is usually the busiest shopping day of the year, but Black Friday always ranks among the top five.

Exact figures are hard to determine, but most experts agree that over 150 million shoppers hit the stores on Black Friday weekend and they spend an average of over $300 each.

More and more people are choosing to avoid the lineups on Black Friday and to do their shopping on Cyber Monday, the unofficial start of the online Christmas shopping season. Other opportunities to avoid crack of dawn lineups and still snag a great deal include check out Walmart’s pre-Black Friday sales starting Saturday, November 7 2009. Each week six exclusive items from Blu-Ray Disc players to Xbox 360 consoles are offered at deep discounts in limited quantities.

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Chitika Research- Update: Months late, Bing Users Still Ad-Crazy

    Chitika Research- Update:  Months late, Bing Users Still Ad-Crazy  

Research Home Archives Contact

Back in July, we looked at how often Bing users clicked on ads when compared to Google and Yahoo! users. Bing users showed a 50% higher ad click rate than Googlers, so at the time our preliminary conclusion was that Bing’s success was being driven in a big part by Microsoft’s huge, expensive advertising blitz.



Now that December is upon us, and Bing keeps showing its ability to push Google from a technology standpoint, we decided to revisit and see how the numbers were looking. As it turns out, Bing users are still clicking on ads at a prodigious rate – in fact, the CTR of users who come to the Chitika network via Bing is over 75% higher than those who come from Google.

Now, it must be mentioned that Bing is still a distant third place in terms of traffic sent – Google dominates with 84% of search traffic, followed by Yahoo! at 7.40%, and Bing holding at 5.75% (AOL and Ask both have just over 1% of search traffic coming into the Chitika network). However, all things being considered the same, driving one Bing user (or AOL or Ask user) to your site can be more valuable than driving one Google user.

The Raw Numbers:



Search Engine Ad Clicks Impressions Ad CTR % of Search CTR Vs. Google

AOL 42,597 1,706,858 2.50% 1.27% 253.56%

Ask 34,437 1,958,490 1.76% 1.45% 178.65%

Bing 134,536 7,741,724 1.74% 5.75% 176.57%

Google 1,115,452 113,332,938 0.98% 84.13% 100%

Yahoo! 136,506 9,972,035 1.37% 7.40% 139.08%



Numbers are based on a sample of traffic from the Chitika advertising network.

about Chitika

Chitika, Inc., is a search-based online advertising network, leading the way in intent-based advertising and search engine insights. Chitika provides publishers with an innovative way to monetize search engine traffic, and advertisers a new way of generating leads with clear consumer intent. Wint over 60,000 sites and 2 billion monthly impressions, the Chitika network is the pulse of the online world. Through research and targeting, Chitika continually evolves its image as “the ad network that knows when not to show ads.” For more information, visit 

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Twitter releases Twitter Lists Widgets

             If you’re interested in giving this new Twitter feature a try, just follow the link below and get started sharing your Twitters lists.
http://twitter.com/goodies/widgets_list

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Gagets in-the- Pink

The perfect i-Phone, along with the rest of the perfect pink gagets a girl would love to own!
The perfect netbook for the girl who is on the go, and would rather carry something light. The Lenovo IdeaPad S10 is ultraportable yet it can run most of the basic programs you need. It weighs only 2.76 lbs and about 1 inch thin so you can take it with you everywhere without feeling the extra baggage. Its 10.2 inch screen is acceptable--you can surf the web all day or work on your reports all night comfortably with this Netbook!
Source: Gagets-in-pink.com
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