The weirdest things turn up on Google Trends sometimes.

Borrowed from Techeblog.com…

Pet Tube is currently the hottest new video sharing site around, offering the funniest animal videos from around the world. In addition to videos, there’s also a forum and even groups.

I can’t see the big deal really. I am all for funny pet videos, but we have those all over YouTube. On top of that, I have gone to the FAQ page on Pettube.com and noticed a “coming soon” message. I figured that if they are that successful to appear on the #1 spot of Google Trends, and have a PageRank of 5/10, then they should have had a FAQ page filled out by now.

I guess the standards of reviewers these days aren’t what they’re cracked up to be.

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I have been an advocate of pushing negative reviews on Apple products for years. My dad first introduced me to Apple many years ago. His words of wisdom were “don’t buy an electronic named after a fruit because it’s bound to go bad”.

I have been against Apple products mainly because of the setup of the operating system in the Macintosh computer. I know that is the fault of Microsoft being greedy and holding a monopoly on Windows, but I can’t help myself for having a preference.

When the iPhone came out, I was unimpressed. I bought a Samsung Behold instead (also a touch screen) and am very happy with it, although I would never give up my Blackberry. The iPhone is an over-hyped piece of crap, and I would never be ok with overpaying for something that isn’t even perfected.

Recently, I was introduced to the iPad, and I have to say that I am finally in support of an Apple product. As a matter of fact, I added it to the “service bartering” page here as something I will accept in exchange for my services. The iPad would allow me an easy way to blog by carrying a compact laptop-like technology.

I doubt Apple will ever give me anything to get excited about in the near future. Especially with the greedy nature of Steve Jobs. In the meantime, I will not pay anything for an iPad because I am independently on strike because of the stupid way he has handled the recent iPhone issue being left in the bar. When that happened, Steve Jobs showed his greedy nature in full force by trying for criminal charges on some broke guy who did try to give the piece of shit back before he sold it to Gizmodo.

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I came across a website about blacksmithing recently because I was thinking about learning the craft. I am not even going to mention the website here and give them free traffic because of their ignorance. Their entire website was a cocky load of spewing about how they are better than those seeking information or lessons.

I have never seen a worse website on the planet. It was all about how you probably work at macdonalds and can’t afford to pay $100 an hour for a master smith to teach you. Funny, because I tend to charge $300 an hour for web/graphic design and my seo consulting fees can run upwards of $10,000 a pop. Hmmm, I guess I am better than that master blacksmith! His measly $100 an hour can’t afford me and my craft.

I will just learn blacksmithing on my own just like I did everything else. This way, I can avoid the wanna-be know-it-alls who know nothing.

I probably should have put a rant warning on that, but oh well. It’s over now.

Ning announced today that they are planning on phasing out the free Ning networks. Their official statement is “We want to provide a new level of innovation to Network Creators — including all the valuable features Network Creators have asked us to build. To get there, we need to focus 100% on paid Ning Networks.”

As you know, I have long been an advocate of “free” because free creates demand. By changing their network to paid only, they are losing a valuable resource. That resource is new leads from people test driving their services, and having the chance to upgrade to make it even better.

I believe that this change from free with paid upgrades to paid only, Ning is about to see it’s downfall. I have to say, I recently started a Ning network, but I have not yet had time to test it out. What this means is that in July when they go to paid only, I will NOT be upgrading. Nice job Ning! You have just lost a customer ….or a few million.

Amazon and Ebay are two major companies. They both skyrocketed to a fast success, and they both have a huge customer-base. But these two companies are entirely different. Not just in their business model, but also in the “feel” for their service.

As a consumer who has used both services, I felt a need to write this review. I started off on Ebay. I have been a buyer and a seller with Ebay. Buying has it’s ups and downs. If you want to find a product on Ebay for a good price, you will have to sort through the various “fake” listings, aka spam auctions. These are auctions that list an item, but it’s not really an item for sale. It is nothing more than the advertising attempt by someone trying to fulfill their obligations under a “free offer” promotion. Their willing to lose a penny auction listings fees in order to get signups from people who will also be interested in the “free offer”. If you bid and/or win the auction, you are signing up to get spammed.

As an Ebay seller, I found that the only way to make money on Ebay is to offer a rare item, or pay more than you would get back to get your item featured on the homepage. It is truly a waste of money for the average seller trying to use a dropship service. The only ones making money are those with huge advertising budgets, and Ebay itself with auction fees. To top that off, Ebay makes money from the transactions themselves because they own Paypal too!

Amazon first came into play because I found some very nice items for a good price. I have bought many products from Amazon including a large amount of books. My Amazon experience as a buyer has been excellent. In addition, I have never found any spam on Amazon. The “feel” for Amazon is much different than Ebay. It seems that Amazon really cares about it’s customers, which is the reason for their continued success, and positive reviews such as this one.

As a seller, I use Amazon‘s Digital Text Platform to sell my ebook listed on this blog. The good thing about Amazon as a seller is that there is no fee to list your item, and it stays up forever. If Amazon sells a copy of my book, they subtract their cut and credit my account with my royalties. I do not have to pay them to sell my book, unlike Ebay. I also love Amazon‘s DTP because it makes my ebook available for purchasing from the Kindle. The Kindle is their hand-held ebook reader, and a convenient way to carry around a bunch of reading material in your pocket.

There is a clear winner here, with Amazon getting the title with a knock out punch!

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Sorry to my readers who think that there are too many links within my posts on occasion. I had my plugin BM KeywordLink to automatically link certain words within my posts to a url I specify. Apparently, I seemed to turn off a fellow blogger who thought I was spamming rather than posting a quality article. I have since reconfigured my plugin to only link the first use of that keyword within that post. That way it wouldn’t appear across the post every time the keyword is reused.

To the fellow blogger, sorry for the misunderstanding with this. I am sure you wouldn’t have wrote that post had you known the true nature of those links.

When I first started getting my movie rentals in the mail, I tried both Netflix and Blockbuster. Nextflix made their dvds available quickly, aside from the occasional wait times for popular titles. I noticed that it takes only one day to go from my home, to their location and vice-versa (not counting Sundays).

Blockbuster was a different story. It took them almost 4-5 days for them to get another title to my home. I did find one thing attractive about Blockbuster however. That was the fact that I did not have to pay an additional charge to get the title in BlueRay format, unlike Netflix which allowed it as a paid add-on.

In the end, the fact that I could get the fast deliveries, and streaming video content made me opt for staying with Netflix. It has paid off recently as I got my Netflix Nintendo Wii Streaming Disc in the mail.

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I got my wife a PS3 in Feb 2009. It was an upgrade with a 350 gig hard drive. It was fine for awhile, until it started crashing for stupid reasons. It ended up at a point where it would loop during a self repair. The methods to fix the problems without restoring the system failed, so everything had to be erased with a full system restore. This meant that the games that were bought and downloaded had to be re-downloaded. Music that I had put on the system had to be replaced. Everything that we had on there to make the system our own was gone!

Currently, the system is still having issues. So we keep it light. We had an issue the other day trying to re-install a game we have on disc, and the system froze up.

My advice… Get a Nintendo Wii. I have had one for years and have NOT had an issue with it yet. The PS3 is an overprices piece of crap.

I just got back home from a drive, and found an email notifying me that my netflix instant streaming disc for the Nintendo Wii has shipped! I have been waiting for some time now. I already have the disc for the PS3, but that system is crap. See my review on the PS3 later today.

I should have my Wii disc tomorrow and I cant wait!