Friday, February 25, 2011

Barry's Perfect Weapon

"We think the government, as many of us have said throughout the day, needs to turn the Internet and social networking sites back on" -Robert Gibbs, statement on Egypt

Thanks to Mr.Matt Greenop many people now know the theory of the infamous Facebook-CIA connection (which you can see here) which in short links Facebook's funding from Peter Thiel (now on the Board of Directors) and venture capital firm Accel Partners to groups like VanguardPAC and In-Q-Tel (a venture capital firm founded by the CIA in 1999). He then backs up his evidence with quotes from Facebook's terms of use and privacy policy which basically says facebook can gather information on you, and even further backed up by the fact that the CIA was posting job ads on facebook back in 2007.

Well this all seems facinating, but some ill-worded legal documents and some investors that are somewhat connected to the CIA don't mean James Bond's buddies are sitting on the other side of your facebook profile examining your every move... but I don't think Greenop's research into the subject is done. Over the last few years, more information has been unveiled showing even more of a connection. Lets start with the people that work there. Mark Zuckerburg, the founder, was personally asked by the CIA to help develop the specs for the new A-Space (analytic space) which shares information between agencies, and additionally has met with President Obama multiple times. Elliot Schrage, VP of Global Communications, Marketing and Public Policy, formerly worked for the Council of Foreign Relations, and testified against China to the House Committee on Foreign Relations through that group. Ted Ullyot, VP and General Counsel, did legal directly for Alberto Gonzales, George W. Bush, and Antonin Scalia before working for facebook. Facebook's COO, Sheryl Sandburg was formerly the Chief of Staff for the Treasury. Once again though, these are only mere connection, not solid evidence.

The solid evidence is the scary part. First is the the story of the Salahi's, more widely known as the "White House Party Crashers." If you remember, the Secret Service found the pictures through facebook. I can be the first to say, if I was searching all of facebook for pictures it would either take me forever, or I would hit some strict privacy settings... just doesn't work out. What we see in all is that the original investors had direct connections to the CIA, nearly all the facebook executives have many connections to high level government, facebook's policies state that it can share all your information with the government, and finally physical proof that the national government has used facebook for its own purposes. In all it seems that facebook undoubtedly has strong government ties and uses.

It is at this point that current news made more sense. A proxy war that Americans didn't even know we were fighting. Iran, Libya, China, even al-Maliki's government in Iraq (who's removal from office was called for by Hilary Clinton and Carl Levin in 2007) were several of the highly effected governments of the Jasmine Revolution. Three governments shunned from the approval of the American government. Why did the revolts spread to China while skipping right over the Islamic and somewhat repressed Afghanistan and Pakistan? Why Has the Obama administration been sitting back watching it unfold with little to no comment? And why have leaders like Gadaffi made a point to try and cry out to the United States at the moment of their final demise? There has been one thing in common with all of these revolts though. One menace that seems to set them all off. One thing that has intertwined the revolts and pushed them through - Social Networks.

In the last few weeks, the Obama administration's response to the revolts was for those governments to keep the Internet, and specifically the social networks available to the people. It leads one to wonder if the United States does have control over those wonderful little social networks, and what they could do with such a tool. Who knows... they could start a revolution.

Robert Gibbs White House Press Conference

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Free Business Marketing Tips - Not for Dummies

If you look to the left of this text you will see a giant stack of money... that is mine. Not really, but you get the point. This article is hopefully going to help you get to this stack of money without the whole article talking about "search engine optimization." Pretty much its a hands on system known as "real stuff that's gonna help you." And best of all, it is free.

So lets start with the basics... SEO. The evil phrase that is in just about every marketing article ever... ever. SEO basically says, the more your website is on other websites the more hits your going to get. That is absolutely true, but you have to know where to post your site up at. Start with wikipedia and the dmoz directory. Don't make a whole article about your company (unless it has some kind of historical or technical significance), instead make your website a reference to something that way it's more likely to stay up. As for dmoz.org, it can hard to get in there but it is defiantly worth it, so do it. Next you have to post on the little sites and get the little articles that make it unique.
  • Send in free press releases on sites like free-press-release.com, prlog.org, http://www.i-newswire.com/, pr.com, etc. Basically you get these press releases ALL OVER the Internet.
  • Links on other small business sites and local directories... as long as their free, do it. Even if it requires a back link.
  • Make a facebook page of course.
  • Add your business to google maps, yahoo maps, mapquest, etc. And be sure to verify it. It pretty much makes sure your company gets listed on google.
  • Meta tags of course, but also rel="tag"> keyword tags. And if you don't want them to show up on your site, make the characters the same color as your background.
  • Finally the easiest one - post your site on del.icio.us and digg so they can be viewed and crawled by people and bigger sites.
At this point in the article you are probably thinking "I don't care about anymore online advertising!!" Well, we have some tips for print media too. Newspapers. Every newspaper has somewhere where businesses can post news about business happens such as hiring's, or a section that just prints profiles on local businesses. If your newspaper doesn't have that then either move, or get printed somewhere else. The calender section has thousands of possibilities, as does the editorial section. Pretty much there are tons of ways to get printed in the newspaper. If you're really desperate you could you even take my last tip. Probably the most sadistic thing you could do, but guarantees you business. Go to your local church and put in your business for the prayer requests section. Usually this means everyone in the church getting a newsletter or bulletin with your businesses name printed right in there for all to see.

Well, that's all there is to it. By this point, your business is properly marketed online and in print for absolutely no cost. You have done a hard days work, so you now deserve to sit back, enjoy a beer, and tell everyone you're busy... my orders. That is the last step to making your business a true success. Enjoy!

Brought to you by http://lexington-ky-web-security-design.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/vegas.hotel
https://www.facebook.com/lvcasino
https://www.facebook.com/atlantic.city.hotel.casino

Welcome to Overworld Magazine

Hi everyone, I am Andrew Edwards, the founder of Overworld Magazine. At this point in time, this magazine is just a simple blog dedicated to life as we know it. Its meant to bring people from the underworld in which many of us live to the overworld of which life could be.

I have high hopes for this "magazine" in the future, including a mailing list, mobile site, text message feed... who knows, even one day we'll have a print magazine (print media is only KINDA dead... to me at least). We will have articles ranging from ways to make money in the recession we are now in (legally), news from around the world, bullshit articles about anything and everything all from the viewpoint of everyday people now wishing to make an article sound like some guy with a masters in journalism who writes the same way every other person on earth writes. Its supposed to be informative but not a bore... we'll see how that works out.

Anyway, I'm hoping to post the first real article on here later, I'll have to think of a subject while I'm at work. I have a couple brewing in my mind... we'll just have to see what I unleash. Thanks for reading (if anyone is) and I hope you enjoy what is to come in this blog.

Andrew S. Edwards