The FBI has announced it arrested a man on Thursday for allegedly selling hacked cable modems that provided free Internet access.

Matthew Delorey, 26, of New Bedford, Massachusetts, is charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of wire fraud. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence on each count of 20 years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000.

Delorey ran a now shuttered website called Massmodz.com which sold cable modems which were hacked and reconfigured to allow them to be used for free, untraceable access to the Internet.

Delorey, through his website sold two hacked modems to an undercover FBI agent posing as a customer.

Delorey marketed his hacked modems in a Craigslist post advertising “Massmodz Free Internet- Get free untraceable Internet.” He also appeared in instructional videos he posted on YouTube, including videos entitled Massmodz.com How to Get Free Internet Free Cable Internet Comcast or any Cable ISP – 100% works”; “Massmodz.com How to bypass Comcast registration page with premod cable modem SB5100, SB 5101″; “Massmodz.com Cable Modem Hack Cable Modem Mod”; and “Massmodz.com How to get back online Comcast new secure area with cable modem premod, Comcast ready.”

Google has added the words “Estimated” and “Finalized” next to “Earnings” throughout users’ accounts. The company says the move was made to be more transparent. The changes in messaging do not reflect any changes to the way finalized earnings are calculated. The company says they’re simply intended to give users a clearer idea of Google’s estimations of earnings and what is actually finalized.

“As you may have noticed in the past, the earnings on the Overview and Advanced Reports pages may sometimes differ from the earnings listed on your Payment History page,” says Elizabeth Ferdon of Google’s AdSense Payments Team. “This is because earnings on your Overview and Advanced Reports pages reflect initial estimations based on our records.”

“We aren’t able to provide finalized earnings on these pages because they still need to be verified for accuracy, a process that takes place a few days after the end of every month. The finalized sum is then posted on your Payment History page by the 10th of the next month,” adds Ferdon.

Google says it can’t say how much amounts would differ for any specific publisher, and that most publishers won’t see a significant difference anyway.

Earlier this week, Google introduced the ability to search for ads in the Ad Review Center. The option is currently available to only a limited number of publishers who are using the new AdSense interface (launched a few weeks ago). The company said, however, it will be rolling it out more widely as they invite more publishers to test the new interface.

What the hell is Twitter? And how to use it,tips for beginners

Twitter is an online service that enables you to broadcast short messages to your friends or “followers.” It also lets you specify which Twitter users you want to follow so you can read their messages in one place.

A popular Twitterer

Twitter is designed to work on a mobile phone as well as on a computer. All Twitter messages are limited to 140 characters, so each message can be sent as a single SMS alert. You can’t say much in 140 characters. That’s part of Twitter’s charm.

Twitter is useful for close-knit groups (although there also are some fairly large mobs on Twitter). If you follow your friends, and they follow each other, you can quickly communicate group-related items, such as “I’m going to the pub on Fourth Street, come on along.” Twitter is conceptually similar to Dodgeball but is simpler to use.

If you enter items into Twitter, they can be private, so only friends you’ve authorized can see them. Items can also be made public, which means anyone who knows your Twitter ID can read and subscribe to them.

Twitter is free.

Continue reading to learn how to get started, hook up your mobile, send your first “Tweet,” follow friends, and direct Twitter. We also show you some advanced features and Twitterers worth following.

How to get started

Go to Twitter.com and click “Join for free.” For best results, use your real name when signing up; otherwise your friends won’t be able to find you easily. It’s also helpful to upload a picture. If you select the “Protect my updates” box, people won’t be able to read your Twitters unless you authorize them. You’ll have more fun if you leave this box unchecked. Just be sure not to Twitter, “Leaving house open and unlocked for the weekend: 1520 Main Street.”

Now that you have a Twitter account, tell your friends your username or send them the link to your Twitter page. Each users has his own page, in the form twitter.com/username. (Example: my Twitter page is twitter.com/Makemoneyfree.)

Hook up your mobile phone and IM account

The Twitter network works for you even if you’re not at your computer or browsing the Web. Once you are registered, you can connect your mobile phone and instant messenger account. Go to Settings > Phone and IM. Connecting your phone and IM programs to your Twitter account is a straightforward process. Note that messages you view on a phone or an IM program also are readable on your personal Twitter Web page.

You can make Twitter send you a message every time a user who you are following has posted a Twitter message. This can be fun, but it will drive you crazy if you are following a lot of people. If you don’t want to be barraged by a stream of random messages but still want friends to be able to reach you, select “Direct Message.” Then when other users send a message to you and you alone, you’ll be alerted on your phone or IM account. Otherwise, you won’t get an alert.

Sending Twitter messages, or “Tweets”

Sending a Tweet from a mobile

You can send a Twitter message, or “Tweet,” from any of your registered devices. From the Web page, enter a message in the entry window at the top of the page. From a mobile phone, send an SMS message to 40404. Your phone’s caller ID is attached to your Twitter account, so the system will know it’s from you.

From IM, message TwitterIM if you’re on AOL, or twitter@twitter.com if you’re on Jabber/GTalk. In all these cases, all your “followers” will see your message on their own Twitter pages and possibly on their mobile devices as well.

Following and joining friends

If you’ve gotten this far, you’re able to send messages into the Twitter system, and your friends can find your account and follow your updates. Here’s how you can see their messages.

On the Web: to add a friend, first be sure you are logged into your account. Then go to his or her Twitter page and press the “Add” link in the “Actions” box. To find a user page, use the search box on your own Twitter page.

Once you click “Add,” you’ll start to see his or her Tweets on your page if his or her account is set for public access. If the account is private, the system will send a “friend” request that must be approved before you start to see updates.

You also can see who your friends are following by hovering your mouse pointer over the pictures in the sidebar on your friends’ pages. Those pictures are of their friends–the users they are following. If you click on one of those pictures, you’ll go to that user’s page, where you can add him or her, too.

You can see all the Tweets from any person’s friends by clicking the “With Friends” tab above his or her message window. Or you can turn that off and see only his or her Tweets by clicking the obliquely named “Previous” tab.

On the phone or IM: send the command follow username to register your phone or IM account to receive public Tweets from a user. You also can invite people based on a phone number: SMS add phonenumber to 40404, and you’ll start following the user at that number; if the person at that number isn’t a Twitter user, he or she will get an invitation to join.

Managing your friends is much easier by using a full Web browser, but you can do everything on a mobile phone if you wish. See this page of the Twitter Help file for full commands, including details on the all-important Leave (to stop following) and Drop (to remove from your friend list) commands.

Want to be a Twitter nag? Send nudge username and they’ll get a request to send a current Tweet.

In case you were wondering what the numbers mean…

A bunch of numbers are on your Twitter page. The most important figures are these:

• The number of “followers” you have. These are the people who are paying attention to (following) your Tweets.
• The number of “friends” you have. This is the number of people you are following.

Public figures and Twitter celebrities will have more followers than friends. People who want to watch more than participate will have more friends than followers. People who just use Twitter to communicate just within their own social group will have roughly the same number of friends and followers.

Person-to-person Twittering

You can send a Twitter message directly to another Twitter user with the Direct command. Enter d username message, and users will get your ping if they have direct messages enabled on their phone or IM account.

If you enter a Tweet with @username at the beginning of it, your message is understood as being intended for that particular person, although others will be able to see it. (However, @ tweets won’t show up on your home page unless you are the intended recipient.) Be sure the person who you want to see your message is following you, or they won’t get it.

Turning off Twitter

Twitter messages may drive you insane. If you want to turn them off, here’s how: send the command Off, Sleep, or Stop to Twitter. To turn it back on, send On, Wake, or Start.

If you’re sick of Twitter on the PC, just avoid the Web site! In a Web browser, in your settings page, you also can define a period of time during which Twitter will not bother you by phone or IM. This is useful if you ever want to sleep.

Advanced features

You can apply your own design to your Twitter home page: it’s fairly straightforward. Our advice is to avoid using the “tile” option for your background image unless you are aiming for the assaultive MySpace design aesthetic.

Twitter also can be used via third-party programs that run on your desktop or in your widget/gadget engine.

Twitterers worth following

In addition to your friends, you might want to follow some of these famous (or useful) Twitterers. Many people are still experimenting with Twitter, so we can’t vouch for the long-term quality or frequency of updates from these users:

• CNN: Newsfeed of high-profile CNN breaking stories.
• John Edwards: Twitters from the campaign trail
• Robert Scoble: Popular feed from ubergeek and Twitter fan Robert Scoble.
• Evan Williams: Founder of the company that built Twitter.
• Rafe Needleman: I wrote this, I must be interesting.
• Caroline McCarthy: Another Webware writer and ardent Twitterer.

Happy Twittering! Got tips for other users? Add them in the comment section.

Next you can read this article.

There is concern from some that Google is trying to eliminate the need for users to leave Google and even visit a small business’ web site.

I wonder if this is an “assault against the small business websites”, Google wants people to spend more time on Google. Yahoo wants people to spend more time on Yahoo. Facebook wants people to spend more time on Facebook. Several of these large online “media” [companies] are doing everything in their power to keep the eyeballs on their website (unless you pay them for an outbound link).

Google has always claimed to do everything with the user’s experience in mind. Unfortunately for SEOs and webmasters, however, it also could mean that people have less reason to go to their sites.

To me, this would really depend on the information that the searcher is hoping to acquire. It’s going to be about finding the right balance of useful information and providing an incentive to still go to your site (if that is your goal). The Place Pages would certainly bring a new element to the online reputation management table. You’re going to want to keep an eye on what’s showing up on your Place Page, and address the situation accordingly. They can include user-generated content.

Another concern that has been voiced about Place Pages, is that Google could start ranking them in natural search results – outside of Google Maps. In fact, Erick Schonfeld points out that this is already occurring for at least the Burdick Chocolate Cafe (the example Google used when it announced the feature).

This could theoretically reduce clicks to actual sites, but again, this would just emphasize the need to manage your reputation on your Place Page. Your site is likely to be easily located from the Place Page anyway.

Blogger Eric Fredline says Google’s Place Pages are “designed for optimization,” but that something is missing. “For one, Google would need local merchant’s to define some sort of ‘conversion event’.  This is conceptually as easy as defining a new ‘block type’ that will appear on the landing page and be optimized,” he says. “For example, a restaurant might view a phone call or an Open Table registration as a conversion event.  If it’s a phone call, I imagine the merchant could be encouraged to use Google Voice to provide a closed loop analysis of the conversion event.”

“Perhaps more likely than having individual merchants doing this (at least in all cases) would be a small army of SEO and SEM experts doing it on the businesses’ behalf – but within a closed looped system managed by Google,” he adds. “Google could potentially create a whole new eco-system.”

Another interesting factor of Google’s Place Pages is the fact that they have sponsored results on them. This could raise more concerns, such as competing ads showing up on a business’ place page. In Google’s chocolate Cafe example, the Page is showing ads for chocolate companies like Godiva and Ghirardelli.

There are a lot of questions about the Pages, and answers will likely come in due time. In fact, Google Place Pages will be discussed in more than one panel at next week’s Search Marketing Expo.

The Place Pages come with their own structured URL. The example Google gives is http://maps.google.com/places/us/cambridge/brattle-st/52/-burdick-chocolate-cafe. You can see how it is structured by places/country/city/street/address/business name. Google discusses the feature here.

Google says that while not all businesses have a place page yet, they will soon. Businesses can update their info through Google’s Local Business Center.

Will this help your business ? what do you think?

Greg begins by clearing up a popular myth about duplicate content, and that is that Google penalizes sites for having duplicate content. This is not the case. That’s not to say that duplicate content can’t have a negative impact on your rankings, but Google itself is not penalizing you for it.

Greg says people see messages like the one below and think their content is getting omitted from Google’s results, when in fact it really may just be being omitted for that particular query. Greg stresses that duplicate content is simply a factor on a “by query” basis.

“What’s actually happening, is that we’re looking at the query that the user’s doing, and we’re saying that we want diversity in the results we’re going to show a user,” says Grothaus. He says those who think their content is being omitted because it is duplicate, will likely find that if they adjust their query to more specifically reflect the missing piece, they may just find that it shows up in results after all.

Google recognizes that most duplicate content is not created to be deceptive. There are of course exceptions, which are considered spam. Grothaus says even spam sites aren’t being penalized for having duplicate content though. They’re being penalized for being spam. Just like some spammers use bold tags, he says. They don’t penalize people just for using them. And they don’t penalize people just for having duplicate content.

Duplicate Content:

• example.com/
• example.com/?
• example.com/index.html
• example.com/Home.aspx
• www.example.com/
• www.example.com/?
• www.example.com/index.html
• www.example.com/Home.aspx

The above list from Grothaus’s presentation shows examples of URLs that are different, but show the same content. Google will recognize that they’re the same, and will try to pick the right one, (although sometimes they pick the wrong one). Greg says Webmasters are the best people to know which one is best, so it helps to only use one.

You will not be penalized for using more than one, but there are some issues that can arise that may negatively affect your rankings. For one, your link popularity will be diluted. Backlinks pointing to several different URL versions of the same content, will make it harder to accumulate link juice for one URL. Greg says that user-unfriendly URLs in search results may offset branding efforts and decrease usability as well. Plus, with multiple versions of the same thing, Google will spend more time crawling the same content, meaning it will have less time to go deeper into your site, and you run the risk of having content not get indexed.

Fixing the Issues

To avoid such issues, Grothaus suggests using a “canonical” version of the URL, meaning the simplest, most significant form. He says to pick one for each page and link consistently within your site. You can also use the rel=”canonical” link element as explained by Matt Cutts.

Rules for rel=”canonical”

There are rules for the rel=”canonical” link element to consider. For one, it should be used between pages that are on the same domain. It works across different hosts.

You can use he element for protocols, such as http:// vs. https://, and you can use it for ports. Pages don’t have to be identical, but they should be similar. Slight differences are ok. You don’t have to use the rel=”canonical” link element. It is just another option, or “another tool in your arsenal,” as Grothaus says.

Another option is to make all non-canonical URLs do a permanent (301) redirect to the canonical (or preferred) URL. In addition, in Google’s Webmaster Tools, you can specify www. vs. non-www. 301 redirects are commonly used when moving sites.

Multiple Domains

Lastly, Grothaus discusses multiple domains. This is in reference to when you have content for different audiences, such as by country, language, etc.

There are concerns here. You have to consider your reputation being distributed across multiple domains, and Google will only show what it perceives to be the best page for a particular query.

One interesting factor of this to also consider, that may often go overlooked, is that with multiple domains, you’re potentially losing the advantage Google’s tabbed user interface. You know how sometimes search results are expandable and point you to different links within the site? If your content is spread out across multiple domains, you may be missing extra clicks, because Google can’t link to another domain here.

Grothaus explains all of the above and elaborates on each point in the following fifteen -minute video. The information is based on his presentation from the recent Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose.

“The revisions more appropriately reflect the nature of Twitter and convey key issues such as ownership. For example, your tweets belong to you, not to Twitter,” says Twitter Co-founder Biz Stone.

With regards to advertising, they’re leaving “the door wide open.” Stone says they want to “keep their options open.” So nothing concrete there.

As far as APIs, Stone says developers using Twitter APIs authorize Twitter to make content available. There is a separate set of guidelines for APIs that can be found here. It is still a work in progress. Current guidelines are as follows:

- Identify the user that authored or provided the Tweet, unless you are providing Tweets in an aggregate form or in anonymous form in those exceptional cases where concerns over user security and anonymity are involved.

- Maintain the integrity of Tweets and not edit or revise them. Tweets may be abbreviated for display purposes and as necessary due to technical limitations or requirements of any networks, devices, services or media.

- Get each user’s consent before sending Tweets or other messages on their behalf. A user authenticating with your application does not constitute consent to send a message.

- Get permission from the user that created the Tweet if you want to make their Tweet into a commercial good or product, like using a Tweet on a t-shirt or a poster or making a book based on someone’s Tweets.

Spam guidelines are the same and can be found here.

The Tweet ownership stuff has already received some criticism for further clouding an already unclear subject. “If Twitter can do what they want with ‘our’ tweets, including reproduction for their own (financial) gain, what do we actually ‘own’?” asks Shéa Bennett at Twittercism. “If Twitter loses our data, closes our accounts or goes out of business, do we still own those tweets? Or are they retrievable in any way?”

Twitter’s terms of service are not necessarily finalized though. Stone made it quite clear that they are still open to feedback, and will make adjustments if they deem them necessary. There is even a feedback link right on the terms page. So if you have concerns about anything within, don’t hesitate to let Twitter know.

Check out this post about top 10 twitter tools for wordpress.

Question: Does Google value its own links for PR/Linkjuice? Google Bookmarks, Google Profiles, etc. Reason – Google links never appear in Webmaster Tools.

Google has plenty of products that spawn links, so the question is certainly a legitimate one. You’ve got Google Bookmarks, Google Profiles, Google Knol, YouTube, Blogger, and many others. Matt doesn’t go through each product and specify Google’s practices for each one, but he gives a general explanation about Google’s policies regarding links from Google-owned sites.

Cutts says he doesn’t know about whether Google links never appear in Webmaster Tools, but in general, people hold Google to a very high standard. He gives the example that if Google delivers search results that aren’t blocked by robots.txt, people find out about it and draw a lot of attention to it, whether that be by blogging or forums, or whatever.

“We try to be relatively careful,” says Cutts.

With search results, Google tries to make sure they’re properties aren’t too spammable, and if they are worried that something might be potentially abused, they will often use a nofollow attribute.

Cutts says with Google Knol for example, most of the external links started out as nofollow, but then over time as they learned which Knol authors were more trustworthy, they lifted the nofollow on those Knol authors.

Google Knol has not received a whole lot of media attention since it was launched in late December 2007. It is a site where users can write articles on any number of topics that they feel they are experts on. An article is referred to as a knol, which Google defines as “a unit of knowledge.”

“Sometimes we do flow pagerank, but we try to be relatively careful because we’re mindful of the people who do try to abuse it,” he says.

The video is below in case you’d rather hear it straight from Matt’s mouth, but I think I’ve pretty much covered what he says in the above text. That said, it is only a minute and a half, so it won’t take too long to watch.

Google has a lot of properties, and this might not answer everybody’s questions on the subject, but I would bet that the trust factor mentioned with regards to Google Knol, could probably be applied to other products.

- Cyprus
- Luxembourg
- Malta
- Monaco
- San Marino
- Slovenia
- Vatican City

“Once you make this change, any earnings generated from advertisers paying on other currencies will be converted to Euros each day,” says Arlene Lee of Google’s Inside AdSense Team. “This also means that if you’re receiving payments in Euros, there won’t be any additional conversions at the end of the month when payments are issued.”

Google recommends that users download and save copies of their past reports in US dollars for their own records, before they switch to local currency reports. After that, the company says to look for the green prompt in the upper right-hand corner of the Reports Overview page, and click the link in the prompt, where you’ll be asked to agree to a new set of terms and conditions.

Google says that it is a good idea to switch to local currency soon, because in the future, it will be a required update. More information about the new reports can be found in the help center. Google also suggests contacting your lawyer if you have questions about the new terms.

Several bloggers have noticed Google displaying these types of breadcrumbs in various places in seemingly random results to some queries. For example, Rob Hammond provides the following screen shot:

Leo Fogarty provides another, which shows the breadcrumbs displayed in a different position within the search result:

Google’s use of breadcrumbs appears to only be a test, and a limited one at that. Google has talked repeatedly about sites having good site architecture in the past. This allows Google to more easily and quickly crawl sites.

Bing acknowledges this too. Rick DeJarnette of Bing Webmaster Center recently said, “You can have great content and a plethora of high quality inbound links from authority sites, but if your site’s structure is flawed or broken, then it will still not achieve the optimal page rank you desire from search engines.”

Here are some tips from both Google and Bing regarding site architecture issues. In addition, Google recently provided this related information on getting your site crawled faster.

If Google begins incorporating the breadcrumbs display as in the above tests, on a mainstream level, that will be all the more reason to clean your site architecture up, at least in the navigation area. Site architecture certainly goes beyond this, but it is a key part of usability anyway.

“As Firefox hit 1B downloads last week, the VideoSurf extension brings sophisticated video search technology to what has become one of the most ubiquitous browsers available,” a spokesperson for VideoSurf tells WebProNews.

Although Twitter has been cracking down on the posting of malicious URLs, they probably can’t catch them all, and this could be good for that reason alone. The following video shows how it works.

The add-on does more than just display videos on Twitter though. It also adds to the user’s experience in Google search results. Video results will display visual summaries and related videos will appear on the page. VideoSurf pulls videos from a variety of video sources.

With all of the add-on’s video displays, you can hover over the videos and they will begin to play, allowing for a similar preview experience to what Bing offers in its video search (you know the one that got people talking about watching porn at work when Bing first launched).

With the add-on installed, you also get some extra stuff when you visit YouTube, including results from other video sources beyond YouTube. You also get the visual summaries that YouTube doesn’t offer on its own.