You heard me right! There are items in your house ‘sucking a nickel of every dollar’s worth of the electricity that seeps from your home’s outlets’. The items I speak about are the ones in “standby mode”, such as your computer or any type of electronic waiting for the touch of a hand to fire it up. This includes rechargeable and trickle charge devices for cell phones, tools, toothbrushes, and any idle appliance such as an oven, dvd player or microwave that displays a clock.

An average household in the US will pay an additional $200 per year due to electronics on standby which is why The Vampire Slayer Act of 2006 has been approved by the California Assembly.

For ways to conserve energy I found this site to be of value and informative.

As for vampires in your home, they may be the ones shouting “Trick or Treat” at your door tonight.

Happy Hallowe’en from all of us at StepForth!

Ps. The picture of the kitty was added by Ross because… well a picture of a vampire kitty just seemed to work in his crazy Halloween-filled mind.

My friend Jennifer Laycock suggested an article today that I am glad I checked out called “Twitter Guide Part #1” written by a blogging newcomer by the name of Caroline Middlebrook. It is a useful guide for an increasingly popular social property located at www.twitter.com. Read more…

Hello all. My name is Tim Rule and I’m the most recent addition to the StepForth team. I believe my current title is “Gopher”, but I’m preparing to take over PPC management from Scott in the very near future.

I thought I’d take this opportunity to introduce myself to this blog by sharing an interesting thread I read in Slashdot this morning.

Not surprisingly, Microsoft has been fairly quick to recognize the long term threat to their dominant stature and have already taken steps towards addressing this.

With the XO not even released yet, I find it amazing the speed with which they have undertaken to insert themselves into this relatively recent initiative. It makes one wonder why they often seem so sluggish to resolve problems with their own products and yet find the energy to jump into new initiatives.

For those of you not familiar with the upcoming XO laptop you can learn more on this site.

Personally, I applaud this initiative and intend to pick up one of these myself. I can think of no globally worthwhile investment an individual can make to beat this. It is pretty hard to beat getting a warm, fuzzy feeling, a nifty new toy and a tax write off in one fell swoop.

I like the irony of the XO name as well.

Here is a list of some articles that my staff and I came across today and thought worthy of sharing. Enjoy!

• I, Cringely wrote an excellent article today describing Google’s plans to host all of our applications. Cringely’s insights are well founded in my opinion. This one is definitely well worth the read.
• According to a mobile study released by Portio Research over half the worlds population will have a cell phone by 2009 and 75% of the population will have one by 2011.
• “The Senate on Thursday night approved a seven-year extension of a moratorium on state and local taxes on Internet access.” Honestly it is amazing to me that such a tax is even being considered – damn politicians!
• “Google Inc. is confident that its $3.1 billion bid for online ad tracker DoubleClick will win over European and U.S. regulators.” Personally I hope it doesn’t go through simply because it has a very real possibility of giving Google a very damaging advantage over other search engines. I am still holding out hope that another player will steal more market share from Google because I prefer a more level playing field but I am well aware that is unlikely anytime soon.

And since we are approaching Halloween, here is something a little frightening for your day. A Zogby/463 Internet Attitudes poll states that 1 in 4 Americans feel the Internet is a decent substitute for a significant other for a period of time. Yikes. Oh and some other very interesting and occasionally boggling data was collected in the same poll so check it out for a laugh or two.

This is an important bulletin for anyone who is currently subscribed to StepForth’s Weekly SEO Newsletter.

This week we need a moment of your time to confirm that you still wish to continue receiving StepForth’s weekly SEO newsletter. In addition, starting next week, we will be using a new premium mailing service to send out our newsletters. The service is called Constant Contact and it will allow us to provide the highest quality opt-in and opt-out email services that will ultimately protect your privacy at a whole new level.

If you wish to continue receiving the weekly SEO newsletter please resubscribe here; it is a simple two step process.

Until you resubscribe you will no longer receive our newsletter.

Thank you for your time and we hope you decide to continue to receive our weekly SEO newsletter.

Sincerely,

Ross Dunn
CEO / Founder
StepForth Web Marketing Inc.

Note: This notification was sent via email to subscribers but due to the importance of this bulletin it has been posted here in case subscribers happen to miss the email.

Congratulations to the gang at dotMobi for their successful Moniker auction in Miami last Friday. I am extremely impressed with how much they made on these domains.

poker.mobi – $150,000
ringtones.mobi – $145,000
news.mobi – $110,000
shopping.mobi – $55,000
email.mobi – $50,000
buy.mobi – $32,500
podcast.mobi – $25,000
cash.mobi – $12,500
pda.mobi – $8,000
zipcodes.mobi – $8,000 Read more…

Today comScore released the results of an interesting study that clearly identifies social networking environments as great places to advertise for leisure products and apparel. If you have ever wondered whether social marketing was worthwhile then this study should pique your interest.

Read more…

According to ZDNet, vulnerability within Gmail could allow hackers full access to Gmail accounts giving them the ability to steal contacts and incoming emails.

Security researcher Chris Gatford noted that “attackers could compromise a Gmail account–using a cross-site scripting vulnerability–if the victim is logged in and clicks on a malicious link. From that moment, the attacker can take over the session cookies for Gmail and subsequently forward all the account’s messages to a POP account.” Read more…

Microsoft has attacked Google in a statement released on Monday. ZDNET reported the statement was released shortly after Google signed a deal with Capgemini to promote its office-productivity software.

The statement had 10 questions directed at Google App users and those considering the software. These questions addressed the perpetual beta stage for many of Google’s products as well as the minimal functionality for fundamental features such as headers, footers, and footnotes.

There has been no word on Google’s stance on this statement.

On Wednesday the news lines were afire as Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs announced a $200 price slash on the iPhone. Ever since the announcement there has been rampant speculation on Job’s move…

Why, why, why?

Well I came across a fantastic character profile on Bill Gates and Steve Jobs by Robert X. Cringely; a man with abnormally deep insight into both men. The article is fascinating and I strongly recommend the read. After all, these are two people who have serious influence over the technological world we live in.