Bart Wilson

Even once useful products and online services have a dark or stupid side to them.

They seem so innocent at first, but then you find yourself mindlessly clicking on links, sending hearts to friends, poking people, and sending photoshop colored flip flops to people and prospects you don't even know. My email box is getting filled with these things and I originally wanted FaceBook for marketing my services.

Now it's only good for generating 90% of my SPAM, maybe more.

As I find myself being pulled (suckered) into this world of "Gotta do these things because your friend, colleague or client did it," I look up at the clock and discover two hours have elapsed. I had an important report to get done and I sent colored Flip Flops to a friend, and returned three heart requests to people I haven't spoken to since my 20th High School reunion.

I'm waiting for Mr. Smithers (on the Simpsons) to barge into my office and yell at me, "Wilson! Get back to work. You Layabout! (or) Lolly Gagger."

YES we know that FaceBook marketing can help you grow your business. Social Networking has proven to increase Google visibility as you can add relevant text links from FaceBook to your site, which Google likes as it Spiders the internet (yum-yum).

But sending hearts, flip flops, posting a comment about America's Got Talent with a photo to someone's wall...? This kind of activity generates leads or sales? I don't think so.

FaceBook is fast becoming another beehive of "wasting time activities," and there's hundreds of companies developing new, even more time-wasting, time sucking applications for FaceBook that will do ZERO for building you new business and ZILCH for you landing any new sales. 99% of these applications are totally USELESS to helping you grow your business or increasing sales commissions.

If someone wants to develop a truly useful FaceBook application, I want someone that lets me press a ZAP button on my FaceBook home page.

It sends a high voltage bolt of electricity to the developer's "private parts," and their speakers blast a loud HONK sound telling them to get their lazy ass back to work.

Below is a very small snapshot of totally useless, time-wasting applications that are now available on FaceBook.

1.) You can SEND and Collect Hearts. (a tiny red heart graphic. The more you send, the higher your profile.)

2.) You can SEND colored flip flops. (not sure why any investor would PAY a developer for this stupid idea, as it does nothing for my sales.)

3.) Poke (regular flavored) and now... Super Poke. You can now POKE a friend (digitally) of course on FaceBook. Not sure I get this one at all.

4.) FunWall. A FaceBook app that lets you add pictures, YouTube videos in addition to text that you can post to your friends' walls. It has a nice side benefit. Like BING!, you also get FREE porn with this FaceBook app.

5.) Zombies. Brains? BRAINS! Send MORE BRAINS. Geez. Need I say more?

6.) WereWolves. Just as stupid. Go howl and have fun. Another useless app that once more makes me me more stupid every time I use it.

I could list dozens more, but I think you start to get the idea.

My FaceBook was supposed to be for pure business. My ID is voyager360. But now my entire alumni knows about me, and I am getting Hugs, Hearts, Poked, colored Flip Flops and I am being asked to join causes ranging from Save the Whales to reading a former girl friend's plea for help as she organizes a Bake Sale in the front of Walmart to help our her local Girl Scout pack.

I'd like to hear about YOUR SUCCESS or TIME WASTER experiences if you'd care to share them.

I will soon post a list of highly USEFUL FaceBook applications that you can use to increase productivity. Really! :)

-- bart

It was a sad day when Elvis died. It was a sad day when Michael Jackson died. Farrah, too.

The Internet has become such an important part of life for everybody today, especially REALTORS that we sort of become so used to have fast, perky screens open and close... that we have little tolerance for Internet hiccups or when the Internet just slows down.

Today, Amazon was off the air. So was Google. Not for a few minutes... a long long time.

If you suffered the same slowdown today at work... maybe you couldn't get your email. Or that one thing left on the contingency was being handled and you could envision closing tomorrow and getting a commission check on Friday.... all of these happy thoughts vaporized today thanks to CNN and Yahoo and the other idiots who decided to Webcast (stream) the Michael Jackson memorial service.

Don't get me wrong, I feel bad that the King of Pop is dead.

But I'm freaking pissed off that it webcasting the memorial service over the Internet cost me five hours of billable time today.

No Internet service, period.

Everybody was CRAMMED around computers watching everyone say good bye to Michael and enjoying some music at the same time.

Does your BROKER pay you for watching CNN or Yahoo webcasts of a memorial service? My guess is no.

Does any BOSS out there have rules that ask your employees to refrain from Twittering for no good reason, goofing off playing Internet games or watching the Michael Jackson memorial service?

This is why God made TiVo, people. Tape the show, and when you get home from work... THEN you watch the recorded event.

I'm sending a bill to CNN today for $670.90 -- the amount of time I should have been paid for consulting for a few brokers today, but was not able to DO my job thanks to 212,903,623 Americans who tuned in and watched the Jackson memorial service, taking away my Internet bandwidth.

I urge everyone to do the same. If you suffered any loss today, send your bills to Yahoo.com and CNN.com who were the two biggest morons who robbed all of us of your time today. Someone has to help me find Yahoo's mailing address, but CNN has two offices. One in NYC and the other is in Atlanta.

- Bart

CNN NY

1 Chase Manhattan Plaza

New York NY 10005

1 C N N Center

Atlanta, Georgia 30348

When I get paid by CNN, I will be donating the entire check to anybody or any firm who is developing a Turnpike for the Internet. I'm dead serious.

If you don't like traveling the Information Super Highway for free, every highway has a Turnpike or the Diamond HOV lane allowing some of us who have BETTER THINGS to be doing with our time can get them done. Without being slowed down by a bunch of stupid looky-loos who want to slow down and piss off everybody who really has to get somewhere.

Why can't some firm build a Private Super Fast HOV version of the Internet so the morons, soccer moms and lolly gaggers who want to surf the web can do it for free?

This Members-Only Internet would be just for HOV business folks who don't have time to watch news broadcasts on our Internet when we are going to get the same information at home and on the 6 O' Clock news.

You show me a company developing that kind of Hi-Speed, Private, Members-Only Internet and I have a lot of checks I am willing to write and invest into that firm.

A recent blog post I did started up an interesting Hot button. Privacy Concerns.

It's so easy for advertisers to get your information. The grocery store disguises discount Club Savings as marketing intelligence. In any city USA where you shop at Smiths, Krogers, Safeway, Albertson's, Piggly Wiggly etc., they collect enough information on those tiny black magnetic stripes with your REAL information, and the guys up the food chain (no pun intended) get to know how beer you drink. How much red meat you consume. It's none of their business, but since you gave up that information, it can be used to re-target you in ways that you might now want this information used.

"The Wisdom of Crowds," by James Surowiecki is a really great book if you want to learn more about your next time home buyers or anyone going to the Internet to shop or buy something. It's a great book with an incredibly simple idea. Large groups of people are smarter than any one of us. They are better at spotting trends and better at solving problems.

So it follows that large groups of people are forming ANTI-advertising groups and are deeply concerned about Privacy matters.

Want to take advantage of the Smith's Discount Shopper card but NOT give up any REAL personal information to the government or the ad agencies that track shopping habits os Americans? No problem.

Just don't put your REAL name on the card. Don't put your REAL address on it either.

Here's what I put:

Dick Nixon

1600 Pennsulvania Ave.

Washington DC, 20500

And when I am asked to give a Social Security number, I use Richard Nixon's SSAN # too. Here it is: 567-68-0515

YES, that is REALLY Richard Nixon's SSAN. It is published in several books, too. I use Dick Nixon and his SSAN not for applying for credit, but for stupid forms that won't do anything unless you cough up a SSAN #.

Privacy Problems will continue to happen so long as companies keep asking for SSAN #'s. It's soooooooo rampant.

Did you know that the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) has a law on the books that prohibits a firm from denying you service if you refuse to give them your SSAN?

Here's a law you might not have known about. Getting a cell phone. Getting phone services from the local phone company, electric company, etc. No state can deny you services if you refuse to give them your SSAN #.

Neither can Verizon, Alltell, AT&T or any other cell phone company. You may give them your Drivers's License Number, but you DON'T have to give them your SSAN.

People freely giving every firm their SSAN is why we have so many Identity theft Problems. The Social Security Act was enacted by Congress in 1935 as a sole means to keep track of Americans and manage the Social Security Program. An SSAN is issued to every American and to many aliens who become American Citizens or those allowed to work in America under a work Visa.

Cell phone ownership and their client records are not 100% hack proof. Who hasn't heard of the story of American Vets having their ID compromised when a laptop containing a few hundred thousand vet's names, and SSAN records went missing? I was one of the Vets on that laptop. My ID was stolen by a waitress at one of two local Santa Fe restaurants last year and it became a nightmare that I am still today trying to fix.

Here's what happened to me.

I have a company credit card VISA. I entertained some clients at two restaurants the month they were here in Santa Fe. I went to Blue Corn Cafe and also to the Outback Steak House.

At both locations, we had some before dinner margaritas and I recall giving my company card to the waitress at both locations to run a tab. Both locations I remember striking up conversations with the waitress because we had a Hollywood celebrity sitting with us at our table. Questions about Voyager and what we did seemed innocent at the time... but after talking to the police, I learned this is how waiters and waitresses use this information as part of a very large Credit Card Theft Cartel.

At any rate, I narrowed down my ID and Credit Card being compromised at one of these two restaurants. As the employee at one of these firms quit, she drove across the state and bought gas at a Mustang convenience store on her way driving to California. She used my name and card at the pump. And has managed to get a blank Visa card loaded up with the same information on the magnetic stripe on my company Visa.

On her way to California, she logged into Priceline.com and booked hotel rooms at the LaQuinta in Los Angeles. She got the reservation number and she checked in at the Hotel with nothing BUT the reservation number.

Hotels can help cut down on ID Theft by DEMANDING that anyone who checks into a hotel first show their Drivers License. This too, I learned from the police is something that not ALL hotels are doing to help cut down on ID Theft.

Then she goes to her room, and she orders Pizza from Pizza Hut on-line. It gets delivered to the room at LaQuinta.

The very next day, I get a call from a spooked sales man at TV appliance store stating that a Beverly Wilson (posing as my wife) was calling to order a large screen TV for my birthday. (which is was no where near my birthday) and they wanted to verify some facts.

This is when I learned everything above and the sobering news hit me that my ID was stolen.

I called my bank and learned about the charges for Pizza Hut and LaQuinta and I called the Los Angeles police department when after I called the Hotel in LA and learned that whoever it was using my card was STILL IN THE HOTEL.

Suffice to say the young lady was busted along with an accomplice who was wanted on various narcotics charges. Right now, she is in jail for narcotics charges until November of this year (2009). But when she gets out, I will be suing her in District Court for ID Theft and I might be able to arrange to have one of the U.S. attorneys here file state and federal charges against her. I will be seeking an additional $30,000 in compensatory damages against the moron, too.

We have a domain name we are going to activate, with a BLOG here soon where anyone can go for more help on this subject.

It will be here and running by the end of July: DebtClearingHouse.com

- bart

Mappying Frenzy for Websites sort of began several years ago, 2004/2005 when Google announced Google Maps (then beta) for folks to start taking Nasa photos of the earth's terrain with Google technology and blending it into an Application Programming Interface (called API). We jumped on the mapping band wagon and so did lots of other vendors. Today, you're just not with the "IN Crowd," unless you have some kind of GPS device hanging around your neck.

Today, GPS is being built into digital cameras. I just bought a new Nikon P-6000 and the manu showed me how to snap a photo and embed the latitude and longitude for the photo. In the early 1980's GPS technology was expensive and the only consumer flavor you could purchase back then was for your automobile, truck or SUV. Back then GPS was only packaged as LoJack.

Someone sole your car? No problem. The local police department thanks to LoJack was able to find your car within minutes.

Today... LoJack is publicly traded (NASDAQ: LOJN) The last time I checked, was trading at 3.65 a share. Their Nemesis is OnStar. The GPS tracking system and operator assisted program that connects you to a live human in case you get really lost and need more than two hands and a flashlight to find your way out of Boston or how to get out of Oakland and back to the Interstate at midnight. OnStar also gives police and the local Medivac/Ambulance people your GPS coordinates if you plow your car into a wall, or a tree. There's no argument this application of GPS has saved many lives.

But just when things nothing more could possibly get invented for GPS use... here we go again.

Last week, FireFox announced a new browser and they now allow (supposedly) anonymous location GPS gathering information to be taken from your computer's location. The advertising copy reads" So this can help you make faster drive to directions getting to your favorite restaurant, bistro, hotel, house, bank... whatever. It's interesting to see they voluntarily added the word: Anonymous without me having to ask for it. Which means your information is being sold to every advertising agency and of course the government thanks to the Patriot Act doesn't need to ask you at all. Invasion of privacy and keeping tabs on you is something the government can do without ever having to ask for your permission.

Like most real estate professionals, I have an iPhone. Many of you have Palm Pilots (the new one is the Palm pre) or a BlackBerry. All of these new Smart-phones have cool tools you can drop into them like GPS maps, and other geo-locator goodies.

I sort of told a white lie to some friends of mine as I didn't want to go to their Mother In Law's house for a block party. I didn't think at the time, I'd get into any hot water by declining their offer.

I apologized and told them I had work to do.

Besides, Agatha's Tuna melt crispies on sourdough baked bread wasn't my idea of a really tasty party food.

I hadn't been out to the Santa Fe mountains in many months and I was sort of relishing the idea of packing a sandwich and driving up to the ski basin and sitting at a picnic bench and scribbling some ideas for my next book.

Anyway, I did go to the mountains, parked my SUV under the Pine trees, parked my butt on a picnic bench and enjoyed a very nice afternoon.

The very next weekend, my friends mother in law bumped into me at the mall along with her son (my friend, Mark). Mark asked me how I liked my day in the mountains last weekend. I asked him how he knew. he brandished his new iPhone 3GS and showed me a nifty application. It shows all his friends with telephone numbers and had a photo of me inside a balloon. He shows me his iPhone and says see?

"I tracked you last weekend. I know you hate mom's Tuna melt pizza, so I sort of guessed you'd find a graceful way to bow out."

Ouch. I just got busted by GPS!

When you look back at the number of grants and loans the government did in from 1997 - 2003, I tracked down just over $72,200,000 in government grants and SBIR's (tech transfer) to private companies who promised commercialization of GPS products and services.

Today, GPS is cool, fun and sexy. Fifteen years ago, it was boring and was a utility used only to track your car in case it was stolen.

Today, you can get LoJack for your PC or Mac laptop, your car. Your boat. Your motorcycle. Even your dog or cat can be given a tiny chip just under their skin. So if Rover or Morris ever gets lost or runs away, you can track your pet down to the square foot in any country. They have special kids sneakers that have chips inside them or you can hide them in your kids socks or tie a thingee to their shoe laces and you'll be able to track your kids.

Need to track your suspected cheating spouse? No problem. Just download this tiny application to their iPhone and leave it. So long as your wife, husband, boyfriend or girlfriend leaves their cell phone on... you can track their every stop from the comfort of your iPhone.

Does anyone else but me wonder how the Hell we managed to ever survive the last 10,000 years without GPS? Christopher Columbus or Dutch explorer Henry Hudson seemed to find America just fine without them.

- bart

The SEO Bozos are getting pretty shifty with unbelievable get rich quick schemes.

If firm's like MerchantCircle or LeapFish can't get you suckered into buying their pumped up SEO service cleverly disguised as nothing more than a stupid directory listing in somebody's portal that less than .000004% of your web customers are ever going to visit -- watch out!

The SEO Bozos are back and they're luring in thousands of people with clever webpages that show you people holding big checks from Google.

The scam, buy their book, or buy their $49 a month service so you can make $10,000 a month from Google with AdSense.

Let's assume for a minute that there was A Google Gold Mine out there for real.

If you found one... WHY would you tell people how to steal your private Gold Mine?

Why not keep the secret to yourself?

This is the big acid test. It's such a great Gold Mine why are you sharing the secret with me for $19.95? Pure stupidity.

It simply defies conventional wisdom and the way people are.

If you look carefully, these are Photoshop'd versions of the same check and 95% of them are several years old, before Google made substantial changes to the program.

While some people are getting checks, they are not like the one above for $132,994.97.

Google PREFERS to deposit to your bank, instead of mailing them. We get paid by Google for traffic to several websites. My average check runs under $1,000 a month but is never mailed to me. It is direct deposited to my account. About what it cost many REALTORS for their monthly desk fees, Top Producer and your $19.95 a month active Rain Website.

The websites to watch out for are all like the ones below;

KevinLifeBlog.com, MarysLifeBlog.com, ScottsMoneyBlog.com and the big scam site: GoogleMoneyTree.com.

GoogleMoneyTree.com was one that the Bartman tried so I could include this in my book or next SEO workshop. I found out they just scam your bank account for a nice recurring fee every month all the while thinking you just paid a one time charge for the report they offer.

But when you buy the report, you never see that very clearly. Which is why there are so many hate mails and death threats to Google Money Tree as a result. You start seeing recurring charges on your PayPal account debiting your bank for the monthly recurring charge and you have no clue how they got access to your bank.

The BBB has hundreds of complaints against these websites, but GoogleMoneyTree.com tops them all.

Other websites like YoogleMoney.com and Google-money-maker.info feature believable people like Kevin Hoeffer or Mary Steadman both from San Jose Califonia who lost their jobs as "boring account temps," and miraculously turned their being laid off into a $5,000 a month or more income by filling out forms for Google.

ScottsMoneyBlog.com is another down to earth and believable website that features Scott Hunter -- another boring account rep for some manufacturing company in New York until he "wised up" and learned how to make mad cash on Google. He even has a recorded message, "How can you go wrong with a company that is publicly traded on the stock market? I knew that as a company Google was solid and the opportunity to make money with them was not BS."

Well it is pure BS and all I had to do was call our former Chief Technical Officer, who has been a full time AdSense employee at Google for three years now. Google does not have any official program like this. Scott's website at the very bottom has teensy text that does in fact disclaim that his Website has no affiliation whatsoever to Google.

ScottsMoneyBlog.com recorded 2.2 million visitors in May 2009 according to Compete.com. This is down 4 million from April, 2009.

The lure of what these companies offer start to get more compelling especially if your last commission or commission advance was a few months ago.

These Get Rich Quick schemes tap into our brains just like the 2 am TV infomercials for Carlton Sheets Make Money in Real Estate program. Carlton might be an okay guy but even Carlton realizes his once $299 real estate program he used to sell a few years ago had a limited life span. Because that same program today sells for under $40 bucks. As real estate agents, nobody on Active Rain is going to buy Carlton's program... We see the Carlton info-mercial and we turn the channel.

Why? Because as REALTORS, we know better. No matter how you package it, Carlton is out there pitching his Get Rich real estate products to the average Joe who hasn't been trained in real estate practice or real estate law. If he wanted to provide education to REALTORS, he could be doing that.. but he isn't.

REALTORS who are just now getting up to speed on how the Internet works might be lured into the spider web of the bozos offering the Get Rich Quick Schemes. Here's what to look out for;

1.) The Google Get Rich Quick sites all look like they were all cloned from the same Monster Template.

2.) My guess is there's one guy named, "Eddie," doing the Blog scam websites and lucky for Eddie, he seems to have no shortage of work here.

3.) Before you buy the book or free report, Google them like this: GoogleMoneyTree.com Complaints.

This is how you find out about the firms so-called claims BEFORE you get hosed after buying their product or service.

There are so many Google Get Rich Quick schemes that Google is having a hard time keeping up with them. They're springing up like weeds. Google is aware of the problems and sources close to me at Google say there are lawsuits brewing for any website that is using the Google brand name. For now, anyone using the word Google in their AdWords ads are starting to get penalized. Many of them are about to become black listed.

GoogleMoneyTree.com was black listed. Try it and see. You won't find GoogleMoneyTree.com at all. Enter that domain name into Google search right now, and you get zero results for the domain itself. You will find 33,000 complaints and information about the site, but you cannot GO to the website anymore.

www.GoogleMoneyTree.com is officially black listed and OFF the air, and the Bartman is celebrating this event as of 10:17 am this morning.

For the REALTORS and brokers I coach -- this is VICTORY.

One LESS SEO Bozo out there to scam your money now.

-- Bart