Ok, so it need not be Digg, but really, all of the online social communities need to rally behind this poor guy, Chris Avenir, who is at a local Toronto university. The poor guy is facing expulsion and has already gotten a B grade turned into a failing grade in a first year chemistry course. Why? Because he administers a local Facebook group on some homework topics. Flabbergasted? I was. Turns out that said Toronto university, Ryerson, has a very liberal academic misconduct policy, which describes such as “any deliberate activity to gain academic advantage, including actions that have a negative effect on the integrity of the learning environment.”

Obviously, as Michael Geist says, sharing answers or plagiarizing is an obvious academic offence. But virtual study groups?

Come on!

So, let’s review the major criteria for creating a movement to help a brother out on Digg.

• Dude is a geek* … check!
• Involves web 2.0 / social media / Linux / Gaming / Apple / technology / Facebook … check!
• Dude is wrongfully targeted because he is a geek and is using one of the above … check!
• Dude facing tragic / legal / funny / sad consequences of his actions … check!

Mr. Avenir clearly meets all of the major criteria to get some tech support / love (but not all minor criteria, which might also include, but is not limited to, posting for your favourite Democratic nominee, sending up some hilarious pictures referencing your 733tness / geek cred, and composing a top 10 list of Terribly Obvious Things).

Seriously — this issue needs to explode across the blogosphere, and folks like Corey Doctorow (of BoingBoing) — who is also a local Torontonian — need to step in, particularly if the worst does happen ( he gets expelled?!). The story, as its been reported, is an absolute anachronistic disaster, and I think Ryerson needs to step up and explain how things have gotten as far as it has, and reassure the city, its students, and the world at large (if their reputation means much), that it isn’t out of step with Progress and how important these new Teh Internets are.

Update: The Facebook group that Chris Avenir was a part of may have had a description that suggested that people were merely copying answers, and this was the thrust behind all of the drama above.  I think that it raises the larger issue of how legitimate it is to having “homework” or “assignments” to be done which “count”, and whose answers are easily copied, in this day and age.  As I wrote over at Mat Ingram’s blog, all this does is drive those seeking to trade in answers in the social “underground”, or via private online groups, and you’ll never find them.  Answers to old tests and exams are a part of university life, and academia has to rise to the challenge of this reality in 2008.  Hammering students into apparent submission, because they’re using existing tools to propagate a very old practice hardly seems fair, insightful, or forward-looking 

* not yet indepedently verified
** photo courtesy of SuperProm

So the next time you get an email soliciting paid links on your blog — and who hasn’t these days (I retract that: if you’re doing well enough that someone wants to pay for links on your site, good for you) — and you’re *really* tempted, because you know that a lower pagerank means squat to traffic, and you could really use the funds to reinvest in your blog / buy a new pair of speakers / pay your rent, you may want to reconsider.

Turns out that there is a new scam that is going around which is actually an elaborate form of the Nigerian Email Scam, or 419 Fraud. I’m sure you know the one — its where you get an email out of nowhere (perhaps Nigeria, as that’s where its thought the scam originated there is no data as of yet suggesting where the fraud is actually coming from) telling you that you’ve won / been bequeathed / need to hide millions of dollars, and that all the other folks need is your bank account number, and — inevitably, extra funds (this is where you get scammed).

Anyway, the *new* version of the Nigerian Email Scam is one where sites, or blogs, are solicited for display, or text link (paid) ads. I found this nugget of information on a security site called F-secure, no less, where the scammers in question used the subject line “partnership enquiry“, or “Website Partnership Enquiry”, that enquiry being, of course, their solicitation to purchase advertising on your site, in the form of display ads and text link ads.

If you *do* answer them, they will negotiate a fairly heft sum of cash (F-Secure has the details) in the low four figure range, which is no small sum to some bloggers. So, here’s the scam part:

They will send you a check for the agreed upon sum PLUS some additional cash, by “mistake”. For example, if you agreed upon $2000, they’ll send you $3000. Then they’ll send an email back saying that they sent the extra by mistake, please send *back* the balance, please.

Problem? That check that was mailed to you for the advertising deal, if you wait long enough, never clears. You end up with squat and the scammer gets your money.

So the next time you get an email solicitation for display ads or text link ads (paid links) on your website, be cautious and do a little bit of due diligence:

1. Investigate your buyer thoroughly: do they leave an appropriate name, place of business, and phone number? Do they have an actual website that they want to advertise? Do the owners of the website *know* the alleged buyer of the advertising?

2. Wait for that check to clear: the scam only works if you don’t realize that the check doesn’t clear / it does bounce. This is a non-issue if you’re being paid via Paypal, but if you’re being mailed anything it always helps to be cautious

Update: Snoskred suggests that it can take an awful long time for checks to clear, and that they can take up to a year to bounce. As always a low threshold for calling any offer that is too good to be true “BS” should be a low one.

Other resources:

• The History of the Nigerian 419 Fraud or Advance Fee Scam
• Examples of Nigerian Email Scams
• Interviews with Nigerian Scam Operators
• 419Eaters — A Scam Baiting site for Nigerian Scam Artists

A few days ago, you may have heard about the whole Jimmy Wales / Wikipedia fiasco — its hard to believe that you didn’t as it hit a lot of major mainstream media outlets.  The substance of the fiasco (if such a phrase can make sense in a non-oxymoronical kind of way) to me was not so much that Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia may have had an affair, but that he may have used his influence to affect a Wikipedia entry, that of Rachel Marsden, the woman he is thought to have an affair with.  Given that Wikipedia is meant to be the towering triumph of the wisdom of crowds, I think exposing this link is a somewhat worthwhile one, although the affair in and of itself … eh, not so much.

What is also kind of interesting, to me, is how Google News kind of missed the boat on this.

So, I’ve written about Google News a bunch of times before, and most recently about how it might help the digitally disaffected, ironically, in another story about a Wikipedia founder (in this case, Larry Sanger).

Well, I think this case is a perfect case of how, if Google wanted to commit the man power (and perhaps some learned PR tricks), Google News could have really worked.  What do I mean? Well, the “digitally disaffected” or new media orphan here, is Rachel Marsden.  In her retort to Jimmy Wales, she decided to post her personal reply on *Ebay* of all places.

Granted its somewhat appropros given that she planned to sell his stuff (and is going to be making a killing — a t-shirt and sweater that he left at her place are going for around $2k and $1k respectively … and there are still 5 days left of bidding) anyway, I think that her message could have gotten out just as well as a “comment” on Google News.

What do I mean by “man power” on Google’s behalf?  Only that it would have taken an active solicitation (and I mean *active*) to get her “take” on things as a Google News comment — because as I recall its a somewhat onerous task to do, and this aspect of Google News is by no means so popular that people are flocking to it in the first place to release their “statements”.

In fact, there’s no real easy way for people who are part of the news to submit their comments *on* Google News, which is also a bit disappointing (i.e. there is no clear link or clear submission page), but perhaps that’s not really all that surprising.

So is this a missed opinion for Google News? 

I think it is.  If they had recognized who Rachel Marsden was, and recognized that she wanted to release a “digital” statement, then this would have been the perfect opportunity.  Google could have, in turn, released a statement of their own, stating that Rachel Marsden was releasing her own statement in full on Google News, rather than the pithy off the cuff remark made on Ebay.  And as this would have been the only place where this existed (because I don’t know of any other place Rachel Marsden released a comment), it would have resulted in not only Bongo traffic, but more importantly, Bongo recognition that Google News is something important and unique.

But for whatever reason, Google didn’t, and perhaps its more reflective of the inertia of Google’s beta ‘handlers’ than anything else.  It may not be as great as Jesus, but I think Google News has the disruptive potential to upend a great deal of online journalism by giving principals in the story *their* say — its just too bad Google doesn’t believe it as well.

• [BLOGGERS] Matt Drudge: world’s most powerful journalist

  An interesting look at the story behind the blogger, from where he started, to how the Drudge Report exploded on the scene not all that many years ago. “Pasty-faced recluse”, indeed. :)

  (tags: bloggers blogging drudgereport mattdrudge telegraph)

• [DESIGN] Blog Headers For Free Download

  About one month ago, Smashing Magazine held a contest to create a gallery of blog header graphics, for free, and with no restrictions. Here are the 100 best, available in the source image format (.ai or .psd), in full size (800×200px). Awesome.

  (tags: awesome gallery graphics free blogging headers design blog smashingmagazine)

• [SOCIAL TOOLS] StumbleUpon Alerter

  Get alerted when something you’ve “stumbled” upon gets reviewed or a thumbs up, keeping track of exactly who likes your stuff and who doesn’t (as well as keep track of what stuff you’re stumbling). This is freeware that you can download at light 2MB

  (tags: utilities stumbleupon social freeware adamantsolutions)

• [SEO NINJA] The most incredible SEO story I have ever read

  Granted, I haven’t read a lot, but read on about how one SEO expert was tasked with getting links for a porn site — and its some pretty specific fetish-type porn — and succeeded in spades, getting links back from Bayer and Wikipedia (NSFW).

  (tags: 301 awesome ninja polepositionmarketing hacks tricks seo)

• [DESIGN] IE8 Not Standards Compliant? (It is!)

  For those so technically inclined, IE8 (Internet Explorer 8) Beta 1 does pass the ACID2 test, a way of checking if a browser meets web standards, but some folks are finding it fails when they try it themselves. Answer? It must be the official ACID2 page.

  (tags: standards design acidtest2 IE8)

• [OFFTOPIC]: Oregon holds health insurance “lottery”

  There’s a huge portion of people who cannot afford or who are un-insurable. This is totally off topic for this blog, but there’s something totally and abjectly wrong about this — that the only way these folks can get insured is by winning a lottery

  (tags: oregon ap insurance health)

So, funny thing: this morning, I was looking to see if VTech had finally gotten around to releasing an update for its cordless VTech phones with respect to making them Vista compatible, so I googled “vtech skype vista support”, because I’m too lazy to sort through their own site. You might recall me ranting about why Vista enrages me, and using the lack of drivers / support one of my chief beefs. Anywhoo, I thought perhaps another site had found a solution, perhaps someone blogged about it. Funny thing was that my own rant ranked #7 on the google search

So I am showing you this not just to show off that this blog has ranking for some pretty obscure terms, but that blog post on my blog outranks VTech itself when it comes for what I think is a relevant search term. I am only casual observer for SEO topics, but looks like a clear example where VTech needs a hand — not just in terms of being the right one to rank for the appropriate topic, but from a public relations point of view, as well.

In fact, VTech has solved the problem as of a few weeks ago, as it did release a new software update so that its now Vista compatible, with the page in question over here.

[edit: or, over here where “VTech released a Vista compatible update for their Skype phones” — VTech, please thank Andy Beard by sending him something (like a free phone, maybe?) after the exchange I had with him below]

Where is does that page rank in the scheme of things? Well, nowhere to be honest. Why is this important? Only because about a year ago VTech made some noises about never releasing an update that would work with Vista machines, which have been (obviously) received quite negatively.

Chalk one up under “why SEO is important”, I think.