(In order to dispel current rumours of my death or alien abduction I thought I should post something here).

I read this news release from the Conference Board of Canada which bills itself as “The foremost independent, not-for-profit applied research organization in Canada”.

Here is the release in full:

Canada seen as the file-swapping capital of the world

OTTAWA, May 22 /CNW Telbec/ – Canada’s failure to strengthen intellectual
property rights (IPR) in the face of digital technology has given it an
unwelcome reputation as the file-swapping capital of the world. Stronger
intellectual property rights and enforcement are needed to protect new
knowledge and shore up Canada’s poor innovation record, according to a series
of Conference Board reports-released in advance of its May 29 conference
Intellectual Property Rights: Innovation and Commercialization in Turbulent
Times (http://www.conferenceboard.ca/conf/09-0120/default.aspx).

As a result of lax regulation and enforcement, internet piracy appears to
be on the increase in Canada. The estimated number of illicit downloads (1.3
billion) is 65 times higher than the number legal downloads (20 million),
mirroring the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s
conclusion that Canada has the highest per capita incidence of unauthorized
file-swapping in the world.

Canada has not ratified new global minimum standards of the World
Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) internet treaties, and the United
States has put Canada on notice for inadequate intellectual property
enforcement measures.

“Canada’s innovation performance has been dismal for decades, and the
role of intellectual property systems has received inadequate attention. If
Canada does not change its approach to intellectual property, its economic
outlook will suffer,” said Gilles Rhéaume, Vice-President, Public Policy at
the Conference Board.

“Intellectual property protection is the essential ingredient that allows
creators of knowledge to obtain value of their work without it being copied or
stolen. Canada is earning a reputation, one that is not to be envied, as the
file-swapping capital of the world.”

The Conference Board report, Creating Value and Stimulating Investment: A
Business-Level Assessment of the Role of Intellectual Property
(http://www.conferenceboard.ca/documents.aspx?did=3053), recommends increased
emphasis on enforcement of IPR regimes. These include: strengthening current
IPR protection legislation, giving Canadian Border Services Agency greater
authority to deal with counterfeit and pirated goods, combating intellectual
property crimes and educating enterprises and consumers about the negative
effects of counterfeiting.

In the report Intellectual Property Rights in the Digital Economy
(http://www.conferenceboard.ca/documents.aspx?did=3054), the Conference Board
puts forward a multi-pronged approach to IPR. Canada should ratify the WIPO
internet treaties, while it encourages collaborative structures that protect
the copyrights of creators and allow new knowledge to be accessed legally.

The third report, National Innovation Performance and Intellectual
Property Rights: A Comparative Analysis
(http://www.conferenceboard.ca/documents.aspx?did=3050), looks at the leading
innovative countries and compares their IPR systems with that of Canada. All
three reports on intellectual property rights are publicly available at
www.e-library.ca.

For further information: Brent Dowdall, Media Relations, (613) 526-3090
ext. 448, corpcomm@conferenceboard.ca

I don’t want to state personally what my thoughts are on this topic as I am interested in what my readers have to say about this. Please leave a comment and mention if you are in Canada or not. After there have been some comments I will chime in with my opinion.

I have been traveling for the last few weeks and the number one problem that I have found is being able to send email while on the road.

Most places including hotels and internet cafes advertise that they have free wifi etc. What they don’t tell you is that they block port 25 which allows you to connect to your mail server (assuming that your local ISP even allows you connect from outside their network). They do this to stop people from using their wifi connection for sending out spam. The problem is that they also stop me from sending my email that is 100% legit.

After lots of looking online and talking to other digital nomads I have found a cheap and effective way to resolve the problem.

The solution is a company called SMTP2GO and they provide a quick and easy way to send email using their mail (smtp) server for as little as $1.99 USD per month and the whole setup takes less than 2 minutes.

The way that they do this is to use noon-standard ports to connect to the mail server. What this means is that instead of using the standard way to connect to the mail server (which many of the free wifi hotspots block), they use another route. This gets around the blocking and allows you to connect and send email just like you were sitting at your desk at home or office. In fact, once you have it configured there is no need to ever change it. It will work from anywhere.

It works with your normal mail program whether that is Outlook, Apple Mail, Thunderbird or Outlook Express for example. They offer a 60 day, 100% money-back guarantee. Service is guaranteed or you get your money back.

Can’t go wrong with that!

Give it a try and you will get rid of one more frustration from the digital nomad lifestyle.

SMTP2Go website.

Link building an important step in search engine optimization. Many people build a website, and then don’t take the time to promote the website. When you build back links to your site, it becomes stronger, and the search engines will find it easier.

When a search engine sees a lot of incoming links to your site, it looks at that and sees it as a relevant website, since many people are pointing to it.

The question is how do you build back links? Where do you get back links from? There are a lot of different places where you can gain back links.

• You can ask other similar websites if they would like to exchange links.
• You can write articles and submit them to directories, adding in your links.
• You can submit your website to directories.
• You can create special pages like Squidoo pages or Hub pages and add back links to your site
• You can join ‘on-line carnivals’ where similar topics come together and link to each other
• You can add your link as your signature on forums and message boards
• You can do a press release to gain back links
• You can comment on other websites and blogs to get back links.

Regardless of where you get the back links, remember it’s also important to remember to use relevant anchor text link that leads back to your site. You’ll want to target your main key phrase or keyword.

Many people overlook the relevance of link building. When it comes to gaining visibility for your website, link building is an optimum step you don’t want to skip.

One last tip, while link exchanges will help build your links, one way links are even better! If you can get incoming links to your site, while not having to link back to the site linking into you, these are seen as stronger links.

The best service that I have found for 1 way back links is Neurolinker.

As a web site owner my number one goal is to increase the number of visitors to my sites. I don’t think I am alone in this. More visitors translates directly into more revenue either from advertising, sales of my own products or affiliate sales. Without visitors I get no revenue from my sites. It is that simple. Visitors are the life blood of any web site.

So the question becomes how to get visitors. The number one rule is to have content that people are looking for and find value. Without valuable content you may get visitors but they will leave very quickly after they realize that there is nothing of value on the site. The second most important rule is to get a high ranking in the search engines. This is done by employing Search Engine Optimization techniques. There are lots of sites out there that discuss the dozens of different rules, tips and tricks. I will not go into all of them. I do however wish to talk about one rule in particular.

Backlinks are the number one way of increasing your page rank and therefore the position that your site appears in the search engine rankings. The reason for this is simple. Google (and other search engines) use the number of back links to your site as a way to gauge how relevant your site is. The more sites linking to you the higher Google sees your site. No one will link back to a site that doesn’t contain relevant and valuable information.

There are two different programs out there to help improve your number of site linking back to your site. One is called Google Annihilation and the other is called Neurolinker.

Both of these sites do the same thing. They allow a user to sign up and pay a monthly fee to provide back links to that user’s site or sites. While the goal is the same the differences between these two sites is amazing.

Here is a side by side breakdown of the features of both:

Google Annihilation:

* $37 per month for up to 30 websites
* Uses NO relevant website matching algorithms, only manual categories
* ONLY 3 anchor keywords allowed
* NO article marketing
* NO social bookmarking
* NO user options for selecting number versus relevance of links
* NO ability to reject any inbound or outbound links
* NO tutorials or instructions
* NO forum

Neurolinker:

* $27 per month for up to 100 websites
* Uses complex algorithms for finding most relevant websites, and lets you pick manual categories too
* Virtually unlimited anchor keywords using advanced keyword syntax
* Article marketing component with article spinner
* Free website content for your website from articles
* Collaborative social bookmarking system for permanent links from social BM sites
* Can reject any inbound and some outbound links
* Plenty of tutorials and instructions
* A forum for help and suggestions from other users

Google Annihilation has been getting a lot of press lately. Every ‘guru’ seems to be pushing this solution as the be all and end all of backlinking. What I don’t understand is how they can objectively be arriving at that conclusion. Google Annihilation costs more per month, offers less and provides no way for the site owner to control what is happening to their site. Neurolinker allows the site owner to use article marketing, social bookmarking, approval of all incoming links (I don’t want my site listed on porn sites for example) nor do I want to link back to sites that I have a personal objection to. Google Annihilation has no such controls.

By all means check out both and if you can honestly say that Google Annihilation is better than Neurolinker please tell me why in the comments below because I don’t get it.

Being involved in web hosting and applications on the internet I come across lots of special offers etc in regard to trial offers and services. Most, I ignore. This offer is different.

Jumpline is offering 90 days free trial on web hosting. Founded in 1997, Jumpline.com has been servicing over 25,000 small business owner’s web hosting needs. Unlike most offers you will NOT be billed. They do require a credit card be entered for verification purposes but is not used.

They include the following with this special offer:

Web Development
	Frontpage 2002 Extensions
	PHP – 5.1.4
	Perl – 5.8.5
	Python – 2.4.3
	Graphics Magick – 1.1.7
	mod_python
	Site Builder

eCommerce
	Miva Merchant – 5
	SSL Certificate Support with OpenSSL
	Shared SSL Certificate Service

Web Application
	Apache Error Messages
	Awstats – 6.5
	Webalizer – 2.01-10
	WebPassword

Collaboration
	Guestbook – 1.1.3
	Neomail WebMail – 1.27
	PHP FormMail – 2
	Jumpline.com WebMail
	Jumpline.com Address Book
	Gallery – 2.1
	Jumpline.com myCalendar
	Majordomo – 1.95
	PhpBB – 2.0.21
	PhpMyNewsletter – 0.8
	WordPress – 2.0.2

Database
	MySQL – 5.0.22
	PhpMyAdmin – 2.8.2
	SQlite

Streaming
	Helix Server – 11

This is an offer that you can’t refuse.

Get complete details and order here.

According to an post on slashdot, the RCMP has finally made the decision that it will stop targeting people who download copyrighted material for personal use (Google translation – original in French).

From the press release ‘Piracy for personal use is no longer targeted,’ Noël St-Hilaire, head of copyright theft investigations of the RCMP, said in an interview. ‘It is too easy to copy these days and we do not know how to stop it.’”

Of course, this doesn’t mean that the provincial police forces such as the OPP and the QPP aren’t going to stop but I would think that they would also quickly realize that if the national police has decided that there are better uses of their resources they won’t be far behind.