Founded in 1996, TechTalk MediaGroup publishes a growing network of online consumer magazines and radio programming.

Our online magazine system is built around four main market segments: HomeServices, LifeStyle, Finance and Medical.

Our HomeServices publications include Appliance.net an online magazine with a companion public forum with reviews of gadgets, small and large appliances. Remodel.net and HomeOwner.Net.

Our LifeStyle group publishes Bicycle.Net, one of the fastest growing, most respected publications covering professional cycling. Other magazines published in our LifeStyle group include Bride.Net and Maternity.Net

Our newest magazine group, under the MedicalCare.Org brand will include a full family of consumer and medical professional magazines and communities like Cardiologist.Org, Dermatologist.Org, Oncologist.Org, Pediatrician.Org and Endocrinologist.Org.

Our Finance/Insurance Group includes LifeInsurance.Net, Refinance.Net, Finance.Org, AutoInsurance.Net, HealthPlan.Net

Our Network of websites is internally owned and controlled, includes over 3000 market specific and locally focused online publications with millions of page views monthly.

Today a friend emailed me about his concerns about the “Fairness Doctrine” affecting American radio and I was about to recommend that he download 1984 and was about to provide the link that I had once used to get the Plucker version that would work in my Tungsten’s reader… but not only wasn’t 1984 there, NONE of Orwell’s titles were available. See screencap below:

George Orwell no longer available at Project Gutenberg

As of 28 January 2009, Australia’s Project Gutenberg still had George Orwell files: http://gutenberg.net.au/plusfifty-n-z.html#orwell

I have copied the files and the links will be here as long as I’m allowed.

• Down and Out in Paris and London (1933)
• Burmese Days (1934)
• A Clergyman’s Daughter (1935)
• Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936)
• Shooting an Elephant (1936)
• The Road to Wigan Pier (1937)
• Homage to Catalonia (1938)
• Coming up for Air (1939)
• Animal Farm (1945)
• Politics and the English Language (1946)
• Nineteen eighty-four (1949)
• Fifty Orwell Essays

I hope that I will be able to update this post with news that Project Gutenberg‘s new omission was a technical glitch and not throwing Orwell down the memory hole [linked to Wikipedia].

More Fairness Doctrine sources:

• The Fairness Doctrine at Work
• Liberals, too, should reject the Fairness Doctrine
• Fairness Doctrine Fouls Out
• Limbaugh Is Right on the Fairness Doctrine – Wall Street Journal
• Fairness Doctrine Watch

PC Magazine, which has documented the explosive growth of the personal computer since 1982, announced on Wednesday that it was dropping its print edition next year and going online only.

PC Magazine publisher Ziff Davis Media, which recently exited Chapter 11 bankruptcy, said in a statement that the final edition of the iconic magazine would be the January 2009 issue.

Ziff Davis said PC Magazine, which has suffered a steep drop in advertising as scores of competing publications cropped up on the Internet, will go “all-digital” at PCMag.com.

“Moving our flagship property to an all-digital format is the final step in an evolutionary process that has been playing out over the last seven years,” Ziff Davis Media chief executive Jason Young said.

“Since 2000, online has been the focal point where technology buyers get their information and technology marketers are directing their dollars to drive demand and build their brands.

“We have been carefully preparing for this step and are fortunate to have a digital business that has the scale, profit, and opportunity to carry the brand powerfully into the future,” he said.

PaidContent.org, which covers digital media, said seven employees will be laid off as a result of the closure of the print edition of the magazine. The Ziff Davis Media statement made no mention of any job reductions.

PC Magazine is the latest US publication to drop its print edition and move to a Web-only format.

US News & World Report, long the number three newsmagazine in the United States behind Time and Newsweek, announced earlier this month that it was abandoning print for the Web and the 100-year-old newspaper the Christian Science Monitor announced plans recently to do the same.

I don’t know about you, but I think spammers are below used car salesmen on the food chain. I think the people who hire spammers are below used car salesmen, too. I think that someone should publish lists of the companies that hire spammers and include the names and addresses of their employees, not unlike Megan’s Law websites requiring registered sex offenders.

Companies could brag, “Spammers and people who have ever hired spammers will never work for us.”

Come to think about it, I think it insults the food chain to include spammers among them.

eWeek reports:

Convicted penny stock e-mail hustler Eddie Davidson kills his wife and young daughter before taking his own life just days after escaping from a federal minimum security prison.

Convicted spam king Eddie Davidson has committed suicide after killing his wife and 3-year-old daughter, according to media reports. Just five days ago, Davidson, the infamous online hustler of penny stocks, escaped from federal prison in Florence, Colo.

According to a story by the Denver Post, Davidson, 35, was found dead in the driveway of a home near Bennett, Colo., an apparent gunshot suicide victim. In a 2006 silver Toyota Sequoia located in the driveway, authorities found the bodies of Davison’s wife and toddler, also gunshot victims. An unidentified teenager survived the killing spree, as did an infant in the backseat of the SUV.

Davidson escaped from the minimum security prison at Florence on July 20. Davidson was just two months into a 21-month federal sentence for his role in sending millions of e-mails promoting questionable penny stocks. The Rocky Mountain News reported that Davidson forced his wife to help him escape from the minimum security facility.

The newspaper also reported that the teenager who was wounded was Davidson’s daughter, who escaped the murder scene and was lucid enough to tell authorities what had happened.

“What a nightmare, and such a coward. Davidson imposed the death penalty on family members for his own crime,” U.S. Attorney Troy Eid told the newspaper.

Davidson was sentenced on April 28. In addition to his nearly two-year prison sentence, Davidson was ordered to pay $714,139 in restitution to the IRS. As part of the restitution, Davidson had agreed to forfeit property he purchased, including gold coins, with the ill-gotten proceeds of his offense.

According to government documents, Davidson conducted his spamming operation from July 2002 through April 2007. The primary nature of Davidson’s business consisted of providing promotional services for companies by sending large volumes of unsolicited commercial e-mail.

Davidson’s original spamming activities were provided on behalf of companies to promote watches, perfume and other items. Beginning in the middle of 2005, Davidson sent spam on behalf of an unidentified Texas company to promote the sale of the company’s stock. The company generated its income through selling stock on behalf of small companies on the public market.

Davidson, aided by several subcontractors, sent hundreds of thousands of unsolicited e-mail messages to potential purchasers throughout the United States and the world touting the excellent investment opportunities the stock offered.

The e-mail messages contained false header information, which concealed the actual sender from the recipient of the e-mail. Davidson operated his spamming activities from his personal residence in Bennett, where he had a large network of computers and servers that facilitated his business.

A new form of spam disguised as an Adobe Picture Document Format (PDF) attachment has been reported. The spam takes on the appearance of a legitimate business email containing an attached PDF file.

The PDF features the file name ‘username_report.pdf’ – the username in the file name is the same as the email recipient’s name (taken from their email address). The personalisation of the attachment file name makes it appear more legitimate.

The new spam technique was first used in a recent pump ‘n dump spam outbreak that promoted a German company’s stock. According to the Marshal TRACE team, we can now expect to see ongoing use of PDF attachments to communicate spam messages.

“Spammers are struggling to find ways to fool spam filters and get their messages into people’s inboxes,” said Bradley Anstis, Director of Product Management, Marshal. “Using a PDF file as the vehicle for the spam message is an attempt to do just that, as spammers believe that many anti-spam solutions largely ignore PDF files.

“As we recently reported, pump ‘n dump spam has declined dramatically and part of the reason for this is overuse of this method. Users are more savvy and can more readily identify a financial scam. With the recent PDF spam outbreak, the spammers have attempted to add credibility and legitimacy to their messages in an attempt to fool users,” said Anstis.

“The fact that the message contains a PDF attachment, which is a very common business-related file format, is designed to lower the recipient’s suspicions that the message might be spam. We are expecting to see a lot more of PDF spam. The recent pump ‘n dump spam case promoting the German company’s stocks marks the beginning.”

According to Anstis, in the past, spammers avoided this kind of spamming method because attaching file types like PDFs greatly increased the size of the message. Historically spammers used their own servers to send out spam and were inclined to keep the spam size small, enabling them to send out more messages.

Now with the widespread use of zombie networks and spambots, the spammers are less concerned with the size of the message. The spammers have tens of thousands of infected PCs at their command and are able to move large volumes of spam of this type.

At least it’s not a virus, though with PDFs, it’s easy enough to embed a URL that’ll go to a virus-laden site.

Al Gore still needs to work on curtailing all that “dead tree version” media on his desk.

Fair(y) Use Tale: AMAZING video cuts up Disney to explain copyright

Bucknell prof Eric Faden has produced the most amazing video mashup I’ve ever seen: “A Fair(y) Use Tale” cuts together thousands of extremely short clips from dozens of Disney cartoons, lifting indivudal words and short phrases to spell out an articulate, funny, and thoroughly educational lesson on how copyright works. This is the most subversive and hilarious use of Disney material I’ve ever seen — and there’s even a really smart chapter about why Faden used Disney material to make his film. This should be required viewing in every K-12 classroom in the country.

Link to:

• Coral Cache link to MP4 download
• Stanford page
• another mirror

For your immediate gratification, while it lasts:

Walking is too slow and I really don’t like getting “dead arm” from shlepping my laptop, books and other stuff.

I live in Los Angeles and the notion of a big wet spot on my back from using a backpack isn’t appealing, either.

Is it safe to just get a rear bike rack and bungee-cord my laptop in a padded case? Any bicycle commuters out there with tips.

Yeah, I could go full-metal-bike geek and drop $130 on a set of Arkel briefcase bags but maybe there’s a cheaper solution that would work? I almost want some kind of hybrid pannier where I can take a bag of groceries on one side and my laptop bag on the other.