I view Microsoft as just another big corporation and make fun of it when necessary, but some people are getting all bent out of shape over nothing. I’m talking about when Microsoft offered bloggers a free laptop loaded with Vista in exchange for a review of the new OS. That’s perfectly normal, but for some reason it’s causing quite a stir online.

You can read the comments at places like ProBlogger and istartedsomething.com. The majority of readers are flipping out about how it’s wrong and unethical to have people review your products. I don’t get it.

To be honest, I think it’s a great idea. Companies started this long before the Internet, so I’m not sure what the big deal is now.

As consumers, you should be happy! Microsoft is asking for reviews of their new OS. If you don’t like it, you can tell them, and then they can make it better!

This is one case where I’m on Microsoft’s side (as is Scoble.)

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If you are promoting Dell, be careful.  If you don’t adhere strictly to their terms, they’ll come after you!

Read more in The Inquirer.

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That’s the question that comes to mind when I think about the latest lawsuits in the affiliate world, with the most prominent lawsuit launched by MySpace a few days ago. If you haven’t heard, MySpace is cracking down on an affiliate network that allegedly phished accounts and sent spam bulletins to millions of Myspace users. But while this will discourage bigger companies from allowing spam, what will it do to discourage the spammers themselves?

If big lawsuits could stop spam, we’d have a lot less email to deal with. But unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. Maybe in an ideal world…

No matter what, someone is going to be spamming and someone is going to be paying them. And if there are lots of people on Myspace, Myspace will get spammed. That’s one of those laws. Like a cross between “If you build it, they will come” and “Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.” Or something like that, because they built Myspace pretty big and stuff is going wrong!

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For more about the lawsuits, see WickedFire, more WickedFire, and BusinessWire.

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If you are sick of PayPerPost, Blogvertise, and the other services that let you buy blog posts promoting your site, I can understand. They definitely have some more bugs to work out.

But I recently found something new to try: Blogem Up

This site is similar, but it will hopefully sort the good blogs from the bad. I can’t say too much because it is still new, but I’ll hope for the best. I’ll post a full report once I familiarize myself with the service a bit more.

(But if you want to try it, now is the best time. The first 50 advertisers sign-up for free!)

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Now it is easier than ever for an aspiring sleazebag to get started in Internet Marketing!

The only thing you need to know is how to bullshit a sales letter to build up undeserved hype for your product. It used to require hours of toiling over buzzwords and bold text, but now it’s as simple as clicking a button.

http://www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html

Just go there and hit the “make bullshit” button, copy the phrases into your push-button generated sales letter, add some outrageous claims, and take advantage of newbies. That is the formula for success right there.

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