The Article Writer

For the record: this isn’t a paid advertisement although you will find this article under the Paid Advert category. I don’t want to incur the wrath of the Google gods for doing something that violates their TOU.

What this article is about is PayPerPost and ReviewMe, two paid blogging models that are popular with some bloggers. I’ve participated in both programs previously, but discontinued paid blogging about the same time that Google announced that penalties were forthcoming. Penalties or not, I was no longer interested in monetizing my blogs through paid posting.

Matthew Mullenweg, who is one of the architects behind WordPress, recently discussed on his Photo Matt blog TechCrunch’s decision not to accept PayPerPost/IZEA advertising after surveying their readership. Mullenweg added, “Their readers made the right decision and voted that it would be disingenuous to accept advertising from a company that, in Michael’s words, pollutes the blogosphere.”

I realize that the words uttered were from Michael Arrington who has a “history” of airing his overwhelmingly negative opinions about PayPerPost, founder Ted Murphy, and the PPP model. Oddly, TechCrunch works closely with TextLinkAds, the company who started ReviewMe. I’m not sure why one business model would be different enough to justify then the other one or whether what PPP does pollutes the internet, while ReviewMe is deemed acceptable.

I’m not taking a position in this debate, but I would hate to be in Ted Murphy’s shoes as the entire PPP model is under attack (talk about job insecurity!) Google has penalized bloggers who use PayPerPost and Murphy is finding himself responding to these attacks by leaving comments (diplomatic ones, at that) on blogs discussing PPP.

Google has changed the way that many blogs do business, leaving some bloggers scrambling to make up for lost revenue. It’ll be interesting to see whether the paid posting model can survive or whether it will be abandoned by bloggers, advertisers, and by the companies providing this service themselves.

Colleges and universities the world over are battling a problem that is nearly out of control on some campuses. No, I am not talking about binge drinking, a serious problem in its own right, but about plagiarism, something that has worsened considerably since internet usage has become commonplace. Fortunately, a plagiarism checking service is doing its part to help schools check online for plagiarism, making it easier for colleges and universities to master what has become an insidious headache.

Plagiarism and Academia

Plagiarism has always been a problem in academia. Students, even professors, seeking a short cut will sometimes resort to cheating in order to finish up an important project or to complete a lengthy paper. When cheating has been uncovered, students have been dismissed from school and depending on how widespread the scandal was the school has been left with a black eye.

The Rise of the Internet

The 21st century has brought with it a boom in the way that knowledge is accumulated and shared. Today’s students have virtually no need to go to their local library to conduct research; instead much of the information needed to write a term paper can be found right online. With its ease of use the internet has fueled the plagiarism fires considerably as entire sites have been developed to sell students complete papers. Also, the cutting and pasting of web content is one more way that information can be lifted off of the internet and pasted to a paper.

The Professor’s Dilemma: Policing or Teaching?

The plague of plagiarism has not stopped academia from responding to the problem although the policing time is impacting teaching time at many schools. Fortunately, a document checking service can check every paper before it is submitted to make sure that it is free of plagiarism. This college paper checking system compares every single submitted paper to language found on the continuously updated internet, via the Gutenberg Project, Proquest where more than 5 million previous academic papers have been submitted and through an intra-institutional archive. From all three sources a report is generated to show where plagiarism could exist.

University Paper Checking Done Right

A university paper checking system makes good sense as it can benefit schools and students alike. Even if there was no intention of plagiarism, the plagiarism checking service can show where a citation has been left out allowing a student to correct the problem prior to submitting the paper. Yes, even when a student has all of the right intentions a mistake could raise attention to an error that could be mistaken for outright plagiarism. No student should be falsely accused and this plagiarism checking service makes certain that all mistakes are caught which could turn into a problem that neither student or academia wants to see take place.

Sponsored Post

---

Photo Credit: Aiyaz Kidwai; Lehore, Pakistan

I thought that Flickr was a free site and I realize that it is, indeed, free. However, the Flickr folks (huh?) are seizing on an opportunity to help Flickr fanatics sell their photos too. Not only can you stick your photos online, but now you can harness a ready and willing pool of buyers through their site.

This is good news for people like me who often will look for stock photos to supplement my many sites. There is a shareable client view of lightbox to provide feedback on image selection. This means you can vote on the photos by slapping a “heart” or “hate” image next to it. A great way to let photographers know what you think about their work.

What is the best part of all of this? You get royalty free photographs based on Creative Commons, archived for public inspection at any time.

I believe that Flickr just may have come up with a decent alternative to expensive stock photograph sites. Isn’t competition good?

This is a sponsored post.