Thanks to all those counterfeit copies of Vista and other software being sold, Microsoft has now co-opted its customers as a main line of defense against counterfeiting its software. Yes, that’s right. You and I have now been handed our FBI badges by M$ to aid them in fighting counterfeit software.

SiliconRepublic.com: Microsoft customers bust software pirates

The biggest counterfeit software seizure in history took place yesterday in China when the FBI and the Chinese authorities worked together to arrest 25 people after seizing US$500m worth of pirated CDs and DVDs.

What do you think about that?

After reviewing the Sponsored Reviews a few months ago, and getting a great comment response from Jarrod Hunt who promised to tackle the problems I had experienced. There have been a number of improvements in the way that the site operates, but I recently checked my stats. They are not impressive.

Out of a total 40 possible projects, I have managed to complete only 7.5%. Another 25% have been rejected (which is fine – I’m glad that the advertiser took the time to look at my offer!).

But the underlying problem with SR’s review system still remains. In fact, the situation seems to get worse, not better as nearly 2/3rds of the reviews that I have responded have either gone unanswered or simply expired.

This is a significant failure to make deals on the part of the advertiser, the blogger, and the intermediary (ie. SR itself). Now this is a pity… Especially since each time that a deal fails to be made, SR’s potential for a fee disappears. Moreover, success in the first campaign would encourage SR’s advertisers and bloggers to come back more often, and do even more deals!

Jarrod, you need to find a way to speed up the dealing system; eliminate some of the reasons that campaigns go unfulfilled; and build confidence in the site! SR has a lot of potential to offer a good alternative to ReviewME, but it is shooting itself in the foot right now!

Many people encourage goal setting as a means to enabling wealth and creating targets to measure success by. I am not one of them. I wish I was. But goals expressed in numbers just don’t interest me. I don’t know why.

I have set goals in this blog, but sometimes I seem so far away from achieving them, that I have a tendency to give up right before I could achieve something. So I’m writing this posting to remind myself of my goals.

 Step 1: Remind yourself of where you are

Right now, my blog is attracting about 900 uniques per 30 days. It has an Alexa/Technorati Ranking of about 110K with daily upticks. In ten months, I have successfully created $4,500 in additional income (though some of the sources pre-existed the blog), with approximately 63% generated since September 1st, 2006 from new sources.

The remaining 37% was from bank accounts, stocks and our business (though, in fact, 2 out 3 of these actually registered a significant increase since the same date). You could say that even that second batch benefited from my increased scrutiny. My bank account interest has doubled since I consolidated my accounts, and created additional term deposits. My dividends have increased by 40%, too, as I have sought additional cash by selling underperforming stocks to buy better performers. The only underperformer this year has been our business. How it improves only time will tell.

Step 2: Consider your current goals and timescale

Step 3: Set your new goals and timescale

Step 4: Evaluate your goals and repeat steps 1 ~ 4 as necessary.