Quote source : Yahoo! Finance

Rising gas prices are inspiring drivers to find new ways of protecting themselves against future increases–including buying gas in advance and investing in stocks that tend to rise along with the price of gasoline.

At MyGallons.com, the company makes those investments itself. Founder Steve Verona says that the company protects itself against future gas price increases through taking positions in the stock market. That way, customers can enjoy the simplicity of purchasing and redeeming gallons for an established amount and avoid experiencing market fluctuations themselves. Verona says the company doesn’t plan to make money on gas, but rather from the annual membership fee (about $30), the interest float on the money that is paid before the gas is redeemed, and advertising on its website.

It looks tempting on the surface, what with fuel prices hitting an all time high everyday. People want relief and want it quickly. However what bothers me is the very volatility of the stock market itself. Obviously this is a question that comes to mind sooner of later and here’s what they say :

Of course, gas prices could come down, which could turn any of these investment ideas into losing propositions. As with all investments consumers need to be prepared to stomach volatility.

But what if prices are currently at their peak and don’t go up again? They say that’s unlikely. “Very few analysts expect prices to come down…because current demand is increasing, while supply has stayed steady. We’re talking years, if not decades, before [proposed] solutions have any impact. In the interim, prices should continue to rise,” Verona says. He adds that if customers opt to drop out of the program, they can get a refund for their purchased gallons.

Now if rising fuel prices hasn’t already given you a scare, that last statement should. At the time of writing this post, oil prices have reached an all-time high of $144.00++. At the rate that it is increasing, it’s more than likely we’ll see it touch $200 by the end of 2008.

When (optimistically, I should say “IF”) that happens, I’d say MyGallons.com is going to be a very popular website indeed and we’ll see many similar services being set up in the near future.

For more answers to your questions about how this system works, visit MyGallons’ FAQ page.

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Quotes from :
Google Adsense Blog
Image from :
Business Week

Google Adsense announce that they will be retiring their Referrals program by the end of August :

We’re constantly looking for ways to improve AdSense by developing and supporting features which drive the best monetization results for our publishers. Sometimes, this requires retiring existing features so we can focus our efforts on the ones that will be most effective in the long term. For this reason, we will be retiring the AdSense Referrals program during the last week of August.

In asking publishers to remove the Referrals code from their websites, Adsense has also suggested the following monetization programs :

• Google Affiliate Network : As part of the integration of DoubleClick, the DoubleClick Performics Affiliate Network will now operate as the Google Affiliate Network for advertisers targeting users located in the United States. Similar to the AdSense Referrals program, the Google Affiliate Network enables publishers to apply for advertiser programs and get paid based on advertiser-defined actions instead of clicks or impressions. For further details, please visit: http://www.google.com/ads/affiliatenetwork/.
• AdSense for content ads : If you have less than three AdSense for content ad units on a page, you may wish to replace the referral ad units with standard AdSense for content ad units.

So if you have Adsense Referrals ads running on your website, best to make yourself a cup of coffee and get down to removing the code. Some of you will need to make yourself a pot of coffee if your site(s) are large.

I think it’s about time the Referrals program was laid to rest. Google’s implementation of the program wasn’t very good. I was very hopeful during my first couple of months with the Referrals programs - getting regular clicks and earnings - but that soon deteriorated to downright irritation. For those of you who have been publishing Adsense’ Referral Ads, you will know what I mean :

• If the ad that you chose is not available, there would be a big white empty space in your webpage.
• The solution to the problem above is to select the “Automatically choose fallback referral ads” option. However, this would likely result if lots of non-relevant ads showing up instead.
• The last I checked, there was still no way for publishers to create a list of preferred advertisers that Google would refer to when displaying Referrals ads. This meant that every time you wanted to select a new advertiser, you would have to go through the whole set up process which to me seemed like a total waste of time.
• Google’s Referral categorization was downright pathetic. You would see “Exercise equipment” ads in “Business services” and other totally mismatched advertisers and categories, which made it a real pain trying to find on-target advertisers

In any case, one thing I like about Google is that they’re not afraid to lay non-performing programs to rest. With Google’s purchase of Doubleclick, I’m sure they have lots of plans in store so as publishers, we shouldn’t really worry too much.

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Quote source : TimesOnline
Image souce : TimesOnline

EBay, the online auctioneer, is likely to face a barrage of lawsuits after it was ordered yesterday to pay €40 million (£31.5 million) in damages to LVMH, the French luxury goods group, for selling fake handbags, perfumes and haute couture.

The judges ruled that eBay had damaged the reputations of Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior Couture by selling counterfeit products.

And so eBay will be 35.1 milliion pounds poorer and I expect more money to leak from their coffers with all the lawsuits pending but I really wonder how it would be possible for eBay to verify the authenticity of every single item sold online? Their site’s one gigantic flea market!

Then again, that’s not my problem - it’s eBay’s. If I were a customer and I was duped into buying a fake Louis Vuitton, I guess I’d be pretty miffed, and I suppose eBay would be the one I’d target my cussing at.

LVMH should take a walk in the cities of Asia and see that the world doesn’t need eBay to peddle fakes. It’s doing fine without it.

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