Techcrunch reports that Realplayer will make it very easy for you to “rip” copywritten videos from YouTube and other places. I’ve written about how this is going on before with other tools, and you should know, dear reader, that it is one of my blog’s most highly trafficked posts. That shows me that this type of thing is something people want.

RealNetworks have announced a new version of RealPlayer that includes one-click video ripping.

The free downloadable video player will allows users to save and organize video files in all major formats including Flash, QuickTime, RealMedia and Window Media and will support video ripping from sites such as YouTube, Google, Yahoo!, Brightcove, AOL and The New York Times.

I’ve hated Realplayer for I think close to 7-8 years now, ever since the beginning of them. Now I will hate it even more. Allowing people to one-click download my content so that they can possibly use it for themselves, or whatever… just sucks.

I have to agree with this comment at Techcrunch.

I wouldn’t install RealPlayer if it also simultaneously cured cancer, brought world peace and enlarged my penis.

More at Techmeme.

I’m not sure what John Chow and his crew aren’t understanding? It’s pretty darn obvious to me, and something I’ve been warning about for a long time now.

Read my lips. Google doesn’t like when you try to manipulate them. Especially when you flaunt it in public.

John has been doing wrong in Google’s eyes, and the backlash is just starting to come about from the Google Gods. I don’t guess this… I know this. I’m not making this up. I’ve talked to people at high levels at Google. Listen to me… or don’t.

DO NOT TRY TO MANIPULATE GOOGLE. DO NOT SELL LINKS FOR PR. DO NOT DO ANYTHING EXCEPT WRITE HIGH-QUALITY, HELPFUL ORIGINAL CONTENT.

Anything else you do against that mission statement is a mistake, and your site/blog will falter long-term once they catch on to you, and they will catch on, sooner than you think. A massive clean-up is underway, and the crackdowns are beginning to come fast and furious.

From John’s post today…

I can only assume the changes are designed to discount all the waves of review for linkback, technorati trains, alexa trains, etc.

Don’t assume. It’s 100% true. Read above.

With the algorithm change, I’ve decided to put a stop to my review for linkback promotion. All reviews received to date will be posted, but I will no longer accept new reviews. I may bring the promotion back at a later date with some changes. However, I’m going to take a wait and see for now.

Why stop now? Why not keep selling (insert sarcasm here) highly relevant links on your blog like you do about “Free male enhancement” and “Creditcheck”.

Don’t you get it? Google does not like that you are selling links to not relevant sites, and you are/am being punished for it. This has always been my problem with John Chow. I have nothing, nada, zip against him. I’m sure he’s a great person. I simply question his tactics and more specifically, his preaching of the absolutely wrong long-term “tips and tricks” to aspiring Internet marketers and bloggers.

His approach is wrong. Period. Long-term, and now shorter-term, you will fail using his approach.

Listen to me. Stop trying to “game” Google. Stop trying to make money off of passing page rank and non-related content. Just stop.

Start writing good content. Start solving problems. Start thinking about how to help a Google user.

Or do what John does. I’ve said my peace.

Here’s a snippet of me talking about bloggers as the next super-affiliates at the last Affiliate Summit.

Yeah, I could have been a bit more dynamic. I wasn’t feeling well that morning. I’m usually way more upbeat.

I make the argument that the webmasters of 10-years ago are now the ones who are reaping the benefits of online riches. They learned how to be online marketers and capitalized on their knowledge. The same is true for bloggers today. In time they will learn how to become online marketers.

The difference is, bloggers have it much, much easier than the webmasters did. Trillions of pages of user generated content from bloggers will flood the Internet making it unavoidable that you will at some point in a search find blog content. When those bloggers figure out how to effectively monetize that content, they will reap the rewards.

Sam pointed me to AffiliateHug.com. This is great stuff. Who doesn’t want a hug? Now if I could get him to give me One good thought in return…

In conjunction with Affiliate Summit, Scott “Uncle Scooter” Hazard, President of Brightside Media and inventor of the ScooterSqueeze™ will be on hand to dole out his world-famous hugs during Affiliate Summit’s Affiliate Meet Market on Sunday, July 8th at the Intercontinental Hotel in Miami.

For your donation of just $20.00, you’ll be helping the March of Dimes continue their fight to save babies from premature birth. You’ll also get something back in return that will make you feel like a million bucks!

While I’ve never actually been on the receiving end of a ScooterSqueezeâ„¢, I will gladly give him my donation and credit for doing something positive across the board. This is socially conscious marketing at its best.

More at Affiliatetip blog. Also, hats off to Alexbet for an awesome design.

Be careful not to try so hard to make money with your blog. Sometimes, like in the example I’m talking about below, you can do “too much” and as I’ve said before, you will start to lose your credibility and readership.

Read this comment on a post over at Problogger. #18 comment to be exact. He’s talking about JohnChow.com. The post is talking about using donations to monetize your blog.

I immediately thought of John Chow as an example of how NOT to do this.

While he does have a loyal readership he breaks a few of your other rules:

1. Already Monetizes in Other Ways - when I saw he put ‘buy me a beer’ on his blog I got really angry. He boasts every month about how much he earns and then has the arrogance to ask us for a few extra dollars?

2. Offers Little Value - he used to write some good valuable content but lately his blog has become largely about doing paid reviews, swapping links (in the name of ‘reviews’), boasting about his earnings. The actual tips about making money online are few and far between.

3. Greed - he’s recently even started charging people to leave comments without no-follow tags.

4. Buy me a beer on every post - I’m already sick of seeing that link at the bottom of every post.

Thanks for your tips on this Darren. I hope others do it in a more sensible way.

The reader is right. It is only a matter of time before a loyal readership decides that enough is enough. They start asking themselves, “Is this blogger really trying to help me, or just make money?” When they think the latter, they begin to question the blogger’s credibility and as soon as that happens a loyal reader can fade away fast.

I’ve had my issues with John Chow before, particularly way back in November of 2006 right here on this blog when I wrote about how this could actually happen to John.

Do you want to be known as a thought-leader, well respected in your community… or that internet marketing guy who pushes stuff just to make a buck?

Is that starting to happen? I don’t want to say I told you so. I’d rather use it as an example for other bloggers to learn from.

Promotion and marketing is all fine and good. Heck, I do it all over the place. The difference is that I’m not writing frequent content specifically to make money (paid reviews, etc…). Rather, I’m trying to help people. Has John’s blog gone too far?

John Battelle talks about how Google is killing journalism? Based on this story.

The Chronicle’s announcement earlier this month that 100 newsroom jobs will be slashed in the coming weeks in the face of mounting financial woes represents just the latest chapter in a tragic story of traditional journalism’s decline.

Reportedly losing an estimated $1 million a week, the paper’s owner, the Hearst Corp., concluded it had no recourse but to trim costs by laying off reporters, editors and other skilled professionals, or offering buyouts to the most seasoned journalists in order to induce them to leave. The cuts reportedly will amount to a quarter of The Chronicle’s editorial staff…

This quote from a commenter on his site.

The rise of the Internet has produced sharp declines in traditional advertising revenues in the printed press. Free online advertising competitors such as Craigslist.com have sharply undermined classified advertising as a traditional source of revenue. While many newspapers have attempted mightily to forge a presence on the Web — including The Chronicle, whose terrific sfgate.com is among the top 10 most trafficked news sites in America — revenue from online advertising is paltry compared to that from traditional print sources. As a result, newspapers such as The Chronicle must make staff cuts to survive — and increasingly it is highly skilled professional journalists committed to seeking the truth and reporting it, independently and without fear or favor, who must go.

The commenter goes on to write:

I see a world where corporations such as Google and Yahoo continue to enrich themselves with little returning to journalistic enterprises, all this ultimately at the expense of legions of professional reporters across America, now out of work because their employers in “old” media could not afford to pay them…..

….the time has come for corporations such as Google to accept more responsibility for the future of American journalism, in recognition of the threat “computer science” poses to journalism’s place in a democratic society.

It is no longer acceptable for Google corporate executives to say that they don’t practice journalism, they only work to provide links to “content providers.” Journalism is not just a matter of jobs, and dollars and cents lost. It is a public trust vital to a free society. It stands to reason that Google and corporations like it, who indirectly benefit so enormously from the expensive labor of journalists, should begin to take on greater civic responsibility for journalism’s plight. Is it possible for Google to somehow engage and support the traditional news industry and important local newspapers more fully, for example, to become a vital part of possible solutions to this crisis instead of a part of the problem?

Interesting to say the least. Scott Karp is right though, “Google Didn’t Destroy The Newspaper Business, The Web Did“.

But let’s be clear — the New York Times can’t monetize that search-driven readership with the same monopoly pricing that it enjoyed in print. But that’s not Google’s fault. That’s the free market.

The newspaper business is based on monopoly control over the distribution of news and information in a given region. The Web destroyed those regional monopolies by making it cheap and easy to distribute any information anywhere in the world instantaneously. The car killed the horse and buggy industry. Digital cameras killed the film industry. Technology happens — but technology itself isn’t destroying journalism. It’s simply destroying the business that subsidized journalism.

Mathew Ingram has more.

I’m sorry, this is just awesome. Microsoft got cool again, in an instant. It’s that easy.

Look at the Techmeme coverage. I think everyone else agrees.

This is only the first step. The free ride is over. I told you so.

Some online publishers may get an unwelcome jolt on June 1st. Google, which provides thousands of ads to websites through it’s AdSense program, will shut off adds to certain websites beginning Friday.

Sites which are heavy in ads but light in content may be bumped from Google’s AdSense program. Several so-called online publishers who have ads with little content have already received emails saying their websites will be dropped from the AdSense program. Google says these sites influence search results, not necessarily for the good of users, by pointing users searching for specific products to these sites. Once they click through, the user may get the information they are looking for but they also may only find an ad or picture related to that product.

The change is scheduled for June 1. Google says, the clean up will affect the Internet, primarily by cleaning up search results so that users don’t click through to a site filled with ads but with no content to support the ads.

Read full report at Bizreport.com.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign team gets it. This video/contest is everything it should be. It’s funny, smart and generally entertaining.

But most of all, it’s a fresh approach to politics and it shows us a side of the candidate that we don’t see… the human side. This is what YouTube and online video is for, and this video is a great example of how to do it right.

Like Hillary or not, you’re looking at the future of politics in the United States. No longer will we be ok with seeing our candidates on TV only. We’re going to EXPECT them to be online, in our face, talking to us… asking us to talk back to them via our own videos, forums and blogs.

Future political decisions will be won online, by the candidate with the best creative team, and the candidate who can actually pull it off without it looking fake/genuine. Stake your bets on which candidate of yours you think could pull something like this off without looking fake. Can they? See them running scared?

Yet another reason why politicians are becoming more and more like rockstars. You MUST be able to perform if you want the job.

Disclaimer: I’m not so sure Hillary does pull it off.

I’m the “blogging captain” at the Affiliate Summit media room this summer in Miami. It’s going to be a great event, with ZEfrank keynoting. You do not want to miss this show.

Not coming? What? How about coming as a member of the press? But, you’re asking yourself… Do I qualify as press? Can I get a press pass? Not sure?

All good questions that needed to be answered. So I asked Shawn Collins and here’s what he said.

Who’s qualified to get a press pass for the Affiliate Summit? Should I apply if I’m a blogger?

Shawn Collins: We don’t have any hard and fast rules – the application process is open to anybody. We are especially interested in bloggers who concentrate on affiliate marketing and post a couple or three times a week (or more).

What exactly do I get when I get a press pass?

Shawn Collins: The press pass entitles you to a full conference pass to Affiliate Summit, which includes access to all sessions, breakfast and lunch on July 9-10, and access to the blogger’s room, where there will be Internet hook-ups, workspace, coffee and water.

What is required of me if I get a press pass?

Shawn Collins: Just cover the conference – write about the sessions, network, vibe, rumors, etc. Note that if you just make a single post of a couple lines, you’re not likely to receive a press pass next time around.

So there you have it. Bloggers are invited to request press passes. What are you waiting for? Apply today.