I agree with Loren. Ted Murphy isn’t evil as Arrington says. In fact, if you read my blog, you’ll know that I turned my opinion on Ted a long time ago and proclaimed him a fucking marketing genius.

Which, by the way is #1 on Google for that term now Ted.

And he continues to keep that moniker.

Case in point, watch Ted at MESH baiting Mke Arrington of Techcrunch.

Disclaimer: I’m on a panel at Postiecon in the fall. Looking forward to meeting Ted and learning how I can also be an evil fucking marketing genius too.

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.

In case you missed it, Google officially launched into the affiliate marketing business yesterday. Michael Arrington of TechCrunch says…

Affiliate marketing networks like Commission Junction and LinkShare are screwed. These networks also operate on a cost-per-action basis, mostly with online retailers. Even though some of them have scale, they will not have the ability to compete with Google on sheer size of network. Advertisers flock to volume, which drives average pricing up. When prices increase, publishers flock to the new platform because they’ll earn more. Look for serious publisher leakage from the big affiliate networks over time as this new product scales up. If you want to argue this point, note what happened to the stock price of Commission Junction’s parent company, ValueClick, today. And that’s even though the market has largely adjusted for this news already – this move to add PPA ads has been rumored for some time.

So is he right? Check out the Valueclick stock price dropping yesterday afternoon.

You thought maybe Mike wasn’t sure about his belief? Later, in the comments he says…

Google is going to eat them alive.

I’ll reserve my opinion and default to much smarter people.

Thanks to Sam for pointing this out to me. I wrote about this last night here.

Judging by the first comment at TC (below), I can already see where this will be going. Not good for MBL.

Holy Christ, what kind of developer doesn’t encrypt their login cookies? That’s not a security hole, it’s just awful programming.

Get your popcorn.

Ok, I don’t think it’s as funny as my CompleteRipoff.com, but it’s pretty darn funny.
Get an account at UselessAccount.com. Via Techcrunch.

The trick to any good humor or hoax site is an attention to detail and a seriousness about your work. Useless Account is the best recent example I’ve seen. It’s clear, for example, that more work has gone into this joke than many of the startups we see every day.

The site has a single function – to create a new account. “Open ID is a pipe dream” the site argues, which also has a fake quote from “TechLunch” that says “Slightly more useful than Twitter.” Once you’ve created your account, you can log in, and edit your account. That’s it. The reason this is really, really funny (for us) is because that’s what we do all day – create new account after new account at every new Internet startup that comes along. I am a seriously huge expert on account creation.

Pretty darn funny. I love satire. Full coverage at Techmeme.

I just wrapped my first radio show of 2007, making this the 4th show so far. You can listen to the latest show here on my Blogtalkradio host page.

Not much to tell about today’s show. No callers yet again, but my stats showed at least 10 live listeners. C’mon people, call in and get your free stuff!

A reminder, the show is on every Tuesday at 1pm est. Please call me! hehe.

If you’re an avid reader of www.techcrunch.com as I am, you’ll know that the comments are always sometimes the very best part of the content. I would argue that most of the time they are even better. That’s no dig on TC, but rather a compliment to the community they have enabled over there.

So when a story breaks on TC that I am interested in, I follow the comments, and the trackbacks, very closely. TC doesn’t have a “subscribe to comments” feature, so I have to keep coming back to the site and refreshing the page. They do offer an rss comment feed, but I don’t use feed readers.

The other thing that I do is click on the commentor’s name to go to thier site. Why? Because it usually leads me to a blog that I find interesting.

WHAT I WOULD BUILD TODAY IF I HAD TIME & MONEY

What I want is a TechCrunch conversation tracker. I imagine it as a mini TechMeme.com. Not just a comment tracker, but rather a “conversation tracker”. A tool that would allow me to subscribe to a blog entry, then actively go out and find the conversations related to that entry, and here’s the key… it would bring them to me via email, or a landing page built just for me.

It doesn’t have to be a solution just for TechCrunch either. I would like it to be used for me on any content I wished to track. I wrote more about this idea at ReveNews a while back when I gave tips to Icerocket.com.

2. Bribe the bloggers with vanity. I would build a system that helps bloggers get noticed. The #1 thing that all bloggers want is attention, so give it to them. Build a solution that helps the blogger be found and rewarded for good quality niche content. Push that content in a Techmeme style layout out to vertical markets. Focus on the bloggers as your customers and solve their problems and stroke their egos while providing them, and their readers with a simple interface that pushes the discussions out to each interested party.