The Story

Starting December 1st, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) “will require bloggersto clearly disclose any freebies or payments they get from companies for reviewing their products.” So when a gadget maker sends around the latest hot handset, any site which does a review will have to say “Yes, I got this for free as a review unit.” The FTC commissioners voted 4-0 in support of this new regulation, and fines for non-compliance can result in fines of up to $11,000 per violation.

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Disclosure is incredibly important to the review process because reviews are a tool which a large base of consumers (large meaning more people than who took part in writing the review) use to evaluate whether or not they should make a purchase. The fundamental problem with reviews is that they will always have some bias in them. If Apple were to send the TechGeist office a Macbook Pro to review, we’d do what we can, but we’d also tell you that none of us regularly use Macs.

The problem is bigger than that, and can often boil down to very specific tastes. To me, lower weight is worth a higher price in a …

Now a full twenty four hours into the Google Wave preview, you have to sit back and wonder how the hell you are going use Wave. For all the bluster, what is actually useful? It’s anyone’s guess, or really any developer’s ability, to guide the product’s future. But, from a blogger’s perspective, Wave opens up seemingly one hundred doors for future and current use. If you do not blog, you might find this post a bit stultifying.

Live Blogging For An Audience:

If you have enough contacts in Wave, you can allow in an audience while you write. TG tried this today, as intrepid reporter Holden Page attempted to write a post on Cliqset live for some of the technorati elite (Scoble et al). He described it as feeling naked. Make a mistake, everyone sees you goof. Not pretty, but I did learn a lot about how other people write. I nearly never delete a whole paragraph. Holden did twelve times. Aside from the human aspect, the live post felt like watching a concert, but with words. For the more straight-shooting blogger, this might become a normal thing to do.

Also, when writing for …

Dear TechGeist readers,

Some of you have asked, where in the name of Thor is the TG Wave review? We really do owe you an apology. Google has yet to see it fit to get us invites. The whole TG team signed up right when it was possible, but after much waiting, no avail. We have had other people such as @atul, and @rickbert send us invites, to no avail.

We keep trying things and availing not.

But, we do promise that indeed our review is coming. The very moment we get in, the fingers will fly. We do apologize for keeping you waiting. Stay tuned.

There is nothing so fun, as a piece of acerbic, almost bitterly vitriolic, satire from one company to another. 37Signals, long a profitable company, and makers of the ever popular BaseCamp SAAS suite, has unleashed a note proclaiming their new valuation at 100,000,000,000 after two VC firms have pooled resources to purchase 0.000000001% of 37Signals, for a total investment of one dollar, or one hundred cents, one thousand tenths of cents, or even, if you dare, ten thousand hundredths of cents. No matter how you look at it, this is quite a bold investment.

Yesterday at the 140 Twitter Conference in LA, Biz Stone laid to rest the constant worry of invasive advertising has been laid to rest, at least for this year. In response to the topic, Stone said “We’re just not thinking about that just yet.” Of course, Twitter has just taken a new round of financing valuing the company at around $1 billion dollars. What you can take from both pieces, is that indeed Twitter has a monetization plan in place, it’s just that advertising is not it.

Of course, there are a number of companies that are working on advertising on Twitter, but for the moment they remain 100% third party, away from the main Twitter corporate team. You almost wonder if Twitter is going to miss the boat on one of these ventures, and have to buy something back later for a premium that they could have just built for themselves.

Twitter is, at least we have been told, is prepping a system of paid accounts for brand, companies, and other power users to extract more value out of the system. This will surely raise large sums for the company, and will …

What Is Google Up To: Google has just implemented today a new feature to the Google toolbar, which has an install base in the millions, called SideWiki to allow users of the toolbar too comment universally across websites and independently from the publisher who owns the content being commented on. Kutano, Glue, DotSpots, and other are working in a somewhat similar space, but none have 1% of the reach that Google can bring to the table over night.

The product works as an expandable sidebar that will be included in all upcoming downloads of the Google toolbar. You can download the toolbar here if you want to jump the gun. Google has now immediate plans to monetize the service.

What This Means: Well, several startups just took a few shots of vodka to get through the day. Given that there are any number of startups working in commenting on websites, and another batch working on commenting off websites, having Google come storming into their space is anything but welcome. Even more so, what an odd move by Google. It seems that …

1. Have the words “social,” “media,” or “expert” in your biography

One of the best things about Twitter is that there is no way to become an expert at it. Other shocking point, we are all using social media on Twitter. Let’s see, you think that you have a skill that only you have, and you want me to follow you because of it? Like hell, sir. Seriously, these people are a plague.

2.  Stupid-Ass Name

There are so many ways to go wrong here. Keep numbers to a minimum, no …

Good morning TechGeist readers, and happy Monday. Given that this week is going to be quite action packed, we wanted to give you a heads up as to what coverage is coming. We will be covering both “140 | The Twitter Conference” and “DemoFall09” in great detail. Also, this week should mark the induction of our newest contributing author, but more on that later.

TechGeist loves to hit the road as often as we can. Given the popularity of our coverage of both the TechCrunch50 and the Engadget Show, we are placing a new focus on heading to as many technology conferences as we can. All in all, keep your eyes tuned your RSS reader loaded, it’s going to be a hectic week.

Final thought, if you know of a hot event in your area that we might have missed, send us a note to info@techgeist.net, we want to hear about it. That’s all for now, get reading!

What is it like to get your first Digg front page? I can tell, and I have graphs. TechGeist recently hit the front page of Digg, and then the “Top In All Topics” list on the right of the homepage. We had a great run from the first wave, and then a second wave from hitting the to Digg section. Before we dig into the data, a big thank you to MediaTemple, who kept us up and alive throughout the influx, without a single hitch.

We hit the front page at almost exactly 8 pm, on the 18th of September. In the first hour, Digg sent us 3,700 hits. Total from 8pm to the end of that day from Digg: around 10,000. Not bad for the night shift. Traffic declined until 5 am, at which point we hopped onto the top Digg list. Traffic began to climb backc up until 10 am, when we did 2,100 hits  from Digg. The story finally reached  number six on the list, not too shabby for our first time on Digg. We eventually moved off the list and traffic began to …

What is a  spot on the Twitter suggested user list worth? If you are TechCrunch, you just found out. In the wake of the TwitterGate document scandal (with TechCrunch airing Twitter’s dirty laundry for all to see), TechCrunch was pulled from the list. To what effect? Well, to begin with, they will shortly be under 1,000,000 followers again. What else? Oh, its arch rivals remain on the list, possibly giving a free competitive edge over the venerable TechCrunch. Let’s take a look at the numbers.

It was never officially reported that TechCrunch was removed from the list. The closest that we got was a Robert Scoble-led discussion on the topic. Still, it is plain that they have been, and you can see the proof. Take a look at this chart (via @TwitterCounter, thank you) showing the Twitter trends for @RWW, @Mashable, and @TechCrunch. Note that all three rise at similar rates, and then TechCrunch flattens:

If that is not damning, then there is no such thing as a smoking gun. If you mouse over the dates, you will find that it was either on the 30th of July, …