If you listen to the radio online you may have heard some stations blacked out music today. They did this to raise awareness of what is happening with the Internet Radio Equality Act. Here is a condensed version  of the issue (SaveNetRadio)…

“On March 2, 2007 the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB), which oversees sound recording royalties paid by Internet radio services, increased Internet radio’s royalty burden between 300 and 1200 percent and thereby jeopardized the industry’s future. ”

These fees will basically put most if not all online radio stations out of business.

The major stations have started a coaliton to attempt to prevent the increase but there is no promise that it will work.

My solution to the issue is to find a provider in Canada. The CRB does not have any juristiction in Canada. There are a number of Canadian providers including us. If you would like a custom shoutcast solution for your radio then build one today.

It used to be that if you wanted to open up your own business, you either needed to take out a massive bank loan or you already had a significant amount of capital ready to invest. With the advent and continuing growth of the Internet, this is no longer the case. There are many different ways that you can make money online, whether it be starting up your own content-based website (like a blog), an e-commerce site (online store), or a website advertising your services (freelance writing in my case, but others have been known to do web development, creative work, and other things).

Starting your own business can be a daunting task and it’s one that you shouldn’t need to go at alone. Thankfully for young Canadian entrepreneurs — we’re talking about folks under the age of 35 — there are many free resources out there at your disposal! Here are three key websites that any young entrepreneur, particularly those looking to make money online, should bookmark.

John Chow dot Com is the personal blog of self-proclaimed dot com mogul John Chow. He was around before the first dot com bust and he managed to survive it relatively unscathed. While there are personal posts to be found on that site, he also offers a lot of advice for making money online, highlighting new ad networks, WordPress upgrades, and all sorts of other business opportunities. If you haven’t added John Chow dot Com to your RSS reader, you should definitely do that now.

The Young Entrepreneurs Association of Canada, according to their official website, is “a volunteer-driven non-profit organization whose mandate is to support young people in business. Aimed at business owners 35 and under, YEA provides members an opportunity to learn from each other’s experiences and take advantage of peer mentorship as they grow their businesses.” They have many programs and resources that will surely be helpful to any up-and-coming entrepreneur.

Business Development Canada (BDC) has a section dedicated to young entrepreneurs. They outline 5 steps to starting a business, as well as several consulting solutions like business plan development, financial planning, and business coaching.

Recently the owner of the Happy Cat Haven in Gibson asked if we could provide them with a solution to getting their site and email online. As we appreciate small (and large) furry animals alike we are now providing them and all of their four legged friends a place to stay on the Internet.

The Happy Cat Haven is a shelter for injured and sometimes abused cats. They provide love, medical care and shelter for these wonderful animals who in many cases have nowhere else to go.

If you would like to donate your services, time or your hard earned cash call Violet at Phone: (604) 886-2407.

I had the opportunity to review the OCZ Technology Rally 2 USB Flash Drive for The TechZone and I must say, this is one of the best thumb drives I have ever used. Gone are the days of archaic floppy drives, because with USB flash drives, you can store a lot more data — I was using the 4GB model — and it will be universally accepted by just about any computer, regardless of whether it is running on Windows or Mac. Of course, you already knew that part, so what exactly makes the Rally 2 so much better than other drives I’ve used in the past?

Well, one of the first things that struck me about this thumb drive is that it has very solid construction, thanks largely to the metal chassis. It feels very solid, and unlike other drives that use plastic housings, the Rally 2 doesn’t feel cheap at all. Performance was very good with a sustained data transfer rate of about 20MB/sec with virtually no dips in this rate throughout the HD Tune test. It’s also a nice plus that OCZ tossed in a free lanyard, so you can dangle this piece of memory from your neck. My only gripe is that it features a standard “capped” design, meaning there is a distinct possibility that you might lose the USB connector cover (which is also metal). It would have been nice to include some sort of mechanism to minimize that risk.

Overall, I was very happy with this USB Flash Drive and it comes highly recommended. That’s why I, without hesitation, gave it an Editor’s Choice Award.

Congratulations to this weeks geek Matt who wins our Fathers Day Geek questions. This weeks questions are:

1.  Who is this?

2.  Who is this?

3.  Who is this?

4.  Who is this?

5. What do these 4 have in common besides being in a similar industry?

As most of you know we are running a contest to give away a 22″ monitor if you vote for our blog at Bloggers Choice Awards. I received an email from a customer that was concerned that this may be unethical. Since receiving that email the following quote keeps running through my head…

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Is the contest unethical? I can understand how it can be seen as unethical and think it falls into a grey area. Ethics are usually black or white but here is why I think this one falls into a grey area.

Our original intention for the contest was to not buy votes but to reward those that read our blog who we thought would naturally vote for us. We did not expect to have the contest picked up from the blog sphere. So as you can see the intention was pure when we started but obviously that message may not have come through to everyone.

There really is no way to fix it now the contest is posted and if we pull it now that would be even more unethical. I will say this publicly if we were to win the Bloggers Choice Awards then we would decline it and explain to them why we won and that the next contender should win. I have tried to review the rules of the Bloggers Choice Awards but have not found any such rules on their site to date.

Lesson learned for me and future contests will not reward people for voting for us on anything.

As a reader of the blog did you feel it was unethical? If so why? or why not?