Here are some other places you can find Two Dubs online,
Two Dubs LLC at Myspace
Two Dubs LLC on Facebook
Two Dubs LLC on Google Maps

These sites are typical 1990's internet schemes, and I can't believe they are still around and actually advertising on the radio. The general theme is that they have many offers that you can complete, from signing up for credit cards, to signing up for subscription offers. For everything that you sign up for, most of which cost you money, they get a commission. They then use that commission to buy you a laptop and keep the remaining commission left over. However, it takes a massive amount of offers to actually qualify for them to send you a free laptop.

Free laptops sound nice and dandy, but it would probably be easier for you to get a job and buy a nice $600 laptop from dell.com. The site is usually a scam and please don't write comments asking where you can get a free laptop, because you simple can't. There is no such thing as a free laptop, sorry to inform you.

The semester is almost coming to an end, now being the last week of class with only finals week left! Planning on doing some nice relaxing over winter break back in Green Bay and going out west to Big Sky Montana to do some big mountain snowboarding, oh yea oh yea!

Thats about it for now, just wanted to make a post to see if this blog still works, which it does, so awesome!

What was played?

Bela and the Flecktones played a wide variety of songs, a lot of their later hits, such as Locks of Dread, which I captured on video, to some of their more recent hits of their last album, and also a couple covers, one of them being the Beatles song "Come Together" which I also captured on video. The music ranged from smooth contemporary jazz, to spaced out psychedelic trances at times, to the always upbeat and funky bluegrass the Flecktones are known for.

Going Solo

As always, each player was given their opportunity to take the stage themselves. Victor Wooten played some funky bass lines, and did some cool improvisational work with his loop station. Futureman impressed the crowd by playing his drum synthesizer, and also added an additional keyboard that played simple and melodic samples and phrases. Bela of course took the show down when he sat on his stole by himself and threw down, while the crowd eagerly cheered him on.

The Conclusion?

The show ended after two sets, and a very long encore. There were alot of older folks in the crowd, and almost all of them were standing up for the 30+ minute encore, and by the end the crowd was ecstatic and full energy, cheering on Bela Fleck and the Flecktones to keep on playing. Overall it was one of the better concerts I've seen from Bela, maybe because of the Madison atmosphere and the enchanting vibes and surreal closeness(since I was about 20 feet from the stage 2nd set) that made this concert really come to life and showed me that there are some truly amazing musicians still out there touring.

For the past couple months I have been using the new Pandora Internet Radio Station. Pandora is a free service that streams music to your computer, the kicker, it creates a radio channel based on a specific artist and then plays relevant songs based on that artists style. For example, say you like Eric Clapton. Enter in Eric Clapton and Pandora will instantly start playing music from Eric Clapton's collection and also other music that is similar to Clapton's style. Pretty cool eh? It only gets better.

Its in the vote

So now your listening to some free music, and Pandora suggests a really bad song. "I don't want to listen to this crap" you say. All you have to do is hover over the album cover art and press the thumbs down button. It will automatically skip the song and go onto a different one. There is also an option for thumbs up if you really like a song. Depending on how you vote, Pandora's algorithm for choosing songs will now play songs tailored to similar songs that you like and will not play songs that you don't like. Wow, thats sweet, it dives deep into each aspect of the song, the instruments, the tempo, the genre, and based on what you like, don't like, and even what other people like, Pandora will come up with music, based on it's algorithmic calculation, that you will enjoy.

Free Music? Ah, Targeted Advertising

Pandora is free, but with the addition of a full page advertisements that border the Pandora music player. Advertisements seem to range from promoting musical concerts to alcohol related advertisements. One thing thats interesting to think about is that Pandora knows an incredible amount of information about you. Sociologists can make accurate predicts based on what type of music you listen to, and Pandora knows exactly what music you like, and what music you don't like, which enables them to place you in a very targeted demographic. As far as advertising, this is huge, since they can now show you highly targeted ads, based on your music style.

Pandora Problems?

So far I have very few complaints of Pandora. I have been using it for the past 3 months, and it's really nice to have someone else find new music for you. I've expanding my music intake, and have found new music that I would have never found before. One problem is that Pandora plays a lot of repeats, most of which I have "Thumbed Up". They could expand their music collection, but they are in the middle of a large legal litigation over the right of internet radio. Overall though, give Pandora a try, and you probably will fall in love.

Taken from the Badger Herald:

“We realize that students need cheap and accessible groceries,” said Christie Penn, ASM campus relations chair. “So right now we are putting pressure on planners to include a grocery store in the new Union South.”

The idea is to give people without access to a car a reasonable option to get groceries to their house. Lets take a look at a students current options to get groceries.

Drive, or get a ride, take the bus

To say the least, parking is a bitch in Madison. If you are lucky to have enough money to afford the steep parking rates of Madison, or have a friend who does, you have the luxury of taking a car to either Copps on Park, Copps on University, or if you really want to save, you can go to the east or west side Woodmans.

Go Local

If you live on the east side, go to Capitol Centre Foods, they even deliver your groceries to you for you if they are over $40. You can even order your groceries online, however I have never tried this. If you live on the westside, take a walk up Monroe street to Trader Joes. Yes, its a bit pricey, and alot of it's health food, but I'm sure it would offer alot better selection than the Union. Didn't the Mifflin Street Co-op just go out of business? Come on man, this is the looniest idea and biggest waste of money I've ever heard of.

Live in the Dorms?

If you live in the dorms, you already have your food catered to you every day. The meal plans are more than enough to keep you going. Need some additional groceries? Why not just go to Carson's or Ed's where they have shelves stocked with groceries, much of which are discounted if your living university housing.

So really, ASM, come on, try and do something more productive with your time, than wasting all of our student money on trying to build a grocery store in the new Union South(which most of us don't want).

Want some more info on the ASM groceries?

• Daily Cardinal's - ASM calls for UW grocery store
• Badger Heralds - ASM hopes to bag new grocery store
• Another Badger Herald Article - Groceries? Try governing first

It seems that Acropolis is some sort of Greek fast food chain, however doing a google search, I wasn't able to find any information on them at all. Acropolis still has all the same workers that used to work at the old Taco Johns, except no more Taco Tuesdays, and instead pricey Gyros. I decided to try it out and see what it was like, and got the original Gyro, and paid a little under $6. What I got was a pita with a bunch of processed lamb meat and a load of onions and some crappy sauce. To say the least, I probably won't be returning.

Why they turned Taco Johns into an Acropolis I do not know. Considering it lines Regent street which is smack dab in the middle of Southern Campus housing, and drunk students looking for a late night snack would probably prefer a greasy taco, to a greasy Gyro. Now if I want to get my fill of fast food tacos I have to go all the way down to the state street Taco Bell/KFC. Boo you owner of the old Taco Johns/new Acropolis.

From the looks it it, the new All Online Games site is using the same content management software that is used to house all the Alluc links. They are already boasting a database of over 17,000 links, quite impressive, however the main distinction between Alluc.org and Allonga.org is that all the links to Allonga.org are not illegal, and don't ride along the lines of linking to illegal content, but more on the links of linking to poplar games that can be found at legitimate sites.

If you house an online gaming website, I would seriously recommend uploading your entire database of games to the site, to help deliver quality traffic to your site, and to build up links. I think the deciding factor for this site that will make it successful is extremely active userbase if alluc.org that will be visiting this site frequently.

This is All Online Games's description they have up on their homepage at the moment, with spelling mistakes corrected ;)

All online Games“ is a collection of links to free online games from all over the web.

Every member can post links to support the community. So the collection can grow larger and larger every day.

For starters we collected about 17m000 links to free online games for you.

Get registered now!

Every member can:

• Post links (but only freeware games)
• Comment on links to online games
• Send messages to other members (private or public in the “Shoutbox”)
• Create a “playlist” with your personal favorite games
• Have a look at the “playlist” of other members
• And of course … PLAY!

Some cool features include Google Web, Local and Video search. Searching the entire amazon product catalog base, searching Madison's Craigslist, and having a wikipedia search. Besides searching the web through Campus Atlas, you can also do Professor Ratings search's from Rate My Professor .com , hot links to around campus and the web, a database of embedded flash games, a news feed reader to many popular Madison newspapers and blogs, and drink specials for bars around Madison. Yes, now you can see why this project has taken me 4 months.

We are plugged into the Google Repository and are using their API extensively to deliver you Google Maps, YouTube videos embedded in the site, Local Resturaunt Searches, visual displaying of featured business's with quick links to get directions, and you can also do google web searches without even leaving the page! Whew, thats some gnarly stuff right there.

One thing that sets Campus Atlas apart from everything else is it uses AJAX technology, which loads new content onto the page without a page reload, thus saving the end user alot of time, from the already huge amount of time their saving by having everything brought to them in one spot.

Even if you don't live in Madison, you can still check the local weather, get quick links to e-mail, and search the world wide web, all through The Campus Atlas. So be sure to click the house icon at the top and set Campus Atlas as your homepage!

Along the lines of watching funny video clips form sites like youtube and veoh, you can also rate a video, write a personal comment on what you think of it, and check out the most popular videos on the site. I'm going to predict more and more of these sites will start popping up. It looks like Your TV Links is using a software designed specifically as a video blog with all of the functionality pre-built into it.

Be sure to check out Free TV Links, a new portal that delivers you streaming videos to your favorite tv shows and movies!

From a business standpoint, this site is 10 times better than the previous one. Your TV Links is now posting around 10-20 new videos a day, which will definitely give your fill, and allow you to come back and see fresh hilariously new content. Enabling users to comment on videos, which there seem to be alot of comment coming in, allows search engines to pick up on all the comments and give each page higher ranking. It is also getting away from linking to pirated content, I don't know if this is from pressure from a higher authority, or if it was just a wise business decision. Either way, the web just got a little nicer, and less piratey with the addition of Your TV Links!

I was searching to see how much I would be paying in tuition at UW-Madison this year, and found out that I could dig through tuition costs of the past years at Madison, including out of state tuition, in-state tuition and segregated fees. I decided to use the new Google Docs and create a spreadsheet of the data and create some graphs to chart the rising costs of tuition.

Here are a couple useful links if you want more information on UW-Madison Tuition

• Fall 2007 Tuition Guide
• Tuition and Fees Information
• UW-Madison Admissions, Costs and Feeds

As you can see, tuition prices are the same for taking either 12-18 credits. If you take the cost of 15 credits, $3365.12 and divide that by 15, you are averaging $224 per credit. Something to think about if your someone who only takes 12 credits a semester, since your paying $280 a credit, $60 more, and getting less of an education.

Also new to this year will be the increase in Segregated Fees for the renovation of Memorial Union and Union South, which I think is incredibly ridiculous. Considering that Memorial Union is running a tavern outside of it's terrace, and hosts music events that bring in huge amounts of heave drinkers, I believe that instead of charging students who are already scraped for money from rising tuition, they should use profits from the terrace and donations from adults who have jobs. Ok, thats all I have to say about that.

The large price on season tickets are partly due to an e-mail glitch the UW Athletic Department made. Of their entire list of students to send e-mail to, they only sent out an e-mails to 20% of the student body informing students that tickets would go on sale the upcoming week. When tickets went on sale, they sold out in 3 days, and many hardcore fans were never informed that they went on sale. That sucks. So now there are a bunch of students who have season football tickets, but would rather sell them to hardcore fans that really want to be at the game.

I've also checked out criagslist where it seems the set price is hovering around $450-$550. With 7 home games, this puts an individual ticket price at $78. In my opinion, this is way too much money. With a student body of around 40,000+ and only around 10,000 student tickets, and many freshmen that missed out on the ticket lottery, this has spurred a huge increase in ticket prices, talk to an economics major if you want to get into the nitty gritty of the supply and demand curve.

My advice is to wait it out, there are many people throwing out ridiculous prices right now just to hype it up. There is plenty of supply, and even though there is alot of demand, it will die down, especially if the badgers have an off season. I also suggest to buy tickets individually, many times friends go away for the weekend, especially since there are four home games in a row.

Currently I am signed up for Broadband internet with Charter Communications for my internet needs. Although I have used there services, my name has never been on a bill from them, but from what I hear, they are very sneaky and like to throw in a lot of hidden charges, and raise bills without notice. This year alone, our internet bill was raised twice, and our landlord called both times and got them to lower it, which sometimes this is all it takes.

As soon as I searched for Madison Internet, a Charter Internet Special ad came up in the Google Ad section. The special is for: $50 Cash Back with Charter High Speed Internet. Only $19.99/mo! Wow, thats not a bad deal, but where exactly is the catch? Come on there has to be a catch. Well the $19.99 is only for the first 6 months, thats still not bad. Of course there is always the small print at the bottom of the page, this is what it says for the $50 back: "Please allow 10-16 weeks after completed qualifying activity to receive $50 rebate check." Still, I can wait that long to get $50 back. Now here is the clincher...

After your six months are up, your internet bill goes up to $54.99. Now thats starting to be a decent chunk of change.

Here are some calculations...

$19.99 for 6 months
+ $54.99 for 6 months
- $50 rebate
+ $100 miscellaneous expenses and taxes
and we end up with...
$119.94 + $329.94 - $50 + $100 = $499.88
divided by 12 month in a year
and we end up with a total of $41.65 a month.

This seems a bit more expensive than the $20 a month initial offer.

Like I said before, if you call in and bargain with Charter, they will usually lower your bill. I believe that all cable internet plans have no contract, which means you can cancel anytime, so it is possible to have cable for the first 6 months and then cancel, however I have heard stories of Charter Internet users trying to cancel, and having it take 2 months for the billing to stop. But as always, it is good to read the fine print before jumping into anything.

I've recently been reading alot about how to become an entrepreneur and how to start a successful start up business. One of the major things that I've taken from the readings is that everything must be planned out. As in, planned out in a business plan. I've taken to plotting out all my ideas in wiki's, which makes things very easy to organize, and editing and updating ideas are a breeze. I am using the same software that wikipedia is run on, which is incredibly powerful. It also allows multiple users to throw their ideas at one spot, and to collectively build a business plan, with everyone in the know.

I've realized that I have alot of websites already developed that have alot of potential, it's just a matter of developing plans, be it business, marketing, development, and coming up with plans to make those already developed websites successful.

For example, I've been thinking about start up websites to build, one of them being my TV Links site. This is a great idea, except that there is a huge chance of running into legal trouble, considering the MPAA as already targeted 3 sites and handed them all lawsuits. It would be much easier for me to take my mothers website, Butterfly Books and to develop a business plan for that website since it is already established, and has been. The domain itself is already 8 years old and well respected by search engines for it's specific niche, "Children's Books and Literature". Since my Mother, Barbara Wilson, is very knowledgeable about books, I devised a plan to turn her site into a book review website, reviewing new and old books, and then directing visitors to amazon where they can purchase the book, gaining a commission for every purchase we send to amazon.

All it takes is a little planning, and it is easier to take something that is already established, and build on it than starting something from scratch. By using a wiki, I can easily organize all my thoughts and ideas on how to build up a website, and then share them easily with people. Also, I am always looking for people to help me out, I have so many ideas, and not alot of time, so if your creative and have good sense for how the internet works, shoot me an email!

When I was in the mere 7th grade, I turned into an ambitious entrepreneur through a grant presented by the Green Bay Chamber of Commerce and decided to start my own business, designing, crafting and decorating hardcrafted wooden bookmarks.

I worked long and hard, and sold many wooden bookmarks to Butterfly Books, Little Professor in East Town Mall, and went to local craft fairs and sold my exquisite handcraft. Well the time has come to now expand my business to the World Wide Web, and I am now offering the option to own one, two or three hundered of these great one of a kind bookmarks!

Included on this page is a display of all my wooden bookmarks which I have crafted using a scroll saw. They come at $1.50 a piece, the original price that they were sold at when this company started up back in 1999. These Bookmarks are perfect for holding places in books, which is what their intention is. Either a good novel, a college textbook, a wonderful gift. Hand crafted out of baltic plywood with your choice of a stained wood finish, or a beatiful color die!

With a price of only $1.50, there is no way you can go wrong!

On their website, I Want My Free Laptop .com, it says, you need to take these 3 easy steps to get your laptop...

1. Select your gift and enter your e-mail
2. Tell us where to send your gift.
3. Complete the sponsored offers of your choise

Well and editor at PC Word tried to get his free laptop, well not really. What he ended up with was a whole bunch of spam mail, good thing he used a fake e-mail address. He also checked into the Better Business Bureau and found out that over 250 people registered complaints against the company in the past 2 and a half year.

Considering I Want My Free Laptop Dot Com's only source of marketing is their radio campaign, it assume it is very hard to convert radio listeners, usually in cars, to hop online and visit your site, even if your giving away free laptops. So I tried a google search for their site, and came up with nothing? What? Google doesn't think your site exists? robots.txt file was disallowing all search engine spiders for the entire domain. Wow, thats smart, looks like it shouldn't be too hard to rank for "I Want My Free Laptop", and hopefully people will be searching for it, unless the I Want My Free Laptop jingle really stuck in your head.

I guess the moral of the story is, don't be stupid and play into tricks like this. If you want to make money online, read some blogs online, and join partnerships with reputable companies, for example... how about google? They make billion's of dollars, and like to share their revenue through Google Adsense. Try starting up a legitimate business, instead of falling into Free Laptop scams. Seesh.

Video Lemon doesn't host any content on it's site. Far from it, they search multiple TV Links websites including tv-links.co.uk and www6.alluc.org, and adds these website's pages into their database, giving it's users multiple places to find their TV Shows or movies. This way, Video Lemon doesn't have to worry about keeping track of links, only the pages that other sites have links on.

Some sites like PeekVid are being targeted by the MPAA. Video Lemon, while being hosted in the US, is far from being liable for copyright infringement, since they don't even host links, they host links to pages that host links to pirated content. What a chain of events, all to just get Free TV Shows without downloads. Also be sure to check out Free TV DB for all the latest shows.

So, in an effort to popularize my blog a bit more, and to try and gain some readership, apart from posting more useful and relevant content, I am now using Feed Burner to take care of users subscribing to my RSS Feed. You can now get all of my recently updated posts via my unified RSS Feed, which is located at Tom's RSS Feed. This will allow me to easily track users that are subscribed to my feed, and it will allow me to gain a greater following of everyone that wants to tap into my brilliant mind.

If you are into the feed reading sort of thing, I would suggest using the new and developing Google Reader, which is an AJAX styled feed reader that brings all of your favorite feeds into one spot to let you easily browser through new updates. The interface is really clean and works very smoothly. You can set up your browser to automatically add feeds to Google Reader by selecting the Google Reader as your default RSS reader.