Guilty as charged! It’s a been a slow start to the year here at Blogging With Dr P…. I believe I’ve spent too much time over on Facebook, and neglected you all here – my vast hoard internet web spider search engine bots, and the occasional real person that drops by

And it isn’t for the lack of not having anything to blog about – oh no. I think it’s more of a “getting the time” thing. But Facebook, and Twitter, (where I have been experimenting with all these “Automate Your Twitter Account” systems etc), and other distracting things have kept me away from the two things I like the most on the internet – making money, and writing my blog.

The web hosting and domain costs keep rolling in, but the Google Adsense revenue and other affiliate stuff I’m “into” keeps rapidly falling. I think I’m going to write an e-book and sell it through e-Bay and on here. It’s probably going to be about the “Making Money With Twitter” experiments I’ve been doing lately. That should make a few bucks

Incidentally, if you trip over a bag contains large wads of cash – it’s mine – and there’s a “Finders Reward” as well – lucky you!

Tags: account, adsense, affiliate, Automate, blog, blogging, cash, Dr P, e book, e-Bay, Facebook, Google, google adsense, internet web, making money, real person, revenue, search engine bots, spider search engine, stuff, twitter

Twitter Down – Why Is Twitter Down? The recent Denial of Service attack on Twitter, and it’s subsequent closure on Thursday/Friday of last week has had far reaching effects. Many other services which use the Twitter API have also ceased operation due to Twitter being down.

But why was Twitter down? Who was behind the attack on Twitter? The New York Times has done an investigation into the events of the last few days….. Professor Main Target of Assault on Twitter…..

By JENNA WORTHAM and ANDREW E. KRAMER
Published: August 7, 2009

The cyberattacks Thursday and Friday on Twitter and other popular Web services disrupted the lives of hundreds of millions of Internet users, but the principal target appeared to be one man: a 34-year-old economics professor from the republic of Georgia.

During the assault — the latest eruption in a yearlong skirmish between nationalistic hackers in Russia and Georgia — unidentified attackers sent millions of spam e-mail messages and bombarded Twitter, Facebook and other services with junk messages. The blitz was an attempt to block the professor’s Web pages, where he was revisiting the events leading up to the brief territorial war between Russia and Georgia that began a year ago.

The attacks were “the equivalent of bombing a TV station because you don’t like one of the newscasters,” Mikko Hyppönen, chief research officer of the Internet security firm F-Secure, said in a blog post. “The amount of collateral damage is huge. Millions of users of Twitter, LiveJournal and Facebook have been experiencing problems because of this attack.”

The blogger, a refugee from the Abkhazia region, a territory on the Black Sea disputed between Russia and Georgia, writes under the name Cyxymu, but identified himself only by the name Giorgi in a telephone interview. Giorgi, who said he taught at Sukhumi State University, first noticed Thursday afternoon that LiveJournal, a popular blogging platform, was not working for him. “I decided to go to Facebook,” he said. “And Facebook didn’t work. Then I went to Twitter, and Twitter didn’t work. ‘How strange,’ I thought, ‘What a coincidence they all don’t work at once.’ ”

Security experts say that it is nearly impossible to determine who exactly is behind the attack, which disrupted access to Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal and some Google sites on Thursday and continued to affect many Twitter users into Friday evening.

The rest of the article is over on the New York Times website – Professor Main Target of Assault on Twitter.

For me there are several applications I use which use the Twitter API. So, with Twitter being “down” – many of these applications such as Tweet Later for example were not functioning fully until Twitter had been given the “all clear”.

Why Was Twitter Down? Due to the sabotage of attempts on some poor unsuspecting economics professor from the republic of Georgia.

I’m sure Twitter will be running as normal soon – and all the other services like Twitter Karma, Tweet Later etc. Twitter Status updates can be found here: Twitter Status Updates

Happy Twittering! Paul Flanagan On Twitter

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