Mediaboss Marketing

The sidewalks are the domain of tourists, prospectors and preachy Park Slope moms. There's no room for cabs, and there's certainly no room for car dealerships to let their products idle. But it's not like common decency stops some dealerships: a tipster sent us the above photos, and asked, "One dealership on the West Side has the habit of parking many of their cars on the sidewalks. Is that legal? Authorized?"

No, it is definitely not legalaccording to the Department Of Transportation, stopping, standing or parking on a sidewalk warrants a $115 fine. But our tipster says he has contacted the DOT several times, and not heard from them about any of his complaints. Along with the sidewalk parking, he's also complained about graffiti on newsstands, missing bus info panels, damaged roofs and shattered glass: "I doubt I will hear from DOT. I [emailed them] over 8 times since last August. [They are] not responding to my requests and at the same time the needed work is being ignored. Do you know why DOT is stone walling me?"

This practice is not unique to NYC either (we've seen Parking Wars!). Another reader told us about his friend's bizarre and scary encounters with a car dealership in Newark last year, where one dealership would park their cars on the sidewalk, forcing him off the sidewalk and into the street while walking.

They brought over this huge tow truck with a huge bed, they loaded up all their cars and took them away. Later that day, my friend was walking from the Newark train station home and they pulled up alongside him in car. And a couple guys from the dealership leaned out and said, "Hey f----t, we're gonna hire a n----r to kill you." After that, he started avoiding them, changing his routes, and he'd always try to walk with other people. And now he doesn't live there anymore.

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Will DOT Ever Notice This Illegal Sidewalk Parking?

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Contributed image "WZRD," the first collaborative CD from Kid Cudi and producer Dot Da Genius, mixes hip hop with guitar-driven, rock-based production.

Longtime friends and partners Kid Cudi and producer Dot Da Genius converge under the moniker "WZRD" in their debut collaborative self-titled album, which reveals a new musical direction for Scott Mescudi.

In "WZRD," Cudi jousts his demons and celebrates his triumphs through melodic rhymes, while other times full-out singing to the best of his (limited) abilities. Furthermore, Cudi's lyrical sensitivity and introspection are ever present throughout the album. But the biggest difference in "WZRD" from Cudi and Dot's previous works is Dot's guitar-driven, rock-based production. Cudi always has straddled the lines of hip-hop underdog and emotive rock star, as if in the depths of his conscience RUN-DMC and Aerosmith were battling it out as they did in their '80s hit, "Walk This Way."

Now in "WZRD," Joe Perry kicks the wall in, unplugs the turntables, cranks the gain on his amp up to 11 and lets his Les Paul wail. In the process of creating the album, Dot and Cudi taught themselves electric and bass guitar while extensively studying their favorite rock acts, such as Pink Floyd and The Pixies.

The result of their experimentation is an album chocked full of heavy electric guitar, ambient entrancing vocals and potent thought-provoking lyrics that are a clever byproduct of Cudi's otherwise repressed alter-ego.

"High Off Life" follows the instrumental intro and starts the album off on an exhilarating note with gritty guitar chords, deep pounding drums and Cudi's rousing chorus, "Never thought the day would come for me/When I would be high off life!/ There's so much I haven't seen."

Listeners immediately get the direction Cudi and Dot are headed in and realize that Dot's production genius expands beyond the elements of hip-hop.

Within Cudi's music, drugs and addiction have always been a recurring theme. In "High Off Life," he persuades us he is free and that "O.D.ing off the life" is a sufficient fix, but Dr. Pill finds him reverting to using medication as his therapy. In "Teleport to Me, Jamie," a song to his recent ex, Cudi yearns to be near his then new love: "I can't stand the times when I'm alone at night/And I feel your side of the bed and it's cold/Wide awake, I don't know the time/Cause I'm too busy texting you on my phone."

"WZRD" follows the tradition of their favorite bands, such as Nirvana and Lead Belly, in covering the traditional folk song "Black Girl" in "Where Did You Sleep Last Night." The duo breaks tradition by beefing up the originally somber and acoustic track with echoing electric guitar and Cudi's fervent vocals.

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Cudi, Dot meld grinding rock, hip hop

The state auditor's office found "gross mismanagement" at a company that provided rural transportation services for the N.C. Department of Transportation and wants it investigated by authorities.

The Cary company 2Plus worked for years without a contract, overcharged the state, and took poor care of DOT-owned vehicles, according to auditors.

The DOT employee who managed the contract, former Public Transportation Division Director Miriam S. Perry, retired last year.

Noting that the contract with 2Plus was the only one Perry personally managed and that the company employed a former DOT worker, auditors said they were sending the report to the State Bureau of Investigation. Calls to Perry and 2Plus were not returned.

Paul F. Morris said he moved to end the state's association with 2Plus when he started work last fall as the department's deputy secretary for transit.

"We ceased operation of the program, we cooperated with the state auditor's office to identify any deficiencies, and we've since been working diligently to implement every action we can to ensure it doesn't happen again," he said. The company stopped operating the program Nov. 30.

According to the audit, 2Plus received $4.3 million in state and federal money over 11 years to operate the van pool.

In those years, the company worked without a contract for the equivalent of about six years, billed the department for $163,272 in various charges that appear "excessive and unreasonable," and didn't properly maintain the DOT-owned vans, according to the audit. One van went 45,000 miles before it got its first oil change, the audit said.

According to the audit, counties, not the state, usually manage rural van pool programs aimed at getting people in rural areas where there is no bus service to jobs. The report said 2Plus was the only van pool operator paid directly through the state transportation department.

Perry faced no discipline, Morris said, because she retired soon after the department learned of the audit and the scope of the problems. When asked, Perry was forthcoming about the situation, he said.

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Auditors: Investigate transport firm that worked for DOT

RESTON, VA--(Marketwire -03/08/12)- Nearly six million domain names were added to the Internet in the fourth quarter of 2011, bringing the total number of registered domain names to more than 225 million worldwide across all domains, according to the latest Domain Name Industry Brief, published by VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN - News), the trusted provider of Internet infrastructure services for the networked world.

The increase of 5.9 million domain names equates to a growth rate of 2.7 percent over the third quarter of 2011, and marks the fourth straight quarter with greater than 2 percent growth. Registrations have grown by more than 20.4 million, or 10 percent, since the fourth quarter of 2010.

The .com and .net Top Level Domains (TLDs) experienced aggregate growth in the fourth quarter, reaching a combined total of 113.8 million names. This represents approximately a 2 percent increase in the base over the third quarter of 2011 and an 8 percent increase over the same quarter in 2010. New .com and .net registrations totaled 7.9 million during the quarter. This is a 4 percent increase year-over-year in new registrations. The .com/.net renewal rate for the fourth quarter was 73.5 percent, up from 73.3 percent for the third quarter.

Verisign's average daily Domain Name System (DNS) query load during the quarter was 64 billion, with a peak of 117 billion. Compared to the previous quarter, the daily average increased 8 percent and the peak grew 51 percent.

Domain Name Hijacking - A Serious but Manageable ThreatThe latest issue of the Domain Name Industry Brief focuses on "domain name hijacking," in which perpetrators fraudulently transfer domain names by password theft or social engineering. As defined by security experts, domain name hijacking occurs when an attacker falsifies the registration data for a domain name, transferring that name away from its rightful registrant and gaining full administrative and operational control over the domain.

The brief analyzes how attackers use a wide range of techniques to hijack domain names, from spyware and keystroke loggers to "social engineering," in which scammers impersonate registrants, registrars, or other entities in the chain of trust in order to gain access to passwords and personal information.

Regardless of the technique used, the end-result for registrants is often severe. Once an attacker has full control of a domain name, they have free reign to use it for any number of nefarious purposes, from creating their own scam websites, to hosting illegal and dangerous content, to extorting the original owner.

While the danger of domain name hijacking is significant, it is a threat that can be significantly reduced with proper planning and mitigation techniques, such as:

Verisign publishes the Domain Name Industry Brief to provide Internet users throughout the world with significant statistical and analytical research and data on the domain name industry and the Internet as a whole. Copies of the 2011 fourth quarter Domain Name Industry Brief, as well as previous reports, can be obtained at: http://www.verisigninc.com/DNIB.

About Verisign VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN - News) is the trusted provider of Internet infrastructure services for the networked world. Billions of times each day, Verisign helps companies and consumers all over the world connect between the dots. Additional news and information about the company is available at http://www.verisigninc.com.

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Internet Grows to More Than 225 Million Domain Names in the Fourth Quarter of 2011

When news broke that regulators had approved the Comcast/NBCU mega-merger in January 2011, I was at the annual State of the Net meeting on Capitol Hill. I missed most of the conference to hole up in my hotel room and write about the deal; the monster transaction would have more impact on the state of internet access in America than any panel discussion at the conference.

Heres why: With the addition of control over NBCUs wildly profitable cable channels (and NBC sports programming) to its existing commanding lead in territory for the provision of high-speed internet access, Comcast can make it just too expensive for any private-sector wired competitor to show up as a cheaper distributor of information, entertainment, data, and voice services.

High-speed internet is the stuff of modern life and the infrastructure America needs to thrive as a global competitor. But many of Americas great cities are now Comcast country when it comes to wired high-speed internet access. (And if youre not in Comcast country, youre probably in Time Warner or Cablevision country these companies dont enter each others territories.) The consumers bank account is suffering and were lagging as a nation, but Comcast is doing well.

Last December, the other shoe dropped: Verizon Wireless and Comcast agreed to market each others services. Verizon waved a white flag, implicitly agreeing not to compete with Comcast on the wired side of high-speed internet access by recognizing that the moat around Comcasts (and Time Warners) business was just too wide to cross. (As a practical matter, only Verizons FiOS can compete with Comcasts DOCSIS 3.0 services, but in 85% of Comcasts footprint there are no FiOS services. Because its too expensive to rip out copper and install fiber, Verizon isnt going to expand, leaving Comcast customers with no choice.)

The prospects Comcast are targeting with Internet Essentials arent customers it wants in the long run; the program, in a sense, filters out people who cant pay by readying them to pay later.

Comcast was also implicitly agreeing not to build its own wireless facilities, making Verizon Wirelesss business plans more certain.

And so the private providers of internet access in America are dividing the market you take wired, Ill take wireless which is all to the good for their shareholders, but not so great for the rest of us.

Now that it faces no competition from other private wired providers and is conceding that wireless was always a complementary service not a substitute for its wires even Comcast has to be just slightly worried that someone will notice that it is selling an essential commodity with zero oversight. Its as if a single company was providing water or electricity in your town and could choose whom to serve and how much to charge not something most Americans would think was a good idea.

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Water, Internet Access and Swagger: These Guys Are Good