Mediaboss Marketing

Raleigh, N.C. The state Department of Transportation provided little oversight as a Cary company operated a vanpool program for low-income workers in rural areas of North Carolina and racked up excessive fees, according to an audit released Thursday.

The auditors' findings have been turned over to the State Bureau of Investigation to determine if any criminal charges are warranted.

The DOT hired 2Plus Inc. in late 2000 to operate a fleet of vans to help low-income people in rural areas commute to work. The program peaked at 34 routes in 2006, but only 10 were still running when the state cut ties with the company two years ago.

The audit found that 2Plus operated the program without a contract for the equivalent of six years because officials in the state Division of Public Transportation failed to execute new contracts after old ones expired. That led to disputes over the purpose of the program, such as 2Plus using some vans to transport South Carolina workers to jobs in North Carolina and non-resident aliens to jobs at Outer Banks hotels, according to the audit.

The absence of a contract also led to "excessive and unreasonable" fees for the program, the audit states. Those included an extra $163,272 to cover personal mileage of volunteer van drivers, temporary rentals when state vans weren't available and insurance deductibles, according to the audit.

"It's just poor management every way you look at it," State Auditor Beth Wood said. "It's just mind-boggling to me. You've got this kind of gross mismanagement, and then I have to turn around and cut nine positions (because of a tight budget)."

Byron York, executive director of 2Plus, said neither the company nor its staff received undue benefits.

"The program has been honest, legitimate. We show where the expenses have been and for what," York said.

The state paid 2Plus $4.3 million through June 2010, and the company says it is still owed $617,404, according to the audit. The state also spent $721,590 on the vans used in the program, the audit states.

The DOT didn't have lease agreements with 2Plus for most of the state-owned vans, the audit states.

Go here to read the rest:
Audit: DOT mismanaged rural vanpool program

Four years ago, the shrewdest presidential candidates used YouTube, MySpace, Facebook and a dash of Twitter. They also tried to gain a strange new psychic edge calledin the contrived conceit of the day"mindshare in the blogosphere." Apps were nowhere in campaign strategies. The iPhone was new. The iPad didn't exist.

So who e-campaigned best last time? During Super Tuesday week in 2008, Garlik, a British firm that monitors digital reputations, ranked the day's presidential candidates by online popularity. It didn't take Nate Silver or that Zogby person to call the winner. If you hung around social media even a little, you knew the fix was in.

It wasn't Hillary Clinton. Nor Mitt Romney, John McCain or Barack Obama. Blowing them all awaysealing for himself, in fact, the Presidency of the United Cyberstates of Digital America, commander-in-chief of the Information-Wants-To-Be-Free Worldwas, naturally, Congressman Ronald Ernest "Ron" Paul.

Ron Paul, President of the Internet! Hail to the online chief! Four more years!

Ron Paul. Elfin ob-gyn goldbug. Ayn Randian. Foe of war, abortion and government. Texan. Rejector of Medicaid, rejector of Medicare. Climate-change skeptic. Keeper of odd company. Espouser of tendentious views.

In 2012, he's still kicking back in the Online Oval Office. Ron Paul, commanding the mad and visible support of somebody. Sure he doesn't fare so well with actual flesh-and-blood voters of majority age who are motivated to drive gas-burning cars and appear with their laminated IDs at three-dimensional voting booths. But you can't have everything.

Tim Hwang, a researcher of online movements and memes and the managing director of the Web Ecology Project, says that Ron Paul illustrates a fact we often overlook: "The Internet is not coterminous with the real world." He told me by email, "Like in a rearview mirror communities can be smaller than they appear on the Internet: discussion is often subject to parties who are loudest and can rally the most participants to appear online and participate at that specific moment."

This time around, for Paul, the Internet rally seems to have been sound and fury signifying little.Paul's big hopes for Alaska, Idaho and North Dakota were dashed on Super Tuesday, and he has yet to score a victory in a single contest in this election.

However, he's still logging mindshare in the blogosphere.

So how does he do it? Paul, for all his flat, engineer-like charisma, hardly seems like a Julian Assange mastermind, able to bend the Internet to his Machiavellian hacker will. Instead, it seems the President of the Internet just got lucky.

Link:
Ron Paul's pointless Internet presidency

Germany's Internet community, gathered at the world's biggest high-tech fair, was up in arms Thursday at a draft law forcing Google and other similar sites to pay media firms for content.

"This draft is completely backward," fumed Bernhard Rohleder, director general of Bitkom, the German federation representing high-tech industries.

"We understand that media firms are looking for new ways to make money" when pitted against the Internet and free press, but a new tax "cannot be a substitute for developing genuine strategies for the digital era," he added.

The draft legislation, dubbed the "lex Google" as it targets mainly the Internet giant's "Google News" service, has recently been drawn up by Chancellor Angela Merkel's centre-right coalition.

Demanded for many years by powerful media groups such as Axel Springer and Bertelsmann, the government will put before parliament a law forcing Google and certain blogs and other sites to remunerate the papers providing the content.

The media groups argue that a user of "Google News" can simply read the short summaries offered on the front page to get his or her fix of the daily news, rather than clicking through to the paper concerned.

The US Internet giant, so the argument goes, therefore benefits via advertising without paying a penny for the actual content.

On the other side of the fence is an unusual coalition bringing together Google and campaigners for Internet freedom, who say the papers receive more clicks from the service and also gain more visibility.

Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, who opened the CeBIT high-tech fair along with the leaders of Germany and Brazil, said the tax "could slow the development of the Internet," according to local news agency DPA.

"It's a bit like the Yellow Pages paying companies for showing consumers their names and addresses," said the blogger Stefan Niggemaier, who believes the tax is akin to a government hand-out to the rich and powerful media lobby.

See the article here:
German Internet community cries foul over Google news law

Three more join the Command Partners team.

Charlotte, NC (PRWEB) March 08, 2012

Heather List will serve as project manager and Angela Kotsokalis will be a full-time graphic designer. In addition, Irene Tang will be Command Partners intern.

List brings six years of project management experience to Command Partners. As a project manager, she will maintain constant communication with clients while coordinating multiple accounts at a time and delivering results ahead of schedule.

Kotsokalis is a recent graduate from Central Piedmont Community College with an AAS degree in Advertising + Graphic Design. Her specialties include Web design and brand identity work, and she will be responsible for creating Web related graphics for Command Partners clients.

About Command Partners

Command Partners focuses on the top strategies for driving online visibility and lead generation, including social media marketing, search engine optimization, public relations, strategic advisory and social recruiting. Command Partners is located in Charlotte, N.C. and works with clients around the globe. For more information, visit http://commandpartners.com.

###

Brandon Uttley Command Partners (704) 910-5727 305 Email Information

Continue reading here:
Internet Marketing Agency, Command Partners, Adds New Talent

Bizwaremagic.com, an Internet Marketing and Business site, streamlines its major content.

(PRWEB) March 08, 2012

Perhaps, the most important change, is the introduction of hovering bookmark buttons which will remain in the viewing frame at all times. Viewers can easily use these buttons to bookmark the content in his or her favorite social network. These social networks have become increasingly popular with web surfers and site owners.

"From a purely SEO perspective, these social networks have become crucial," says Titus Hoskins, who runs Bizwaremagic. "On a Post-Panda web, these social network markers and numbers, have become an important ranking factor which can't be ignored by site owners."

Almost all popular current websites now have these bookmark buttons featured prominently along side their content. Mainly because these social networks can bring in a lot of targeted traffic and clients. These social networks are also important for building up a list of followers, fans and subscribers.

In addition to placing more emphasis on social bookmarking, Bizwaremagic.com, also had a lot of old content removed or updated. For a site which has been around for over 10 years, some old content had become outdated and not relevant on today's web. Other content was re-organized under appropriate topics to make it more accessible for visitors. These same visitors have access to free marketing tools and guides, including a very popular marketing ecourse, a list building course, a laptop buyer's guide... and much more.

About Us:

Founded in 2002, Bizwaremagic.com is an Internet Marketing website, dealing with all aspects of running an online business. It has been fairly successful, welcoming millions of visitors and selling millions in affiliate products, mainly through major affiliate networks such as Commission Junction, LinkShare, ClickBank and Google. You can follow us on Twitter @bizwaremagic.

Titus Hoskins http://www.bizwaremagic.com 1 709 538 3576 Email Information

Read more:
Internet Marketing Site Streamlines Its Content - Bizwaremagic.com