Is ReadBud a Scam (4th update)

It's about 1 1/2 weeks since I joined the ReadBud site and I've got to say I'm more than a little bored with it, even though I only selected a few subjects, that I am genuinely interested in. To be totally honest I am tempted to never return to the site again, but I want to see whether they pay me once I have read enough articles to reach their payout threshold of $50. I will be genuinely surprised if they do pay up because I am reading too many reports that say that ReadBud is a scam site.

Anyway I have been given an average of about 18 articles a day to read and have made about $1 a day - if they ever really do pay anybody that is. Wow! A whole dollar. It's not enough to bother with, is it? I think my time could probably be better spent writing articles for Triond. At least I know from past experience that they pay up.

I will post further updates about ReadBud next month.

Google Anounces New Weapon in their War Against Content Farms

Google recently announced the realease of a couple of new extensions to the Google Chrome browser and they contain new algorithms that are designed to filter out sites that offer poor quality content and they say that the worst offenders are content farms. How this will affect sites like Triond remains to be seen, but remains king of the search engines, they weild a lot of power, and can easily make or break an online business:  Will Google’s New Algorithms Mean The End of Triond?

St. Catherine's Wheel

Have you ever wondered how Catherine Wheels got their name? If you have you might be surprised to learn that it is not a nice story. Modern day Catherine Wheels are a spinning firework, but they were named after the big, spiked wheel that St Catherine of Alexandria was stretched across when she upset the Roman Emperor, Maxentius: How Catherine Wheels Got Their Name.

Facebook Prank Causes Worldwide Panic

It all began on January 9th. Panic spread across the net and many Facebook users began downloading their photographs from the site before they were lost. Meanwhile, other users  were busy exploring their options. Where would they go? MySpace? Twitter. Once Facebook bit the dust they would need a replacement. Except Facebook was not and is not going anywhere, the panic had been caused by a spoof article posted on The Weekly World News Website that stated that Facebook would shut down on March 15th: Facebook Shutting Down? That’s About as Likely as Martians Putting Down!

Is ReadBud a Scam? (Day 3)

Today ReadBud provided over 20 articles for me to read and if they ever pay up today's earnings are nearly $2. It is going to take a long time before I reach the $50 payment threshold so I think it is a little unrealistic for me to post daily updates, so my next update on this will be next week. I'm still checking other sites and everything I am reading suggests that ReadBud is a scam. Here is a forum post from a guy who reached the payment threshold. Two months later he was still waiting to be paid and found it impossible to contact ReadBud about it.

Is ReadBud a Scam? (Day 2)

This post is a continuation of yesterday’s post which marked the beginning of my investigation into the paid to read articles site ReadBud.

I logged into ReadBud today and read all the available articles. There were a few less than yesterday and I was a few cents short of making a dollar. It will be interesting to see how many they offer me tomorrow.

My antivirus went crazy a few times as I was reading articles though, and I find this rather worrying because the sites I normally visit never present a problem and I cannot remember the last time it activated. I use a Firefox browser and have the NoScript extension installed. NoScript is a free extension that provides extra protection for mozilla-based browsers and it only allows JavaScript, Java and Flash and other plugins to be executed by sites that you trust. It also gives the most powerful Anti-XSS protection available in a browser. Yesterday when I visited ReadBud I allowed NoScript to block just about everything on the site except for what was needed to rate the articles. Today I set it to temporarily allow all on the pages. I won’t make that mistake again. I am still a long way off being able to say whether or not I think ReadBud is a scam, but the site does appear to have some worrying cross-scripts on the pages, so if you do decide to read articles at ReadBud I recommend that you have a functioning antivirus program installed on your computer and NoScript might be a good idea as well.

How to Diet Without Dieting

According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary the definition of a diet is:

‘a regimen of eating and drinking sparingly so as to reduce one’s weight.’

Some diets that are diets in name only though, because they have little to do with what the so called dieter eats or drinks: Six Ways to Diet Without Dieting