Scour

Scour was founded in 2007 with the aim to bridge the gap between searchers and relevant results. By providing a platform for the user to vote and comment on relevancy, searchers connect with one another creating a true social search community, attained through innovative solutions to meet the needs of today's web searchers.

Another point of discussion is that it pays to search; well they say pay you earn reward point and then you get a selected gift.

Here is the trip make money by searching. You have 100 search limit cap per day. You get 1 point per search, 1 point per comment and 1 point per vote. Do the maths that, 3 points per search itemised and a 100 search cap that 300 points a day. You have to get 65000 points to get paid in the form of a gift card, visa gift card that is.

What's more Scour encourages participants only in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, U.S., and U.K.

Participants from other countries have to wait till they have accumulated around 50,000 reward points for which they get $5 in return!!

The search guideline details some key elements participants have to keep in mind whilst performing search.

A quick search online shows that Scour have kept up to their word by paying participants as promised. Looking at their website also shows current users payouts. Moreover, the site is currently nominated for the CNET Webware Awards 2009.

All good!!

Well then again we should look closer. On inspection, I found users who were either banned or have had their points reduced hammer their complaints towards the strict regulation system. Some users have also complaint on having their points reduced unnecessarily. The response time to complaints have also been criticised for being too slow. Moreover, with the existing payment system, payments are expected to take a processing time of 2-4 weeks.

I believe since it is a relatively new site (the search engine bit) we should be giving Scour.com some breathing space and watch how it performs. Also, keeping a close watch for its future plans is a good idea.

Un''scam'' youself? Pyramid scheme

The Pyramid scheme is a luring scheme that invites its participants to believe in an easy money making formulae. It involves either in making one-off payments or buying a product to initially enter the scheme. Now, to start making money the participant invites others to join the scheme and takes a share of their investment as commission.

''A person (the originator) starts by sending a message to several people. Usually people he/she knows. The message in some round about way, will tell everyone to send him $5 or so...and then send the message to someone else. All the while adding names to the list, and each new recipient must send money to the first person, second person...etc''

(Source:http://www.streetdirectory.com/travel_guide/7045/online_business/mlm_pyramid_schemes_and_matrices.html)

However, there is no real product being sold. Hence, basically you unscam yourself by scamming other, not necessarily knowing that you might be scamming others. There are other names and forms of this scam such as the Multi Level Marketing, Ponzi scheme, and High-yield investment program.

Well what I aim to focus on here is the Ponzi scheme. Why? Because I believe this scheme is currently prevalent, in practice and has gone unnoticed. First an introduction:

''A Ponzi scheme is closely related to a pyramid because it revolves around continuous recruiting, but in a Ponzi scheme the promoter generally has no product to sell and pays no commission to investors who recruit new "members." ''

(Source: http://www.ftc.gov/speeches/other/dvimf16.shtm)

Major companies such as Vodafone, talktalk, etc... use this scheme under the label ''recommend a friend''. Here you’re encouraged to sell a product, or be it service, to you mate because you are lead by the greed to recuperate the cost of you initial payment. In a competitive market, we have to agree there might be better alternatives. Hence, encouraging to selling a product which might not really benefit your mate and is indeed, I believe, misleading.

So please let me know whether you think that ‘’recommend a friend’’ scheme flows in the same vein as the Pyramid scheme or its akin? Is it a scam? If so shouldn’t something be done about it?

Quantitative investing Scam or not?

After all the recent credit crisis, most of us must be aware of quant’s or at least quantitative trading. If not Wikipedia is always there to help:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_analyst

Well in short graphs, figures, models and formulae's help us finding out what the future could possibly hold, with reference to the stock market of course! Arghm, the thought is a bit dubious, but yes it has been in practice since 1992 and has been working wonders for some. Many companies began using them, banks, hedge funds, private equity management firms and most financial institutions. Watch dogs and rating agencies where aware of the practice and accepted the use of them too. However, much lately (2006) major institutions placed huge bets against these models, which predicted that the market in any case wouldn’t fall a certain amount in a day allowing companies to withdraw their money and prevent them from further losses.

Quant’s or Quantitative analysts are professionals who are trained to use such formulae's or sophisticated software’s. Lets fast forward a bit, 2008 post-credit crisis. One of the causes for the crash we have witnessed has said to be this method. Because of its numerous weaknesses they have always been irrelevant (Prof. Talib 2007, The Black Swan) Thier reliance on historic data, sensitivity to data used in calculation, disregard of tail risk, and assumption of a normal distribution are but a few.

So after being aware of all its weakness should we allow these methods to be continued to be used by our banks? Does it really help in doing what it is supposed to do?

And finally is it scam or not?

Learning from home scam?

Recently I was browsing the net for some courses of vb.net and came across this:

http://www.homelearningcollege.com/

at first I was quite impressed. All their listings, such as course outline, actually matched my requirements. I filled an online application with my details such as phone number and shortly was contacted by one of the lecturers. He required a meeting at my place to discuss further details. But before that I had to clear some doubts on whether the course was really suitable for me.

But this is where things began getting a little dodgy. Since there were no details on their site of their tuition fees, upon asking him he seemed quite hesitant and refused to give me the details. Since I wasn’t comfortable with his tone and approach I cancelled the appointment.

Soon after I researched a little more on the college and found very interesting results. One commentator stated that the accreditation claimed to accompany some of the courses where actually falsely claimed. Meaning after you complete your course the degree might actually not be recognized! Moreover, some courses tutors, after providing the course material and obviously taking payments didn’t provide the degree and simply disappeared. Although these are claims that cannot be fully verified, however through my experience I was convinced that this is a potential scam.

If anyone has more details please be kind and fill us in.....

Oola Moola

Making moola (money) online is'nt easy. So moola.com have made it easier, however only for people in the US.

However, I have researched and found this:
http://www.oolamoola.co.uk/

wonderfull site for our British audience. Not really gambling, but the viewer is asked to take up challanges. ''Challenge us with your budget dilemma via this form. Every week, we’ll post the most interesting ones on the blog so you get to vote for the one you’d like to see us take on.''

So!! back to our question is it a fake, an imposter???!! or is it really worth the try????!!
let the bogging begin....

Is yougov.com a scam?

Any one interested in making money online will br aware of yougov.com, however, new fellow geezers might still be warry. Please comment why you think yougov.com is a scam or why not?