Apple’s long overdue iPhone will hit retailers Friday. At first glance, it seems that the iPhone is appealing greatly to teens as well as people 20-30 years old. The all in one social networking market is hot right now. YouTube brought “Vloggers” (Video Bloggers) together. MySpace brought casual and social internet users together. It looks like the iPhone will continue where computers and PC based internet left off.

For years business magazines and columnists worldwide have been predicting the next big advertising breakthrough in the form of mobile internet and cell phones. Sure people have been able to browse their favorite websites and check email from cell phones for years, however, with new technology such as the iPhone bridging the gap between consumers and affordable mobile web technology companies are racing to take advantage of their new potential audience. With MySpace receiving roughy 50% the daily traffic of YouTube it only makes sense for Google to take this opportunity to to continue running circles around it’s competitor. Apple announced a deal last week with Google that will provide iPhone users exclusive access to an all new battery saving version of over 10,000 of the most popular YouTube videos. YouTube will release more and more videos in the low bandwidth iPhone ready format eash week as the iPhone rolls out into various markets worldwide.

Google AdSense has just released a new feature for publishers to take advantage of. You can now have ROUNDED corners on your Google ads. It’s about time. I’ve had rounded corners on many of my websites for years. It seems like Google would have been a bit quicker in getting this to the assembly line but hey, at least it’s here now.

How do you use these new rounded corners? Easy. When creating your ad blocks, there is a new option called “Corner Styles”. Simply select your desired corner type from the corresponding dropdown menu:

If you are looking to buy a domain online, you should know a few things that you don’t necessarily want to hear. It’s hard to prove what I am about to say, but, even so the evidence is out there. Time and time again people who are searching for available domain names come across a name they like. Many people buy these as soon as they see them. Other times, however, they wait a day or two while they decide what name to buy. Often times this can be their biggest mistake. Here’s why:

It’s not clear or official which domain registrars are monitoring domain availability searches, but, I hear all the time about people who find an obscure domain that they like only to go back a few days later and find out that the domain is now owned by somebody. Coincidence? Absolutely not. I’ve had this happen to me too. I searched for a domain and found that it was available. I liked the domain and was planning on buying it a few days later. Well, when I went back to make the purchase I was shocked to find that the domain had been registered a day or two earlier, just after I had checked its’ availability. Annoying? Yes.

I’ve sold my fair share of items on eBay and the feedback game never gets old. Personally I think the feedback system is worthless and here’s why. Say you buy an item from somebody, pay instantly, and overall do everything a good buyer needs to do. Basically you have gone through the motions and now you are waiting for your precious feedback. Well, the item shows up not as described or damaged. Yes, you got screwed. So, what do you do? Leave a negative? Try to work it out? None of the above?

It’s a well known fact that most people will do anything to avoid a fight. Most eBayers would rather eat the loss than have to confront the seller. Leaving a negative feedback doesn’t always have the right effect. Plus, there’s no stopping the seller from leaving YOU a negative in return just to “teach you a lesson”. That’s called holding somebody’s feedback hostage. There are some sellers who won’t even leave ANY feedback until you first leave feedback for them. This is not only ridiculous, but, very unfair. As the buyer, once you have paid for the item your part is over. If you paid quickly and provided the seller with a legitimate physical shipping address, you deserve a positive feedback. Most sellers are scared of negative feedback so they would rather force you to either leave nothing, or leave a positive just so you can get a positive in return and in turn avoid a possible negative that wouldn’t even be your fault.

If you are a web admin of any type of site, you have probably dealt with spam. I personally hate spam of all types. Email spam, forum spam, blog spam, popup spam, IM spam, MySpace spam, spyware spam… Did I mention I hate spam?

Most smart admins will ban spammers on the spot. No second chances, no warnings, just a quick and permanent ban. Some people spam without realizing it. Others try absolutely ridiculous methods of trying to disguise their spam. Somebody today spammed one of my sites with a message starting with “Dear Sir or Madam.” Now I don’t know about you, but immediately I was annoyed and deleted the message as well as banning the person on the spot. No legitimate member of any site would ever start a legitimate discussion with that. It’s the bottom of the bottom of the canned spam salutations.

You’ve heard that success duplicates success, but, this isn’t always a good business strategy. For example,  eBay is by far the very best online auction site despite the inflated fees and frequent user complaints. The fact of the matter is that eBay is highly successful in what it does and since it was launched in the late 90’s nothing has come close to topping it. Monopoly? Yes. Duplicatable? In a word, no. Take Microsoft as another example. They are highly successful in the computer software and online business collaboration industries. Monopoly? For the most part. Duplicatable? Considering that the only company in their field to come close to them ever is Google, I would say no. Sure Google has it’s own search engine Monopoly, but, Microsoft remains the undisputed leader of PC operating systems worldwide. The point I am trying to make is that in order to attempt to follow in the footsteps of such business giants, one must be prepared to deviate from the path from time to time.

You can’t just create a better operating system. You have to convince consumers to buy it. You can’t just create a better eBay or Google, you have to drive traffic to it. In the end your product or service can be twice as good as your competitors, but, if you don’t win the wallets of consumers you have gained nothing. Take Google for example. When Google launched in 1999, AOL, Yahoo, Excite, MSN, and Ask Jeeves were dominating the search engine market. Google wanted in, but, instead of trying to create a better search engine, they first created a better more convenient search experience. Instead of competing with the other big name search engines, they simply made the choice simple for consumers. Should somebody search on Yahoo or MSN? Will Jeeves really serve up what you are craving? The solution came from a third party search engine called Google by allowing web users to search ALL of the major search engines at the same time, bringing back a simple page with results from each. Google didn’t reinvent the wheel to turn business towards them. Instead they made the wheel easier to use and in turn, once heads were turned and they were in the spotlight, they went on to essentially reinvent the “search engine wheel”.

It’s old news that people can make money by blogging, but it seems USA Today has finally taken notice as well. Most tech junkies have heard of and most likely have been to TechCrunch.com. What you probably do not realize is that its’ owner Michael Arrington is bringing in $200,000 a month in revenue. Now THAT’S what I’m talking about. That should be enough to catch the attention of anybody with a mind for money.

He only started the site in 2005 and now it’s one of the most popular tech blogs on the net, not to mention the planet. With a Feedburner rating of 432K readers it’s also one of the most popular blogs PERIOD. It’s full of ads. It’s hard to find what you are looking for right away, but none of that matters if the traffic keeps coming in. Right off the bat I see 13 ads just on their homepage. Sure it’s cluttered, but, it works.

News Corp, the company that owns MySpace is rumored to be in talks with Yahoo regarding a very interesting deal indeed. Apparently the two companies are considering a trade. 100% of MySpace for approximately 25% of Yahoo. Considering that Microsoft was recently considering a $55 Billion dollar purchase of Yahoo, that would essentially value MySpace at just under $14 Billion dollars. Quite an improvement over its’ 900 million dollar sale a few years ago.

I think this would be a good deal for both parties. Yahoo is struggling as it is, so taking over 100% ownership of MySpace while maintaining 75% of itself might be a very good way to diversify a bit. Of course then if Yahoo sells out to Microsoft (which I believe is no longer being discussed) then maybe Microsoft will get ahold of MySpace. Who knows.

It’s very interesting to follow these large buyouts and mergers. I think if Yahoo took over MySpace it could be a good thing. I’m not a big fan of MySpace personally but I think Yahoo’s social networking could be a lot better if it combined with MySpace. Hey maybe Yahoo would change the name of MySpace to YSpace… Highly unlikely considering the name recognition that MySpace commands, but, even so, perhaps if Yahoo took over the social networking giant they would network the accounts with Yahoo accounts and make it easy for MySpace users to play games on the Yahoo Games website.

So I’ve been blogging here for almost three months straight on a daily basis without fail. I thought I’d take today and reiterate and explain how I expect things to function around here.

First, if you are a regular reader, feel free to comment on any posts that interest you. You’ll notice in the right navigation menu there is a heading called “Top Commentators”. This allows anybody who posts a comment to be ranked in order of how many comments they have posted in the last 30 days. Just enter your website url when commenting and use the same name each time and you will get free backlinks from every page on this site. This site is expected to be a PR5 after the next Google Page Rank update next month, so backlinks will certainly help you out.

You’ve probably seen the small “BumpZee” links in each blog post I make. This is a popular system similar to Digg but for blogs. Basically if you like one of my posts, feel free to click “Bump It”  and it should help to bring some traffic here from BumpZee. It also helps me see which types of posts people like and what ones I should stay away from in the future.

Now, scroll down and take a look at the bottom of the right column. You’ll see a “Recent Readers” area. If you log into your “MyBlogLog” account you can have your picture and a link to your profile show up here on Money Complex.

So earlier tonight I was watching TV and I saw a familiar face. The face was this guy, who has several awesome videos on YouTube. Apparently Geico liked what they saw and decided to use him in a commercial.

The funny thing is that while he has a lot of very cool displays of his acting style and ability, the video they chose was one of his more random videos.. this video, to be exact. “Strange Faces and Noises I can Make III”. After 15 seconds of barking like a dog, and just generally making strange noises, he is cut off by “There are better ways to spend 15 seconds. 15 seconds can save you money on your car insurance.” (Or something like that)