As promised here are the words which have been qualified and disqualified for the $100 Challenge. The judges are still deciding on the winner of this challenge, but there will be a definite decision by Tuesday’s class. However, don’t forget about the $5 challenge I issued yesterday. This challenge is open to everyone in the class. You can continue to find words in the dictionary which have not been purchased as a domain. For every word you find that does not violate the rules spelled out in the $100 Challenge you will get $5. The maximum words you can get paid on are three. So everyone in the class can get up to $15. If you have any questions or if you notice that your word is not on the list feel free to email me or leave a comment.
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I apologize to Ms. Draper’s students. I promised them that I would blog yesterday about the words which were disqualified for the $100 challenge. I haven’t forgotten, I just haven’t had the bandwidth to go through all the words again, but don’t worry I will get it up shortly (hopefully today).

However, I need to let my readers know how amazing these kids are. Yesterday was my fourth day teaching Internet marketing and business to this class, and I am amazed at how bright and amazing these kids are. I have pushed them to think differently and to dream bigger. The things that these kids share with me are simply outstanding!

So here’s my challenge to marketers and business people alike: GET INVOLVED! Go to your local school and ask if you can teach about what you do or just volunteer your time to help. I think all to often in my profession we get caught up in our endeavors to be successful. Yet, what could be more successful then helping kids get on the right path of being responsible and upstanding adults.

Today, without planning it, I issued to Ms. Draper’s class the $100 challenge. What this challenge entails is finding a single word in the dictionary that is not already owned as a dot com. Example: elephant is in the dictionary, if you find that nobody owns www.elephant.com I will pay everyone on that team $100 (by the way, Ms. Draper’s students www.elephant.com is a safe site to visit).

Here are the rules:

1. The only website you can visit to find out if this word is availible is www.whois.net. If you violate this rule you are disqualified. I am not making this rule to trick you, I just know that this is a safe site.

Homework with parents Your homework for March 28, 2007 is to send me an email telling me who is on your team and what is the name of your company. If you need help on thinking of a name, try to think of things you like. Or if you want you can use your name, I own a company called Wilson Road. Another company I use for my consulting combines the two most common things about me–dreaming and passion. Therefore, DreamFire was created. If you have any struggles feel free to email me. ~Paul W.

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Those of you who are faithfully readers of my blog, I think you will enjoy the next few blog posts as I work with Ms. Draper’s 6th grade class. I have promised these young entrepreneurs that I would post their homework assignment and the $100 challenge on my blog. If you have any questions independent of my elementary work you’re welcome to contact me. 

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I have the great honor everyday this week to teach marketing to Ms. Draper’s 6th grade class. Today was our first day going over all the essentials: web safety, the purpose of business, the different types of business, goals, and of course blogging. My hopes for this class is to show that anyone can make money on the web—yes, even at the age of 11 and 12. Also, I will be having the kids coming on my blog and leaving comments. If you have any pearls of wisdom you want to teach please don’t hesitate. Below are the topics we covered in class and what the kids had to say about them.

What type of business can you do?

1. Mow lawns
2. Lemonade Stand
3. Baby Sit
4. Shovel Snow
5. Pull Weeds

How can you protect yourself from going to bad sites on the Internet?

Jott.com - One very cool site

A friend just introduced me to Jott.com, and all I can say is—wow! Okay, I can actually say a lot more about this service. Jott gives you a toll free number that you call and talk up to 30 seconds. Then it emails you the transcript of what you just talked about. All off this for F*R*E*E! When my friend told me about it, I didn’t believe her so I tried it out. Sure enough, when I said, “Hello world, this is Paul Wilson and I am now Jotting,” I received an email to my gmail account literally 4.2 seconds later.

Now, I am familiar with this technology. When I did KatrinaHousing.org we had a company out of Florida approach us about creating a phone system that did something very similar for the hurricane survivors. We had a website to help the survivors but, as you can guess, most people caught in the three hurricanes didn’t have access to the web. The company offered the phone system to us for free, but we had to pay an eight cent, per minute for everyone that called in. Well, for two solid months we had close to two to five thousand calls a day. That begins to add up, a lot! So we didn’t go with the system. However, this makes me wonder how Jott is paying for their 800 number (877-568-8486 to be exact). I wasn’t able to find anything on their site. If anyone figures it out please let me know.

So I have been fiddling with this website called IceRocket. The main focus of IR is on the blogging community. Imagine taking google, alexa, and technorati and rolling it into one big site, you would then begin to understand what IR is.

The first thing that I noticed about IR is how they used google’s clean cut approach to designing a website. The layout is so close to king google’s design that if I had both sites open I would probably get the two confused. Well, not really because IR has these cool rocket ships for their navigation bar. Yet, other than that you will notice how the layout is very similar. However, since I am a big google fan I have no objections to this.

Onto the fun features of IR. First thing you will notice when you go to the index page of IR is that they have a portion of their page dedicated to making a comparison on how much buzz is being generated between two companies. Today they were showcasing a buzz comparison between Pepsi and Coke. Below is the graph I lifted from them (click on the graph to see it better):

Okay I just came across a really cool website, www.GeneralFreeware.com. I don’t think I’ve found a better freeware site on the web. Even download.com doesn’t have as much cool free stuff as these guys do. I was able to find a free chatting software that I will be using for a future project. When you get a chance take a look at this site. freeware.gif

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It’s been a few days since I’ve written, which unfortunately means I have a thousand thoughts that I want/need to write. However, I will only burden you with the most pressing thought on my mind. This deep and burdensome idea came to me this weekend as I ran the Moab half marathon in Utah.

Throughout the entire 13.2 miles of running I pondered the great universe of web marketing. There are so many facets that we can focus on in our never ending quest of Internet visibility. With this in mind, as I came up on mile 10 and my body began to break down I had an epiphany. The breakthrough—there is such a thing as an individual’s Internet Grooming!

This may sound rudimentary but I noticed that up until recently someone’s IG was very static and one dimensional. Usually the makeup existed of only a simple website which probably changed once a year (if lucky). Then social networking exploded on the scene and the face of IG changed. Now you could change your appearance every day or hour if you so desired without having to know a single stroke of code. You could connect to your friends, make new ones, or find your true love. Second Life even took this concept a step further and made it so you could actually create a character who literally lived on the web.