At 14, Caroline Moore became the youngest person ever to discover a supernova. But months later, we're still figuring out how her find, dubbed SN 2008HA, can actually exist, since it defies everything we thought we knew.

Moore is part of the amateur Puckett Observatory Supernova Search Team. According to Deer Pond Observatory:

It all came about at diner with Tim Puckett & Mike Peoples after the Friday's opening of NEAIC 2008. Tim was telling us about the search team and the fact that the team had the youngest person to discover a SN. Her name was Jennifer and she was 16 ( it turns out she was 18 but Caroline did not know that until after her find ) Hearing that a 16 year old had found a supernova, she pronounced " I could beat her". Timmy said it would take a lot of work, but if you think you're up to it I'll sign you up. So at the ripe old age of 13 Caroline started her hunt

That was the beginning of a long eight months. First she had to get a new computer and install all the software then work with Mike Peoples to learn how to get the data and what to do with it.

On November 6,2008 Caroline spotted something odd in one of the data files of distant galaxy UGC 12682, located in the constellation Pegasus. The image of the object was very faint but she noticed some pixels off to one side of the galaxy that made her suspicious, Caroline did all the checks and ran it through all the data basis. "I'm going to send it in. I think it's something," she told her Dad. It took couple nights until the team could get a confirmation image and it looked like her suspicions were confirmed.

Her discovery did indeed turn out to be a supernova, but it goes against all the rules we thought we knew. For example, it's in a galaxy that's in the process of "eating itself," UGC 12682, where supernovas don't usually occur. It's also one of the least luminous supernovas ever detected, and scientists haven't found any evidence of hydrogen, which usually turns up around dimmer supernovas. Now scientists are theorizing that the lack of hydrogen may stem from the fact that this was a massive star that lost mass. Perhaps its core collapsed into a black hole without transferring any energy to the outer layers of the star. Says Stefano Valenti with Queens University Belfast:

The implications are quite important. If this is a massive star explosion, then it is the first one that might fit the theoretical models of massive stars that lose their outer layers through their huge luminosity pressure and then, perhaps, collapse to black holes with a whimper

It's pretty cool that an amateur teenager can discover something that keeps the experts guessing.

Online magazine Salon.com today opened up its new hosted blog network, Open Salon, which not only allows its readers (or anybody else for that matter) to create their own blogs, but also has a built-in tipping mechanism to reward writers for their best content. As a blog host, Open Salon's feature set is similar to that of Wordpress.com or Blogger, but the differentiating feature for Open Salon is clearly the 'Tippem' tip jar which is prominently featured on every page.

Standard Blogging Platform

As a blogging platform, Open Salon is about as standard as they come. The front page features a number of especially interesting posts as determined by the editors, as well as the ability to see the top rated, most read, and latest posts. Users can comment, rate, and save the posts on popular bookmarking sites like delicious, digg, and reddit. Open Salon also provides profiles and RSS feeds for every user. We were not able to determine if there was any way to post to Open Salon from a desktop blogging client, but at least for now, there is no indication that this would be possible, so users are restricted to posting from the rich-text editor provided on the site.

Free Tips

To process micropayments from the Tippem jar, Salon.com has chosen Revolution MoneyExchange, which is still officially in beta, but must have proven stable enough by now to be chosen by Salon.com over competitors like PayPal or OboPay. Salon.com has set the default tip amount to $1, with $0.10 being the minimum and $1000 the maximum amount one can tip (for tips of $1000, Open Salon advises you to contact the author directly).

It's important to note here that everybody who signs up from a Revolution MoneyExchange account from Open Salon immediately gets $10 to give away as tips from Open Salon. While this will surely seed the system at the beginning, the real question, as Caroline McCarthy also points out, will be if users will keep tipping after those first $10 have been exhausted. After all, it's easy to tip if it doesn't cost you anything.

Good Fit For Salon.com's Culture?

Given that most users on the web consider content to be free, it will be hard for Salon to foster a culture where paying for blog content becomes a regular event. But then, Salon.com is, of course, one of the few sites where a lot of the content is not free, but only available to subscribers or after being forced to watch a 15-second full screen advertisement. Because of this, Salon.com's audience might be more willing to pay for content than the average Internet user.

Tippem, by the way, is only available to US citizen at this point.

Matthew Sherbourne saw my posts about the ebook I have written and very kindly offered to send me a free review copy of his own ebook - all about writing ebooks! Of course I jumped at the chance. I really enjoyed the book so this review is quite long!

Instant Money Reports

The book is called Instant Money Reports and sells for $37. It has one of those annoying long sales letters which I dislike but as Matthew kindly sent me the book directly, I didn't have to read any of it :-)

I did flick through it however and I must say I think the sales letter itself is a little vague. He emphasises a wealth-creating system but almost mentions the reports' part as an afterthought - it would be easy to miss. I think he would be better off clarifying that this is all about writing reports for profit and talk less about a generic wealth system'.

The reason I say this is that there are many ways of making money online but writing is not for everybody. There are a ton of people out there for whom English is not a first language or they simply find it hard to write. So this is not necessarily a great option if you are one of those people, where as affiliate marketing may be better for example.

Content of the Book

It is a standard PDF-ebook, weighing in at 89 pages, and split into four major sections:

1. Your Report Topic
2. Gathering Information
3. Your Info-Product
4. Make Money

With a fairly long ebook such as this you are not likely to read it in one sitting so it would have been nice if PDF bookmarks had been inserted. You can see these in action in my own WordPress ebook.

Technical niggles aside, I'll now review the actual content of the book itself:

Part 1 - Your Report Topic

Matthew goes into quite a bit of detail about picking a topic for your reports. He describes the various kinds of topics and the way they tend to generate income (an initial rush vs a steady stream for example) and explains when to use the various kinds of topics.

There is a strong focus on profitability within this ebook. Matthew is touting report writing as a standalone business and encourages you to think about how you can branch out within a niche and eventually dominate it so that you can be regarded as an expert within the niche. This is something I did not really think of with my own ebook - I just got an idea and went with it on the spur of the moment.

He also identifies key ingredients that are necessary in any report, such as popularity and goes into depth to help you ascertain if your chosen topic has these ingredients. This is basically the research phase of your ebook - get it wrong and you may be doing a lot of work for nothing so it's nice to see this area covered in such detail. For instance, recall how recently I did a case study of a niche site and I pointed out that perhaps the site would not get much traffic due to a poor choice of topic.

At the end of this section there are some practical tests for you to run against your chosen report topic for you to determine whether or not it is a viable one. This is a nice touch which encourages the reader to actually DO something with the information in the book rather than just reading it and then forgetting about it.

Click here to buy Instant Money Reports for $37

Part 2 - Gathering Information

I think one of the golden rules to selling anything online is giving people what they actually want as opposed to what you think they need. I've had this message drummed into me a lot recently as I was being told the same thing for the Teaching Sells course that I am working through.

This section of the book gives workable methods for figuring out exactly what it is that your market wants rather than you having to resort to guesswork. This again is something I simply didn't do with my own ebook.

What I also like about this section is that the methods in here can be applied to all sorts of things such as what to write about on your blog for example, and is not just applicable to writing ebooks. I'm also going to use these methods to determine exactly what to teach in the course I am developing for Teaching Sells. I really need to do a blog post about that shortly

Once you have figured out what the market wants, Matthew suggests that it is then your job to answer the biggest questions that they have. At this point I think many people can fall over. You see the Internet is full of information - we have an information overload and in all honesty an Internet savvy person could probably find the answer to any question they have absolutely free starting with Google.

So of course some people believe that because the information is freely available that nobody will pay for it. Not true! Most people don't have time to wade through all the information, to weed out the crap - and that's where you (and me) come in. The average surfer can't be bothered to look for it all himself.

What Matthew does in this book is show exactly where to find the information you need to answer the questions being asked by your target market. If research is not your strong point it will be after reading this chapter! I thought I was pretty wise when it comes to the Internet but there is a ton of resources in this chapter that I had never heard of before.

Click here to buy Instant Money Reports for $37

Part 3 - Your Info-Product

This section of the book is all about the physical production of your report. Matthew starts by giving some practical advice on the organisation of the body of the report, ways of dealing with writers block and so on.

He also covers how to write a proper introduction for the report, the conclusion, and various finishing touches such as copyright and disclaimers.

This section also discusses how to increase the perceived value of your ebook and additional monetization via affiliate links.

Next up we have the packaging - how to actually turn your report into downloadable PDF file and then how to grant usage rights to the users. This is something I did not consider with my ebook but as a free offering it is not so important. However, it is very important if you intend to sell your report and Matthew goes into great detail about licensing.

Part 4 - Make Money

This part starts of with the sales message that accompanies your report so it is really lessons in sales copy. For example, apparently its very bad to use the word buy' in your sales copy which is just what I have done within this review, oops!

There is a lot of information here about appealing to the emotional needs of your audience - giving them what they want rather than what they need. I skimmed over a lot of this stuff as I'm not really likely to be creating long sales letters anytime soon.

I was far more interested in the practical aspects of setting up a secure download page. One of the services that Matthew recommends is called E-Junkie which is spooky because they just so happened to take out an ad with me today! He also explains how to provide instant delivery of your report even if you do not have your own website or blog.

The very last section in this ebook is the most valuable to me - here Matthew shows exactly how to market your report on popular forums such as the Warrior Forum which just happens to be one of the action points that I had in my project page for my ebook. My problem is that I find the Warrior Forum intimidating and you only get one chance to promote something so of course I don't want to screw it up! The information in this ebook is brilliant here.

As well as forums, he also discusses ebay (another one of my marketing todo's!), something called Lulu which I had never heard of, classified ad sites such as Craigslist, and again, lots more that I didn't know about. I will be re-reading part 4 of this book several times over the next couple of weeks as I continue with my ebook marketing.

Click here to buy Instant Money Reports for $37

Action Points to Take Away

I really should have read this book a couple of months back before I started on my own ebook project. The problem is that it was just a spur of the moment idea and I wanted to run with it while the enthusiasm was there. To be honest, it's been out for quite a few weeks now and has already been updated so many times that I don't think there is much point in applying what I have learned here to my current ebook. So instead, I will take these action points and apply them to my next one:

• Do better research to determine a good topic - look at profitability potential
• Find out exactly what the market wants to know rather than assuming that I know what they want to read
• Research online sources of information rather than just relying on my own knowledge which may be flawed.
• Add polish to the content thereby increasing perceived value
• Put more effort into crafting a good title for the book
• Write a proper copyright and disclaimer section
• Fully investigate the security options when turning into a PDF file
• Provide a secure downloadable paid ebook and not just a feebie next time!
• Sell the book in forums such as the Warrior Forum
• Sell the book on eBay
• Sell the book on classified ad sites

Conclusion

I was given the book free but if I had paid $37 for it I would be very happy. My favourite part was the last one all about how to market the book and make the most money from it. I didn't much like the stuff about the sales page but that's just me, and not because it's bad information.

I suppose I should also mention the extras. The book has some bonus reports such as a 26-page guide to cashing in on Craigslist which looks interesting and there is a toolbox' which is basically a PDF with lots of worksheets, diagrams etc to help you clarify your thoughts. This toolbox is referred to throughout the text of the ebook.

There is also a 30 day money back guarantee, as you would expect these days :-)

With my current ebook the main revenue stream is an affiliate link to my hosting company Bluehost which pays out $65 per referral. Obviously just a single extra sale that comes from the information in Matthews book would pay for the book almost twice over.

Over the next few weeks I plan to do a lot more marketing of my ebook (as well as work on some other projects) and I will certainly be referring back to part 4 of Instant Money Reports to make sure I get it right.

I am an affiliate for this ebook so obviously I want you guys to go out and buy it but I really do recommend this one, there is so much information in it that I simply didn't know and it is written in an extremely practical way so that it can actually be applied.

Click here to buy Instant Money Reports for $37

Welcome to the first day 6 Day Twitter Traffic.

Twitter is a micro-blogging presence stream' application that's unique because it only allows you to post messages shorter than 140 characters in length!

Yet within this limitation, a whole community of over ONE MILLION users has evolved, making this one of the most vibrant, interactive and fascinating of social media channels available today.

Are you ready to explore the exciting waters of Twitter?

Let's go.

Sign up for a Twitter account

Before you go further, read this report (it's free) to see what your next steps will be:

Mastering Twitter: Click here to download the PDF

Enter your name, username, password, email address, and a picture.

The picture/photo is important. It's your avatar' on Twitter. And on a social medium like Twitter, it matters that people in your network interact with you as a person or entity. Pick a photo, picture or logo that represents you or your business, brands it, and is eye-catching.

Start experimenting.

Post a few messages to Twitter. Since no one is following' you yet, don't worry - if you goof up, no one will know!

Type a short message (less than 140 characters) into the box and click on the UPDATE button. Your post will appear below the box.

Try using a link to your website or blog. The link will be automatically converted into a short cloaked link, through the tinyurl.com service.

Here's a sample you can try out - and at the same time, promote Congenital Heart Defects awareness:

A Day For Hearts is on February 14th. Please show your support. Help save a child's heart. http://www.CHDinfo.com/chdaware/

or

You can help spread Congenital Heart Defects Awareness. See how you can help: http://www.chdinfo.com/chdaware/youcanhelp.htm

Then, check out the General Timeline by clicking on the link near the top of your Twitter homepage. You'll see a cross-section of ALL Twitter users, with posts being refreshed frequently.

Some posts will be interesting, others cryptic, and most will be dull, drab, useless musings of individuals. You do NOT want to make many posts in that last category!

Click on stuff and explore the service.

There are many cool features. You'll discover them by being curious. And for more background, check out the Big Juicy Twitter Guide written by my friend, Caroline Middlebrook - it's here

The CHD Social Media Challenge is a project to spread Congenital Heart Defects awareness. There are 4 mini-tutorials and 1 firesale making up the challenge'. You can join in and help too - click here to see how.

Caroline from Webware has a scoop on a new combination of MySpace and MTV which will hold "interactive" presidential discussions. Seems similar to YouTube and CNN"s presidential debates last month. From her article:

"These dialogues are not going to be a debate," said Ian Rowe, MTV's vice president of strategic partnerships, in an interview with CNET News.com. "They're going to be one-on-one, unfiltered conversations between a group of young people who are sitting inside a college campus auditorium (and) an audience online (that) will have the ability to submit questions in real-time." Rowe added that this will be a totally interactive experience. "They'll be able to literally respond to what the candidate is actually saying during the conversation. Even if you don't have the opportunity to physically be in the room, you can participate tangibly in the conversation."

It appears the first of these conversations will take place on September 27th with John Edwards. Think he will Twitter it live?

Will it really be "anything goes" or will it be "filtered conversations" as was reported with YouTube/CNN? Is MTV even relevant anymore?

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