The FTC will require that writers on the Web clearly disclose any freebies or payments they get from companies for reviewing their products. The commission also said advertisers featuring testimonials that claim dramatic results cannot hide behind disclaimers that the results aren’t typical.

The gist is this: where you have anything good and sacred in this world, there will be people who practice unethical behavior. The book blogger community is, as a whole, an honest community. In my time, I have not met many who were not overall very good, honest bloggers. Most book bloggers such as myself also endorse products and receive free merchandise for review. Once you enter this realm, you really start encountering people who run blogs solely to get products and money. They are even willing to sell out their own opinion for a few freebies and a few bucks, giving dishonest and positive reviews to placate their sponsor. This IS unethical behavior.

And this is, of course, what I hope the new FTC regulation will stat to put a stop to.

Naturally, it means that all of us must abide by the rules. But, I am a big time rule player. I like them, I understand them, and I figure if I am not doing anything wrong, it is an easy transition to make. I also have a sitewide disclosure for sponsored posts, but I am going to include after every book and product review if I received the item for free. My reviews have always been honest, though, free gifts or not. As a community, we have a responsibility to protect ourselves and each other.

MyFreeCopyright.com – Register your blog by adding your feed address. From the point that you register and beyond, your blog posts will be logged, registered with a date to prove you published at a certain date and time, and given a unique digital fingerprint. With this you will be able to prove that the content you publish is yours because you have a digitally stamped copy. You can’t alter the time and date or text like you can with a blog entry. So, if someone steals your content, you can just furnish your proof that it belonged to you first.

CopyrightSpot – As they say, this site is for free plagiarism detection. You put in your feed URL or your site URL and their search engine will seak out duplicates of your content. This is important for book reviewers because some sites and book sellers out there will just steal a review from a reviewer site and publish it in their book shops. Without permission.

SafeSurf Rating System – Not all of us rate books that are child or teenager friendly. There are a lot of hot and steamy novels out there! Of course, as responsible web owners and reviewers, we don’t want children to come across our reviews and read something that may be inappropriate. A quote, an observation, a joke… whatever. The site, once you register your content, will generate a META tag for you to add to your site. If your site is not for the eyes of the young, search engines will read that and not show it in results.

I bought his domain when I started college. It was sort of a treat to myself to get one, as I had a blog hosted at other places for a while up to that point. I chose a name from one of my favorite Anne Rice book quotes and set off on the purchase. I can still remember very clearly sitting in the computer lab of the school, checking my URL to see if it worked. And I can remember how happy I was to see it and know that it was mine. I also recall very clearly how upset I was when I almost lost this domain. In the six years I have had it, I haven’t once thought of buying a new personal domain. This is my domain. I want no other name but this and I can’t imagine ever wanting another one to identify me.

This blog/site has gone through many changes, but so have I. Okay, so it has little more purpose than it did from inception, but it makes me happy and that is all that counts.

I just wanted to mark this occasion by announcing and by declaring my ever lasting love for this domain.

And the count begins again.

So, when I heard about Postcrossing, I signed up instantly.

The deal is this. You sign up and put in your information, including your address (how are they going to send you a postcard without one). When you’re ready to send a card, you click on ‘Send a postcard.’ So easy, right? You get the address of a person and a special ID number. When you fill out your postcard, you include that ID number because the person who receives the card will identify it by that number and mark it off on the website that way. This is the sites way of verifying that you sent the card. Once the system has it that you’ve send a postcard, your address is put on the list for someone to get when they want to send a postcard. So, for every postcard you send, you get one sent in the mail.

They also give you the option to upload the postcards that others have sent you to make an online wall. If you have a scanner or a digital camera, that means you can share all of the postcards you’ve gotten. I’m so doing that, too.

It sounds like so much fun to exchange postcards from around the world. I am going to go out and buy tons of cute VA postcards. I can’t wait to put my mail box to good use.

Sign up, guys. I made a blog post about this because I think it’s just such a neat idea.