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The first part of an insightful interview with indie film consultant Peter Broderick, the Executive Producer of my documentary film Paper Chasers.

AFP/File – Customers use their laptop computers at a cafe in Beijing in July. Contrary to popular belief, technology …

by Elinor Mills Yahoo! Buzz

Twitter and Facebook users were getting hit with scams on Monday.

Twitter users warned about direct messages that said, "I make money online with google. i learned how here [link]," according to Twitter users.

A Twitter representative said it was not a phishing scam because the site to which the spam links does not ask for a username and password, or look like a Twitter page.

"We're on it and fixing accounts as fast as possible," she wrote in an e-mail. "You can keep posted on known issues as well by checking in on the Twitter Status page."

On Facebook, meanwhile, people were seeing messages from friends that said, "just take a look at it and read it over and try it if you want [link]." The link goes to a site that appears to be hosting malware. Accounts that are generating the messages are likely compromised, and the owners should change their passwords immediately.

"We're aware of this campaign, and are blocking malicious URLs and resetting affected users' accounts," a Facebook representative said in an e-mail. "The link in the spam message is for a work-at-home scam, not a phishing site. We're still investigating, but it's likely people's accounts were compromised through a previous phishing scheme."

 

Twitter users warned about a "make money online with google" scam on Monday.

(Credit: Twitter Search)

Updated at 3:39 p.m. PST with Facebook comment and at 2:15 p.m. PST with comment from Twitter.

Elinor Mills covers Internet security and privacy. She joined CNET News in 2005 after working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Portugal and writing for The Industry Standard, the IDG News Service, and the Associated Press. E-mail Elinor.

What is NaNoWriMo?

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

As you spend November writing, you can draw comfort from the fact that, all around the world, other National Novel Writing Month participants are going through the same joys and sorrows of producing the Great Frantic Novel. Wrimos meet throughout the month to offer encouragement, commiseration, and—when the thing is done—the kind of raucous celebrations that tend to frighten animals and small children.

In 2008, we had over 119,000 participants. More than 21,000 of them crossed the 50k finish line by the midnight deadline, entering into the annals of NaNoWriMo superstardom forever. They started the month as auto mechanics, out-of-work actors, and middle school English teachers. They walked away novelists.

So, to recap:

What: Writing one 50,000-word novel from scratch in a month's time.

Who: You! We can't do this unless we have some other people trying it as well. Let's write laughably awful yet lengthy prose together.

Why: The reasons are endless! To actively participate in one of our era's most enchanting art forms! To write without having to obsess over quality. To be able to make obscure references to passages from our novels at parties. To be able to mock real novelists who dawdle on and on, taking far longer than 30 days to produce their work.

When: You can sign up anytime to add your name to the roster and browse the forums. Writing begins November 1. To be added to the official list of winners, you must reach the 50,000-word mark by November 30 at midnight. Once your novel has been verified by our web-based team of robotic word counters, the partying begins.

Still confused? Just visit the How NaNoWriMo Works page!

Ready to write a novel? Now might be a good time to start!

Jeffery Morin's memorabilia business in Stafford probably isn't the next Google or eBay, but I love the 27-year-old's story because it's about a regular guy who saw an online opportunity and went for it.

Morin was noodling around on eBay, the auction Web site, seven years ago while serving in the U.S. Marine Corps aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Wasp in the middle of the Red Sea. He stumbled across some people selling old military memorabilia coins, about the size of a silver dollar, called "challenge coins." Challenge coins are collectibles used by the U.S. military to commemorate service in a unit or participation in an exercise.

"Poor man's coin collecting," as Morin puts it.

EBay customers were bidding $15 for coins Morin knew he could buy at a Marine Corps base for $5. So when he got back to Camp Lejeune, N.C., he marched to the base store and bought 30 generic Marine Corps coins for $4.50 each. (He persuaded the store manager to knock 50 cents off the $5 price.)

Morin took a photograph of one coin and posted it on eBay. It sold in three days for $11.50, yielding a $7 profit.

He was on to something. During lunch breaks, Morin would run to his barracks, package the coins into bubble-padded envelopes, address them by hand and walk them to the base post office for mailing; the envelope and postage for each coin cost him $1.05, which came off his profit.

As he moved ahead, he learned how to create demand for his coins.

"The whole point [on eBay] is to create a bidding war between multiple people. So I realized it was better to post only one coin at a time instead of three or four a day. If there was just one, I could sell it for $11. The more coins I stuck out there, the price settled down and sold for $7 or $8."

His mother lent him $500 to buy more coins, and he was quickly earning $300 to $500 a month from the business. Profits went in to buying more coins.

After about six months, he got an e-mail from an Ohio woman that would result in a big expansion for his nascent enterprise: She had seen his coins on eBay, and could he find a coin dedicated to mothers with sons in the Marine Corps?

"No problem," said Morin. He paid a fellow Marine $50 to sketch out a design. Then Morin jumped online, searched for "customer minted coins" on Google and found a Georgia company that would turn the design into a mold from which he could make his Marine Mother coins: $300 for the mold and $3.50 per coin. He ordered 100, and the bill came to $750 with shipping.

Morin looked at blogs to locate more mothers of Marines and found sites like Marine Parents United and Marine Moms Online. He joined the blogs to solicit customers and posted a sketch of the forthcoming coin.

The 100 coins sold out in less than three hours; Morin turned a $6.50 profit before shipping on each $10 sale.

"The demand was so high that I called the manufacturer that day and ordered 500 more," he said. The 500 sold out in three days, too. This time, the total profit was $2,500.

"I started to realize . . . there's some money to be made in this business," Morin said.

The burgeoning coin business outgrew his barracks at Camp Lejeune, so he recruited his mother to help from her basement in Stafford. He paid her 75 cents to address and mail each envelope. He also learned another important lesson: The $3.95 "shipping fee" he charged customers covered both the postage and most of the cost of each coin, adding to his profit.

The Ohio woman gave him an idea: Why not make custom coins for fathers, brothers, sisters and every other niche having to do with the Marines, from cooks to sharpshooters to infantry grunts? Soon, Morin sold coins that had meaning for every recruit who came through the Corps, expanding his potential customer base into the millions.

He found manufacturers that would make them for lower and lower prices, eventually finding a Chinese company that charged him 90 cents each.

By the middle of 2003, Morin had left the Marine Corps and was selling $15,000 of coins a month.

Then he bought a book that taught him how to advertise on Google using key advertising words like "custom coins" and "military challenge coins."

"We had orders pouring in," he said. "I had to hire customer service reps."

Within days, he got a call from Target, the retail giant, which led to a contract for 50,000 coins for a "Star Wars" movie premiere the retailer was sponsoring. Morin beat his suppliers down on prices, eventually paying 60 cents per coin and selling them to Target for $1.35. He pocketed around $35,000 on the deal.

Morin was 22.

In the past five years, Morin has expanded his coin business beyond the Marines to include other service branches, weddings, sports teams, and corporations such as Starbucks, Delta Air Lines and United Parcel Service. He hired a Web designer to jazz up the online site. He changed his company name from Marine Corps Coins to Coins for Anything and has expanded into trophies, pins and lanyards (the neck straps to which security badges or credentials are attached).

The enterprise now encompasses five companies that will generate around $5 million in revenue this year, with the coins and trophies representing the vast majority. His costs include $2.5 million for the products, $500,000 in payroll for 16 employees, and about $7,000 a month in rent on a 4,000-square-foot headquarters in a Stafford office park. He pays Google around $1 million a year.

I estimate that Morin's companies earn a net profit of around $1 million; he didn't deny that estimate. He is rolling most of that profit back into his enterprises. A competitor offered to buy the coin company for $4 million a couple of years back.

"I'm a serial entrepreneur," he said. "I get a high on taking an idea and starting new companies."

Next up: He and a buddy are partnering in the T-shirt business.

Monday, Nov 2, 2009 8:57AM

Written by Cyrus Langhorne

Former Def Jam artist DMX recently spoke on his issues with the record industry and why most artists are forced to give up a large portion of their publishing rights and profits.

While not mentioning any label in particular, X vented about the music industry's cut-throat practices.

"The highest paid artist gets like 26 cents off a dollar," X revealed in an interview. "And they sell your sh*t for $20. I can't use my own music without getting your permission? I wrote it, paid a n*gga for the beat, I paid your for loaning me the money, I paid you back your money, now we splitting because you owed me the money but you own my sh*t. I don't owe you a motherf*cking thing, why is you holding on to my sh*t? And that's standard, get the f*ck outta here man. S*ck my f*cking d*ck." (Sounds Like Fire)

X previously said Jay-Z's run as Def Jam president around 2005 forced him to leave the label.

"I f*cks with him and had respect for him -- until he became the president of Def Jam and I ain't gonna say too much more about it, but you know what it is. There's a difference between doing wrong and being wrong. There's a difference between doing wrong and 'being' wrong, at one point you were 'being' wrong. N*ggas can't do it like we could, n*ggas couldn't do it like we could. N*ggas weren't able to -- we're artists. Jay is a talented motherf*cker. Don't misunderstand me. He is talented but he has no heart behind it. There's no soul behind it. It's motivated by money...But I still maintain the respect, because our birthday is in the same month and you know, we have history. But I lost it when he became president of Def Jam, that's why I left Def Jam...When you became the president, you hit me 'yo dog, the inmates is running the building!!!' You know what that mean, your mans is in charge...That's what it is, we good,' 'cause we had history. And then you go do that. You come down, listen to my sh*t -- we ready. Then you go on vacation. N*ggas take a picture of you with chancletas on. That's what you leave the hood for, son? That's why you walk out on your man for, son? Flip-flops? Serious? You serious? Real talk son, I respected you. I'm in my feelings about that. I'm hurt. I ain't ever talk about that." (Hip Hop Stan)

Aside from the music industry, X recently spoke about his upcoming Alabama Pride martial arts match-up against fighter Eric Martinez.

"We got a phone call asking if I wanted to participate in it," X said about how the opportunity presented itself. "I'm just gonna walk in as it is man, you know what I mean? It wouldn't be fair if I trained. I think it's three two-minute rounds...[My opponent] is shorter than me and I think he weighs a little more than me. I'm 175, six feet. I got a little build on me, you know what I'm saying? I've seen him, yeah I've seen him. He's a nice guy -- when I agreed to it, I didn't know it was gonna be him...I'm going to pick one of my own songs [to walk out with.] 'What's My Name.' I'm in the studio everyday banging joints out -- I got the pens and the paper. [New album] hopefully first quarter." (106.7 The Fan)

Reports landed online around September which had X headlined for the forthcoming fight.

Thunder Promotions recently announced that Alabama Pride: Butterbean vs. Tank Abbott is set to take place on December 12 at the Birmingham Jefferson Convention Complex in Birmingham, Alabama. Headlining the event is a heavyweight match-up between Butterbean and Tank Abbott. Thunder Promotions also announced is a celebrity fight between co-headliners rapper DMX and musician Eric Martinez. (MMA Waves)

Check out DMX speaking on the music industry below:

If you haven't yet learned about machinima filmmaking, here's a wonderful free tool to get you started.

By Ann Hornaday
Sunday, October 25, 2009

To earn her two Oscars, Hilary Swank went mano a mano with Clint Eastwood in a boxing ring and sucked face with Chloë Sevigny. But her toughest test yet might be this weekend, when box office numbers for "Amelia" come in. The historical drama, about the pioneering aviatrix Amelia Earhart, represents a major risk in Hollywood, where studio executives have been increasingly chary of making movies about strong women. If "Amelia" earns respectable receipts, chances are it will be dismissed as a lucky break. If it fails, it will be cited as yet more proof that strong female protagonists are box office poison.

Reached by telephone last week, Swank -- who also executive produced "Amelia" -- was optimistic. "I think things ebb and flow, and someone out there who crunches numbers probably affects that," she said regarding studios' reluctance to make films about strong women ("Amelia" was produced and distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures, a subsidiary of Twentieth Century Fox). "Then I think art has to override it, and the numbers people say, 'Oh right, that works.' It comes in and out."

Strong women, for now anyway, are out. Two years ago, when the Jodie Foster vigilante thriller "The Brave One" failed at the box office, industry blogger Nikki Finke reported that a Warner Brothers production executive announced to staffers that the studio would no longer produce movies featuring female leads. This past summer, actress and writer Nia Vardalos blogged on the Huffington Post that when she was pitching a project to a studio executive, he asked that she change the female lead to a man. Why? Because "women don't go to movies," he told her. "When I pointed out the box office successes of 'Sex and The City,' 'Mamma Mia!,' and 'Obsessed,' he called them 'flukes,' " she wrote.

On paper, at least, "Amelia" should be a surefire hit. The high-gloss portrait of 1930s pilot Earhart recalls such audience favorites as "Out of Africa" and "The English Patient" in its sense of epic romance and period glamour. Swank gets to flirt with two dashing leading men, Richard Gere and Ewan McGregor. And she plays an enduringly fascinating icon, a free spirit who vanished mysteriously in 1937, leaving behind a tantalizing myth that combined speed, adventure, proto-feminist brio and American optimism.

The only problem? No Manolo Blahniks! No Abba! No vampires!

Consider: It's been nine years since Julia Roberts starred in "Erin Brockovich," about a nervy legal assistant who wound up taking on corporate America. Nine years before that, Jodie Foster starred in "The Silence of the Lambs," in which she played a quietly courageous FBI agent. Of the top 10 movies of 2009 so far, only one features a woman in a leading role: the romantic comedy "The Proposal," starring Sandra Bullock. "Julie & Julia," which is close to breaking the $100 million barrier, is the only hit film that features a "serious" female protagonist -- Julia Child, played by Meryl Streep.

In an era when women in movies fall along a spectrum defined by Hannah Montana and "Twilight" on one end and "Sex and the City" and "Mamma Mia!" on the other, where are the screen heroines of yesteryear, who could be strong, serious and sexy?

"Dramas are dead," says producer Lynda Obst ("Contact," "The Invention of Lying"). "Some of the greatest parts for women -- the Academy Award parts for women -- are often in dramas, and this is the worst time for dramas since I've been in the business for the last 10,000 years." More than ever, Obst adds, the movie business is geared toward the young men who go to movies most frequently. "And by and large that's a comedy audience and an action audience. To get a project greenlit now, studios are requiring more and more what we call 'unaided awareness,' which is where you get this addiction to toys and comics and old titles. And dramas don't live there."

To understand the situation of women in Hollywood right now, one need look no further than Drew Barrymore, whose career over the past year perfectly crystallizes the good-news/bad-news dichotomy. The ensemble romantic comedy she produced and starred in, "He's Just Not That Into You," was a hit. "Whip It," the girl-centric action comedy that marked her feature directorial debut, was not -- even though it put Barrymore in the company of a remarkable crop of female directors with movies out this year: Kathryn Bigelow, Jane Campion, Nora Ephron, Karyn Kusama, Lynn Shelton and Lone Scherfig (whose effervescent coming-of-age film, "An Education," opens Friday), to name just a few.

But Barrymore also delivered a stunning dramatic screen performance in 2009. Not in a major motion picture, but on HBO, in "Grey Gardens" opposite Jessica Lange. "Dramas are still alive in television," says Obst, "which is why we see some of our greatest actresses emigrating to TV, everyone from Mary-Louise Parker to Glenn Close to Holly Hunter."

To cries of "I call sexism!" most insiders agree that it's more complicated than that. "I don't think it's sexism," says writer-director Rod Lurie, whose films "The Contender" and "Nothing but the Truth," as well as the television series "Commander in Chief," all featured strong female leads. "Because Hollywood will do whatever it takes to make money. They are not taking a principled stance against women. They just don't see the audience as going there.

"I'll tell you something," Lurie continues. "When we were researching 'Commander in Chief,' which was about the first woman president, we found that men supported [the idea of] a woman for president more than women did. Women's top priority was security, and they felt more comfortable with a man for that reason. Women are the predominant buyers of tickets at movies, but they don't seem to support in any great strength going to see 'The Brave One' or 'Duplicity' or 'Changeling.' " (The failure of "Duplicity," the Julia Roberts caper comedy that came out earlier this year, is often mentioned as yet another death knell for meaty women's roles.)

What women will go see, observers agree, are groups of women in comedies, a la "Sex and the City," "Mamma Mia!" and "He's Just Not That Into You." (Each of them, it bears noting, was based on a popular TV show, musical and book.) "Women like going out in groups to watch women interacting in groups," says Paul Dergarabedian, box office analyst for Hollywood.com. "And they are very loyal. If they discover something they like, they tell their friends about it. Women were social networking way before Facebook."

And what what women like, at least for now, Dergarabedian says, are traditional narratives. "There's no 'Bourne Identity' with a woman starring in it right now," he says. "It's almost as if in real life, women want to be empowered and in control, but on-screen they seem to like the old-fashioned damsel-in-distress, love-struck female."

This state of affairs distresses Melissa Silverstein, who tracks women's issues in the entertainment industry on her Web site Women & Hollywood. "One of the things making me nervous this fall is the box office of movies like 'Jennifer's Body' and 'Whip It,' " says Silverstein. "I call them 'girl-power' movies. They're the movies I dream about for my feminist future. And the fact that people didn't go to see those movies makes me want to weep.

"Figuring out how to reach women and young women is the challenge for this business. They don't know how to do it well. Car companies have figured it out, yet Hollywood has not figured it out."

One reason why we see fewer strong female leads these days is a changing business model, notes Silverstein. In the 1970s, 1980s and into the 1990s -- years when stars like Jane Fonda, Barbra Streisand, Sally Field and Goldie Hawn were making movies in a diverse number of genres -- studios were not, as they are now, subsidiaries of multi-corporations, responsible for contributing to quarterly bottom lines. With economic pressures greater than ever, studios are looking for movies that are guaranteed to make $100 million their first weekend out. The result: More Paul Blarts, fewer Erin Brockoviches.

The upshot, Obst says, is that "it's easier for male executives to get jobs now, because they want to develop male-oriented material. Girls don't grow up reading comic books or playing video games, or with Transformer or G.I. Joe toys. So the material they're looking for isn't necessarily as familiar to female executives who read books, which is becoming practically a liability. That's a real problem. That's how it becomes systemic."

For his part, Dergarabedian sees the recent trend as part of a cycle that will eventually shift. "Maybe someone hasn't built the perfect beast yet," he says. "Ultimately, everything comes down to the movie. If the movie's good, it can cross over all kinds of lines and break all sorts of rules." Obst concurs. "Are we ever going to see strong women again in movies? We might see them in thrillers. We might see them in an elegant horror movie like 'The Silence of the Lambs' or 'Rosemary's Baby.' The movie just has to be a bang-out narrative with a star people want to see. But dramas? They're on television."

Meanwhile, Swank recently wrapped "Betty Anne Waters," based on a true story of a woman who put herself through law school to exonerate her wrongfully accused brother. It's a bona fide strong-woman drama, says producer Andrew Sugerman, in the tradition of "Erin Brockovich." The film has yet to be picked up, but Sugerman is optimistic. "We have a distributor very interested," he says.

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