What is Bla.st? Put simply it’s an alternative form of online advertising that anybody can use. You can promote almost anything and pay as little (only pay if you want to) or as much as you like. The more you do pay means the higher up the page your advert(s) will go and the more likely it is to appear on other peoples websites, yes, they have a publishers program in the form of a widget (great for Wordpress sites) which doubles as a kind of referral program where you can earn credits for your own cards as well as 50% of the sale on any paid ads taken out by the referral.

Bla.st is extremely easy to use and has the added bonus of being free, and with hundreds of categories to choose from, you can target your advert to a specific market. If there isn’t already a category for the market you want, you can create one, but this means you will probably be the only advert in that category for a while, which could be good or bad depending on the way you look at it!

Traffic from my ads haven’t been that fantastic so far, but I have noticed that as Bla.st has grown, there has been an increase in visitors, so I am optimistic it will continue to be a valuable source of extra traffic over time.

Summary: If you are looking for an alternative way to advertise your product then I think Bla.st is a good idea, it’s not the only free option, but it does allow you to design and redesign your own ads as many times as you like, and if you place cards on your own website, you could earn credits to promote your own cards to the top slot, and maybe a few extra dollars along the way!

Update: I’m no longer using Bla.st, but it still looks like an interesting way to attract additional traffic to your website.

But then when you stop and think about all the negative news that’s pumped into almost every living room via the TV and browsed by thousands every day in newspapers and on the web, there shouldn’t really be an excuse to miss anything — should there?

I found a list of the Top 25 Censored Stories of 2007 this morning, I’m not sure if the “of 2007” should really read “for 2007” as it’s still 2006 right? Anyway it doesn’t really matter as most of the 25 stories first graced the media-circuit in 2005, but for some reason failed to attract the attention they deserve. So have the stories been censored?

10 out of the 25 headlines that made me stop and think.

• Future of Internet Debate Ignored by Media
• Halliburton Charged with Selling Nuclear Technologies to Iran
• Oceans of the World in Extreme Danger
• High-Tech Genocide in Congo
• US Operatives Torture Detainees to Death in Afghanistan and Iraq
• The World Bank Funds Israel-Palestine Wall
• Dangers of Genetically Modified Food Confirmed
• New Evidence Establishes Dangers of Roundup
• Iraq Invasion Promotes OPEC Agenda
• Physicist Challenges Official 9-11 Story

More news that didn’t make the news can be found on Project Censored and the complete list of 25 can be found here.