A few days ago we wrote about Google’s new emphasis on video content. Kids today don’t read, they watch. So Google is bumping up sites that have moving pictures. And that means there’s an opportunity: somebody has to create all those videos.

Sure, kids today are creating videos like crazy—there are over 10 billion on YouTube—using cell phones, web cams, Movie Maker and iMovie. They’re uploading almost 30,000 a day, but that’s nothing compared to the number of blog pages created daily. So who’s going to create video for the bloggers? That’s where you come in.

If you have some computer skills (if you don’t telework is probably not an option) and an ounce of artistic talent, there are some programs out there that will do text-to-speech conversion and antimate an object. If you’ve seen the E*Trade ad with the baby in front of the computer you know what I mean.

In a very interesting article in the New York Times titled Becoming Screen Literate, Kevin Kelly has a lot more to say on this topic. To incude a video with this blog post I took a JPEG of him I found on the Internet

and animated it with CrazyTalk 5, just to give you an idea what’s possible. Took me two hours to learn enough to create something, 15 minutes to do it, and 15 seconds to add the text.

(P.S. I hate the terrible voice. Better ones are available, though).

Last week the world changed. Not that you probably noticed. And no, we’re not talking about anything to do with elected officials or the economy. One of the major enabling technologies, one of the technologies that makes working from home possible, just changed the rules of the game.

Google announced that its search engine would now promote personalized searching. You like one of the results from a search? Promote it to the top of the page. It’ll be there the next time your search. Don’t like others? Click, they’re banished. What’s more, they have served notice that sites without video will be demoted.

Don’t think that’s all a big deal? Think again. That means that all the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) gurus are out of work—or at least are going to have to reinvent themselves. That means all the link-baiting and keyword stuffing efforts are irrelevant, and useful content—relevancy—will be pivotal. Finally. That means every website owner is going to be scrambling to find a way to add video to their sites.

And get this: Google has technology that will “watch” a video, extract the spoken content, convert it to text, and index it right along with the written content on a site. Think that one over a bit, and you’ll see why we think the rules have changed.

Add that to the fact that the cost of voice communication now is distance independent, and that memory is almost free. It costs the same to talk to someone next door as it does across the country. Free long distance. And we just bought a 4Gb SDHC memory chip for a camera and a 1 terabyte (1000 Gb) external hard drive for one of our computers. The chip price went from $64 to $15 in three months, and the hardrive was just $116 from Amazon with no tax and free shipping. Blame it on desperate retailers, but the trend is real.

I dunno about you, but I have a good feeling. If our new president puts the emphasis on broadband infrastructure and telework that he says he will, and if giants like Google continue to innovate like  they have, the future is going to be very interesting.

Have you heard that Google has been noodling on the idea making free wifi available virtually everywhere?

A life-long pal wrote to me about Freelance Home Writers dot com, and asked if we thought it was a scam too. Oh yeah, we sure do.

When we read, “Thousands of smart people just like you are are already brining (sic) in an easy $1,000, $2,000…even as much as $5,000 every single week just by doing this easy writing in their spare time…and now it’s your turn!” we know it’s going to go down hill from there. If it sounds too good to be true, you can be sure it is.

At $20 an article that means you’d have to write 8 a day (that’s one per hour with no breaks), 7 days a week, to make just $1120 a week or $4849.60 a month nevermind a week. So right off the bat you can tell something’s whacky.

Then they try to prove they know what their talking about by claiming that search results are based on pages of content.

“Since 90% website visitors come from the major search engines (Google and Yahoo)…the more content pages a business has, the more times one of it’s pages (articles) will show up in the search results when a potential customer does a search…”

Doesn’t relevance figure in anywhere? Google sure thinks so.

Okay, so let’s ignore all that and take a look inside the site. Oops. You have to give them $2.95 to become a member. All that gets you is the opportunity to log-in AND commits you to a $47 a month charge. Want to take an guesses at how easy it is to reach anyone there to cancel?

But let’s say you’re so excited by their pitch that you decide to spend the money so you can begin “. . .raking in a life-changing $2,000, $3,000… even as much as $4,000 each and every week!” (Wait a minute, I though it was $5000 a week?)

What makes you think you’ll actually get paid after you write something? I’ll bet you’ll discover they claim to pay you monthly. And then after a month’s work you’ll discover, well, your work just wasn’t good enough, or they’re short on cash, or ….

But don’t take our word for it. Type ‘freelancehomewriters scam’ in a Google search box and you’ll get about 15,000 pages on the topic.

For more details on legitimate writing jobs that allow you to work from home, pre-order our new book Undress For Success: The Naked Truth about Making Money From Home. It will start shipping in March of 2009. This is starting to sound a like a commerciial. So forget the book. Just remember, if it sounds too good to be true it usually is.

Australian Navy brass have ordered a two-month shutdown over Christmas, and have told personnel with child-care problems that they can work at home.

All unit heads have also been ordered to allow personnel affected by the collapse of the ABC Learning child-care company more flexible working arrangements including working at home if necessary until they have found alternative care.

Australian military services, like most of the public service, relied on ABC Learning for child-care services for its workers. Hundreds of children of navy personnel are affected by the collapse of the child-care giant.

Local unit commanders were told that “following the announcement that ABC child care has gone into receivership”, they must be “understanding of this stressful situation as the new working year approaches”.

“Local commanders are to make every effort to negotiate flexible working arrangements that allow families to manage their commitments at home and at work until the situation is resolved,” the directive says.