The Federal Trade Commission told the U.S. House Subcommittee on Commerce on Thursday it supports proposed legislation aimed at protecting consumers who sell gold and jewelry to online buyers.

Jim Kohm, Associate Director of the Enforcement Division of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, testified that the FTC supports the proposed Guarantee of a Legitimate Deal Act, which would strengthen the FTC’s ability to protect financially stressed consumers.

The unattributed verbatim appearance of a Wikipedia article in a book from a major publisher sparked accusations of plagiarism, and raises more serious issues of ethics as well as the perils of publishing under open licenses.

(I’m at EconSM today.)

Yet another advertising-related change has come to Google in the run-up to Search Engine Strategies 2007 New York: Google shifted the One Box background color from blue to yellow.

Brands continue to launch operations in Second Life with the hopes of marketing their products and services to a completely new audience.

Skeptics, however, doubt that such a strategy has any long-term sustainability and is just another example of the bandwagon mentality.

While no one would disagree that staying ahead of the technology curve is a good thing, one has to constantly gauge factors such as feasibility and return on investment when deciding to jump headlong into a new venture.

I missed last week (My laptop started with the “laptop death rattle” – so it was a scramble to do data backups, find and migrate to a new machine). One of the worst parts of being a solo shop is being your own IT guy. Excuses aside – here’s twice the friday favorite goodness for this week.

Fortune magazine senior editor David Kirkpatrick is just out with an article on the future of Second Life, noting:

AOL’s now in the mining business. Seeking to recoup losses from a notorious spammer, the company believes gold and platinum bars belonging to spam king Davis Wolfgang Hawke are buried in his parents’ Massachusetts yard. And they want that gold. Yarr.

Global relief agency Oxfam brings us an interesting case study on social media relations’ ability to raise awareness.

For the IABC 2006 international conference in Vancouver, Canada, in June, Shel and I are co-hosting and producing ConferenceCast, the official podcasts of the conference, as we announced in February.

This from our mates down-under…

Eric Schwartzman will produce a series of his “On the Record Online” podcasts from the Media Relations 2006 conference, April 9-11 in New York.

AOL is combining with Survivor creator Mark Burnett for “Gold Rush”, a reality game that will challenge players to use clues buried in AOL Network websites to find 13 caches of gold buried around the United States.

It’s often a good idea to just click on things on a website as you might discover something new.

Infomosaic announced the release of the Mac OS X version of its SecureXML Digital Signature Java applet, which is compliant with W3C standards.

Microsoft with some help from the New York Attorney Gerneral’s office has won a $7 million settlement from Spam King Scott Richter.

The long running shareholder battle between Mr. Disney and the Walt Disney Company has been resolved.

Harmony Gold Mining’s hostile takeover bid for Gold Fields was approved by South Africa’s Competition Tribunal.

When I consult with small and home based business owners, more times than not one of the greatest concerns they have is how to increase reach to a targeted market while keeping costs down. Hands down, effectively using the power of the Internet is the cornerstone to achieving this outcome. More times than not, companies are not using their Internet presence as effectively as they can.

The price of gold fell to its lowest level in five-week because of fears the Federal Reserve increase interest rates even quicker.

The myth that you can’t make money online with resale digital information products will be EXPLODED right now.

Web analytics company WebTrends has launched WebPosition Gold 3.0, the first new release of the product in over two years. Version 3.0 integrates WordTracker and WebTrends to help manage all aspects of the search engine optimization process by using one product. “It brings together the leaders in search engine marketing and web analytics to be really the first player that can truly provide marketers with a full online story for their combined paid organic activity,” Coleen Carey, Director of Product Marketing, WebTrends, told WebProNews on Friday.