Google today announced a joint partnership with multi-billionaire Richard Branson. This joint venture will take Google and hundreds of selected applicants on a new adventure to be “the first permanent human colony on Mars”. Watch the video below to find out how to enter:

Following this short video, Virgle applicants need to pass a 15-question multiple choice personality test.

If you do well on the test, you’ll be presented with a link to submit your application video. Good luck!

Gyutae Park from Winning the Web is probably one of the most prominent “up and coming” bloggers around.  Since October of last year, he has made quite a name for himself and his blog by getting users through the use of contests and giveaways.

The present seems to paint a good reflection of the past for Gyutae as he is running, in my opinion, the most insane, well organized, and well thought out contest around.  Gyutae is surely to be a huge winner from this contest.  He’s rounded up over $13,000 dollars in prizes and sponsorships and he will give it all away on April 2.

Here’s a small sample of prizes that he’ll be giving away:

• Cash: A crazy amount of cash.  Ranging from $50 up to $650 from different sponsors!
• Gadgets: An iPod touch, at that!
• Special memberships to places like SEOmoz, SEOBook, and more.
• Banner designs
• Wordpress themes

Are you interested in any of these things?  I think you should be!  Gyutae is a genious and has worked hard to find sponsors so that he can give away these prizes!  Check out the official contest page and join in the fun!

A tried and true tactic to making money has been to build something from scratch and then sell it to the highest bidder once the going gets good. Just look at all of the mergers and acquisitions that go on in the business world; this should give you an idea of just how much money is potentially at stake for you. You could sell a small business to Google, for example, and net yourself $1.6 billion.

Taking the ‘real-world’ example and modifying them to something you can do in your spare time is pretty easy, conceptually. With all things, however, you are going to need to dedicate time and effort to making things work, grown, and prosper. It won’t be easy, but you can do it.

If you’ve never heard of it before, there’s a huge marketplace for websites on the internet. More than one, actually, but this post was inspired by an auction currently going on at the sitepoint marketplace.

This auction is for a premium, well established, monetized, popular website. Minimum bid: $500,000.00. Small fries need not apply. This auction caught my attention because I’ve used that site in the past. It also caught my attention because it’s being sold for at least half a million dollars.

So how can you build, market, and sell a website for a profit? The principle is easy: Build a site, build a following, then sell the site. Now, as webtrepreneurs, we all know that quite a bit of effort is required to make things work out. Starting this week, we will explore these 3 topics: how to build a website, a community, and finally, how to sell the website for a profit. Be warned: you will need to spend a few bucks to try this, but it takes money to make money.

The methods that I will teach you are tried and true; I’ve built a few sites using this plugin and the sites have already paid me back nicely. Bring a good attitude and a business spirit and get ready to jump on the online money train!

Are you interested in making money online? Then stay tuned and sign up for my RSS feed. We’ll do this step by step so that by the end of the series, you will have a website that you can build on and get it ready for sale.

I have long been a fan of RFID. I think the technology is really cool and can help streamline businesses and help raise the profit margins for well-organized companies. I like RFID’s potential but know that it’s nowhere near ready to be used for sensitive information such as passports, certificates, or credit cards. While the technology behind RFID is ultra cool (RFID embedded in fingertips to open doors, unlock PC’s, etc…) and the technology could lead to a “commerce 2.0″ type revolution/evolution (faster checkouts at grocery stores, faster pay at the pump…), the lack of thought given to securing these cards by their manufacturers brings to the forefront a very big security risk for anyone carrying RFID cards with sensitive data.

This blog post was inspired by yesterday’s Boing.tv post where they demonstrate how easy it really is to hack in to an RFID card. For as little as $8 in parts easily obtained at eBay, Pablos Holman proves how quickly and easily one can obtain the data stored on these chips.

RFID is a scary technology that I believe is being used prematurely in some respects. If you have a credit card or a passport with RFID chips embedded, I would exercise caution and do my best to disable the readibility of those chips. For example, one could easily disable the RFID chips by microwaving the chips for a few seconds. Your card should still work but the RFID functionality would obviously be disabled.

Watch the video below and use your wise judgment when considering an RFID card.

Got some time to spare?  Head on over to Google’s official easter egg game and relax for a bit!