Fauxto, as far as we know, is the only full-featured image editor on the web. Our goal is free-range editing capability and a YouTube like usage model. You can edit, save to the server and distribute anywhere. Though it is most certainly in a beta stage of development, and we are still working out kinks and tweaking the system as a whole, we think you'll be happy with what you find.

There is no help system at present, but there will be shortly. Our hope is that going live now will allow you all to help us stress the system and provide input as we grow.

Below is a graph from Compete.com that outlines the major differences between the two services. One of the biggest differences is that Compete gathers data only from the United States where as Alexa is International. Another major difference is that Compete includes estimates for unique visitors.

500 MB basic email account storage

Video clips

Computer desktop icons

MSN skins and emoticons

Printable calendars

Screen savers

Themed browser designs

Wallpapers

E-cards

Avatars

Mailing lists

"The link brokers are going great guns," Leake said.

One such firm is TextLinkBrokers.com, which started in Phoenix three years ago by brokering paid links between sites with high Google ranks to those with low Google ranks. But Google's changing formulas have made it harder to boost a site's ranking just through paid links, said Jarrod Hunt, chief executive of the 60-person firm.

"Editorial links are more valuable now than the paid ones," he added.

Hunt said his firm still brokers text links for sale from thousands of independent Web sites, but it also develops original editorial content to help get links Google might consider to be of higher quality. Often the articles are given away or sold to sites in a program he calls "hosted marketing pages," basically online advertorials with embedded links.

There are shady ways to get Google juice, too, but be careful -- it could get your site booted completely out of the Google index. If you break the search-engine rules, the juice can turn to poison and lead to the Google death penalty.

A initiative to expose the Google ranking system is under way and has some major backing from the SEO (search engine optimmization), blogging, and web development community, and it's as simple as a contest. The v7n SEO Contest is offering (in one way or another) prize winnings of up to $7,000 plus an iPod if an entrant places in the #1 position in Google for determined keywords. The SEO contest keywords which must sites must be ranked are "V7ndotcom Elursrebmem". v7n.com, which is sponsoring the contest, announced the keywords this week, stating that that Elursrebmem is "Members rule" spelled backwards.

After only a few days, the v7ndotcom elursrebmem contest is starting to gain momentum outside of the SEO corner of the web as major blogs, authority sites, and new V7ndotcom Elursrebmem domains, wikis, Google Base listings, etc. are entering the competition. Speaking of domains, there is already an eBay auction going on right now for the domain name V7nlursrebmem.com. By monitoring the results of the contest, site publishers and SEO practicioners hope to pick apart Google's ranking system and see what makes it tick.