If you were worried about Microsoft's smart tags, then perhaps you should read this article. Whereas you could argue that Microsoft didn't have best of intentions with smart tags, at least they provided a way for webmasters to prevent them showing on their pages.

On other hand, Ezula (and it's product TopText) is scum that scum wipes off scums feet. The company is evil. While they are not in same league as Osama Bin Laden (who needs to be volunteered to a special project to determine effects of nuclear missles on human flesh), they are evil. With them, though, best "nuke" is to ignore their pitch and never install product. If you've got it, remove it immediately. It's simple and and obvious.

Here's what Ezula does. They sell users on some exaggerated benefit (much like that other scum product called Gator) and use this to get their product installed on user's computer. In this case, Ezula "gives" their users something almost identical to smart tags.

The product basically scans HTML pages as they are loaded onto a system, looking for keywords. When it finds a keyword, it replaces it with a special link to page (or pages) of a page advertiser (along with some links to content of some kind - that's "benefit" that gets people to install silly product).

Let's take an example. Pretend you want to sell tires, so you purchase Ezula rights to keyword "tires". Now, every time any web page of any Ezula user loads it is scanned for word "tires". Ezula replaces those with links to your site - even if it is site of one of your competitors! Or even a site about how people get tired ("he tires easily") or anything like that.

Here's what they tell users (the poor suckers who download this excrement): "eZula, Inc. is a leading provider of real-time contextual Internet solutions. eZula's flagship product TopText iLookup is premier personal Internet reference and simplification tool, empowering millions of Internet users with an easy way to retrieve relevant information and simplify Internet Navigation."

Sound's great, doesn't it? Man, if that's all you read you'd run to download this garbage. But wait, read more of website. Go to advertisers section and you will read, "eZula's platform leverages content that user is viewing in real time and turns key phrases, that best describe advertiser, into a global advertising opportunity that drives qualified traffic to advertiser from anywhere on Web."

Alarmed, I immediately investigated. He was right.

It was then that I realized that I had dropped ball. I hadn't even looked at my search engine results for a couple of months. I hadn't been marketing my business.

How had this happened? As I reflected on what I'd been spending my time on, I realized that recently more and more of my time was being spend on adminstrative tasks. And I'd been spending very little time doing things I love most about my business; writing, researching and marketing. Not good.

Over past year, I've been working harder and longer. And I'd been marketing less and less. Not to mention fact that precious time that I have with my kids was being chipped away by my "projects".

My business was running ME.

I was also still locked into mindset that I *couldn't afford* software and services that could really help me to run my business more efficiently.

Here's a good example: I spend a great deal of time answering emails from site visitors, most of them same types of questions. Now, I really like to answer my emails personally, but there comes a time when you have to decide whether or not this is really best use of your time.

I bit bullet and purchased two programs: a program to set up and administrate a Frequently Asked Questions area, and an autoresponder program to set up an Instant Answers section which sends immediate responses to common questions by email.