I was informed about yet another money making opportunity two days ago, but unlike many before, this one made some common sense, and ordinary New Zealanders might make some money by just knowing an American or two. [lots of drivel snipped] It makes good sense, as it does not appear that you would be selling an item that people don't want, and in all likelihood are probably using in some form at the moment, i.e. electricity. Anyway for those interested check out the site at www.bigplanet.com. I don't know any Americans, but you might, and this could be your thing. Get back to me if you want to know more, so I can put you in touch with the people with the info.

Now it's possible that this was the result of someone posting in all innocence, thinking they were genuinely in possession of a great opportunity - that's that's another danger of these schemes. They sound just so damned good that too many people, who can't be bothered doing their homework, simply believe the sales-pitch at face value. These are the same people who probably believe that it's okay to send junk email or that every chain letter they receive is really from someone who has now retired with a condo in Hawaii and a Porsche - all because they put their name on the bottom of the message and set $5 to everyone else on the list.

I've also heard from a couple of local Net users who have been approached personally by individuals attempting to flog the Big Planet Internet Service. These "sales people" didn't seem to have much idea what the Net was - but they were damned sure that you had to be on it and that Big Planet was the only option you should consider - although they weren't able to explain why (could it have something to do with downstream commissions?).

It seems that work is currently underway on a New Zealand site for the local Big Planet victims (oops.. I mean evangelists).

Now be very, very careful if someone from Big Planet approaches you and tries to sell you anything - because they have nothing to sell here in New Zealand. This whole scenario has been played out before in the form of an ill-fated scam called 1st Family. At present, Big Planet has nothing they can sell here in New Zealand!

Regular Aardvark Weekly readers will recall the warnings I gave about 1st Family almost a year ago.

At that time they (and some local people silly enough to believe in their stupid MLM scheme and products) were claiming that you could sign up for an Internet service that would be available "real soon". A year later we're still waiting and I see that even the US division has gone back into "pre-release" mode.

Can anyone see the similarities between Big Planet and 1st Family? Multi-level, reselling Net access that doesn't exist yet (locally), running a business model that places an emphasis on the recruitment of new dealers to downline commissions.

If you're really in doubt as to how close the similarities are, just check Deja News for the words "Big Planet" and you'll see, just as was the case with 1st Family, the newsgroups have been bombarded with ads for this MLM scheme.

Believe me - the people at the head of this organisation are very, very clever. Just look at this page from the Big Planet site. They're making a very big deal about gaining "Industry Support" and announcing "strategic business relationships" with key players in the industry. Of course this sounds very important - but it means very little. When you read between the lines - Big Planet has bought some gear from some suppliers such as Sun and Netscape who have, in return, simply said words to the effect that "using our products will make your service much better". I think anyone could get that level of endorsement - money talks!

But I repeat - Big Planet has done a superb job of "spinning" this so as to look like a major endorsement of its company and products from some key players. The problem is that the vast majority of people will simply accept the apparent meaning rather than the reality behind of this kind of marketing.

The bottom line - avoid, avoid, avoid - and it might not be a bad idea to let your friends and relatives know the truth behind these MLM schemes before they're approached using the hard-sell, no-knowledge methods that seem to be surfacing locally.

While cruising the Web the other day I found The Security First Network Bank which claims to be the world's first Internet bank.

This is a damned fine site - easy to use and feature-rich. Maybe our ground-breaking local boys could learn something from this.

For a start - it works nicely at standard VGA resolution (the demo for FastNet requires sideways scrolling on anything less than 800x600). There also seems to be a wider range of services available and the interface is nice and "flat" in terms of navigation. Finally, despite being hosted in the USA, the site is a whole lot faster than FastNet.

Best of all, it doesn't appear to require the download and installation of a 2MB update just to access the transactions if you're running IE4.01 or IE3.02 as the BankDirect site does.