Okay, not often do I get emotionally involved in stuff that really does not concern me, but this needs to be shown to the world.

I recently had an email exchange with the owner of http://webmasterbrain.com who wrote the PRoogle search engine that showed PR values next to all listings.

Seems he is the victim of a very crooked and deceitful individual who runs checkpr.com

This individual not only took his idea, but somehow got access the proogle source code and flat out stole it and is using it. At first I was not sure who had what first. Then David of webmasterbrain showed me this url: checkpr.com/demo/advanced.html (I purposely did not make it a link as I do not want to help these *******s.)

Now I am sure it will be changed fast as hell, so I screencapped the incriminating page for posterity and my attorney who I am going to pay to help David out if he desires. The screencap is here: http://textlinkbrokerage.com/crooks.gif

Now if you look at the pages title in the blue title bar of IE, it clearly shows Davids "Prog" name in the title from http://webmasterbrain.com/prog. There is no way David could have faked this on THEIR site.

These checkpr guys are flat out crooks and should be eliminated. To that end I am offering David publicly my own help in making sure they go away fast. As most here know, I am an avid coder and make a good chunk of my living by coding, so when I see code theft for commercial gain it pisses me off to no bloody end.

David, you have my support in this and you have my help.

David, I would hope you reconsider selling your script. I can and will help you deal with these *******s.

Lovely.....go get em

I just made a blog entry about bogus websites yesterday because I saw checkPR as one of my ads on my site and (not clicking on it) I went to their site and saw what it was.

the biggest thing that makes the software shady is not that it is a duplicate product of something that is already out there, but also that they do not adequately disclose that your site could get blocked from seeing search results or that others created the idea and are offering it free elsewhere.

Pretty sad.

Our site gets copied now and then, sometimes entirely. Ya gotta wonder.

Keeping Informed: After numerous emails back and forth with Greg, the owner of the checkpr sites using Davids scripts, it appears as if he realizes the problem, admits there is a problem, and was duped by a coder who made like he wrote the scripts himself. Either way I have notified him that the site must come down and damages to David are in order.

As of this post the site is down.

------ further ---------

The situation has been resolved amicably and Greg and David may even be working together on some future projects. So some good may have come out of this incident for both of them.

It always feels great to be involved in stuff like this when it all works out

>>was duped by a coder who made like he wrote the scripts himself.

That's probably why these things are best not done in public forums dude. You just dont know for sure....

Nick