Ah, Evony. Sweet, sweet Evony. Chances are if you've been online for more than a day or two and you dare step outside the sandbox of Gmail or Facebook and into the seedy underbelly of the beast, you'll have seen the Evony ads.

Take a good, long look at the advert to the right -->

OK. Now what're you thinking? BOOBS? Voyeuristic pleasures of the flesh? 'You know, it looks like she's sleeping... or enjoying herself... or both...'

To be fair, this one actually includes a brief description of the game itself ('build your empire'), but later versions aren't quite as subtle (probably not work-safe).

But we only have ourselves to blame. You see, Evony's marketing ploy must be successful or they wouldn't still be doing it. Sex sells, gentlemen. The promise of sex sells even better! Seriously, a girl pleasuring herself couldn't be further from the truth in the case of Evony, but the image hits your eyeballs and heads straight on down to your animalistic hindbrain. Before you know it -- before your rational, sensible, Internet-savvy brain can kick in -- you're clicking the ad. You're probably clicking her boobs even. It's OK -- we all do it. That's why such ads exist.

You've just been had by the Internet. But who's to blame exactly? Us, for being weak and driven by our biology? The scrupulous Web service providers that hire advertising agencies to shoot girls in skimpy panties and low-cut dresses? None of the above, I'm afraid. The inherent freedom of the Internet comes at a price, and if you think those money-grabbing bastards aren't going to milk it for all its worth, you'd be wrong.

Think about it: if the ad showed a girl gouging her eyes out and eating poop from a cup it wouldn't get quite the same click-through ratio. Why not boobs? Why not delusions of grandeur? Why not promise things you can't deliver on? Why not LIE? Who is going to stop them?

The Internet, in its rampant, unmonitored, ungoverned and anarchic state is full of examples like Evony. Lose 15lbs in 15 minutes! You've won the lottery! Click this irritating and epilepsy-inducing banner to collect your prize! Scan your infected, virus-ridden computer now... and get a bonus malware infection for free! Evony, unlike other cowboys, at least delivers a small portion of its promise -- you can play it in a browser after all -- but that's not the point.

The point is: the Internet is simply too good to be true. The problem is not that there's fake stuff out there -- there will always be fake stuff -- it just happens to be damn hard to separate the good stuff from the fake stuff. You never quite know what you're going to get after you click a link.

So remember, if something is FREE!!! or relies on a picture of BOOBS, it's too good to be true.

In fact, if you don't want to be fooled by advertising, just download whatever we feature here at Download Squad -- I guarantee we'll never sell out and recommend a boob-branded download.

Pear Analytics asks on their website, "Have you measured the impact of social media on your brand?" Apparently that's what they do. And they've been busily analyzing what goes on over at Twitter.

The super shocking results: just over 40% of tweets qualify as "pointless babble." Following in second place are "conversational" updates, at 37.5%.

Their findings are based on 2,000 tweets. Surely they must know what a small sample that amounts to - that's like a single hock in the Twitter spittoon. Regardless, what's the big deal here?

If you asked me how much of my Twitter stream is social white noise (which is what I'd expect a fancy social analytics firm to call it) I would probably say "about half." There's not really a need to analyze it. On top of that, it pretty much mimics what I experience in meatspace on a daily basis. People just love to talk about nothing.

Twitter is many things, but tops on the list are 1) a haven for self-promoting social media douchebags and 2) a place to post things you don't give a crap whether anyone cares about.

I guess I should be thankful. Finally, some rock-solid empirical data to prove what everyone with half a brain has been thinking about Twitter all along.

Go us!