15 August 2005
You Don't Have To Answer Your Mobile Phone Just a quick public service announcement reminding people that (no, seriously)
you don't have to answer your mobile phone every time it rings. The author notes that, among adults, growing up in an age where long distance communications (or even just any phone calls) were considered a big event, we have it hard wired into our brains that a phone needs to be answered when it rings -- even if it interrupts something
much more important. However, the author notes (anecdotally), that the younger generation which has grown up with mobile phones doesn't seem as inclined to answer each and every call -- recognizing that it's not such a big event any more. Of course, a lot of this could be solved if there were good ways to build better presence information into a mobile phone, such that it would know when to shift calls directly to voicemail or when to alert you only to "important" calls.
14 August 2005
Is That A Certified Preowned Rolex, Or Just A Cheap Knockoff? One of the issues with buying used goods online is you really have very little way to know the real quality of the product you're buying. Escrow services help to make sure the product is
real, but can't necessarily judge the quality (or legitimacy) of a product. That, not surprisingly, is a big concern for luxury brands who often have to
deal with people selling knockoffs and counterfeits. So, it appears that luxury brands are taking a page from car-makers and are starting to create
"certified, pre-owned" systems for online auctions that will (they hope) make people feel more comfortable buying the used item they're looking at. It's a solution that makes sense for everyone -- giving brands an avenue to push legitimate used products, while helping buyers feel more comfortable that what they're buying is legitimate.
How Dare A Company Not Spy On Its Workers! Is it any surprise that the
fear mongering stories about companies not monitoring everything their employees do online always come from companies selling internet monitoring tools? It looks like one such company has gone a step further and convinced someone to write an entire
fear mongering book about companies not monitoring employee emails. The reporter writing about the book never seems to question the obvious bias from the company who provided the data for the author and (look at that!) is helping to market the book. In fact, the article seems to simply accept all of the findings outright, without once pointing out that there's another side to this story as well. Instead, we're told that this book has "startling" findings such as the fact that (gasp!) employees were looking for other jobs (hey,
everyone's doing it, apparently) and that some stupidly did things like looking at porn. The only nod towards the fact that this might be an invasion of privacy is the claim that no one should be worried about privacy issues because in one story in the book, email monitoring found "an Al Qaeda operative working at a government agency." Now, that's quite a find -- but, to use an extreme example like that doesn't necessarily justify invading everyone's privacy. It actually just raises a
lot more questions about how this person was hired in the first place. Meanwhile, other studies have shown that employees who feel they're being spied on by their employers tend to be
less productive. This isn't to say that email monitoring doesn't make sense in some cases -- but, to brush off the downsides to monitoring in favor of what's clearly a marketing attempt by a company selling filters is weak reporting.
Spammers Move On To Scare Tactics? Are spammers getting more desperate? A new report (from an anti-spam company, of course), claims that the traditional "hard sell" spam is losing ground to new spam messages
that focus more on using scare tactics to get people to respond (e.g., "protect yourself now!"). Is this really new, however? It seems like there's always been a mix of spam types, and these have always been popular.
Howard Stern Sues Google; Discovers How Pay Per Click Makes Daily Budgets Fuzzy What is it with talk show hosts and Google? Following overhyped reports about David Letterman
making a stupid joke about Google (which probably was more for the slight humor value than any actual dig at Google),
Threadwatch has pointed out that
Howard Stern has sued Google over misrepresentations concerning the "daily" AdWords budget. The complaint is a common one for AdWords users, but might not really be such a big deal. The problem is that, since Google charges advertisers
per click rather than for placement, it's nearly impossible to guarantee that a daily budget will stay under the number. That's because Google keeps showing the ads not knowing if anyone's going to click. So, for example, if the daily budget is $10, and each click costs a dollar, when it gets up to $9 Google will keep showing the ad, but what if four people all see it and click on the ad? Then you've gone over budget. Google promises to try to even these discrepancies out over the course of a month, and many advertisers seem to believe it does a pretty good job of it. However, the wording of the "daily budget" might not be clear enough, so perhaps Google should better explain it for those who don't like to read the fine print. In this case, however, it appears the specific complaint was that Google promises that you will never pay more than 120% of the daily budget -- but did actually charge advertisers up to 162%. If that's the case, then, Google did screw up and go beyond their own stated terms. Either way, knowing Howard Stern, expect plenty of Google-bashing to go on the air. Guess we
won't be hearing any Google representatives on Stern's show for at least a year.
Why Scammers Love Nigeria By now, you all (should) know about 419 advance fee scammers from Nigeria. Despite regular claims of plans to
crackdown on the scams, the Nigerian government had done very little. In fact, there were claims that up until a year ago,
not a single person in Nigeria was in jail for such crimes. That's starting to change, with new reports saying that
about 500 people have been arrested with another 500 under investigation. Of course, that sounds like a tiny percentage of the scammers, and it didn't seem all that difficult for the Associated Press reporter who wrote the above article to track down plenty of scammers who are quite proud of their scamming ability. It certainly still appears that scamming is a way of life for many Nigerians who find that it's a lot easier and a
lot more lucrative than other jobs... which are often hard to find.
12 August 2005
Court Revives E-Mail Interception Case The full Appeals Court rules that E-mail interception could be considered illegal, which according to one advocacy group reaffirms that E-mail is a protected medium under privacy laws, protected from government wiretapping without a warrant and misuse by service providers.
Windows 2000 Users Face A Wave Of Bugs Security analysts say the latest vulnerabilities prove that Windows 2000, no matter where it is in Microsoft's support cycle, will continue to be a target for attackers.
When Life's A Beach, This Is Your Mouse If your mobile office extends to where the surf meets the sand, the AquaPoint, a mouse that can stand up to splashing, spraying, and flat-out wetness, is for you.
No Vista Viruses For Now Microsoft executive insists that reports last week of Windows Vista viruses were wrong, because the component at risk won't be included with the next-generation operating system when it ships in late 2006.
10 August 2005
Dixons drops 35mm cameras High Street retailer Dixons is to stop selling 35mm cameras which use film, as digital cameras become the standard model.
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August 2005
