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eBay Giving Out Coupons and Other Compensation after Website Crash

Paul Lilly — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:12:27 -0600

Auction site eBay went down for several hours on Saturday, causing sellers to lose sales, as well as potentially selling items for a lower bid than they might have otherwise received had the site remained running. Oops!

eBay says it has since fixed the software SNAFU that caused all the ruckus and promises this was a one-time deal, but that doesn't rectify the situation for sellers who were affected by the outage. To make things right, eBay said it plans on compensating vendors in several different ways.

"To minimize the impact, we'e working to ensure that sellers and buyers whose transactions were affected by the disruptions will be made as whole as possible," said president Lorrie Norrington. "This includes listing fee refunds and protection against negative or neutral buyer feedback as well as detailed seller ratings (DSRs) lower than five starts for impacted sellers, and coupons for buyers of items that were impacted by the disruption."

According to eBay, the surge of holiday shoppers caught the site off guard, which led to the crash.

Newspaper Tracks Down Anonymous Commenter, Gets Him Fired Just for Fun

Pulkit Chandna — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:21:26 -0600

Many online commenters try and compensate for their lack of insight into the subject at hand by summoning their ability to enliven even the most vapid discussion with a highly stimulating cocktail of profanities. But not everyone can fully relish this amazing ability as not everyone possesses it. The practitioners of this colorful art are often persecuted by the prim archpriests of insipid internet discussions.

An anonymous commenter paid with his job for what was an earnest attempt to breathe some life into a discussion on a newspaper’s site. Last Friday, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published a blog post titled “What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever eaten? And did you like it?” One anonymous user replied with “a single word, a vulgar expression for a part of a woman’s anatomy.” But his terse reply was deleted within one minute of being posted (probably for being way too brief). The obdurate commenter returned to repost his single-word comment, only to have it deleted once again.

But the paper’s director of social media, Kurt Greenbaum, who had posted the concerned article, managed to track down the anonymous poster using the WordPress e-mail alert that accompanies every comment. The alert included the commenter's IP address, which was found to be from a local school.

“About six hours later, I heard from the school’s headmaster. The school’s IT director took a shine to the challenge. Long story short: Using the time-frame of the comments, our website location and the IP addresses in the WordPress e-mail, he tracked it back to a specific computer. The headmaster confronted the employee, who resigned on the spot,” Greenbaum wrote in a blog post on Monday. Was it right on the paper’s part to pursue an anonymous commenter? If yes, then what is the point of allowing anonymous comments? Have your say without the fear of getting fired.

Image Credit: Bio Job Blog

Google: Meta Tags are Worthless

Paul Lilly — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 11:30:00 -0500

Want to increase your website's presence on Google? Don't waste your time littering your site with "keywords" meta tags, because according to Google, that won't do you a bit of good.

In a blog post on Monday, Google explained that it doesn't use keyword meta tags, disregarding them completely. The reason, Google says, is because meta tags are subject to abuse. It's far too easy (and common) for a webmaster to inject oft-irrelevant keywords without typical visitors ever seeing them, so Google has been ignoring them for "many years."

The search giant also clarified that it doesn't ignore all meta tags, such as sometimes using the "description" meta tag as the text for its search results snippets. However, these too are disregarded in terms of ranking.

Full explanation and video here.

Dell Unveils Della Website for Women, Offers De-Stressing Tech Tips

Paul Lilly — Tue, 12 May 2009 08:00:00 -0500

Like, OMG! Netbooks are soooo cute! But "once you get beyond how cute they are, you'll find that netbooks can do a lot more than check your mail." For example, they can help you 'Get healthier' (tech tip #2) by tracking exercise and food intake at free online sites, and to 'Eat better' (tech tip #3) by finding recipes online. You can even 'Get Organized' (tech tip #4), because "Remember the Milk is a free, tweakable online task manager." Or use a netbook to 'Chill out' (tech tip #5).

These are all real tech tips, and they're all listed on Della, Dell's new microsite dedicated to helping women shop for notebooks without focusing on all those manly GHz and GB abbreviations. The new site pays particular attention to the Dell Mini 10 and Studio notebooks, making it a point to convince women that these laptops won't cramp their stylish lifestyle.

But it's the Tech Tips page that offers the most amusement, even if not everyone is amused.

Will Circuit City Live on Online?

Paul Lilly — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 09:43:42 -0500

Anyone miss Circuit City yet? For those of you that do, you may be in luck. Sort of. While the bankrupt electronics chain won't be making a brick and mortar comeback anytime soon, it appears Circuit City has some kind of future planned online. Going to Circuit City's website now reads:

"CircuitCity.com is also temporarily closed, although we anticipate the website will reopen in the coming weeks. Please check back for updates."

What exactly the former chain has planned so far remains a mystery. News site TGDaily notes that calls made to the company's office in Richmond, Virginia have gone unanswered, and without any kind of statement from Circuit City or its liquidator, that leaves the online message as the only clue we have to go on.

Circuit City did everything it could to avoid going out of business earlier this year and last year, including closing down over 150 stores and cutting 20 percent of its workforce. But it was unable to find a buyer and, following a controversial liquidation sale, closed its doors for good last March.

Hulu Upgraded with Social Networking Features

Pulkit Chandna — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 09:46:55 -0500

Hulu is celebrating its first anniversary. And what an amazing inaugural year it was for Hulu: its market share rose steadily through the year making it one of the most riveting video sites on the internet. The video-on-demand site has stepped into its second year armed with new social networking features.

Now website users can share their favorite shows with each other using the new "Hulu Friends" feature. Users can import contacts from major social networks and email services. The site ensures that friends are kept up to speed with each other’s viewing activities. This move is expected to make Hulu more enticing for advertisers.

Image Credit: Wired

Is iTunes-for-Youtube App "Muziic" to Google's Ears?

Pulkit Chandna — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 19:23:10 -0500

Youtube houses arguably one of the largest music-video collections on the internet, which even features some hard-to-find musical gems. Dan Nelson, a 15-year-old developer, has built an iTunes-esque, free-music service that streams Youtube music to the user’s desktop. His downloadable music player is called Muziic.

Muziic can be considered the notional progeny of Youtube and iTunes: it delivers free music available on Youtube in a seamless manner one associates with iTunes. But its adolescent creator is yet to secure Google’s endorsement.

A Youtube spokesperson told Cnet that Muziic appears to be in breach of the Youtube API terms of use. But he admitted that their inquiry is still in its youth. “This is the first we've become aware of the site,” he said.

Google’s gripe may emanate from the fact that there is no mechanism in Muziic to display the advertisements that usually accompany Youtube videos. So Muziic is effectively depriving Google of ads revenue that is lawfully its due. Having used Muziic, this author can vouch for its utility. But will it be music to Google’s ears?

Image Credit: Muziic

Internet Users Continue to Amaze with Foolish Passwords

Pulkit Chandna — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 17:51:15 -0600

It is a disgrace that humans haven’t still got the hang of setting passwords. It seems as though that most internet users have inextricably tethered themselves to a promise of not setting strong-enough passwords, which may force hackers to reconsider their choice of profession for its grueling nature. As you devour more of this story, you will begin to envy hackers for having it stroll-in-the-park easy.

A new study has revealed – rather reiterated - that internet users nonchalantly continue to set unimaginative, fatuous passwords. The study appraised 28,000 passwords that were recently stolen from a U.S website.

Sixteen percent of the users had set their first name as their password. Around fourteen percent chose easiest to recall key combinations, including “1234” and “12345678”. Other users, who apparently don’t rate their mathematical ability highly, chose to steer clear of numbers and settled for passwords such as “AZERTY” and “QWERTY”.

Five percent of the passwords were found to be inspired by popular things and celebrities, including names of movies, TV shows and actors. The strongest password in this category was found to be “Ironman” as it sounds impenetrable.

Three percent of the people reckon passwords are another medium of expression. How else would you explain passwords like “Iloveyou” and “Ihateyou?”