Google to release new web browser
September 2, 2008
Today is a new day in the browser wars. In the beginning (early 90s) there was Netscape, Opera and Internet Explorer, then for years there was pretty much just Internet Explorer. In 1999 Mozilla was born, and in the early 2000s Safari joined the race and Firefox arose from Phoenix.
Later today Google will release the first public beta of a brand new Browser - Google Chrome. Chrome borrows code from Firefox and Apple and will be an open source project meaning anyone can add and adapt the browser.
Google are touting Chrome as a lightweight browser that is “streamlined and simple”, saying “Like the classic Google homepage, Google Chrome is clean and fast. It gets out of your way and gets you where you want to go.”
I’ll be interested to compare the file size to the hefty 14.8MB for Internet Explorer 8 (beta) or the svelte full install file of just 7.8MB for a Firefox download. I’ll be even more interested in the speed it downloads and displays webpages and how it renders them.
Google say Chrome is ready for “the next generation of web applications that aren’t even possible in today’s browsers”. The true test of success for me will be how well it runs the websites I need today, such as eBay, PayPal, Parcelforce, Royal Mail and of course TameBay.
eBay.ebay? Yes, says ICANN
June 26, 2008
A major shakeup in the way that domain names are created has been approved by the organisation which oversees the system of web addresses. ICANN today approved a new way of creating domain names, which will see traditional suffixes like .com, .net and .co.uk joined by others such as .bank, .bet, .school, .shopping or .hotel.
As well as these generic TLDs, the owners of existing trademarks are expected to buy their own names: .ebay is expected to be just one such example. Cities such as New York and Berlin are said to be pursuing .nyc and .berlin. It will also be possible to create full domain names in alphabets other than our own Roman one.
However, if you’re planning to buy your own name as a vanity project - and I have to say, .sue has a certain ring to it; just think of all the lawyers I could sell it to - you might need to think again: the new domain names will cost at least $100,000.
Microsoft Live Search cash back live on eBay.com
June 14, 2008
Microsoft have revealed more of their Live Seach cashback initiative confirming that all fixed price listings on eBay.com are eligible for a rebate.
When a buyer clicks through from Live Search to eBay and goes on to make a purchase, when they check out they’ll be presented with a screen telling them exactly how much cashback they can expect. Payment for the purchase will have to be via PayPal to qualify.
The cashback offers are now live on eBay.com, but currently Live Search cashback is only available in the US. It marks a departure from Google’s stategy where advertisers pay for exposure, on Microsoft Live Search, merchants can offer cashback direct to the buyer with eBay paying rebates for products on their site.
If Live Search cashback proves popular in the US doubtless it will filter across to the UK in the future. One to keep an eye on and no doubt JD will be announcing it to US sellers at eBay Live! next week.
Microsoft Live Search Cash Back for browsing
May 21, 2008
Microsoft is expected to offer cash back to users of it’s Live Search platform, when they go on to make a purchase. In an effort to bolster their share of the search market an announcement is expected at the advance08 event today.
Microsoft Live Search Cash Back is to be launched in conjunction with eBay’s PayPal and John Donahoe has recorded a taped message to go out in conjunction with the announcement.
Microsoft’s official statement reads “On Wednesday, we will be announcing a major new initiative that our search teams have been driving. We are getting better and better with our core algorithmic search, and at the same time, we are investing to differentiate in vertical experiences and to disrupt the current model.”
Microsoft will use the technology obtained from the acquisition of JellyFish, where buyers who make a purchase through the service receive a portion of the advertising revenue Jellyfish receives from the seller. Soon instead of visiting Jellyfish the cash back will be available on the Live Search site.
The big question is will you switch from your current search engine for some hard cash? Will you make Microsoft Live your default search engine? Most important of all, can they deliver the same quality of search results as Google and if not will cash convince browsers to put up with an inferior experience?
eBay Jobs isn’t working
May 19, 2008
Fancy a job working for eBay? No, me neither but even if we did, we’d be out of luck: eBay appear to have forgotten to renew the domain name for their site advertising jobs in their Dublin offices.
Or perhaps it’s that eBay Jobs Ireland didn’t actually have any real jobs listed? A TameBay correspondent who applied for a CS job back in April received no contact whatsoever apart from this automated email:
We have successfully received your submission to the following position(s):
Customer Support Representative DUMMY REQ 26165BR
Thank you.
*Please do not reply to this email.
emphasis mine
Faked advert that wasn’t offering a real position, or just part of the job description?
1st May is RSS Appreciation Day
May 1, 2008
Have you ever wished there was an easy way to see which of the blogs you read has posted recently? Or wanted to check the headlines on a dozen different news sites without having to click through them all? Or even wanted to keep an eye on your favourite eBay sellers, searches or competitors? If so, you need RSS.
RSS is a way for you to automatically receive updates from websites without having to visit the sites themselves. All you need is a bit of software to collect the RSS feeds, and you can see at a glance which blogs have updated, what the latest headlines are, or that your favourite eBay seller is having a sale.
All you need to do is look out for the orange symbols like the one above - or sometimes they’re an orange button with “RSS” written on it, like at the bottom of eBay searches. If you’re using Firefox or IE7, you can just click the orange buttons and your browser will automatically subscribe to the feed. Or if you prefer, there are dozens of seperate feed readers: personally I like Google Reader.
And today is RSS Appreciation Day, so if you haven’t discovered just how convenient RSS feeds can be, now’s the time to find out! Oh, and here’s our feed.
PayPal to block unsafe old browsers
April 18, 2008
PayPal are to block old browsers in an attempt to improve security. In a white paper discussing anti-phishing measures, the company said, “The alarming fact is that there is a significant set of users who use very old and vulnerable browsers, such as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 4 or even IE 3.” Unlike more up to date versions of Internet Explorer and Firefox, these browsers do not have any phishing filters. Earlier this year, PayPal advised users of Apple’s Safari to use another browser to access the internet, as Safari lacks crucial anti-phishing features such as a filter for known or potential phishing sites, and visual clues which tell users when they are on a safe site.
In their fight against online fraudsters, PayPal go a step further, proposing that the process of blocking old browsers should be a rolling one, saying that “any Web site that asks for personal or financial information” should warn users who are one release behind the most up-to-date software, and block anyone who is two or more releases behind the times. Currently that would mean anyone using IE5 or earlier blocked from accessing the site.
PayPal comment “in our view, letting users view the PayPal site on one of these browsers is equal to a car manufacturer allowing drivers to buy one of their vehicles without seatbelts.” And as those using older browsers are perhaps likely to be those who know the least about internet security, ensuring they’re using the most up-to-date software to help them is a great move on PayPal’s part.
Down for everyone or just me?
April 10, 2008
Down for everyone or just me is possibly one of the most useful sites I’ve stumbled upon in a long time. The frustration of trying to work and waiting for a website to load, not knowing if it’s your browser hanging or the site is temporarily offline, is one of the things that frustrates me most.
No longer though - the new site (who’s design is more basic even than Google’s home page!) aims to dispel the frustrations and give a definitive answer. Down for everyone or just me allows you to type in a URL and then checks to see if the site is live on the Internet. No more waiting to see if a website is down for everyone or if it really is your own computer/Internet connection that’s playing up.
They have a sense of humour too, just for fun I typed in their own URL and they came back with “If you can see this page and still think we’re down, it’s just you.” 
Mobile phone calls take to the sky
March 21, 2008
It won’t be long before eBay users can keep in contact with customers whereever they are in the world, including one of the last prohibited areas - on a plane flight.
According to the BBC the first authorised mobile phone call has been made on an Emirates flight using a new system created by AeroMobile. Cabin crew will be able to limit use of the system blocking calls and only allowing text messages at certian times such as on night flights.
Initially only GSM services are likely to be available but AeroMobile intend to extend their technology to GPRS to include data services. In the future Skype on a plane should be come a reality, as would the ability to browse your eBay auctions and answer questions from buyers.
I guess it’s almost time to look at upgrading my PDA to include a data card. I love an excuse to buy a new techie gadget
Internet Explorer 8 Beta available for download
March 5, 2008
Internet Explorer Version 8 is available for download, at least as a beta. There’s some new features which eBay will be keen to make use of such as WebSlices.
WebSlices are a new way to get updates from other sites via the browser without having to visit the web site itself. Rather than adding webpages to your bookmarks or favourites you’ll be able to bookmark a WebSlice. You can then view the WebSlice as you would your favourites, but it’ll show you a small window of live web content. This will be perfect for tracking eBay auctions allowing you to monitor items you’re bidding on without even visiting the site.
I’m not normally too enthusiastic about having the latest software, and I’d definately hold off installing it on my main work PC until I’m sure it’s compatible with all the applications I use. ParcelForce took about six months to update their website for IE7 and shipping parcels is pretty important to me. Even more so it needs testing with TurboLister as that relies on the IE engine to drive it. If however you’ve got a spare PC for testing it’s worth downloading and giving a trial, especially when websites such as eBay start serving WebSlices.
How to cope with spam email
December 30, 2007
It’s the only quiet time of the year for me on eBay, sales are still coming in but there’s now no courier collections until Wednesday next week so no need to go into the office. With some spare time I’ve decided it’s time to tackle some of the problems I’ve been meaning to fix and top of the list is spam email.
A temporary fix six months ago was to install MS Outlook 2007 with the junk email filter enabled. That has been capturing a couple of thousand spam emails per week, but recently it’s been missing an unacceptable proportion of the spam I receive. Chatting with Steve of Astrobits a couple of days ago he again (he’s been telling me for years!) suggested I install MailWasher Pro.
As Steve said to me “Advertising is a double edged sword, the more people know about you the more spam you get.” This is especially true as eBay and PayPal are two of the biggest targets for phishing attacks.
What MailWasher Pro does is to check your email on the server only downloading headers and the first 200 characters of the email to your PC. It doesn’t download the full message or any attachments. Much of the email is automatically marked as spam (highlighted in red) as soon as it’s downloaded. email is checked against known spam lists and your own personal blacklist and safe list.
You can scan all spam just in case it’s miscategorised an email, and from then on process the email and spam will be deleted from the server. MailWasher Pro then launches your email client so that you can download just the remaining legitimate email with no spam.
There are other attractive features such as the ability to send a fake “bounce” email, this tells the sender that they sent email to an email address that doesn’t exist and may in the future actively reduce the amount of spam you receive. You can also report spam to several spam blacklist servers including Spamcop who will report the spam to the relevant ISP.
When installing MailWasher Pro it makes sense to schedule automatic email checking on the program, but to disable it in your email application. If there is an email you wish to send a quick reply to you can click reply in MailWasher Pro and it’ll open the email in your email application een before you download the mail.
There are only a couple of things I dislike about MailWasher Pro, and they’re minor in comparison to the job it performs. It would be nice if the recycle bin displayed totals of the spam it holds, but you have to check the program statistics to see this. The only other thing I’d love the program to do is when it launches outlook after deleting spam to trigger an automatic send/receive to download legitimate emails, currently you have to click to do this manually.
For less than £20.00 MailWasher Pro is a superb tool to reduce the time handling spam takes. Totals for today show that 93% of the emails I’ve received were spam, and that’s just too many to handle manually. If you’re starting to (or already do) struggle to cope with a deluge of spam I’d highly recommend trialling MailWsher Pro, and it’s at no risk - they offer a 180 day money back guarantee.
Read more
25 million MySpace users for Skype
December 12, 2007
In October Skype hit the milestone of 10 million simultaneous users online, now they’re set to smash that target with as 25 million MySpace Instant Messenger users gain Skype capability.
MySpace’s 110 million users will be able to access Skype through MySpace’s IM client, already more than half a million MySpace users have checked out the beta version of MySpaceIM with Skype. To encourage adoption of Skype MySpace users are being offered a free ten minute call to a phone in their own country.
MySpace users don’t have to download any additional Skype software. And they can now link their MySpace profiles, photos or avatars to their Skype names. Now when will they do the same for Facebook?
T-Mobile plays catch up with the Skypephone
December 5, 2007
T-Mobile have released their latest Internet offering for Pay As You Go customers. A ‘5 Day Pass’ costing £2.50 gets users unlimited web surfing on their handsets.
Richard Warmsley from T-Mobile said: “The web’n'walk 5 Day Pass puts the whole internet into your pocket. It’s perfect for people who simply want to dip in and out of the internet on their phone, with the 5 Day Pass you get unlimited web browsing on the internet for a great price and without any hidden costs.”
On first glance it sounds like a great offer, Internet access on your mobile for just 50p per day… but it just doesn’t compare with the Skypephone from 3. With the Skypephone you can buy Internet access by the day for 50p, £2.50 gets you a whole week (that’s seven days, not five), or for a fiver you can access the Internet for an entire month (30 days).
On top of the free Internet access with the Skypephone of course you have Skype - 4,000 free Skype minutes and 10,000 free Skype chat messages. Then of course I can access eBay on my 3 Skypephone for free without even buying an Internet add on. If T-Mobile are going to tempt me to switch from 3 they’ve got a lot of catching up to do yet!
eBay Ireland chief slams poor broadband availability
December 5, 2007
The managing director of eBay Ireland has warned that the country’s poor internet service is harming its ability to attract foreign companies to locate there. John McElligott said “I am embarrassed to tell my peers in other countries about Ireland’s connectivity problems.”
In correspondance delivered to Irish politicians over the last week, McElligott said that Ireland needs “a major leap in connectivity capabilities in terms of coverage, quality and speed” if it is to become the location of choice for companies expanding into Europe. At the moment, he said, “the UK is the destination of choice. I fear we will regret this.”
The statement will come as an embarrassment to Irish politicians, particularly Michael Martin, the minister for enterprise, trade and employment. Martin said last October that broadband availability was expanding, and that connectivity issues were not inhibiting Ireland’s attractiveness for foreign investors. The government is planning to spend €435m on communications’ improvements over the next five years, but McElligott has called for bigger and better improvements. He said, “I am comprehensively disappointed by what has been achieved to date, and highly concerned about the future.”
£200m online sales per day until 20th Dec
December 3, 2007
Experts are predicting that £200m per day will be spent online in the run up to Christmas with £1.25billion spent yesterday, making it the busiest day ever for online sales. eBay were predicting 35 million searches and 2.65 million bids would take place in the last 24 hours as shoppers rush online to spend their final pay cheques before Christmas.
Importantly for eBay sellers 44% of people in the UK expect to purchase at least one Christmas prestent online this year. The most likely online shoppers come from East Anglia (52% expect to make an online purchase), with the West Midlands the least likely at just 37%. In Scotland 50% of people expect to do some of their Christmas shopping on the Internet.
Richard Kanareck, of eBay, said: “Shopping online at Christmas offers maximum convenience, the broadest choice at the best prices, and increasingly, the opportunity to find a more original or personal gift versus the High Street.” and he’s right! Walk down any high street today and it’s the same retail chains with the same goods as almost any other town in the country.
If you want to find that unique Christmas present shopping online is the way to go.
Display eBay in your own time zone
November 23, 2007
I’m easily confused and anything that makes my life easier is a good thing. That’s why I like the myTimeZone Firefox add-on that displays times from eBay sites around the world in local time that makes sense to me.
Normally if I visit eBay.com I’ve not got a clue what time auctions actually end. In truth I’m never quite sure whether PST is ahead or behind EST, although I’m pretty certain that CST is somewhere in the middle. It’s just all too much like hard work, I want to think in UK time as that’s what I wake up and go to bed by. Shopping on eBay.com or other eBay sites display times local to that site and sometimes even the date can be wrong (or at least wrong in the UK).
myTimeZone for eBay 1.4.0 is an add-on for the FireFox browser which turns foreign times into local times. It doesn’t even need me to tell it what “my time” is, it automatically recognises it from my computer clock.
Now if I view eBay auctions on sites other than eBay.co.uk it simply displays the time and it even corrects the date. That tells me if I need to be up early, go to bed late, might be at work, or could be up the pub, when an item I’m interested in will be ending. I don’t need to try and figure out if I’m likely to be at my computer to place a bid at some point in the future, in a random time zone. From now on I’m shopping on UK time all around the world!
myTimeZone for eBay supports eBay.co.uk, eBay.ie, eBay.com, eBay.ca and eBay.com.au. It is only available for the Firefox browser and can be downloaded from the myTimeZone website.
How the Skypephone pays for itself
November 21, 2007
It’s been almost a month since I got my Skypephone and it’s been working perfectly. That being the case I thought it was high time I read the manual, and enclosed in the box was a CD with software to connect the phone to my computer. Now I know what you’re thinking… surely I should have read the manual way before now, but who needs one for a device which is so intuitive anyway?
Well I couldn’t resist sticking the CD into my drive and up popped the software for possibly the biggest benefit of the Skypephone yet. It can be used as a modem for my laptop! Install the software, connect the phone via USB and you get a 115k connection to the Internet, from anywhere in the country that you can get a 3G mobile phone signal.
That to me will save the cost of the Skypephone many times over. I’ve lost count of the number of hotels I’ve stayed in where Internet access was promised, just to find it either to be extortionately priced or non-existent. A case in point is the Copthorne Hotel in Manchester, where Sue and I stayed for the recent eBay University and TameBay birthday party. £20 per 24 hours for Wi-Fi Internet access (but only in the bar area!). So that was a grand total of £80 for two days Internet usage as we both had laptops and needed to check email. I swear I’ll never stay in another Copthorne again!
Well there’ll be no more silly Internet charges for me from now on, with 3 you have an option to pay £1 per megabyte of data with no contract, or even on Pay As You Go you can purchase Internet Add Ons for your Skypephone. The Internet Add On prices are so low as to be almost unbelievable, £5.00 for a month, £2.50 for a week, or just £0.50 per day. Don’t forget that gets you 4,000 free Skype minutes from your Skypephone too.
Yes that’s right, buy a PAYG Skypephone for £49.99, add a £10 top up for 12p/min calls and 12p/text, and use just 50p of your top up on the days you want to use the Internet from your laptop or direct on the Skypephone.
This has to be one of the most cost effective methods available for accessing the Internet when you’re mobile. 50p per day from almost anywhere in the country, like the comfort of my hotel bedroom compared to £20 for Wi-Fi access from a noisy crowded bar in the Copthorne Hotel. There really is no contest and the Skypephone wins hands down.
The one disappointment is that during the installation the software wasn’t XP approved, that might deter some users from installing it. Apart from that it’s a fantastic, extremely cost effective way to access the Internet from a laptop when you’re on the move.
The eBay story on BBC Radio 2
November 7, 2007
Last night on BBC2 a programme presented by Kate Thornton traced the story of eBay and online selling with the giants eBay and Amazon. It dispels the rumour that Pierre Omidyar started eBay for his wife to trade Pez dispensers with the truth that he wanted to create an online trading site for ordinary people.
Pierre wrote the code for “Auctionweb” the original name for eBay over a holiday weekend. His first listing was for a laser pointer he’d bought as a cat toy. When it was broken he listed it on Auctionweb for $1 and it then sold for $14. The buyer… a collector of broken laser pointers! He announced Auctionweb on online forums and users started to visit the Auctionweb site which launched with just a dozen items listed on the first day.
When Meg Whitman joined eBay it was still called Auctionweb and since then the site has changed immensely including the name eBay. At that time the site was still black and grey and even the original eBay logo lacked the bright primary colours so familiar to eBay users today. The first Auctionweb logo was simply a white to black gradient with the words Auction web.
It’s a far cry from the colourful feature rich eBay site so familiar to millions around the world today.
The program covers everything from unusual items sold on the site to celebrities who have traded and even been kicked off eBay. David Baddiel explains how he got banned from eBay when his emails ended up in his junk email folder. The program also covers some of the more common scams on eBay warning how to stay safe on the site. Meg Whitman explained that most sales are perfectly reputable and safe.
Amazon is featured as the only real alternative to eBay, unbelievably when they started Amazon had a beeper that went off every time a sale occurred on the site. That soon had to be disconnected as Amazon employees were driven mad by constant beeping! Unlike eBay the programme highlights that it took years for Amazon to make a profit, eBay was profitable from the start. Richard Ambrose explained how dumping their own payment system Billpoint and buying PayPal drove the business even faster.
Pierre Omidyar became an overnight billionaire and the richest 31 year old in the world. He quietly stepped down from the day to day running of the eBay business and since 2004 has spent his time giving his wealth away though the Omidyar Network.
You can listen again to the first three programmes in the series including “SHOP TILL THEY DROP: eBay and the online retail revolution” on the BBC Radio 2 website. If you’re wondering what to do for your lunch hour it’s well worth a listen.
UK high street store to accept PayPal
October 23, 2007
New Look are due to launch an ecommerce website prior to Christmas and top of their priorities is ensuring their young target audience can use it. According to New Look Director, Shaun Wills, many in-store transactions are still cash based, many of their customers are young without access to credit cards and PayPal offers the perfect way to transact with them.
If someone has sold on eBay the chances are they have a balance in their PayPal account, and rather than withdraw it New Look will offer the chance to respend that cash online.
The website is to be built by e-InBusiness who PayPal have announced a new partnership with. They have developed over 70 ecommerce sites including those for Dreams, Conran and Millets, so don’t be surprised if more high street stores start accepting PayPal soon!
MySpace enables open communications with Skype
October 17, 2007
If there’s one thing that annoys me about many social networking sites it’s that they’re closed environments. That just doesn’t work on the Internet, think back to AOL who attempted to provide a “closed Internet” with purely AOL content, it didn’t work. Think back to the Instant messenger wars with AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, I don’t know anyone that still uses them all and personally I ony use Skype these days.
There’s a glimmer of hope for one networking site today, and that’s MySpace. They’ve teemed up with Skype to add voice calls to their instant messenger client - MySpaceIM. That means for the first time MySpace users will be able to message their online friends direct from Skype, and while logged into MySpace they’ll be able to use Skype to message friends who don’t have a MySpace account.
It’s a massive about turn in the way social networking sites operate. It still annoys me to receive an email informing me that I have a message on sites like MySpace and Facebook, but the email forces me to log in to read the message. Hopefully more sites will follow suit to open up communications so that they can be accessed freely without having to visit the site itself.
For Skype it’s a winner too, MySpace users will be able to set up a SkypeIn number, voicemail and call forwarding once they’ve connected their MySpace to their Skype account. The MySpace IM with Skype should be available to download by the middle of November.
Skype built into Microsoft beating OS
October 10, 2007
It’s not every day a revolutionary new operating system comes along, and even rarer that it has Skype built into it. But that’s what’s freshly launched onto the market this week.
Splashtop is a new operating system which boots as fast as you can click the power on button on your PC or laptop. No more waiting while the PC boots into Microsoft or Linux. No more frustration that your desktop has loaded but Windows is still booting in the background. With Splashtop as soon as you hit the power button your PC is up and running with a browser and ready to make calls with Sype!
This is a great utility, although sadly currently only available on the Asus P5E3 Motherboard. It’ll be built into more products in the near future.
Imagine the possibilites though - you want to check your eBay auctions, just hit the power on button and you’re online. Want to Skype someone, you’re set to go in seconds instead of minutes! This will also be fantastic for Internet Cafes, no need to run operating systems that are hard to maintain, in fact no need for an operating system at all, it’s built into the motherboard!
The burning desire to get online and be browsing the web as quickly as possible is what makes this a real winner. I want it now!
McDonald’s goes eBay friendly
October 6, 2007
It always annoys me when I stay in a hotel and then have to pay to access the Internet. It’s the same when I’m at an airport having paid for a flight, or in a coffee shop paying for a drink. It’s not just the paying but it’s not cheap at anything up to £7.50 per hour. Now an unlikely contender has just jumped to the top of my favoured eateries - McDonald’s!
Yes, the doyen of the fast food industry has promised by the end of the year WiFi access in most of its 1200 UK restaurants will be free to all. For an eBay seller who just can’t not check my emails, that’s music to my ears. What’s even better is you don’t *have* to eat their food. Faced with the prospect of young people spending hours surfing the net after buying just a single cup of coffee, a spokesman for McDonald’s said: “We would be comfortable with that. There will be no restrictions.” In the words of their own catch phrase “I’m lovin’ it”.
Skype is ten years out of date
September 26, 2007
I’ve been thinking over the instant messaging clients I’ve used in the past, most of which I never even log into these days. There was ICQ, Yahoo! Messenger, MSN Messenger, AIM - I had a log on for them all. Sadly due to lack of interoperability between instant messenger clients I consolidated my use down to just one - Skype.
What prompted me to recall my instant messaging past was the news that firewalls are now able to block Skype traffic and prevent users on corporate networks communicating with the outside world. I didn’t have that problem in the old days - I couldn’t even install the software in the first place. Most of the companies I worked for locked users PCs so that they couldn’t download and install applications (It constantly amazes me that companies don’t do the same today!). The inability to install wasn’t a problem because my then favourite Instant Messaging client, Yahoo! Messenger, had a web browser based version.
You can still log onto a web based version of Yahoo! Messenger today. The great advantage for me was I could chat to my friends with no software to install and at the same time feel slightly smug that I’d outwitted the IT department by using unauthorised software. Everything worked including file transfers to and from friends!
The big question is why have Skype been so slow to introduce a browser based version of their software? Why can’t I go to the Skype website from any PC anywhere in the world and simply log on to the service? Why do I have to download and install software? Yahoo! had a browser based solution some ten years or so ago, downloads are so outdated!
Checkpoint firewall blocks Skype
September 25, 2007
Mis-use of the Internet at work is a growing concern for many companies. Not only does it fritter away hours of employee’s time the company is paying for but there’s a justifiable of virus and hacking vulnerabilities being introduced to the network.
Checkpoint, a major firewall and security company, have just raised the bar with the announcement that Checkpoint Firewalls can now block Skype. That’s no free calls, no instant messaging chats and no file transfer through Checkpoint Firewall. One of Skypes main benefits (for users) has always been that it can be installed and used behind a firewall and it just works.
With Checkpoint blocking Skype the free and easy days could be coming to an end. Where one security vendor goes others are sure to follow, but doubtless Skype’s engineers will be busy figuring out new ways for Skype to work inspite of Firewalls trying to block their efforts.
Sky News Technofile features my auction
September 24, 2007
Sky run a feature called Technofile presented by Martin Stanford from Sky news. The latest installment was of great interest because not only did it talk about online selling but I was featured too!
Topics covered included about broadcasting yourself online big brother style, collaboration online, and advertising online, which is where eBay auctions come in. How to get your message across online more effectively? Well the answer is with video and along with vzaar they used one of my auctions as an example.
Technofile finished up with privacy online, if you’re using search engines or using a wireless hotspot you may not be as anonymous as you think you are. It’s like someone looking over your shoulder online, but if someone really is shoulder surfing consider a 3M privacy filter as recommended by Sky News!
Recent Forum Threads
- Help with a Trademark Violation Issue
- Stupid new eBay email system
- Making plans in case of emergency
- Ebay Account
- ME>YOUTUBE
- seen this?
- COLLAPSE OF FEEDBACK SYSTEM TRENDS FOR NEGATIVE POSITIVES
- Bargain DVDs at DVDSETPRO
- Seller meetup - London - 3rd Thursday of this month
- Ebay PowerSeller making a full time living, 4 years now
