World Watching

Google seem incapable of not making the news of late, usually for all the wrong reasons (street view, google books etc) but as one famous hollywood type whose name i have forgotten said “all publicity is good publicity” It seems google is battling on none the less.

The lastest brainwave of the internet giant is apparently called ’shop view’ where it seems they are trialling something similar to the much hated street view, just inside shops now. Coupled with an aquaintence bemoaning how it seems google are ignoring the noindex tags on his website, this got me thinking, If you don’t invite google or any other search engine to index your site i.e submit your url to them… do they actually have a right to be indexing your site, docs and pictures that you may have on the server at all?

Read the rest of this entry »

yes? whats stopping you? If the answer is along the lines that, its expensive to set up a credible online store and make a little cash working from home then read this e-commerce article because the truth of the matter is, that it can be done for free… yes FREE and no, i’m not trying to sell you anything either all information provided on the worldwatching website is totally free of charge. 

The credit crunch may still have it’s fangs into the country and economically times may still be hard, recession still causing hardship, ebays fee’s still high and the future uncertain… BUT if you can set up a small online business and make a small success out of it now the law of averages says it should be a bigger success in better times.

The fact of the matter is people are still shopping online, albeit a bit more prudently than in the past… So if your going to sell to them you have to keep your costs down and if that means axing ebay fee’s from your overheads it can be done.

The abundance of online payment processors today also totally negates the need to have business bank accounts etc until such time as you actually find your business has grown and a business bank account is a realistic option.

The usefulness of twitter to business has been called into question at the Chicago SES 2009 conference by site logic’s Matt Baily.

Do you think twitter is a business tool or gadget?

WebProNews.com interviewer, Abby Johnson talked with Baily about whether or not Twitter was a viable and useful channel to pursue for the average business.

Watch the WebProNews video here

Bailey feels like businesses feel an unwarranted pressure to ‘get someone on Facebook or Twitter’ without fully understand why they are doing it – aside from the fact that some marketing expert told them they needed to. – WebProNews

Early comments on the WebProNews site seem to suggest that Baily is not alone in his views.

This time it’s in Switzerland, the reason? Street view! how long is it going to take for the morons and bone heads at google who dreamed up the concept of being an internet peeping tom to get it through their caveman like skulls that people don’t like the concept of not only themselves but their homes and children being photographed and posted on the internet.

The BBC is reporting that the swiss data protection commissioner Hanspeter Thuer is asking the Swiss courts to order the immediate removal of all Swiss images from street view until a judgement is handed down on the issue.

Caution: Critical comments ahead!

I have come to the conclusion that postal workers strikes make some of ebay’s sellers outright dishonest and lazy.

Just the mention of a possible strike is enough to have my inbox bombarded with messages from some sellers stating that they simply “cannot post an item because i might not get it”

What kind of muppet do these idiots think i am? do they believe that somewhere in the heart of every sorting office there is a mail munching troll that eats mail posted in the run up to/or during a strike?

That said, i have also had some of the most speedy deliveries during these strikes as well.. either the management are really pulling out the stops or support for the strikes has not been as strong as claimed.

Having had enough i replied very abruptly to one such work shy lackey, pointing out that if they got off their lead laden arse and posted the item first class as i had paid for, given that the strikes were not due to start for another 4 days i would receive it before any disruption started.

Guess what happened… It arrived in the post next day!

Spare a thought for the US Marine corps, They have just been banned from using social networking sites. While looking at it from a purely security standpoint the ban is easy to understand.

However for the poor buggers stuck in far off lands doing a tough job in even tougher circumstances, This is hardly likely to help morale at all.

INTERNET SNS [social networking sites] ARE DEFINED AS WEB-BASED SERVICES THAT ALLOW COMMUNITIES OF PEOPLE TO SHARE COMMON INTERESTS AND/OR EXPERIENCES (EXISTING OUTSIDE OF DOD NETWORKS) OR FOR THOSE WHO WANT TO EXPLORE INTERESTS AND BACKGROUND DIFFERENT FROM THEIR OWN.  THESE INTERNET SITES IN GENERAL ARE A PROVEN HAVEN FOR MALICIOUS ACTORS AND CONTENT AND ARE PARTICULARLY HIGH RISK DUE TO INFORMATION EXPOSURE, USER GENERATED CONTENT AND TARGETING BY ADVERSARIES.  THE VERY NATURE OF SNS CREATES A LARGER ATTACK AND EXPLOITATION WINDOW, EXPOSES UNNECESSARY INFORMATION TO ADVERSARIES AND PROVIDES AN EASY CONDUIT FOR INFORMATION LEAKAGE THAT PUTS OPSEC, COMSEC, PERSONNEL AND THE MCEN AT AN ELEVATED RISK OF COMPROMISE.  EXAMPLES OF INTERNET SNS SITES INCLUDE FACEBOOK, MYSPACE, AND TWITTER.

One can only hope that the pentagon realises that many of it’s personnel will have come to rely on these sites to stay in touch with reletives in the same way civilians have.

Chris Crum, writing for webpronews has cited an auctionbytes survey stating ebay’s latest package of changes and stated they are going down better with ebay sellers, than the last lot did.

Hmmm the comments on the posting itself say otherwise..

The auction giant (yes, its still just about ebay) has lost sellers at an unprecedented rate in the last year, in my personal experience i would question whether many of them were the ones that needed ‘losing’.

ebay is still a minefield for the unwary buyer, it is still littered with scams intended to seperate the ebay’er and his money in return for… well nothing but grief!

It seems ebays relentless push towards the mythical ‘online mall’ continues regardless of whether they will have any buyers or sellers left when they get there.

In my opinion ebay needs to focus, focus on what made it an online auction giant in the first place rather than trying to be amazon in a different colour jacket.

read the ebay announcement with roles out the changes here 

PS. and donohoe needs sacking asap, both him and meg are a liability… in my opinion.

Kara Swisher has reported in her BoomTown Column that a 10yr deal has finally been reached between web giants Yahoo and Microsoft. In the announcement, it looks like Microsoft will handle the technology side of a combined search venture and Yahoo will do the sales and marketing side.

So what have Google been saying? so far not much.. only off the record it seems that they dont consider the MicroHoo partnership to be a threat.

Microsoft and Yahoo have set up a joint website to explain things further.

So what does this mean for you and i? well microsofts latest venture into the search industry (Bing) has gained in popularity in recent months, although still accused of throwing up irrelevent results now and again. So maybe integrating Yahoo search experience into the Bing platform will be a good thing..

Well everyone has been saying it for years… Now its official, Broadband connections are not as fast as they should or are claimed to be! The BBC has reported that OFCOM, the telecommunications watchdog has conducted a survey and found one fifth of 8Mbps subscribers actually receive less than a 2Mbps connection.

On top of that less than 9% of users get more than 6Mbps!

The worst perfomers on average were AOL and the best on average were Virgin Media.

BT who didn’t actually fare too well in the survey as would be expected have criticised the survey.

Listen to the BBC’s Today Programme with OFCOM

So once again the british public are being robbed blind by big business.. only difference is it’s now official instead of just common knowledge!

having just spent my coffee break surfing the web (yes nothing better to do), i have found what i think are some stunning photo’s over at todd norbury’s blog. Well worth a visit in my humble and completely un-educated photographic opinion.