Paypal: new site design and phishing
by brian_turnerIf you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thank you for visiting!Paypal currently looks like this:
However, apparently there’s a new redesign in the works, with a friendly and less plain frontpage:
It’s be interesting as to whether there will be any changes to functionality.
And it’s worth repeating - NEVER […]
Yahoo! search
by brian_turnerGreg R Notess gives Yahoo! search a fairly comprehensive examination in his paper Review of Yahoo! search.
Definitely worth a read if you’ve been so focussed on Google for traffic, that you pay far less attention to other major search engines than you should - myself included.
September 29, 2004
PPC fraud: are you worried?
by brian_turnerIf you’re involved in PPC management, you almost certainly should have heard of “click-fraud”. In fact, you might even have encountered some rather suspicious click-though rates, as the SEW forums moderator Sebastian mentions here.
However, what you should be more particularly worried about is that mediapost reports here that Clicklab - a web analytics provider - […]
Google shares top trading
by brian_turnerWell, if you risked buying stock in the Google IPO, you’d be laughing if you sold today:
According to Reuters, reported here:
http://biz.yahoo.com/rb/040928/tech_google_stocks_2.html
Google’s stock touched $127.40 before finishing the Nasdaq session up $8.60, or almost 7.3 percent, to $126.86 — a gain of almost 50 percent from the company’s mid-August initial public offering price of $85.
Google’s new Googlebot
by brian_turnerThere’s plenty of talk about Google’s new Googlebot visiting websites:
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; http://www.google.com/bot.html)
It’s been suggested that the Googlebot might be parsing Javascript and other scripting methods normally used to hide links from search engines.
However, in this thread at DigitalPoint, Shaun makes a point of commenting that it’s using the HTTP 1.1 protocol, as the Googlebot/Test […]
The Importance of Backups
by brian_turnerIt’s a sad fact of the webhosting industry that hosts go down on a regular basis.
It could be a harddrive failure, other hardware failure, security failure, network failure, general datacenter failure - any number of issues.
Point is, although some hosts get up, others do not.
And no matter how the issues involved are addressed, […]
September 28, 2004
E-marketing News
by brian_turnerI’m currently reading Mike Grehan’s Search Engine book, and it’s a very enlightening exploration of how search engines work, packed with very useful information. The worst part of it is that I’m reading the Second Edition, which basically covers up to 2001 in great detail, with only a few sections updated since then - though […]
The SE friendly CMS
by brian_turnerNick W takes a moment to share one of those rare SEO secrets, in this thread entitled Installing a Powerful - SE Friendly CMS in 10mins.
In short, he highly recommends using Drupal, with “clean URLs” selected in the admin options.
I’m going to have to test that out and see how it works. But you can […]
Bob Massa on search engines
by brian_turnerA thread at the Search Engine Watch forums raised the subject of a “Scalable Topic-Based Open Source Search Engine“, and the methods being mooted for developing a more relevant algorithm.
Somewhere among the tracking of information on what the project was up to, and what bots were used - which can be found in this thread […]
Microsoft offer Wiki to open source
by brian_turnerFrom CNet News:
“Microsoft said Monday that it is dipping a third toe into the open-source waters, adding a collaborative creation program to the list of Microsoft efforts that the company is freely sharing.
The company is making available the code for FlexWiki, software for creating “Wikis”–Web pages designed to cover a topic by allowing any number […]
Microsoft and Amazon vs Internet Crime
by brian_turnerCNET news reports here that Microsoft and Amazon have teamed up to launch combined lawsuits directed at specified individuals, who are seen to be major players in practices such as e-mail spam and address spoofing, as well as phishing.
According to the article:
“The companies said they hope to eliminate the scams, which have become a nuisance […]
Nvidia and ATI target mobiles
by brian_turnerAccording to this report, Nvidia and ATI have apparently been developing graphics chips specifically for the mobile markets with some success.
Although ATI’s Imageon 2300 had been showcased earlier this year, Nvidia have now demonstrated a chip - named GoForce - for mobile technologies, which can run full 3D graphics and streaming video at three […]
Hotmail charges for Outlook
by brian_turnerToday it was announced that Microsoft’s Hotmail e-mail service would no longer allow free download of Hotmail e-mails to Outlook Express, or other e-mail clients.
Apparently up to 18 million users could be affected, but Microsoft chiefs insist that the move is necessary to fight abuse of their free e-mail service, and their general […]
Security threat to the internet growing
by brian_turner“More than 30,000 PCs per day are being recruited into secret networks that spread spam and viruses” - Symantec
That’s just one of the conclusions raised by Symantec in their biannual Internet Threat Report, which attempts to trace trends in internet security.
This is an increase from 2,000 machines a day from 6 months ago. However, the […]
Virgin enters music online
by brian_turnerSeems that interplanetary space isn’t enough for Richard Branson - he wants to enter cyberspace in a big way, too.
More specifically, Virgin have launched Virgin Digital in the US, competing with other new arrivals on the market, such as Yahoo and Microsoft.
Virgin may have an interesting advantage in this market, with already owning a […]
Staff shortage loosens screwfix.com
by brian_turnerNow here’s an example of over-expansion coupled with staffing problems. Screwfix.com has apparently been unable to recruit the full compliment of 550 staff for its warehouse departments. Because of this, the company has had to suspend online ordering for at least a week.
I’m sure the 520 staff they axed a couple of months of ago […]
The Decline and Fall of the Housing Market
by brian_turnerI’ve already covered in the Platinax Internet Community Forums the issues of the UK housing market being over-valued.
An report published here earlier this month, showed that the housing market was slowing. And the IMF has warned that UK house prices could come crashing down.
Now the British Bankers’ Association (BBA) has showed that new mortgages were […]
Virgin to enter space?
by brian_turnerIt seems that balloons don’t go high enough for Richard Branson. He’s apparently signed a deal with Scaled Composites - a forerunner to the X-Prize, the race into making viable people carriers reach the boundaries of space and return safely. The new Virgin venture aims to send the first space tourists into space, using the […]
How to lose customers fast
by brian_turnerCallers to the complaints were greeted by the abuse from someone using a north-eastern accent.
The message, littered with four letter words, ended with the claim: “We are not going to handle any of your complaints… leave us alone, get a life.”
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And how would you receive this message? By calling the NTL complaints line, apparently, […]
US oil over $50 per barrel: Global Economy warning
by brian_turnerThe price of oil from the US has risen over the $50 mark. This reflects the serious problem of increasing global demand (not least from China), coupled with problems with production - an insurgency in Nigeria; hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico stifling US output; the continued crisis in Iraq as pipelines are targeted; plus […]