wooba.com - for your clicky finger

Oh man, say it ain’t so! Anytime eBay takes over a property, it’s doomed! Or maybe they are taking over the world! eBay’s trying to kill off half.com (unsuccessfully, I might add, as they keep pushing back the MDK date), I’m not too happy with their purchase of Paypal, and basically eBay is turning into the Microsoft of the e-commerce world. Really, why does Paypal or eBay need to be down any amount of hours per week for ‘maintenance’? Can you imagine if Google did that (oh, between 3-4am on Friday morning, we’re going to be down because we need to do some stuff)?

I’m really surprised that craig sold out like that. Guess the $25M per year in revenues might have been a bit overestimated? They should’ve just IPO’d like Google rather than sell out to eBay! I’m disappointed in you craig! Coulda gotten a lot more if they waited a bit. Are there any independent successful e-commerce sites still running?
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Online auctioneer eBay said Friday it has acquired a 25 percent interest in craigslist, the online marketplace of mostly free classified ads. The financial terms weren’t disclosed.

Craigslist, which covers a wide range of categories from jobs and apartments to used cars and personals, was founded by Craig Newmark in 1995 in San Francisco. Its following has been moving from pop status to mainstream and it cut into revenues of newspaper classified ads.

http://www.internetweek.com/breakingNews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=29100193

Watching the Olympics Opening Ceremony (again, but this time in hi-def), I noticed that the overwhelming majority of camcorders held by athletes walking thorough the opening ceremonies were Sony branded. Not really surprising, but it seems everyone and their Mom (there’s some old looking officials doing the walk) had a Sony camcorder. Although when I go on vacation to a tourist spot, say, Las Vegas, you do see mostly Sony camcorders. Wonder what their market share is. I have a old Sony PC100 too. Image quality is superb.

Then you see the disparity between the rich and the poor as well. The rich nations had the camcorder gizmos, digital cameras, and cell phones chatting away (Hi Mom, can you see me talking to you on your TV right now? Well, you can’t if you are in the US, heheheh…), then you get the poorer countries, like some in Africa, with delegates carrying around the old school 110mm wind-after-you-take-a-shot cameras.

Oh yeah, and it seems everyone leaves on the Sony stickers on the outside of the cams, you know, the ones that list the features, like 10x optical zoom, etc? Can someone PLEASE tell the world that it’s OKAY to take off the sticker? Heck, it’s really not even supposed to be there! The only time it should be there is at the store when they are trying to sell it based on its features. Ugh, I’ve actually seen someone leave on the Trinitron logo overlay on a Sony TV. And yes, it took up like 2” in the corner of the TV! So for pure aesthetics and to stop driving me insane, please PLEASE PLEASE take off the stickers on your camcorders and digicams that aren’t necessary. Also, you can take off the stickers that say Intel Pentium 4 and the Windows XP stickers on your laptops. Really, you can! (I had a heck of a time finding that image, though that one ain’t too bad, it’s still annoying, and I knew eBay had a picture of such a sticker, somewhere!) End of rant…

Yes, but if you steal Tommy and Pamela’s video, or release footage of yourself with Paris Hilton, nothing happens to you. So remember kids, if you ain’t rich or famous, or have someone in the porn industry lining your pockets, you will get in trouble for releasing sex videos of your ex. Wonder what kind of sentence he will get. Handing out the URL at her 21st birthday party was a good idea for revenge, though. But only 300 hits? He shoulda spread the address via a blog or IM or IRC… Woulda hit 3 million in no time!
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Paul Clarke posted the lewd footage on the Web after his bitter split from Cara Whitehouse, a court was told.

Business cards with the website address were handed out at her 21st birthday party, to her neighbours and at her workplace.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/articles/12543879?source=Metro

I get asked this so much, I thought I’d just write it down so I could just point people this way. Anyways, yes, you need more than one spyware removal tool, as none are perfect. One may find spyware that others may not. A combination of two or three of them will generally do the trick and protect you all around. If that doesn’t, then Google your way to solving your problem by typing in symptoms of the spyware you are facing. Spyware sucks ass, I can’t believe companies that do it don’t get fined heavily.

Immediately after downloading the below programs, be sure to update the definitions (just like virus definitions, spyware definitions get updated quite frequently) before scanning your computer. The first two I recommend are completely free, Spybot and AdAware, I believe Spy Sweeper has a free trial as well, but I use all 3 in combination. If you only choose one, I guess choose Spybot. Don’t forget to run your spyware checker once every week or thereabouts…

Our thoughtful user Ray suggests Microsoft’s Regcleaner as another utility to help keep your Windows registry clean. So we’ve linked that as well.

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Spybot: http://security.kolla.de

AdAware: http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/

Spy Sweeper: http://www.webroot.com/wb/products/spysweeper/index.php

http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,4666,00.asp

Bjork sucks. Sorry, can’t say anything else about her. The Opening Ceremonies are pretty interesting, the introduction was pretty spectacular, but Bjork? Bjork? Bjork? What were they thinking? It’s almost as bad, no wait, it’s worse, than Macy Gracy in Spider-Man. This is a worldwide live audience (except for USA of course, ha!) with billions watching. Eeek!

I thought it was very 21st century to have Tiesto spinning tunes during the Olympic country walk. Way better than the standard boring music fare. Anyways, be sure to catch some of it, although I recommend waiting for the HDTV broadcast and at least catching the opening part of the ceremonies and then the end, when they light the Olympic torch signifying the start of the Games. Thanks to NBC, most of the US can watch it 10 hours after the fact… No Janet Jackson inappropriateness popped out either.
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http://www.athens2004.com

Woop! They didn’t take into account the horrid traffic and the fact that most people can’t drive! The city has been overpriced for the past 5 years, but you can still get a Dick’s Special for $1.50.

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The Seattle metro area is home to some of the largest American corporations (such as Boeing and Microsoft), but that doesn’t mean that the cost of living and housing are proportionate to the job and income growth in the area. The Economic Development Council of Seattle and King County argues that there’s a reason for the high housing costs—mainly because roughly 25% of local residents are in either professional or managerial positions.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5696874/

BOO to NBC! First the HDTV coverage ain’t even close to being live… That said, at least put up some Web clips or something, heck even half window of ads, other half of coverage is okay, but c’mon now, if the Brits are doing live Web streams, NBC should at least have something to counter it with. I wonder if there’s going to be ways to get around this territorial Web restrictions… Hmm… I don’t see any streams on BBC’s site, but then again, I’m not trying to get there through an open proxy.

Sad in our day and age, I wonder how much of an effect BitTorrent and other P2P sharing will have on the Olympics. I don’t even dare imagine what the South Koreans are able to do, probably live HDTV streaming over their 30Mbps connections?
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The Summer Olympics, which began Friday in Athens, is the first Olympic Games to be broadcast from a collection of websites. The BBC and other European networks are offering live, on-demand Internet video streaming of Olympic events to broadband viewers. But the BBC and fellow members of the European Broadcasting Union are required by their Olympic broadcast contracts to block U.S. Internet users and others from outside their home counties.

Despite its contractual lock on Olympic footage, NBCOlympics.com is offering only highlights of selected events after they have been broadcast on one of the network’s TV channels. U.S. customers of AT&T Wireless’ mMode information service will also get video clips. By contrast, those online in the United Kingdom can watch live simulcast coverage from BBC TV’s five video streams.

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,64562,00.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/olympics_2004/default.stm