Ebay fined over fake goods

Ebay has been ordered to pay 40 million euro by a French court, after it failed to stop transactions on fake "brand" products through its website. The companies are part of the LVMH group, which includes Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, and Givenchy. The group is suing both for the auctioning of fake luggage and handbags, as well as for the sale of perfumes. There are some more significant concerns as far as the perfumes are concerned, because only authorised retailers are allowed to sell the products. One of the reasons is that perfume can cause allergies or irritation if tampered with, a practice often carried out by street sellers, who mix perfumes and reseal them.

LVMH were satisfied with the decision of the court to fine Ebay and to ban them from allowing any more perfume transactions on their website, as they consider these companies an important part of French business heritage.

However, Ebay spokespersons are not pleased with the ruling, saying that the case was more about LVMH trying to protect its uncompetitive commercial practices, rather than getting rid of counterfeits, an effort that Ebay makes anyway, removing fake copies as soon as they find them on their site. It's a tough decision against Ebay, the second in less than a month.

But should Ebay really be the one fined or should it be the individuals carrying out the sales?

Cable TV targetted ads criticised

US cable television companies are facing criticism after plans to share their customers' viewing habits, in order to tempt advertising money through ads that will be more specific to each viewer. This is not a new technique in any way, it is used on the Internet where depending on user searches, websites visited or location, specific ads are shown which are more likely to be relevant to the user.

There is a question of privacy rules being breached by Comcast, Time Warner and several other companies who want to go ahead with this plan, especially if one takes into account the fact that Google and Facebook have been criticised on the exact same issue. If the same technique is used by cable television providers they will essentially be sharing subscriber information, an act prohibited by federal law in the US. Nonetheless, the companies planning on using this new wave of advertisement have said that they will adhere to the laws in place.

This targetted advertisement could be a very powerful tool indeed, as cable viewers would only see advertisements that interest them (i.e. National Geographic subscriptions for people that watch nature documentaries), a very tempting perspective for advertisement companies. But is this sharing of information a step too far?

Sony vows to turn a profit in TV and games

Sony has pledged that this fiscal year they will turn a profit in their TV and video games branch by giving almost all of its electronic products wireless Internet connectivity capabilities by 2011. This move is a revival of Sony after a bad few years that saw it shut down factories, donwnsize categories and cut thousands of jobs around the world.

Sony wants the software and connectivity that should go with its hardware, such as Playstation and the Bravia television set. As regards the Bravia model, the company claims that they will be able to provide films and television shows directly to the consumers' sets, without the use of cable or satellite TV. This capability will also be offered to the PS3.

This move is long awaited by Sony itself, which saw its competitors leave it far behind even though their hardware is the most widely used in the world. At last, they will be able to provide the software and networking capabilities that a company of their caliber should, and start catching up with their competitors, through immense investments in research and development of these technologies.

Visa invests in Facebook

One of the world's largest credit card companies, Visa, will pay social networking megasite Facebook £1 million for the promotion of its small business service to their users. The first 20,000 businesses in the US to download Visa's services via Facebook will receive $100 in advertising credit.

Visa is trying to take advantage of Facebook's 80 million global audience and help small firms run more efficiently with the online branch of their service. There are approximately 80,000 small online businesses with Facebook profiles, surely to be followed by many more, and there are hundreds of programmes that have been created especially for the entertainment of the social networking website users, however most of these programmes (photosharing, film interest comparisons, etc.) are free, with no profit to be made for anyone.

Nonetheless, Visa and Facebook are hoping that at least some of these companies will be able to use the social networking website for online marketing and will turn a profit from it at some point in the future.

Helping with your college admission essay

I've always enjoyed writing, that's probably why I started blogging back in 1999. However, going through university, writing essays is a different matter. And even there, if you are studying something you are interested essays should be enjoyable.

However, what do you do if you need to write an essay about yourself, your experiences, your abilities, without sounding conceited or full of yourself, while at the same time creating a piece of work that will set you apart from the crowd and grab the attention of the examiner choosing whether you are the right candidate for their university?

When writing a college admission essay it is no longer really about your own style, it is rather about setting your work apart from everyone else's. That's where www.admissionessays.com comes in. You give the website your information and your experience, in general what you want included in your essay, and they send back a model that you can follow and make your essay unique and inspiring.

In fact, they will even send you different introductions to your essay so that you can choose or mix elements from the two and will offer you discounts if you require more than one essay (different colleges and universities look for different things after all). They deliver work within 5 working days and have various services depending on what studies you want to follow (Law, Business, Graduate School, Medicine).

Domain name laws to be relaxed

A change like nothing before may be on its way for the Internet, as discussions are being held about the laws and regulations governing domain names. Specifically, the discussions are about top level domain names (.com, .net, .org, etc.) and if the plans are approved it could allow companies to use their own name as the domain itself.

Efforts have been made over the last 3 years by Icann, the main Internet domain regulatory body, to relax the laws governing domain names. Apart from web address endings changing, there could also be drastic changes to the characters used for the addresses themselves, allowing different countries to use their own language's characters.

Essentially, this is freedom for everyone who wants to take over a small part of the internet for themselves. The number of names that can be used will rise by thousands over the next few years if the plans are approved.

"Yahoo!" turning into "Yahoo?"

There have been numerous reports over the past few days about executives in Yahoo! resigning and moving to new companies and the possibility of lawsuits from upsed shareholders, after the Microsoft deal fell through, and Yahoo! ended up going with Google. It may be that these events, the resignations and the lawsuits, go hand in hand, as the execs are trying to get out before the ship sinks.

TechCrunch has published a list of executives who have resigned, but before clicking on the link make sure you have a fresh cup of coffee as the >list is long. About 50 executives have quit Yahoo since January last year, more than 10 in the last 2 months. Even though the current deal with Google is more profitable than the offer made by Microsoft, many investors were disappointed with the decision.

YouTube videos to get longer and longer

YouTube has had longer videos in their content for more than a year now. There are usually two ways of doing this. Somehow uploading a video that lasts for an hour and a half all in one go, which would take you a while, or uploading it in segments. I have watched a number of documentaries that way, and although I sat through the whole thing, it wasn't the most pleasant way of watching anything.

Apparently, YouTube are going to make some sort of big announcement at the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival this week, according to CNN Money. The same source indicates that they are fishing for up and coming directors for some sort of deal, and are stressing how certain directors of videos on their website have gone on to strike deals with studios.

However, YouTube is neither the first video website to upload full length videos, nor the first site to host the video of someone that later became famous. Stage 6 was very popular for a short period of time for full length videos, with documentaries and interviews from the 70's to the 00's, and its content, to begin with, was incredible. However, more users joined in and uploaded their videos, Stage 6 turned more and more into a big repetitive mess and it became harder and harder to find videos.

The most important consequence of millions of people uploading full length content and the main reason that Stage 6 closed, is the cost of storing all these millions of clips and dealing with whether or not they are allowed online.

Good luck to YouTube and more power to them for trying this, but I hope they have called DivX up and asked what went wrong with Stage 6 before starting.

Adobe sales boosted by overseas markets

Profits for the world's biggest design software developer, Adobe, have increased by 41% in the second quarter of 2008, thanks to demand for their products (Acrobat, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, etc.) in Europe and Asia.

Nevertheless, stockholders were not pleased with the profit outlook and Adobe shares dropped by between 2.5%-3.1%. Despite the 45 cents per share increase forecast by the company, the shareholders were looking for more.

Adobe is now looking to South America, Eastern Europe and China for new markets as the US economy slows down. According to statements by top officials within the company, there is no way of knowing how the recession will affect the company. Even though demand for the company's products remains high, their new income from Europe, that has sustained them during the grinding halt that is US economy, may experience a sharp decline as citizens of the EU head down to the beaches for the summer.

The Dark Knight returns to our screens

The latest installment in the Batman franchise, The Dark Knight, is about to hit us hard this summer. After dark auter Tim Burton's first two films followed a series of not so well executed sequels, ending in what was a garish fluorescent music video, aka Batman and Robin. However director Christopher Nolan came to the rescue and blew us all away with Batman Begins in 2005. Inspired casting began with that film and we will see Christian Bale don the cape and kevlar once more to do battle with the much awaited Joker, an intense character performance by the late Heath Ledger.

If The Dark Knight interviews and trailers are anything to go by, the action scenes and gadgetry will put every other Batman film to shame (and every James Bond film for that matter), and the production team tried to keep as many of the stunts as possible real. So, yes, that is really a man jumping off a 100 floor skyscraper, and apparently the only 3D in that scene is the fluttering of his cape.

What impresses me a lot more from the trailers is the unhinged lunacy of the Joker, an instability simmering just under the surface, less camp than the Jack Nicholson version (although that was in no way anything but excellent). Ledger was much more intimidating, creating an air of almost palpable danger.

However, what always lets me down in the Batman films, and there is no guarantee that it will or will not happen this time, is the inability of the directors to project Bruce Wayne's own instability and his ability to stand just this side of insanity. The Batman character in many ways is supposed to be a mirror of the Joker. And so far I have not seen this struggle to remain "good" portrayed properly. Having said that, Nolan has managed to turn the franchise around, so maybe he's done it all in this film.

Regardless, this is definitely going to be one of the biggest summer hits, and probably one of the biggest Batman hits. See you in the cinema.



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Yahoo! shareholders not pleased with Google deal

Saying that Yahoo! shareholders are less than happy with the rejection of Microsoft's offer for Yahoo's online search branch, is an understatement. Yahoo preferred to make an ad deal with Google, and as a result Yahoo stock dropped by 7.5%, while Google stock rose.

Many of Yahoo's shareholders and certain analysts believe that joining with Microsoft would have been a much more lucrative decision. But Yahoo wanted to revive an offer made by Microsoft in the past to buy Yahoo in its entirety, an offer they had rejected. This time around Microsoft were no longer interested in such a deal and instead offered $1bn to take over the search business and another $8bn for 16% of Yahoo.

To give you a clearer image of the money being lost, Yahoo believes they can make up to $800 million a year with the current deal with Google, while analysts estimate that the Microsoft deal could have made up to $1 billion a year. That is $2oo,ooo the shareholders will not be seeing.

Furthermore, Reuters reported that there will probably be lawsuits from the shareholders that will eventually cost the company even more. Perhaps Yahoo execs know something the rest of us don't. Maybe in the long run it will work out for the best for them...

Retailers stand to lose millions from credit card fraud

A loophole that allows credit card fraudsters to bypass security and make purchases online without raising any alarms in the online purchases security systems was reported by the BBC today. Apparently The Third Man security company noticed the crime being committed completely by chance while they were monitoring sales at an online shop.

Apparently, the loophole can be found in the Address Verification System and is quite simple to carry out:

"When carrying out address checks AVS compares the house number of a customer plus the digits in their post code to those input during a transaction.

For instance, if the Prime Minister bought goods at an online store with a credit card, AVS would use numbers in the address - 10 Downing St, SW1A 2AA - to help verify his identity.

In this case AVS would use 1012 as a shorthand ID check."(BBC)

So technically, all a credit card thief needs to do is find out your address and then an address including those numbers and he can start ordering away from your credit card. Just another reason to cancel cards as soon as you realise you no longer have them on you, and be very careful where you order from.

As liberating as online shopping is for millions of us, we must not pose the new risks that accompany it and neither should the retailers we use. After all, 1 in 10 (Britons) has fallen victim to some sort of online fraud and several tech sites report that over £500 million in fraud was attempted in 2007. If they do not use a safer system, I'm not shopping from them.

If you would like to see what other ways there are to avoid online credit fraud have a look at this article.

BT goes faster! But at what cost?

So BT have finally decided to up their speed. However, the cost of their new BT Broadband Accelerator, part of its Home IT Support Service, is £90 a month. On the one hand, for a consumer such as myself I don't know if it is worth it at the moment. The minimum increase in speed is o.5Mbps and this increase can come about through optimizing your PC, checking the wiring, plugging the modem into the master plug and even by fixing faulty wiring or other household electrical applicances. But it's still too much for me, living with 3 flatmates in a 400-year-old cottage. Primarily because when you have 4 people downloading at the same time it will affect your connection and secondly because no amount of rewiring will help with the electrics in a house as old as mine.

On the other hand, if you run an office out of your house, this could cut out the IT man. If your livelihood depends on being online at any given time and using high speeds to get things done quickly, then it is worth having a technician come over and help you figure out how to make your broadband run faster. In fact, it might even lower your business costs, as faulty wiring and appliances or malfunctioning lights might be using up unnecessary amounts of power. In that case the £90 price is not out of the question. BT are also to launch a product called iPlate, which will supposedly boost broadband speeds and comes to £10, a much more realistic purchase for a consumer such as myself.

This all sounds great, but I have raise the issue of BT's competitors. Because if you check out average speeds, you will notice that BT is not at the top of that list. Not by a longshot...

BT goes faster! But at what cost?

So BT have finally decided to up their speed. However, the cost of their new BT Broadband Accelerator, part of its Home IT Support Service, is £90 a month. On the one hand, for a consumer such as myself I don't know if it is worth it at the moment. The minimum increase in speed is o.5Mbps and this increase can come about through optimizing your PC, checking the wiring, plugging the modem into the master plug and even by fixing faulty wiring or other household electrical applicances. But it's still too much for me, living with 3 flatmates in a 400-year-old cottage. Primarily because when you have 4 people downloading at the same time it will affect your connection and secondly because no amount of rewiring will help with the electrics in a house as old as mine.

On the other hand, if you run an office out of your house, this could cut out the IT man. If your livelihood depends on being online at any given time and using high speeds to get things done quickly, then it is worth having a technician come over and help you figure out how to make your broadband run faster. In fact, it might even lower your business costs, as faulty wiring and appliances or malfunctioning lights might be using up unnecessary amounts of power. In that case the £90 price is not out of the question. BT are also to launch a product called iPlate, which will supposedly boost broadband speeds and comes to £10, a much more realistic purchase for a consumer such as myself.

This all sounds great, but I have raise the issue of BT's competitors. Because if you check out average speeds, you will notice that BT is not at the top of that list. Not by a longshot...

Apple drops price of iPhone 3G

There is no doubt that the iPhone and the 3G version are two of the most sleek and beautiful mobile phone devices, although they do a lot more than just function as telephones. So in order to try and tempt some custom away from Nokia and Blackberry, Apple have announced that the new iPhone 3G will be offered to consumers for £100, in its cheapest version with 8Gb of storage. Not a bad deal, as with the new 3G technology Apple claims users will be able to download two times as fast.

However, Nokia and Blackberry are not sitting with their arms crossed and smiles on their faces. Even though Apple only holds 5% of the global smartphone market, the drop in price could bolster iPhone sales when it is launched in 22 countries in July. But it will have to compete with Nokia’s N96 and the Blackberry Thunder. Apple’s hope is that the £100 price tag, which they hope will be the same across most of the countries the phone is released in, will increase their sales and help them catch up.

90,000 Spanish lorry drivers hit the breaks

More than 200 Spanish lorry drivers ground traffic on the borders with France to a halt last night, as they parked their lorries next to the toll booths and proceeded to stop other lorries from passing, in protest to the 20% rise in the price of diesel fuel.

The tens of thousands of lorry drivers on strike are mostly self employed or work from small companies, and they all face the same problem with the soaring price of diesel. Bankruptcy.

The hauliers have found support from others in their trade in France and Portugal. These strikes are threatening the arrival of goods to supermarkets and fuel all over Spain. Since May, protests by lorry drivers, fishermen and taxi drivers in 7 European countries have been reported by the BBC, and if fuel prices do not decrease it could spell many more mass protests throughout Europe.

The soaring diesel prices are due, to a great extent, to the 15% minimum VAT imposed on the fuel. However, the EU has stated that it will avoid cutting fuel taxes in order to deal with the high prices, and instead recommends that national solutions be found in each member state dealing with the problem.

Perhaps it is time to focus on more fuel efficient haulage and fishing vehicles and subsidise the purchase of such vehicles, a trend that should be followed by every company worldwide, as it makes long term financial sense and improves companies’ image as regards to the environment.