Thursday, June 19, 2003

E-mail scam makes Best Buy scramble. The retailer moves to limit potential damage from an e-mail scam that links to a look-alike Web site to try and convince consumers to give up their credit-card information. [CNET News.com] My sister got hit by this last night.  There were a few flaws to notice like; The Email address was not from BestBuy.com, the link it gave was not to BestBuy.com, and they sent it as a text and a html document (no self-respecting retailer would make it that hard if it wanted to keep its customers).  I sent a nasty little note to the person sending it and informed BestBuy.com of the problem.  Seems like they're on the hunt. As a side note my sister has gotten her second eBay scam mail this week today.  This is getting out of hand. comment [] 6:07:13 PM

I predicted this and hailed it's coming before.  Microsoft's MSN devision is currently researching a web crawler for their search site.  This comes after a reportedly refused attempt to buy Google.  The rumors are flying about this one but one that is credible suggests what I asked for, that searching in Longhorn (the next build of Windows) be seamless between the net and your computer.  This looks like it could be the begining of a very large battle between MSN and Google who has been growing complacent. comment [] 4:05:10 PM

Save Instant Messages, NASD Tells Members [New York Times: Technology] I've been waiting for this one.  Next it will be save your text messages on your phone.  There are up and down points to all of this I suppose.  The down point really only applies if you're using your communication clients for something illegal, which I'm sure there are a lot of people doing.  The upside could also be tremendous.  Have you ever wondered what say, Abraham Lincoln talked to his friends about before the Immancipation Proclamation?  Maybe you've wondered what Kennedy really thought about the space program.  This could be an amazing way of archiving history.  If all of this were saved and eventually made publicly available we would have a searchable archive of an amazing amount of information.   Now I understand that this article is about business practices but this idea can be applied to any field where an IM client is used.  I use my Trillian logs to look at what I've said or for information from a conversation, and many times it's the only place that information now exists.  Recently MSN has added the log capability to it's consumer IM client so now maybe we can have longer memories than elephants. *A side note Trillian was named after a character in the book mentioned in the last post. comment [] 3:52:57 PM

Hitchhiker's film 'still in pipeline'. UK production firm Hammer and Tongs takes over the reins of a film version of Douglas Adams' cult novel. [BBC News | Technology | UK Edition] All I can say is Thank You!  There's only one other book I would genuinely like to see made into a movie and that is Atlas Shrugged.  I think the world could do with a little of Douglas's brand of humor right now or any time for that matter.  On top of that it would replace the horrible BBC version of the series. comment [] 3:48:28 PM

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