Spammers moving from email to the cellphone

By Mark O’Neill

This article in the New York Times really struck a raw nerve with me because it is a touchy subject in my life at the moment.ย ย ย ย  The article is about spammers who are moving their harassment from emails to the cellphone (or mobile phone if you are in Europe).ย ย ย  Never a day goes by without my phone buzzing with the latest spam SMS message.ย ย  In fact the last message was five minutes ago so I am still fuming a bit.

The biggest offender in my case is, ironically enough, my mobile phone provider!ย ย  T-Mobile is sending me countless SMS messages getting me to change calling plans, telling me of new promotions, and on and on.ย ย  I keep calling them to complain ferociously (and trust me, I am a ferocious complainer).ย ย ย  But still they keep on coming….it’s getting to the point where I am about to change phone providers.ย ย ย  But who’s to say it will be any better with the next crowd?

I have also had spam SMS messages from German pornographic phone numbers, the kind of which normally flood the television stations late at night.ย ย  How they managed to get my mobile phone number I have no idea.

The biggest problem with mobile phone spam seems to be that, unlike email spam, there’s no filtering in place.ย ย  There’s no “mark this as spam” button to stop it coming through in the future.ย ย ย  Plus, some plans make you PAY to accept these messages!ย ย ย  Luckily I don’t pay to accept SMS messages so I am not suffering financially otherwise my Scottish blood would be really boiling!

Do you suffer from cellphone / mobile phone spam?ย ย  If so, what have you done (if anything) to stop it?ย ย  What kind of spam have you received?

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Levi Strauss hits the viral jackpot on YouTube

By Mark O’Neill

Levi Strauss are celebrating getting onto YouTube’s coveted “most viewed” spot with their “back-flipping jeans” video clip.ย Since Monday, it has clocked up 1.4 million views and no doubt it isn’t doing any harm to the Levi Strauss sales targets either.

The company insists that no trickery was performed.ย The people in the clip are all professionals.ย ย  They wore silk boxers and the jeans are starched.ย However, as a man, I still instinctively clamped my legs together and winced!ย ย  I dare you not to do the same!

Look out for them now in the next South Park episode next to the Chocolate Rain guy.

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What internet services would you be willing to pay for?

By Mark O’Neill

I seem to be finding some thought-provoking lists today online. This one, on the website of Ryan Spoon (great name!) is what internet services you would be willing to fork over money for if you were forced to.

A lot of stuff on the internet is free these days, to the point that if someone dares to ask for money for a product, there are howls of indignant protests and calls for a boycott. There are also so many competing products that many developers are probably very nervous to ask for money, because they figure that their users would just defect to a free similar product instead.

But would you be willing to pay for your favourite products if money was asked for? Personally speaking, as a Scotsman, I am loathe to hand over money for ANYTHING unless my life depends upon it (and even then I want an expert second opinion on my chances of survival). That means that during the past two years, I have only personally paid for one piece of software and that was SnagIt (and I made sure I could claim it as a tax write-off!)

But if they started charging for Gmail, Google Reader, WordPress….would I pay? I don’t know…..it depends on what extras they throw in to sweeten the pill. I probably would in the end get out the credit card, grit my teeth and hand over the cash though. Most of my online life is centered around these applications and to move to another application is just too much time and hassle.

So how about you? Using Mr Spoon’s list as a guide, what currently free internet services would you be willing to pay for if they suddenly became paid services? Or would you refuse to pay as a matter of principle and move elsewhere, regardless of the hassle and inconvenience?

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Who are the people who define the Internet?

By Mark O’Neill

I came across an interesting list called “15 People Who Changed The Internet” and all the obvious characters are on there – Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Sir Tim Berners-Lee… but the list got me wondering who is NOT on there.

As with any product, it’s one thing to invent the Internet but it takes a lot of people to develop it and take it to the next level. We’re on Web 2.0 at the moment, and we are well on our way to Web 3.0, so I find it very difficult to believe that we can condense “People Who Changed The Internet” down to a nice neat list of 15.

So since we’re all geeks here, who would YOU nominate for the list? Who would YOU say is a major mover and shaker online? Do you agree with the list? Who would you kick off and why? Who would you put on, and why?

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What Do YOU Use To Check For Domain Names?

By Mark O’Neill

One of the things I like to do is research and buy web domain names. I am NOT a cyber-squatter mind you but I like to think up creative URL’s, see if they are available, buy the domains for a year and see if I can make a project out of them or not. If not, I release them out into the wild for someone else to snap up.

But I have never been able to find a decent domain searching tool. I have been using Yahoo Small Business‘s URL search engine and on occasion, I have also been using WHOIS. But I’ve been wanting something else, something with a bit more….of a punch I guess.

Today, Web Worker Daily pointed out a really interesting domain searching tool called Domize which is rather interesting. But I still feel kind of unimpressed with these tools. For a start, where is the support for foreign domains? What if I want a German .de domain? Next, where’s the skimpy bikini model on the screen cooing and complimenting me on my domain name choices? I mean, come on man! Do I have to do everything around here?!

Does anyone know of a really fantastic free domain checking tool that they use personally and would recommend? Preferably ones that don’t push you towards GoDaddy afterwards and just tells you instead the availability of domain names. Real time checking-as-you-type is a plus as well as foreign domain support.

Plus I seem to vaguely remember that there was a service or a webtool a couple of years back that alerted you when certain domains were released back onto the open market. So if you were waiting for a certain domain to be freed up, you could put a watch on it and you would be alerted by email when it became available again. Does anyone know if such a service still exists?

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Xobni: Email Made Easier Than Ever

By JR Raphael
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

Fellow Outlook users, prepare to revolutionize your email experience.

Allow me to introduce you to my new best friend and personal assistant, Xobni (pronounced ZOB-nee, and spelled like a backwards inbox). He and I just met this morning, but we’ve really hit it off.

Xobni is a powerful little tool that’ll save you time and effort in your electronic communications. It’s been under development in a limited beta release up until this week, so now’s your first chance to give it a whirl. I’ve just begun to scratch the surface of how it can help me, and I’m already blown away. Let me get you acquainted.

Easy indexing

Perhaps the most useful part of Xobni is how it indexes and threads content. Taking a cue from Gmail, the program lists emails in “conversations,” so you’ll see all the back-and-forth replies to any message together in one window within Outlook (Xobni runs as a sidebar inside the program). Having that info so readily available, without even having to navigate away from your current message, is quite a convenience.

But where Xobni one-ups Gmail is in its attachment handling. Who hasn’t needed to find an old attached file and forgotten where you saved it? When you have an email open, Xobni’s displays a box that shows you every single file you’ve ever exchanged with that person and lets you easily access them. I have no doubt this will save me on many occasions. But it’s only the beginning of what Xobni can do for your inbox.

Quick connections

The neat thing about this utility is how it logically connects everything in Outlook. Open up an email from someone, and everything you could possibly need to know about them appears in the sidebar:

  • You get all their contact info, including — here’s the best part — phone numbers extracted from their past emails. Xobni will pull their digits from their signature and save them for you, without you ever having to do a thing.
  • You get a list of people related to your sender, like coworkers or others with measurable connections. Xobni analyzes emails they’ve sent, looking at things like shared recipients, to deduce and organize this data.
  • You get a bar graph of what times of day they email you, so you can easily figure out when they’re usually at their computer and most reachable.
  • And you get a chart showing the balance of inbound and outbound messages. Think you’re emailing your boss way more than he’s emailing you? Xobni will let you know at a glance.

Xobni also has far more powerful (and far less time-consuming) searching than Outlook, plus another fun Google-esque feature: analytics. Makes you wonder why Microsoft didn’t think of all that.

Xobni is available for free downloading at the developer’s web site. The program supports Outlook 2003 or 2007 running on XP or Vista.

Watch Out For This Watch

By JR Raphael
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

I often write about cool gadgets we’d all like to own. Well, my friends, today I am turning the tables and focusing on a pricey little gadget you should be embarrassed to own. This is the $300,000 watch…that doesn’t tell time.

Have you heard of this thing? It’s the hottest new “luxury” item to hit the jewelry market in years, and quite possibly the stupidest. Swiss watchmaker Romain Jerome came up with the concept, called the Day&Night, and already has it selling like hotcakes. In fact, the watch sold out completely without two days of its launch and is now on backorder.

“With no display for the hours, minutes or seconds, the Day&Night offers a new way of measuring time, splitting the universe of time into two fundamentally opposing sections: day versus night,” Jerome explains on his web site.

The watch has two tourbillons — fancy lil’ wheels that can balance the effects of gravity to keep your watch accurate. Very important, clearly, since this watch doesn’t actually tell you the time. It instead, as the name suggests, only shows you whether it’s day or night. But it evidently does so within a millisecond of accuracy.

Now, the designer’s whole selling point is that it’s the “ultimate luxury” to not have to worry about time. And I get that. When I’m not on a specific schedule, I’ll leave my watch at home. It makes me feel as unconfined as a freshly escaped farm sheep roaming the countryside. The difference, of course, is that I’m not paying $300,000 for that readily available luxury.

Jerome calls the Day&Night a “new interpretation of time.” I call it a “new waste of time” — and money. Sorry, high society, but this one is taking the idea of silly spending just a bit too far.

World’s First Digital Camera

Ahhhhh the 70’s… the decade where the first Star Wars movie was released, where afro haircuts where all the rage, and where the first digital camera came into existence. Yep, you read that right! In 1975, Kodak released the world’s first digital camera prototype, a clunky-looking device that used casette tapes as the medium to store pictures. Each photo took 23 seconds to snap, producing a 100-line black and white image that could only be displayed on a television set. No wonder why it never became popular.