Tag: commerce
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Personal Privacy and Commercial Databases
First ChoicePoint and now Westlaw. Both are in hot water because of news because of real and potential security breaches. Both companies keep large databases of private records such as Social Security numbers, bank account numbers and residential addresses. This is not the first time ChoicePoint has made the headlines. In 2003, they were slammed…
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The Mind of a Link Spammer
The Register interviews a link spammer and we see just what we expected; a selfish brat who has no regard or sympathy for the community that allows him to thrive. Link spamming, with its abuse of common resources, turns out the most efficient, just as cutting down virgin Indonesian and Amazonian rain forest is the…
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Nisenholtz counterpoint to Dan Gillmor
The Online Journalism Review inteviews Martin Nisenholtz of NY Times Digital who is a ready counter-argument to Dan Gillmor’s call for a freeing of the archives. Until banner ad revenues outstrip the royalties they curently earn from subscription databases such as Factiva and Lexis-Nexis, there is no way they’re opening up the barn door. “We’re…
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Bring Down the Wall says Gilmor
Dan Gillmor argues for the newspapers to unlock their archives from behind the pay wall and provide them to the reading (and blogging) public as a community resource, collective history, and public record. With advances in contextual advertising such as Google’s Adsense (now available as an API by the way), there must be a way…
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Craigslist vs. Newspaper Classifieds
More clouds on the horizon for papers that don’t change their ways. Steve Outing writes in Editor & Publisher that the traditional newspaper classified is under attack with free, online alternatives such as Craigslist (which I’m using extensively as I settle into my new home in the Bay Area) and eBay. Of course, the merchandise/other…
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Using Web 2.0 for an instant storefront
Richard Soderberg writes on a quick and easy way to tie together a number of web services to build an e-commerce site. Using Blogger, get a blog (and configure it to use your FTP server, if so desired). Using Picasa, create a new Hello account and configure it for the blog. Using PayPal, get a…
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Click Fraud
Write up in CNet on a dark secret known amongst the interactive advertising industry. There are a number of sites out there which artificially generate banner clicks from automated bots and use that to scam Google, Overture, and other ad syndication networks which serve up advertising and pay out commissions for clickthroughs. This pay-for-performance gaming…