Bloggers beware when you criticize the rich and powerful

Do eBay Ads Go Overboard? (PC World)

Last year, eBay signed deals to run ads from the Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. networks in order to better capitalize on the massive traffic it draws to its Web sites, primarily its core marketplace. The strategy seems to be working: In 2007's second quarter, ended June 30, eBay's advertising revenue almost doubled compared with the same period in 2006. The very influential Professional eBay Sellers Alliance (PESA), a group of large eBay sellers, has been watching from the sidelines with increasing concern and skepticism. "Having those ads on the Web site we view as very negative. Encouraging people to leave eBay can never be good for the seller who is paying to be on the marketplace," said Jonathan Garriss, PESA's executive director. While eBay has had advertising on its Web site for years, sellers generally hadn't perceived it as a major threat, for a variety of reasons. For instance, the advertising program that the Yahoo deal replaced in May of last year was run in-house by eBay and was designed to let eBay sellers promote their products in the marketplace. In other words, the ads didn't link outside of the eBay Web sites. Also, whenever eBay has allowed external ads in its sites, as it did in the late 1990s and early 2000's via a deal with AOL LLC, the ads weren't as precisely targeted as is possible with the current ad-matching technology from Google and Yahoo. Now, with Google and Yahoo delivering ads that are contextually relevant to the eBay pages on which they run, eBay sellers feel that the barbarians aren't just at the gates, but inside the marketplace's walls, luring buyers away. The deal with Yahoo made it the exclusive provider of pay-per-click (PPC) text ads and banner ads for eBay sites in the U.S., while the Google deal, signed a few months later in August 2006, is for PPC text ads in eBay sites internationally. In the second quarter of 2007, eBay reported $76 million in advertising and "other non-transaction revenue," an increase of 96 percent from the same period in 2006. An eBay spokesman acknowledged that most of that revenue came from advertising. Making some rough calculations, Garriss believes that eBay visitors clicked about 250 million times on the Yahoo and Google ads during the second quarter. "The biggest issue is seeing ads that compete with products already on eBay," Garriss said. Hani Durzy, an eBay spokesman, acknowledges that the company has fielded concerns from sellers about this issue, but he argues that the worry is unwarranted. "Our first priority is always to encourage buyers to transact on the site and click on our sellers' listings. If our sellers aren't successful, they're not paying eBay fees, and then we're not successful," Durzy said. In an ideal world, every visitor to eBay would end up buying something in the marketplace, but research has shown visitors don't always come to buy. Often they do research or browse, he said. Thus, eBay can potentially monetize those visits and improve those users' experience by showing them relevant, targeted ads, Durzy said. "Our strategy is to serve ads differently based on what we think you're most likely to do, in order to ultimately give you as a buyer the best experience," he said. An increase in buyer satisfaction ultimately benefits sellers. "Serving relevant, compelling ads in certain situations makes for a better buying experience," Durzy said. Still, eBay is considering reactivating the in-house ad program for eBay sellers that it cancelled last year, because it recognizes that it had some value. "We're examining parts of that [program] that we can reconstitute within the context of our deal with Yahoo," he said. What's not negotiable is the existence of external ads on eBay. "We continually test what's the best mix and how to improve our targeting so that we serve the right ads to the right people and avoid that thing which sellers legitimately fear," Durzy said. Recently, Steve Hartman, eBay's director of on-site advertising strategy, addressed these issues in a blog posting. "We want buyers to transact on eBay," he wrote. "But we also want to offer alternatives when we believe it will improve the buying experience." EBay won't claim that the ads have never driven a potential buyer away from the marketplace, but those situations would be exceptions, not the rule, Durzy said. "Our initial testing period shows no significant impact to our core transaction business, which means no significant impact to our sellers' revenue, because the two are inextricably linked," Durzy said. "We feel very confident that our strategy is working." Garriss, also CEO of Gotham City Online, an apparel store on eBay that also has its own site, isn't convinced. "We think it hurts the sellers, while eBay benefits from the ad money," he said. "This is one of our fastest-growing concerns."

As Sea Ice Melts, Walruses Make For Land

FTC Cracks Down on Health Sites' Claims (PC World)

Six of the sellers have signed consent orders barring them from making unsubstantiated claims in the future, the FTC announced Friday. The seventh Web site did not respond to repeated efforts to contact it by the FTC staff, and its case will be heard by an administrative law judge, the agency said. "Millions of women seek safe, effective alternatives to hormone replacement therapy," said Lydia Parnes, director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection. "These companies violated their trust by making claims they just couldn't prove." The sellers claimed that their natural progesterone creams were effective in preventing, treating, or curing osteoporosis; were effective in preventing or reducing the risk of estrogen-induced uterine cancer; and did not increase the user's risk of developing breast cancer, or were effective in preventing or reducing the user's risk of developing breast cancer. The FTC complaints, filed earlier this year, alleged that the sellers did not have substantiation for these claims and, in some cases, misrepresented that clinical testing proved the products were effective. The products allegedly sold without proper health-claim substantiation included: ProBalance transdermal cream; Elation Therapy Natural Progesterone Cream; Preserve Progesterone Cream; Restored Balance progesterone cream; Serenity for Women Natural Progesterone Cream; Nature's Precise Cream; Eternal Woman Progesterone Cream. The consent orders settle the FTC's charges against the following people and businesses: — Lawrence A. Jordan and Stephanie L. Jordan, doing business as Springboard and Pro Health Labs of Spring Valley, California; — Elation Therapy Inc. and Robert Rutledge, an officer of the company based in Marietta, Georgia; — Merilou Barnekow, doing business as Women's Menopause Health Center of Surfside Beach, Texas; — The Green Willow Tree LLC of Asheville, North Carolina, and manager Robert Burns; — Health Science International Inc., of Port Orange, Florida, and David Martin, an officer there; — Shelly Black, doing business as Progesterone Advocates Network of Trabuco Canyon, California. Under the terms of the orders, sellers are required to have reliable scientific evidence substantiating claims about the health benefits, performance, safety and side effects of any dietary supplement drug, or health-related service. In addition, the orders prevent the sellers from misrepresenting the existence, validity or interpretations of any research. Finally, the orders contain 20-year record-keeping provisions designed to ensure the sellers comply with their terms. The charges against Herbs Nutrition Corp. of Torrance, California, and Syed M. Jafry, an officer there, have not been settled, and the case will be tried by an FTC administrative law judge. The FTC is not aware of any competent and reliable scientific evidence to support claims that natural progesterone products are safe, or that they are effective in preventing osteoporosis, increasing bone density or preventing, treating, or curing cancer, heart disease or other diseases, the agency said. When evaluating health-related claims for any product, consumers should talk to their primary-care doctor or pharmacist, the FTC recommended. The FTC staff identified the respondents through an Internet search of Web sites advertising products that claimed they were natural alternatives to hormone replacement therapy. The FTC sent warning letters to 34 Web site operators informing them that they must have reliable scientific evidence to support any health-related claims made for their products. The FTC advised the marketers to revise or delete any false, misleading or unsubstantiated claims. Twenty-seven of the 34 Web sites modified the health claims about hormone replacement therapy after the FTC letters.

Danger Lurks on Government Web Sites (PC World)

On Thursday, compromised pages hosted by the Brookhaven National Laboratory and the Superior Court of Madera County, California, were still hosting inappropriate content. Brookhaven had links that redirected visitors to pornographic Web servers, and the Madera County court site featured ads for porn and Viagra. Brookhaven has begun an investigation into the incident, said Tom Schlagel, a manager with the lab's information technology division. "From what I've been told, there isn't any evidence that there's any pornography on the server," he said. "It's all just redirections." Brookhaven is a U.S. Department of Energy lab that specializes in nuclear and high-energy research. The security of U.S. government Web sites has been front-page news in California this week after the U.S. General Services Administration, which administers top-level domain, temporarily removed California's state servers from the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS) infrastructure, apparently because of a security problem on the Web site of a small state agency, the Transportation Authority of Marin. Observers said that this was an unusually extreme move and one that eventually would have knocked the entire state off the Internet. The move was caught before it caused widespread service outages within the state government, but it drew attention to an underlying issue: compromised governmental Web sites. The GSA on Thursday said it has revised its policies to avoid another possible statewide shutdown, but it defended its right to sites from the Internet. "The potential exposure of pornographic material to the citizens– and tens of thousands of children– in California was a primary motivator for GSA to request immediate corrective action," a GSA spokeswoman said in an e-mailed statement. "Also, in these days of heightened security concerns from hackers, it is important to quickly stop potentially harmful damage to federal, state and local Web sites from those who have no love for our country." Alex Eckelberry, the president of Sunbelt Software Inc. who first reported the problem that led to the California shutdown, said that the government could do better. "Once you're on the Web, especially if you're government, you really have to be responsible for your content," he said. "We have to have some sort of recognition that there is constant danger and that people need to stay on top of their sites." However, educational sites, hosted within in top-level domain, have far more problems than sites, Eckelberry said. Security professionals like Eckelberry complain that poor response from Web site administrators means that even when problems are discovered by outside researchers, it's often hard to report them. For example, the Madera Superior Court site has a "Click Here To E-mail Our Webmaster" link on the bottom of its front page, but when Trend Micro Inc.Network Architect Paul Ferguson used it to inform the court that its site had been hacked, his e-mail bounced back as undeliverable. Madera Superior Court representatives did not return a call seeking comment. "It is almost impossible for someone like, say, a security researcher to find the right person to report problems to," Ferguson said via e-mail. People outside of government cannot do "Whois" queries on the.gov domain, which would yield contact information for site administrators, he added. "In many cases, either the contact information is incorrect, nonexistent, or the 'lights are on and nobody is home'." "Everyone has really got to do a better job on securing the Internet," Ferguson added. "You can't just put a Web server out there and forget about it any more."

Trigger-happy video game players battle for cyber supremacy (AFP)

This is only the second time the WCG Grand Final has been held in the United States. As gamers walk into the Qwest Field Exhibition Center in this northwestern US city, they are greeted by a sensory overload of music blaring, giant digital displays and LED screens pulsing with video games played all around the room. A giant world globe made from a balloon hangs from the ceiling in the entryway. It's big enough to hold a Mini Cooper sports car. But don't be fooled into thinking this young crowd and wall-to-wall gaming is just about fun and play. There is big money at stake. Gamers of this e-Sport tournament are competing for gold medals, national glory and a share of 500,000 dollars in cash and prizes — and the title of the "world's best" in 12 different gaming titles. Nicholas Timmerman, 19, is representing Germany and will be playing the racing game "Need for Speed" with his team. It's his fourth year in the tournament. He's not too worried about the competition. "They suck," he says. It took Ken Hartson and his team from the Netherlands 18 hours to make the trek to Seattle, in the Pacific coast state of Washington. His gaming tag name is "Experience." "Gaming isn't as big in my country," Experience says. "At home, in my country, they think we are stupid or something" for playing video games. That's not the case in other countries. In South Korea, players are treated like rock stars, stadiums are named after videogames and many professional South Korean players make six-figure salaries. Geoff Robinson is the only member of the US team from Washington state. The Oregon State University student says he has been playing the space battle game "StarCraft" for more than 10 years and looks forward to his family coming to the WCG to "see what I've been doing in their basement for the past 10 years." In an Olympics-inspired opening ceremony, players from each of the 74 countries took to the stage waving the flag of their homeland. While there is no Olympic Village at this event, there is a Players Lounge filled with bean-bag chairs for players to rest on between matches and a Players Restaurant. Gamers proudly wear their country colors and in some cases even drape their country flag over their shoulders. While playing in the game pit, teams scream, bang on their keyboards and yell into their headsets — all in attempt to advance to the next round of games like "Command & Conquer-3," "Need for Speed," "Gears of War" and "Dead or Alive-4." On the main stage players go head-to-head in a spaceship-like capsule to play their game without distraction. The video game is projected on the stadium-sized screen, and close-up shots of the players can also be seen as an announcer gives a play-by-play of the action. There are more than 50 game development companies in the Puget Sound area where Seattle is located. This city is also home to major IT companies such as Microsoft and RealNetworks. The tournament opened Thursday evening and runs through Sunday. The next WCG championship will be held in Cologne, Germany.

France Declares War on Spam (PC World)

The French government funded the development of an open-source toolbar for Microsoft Corp.'s Outlook and Mozilla Corp.'s Thunderbird e-mail programs that people can use to report suspected spam, said John Graham-Cumming, an Englishman who built the software for the project, called Signal Spam. "From the French perspective, spam is like any other criminal activity that is affecting the French people," Graham-Cumming said. Most users today simply delete spam email from their inboxes, in part because they don't have a simple tool for reporting spam to their ISP. The SignalSpam project aims to provide them with such a tool. When users receive spam messages, the toolbar provides an easy way for them to forward the message to a central database. The messages are then sent to the ISP whose network they originated from, and the ISP decides whether to shut down the account of the sender, Graham-Cumming said. France is ranked as the 10th worst country for generating spam, according to The Spamhaus Project Ltd., which publishes a list that can be used in e-mail servers to block known spamming IP (Internet protocol) addresses. The U.S. is the worst, followed by China, Russia and the U.K. If a spam message originates outside of France, SignalSpam takes no action. If a message comes from a legitimate marketer, the system can send an automated response to the person who reported it telling them how to unsubscribe to the mailing list, Graham-Cumming said. Marketers are encouraged to register with Signal Spam. The system's success will depend on people's willingness to install the tool bar. Since the project launched in May, about 3.5 million spam e-mails have been collected in the database, which can be used to generate statistics on spam trends. By the end of the year, Signal Spam plans to release a toolbar for Outlook Express, another Microsoft e-mail client, Graham-Cumming said. Signal Spam is also in talks with Web-based e-mail providers, such as Microsoft and Google Inc., on developing a reporting mechanism. Some ISPs have been accused of profiting by allowing spammers to use their network, while other ISPs don't take action against spammers due to the expense of shutting them down. However, Signal Spam has received broad support from French ISPs, according to Graham-Cumming. In the next couple months he expects the database to start to reveal spam trends that could shed greater light on how to stop the problem. Eventually, Signal Spam may also turn its attention to closing phishing sites more quickly. Spam e-mails often try to entice people to a fraudulent Web site in order to trick them into divulging their personal information.

Hot Tunes: Man Says Nano iPod Caught Fire in His Pocket (PC World)

The nearly two year-old iPod caught fire in the pocket of Danny Williams at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, where he is employed, according to Williams' mother, Elaine. The flames lasted 15 seconds and fire reached up to his chest, she said in a telephone interview. Apple Inc. representatives were not immediately available for comment, but the company has since sent a packet to Danny to return the iPod Nano, she said. Glossy paper in his pocket may have shielded him from getting burned by the fire, Danny Williams said in local news reports. "If TSA had come by and seen me smoking, they could have honestly thought I was a terrorist," Williams is quoted as saying. The iPod contains a lithium-ion battery, which has a history of catching fire in laptops. Since December 2005 these batteries have been blamed for meltdowns and fires in several computers. Last year several manufacturers, including Apple, Dell Inc., and Lenovo Group Ltd. were forced to recall millions of the batteries.