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Super Spam Me

Someone somewhere must be replying to spam e-mail, otherwise the spammers wouldn’t continue with their irksome trade. Internet security experts McAfee are aiming to recuit a team of volunteers to respond to every spam message they receive over a 30-day period. McAfee are calling this initiative 'Super Spam Me' in honour of Morgan Spurlock’s fast-food diet-umentary.

Greg Day, a security analyst at McAfee, said: "Many people are bothered by spam because of the impact it has on the amount of time they spend reading their e-mail. The experiment will contribute to a study of the potential dangers of responding to those 'great offers' which pop up in your inbox from completely unknown sources, usually scammers and cyber crooks. The project aims to highlight the scams and risks web users across the world are exposed to everyday and to understand the potential impact of internet junk mail."

Whether the effect of replying to countless offers for bootleg Viagra will prove quite as deleterious to the volunteers’ online health as the original experiment was to Mr Spurlock’s is uncertain. The spam-munching guinea pigs will receive £300 from McAfee, though, which they are free to spend on anything they like. Some nice fake Viagra perhaps?

A tip for HD-DVD and Blu-Ray customers: don't buy until 2008

For those of you who've already purchased a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD player, you may want to look away now. Why's that? Well, the price of these next-generation video players is about to fall dramatically, so far in fact that you'll soon be able to pick up a perfectly fine model for under £100.

Facebook provokes MP's existential crisis

It must be hard being Facebook. When you’re not being accused of endangering the privacy of people who’ve posted their life stories on the web, or of providing a forum for paedophiles, you’re deleting the profiles of Lib Dem MPs, claiming that they don’t exist. It must be hard being a Liberal Democrat too.

Steve Webb, 42, who has been an MP for ten years, used his Facebook profile keep in touch with constituents, but some people, it seems, began to doubt his credentials. When Facebook received complaints, they took prompt action and removed the profile.

"I was essentially accused of impersonating a Member of Parliament," Mr Webb told Reuters.

He accepted that Facebook’s doubts may have arisen because he had more than 2,500 friends – a suspiciously large number for an MP.

Why the Wii could fall in 2008

Nintendo's Wii may have won round one, but its longer term fortunes are very much in doubt, according to new forecasts from media analysts at UK-based Screen Digest.

This Christmas season marks the first time the three game consoles -- Sony's Playstation 3, Microsoft's Xbox 360 and the Wii -- have vied for consumer's wallets in all major territories. And, despite costly supply shortages, Wii is a cinch to come out the winner. But in 2008, the market will not be so kind, says Screen Digest.

Looks like another breakthrough e-tailing season, unless you're German

Britain and France appear well on their way to another record year for online holiday shopping. But don't expect much of a gift from your German friends. Traffic to German e-tailing websites has been in decline for the past month, according to the latest stats from web measurement firm ComScore.

Do you mind if search engines archive your search queries?

Ask.com, one of the second-tier search engines, believes enough of you do. That's why it just launched AskEraser, a new feature that promises to delete all search queries from its servers within hours, compared to the industry practice of 18 months. It may not be ideal for advertisers looking to pitch you offers based on where you've clicked, but for privacy-minded netizens it's a step forward. As the company explains: "We believe that you as a user should have the power to control the usage of your search history".

Microsoft's 'kiss and make up' with OLPC

Well, it's a long way from Bill Gates saying poor countries should 'go and get a decent computer' instead.

Microsoft hasn't always had the smoothest relations with the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, which aims to bring cheap computers to the developing world.

Mostly that's been because OLPC, the brainchild of Nicholas Negroponte, opted to run the device on 'open source' software. But it probably also had a bit to do with the fact that the machine, the 'XO', uses flash memory rather than a hard drive for storage - meaning it's not really roomy enough for Windows. (Think of trying to stick a gorilla in a shoebox.)

Now the two sides seem to be reaching something of a rapprochment, with Microsoft announcing yesterday it would adapt a version of XP to run on the machine, possibly as early as the middle of next year.

In a post on his blog, James Utzschneider, a manager in Microsoft's Unlimited Potential group, which is doing the 'port' of Windows, said that field trials of the new software would begin in January, and that he was "hopeful" that within six months, 'Windows for XO' would be ready to ship.

But, he cautioned, it shouldn't be assumed that the new software was "a done deal". "We do not want to set expectations we subsequently cannot meet."

It's an interesting little post - as much for the coded messages about Microsoft thinks of OLPC as for the technical explanations, which effectively amount to: XO is really small, it's quite tricky to squash Windows inside it, this is going to take a while.

It's a Small World, if you're rich enough

Social networks like Facebook and MySpace can be addictively entertaining places to find old friends, and stalk old enemies. One of the downsides, though, is the hazard of receiving a ‘friend request’ from someone you’ve never met or being on the receiving end of a shameless sales pitch from a distant acquaintance.

Imagine how magnified those irritations might be for social networkers who are wealthy or well known. For the same reason that successful people tend to frequent the same clubs in the real world, they are turning increasingly to niche networks with exacting membership requirements that filter out the kind of person who has failed to make the Sunday Times Rich List.

The largest and best-known of these communities is A Small World. It was founded in 2004, but with in the region of of 300,000 members it’s still comparatively small: One FaceBook group alone, "Enough with the Poking, Lets Just Have Sex", passed that figure this autumn. Size isn’t the issue though. For founder Erik Wachtmeister it’s all about the quality of experience:

“This community is characterized by inter-connected, well travelled, interesting, educated, and accomplished people who tend to seek each other out for company and as a resource for trusted information… It is in essence a Social Google, a high-end Zagat/Craigs List/Monster.com, and a real time Wikipedia rolled into one”

Because the community is invitation-only, it’s impossible for an outsider to take a look and see exactly what’s on offer. The seemingly limited growth potential didn’t put off savvy film producers Bob and Harvey Weinstein who have invested in the company. For the ultra-luxury brands that can afford to advertise on A Small World, it’s a rare opportunity to access a high concentration of web users with astronomically high disposable income. 

Membership is private, so the precise value of the Small World demographic is hard to assess. Like the VIP area of a hipper-than average nightclub there’s thought to be a mixture of A-list names, old money and rather decorative fashion models behind the velvet rope.

Certainly if you’re looking to sell your old Bugatti Veyron, or are looking for a private ski lodge in high season, you’re better off there than on MySpace. Strict rules are enforced though to ensure that the elite are not pestered with unrequited sales pitches.

It’s certainly an interesting concept. If you’re of a certain social class and find you have a couple of hours free to fool around on the internet, you really should ask your valet to log on to A Small World and see what’s there.

Quite the most splendid thing on the internet today

WordPerhect is an ingenious online word-processing tool that emulates the kind of thing you might write on in the real world - an old phone bill, a bit of cardboard, an expired tube pass.

Of no obvious utility, it serves only to demonstrate the quirky genius of the programmers: and isn't that what the internet is all about?

Is spam e-mail finally on the decline?

It is indeed, says Google's spam enforcer Brad Taylor. In an interview with Wired, the staff software engineer for Google's wildly popular Gmail service says the volume of bogus e-mail messages is beginning to plateau, and could be declining for the first time in anyone's memory.

Taylor didn't share any raw numbers with Wired. He said merely that spam as a percentage of legitimate e-mail is down. Already, there are sceptics, including this Gmail user who has not seen any tail-off whatsoever in the number of get-rich-quick-work-from-home-improve-your-potency-full-head-of-hair-Nigerian-lottery-winning-ticket missives.