'Net Buzz

By Paul McNamara

Taking aim at popcorn-popping viral marketers

11/25/08

The National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus said in a press release: "Advertising claims made in the context of viral videos produced to build interest in a product are subject to the same standards of truth and accuracy as advertisements published in traditional media."

You've been 'synergy-related headcount restructured'

11/13/08

Even the word layoff is a euphemism, when you think about it. Yes, it can serve to draw a distinction between budget-based and performance-based termination, but not many laid-off workers get recalled to their old jobs these days; "laid off" pretty much means you're fired.

'Net teaches print another lesson

11/10/08

How thoroughly has the Internet come to torment the dying industry that is print newspaper publishing?

I need a 'wallet phone' why?

10/31/08

This looks to me like still-not-here technology aiming to eliminate a minor inconvenience that existing technology has already all but eliminated.

Predictive markets and other online gambling

10/23/08

My knowing little about the ins and outs of online "predictive markets" hasn't kept me from wondering over the years why U.S. politicians don't attack this kind of Internet gambling with the same vigor they apply to online poker.

An unsettling week for everyone but Joe

10/20/08

Bill Gates told a symposium at the Harvard Business School that he expects today's unemployment rate of 6.1% to top 9% before the dust settles. But I read a story on Network World's own Web site about Gartner assuring one and all that no matter how bad things get they won't be as bad as the dot-com bubble burst.

Verizon exposes the wrong 1,200 e-mail addresses

10/09/08

A Net Buzz reader on Verizon: "In a period of three hours I received 14 e-mails promoting Verizon's 'Secure the Information. Secure the Infrastructure' webinar series, and three e-mails promoting their '2008 Data Breach Investigations Report Road Show.' Considering their content [about data-breach seminars], I thought it very humorous that the TO: field of the e-mails contained over 1,200 e-mail addresses: 17 e-mails times 1,200 addresses equals more than 20,000 chances for leaks."

Airport 'X-ray art' courts TSA trouble

10/02/08

Techno-artist/open-source developer Evan Roth has a message for the Transportation Safety Administration -- several messages, actually -- about what he considers excessive airport security "theater." He also has chosen an intentionally provocative method of delivering those messages: the TSA's own X-ray screening machines.

Google has gone and redefined 'beta'

09/29/08

The question of why so many Google products are classified "beta" -- and classified thusly for so long -- has knocked around the tech press for some time. However, no one really seemed to know the answer, at least no one outside of Google.

Verizon robo-caller torments my household

09/18/08

Nine robo-calls in 24 hours, all from Verizon: Nothing could make them stop; not my wife's increasingly urgent pleas (I was away); not the hapless customer service reps who promised relief; not the "in-charge supervisor" who wasn't in charge; and, not even the ever-so-helpful individual who said the barrage was "a national problem" before adding, "We're suggesting that people just unplug their phones."

Rifling through my DEMO notebook

09/15/08

Seen and heard last week at Network World's DEMOfall 08 in San Diego: When RealNetworks took the wraps off new DVD-to-PC copying software, one major selling point was that users now can sleep soundly knowing for the first time that their homemade copies of commercial movies are perfectly legal.

Was MythBuster's RFID tale only a myth?

09/04/08

It all started when Adam Savage of Mythbusters fame told a convention audience that legal bullies from the credit card industry had cowed Discovery Channel into scotching an episode of the show that was to have taken on RFID.

Fooling Google News is as easy as s-p-o-o-f

08/14/08

Google News cannot tell the difference between real news stories and spoofs, especially when both the real news and the spoof are ostensibly about the same topic. Google News cannot tell the difference because it employs no human editors to pick stories for its front page and because the software it relies upon instead has no sense of humor.

Circuit City, Mad magazine and Streisand

08/07/08

About 10 days ago, someone at Circuit City spots a Mad magazine parody of his beleaguered company and dashes off an e-mail demanding that all copies of the periodical be purged from the electronics chain's shelves. I already know that you're thinking two things: Mad magazine still publishes? And it's sold at Circuit City?

About that Verizon/pit-bull blog post

07/31/08

I need to apologize to Buzzblog readers for writing recently that Verizon deserved praise for standing up to animal rights activists who found offensive the company's new commercial for its LG Dare cell phone. That spot featured a pair of chained, snarling junkyard dogs, pit bulls to be exact.

Aiming to make data-breach research easier

07/23/08

The monstrous data breaches involving millions of records make all the headlines — TJX, AOL, the Veterans Administration. However, it's those whoppers combined with the rat-a-tat-tat of seemingly daily divulgences involving lesser-known entities and fewer victims that add up to a costly and so-far-uncontrolled societal headache.

Doing the Laptop Drive of Shame

07/17/08

If you bring your work computer home with any regularity -- or especially any irregularity -- chances are good that you’ve done the Laptop Drive of Shame

Bank of America to support Firefox, finally

07/10/08

Bank of America, the nation's second-largest bank, will support Firefox, the world's second-most-popular Web browser, in the very near future.

'I have a lost laptop horror story for you'

07/01/08

The devil of identity theft is in the details: Russ Jones tells a tale of woe that isn't particularly dramatic -- or rare -- and yet it's exactly the kind of story that worries me enough to ignore my better judgment and buy identity-theft protection from my insurance provider.

Is Google News scapegoating technology?

06/26/08

Well, the company did cite a technical problem as the reason that the Google News front page was an hour later than other online media outlets in reporting the recent death of NBC journalist Tim Russert.

Data leaks out . . . and lawyers rake it in

06/19/08

What made the Ameritrade data breach particularly memorable was not that 6.3 million customers had their personal info compromised and inboxes stuff with spam as a result. No, what made it memorable was that the company had received multiple warnings from IT professionals over more than a year that its database had been compromised -- yet took no action before the bits hit the fan last fall.

AT&T manager on laptop loss: 'It is pathetic'

06/16/08

It's just another in a long line of stolen laptops . . . unless you work in management at AT&T and you're worried about your Social Security number falling into the hands of identity thieves. Or, you're worried that your co-workers might find out how much -- or how little -- you actually earn.

Tank on Empty: Tales from beyond E

06/09/08

A year after launching Tank on Empty -- a site dedicated to collecting data and anecdotes about how far cars can drive once the warning light goes on -- the project has managed to land Justin Davis in hot water with worrywarts, motor-heads and statisticians . . . not to mention his own mother.

Can tornado warning nets sound too soon?

06/02/08

Unbeknownst to you, an F5 tornado -- the kind that can obliterate a house in a heartbeat -- is barreling directly toward yours: Would you prefer 60 seconds warning or 20 minutes?

The real sticking point with Microsoft/Yahoo!

05/26/08

Microsoft’s desperate struggle to acquire all or part of Yahoo! has gotten hung up not on disagreement over a fair price for the latter’s online advertising operations, sources say, but rather the value of Yahoo!’s iconic exclamation point.

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