Ebay In A World Of Hurt

Ebay (the real Ebay, not a fake one) has now been ordered to pay 38.6 million euros to LVMH, which is the parent company of Louis Vuitton. The damages have been awarded because of Ebay’s inefficiency in preventing fake Vuitton goods from being sold on their auction website. While it isn’t the first action of this type taken against Ebay, it’s highly likely that it will cause yet more court cases of a similar nature.

During the same hearing, Ebay were also forced to pay Christian Dior, Kenzo, Givenchy and Guerlain perfume companies 3.25 million euros for similar offences – although in those cases it was the unauthorised sale of products. Just last month, Hermes won 20,000 euros over similar allegations and it’s possible that now the flood gates have opened there will be no stopping the action from commencing.

LVMH had actually asked for 50 million euros, amid claims that in 2006 more than 90% of the Vuitton products for sale on Ebay were in actual fact replicas.

Ebay is expected to appeal the case, citing that it has numerous anti fake and anti replica measures in place. It’s a bit of a worrying situation, even for a site the size of Ebay, because there are sure to be other companies ready to follow suit and many will have similarly detailed portfolios to that of LVMH.

May Testing Shows O2 Offers Best Broadband But UK Speeds Are Dismal

moneysupermarket.com carried out broadband line tests throughout the month of May in the hope of turning up the best, and indeed worst, Broadband providers in the UK. While it highlighted that O2 offered the best 8MB connection with actual speeds reaching 5.39MBps, the average speed is a rather pathetic 2.97MBps.

O2 was way out in front in the tests, a considerable distance ahead of Sky in second place with speeds of 3.59MBps and TalkTalk in third with 2.99MBps. Even more interesting is the fact that those surfers paying the extra to get improved Broadband speeds are those that are getting the lease value for money – 16MBps being the worst performing speed band. The average speed of a 16Mbps
connection is a pathetic 7.02MBps.

Happily, moneysupermarket is taking the opportunity to yet again champion the cause of consumers. They have already been quite vocal in their belief that broadband providers should advertise an actual speed rather than whats is essentially a meaningless maximum speed because very few, if any, consumers even actually achieve the maximum advertised speed.

We Love Online Spending

Even though we’re all apparently concerned over the cost of fuel and indeed food, we’re spending even more money online as figures continue to increase. On average, we spend £73 each every month online. Perhaps it’s more indicative of the fact that we can typically get products cheaper by shopping around online than by using the usual high street stores.

Electrical goods sales did slip significantly by around 10% month on month, and May’s figures are 30% higher than they were 12 months ago according to IMRG, the research analysts. More and more people are getting online and those that do shop online have become increasingly willing to buy large price items rather than just smaller items or groceries.

The younger generation is not only grocery shopping at major online sites, but rely on the Internet for all of their purchases. To most of us it’s hardly likely to be that surprising, although the £73 per month figure does seem high when you consider that not every consumer in the country uses the Internet for their purchases. The figure is believed to be inflated by the purchase of high cost items including holidays and cars but nevertheless that’s a lot of online spending.

Mozilla Breaks World Download Record But Is Nearly A Victim Of Its Own Success

Mozilla was attempting to break the world record for the largest number of software downloads performed in a 24 hour period when it released the latest version of its free browser, Firefox 3. Unconfirmed figures have shown that the record has been broken, with a staggering 8.3 million downloads in that period. However, it has fallen victim to its own success.

Firefox has long been a popular alternative to the Internet Explorer range of browsers partially because of the increased security that it offers. Fewer hackers and malware authors targeted Firefox because it wasn’t as omnipresent as Microsoft’s software. Because of the success and possibly the planned record attempt, though, security firms have found a potential flaw that hackers can use to gain access to the resident PC.

Another problem occurred almost as soon as the record attempt began, with servers going down under the pressure of so many attempted downloads. The record attempt subsequently began when the problem was fixed.

Download and server logs have now been forwarded to Oregon State University to verify the exact number of downloads and remove duplicate and failed attempts from the list. The process of verification is expected to take several days, perhaps as long as a week, but the record claim will be either confirmed or rebuked at that time.

Win A Zero Gravity Flight

Short of being a co-founder of the most successful search engine in the world and booking a seat on the first commercial flight into space, zero gravity flights are the next best thing so that you can actually experience zero gravity. T3 and Sure for Men have partnered to offer an incredible prize worth over £10k.

Winners get to stay in Vegas for 5 nights accompanied by a pot of £2,000 spending money (granted, that’s about twenty minutes unless you get lucky) and an incredible zero gravity flight. An editor’s choice award is also up for grabs consisting of some fairly awesome home entertainment equipment.

Come up with a design for some type of future technology and upload it to the T3 Sure for Men competition page to be in with a chance of winning. Do ignore the rather tenuous link between the competition and Sure’s products, but remember that the design can be for any item and any technology of any type.

Having A Mozilla Party?

Mozilla is making a fairly big deal out of this so we thought it only polite to join in. In fact, in all honesty, while the release of Mozilla Firefox 3 on June 17 (you can actually get it now if you really want but that would mean missing out on the party and the world record attempt) is excellent news, the suggestion of having Mozilla download parties and attempting to set the world record for the most downloaded software in a 24 hour period smacks a little of going completely overboard.

Perhaps even more worrying, though, is the fact that there are already 444 confirmed Firefox parties with an unashamed (you should be ashamed – very, very ashamed) 2,648 people expressing their intention to attend. By attending a download party you could help set a world record too – still not selling the prospect to you are we?

The third version of the proposed release build can be downloaded here, and as this included only one very slight change it is highly like that this will be the final version that is released in 5 days. You could always download this version and then download the official release version on the big day if you really want to be a part of the action.

Google Moving In With NASA

Google has never been particularly shy in its monumental achievements and certainly isn’t afraid of splashing the cash to ensure that its workers have the most productive environment. Reports last year showed the offices that included bean bag meeting areas, fireman’s poles, and many more initiatives. However, they’ve taken it a step further this time.

Paying just less than $4m lease per year initially, Google has announced that it is leasing 1.2m sq ft of land from Nasa. The land will be used to build research and development labs as well as to house some of the thousands of new employees expected when they further expand the business.

Google currently employs approximately 20,000 people having significantly boosted their staff in recent years. The new site will also include a huge office block and it is likely that it will also incorporate housing, leisure, and possibly retail facilities for employees.

From NASA’s point of view it is seen as a positive move, not only because of the obvious injection of cash but because it will further improve their own credibility within the scientific and technology arena.

While the lease is for an initial period of 40 years, building is not expected to start for five years and will not be complete until some time after 2022. Fortunately, there should be the opportunity to extend the lease by 50 years once the initial period lapses.

You’re A Selfish Bunch Of Surfers

According to a report by the BBC on research by Jakob Nielsen, the leading light in research into online habits, surfers have become selfish, impatient, and increasingly sceptical of advertising and promotions. We have essentially streamlined our surfing and information gathering processes and have learned to ignore the ploys that websites use to persuade us to linger longer on a website.

Approximately 75% of us achieve what we set out to do when we first open our browser, a figure which has increased from 60% in 1999. While this is partially down to better website and software design, it is largely because we are more understanding of the way the Internet in general, and websites work. As such we can quickly find the site we want, complete the desired action, and leave again.

Nielsen also stated that we still regularly fail to find what we are looking for using search engines, even using Google. He hypothesises that any site wanting to be more successful than Google simply has to make the search process a more successful one.

Search engines have become more sophisticated, more intelligent if you like, in the way that they collect and index data but it can still take several searches to find the actual information needed. As we continue to evolve into Internet gurus this is also likely to improve, though, because we will learn how to manipulate the search engine indexes to our own ends when conducting any search.

New Napster Offers 6 Million DRM Free Downloads

While there are obvious drawbacks to the iTunes service (DRM compatibility immediately springs to mind) the principle behind the music download service is a great one. That’s why it by far the most popular of all online download services in the US, but the latest incarnation of Napster is ringing in some major changes that are likely to shift some of the balance of power.

The new pay per song service runs at 79 per song, which many believe is still a little too high although realises reasonable savings against new releases. However, perhaps the biggest benefit of the new Napster is that it will not only include over 6 million tracks, but will also be DRM (Digital Rights Management) free.

Tracks can be downloaded to your PC, transferred to another PC or audio device (including the iPod) or burned to CD or other storage device. While the new service is a step away from the monthly subscription plan, those customers that have downloaded music using that plan, will still be supported and have access to their collection of music.

The move is likely to help Napster challenge for the throne of music download service kings, although Apple is bound to have something to say about that.

The Facebook Refurb - Good Move Or Bad?

In terms of design and simplicity, Facebook has become a victim of its own overwhelming, short term success. Because of the increased number of users, applications, and other features, what was once considered an intuitive and clean interface has become cluttered and more difficult to use. In light of this, and backed by user’s ideas, Facebook will go through the cutting board with a design overhaul.

Rather than have a single page containing feeds, friends, applications, quizzes, and more it is believed that Facebook will now adopt a tabbed browsing system. Each category will then have its own tab so that users can once again enjoy intuitive management of their Facebook profile.

Facebook is consulting 85,000 of its 70 million active users as a sort of elite focus group. Primary consensus is that while some believe the site change is a good idea, others believe that it will detract from the site’s popularity. In reality, though, something does have to be done.

With more than 6 million user groups, 25,000 existing applications, nearly 150 new applications every day, and the largest photo sharing function on the Internet make Facebook the social media website that offers more than others. As such, profile pages do become very cluttered in a small space of time.

The question is, what do you think of the proposed changes? Feng Shui or the needless creation of work where none is required?

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