eBay Watch: Discounts and Sales Tax Tools

Its Friday… and that means another edition of my eBay Watch column has been published over on ECommerce-Guide.  This week in eBay news, a seller discount, the launch of the My eBay beta, one-click bidding and sales tax tools.

“‘The team working on ‘My eBay’ announced the beta launch of the new version. Changes include an item preview with details and images for items you are watching, the ability to re-bid right from within My eBay and to see a snapshot of critical seller information. There is also a space where you can leave yourself notes and reminders about items, plus the ability to create personalized item recommendations. A small group of testers are now being invited to try out the site, with the official launch of the new format slated for early 2008, according to Blair Hamilton, product manager for My eBay.”

Quick Reference: Social Networking Sites (Webopedia)

The latest tech reference covering the basics of what a social network site (SNS) is, the history of, security and privacy concerns, and links to some different SNS was posted over on Webopedia.com this morning.

“‘Social networking services, also called social networking sites (SNS), are designed to build upon interactions to create communities of people online, and provide the required software to do this. Web-based social networking spaces offer a way for individuals or groups to create a profile of themselves, then share that profile with other members of the social networking space. The specific site also provides a variety of ways for users to communicate with others in the space, such as instant messaging and chat rooms, e-mail or site mail (used only use through the service), notes and blogs, file sharing, forums or other types of discussion groups, videos, and so on.”

Your Facebook Status in your WordPress.com Blog « Collin’s Geek Rants

Your Facebook Status in your WordPress.com Blog « Collin’s Geek Rants

I know, I’m pretty new to WordPress but this is my first ever post linking to another WordPress blog. Collin’s Geek Rants offer perfectly clear details on how to get your Facebook status on your WordPress blog. Works perfect!

Nifty Tech Terms You Can Use #1: munging

Looking for interesting tech terms to spice up your blog or tech articles? Here is one I really like – munging. This is the Webopedia definition for munging;

“‘(MUHN-jing) The act of altering an e-mail address posted on a Web page to make it unreadable to bots and harvesters that crawl the Web for e-mail addresses to include on spam lists. Munging is where the e-mail address is not fully written out but is still understandable to anyone reading the Web page. The characters to the left of the @ symbol in your e-mail address should not be altered when munging.

For example, munging the fakeaddress@webopedia.com e-mail address could result in something like fakeaddress-AT-webopedia-DOT-com. 

The term munge is frequently defined as “mash until no good” and is also called address munging.”

N.S. Dalhousie University “Animal Cruelty” Facebook Groups

Students of Nova Scotia’s Dalhousie University and animal rights activists have reincarnated its Facebook Group “Stop dogs and puppies from being murdered at Dalhousie University“. According to University, for the last last decade it has only used used rodents and insects. The Facebook group, however, says that Dalhousie is using dogs and cats for scientific research. Currently this group has over 23,000 members. In Facebook style response to the overwhelmingly popular group, there is also “Stop People From Spreading Lies About Animal Cruelty At Dalhousie” with 625 members, as well as another group that annoyingly uses all caps in their long group name to show support for Dalhousie University. It has 70 members.

eBay’s Month-long Listing Fee Promotion (US & Canada Sites)

Better than a one-day deal, even if you do have a few extra requirements to meet. From August 29 to September 30th, eBay listing fees are free if you purchase GALLERY and in Canada, the item is C$11.99 or less and for the USA site US$9.99 or less. Other starting prices will receive a 25% insertion fee discount.

What is excluded?
This promotion will not apply to the following types of listings: All eBay Motors listings (including Parts & Accessories, Passenger Vehicles, Motorcycles, Power Sports, Other Vehicles), Live Auction, Professional Services, Real Estate, Ad Format and Store Inventory listings. The following business and industrial categories are excluded from the Insertion Fee Sale: tractors & farm machinery (91952), heavy equipment (25249), concession trailers, carts (67145), imaging and aesthetics equipment (92035), forklifts and other lifts (97185), manufacturing equipment (92080), metalworking equipment (92082) and commercial printing presses (26247). Bundles that contain Gallery such as Value Pack, Pro Pack, Gallery Plus, Gallery Featured and Picture Pack will not be eligible. You will need to purchase Gallery separately to be eligible for the promotion. The promotional rate does not apply to listings with a start date prior to August 29, 2007 – including those listings revised during the promotional period. The promotional rate also does not apply to listings created during the promotion August 29 – September 30, 2007 and scheduled to start after the promotion ends.

You can read the promotion page here.

The Latest in Instant Messaging News

Today on InstantMessagingPlanet you’ll find my newest IM Watch article, which discusses instant messaging news from the past two weeks. This week it’s Yahoo’s Web-based e-mail service changes, SocialBox for Facebook, Lotus Sametime Unified Telephony software, the Bebo abd Microsoft messaging partnership, mobile IM news, and more.

“‘Social networking site Bebo says it plans to launch a Microsoft-powered IM program in the fall, the starting point of a new plan to enable other sites to incorporate Windows Live Web services. The Bebo IM will have limited compatibility with Microsoft’s own services and will let Bebo members click a link to start an IM session with any other Bebo member, even without a Windows Live ID. Bebo users will be able to send messages to Windows Live Messenger users only if they also have a Bebo account.”

IM Watch: Yahoo Makes IM-to-Cell Connection
By Vangie Beal, August 28, 2007

Aggregate Your Social Networks From One Place

MyLifeBrand is a new social platform that lets its users aggregate and manage their favorite social networks, communities, services and friends on one site. Launched recently in beta form, you can basically set up auto-logins for multiple social networking sites and access them simultaneously through the MyLifeBrand Web site. 

To start, you need to choose your user type ” individual, artist, company….”. Once you have created an account you then log back in and choose your default community “GenerationX” or “Global”. Once you’re registered, have a profile filled out and are sitting on your personalized page, you can access your own dashboard. The dashboard options let you add and later access your MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, or any social networking site account. After the accounts are added you can then select a tab to load that site inside of MyLifeBrand. Other features worth noting include the ability to map friends in geographical representation, connect with a meebome account right from MyLifeBrand, and also add embeddable widgets to your personalized home page.

I have to admit MyLifeBrand does offer more than I actually expected it to. It still remains to be seen if I really want to belong to yet another online community and if the interface provided by MyLifeBrand to access multiple social networking accounts becomes intrusive over time or not.  Really, most people just use a nifty little thing called ‘tabbed browsing’ if they want to be logged into multiple sites at the same  time, but MyLifeBrand does make the process a bit easier.

Personally I’m still waiting for a true unified social networking service.

Whatever Happened to Unified Messaging?

Near the end of 2006 unified messaging was the trend to watch for. Today over on InstantMessagingPlant, Paul Rubens takes a look at the idea behind unified messaging and why it always seems “ready to take-off”, but never does.

“‘In practice, it’s only sensible to consider a unified messaging strategy if you already have or are planning to buy an IP PBX and a converged voice and data network, because it’s simply not economically feasible to implement this type of setup solely for the purpose of enabling a unified messaging system. On the other hand, if these are on the cards already, then unified messaging is only likely to add five to ten percent to the cost of an IP PBX, according to Matthias Machowinski, a directing analyst at Infonetics Research.”

Why Isn’t Unified Messaging Taking Off?
By Paul Rubens, August 27, 2007

eBay Auction – Chewed Michael Vick Cards Are Back!

Kudos to seller ballnfish who has re-listed their ‘dog chewed Michael Vick cards’ on eBay. I mentioned this auction earlier (read the post here), but also later noted eBay had pulled it (apparently the first listing violated charity listings). The seller leaves a hint about the good that will come from the auction, but doesn’t specifically say it will be donated this time. So far bidding is up to $7,100. Also, you can see the new ID masking rules in place on this auction. When I last checked, user y***r was winning.