There are lots of ways to rid yourself of an old mobile phone - most of which make money for you, and even some for other people. Depending on what you wish to do will obviously sway your choices, but the following things are easily available if you wish to get rid of your dated [...]
I was shocked when I heard there was a place which pays you for submitting your photos online. My curiosity drove me to the website and made me aware that even I could earn a little without investing too much time and effort. After all who wouldn’t like a little extra money?
I wanted to know [...]
We’ve seen a few different lawsuits involving ticket reselling website Stubhub (owned by eBay). Last year, you may remember, a court forced Stubhub to hand over the identity of sellers of New England Patriots’ tickets, despite the fact that Stubhub’s terms of service protect users’ privacy. One of the big questions brought up by various lawsuits is whether or not Stubhub is guilty of violating various anti-scalping laws. It seems like it would be clear that Stubhub, as the platform provider, is not liable and is protected by Section 230 of the CDA. And, in fact, that’s what a court has just found, dismissing a complaint against Stubhub. However, as Eric Goldman notes at that link, this seems to contradict with at least one other ruling against Stubhub — meaning that this is hardly settled law, and we should expect to see a bunch more lawsuits along these lines pop up before this gets worked out.
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You may need to convert Mini DV cassette recordings to a format more compatible with a certain kind of player, like a DVD player, or multimedia on your PC. Sometimes, the tape may get scratched due to constant use and replay. Converting it to other formats makes replaying it easy and harmless. Conversion is either [...]
Despite the growth in internet shopping, a lot of people still like to see televisions ‘in the flesh’ before committing to buy. It makes sense for such an important (and expensive) purchase, as it’s good to get a feel for the TV and speak to experts in store. But there are huge advantages to buying [...]
You may recall stories involving a small patent holding firm called Klausner Technologies, which claims to hold patents on the concept of “visual voicemail.” It seems to have interpreted these patents pretty broadly to the point that it considers anyone who offers any graphical interface to voicemail as infringing. Over the years, that’s meant lawsuits against AOL, Vonage, Apple, eBay, AT&T and others. Apparently, suing one by one was too much trouble, because Klausner has now sued another bunch of companies including Google, Vonage and Embarq. Of course, the company is playing up the fact that all those other companies it sued settled, but we’ve seen that game before. There’s not much new here as this scenario is all too common. We have a company with an overly broad patent on a concept that was a natural obvious progression of the art, suing pretty much every company that actually innovates, thus making actual innovation more expensive.
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How much of a Batman fan are you? Does your bank manger pop cold sweat and whiten when you explain that you really only need the £250,000 to buy an original Batmobile off eBay?
Well, gamers are now being offered the chance to pick up some limited edition Dark Knight Xbox 360s on eBay, and with prices ranging from over £400 to £600, it’s just not funny.
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How do I stop them?
John Kirkham
JS: You can’t, but they should be sorted into your spam folder. If not, create a rule to do this. These emails are not really from CNN, though they are a good imitation. Click a link in the latest version, My Custom Alert, and it takes you to a Russian website, where you are asked to download a malware version of Adobe’s Flash player (adobe_flash.exe). This installs a Trojan downloader which runs a service called CbEvtSvc and connects to a remote host. Your anti-malware software should remove this. If not, try running SuperAntiSpyware.
I have used Nikon Fotoshare to send photos by email. It was very quick and easy. Nikon is now offering My Picturetown. This is very slow to upload, and I cannot find out how to email the photos.
Robin Hood
JS: Fotoshare is an online photo album. Nikon plans to close it on September 10 and will then delete all the photos people have uploaded. MyPictureTown.com is similar but has drag-and-drop uploading and is claimed to be easier to use. There are a great many alternatives, including Photobucket (owned by MySpace), WebShots (American Greetings), Flickr (Yahoo), Picasa (Google) and Windows Live Photo Gallery (Microsoft). SmugMug is good but not free.
They all have their fans, many of whom use more than one, so now there is framechannel.com to manage multiple services. There are even more sites that cater for people who want to upload one or two images, such as Imagevenue.com. You can use them without opening an account or signing in. When you upload a photo, these sites usually provide several links to cater for web pages and different types of message board.
Unfortunately, many of these sites make their money by displaying popup adverts, and some may even try to install malware. The best rule is to copy the “direct link” and email that instead of the photo. Avoid any links that contain the letters php.
I have installed the BBC iPlayer, but every time I activate it, a program called Kontiki pops up.
Denis
JS: When you download TV programmes using iPlayer - as distinct from watching streamed versions online - they are downloaded using Kontiki. This is a peer-to-peer file sharing program, which is also used by similar services such as Sky by Broadband and Channel 4’s 4oD. Kontiki seems to load and use your bandwidth, even if you are not using iPlayer: use the Windows Task Manager to see if Kservice is running.
The BBC has a page that explains how to stop it running on startup and when you are not using iPlayer. You can remove it altogether using the kclean.exe program. However, if you do, any Kontiki-based programs such as iPlayer will stop working.
I have a not-that-old HP OfficeJet 6110 all-in-one printer/scanner/copier which I’ve recently replaced. It works, but is a little streaky on some printing. I’ve been trying to get rid of it in an ecologically sound way, but to no avail.
Chris Rowbury
JS: You could offer it on eBay, noting the fault and offering it as for “spares or repair” and probably “collect only”. Otherwise, try Freecycle.
· Paul Niemiec wanted a cheap way to digitise cassette tapes, and I suggested using the open-source Audacity software. John Blackburn suggests the shareware CD Wave instead: “This software is simpler than Audacity and has the very useful (and, indeed, important) feature of being able to split the music into tracks, either automatically or with manual assistance. CD Wave will save the resulting tracks as WAV, MP3, OGG or FLAC files. WAV is for making audio CDs and MP3 is for the car. FLAC files are lossless, as you say, and are about half the size of WAV files.”
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Just days after Tiffany appealed the correct US ruling that eBay isn’t liable for counterfeit goods sold on the site, a Belgian court has sided with eBay in a very similar lawsuit involving L’Oreal. Apparently, the Belgian courts understand how liability works a lot better than their neighbors in France, who ruled the other way in a case involving Louis Vuitton.
L’Oreal says it’s “surprised” by the decision and will appeal, but fails to explain why eBay, as a platform maker, should be responsible for what people do with that platform. About the only answer seems to be that L’Oreal recognizes eBay is an easier target than going after those actually responsible (those selling the counterfeit goods). It’s nice that most courts recognize that the easiest entity to sue is not necessarily the proper entity to sue.
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Last month a US court correctly pointed out that eBay was not liable for counterfeit products showing up on the auction site. That doesn’t mean that it’s legal to sell counterfeit products, just that eBay isn’t liable for the counterfeits showing up there. Instead, it should be the person who actually lists the item that’s liable. That makes perfect common sense. Except to Tiffany, apparently.
The company is now appealing the ruling, making some bizarre arguments in its own defense:
“If one were a flea market operator and you become aware that counterfeiting is going on with the individual sellers at the flea market, you have a duty to investigate it. Why is eBay any different from that analogy?”
Well, two things, actually. First, it’s the individual seller in that situation that’s liable, not the flea market operator, and much more importantly, eBay is quite different than a typical flea market in that it doesn’t pre-vet any of the sellers. A traditional flea market involves the flea market operator finding sellers. eBay is just a platform where anyone can sell. That is, eBay has simply no knowledge of what anyone is selling on the site — nor should it be required to. The law is pretty clear on this, so it’s not at all clear what Tiffany thinks it’s going to accomplish here other than to waste a lot of money on lawyers who seem to be giving the company really bad advice.
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