Erris writes “A member of the Baton Rouge LUG noticed that Cox checks the text of outgoing email and rejects mail containing key phrases. I was aware of forced inbox filtering that has caused problems and been abused by other ISPs in China and in the US. I’ve also read about forced use of ISP SMTP and outbound throttling, but didn’t know they outbound filtered as well. How prevalent and justified is this practice? Wouldn’t it be superior to cut off people with infected personal than to censor the web?”

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willdavid writes “Paul McDougall reports in InformationWeek on Microsoft’s new online comic. The Heroes Happen Here comic strips are being created by Jordan Gorfinkel, a former DC Comics editor who helped revitalize the Batman series. ‘Tech workers who in the middle of the night fix a downed server or take on a computer virus don’t really have breathtaking powers. It just seems that way. But a new comic book has debuted in which IT pros literally are superheroes. The daily Web comic, called Heroes Happen Here, features tech savvy crime fighters like Lord Firewall, who “stands between chaos and order” and says things like “begone vermin!”‘” And because it’s never simple, in order to read the archives of the comic you’re going to need to install Microsoft’s Silverlight.

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Filed under: Bad news, Competitive strategy, Circuit City Stores (CC)

Even though Circuit City Stores, Inc. (NYSE: CC) reported a horrible December in terms of sales and profits, the second-largest consumer electronics retailer in the U.S. was one of the top three online consumer electronics retailers in December, trailing leader Best Buy, Inc. (NYSE: BBY), but ahead of on the internet auction giant eBay, Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY).

Nielsen ratings figures put one-of-a-kind web visitors like this: Best Purchase at 23.99 million, and Circuit City at 19.61 million. Figures for eBay weren’t available (as some separate categories have to be measured together), but the real news was that Circuit City’s December 2007 website traffic growth increased more than 20% from 2006’s level. Best Buy’s December 2007 visitor count rose only 9%.

Why couldn’t Circuit City capitalize on such an impressive amount of unique holiday retail traffic? The failure of the retailer to make any sales gains this past holiday season just seems endemic of multiple failures and problems the company has at this time. While we wait on Circuit City CEO Phil Schoonover to be sacked from the corner office, perhaps a lingering, potential sale of the company will force the issue and Circuit City can get back to business. Profitable business, that is.

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Filed under: Consumer experience, Competitive strategy, eBay (EBAY)

In one of the largest customer-oriented changes I’ve seen on eBay, Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) in quite some time, the world’s largest on the web auction house will no longer grant negative or neutral” customer feedback” ratings to be left by auction sellers on the accounts of auction buyers.

The thinking goes like this: a buyer may be afraid of leaving negative feedback on an auction for fear of the seller retaliating by leaving negative feedback themselves.

Imagine this: you purchase an item from an eBay seller and that package arrives with a product significantly different than what was advertised. You fulfilled your end of the bargain; the seller has not. If you leave negative feedback for the transaction, the seller might come back at you with an inappropriate feedback rating. Thus, both parties may not leave feedback at all — and that’s not what builds trust in the eBay community, right?

The changes won’t happen until this coming May, and current feedback ratings for both buyers and sellers will be based on a 12-month rolling average instead of a “lifetime” rating, which seems more appropriate. Perhaps changes like these — which seem to come as a response to customer demand — will help stem the tide of nastiness some eBay customers have had recently about the auction company.

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willdavid writes “Paul McDougall reports in InformationWeek on Microsoft’s new online comic. The Heroes Happen Here comic strips are being created by Jordan Gorfinkel, a former DC Comics editor who helped revitalize the Batman series. ‘Tech workers who in the middle of the night fix a downed server or take on a computer virus don’t really have incredible powers. It just seems that way. But a new comic book has debuted in which IT pros literally are superheroes. The daily Web comic, called Heroes Happen Here, features tech savvy crime fighters like Lord Firewall, who “stands between chaos and order” and states things like “begone vermin!”‘” And because it’s never simple, in order to read the archives of the comic you’re going to need to install Microsoft’s Silverlight.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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willdavid writes “Paul McDougall reports in InformationWeek on Microsoft’s new online comic. The Heroes Happen Here comic strips are being created by Jordan Gorfinkel, a former DC Comics editor who helped revitalize the Batman series. ‘Tech workers who in the middle of the night fix a downed server or take on a personal virus don’t really have incredible powers. It just seems that way. But a new comic book has debuted in which IT pros literally are superheroes. The daily Web comic, called Heroes Happen Here, features tech savvy crime fighters like Lord Firewall, who “stands between chaos and order” and states things like “begone vermin!”‘” And because it’s never simple, in order to read the archives of the comic you’re going to need to install Microsoft’s Silverlight.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Erris writes “A member of the Baton Rouge LUG noticed that Cox checks the text of outgoing email and rejects mail containing key phrases. I was aware of forced inbox filtering that has caused problems and been abused by other ISPs in China and in the US. I’ve also read about forced use of ISP SMTP and outbound throttling, but didn’t know they outbound filtered as well. How prevalent and justified is this practice? Wouldn’t it be better to cut off people with infected personal than to censor the internet?”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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dratcw writes “The first commercial LAN was based on ARCnet technology and was installed some 30 years ago, according to a ComputerWorld article. Bob Metcalfe, one of the co-inventors of Ethernet, recalls the early battles between the different flavors of LAN and states some claims from the Token Ring backers such as IBM were lies. ‘I know that sounds nasty, but for 10 years I had to put up with that crap from the IBM Token Ring people — you bet I’m bitter.’ Besides dipping into networking nostalgia, the article also quotes an analyst who states the LAN might be nearing its demise and predicts that all machines will be individually connected to one massive WAN at gigabit speeds. Could the LAN actually be nearing the end of its lifecycle?”

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Erris writes “A member of the Baton Rouge LUG noticed that Cox checks the text of outgoing email and rejects mail containing key phrases. I was aware of forced inbox filtering that has caused problems and been abused by other ISPs in China and in the US. I’ve also read about forced use of ISP SMTP and outbound throttling, but did not know they outbound filtered as well. How prevalent and justified is this practice? Wouldn’t it be better to cut off people with infected personal than to censor the internet?”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Filed under: World wide web, Video, Web services, web 2.0

Hulu may have an incredible selection of videos from Fox and NBC available for streaming on the web. But there are at least two problems with the service right now:

1. Hulu is in private beta, meaning you can only access videos if you have an account or if someone’s been kind enough to embed the video player on their site.
2. You’ve to search through videos using a mouse and keyboard as if you were looking up directions, not using an on-screen program guide like you would with a TV.

Hulu Media Player attempts to deal with both of those problems. Paul Yanez, the guy who brought us a browser-based Joost clone, plus an Apple-TV inspired video player for all sorts of web video content.

Hulu Media Player is still a tiny rough around the edges. For example, we found that we would occasionally click on one episode of a TV show only to have a different one start playing. And once you’re watching a video, there’s no way to go back to the list of episodes for that particular Television show. Instead, you’ve to click the “show guide” button which takes you back to the main menu. And it’d be nice if you could control the player using your keyboard instead of a mouse. But it’s still a pretty neat twist on Hulu.

While you don’t need a Hulu beta account to access Hulu Media Player, only a small portion of the Hulu library is available for viewing right now.

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