A deal a day keeps bankruptcy at bay

Here’s an novel twist — an e-commerce site that sells only one thing a day. That’s it — when it’s the stock is sold, the store effectively closes for the day. Think of it as an anti-portal. And yet Woot.com has apparently racked up sales of $10 million in about five months. When I last looked, it was selling a wireless adapter for Sony Playstations at $10 (plus $5 p&P) a go. Part of its success may be due to the fact that it makes intelligent use of RSS in a way that online stores selling thousands of items cannot do.

Reviewing eBay

Russell Beattie says he’s no good at reviewing books — and then goes on to post an absorbing and insightful review of Adam Cohen’s exhaustive study of eBay — The Perfect Store.

The dangers of MIT

Well, well. How about this para from a report in Forbes.com?

“Aizenman said he is concerned that without such testing it is not known if, for example, a pregnant woman who is exposed to MIT could put her fetus at risk for abnormal brain development. People working directly with MIT are those most at risk, he said.”

I’ve often wondered about some of those folks from MIT. But, sadly, the story turns out to be about the dangers of shampoo. It turns out that an ingredient found in shampoos, hand lotions and paint causes neurons to die. The chemical, methylisothiazolinone, has been assigned the acronynm MIT by chemists. It belongs to a class of compounds called biocides which are are used in the manufacture of many common household products and industrial water cooling systems to prevent bacteria from developing. According to the National Institutes of Health, brands containing MIT include the shampoos Head and Shoulders, Suave, and Clairol, as well as Pantene hair conditioner and Revlon hair color.

Phew! This is one of the few cases where losing one’s hair puts one ahead.

(Thanks to Gerard for the link.)

Perspective on the US election

John Perry Barlow has found a lovely passage:

“A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt……If the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at stake.”

Who wrote it? Answer: Thomas Jefferson, in a letter he sent in 1798 after the passage of the Sedition Act.

2004: a great year for going phishing

Here’s what the year looked like to the folks at MessageLabs:

“London, 6 December 2004.  Phishing attacks or online identity theft has established itself as the principal threat of 2004, and may signal the beginning of a wave of email security attacks targeted specifically at individual or small groups of companies. This puts business firmly on the front line in the fight against online attacks, according to the annual MessageLabs Intelligence Email Security Report for 2004 released today.

In September 2003 the company intercepted 279 phishing emails (containing a URL to a fraudulent website), by September 2004 that figure had significantly risen to over two million. During the course of 2004, MessageLabs intercepted over 18 million phishing-related emails.

The perpetrators of phishing attacks have also developed new techniques in order to increase their chances of success. Recently, phishing emails have been designed to capture online banking details automatically when a user opens the email, rather than when the user clicks on the URL link. Phishers have also attempted to dupe unsuspecting users into becoming middlemen for money laundering operations, by offering employment opportunities with legitimate organisations.

Spam and virus ratios have also risen since the end of 2003. In 2004 the virus infection ratio was 1 in 16, in comparison to 2003 when it was 1 in 33. The most widespread outbreak of the year was W32/MyDoom.A, which occurred in January. In addition, the percentage of email identified as spam in 2004 is 73 percent whereas in 2003 it was 40 percent.

As well as the rise in phishing, virus and spam volumes, MessageLabs also witnessed tailored malicious activity ranging from Denial of Service (DoS) attacks targeted at blackmailing online gaming sites through to threats that send out child pornography in the name of a particular reputable organisation.

There is also evidence to suggest that Trojans and other malicious code have been developed during 2004 specifically to compromise particular organisations. MessageLabs expects this trend to continue.”

Malapropism online?

I know it’s a bit early in the week, but consider this interesting example of linguistic innovation:

“We remain keen not to introduce a fixed cap on our products, as we do not feel this consumerate with the general needs of most Broadband users.”

At first I thought it might be a malapropism (“an incorrect usage of a word, usually with comic effect” – Wikipedia). Well, the effect is definitely comical, but is ‘consumerate’ a word? I’d never heard it before. Googling it produced 374 hits, most of them using it as a noun (analogous with ‘electorate’), whereas it’s used as an adverb in the quote. Or is it an example of euphony (“language which strikes the ear as smooth, pleasant, and musical”)? Hmmm… Glad I’m not a lexicographer. I’m reminded, though, of a conversation I once overheard in the lounge of the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin. Two middle-class ladies were bragging to one another about the merits of their respective husbands’ company cars. “The thing about Jim’s Volvo”, said one, “is that it’s very good for the environment”. “How’s that?”, inquired her companion. “It’s got a cataclysmic convertor”.

Thanks to James M, who found ‘consumerate’ in an email from Plusnet to its subscribers which was published on the ADSLguide site today.
9:11:00 AM    

Call the firewall brigade…

… is the headline the sub-editors put on today’s Observer column.

Skype stats

Skype, the free VoIP service, seems to be spreading like wildfire. These statistics come from Kevin Werbach’s Blog:

* 13M+ users registered
* 1M+ simultaneous users reached for the first time a couple of weeks ago
* almost 2.4 billion minutes. Just to put things in perspective: Vonage has 170,000 customers and passed the billion minutes mark sometime in 2004
* 295,000 users have signed for SkypeOut (Skype has a goal of 5% conversion from the free service to SkypeOut)

What we’re up against

I’ve been trying to forget about the US election result on the grounds that we have to live with it and move on. But then, while clearing out some old newspapers and magazines this morning, I came on Andrew O’Hagan’s wonderful report from the Republican Convention in the London Review of Books. Here’s the passage that really depressed me:

“A certain mica sparkled through the atmosphere of the Republican National Convention: it was the notion that a lack of patriotism was the enemy of democracy, that a love of nuance was a brand of elitism, and that being proud of your country was the only strength that mattered in foreign relations. In this same atmosphere – pungent with intolerance – the notion prevails that foreigners hate America not for its actions but for its values, its ‘way of life’. When people speak of American imperialism this is what they more often mean: not the corrupting, internecine dealings of Halliburton and the Carlyle Group, the cronyist, Saudi-protecting demeanour of the Texas oil barons, shocking though all that is, but the everyday self-certainty that makes America a fighting force against other cultures and ways of life. The delegates have breathed a lot of this stuff into their lungs in recent years, but they wanted more. ‘The Muslims just hate us for our love of freedom,’ said a woman from Iowa wearing a cloth elephant on her head. ‘They don’t have any culture and they hate us for having a great one. And they hate the Bible.’

‘Really?’ I said. ‘The Iraqis had a culture for thousands of years before Jesus was born.’

‘What you saying?’

‘I’m saying Muslims were building temples when New York was a swamp.’

‘You support the Iraqis?’

‘No.’

‘You support the killing of innocent people going to work? People who have to jump out of windows?’

‘You aren’t listening to me.’

‘No, buddy. You ain’t listening. These people you support are trying to kill our children in their beds. Where you from anyway, the New York Times?'”

Noam Chomsky

This is a thumbnail of a lovely recent portrait by Sam Javanrouh. You can see the full-size version here.