Hasta La Gadget!

Many of us who live in North America and Europe consider Amazon synonymous with online retail — yet we forget that the company barely even registers in some parts of the world. That misconception is about to be cleared up now that one of China’s largest online retailers, 360buy, is going global. A just-launched English version of the store is initially shipping China-made goods for free to 36 countries that include obvious candidates like Australia, Canada, the UK and the US as well as France, Germany and southeast Asia. You’re unlikely to find a Kindle Fire HD equivalent in the selection, but the mix could still make Amazon nervous when the brand-agnostic can already find real bargains. Combined with long-term plans to set up local distribution points, 360buy’s international expansion could get more of us comfortable with buying from China and heat up a retail race that some thought had already been won.

Filed under: Internet, Amazon

Chinese online retail giant 360buy spreads worldwide, may keep Amazon on its toes originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 19 Oct 2012 14:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When reading reviews of restaurants you’re interested in trying, it can be difficult to sift out the shill reviews and only spot the ones that are genuine. However, Yelp is looking to make it easier on its users by introducing Consumer Alerts. These alerts will warn you every time you come across a paid review on their site.

Starting today, when Yelp detects questionable activity, it will display an alert to Yelp users for 90 days, and it will also alert the business that the review was posted for. So far, nine alerts have already been issued on this first day, which seems like a low number, but Yelp says it’s still working on getting through more reviews and will always be scanning for odd activity.

The company mentioned in their blog post that they “want to make sure consumers are making informed decisions,” and “as efforts to game the system continuously evolve, so do [its] methods for combating it.” We’re glad Yelp is finally taking the initiative to further help out its users, and we hope other review sites step up to the plate as well.

However, Yelp’s plans don’t stop there. They also plan on implementing an IP address detection system where it will inform users when a business has received multiple reviews from the same IP address, which is easily a big red flag when it comes to online reviews. However, Yelp has had an automated filter system that’s used to detect fake reviews, but the company says that its Consumer Alerts are simply a secondary defense, and will help out even more with detecting paid reviews.

Yelp announces Consumer Alerts, lets you know when reviews are paid is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Disavow (v): To deny any responsibility or support for something. This definition succinctly describes Google’s Disavow Links Tool, which allows webmasters to disavow links to their websites if they feel that the links are causing harm. If ever there was a time to say, “With great power comes great responsibility,” this is it.

At the Pubcon keynote today, Google’s Matt Cutts announced that the Google Disavow Links tool is now available while stressing that webmasters need to be careful when using it. Said Cutts, “Most sites shouldn’t use this tool. Use Caution. Don’t just start disavowing links. Please start slow.” The tool has been in beta for the last few weeks.

The Disavow tool is most beneficial for webmasters who have received notice of a manual spam action caused by unnatural links to their website. Using the disavow tool, Google can be instructed to ignore these links when evaluating your website. According to the Google announcement, if you haven’t received a notice of spam action caused by unnatural links, you’ve little use for the tool.

In order to use the tool, you’ll need to visit the Disavow Tool link and select your website. If your website isn’t verified, you’ll need to verify it before continuing. Once verified, you’ll then be prompted to upload a plain text file containing the links you want to disavow, with one link per line. Once the file is submitted, the links will be disavowed, for better or for worse.

[via Google Webmaster Central Blog]

Google launches Disavow Links Tool for webmasters is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Yes, we’ll admit that we borrowed that pun in the title. MooresCloud founder Mark Pesce’s Xzibit reference is still a very apt description of the Light, his company’s Linux-based LED lamp. The Australian team’s box-shaped illumination runs the open OS (including a LAMP web server stack) on an integrated mini PC with an accelerometer and WiFi. The relative power and networking provide obvious advantages for home automation that we’ve seen elsewhere, but it’s the sheer flexibility of a generalized, web-oriented platform that makes the difference: the Light can change colors based on photos or movement, sync light pulses to music and exploit a myriad of other tricks that should result from a future, web-based app store. When and how the Light launches will depend on a Kickstarter campaign to raise $700,000 AUD ($717,621 US) starting on October 16th, although the $99 AUD ($101 US) cost is just low enough that we could see ourselves open-sourcing a little more of the living room. At least, as long as we don’t have to recompile our lamp kernel before some evening reading.

Continue reading MooresCloud Light runs Linux, puts LAMP on your lamp (video)

Filed under: Household

MooresCloud Light runs Linux, puts LAMP on your lamp (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 13 Oct 2012 10:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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TopThat is part of a category of applications that I like to label “ego-driven apps”, and for example, Foursquare is one of them. TopThat was launched in public beta back in August 2012 and today, it is making its official public debut.

The underlying concept is very simple: TopThat allows members to compete and judge 1-on-1 or group-based competitions.
(more…)

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