Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on December 24, 2006 by CyberNet.

I thought Facebook would undoubtedly be the next YouTube and sell their soul to another company. At $1 billion I thought it was a done deal but as it turns out that just isn’t enough:

Zuckerberg, founder of the Facebook social networking website, has told Yahoo!, the internet giant, that $1 billion is not enough to sell out. Now leaked documents suggest that Yahoo! was willing to raise its bid to $1.6 billion.

So why would Facebook be turning down so much money? They are either really set on keeping it an independent service or there are other offers on the table. Back in October there were rumors that Google was offering $2.35 billion for Facebook which falls quite short of offers Yahoo! has made for them.

The CEO is Mark Zuckerberg and is only 22 years old. He owns 30% of the company and the recent offer of $1.6 billion from Yahoo! would put $480 million in his pocket. What’s pretty cool is that he is one of the most casual CEO’s I have ever heard of:

One story has it that Microsoft had to abandon a planned 8am conference call with Zuckerberg because he said that he would still be in bed then. Zuckerberg, who often turns up to his office in Palo Alto, California, wearing Adidas sandals, took exception to a drawing in The Wall Street Journal because it showed him wearing a shirt with a collar instead of his habitual T-shirt.

At this point Zuckerberg might be hoping for other offers from other large companies like Microsoft and Google before finalizing any decisions. Man, $480 million (which is what he would get) is quite a bit of money though. Let’s just hope they don’t get too greedy and start to lose popularity like Friendster.

Thanks for the tip Curtiss!

News Source: Times Online [via Digg]

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on June 16, 2007 by CyberNet.

Weekend Website

Video sites have been popping up all over the place, even ones with a focused niche. YouTube, MetaCafe, and the like are great for your random sampling of just about anything, but what if you’re looking for something on a more specific topic? One such site with a focused niche is called ExpertVillage and their focus is specifically on “how-to” videos. These how-to videos range from instructions on changing the oil in your car, to learning how to belly-dance, and everything in between.

At ExpertVillage, their goal is to provide how-to videos and articles containing advice from experts in their fields. For each video or article, they provide the credentials of the person being filmed so that you can get an idea of how credible the information is. For example, a video on how to read sheet music for piano is given by someone who has a degree in Music and Theater, and teaches piano lessons. I’d feel pretty confident getting advice on piano from someone with those credentials.

Finding the Videos

Finding the how-to videos is simple.  They’re broken down into 12 different categories which include: Automotive, Beauty and Fashion, Crafts, Food and Drink, Health and Fitness, Hobbies, Home and Garden, Music, Parenting, Pets, Sports, and Other.  While they do have a wide range of categories, you’ll notice that they do not have a how-to technology category, so this isn’t the place to get your tech advice. The videos tend to be short so that you don’t lose interest, and they get to the point pretty quickly.

Registered Users

Anybody can go to ExpertVillage to view the how-to videos, however you can also become a registered user.  The only difference with registered users is that they are able to rate and comment on an article or video. You can also bookmark your favorites so that when you click on “My Videos,” you’ll be able to quickly find all of your previous favorites.

Embed the Player

Just like other video sites, you can embedded the player on your own site. When you click on a video you’ll get the code to link to the video, as well as the code to embed the video. Below you’ll find a video that I have embedded titled “The Floating Card Trick Explained: Learn Free Magic”

Wrapping it up

With over 17,000 videos and over 1700 experts (and counting), ExpertVillage is a great resource for getting advice on a wide array of topics.  You can also get involved as either an expert or as a film-maker.  Film-makers have their own equipment, shoot content, and then send it in to the company. If that sounds interesting to you, they’ve got additional info on their site.

Now go on, go learn how to do something new like: Standing Up on the Surf Board, When to Travel: How to Plan a Vacation, Choosing a Tent Site (Camping), How to Check your Engine Coolant Level, or any of the many others!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on August 09, 2007 by CyberNet.

I’m sure you’ve been in the situation before where you’ve wanted to purchase something on eBay, but there were multiple people selling the same thing. You probably placed a bid on one of the items in hopes that you’d win it, but you had to leave for work and wouldn’t know the results until you got home. The first thing you did when you got home was see if you won the auction…and you didn’t. Not only that but those similar auctions had also ended without you ever getting a chance to bid on them.

This is a pretty common problem, and eBay is taking it into their own hands to solve it. They have created a free Bid Assistant that anyone can use to do the bidding for them. It lets you "bid" on a group of items, and if you win one it won’t bid on the others. It will immediately bid on the item that ends the soonest in your group, and when one ends it will continue to bid on the others until you win or hit your maximum bid price.

To use it you’ll need to add all the items that you want to monitor to your Watch List. Then select the checkbox next to each one, and click the "Bid with Bid Assistant" button:

In this case I had two of the same computers being offered from the same person. It is common for eBay sellers to have multiple listings of the same items, and the Bid Assistant makes it easy to bid on each until you win one.

Now you can enter in the maximum price you want to pay for each individual item in the group, or you can set one price to be the global maximum bid:

Click to Enlarge

It’s nice that they let you choose a price for each individual item because often times you may not be bidding on the exact same thing. For example, you may want an iPod, and so you’ll setup bids on various models. Or maybe you’re buying a present for someone and are bidding on several different ideas that you came up with.

To use the Bid Assistant you must have at least 5 feedback, but most of you are probably eBay veterans that have dozens if not hundreds of positive feedback. Also, the Bid Assistant will not snipe your bids (place them at the last second). To do that you would need to use a software application such as the free JBidWatcher, which also incorporates most of the features from the Bid Assistant as well.

Hopefully these tools will help you get the things you want at a price you can afford!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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We don’t know how many of you are familiar with Revision3, but if you watch Diggnation, The GigaOm Show, or Tekzilla, you should be. It’s an online media company and they create and produce shows for people to watch on-demand. Over the Memorial Day Weekend they experienced a Denial of Service Attack which is usually a deliberate attack by someone who is trying to prevent a site on the Internet from functioning. They are illegal, at least in the United States, and can cause the site that is experiencing one all kinds of problems. When they happen, often times the people causing the attack are in foreign countries. To Revision3′s surprise, after looking into the attack, they traced it back to a neighbor in their home state of California. In a posting on the Revision3 blog, their CEO Jim Louderback wrote a great explanation of what happened, what they’re doing about it, and who did it.

So what neighbor in their great state is at fault for the attack? Media Defender. Yes, it’s that Media Defender, the one the MPAA hired to help them stop piracy by setting up a fake video site. They call themselves the “leading provider of anti-piracy solutions in the emerging Internet-Piracy Prevention industry” yet what business do they have attacking Revision3 who does absolutely nothing illegal? Louderback explained saying that the company apparently took offense to the fact that they use Bittorent (perfectly legal) to distribute their shows. He says, “We use the internet and peer-to-peer networks to accelerate the spread of legally traded materials that we own. That’s sort of directly opposite to what Media Defender is supposed to be doing.”

We won’t get into the details because there are many of them (which you can read here), but we are disgusted with the method Media Defender used to try and take Revision3 down for no apparent good reason. Louderback says that their logs showed Media Defender sending SYN packets, “upwards of 8,000 packets a second” which brought down their public facing site, their RSS server, and their internal corporate email, or in other words, “the entire Revision3 business.” In the process of all of this, they learned Media Defender had been abusing a Revision3 server without their approval, for quite some time.

Thankfully they’ve gotten the FBI involved looking into the situation and hopefully at the end of the day, Media Defender will have to pay for their actions. Louderback wrapped up his very informative post by saying:

We’re simply in the business of delivering entertainment and information – that’s not life or death stuff. But what if MediaDefender discovers a tracker inside a hospital, fire department or 911 center? If it happened to us, it could happen to them too. In my opinion, Media Defender practices risky business, and needs to overhaul how it operates. Because in this country, as far as I know, we’re still innocent until proven guilty – not drawn, quartered and executed simply because someone thinks you’re an outlaw.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on October 18, 2006 by CyberNet.

If you are wondering how secure your password is then maybe you should go checkout the Microsoft Password Checker. It isn’t anything super special but to have the most secure password it looks like they require you to have a combination of letters, numbers, and special characters. If you have less than 14 characters in your password then it will only give you a rating of “Strong” but more than 14 characters will get you the “Best.”

This reminds me of a post I did a few months back that listed the top 10 most common passwords. Ever since then I changed my password from “123″ to “123456″ because it is much less used.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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