The great eBay rip off
It has been a while since I sold anything on eBay and I was discussing it last week with my brother. Did you know they now charge 10% of the final price plus the listing fee’s ? He asked. I thought, no that can’t be right.
It appear’s he was absolutely right.
Here is a breakdown of the closing fee’s (and don’t forget you have to pay to list the damn thing as well)
Final Selling Price : Final Value Fee
| £0.01 and above
|
10.0% of the amount of the winning bid, up to a maximum Final Value Fee of £40.00 |
and for business users (more…)
Tracking where you’ve been through foursquare
A number of month’s ago, on a regular business trip to the west coast of Ireland, I stopped off at a random filling station somewhere between Dublin and Limerick. With the new carrageway opening up in stage’s every month or two it’s easy to get disoriantated on the journey and wonder just where in the midlands you are. Rather than do the ‘scouting thing’ and dig out the map from the boot of my car, I decided to just check in on foursquare which would geo-locate my exact location and publish it not only to the world but for me to glance at it again later on and see just where I had been. Another check in on the road back to Dublin the next day, secured me the mayorship and my place in Toomevara 4sq history.
Yesterday on a similar business trip, I stopped again at the same station and again checked into 4sq to see what had been ‘going on’ since my last visit, I had been outed as Mayor by my arch-nemesis Evert Bopp which is understandable as he lives near by but as I looked through the near by locations, my recent check in’s and where Evert had been checking into recently I began to think, wouldn’t it be great to see all these check in’s on a simple google map ? Perfect for any one who travel’s a lot like myself. (more…)
Is the reception area in a budget hotel really necessary ?
My business is built around the hotel industry so I spend my days meeting with general managers and hotel owners of every kind of hotel from a 12 bedroom one man ran operation to a sprawling 1000 acre 5 star estate.
Because the nation’s best hotels are not built within a 100 radius of my house, I often sleep in them too. Sometimes I am the mood for 5 star luxury and sometimes I just was peace, quiet and a bed.
Tonight, I just want the latter so I am staying in a Travelodge. Travelodge are a fantastic business which get a lot of flack but really, a clean room, flat screen TV and a shower for €35 – what could be better?
Obviously to get all this for €35 you lose a lot of the ‘extras’ other hotels give you. There is no porter for example, no breakfast, no bar, no foyer to speak off, no leisure club, no gym the list is endless but Travelodge do this to give you a quality room at a reasonable price. (more…)
BBQ at McQuillan Manor in 32 seconds …… and a great chance to chat about Gawker
Gawker is an amazing piece of software for Mac OS that I have just discovered. With very little effort it allows you to put together a short movie of still imagines to track a day of work or an event.
Time lapsed BBQ at McQuillan Manor – 11th July using Gawker from Russell McQuillan on Vimeo.
Pornography to get its own space on the Interwebs but will it work?
After a ten year battle between Icann (the people who look after the www. protocol) and Stuart Lawley a British internet entrepreneur the .xxx domain has finally been approved.
The idea is that all pornography or ‘top shelf’ related material will move from .com, .co.uk, .net, .mobi etc to the new .xxx domain. Porn is still the most searched item on the web but it is only in the last two year’s that sites like Facebook and Twitter have kicked the porn sites from the Alexa top 50
It’s a good idea as it makes the Internet as easier place to police, it also makes it a lot easier for parents to content filter what their kids are looking at online by simply blocking the .xxx domain on their machines. Companies like NetNanny who specialise in web filtering will surely welcome the new domain and anyone operating a public machine will see the benefits.
That said, it will never work (in its current form). Believe it or not porn sites actually want you to look at their sites, no matter who you are so they go out of their way to step around web content filtering, this new domain is simply that, a new domain. It has been set up by a business man not an authority or a Government so it cannot be policed. Porn sites cannot be forced to use the domain and they are surely not going to give up their valuable .com domains in a hurry, In 2007 porn.com was sold for $12m and there has been a near 20 year battle over sex.com. (more…)
Cheaper by the dozen ? Not any more !
A new barmy law has been passed down from our good old buddies in the European Union. All food sold in EU stores must be advertised, priced and sold by weight and not quantity.
Until now, Britain has been exempt from EU regulations that forbid the selling of goods by number. But last week MEPs voted to end Britain’s deal despite objections from UK members.
This means Eggs, bread rolls and oranges too, so gone will be the day of buying a box of 6 egg’s for 99p.
Now you will have to buy 382grams of egg’s or 396grams of eggs depending which box you pick up, no box of 6 egg’s will ending up the same price as the next as it is nearly impossible to get 6 egg’s to weigh the same, unless we can somehow program the chickens to fire out 50gram eggs on comand but that would probably be in human.
What a load of balls, not two balls of course, a load of balls. Who thinks of these stupid laws? How is this helpful to the general public ? I want 6 egg’s, I’m quite happy to open the box and judge if the egg’s I am buying are big enough after all, I am not a complete moran ! (more…)
Flashforward – well they didn’t see that one coming !
One of the better cult TV drama’s to hit the screens in the last few years has no sooner gained traction only to be binned by its owner ‘ABC’
Looking at the American viewer numbers its quite easy to why, over 12 million viewers in the first episode falling to nearly a third of that in the last few episodes. Easy to see why they cancelled it, that is, if you are in fact a complete moron and don’t look at all the facts.
Let’s compare it, if you will to one of the other large ‘TV’ chart toppers of the last decade ‘lost’.
Lost first aired in 2004 with a whopping (in TV terms) to (just under) 16 million viewers and the show was syndicated to around 180 countries. (more…)
Hey teacher, leave us kids (Facebook profiles) alone
I am a part time volunteer youth worker and I have many friends who are teachers, there are two schools of thought on weather or not teachers and students can be friends on social media sites.
The first argument is that, Facebook and sites like it are a great way to connect with students out of school. Many teachers use blogs to do this but I have heard of a few recently who have been friending students to update them about classes, news stories and topics of interest. The issue comes when students or teachers start posting personal things on their sites, who they are going out with, what they are getting up, photo’s and the like. Things that could be taken in the wrong context and can personally damage the view of students or the professional life’s of teachers. (more…)
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