Archive for the ‘Tech’ Category

eBay Banning Strike Organizers, eBayer Set to Strike Victoriously

Monday, February 11th, 2008

Moving quickly in reaction to eBay’s announcement of looming changes to feedback and fee scheduling systems, users banding together in protest. Buyers and Sellers are marking the week of February 18th as a week of boycott, putting both buying and selling on hold.

Sellers, long receiving the short end of eBay’s policy changes, are now planning vacations, spring cleanings, and, most worrisome for eBay, establishing themselves on competing websites.

eBay, long accused of unfairly raising fees, impotent and unhelpful customer support, and general disrespect for users among management and executive ranks, is so far reacting to this threat in an all too predictable manner of banning several of the users most vociferous in support of next week’s mass log-out. Among those banned, the producer of this video supporting the strike:

eBay's stubborn refusal to take user feedback into consideration, respect those who contribute most to its success, and lash out at those expressing dissatisfaction my be just the chink in the giant's armor needed by competing sites like Amazon Auctions and Yahoo! Auctions to lure those fed-up with putting so much into a community that gives less the bigger it gets.

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Leaps and Bounds

Saturday, February 2nd, 2008

Pause for a minute. Think about a computer the size of a passport. Not a PDA, not one of those weak portable media players, a computer. Bright hi-res screen, faster than your laptop, full wifi, bluetooth, camera for video conferencing, connecting wirelessly with an LCD projector for powerpoint presentations or movies or whatever. Like a laptop but faster, brighter, sleeker, more durable, flexible (like a passport - we’re thinking passports, remember?), battery life that outlasts your blackberry.

Pieces are coming together for this. Coming together fast, too.

Organic LCDs (OLCD) have been talk for a while now, wirless networks are becoming more and more present (I worry about brain cancer when I can find 20 BT signals in Stanford’s library), processors are getting smaller and faster (a horizon is about to be broken here, I’d be AMAZED if it took two years to crack), batteries are about to see it too (though I don’t like the idea of a hydrogen cell from Sony exploding, I guess it’ll be fine as long as you’re not smoking when it happens), and now solid state drives (like an SD chip or USB Flash drive) have jumped in speed.

Intel and Micron have announced a chip that’s 5x faster than what’s on the market now. You know that USB 2.0 junk? It’s faster than that. It’s bored by USB 2.0. It’s like a girlfriend that doesn’t know who the Sec Gen of the UN is (if you just thought Kofi Annan you lose the right to be disgruntled with anyone else’s political awareness, including people from Florida)

All we need now are speakers from our cell phones that don’t suck. Skull Candy, care to step up?

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