AVG has pretty good timing considering the recent success cybercrooks have had with manipulating search results to direct searchers to malicious websites. The security company released a free tool today that scans links before users click on them.

AVG LinkScanner, available for free download, checks URLs ahead of clicking by scanning the webpage and alerting the user if the site … Read More

It looks like eBay may be considering a program for "certified sellers." Ina Steiner at AuctionBytes talks about one of her readers who wrote in and told her about a survey for eBay he participated in that showed a made up listing page for a digital camera. It looked something like this:

Click to enlarge.
Notice the new section where … Read More

Like all popular services, Twitter gets abused too. Who would’ve thought? Will spam kill Twitter? Well, do you still use email?
Perhaps it’s unfair to compare Twitter, which is still pretty much in its infancy to a communication medium that has been around pretty much as long as the web itself, but with the momentum that Twitter popularity is gaining, … Read More

Earlier in the year, eBay announced that it would be making two big announcements per year regarding the eBay Marketplace. Each announcement would be made 60 days in advance of when the changes were scheduled.
eBay has now made the first announcement of the year, and it includes three groups of changes (comment on them here.), each with components of their … Read More

People with a grudge against Microsoft are liable to be in a decent mood this evening.  The company gave a quarterly financial report today, and in one important respect, it missed analysts’ estimates by a significant amount.

Onlookers wanted to see something in the neighborhood of $14.09 billion in terms of revenue.  Microsoft reported $13.65 billion instead, which represents a … Read More

A British advertising watchdog has told eBay to stop claiming it offers brand new items for 25 percent less than retail stores.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said Wednesday, that eBay’s posters claim a 25 percent discount was misleading because it did no provide enough details of how the comparison pricing was conducted.
eBay hired a third party company to … Read More

Compete has shared some interesting data looking at homepage visitors at the top publisher sites. Here is the top 12 in terms of domain visitors. Look at how the homepage visitors compare to the percentage of site visitors who visit the homepage.

"Hompages present big opportunities for online advertising. For example, display advertising on Facebook consists mainly of small sponsored … Read More

You know times are rough for newspapers when taking a bullet for the company isn’t enough to save your job. One St. Louis reporter knows that all to well—at least, he knows now.

According to RiverfrontTimes.com, Todd Smith, online editor for the Suburban Journals, sister paper to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, thought possibly he was being called in for a … Read More

Visiting sites like Facebook or YouTube while at work can make employees more productive, claims a new University of Melbourne study.
Dr. Brent Coker, from the Department of Management and Marketing, says that workers who engage in "Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing" (WILB) are more productive than those who don’t.

"People who do surf the Internet for fun at work - … Read More

You could call it a learning experience, a far cheaper lesson for the rest of the world than for Ray Lam, a Vancouver political candidate who withdrew his nomination after racy pictures of him surfaced on Facebook.

Lam says the photos were on his private account, and those vetting the candidate hadn’t discovered them. If so, one of Lam’s “friends” … Read More