Smoking Gun targets Stamps.com
Stamps.com has made some changes since introducing its service that lets you put Mom’s picture on a real U.S. postage stamp. Unless Mom is Mae West, or Imelda Marcos, or Bonnie Parker.
The company added restrictions after The Smoking Gun Web site, co-owned by Time Warner and Liberty Media, decided to test the boundaries. “TSG sought to determine what kind of interesting stamps we could actually create,” its editors said. They tried to get stamps processed featuring Lee Harvey Oswald, the Unabomber and Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano. All three were rejected. Undaunted, the Gun persevered and successfully ordered stamps featuring New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey and his alleged gay lover; Monica Lewinsky’s blue dress; and Slobodan Milosevic.
The Stamps.com personalized postage service test ends Sept. 30. The U.S. Postal Service will review it and decide its fate. Meanwhile, Stamps.com has tightened its policy on uploaded pictures to prohibit “celebrity likenesses,” political “leaders,” and “newsworthy … individuals.” To show they’re serious, the company is now also charging a $10 fee for each graphic submitted which “violates our content restrictions.”
Yahoo hosts ‘Apprentice’ site
Mark Burnett Productions has a deal with Yahoo to host the official Web site of the second and third seasons of the “Apprentice.” Under terms announced last week, Yahoo will produce, host and sell advertising for the site at http://apprentice.yahoo.com. “Apprentice” content and ads will appear on half a dozen Yahoo properties including Messenger (They’ve got an audio clip of Donald Trump saying ‘You’re fired’ that you can send to friends), Finance and HotJobs. The site will offer 40 minutes of video not shown on the TV shows, including outtakes, and tours of the contestants’ residences and Trump Hotel & Tower.
Gizmodo previews new MSNTV box
Gizmodo, the original gadgets Weblog, says the broadband-capable version of Microsoft’s MSN-TV is almost exactly what an updated WebTV should be. Faint praise, you might say. But it’s enough for the intended market.
“It doesn’t suck. Still simple enough that anybody can use it,” the review said. “It’s Grandmavision,” said the writer, referring to the fact that the product, which displays the Web on a TV, has found customers among “grandmas who need to get on the Internet and kids who want to buy one to give to their grandmas.”
The use of a TV as the monitor is both the $200 device’s strength and weakness. “At that sort of resolution you’re just not going to have an optimal experience,” Gizmodo said. The new MSN TV is capable of streaming music and movies, the demonstrators reportedly said. It is expected to be in retail stores early next month.
A healthy diet of spam
Almost three of every four e-mail messages last month were spam messages, according to Postini Inc., a provider of e-mail filtering services for company networks. Despite the federal CAN-SPAM Act and federal arrests of bulk e-mailers, spam accounted for 76 percent of all e-mail processed by Postini in August.
“The spam problem is just too large for laws alone to stop,” said Andrew Lochart, director of product marketing. He said a total of 5.7 billion messages were reviewed during the month and 1.5 percent of them, or 85 million, included viruses. Postini’s investors include venture capital firms and Sun Microsystems.
Promotion boosts 3 million songs
RealNetworks sold 3 million songs during a three-week promotion for its new technology that allowed tracks purchased from its online music store to be played on Apple Computer’s iPod. “We are the only place consumers can buy music and enjoy it on any popular portable device,” said Rob Glaser, chief executive officer and founder. He also said the company will partner with Rolling Stone magazine to offer 10 popular and noteworthy songs each week for 49 cents each. The Rolling Stone Top 10 List will be based on the magazine’s tally of songs, and the popularity of tunes played on Real’s Rhapsody music subscription service and sold through Real’s Music Store.
Net snags back-to-school shoppers
Amazon.com, OldNavy.com and Staples.com were the top Web sites for back-to-school shoppers this year according to a study by Feedback Research, a division of Claria Corp. Textbook shopping was the category showing the most growth, with Amazon.com capturing 35 percent of such traffic from June through August. OldNavy.com replaced the Gap.com as the most popular apparel site, with 44 percent of those surveyed saying they bought or planned to buy clothes and apparel. Staples.com led the school-supply category with 22.2 percent of traffic, virtually tied with Office Depot.com’s 22.1 percent.
New lubricant developed
A newly developed lubricant could improve the performance, capacity and longevity of hard drives used widely in computers, music players, video recorders and other devices, researchers say.
Lubricant coats and protects the polished disc surface that spins thousands of times per minute as data are magnetically recorded, retrieved and erased on the drive by a head that flies back and forth dozens of times per second.
But today’s standard lubricant, called perfluoropolyethers, is reaching its limits as disc drives spin faster and hold more data. In some cases, centrifugal forces are causing the lubricant to ripple.
The new lubricant, called sterically hindered polyester, is based on inexpensive and abundant materials.
It acts like a solid material when it’s cast in very thin films and has very good adhesive properties, said its creator, Wei Xiao of the University of Illinois.