..because it’s going to ban negative seller views. They’re taking away the ability to leave negative feedback about someone which, to me, is one of the best things about eBay. Not that I particularly enjoy leaving comments of that type, but surely they’re core to one of the best things about eBay - user ratings.

Clearly, the system as it stands isn’t perfect. I’ve been tainted with some unjustified negative feedback before and it’s frustrating to think that future buyers opinions of my trustiness will be affected by that but fuck it, I’ve got a 98% rating and I’m happy to let the buyers make their own mind up. Similarly I like being able to read feedback (both + and -) about sellers before I decide to place a bid on something. Buying from someone with 100% positive feedback isn’t a guarantee that you wont be done over and nor is it a definite that someone with no feedback at all will be trying to fleece you BUT they’re actually fairly reliable indicators and generally, I think the system works. Or at least, I think it works better than what eBay are proposing to introduce as a replacement.

Who comes up with these ideas? Madness! You’d've thought that with all the free time eBay employees have (because let’s face it, they do fuck all. Ever tried to get in touch with their customer ’service’? Not happening.) that they could come up with a better solution to the feedback ‘problem’ they have.

p.s. Like what I’ve done with the image here? ’stupid-bay’? Get it? Clever innit.

In other random eBay news. Feel free to buy me this. It’s awful, and I’d never buy it for myself but I’ll happily accept it as a gift

Genuinely a bit sad to hear about this earlier.. Jeremy Beadle provided the highlight to many a weekend when I was growing up. I used to love Beadles About and You’ve Been Framed (I was very young). (It’s a shame that the latter has been tarnished with Lisa ‘the fat one from Emmerdale’ Riley and Harry Hill but that’s largely irrelevant here.)

Really though, respect due to the Beadle..

If you don’t know who he was: Jeremy Beadle obituary on BBCi.

Billboard adverts are done to death. No-one cares about them anymore. Some places even ban them completely because it’s 100% agreed that they’re ineffective (at least, I’m pretty sure that’s the reason). So if you’re in advertising, what do you do(?)

A. You get into the minds of people walking past them. Obviously.

This new billboard for the tv series ‘Paranormal State’ (which, btw, sounds like a quality production *cough* Most Haunted *cough*) effectively tricks people into thinking they’re mental by sending sound straight into their tiny little brains.

Mounted above the billboard, the system projects an isolated beam of sound down onto a targeted area of the sidewalk - from seven stories up! People who pass by the billboard are startled and entertained by the sudden message, and their attention is drawn directly to the billboard itself. Meanwhile, quiet is preserved for all of the neighbors.

Lucky neighbours! Not so lucky innocent people walking past who don’t actually want to pay attention to your poxy advert. Apparently, ‘the sound of a women’s voice whispers, “Who’s that? Who’s There? …It’s not your imagination.”‘, which in my book is really creepy. By ‘creepy’ I mean ‘irritating’. By ‘irritating’ I mean ‘a ridiculous invasion of personal space that should surely be illegal or something’. It’s tantamount to those people who block your way on pavements by holding up luminous signs with ‘Unlock your phones! Next street across!’ on just following you down the street all up in your face going ‘ooohh, you love your phone being unlocked don’t you.. oooh…’.

It’s not on really is it(?)

That said, it’s very clever :). If only these powers could be harnessed for the power of good..

more info: http://holosonics.com/PR_AE.htm

Can’t really be stretched to make a coherent couple of single posts about these things so consider this a link-dump of sorts. With mostly videos.

Pet camel kills Australian woman - madness! I’m quite a fan of camels generally and reckon it’d be great to have a pet one (someone on Location Location Location last week had a camel trekking business.. THAT’d be great) but I dunno if I could cope with it expressing any sort of sexual urges. Curb that shizzle..

Happiness Factory 2 is simply great. The original one (which you’ve surely seen by now) was also great, but this takes it to a whole new level. Well, not completely new, but it’s great regardless.

Women in Film is somewhat interesting if you like soft focus. Though, they really missed a trick not naming it ‘girls on film’ with a duran duran accompaniment instead of the violin.

Some free UK hip hop courtesy of Baron Samedi in the form of ‘Ripping Yarns’, his album from last year which is now available to download here (rapidshare).

Mos Def in a film worth seeing shocker?!!?!! Perhaps.

I’ve not actually managed to find the time to watch this yet but Zeitgeist looks kinda interesting. I’m going to try to fit it in across a couple of days this week. You should too.

Top 10 Low Budget Music Videos is a bit hit and miss (I hate that OK GO treadmill shit) but the number 1 is bang on. Takes a while to see why they picked it but once it gets going… Genius!

I’ve signed up for ‘blog action day‘ and thus, will make a difference

And finally, this poster is mental. I’d like to go through it line by line and see if it really is what it says it is but alas, I’m not really that fussed.

Just a quick one to say that this new bit of software actually looks quite good. It’s basically a WYSIWYG coding type of thing which produces stuff that looks a bit similar to what you can do in Flash (or Director).

Straight from the beeb:

“Computer programming has been traditionally seen as something that is beyond most people - it’s only for a special group with technical expertise and experience,” said Professor Mitchel Resnick, one of the researchers at the Lifelong Kindergarten group at MIT.

“We have developed Scratch as a new type of programming language, which is much more accessible.”

It sounds okay and it looks okay too.. Frankly, anything that can introduce coding (in some form or another) to people gets the thumbs up from me. Not because I think that everyone should know how to code, but it would be nice if those people who are interested in it could start early. However, the thing that; “they don’t have to worry about the obscure punctuation and syntax common in most programming languages,” is potentially worrying because it slightly takes away from the actual nature of programming languages surely(?) Blah.. we’ll see in 15 years or so when the generation of ’scratch’ people come up with Web 5.0 or whatever it’ll be.

Generally though, looks good.

Alas, due to (presumably) a massive amount of traffic, I cant actually get on to the actual site just yet so details are still fairly sketchy for me.. Like, what can you do with these animations? What do they export as? etc etc.. Blah.. I’ll be popping back to give it another look.. As should you

Last week, archeologists in Rome reckon they stumbled on the location of Lupercale, the mythical(?) location where Romulus and Remus were suckled by a she-wolf before growing big and strong and founding what would end up as Rome (but could’ve been called Reme). You know the story. So do I.

(Just for good measure, here’s another picture of suckling babies. Disturbing.)

But what I never realised was that the Ancient Romans actually had a location where the cave was supposed to be. A cave which was deservedly revered by Romans who loved the whole she-wolf thing. A cave which was built over by Emperor Augustus’ palace when the Republic became the Empire. A cave which was then bizarrly forgotten about. A cave which has now been rediscoved underneath Augustus’ palace on the Palatine Hill. Yay for legends with a proven factual basis!

It’d be cool to look around it when they’ve finished excavating. Presuming of course that it’s accessible and doesn’t get closed for safety reasons before it even gets opened. We’ll see. I’m adding it to my list of things to see next time I’m in Rome.

http://www.edgeofexistence.org

That may well be the longest title I’ll ever use on this blog and while it’s almost certain to ruin the perfectly adhered to aesthetics of this site, it’s worth it.

The Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered (EDGE) program received a flurry of publicity last week thanks to various news stories about it, and I just wanted to add to the linkage. It’s implemented by the Zoological Society of London and, in their words:

The EDGE of Existence programme aims to conserve the world’s most Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered (EDGE) species by implementing the research and conservation actions needed to secure their future.

ZSL researchers will work closely with scientists from countries in which EDGE species occur. The programme also aims to train students from developing countries to monitor and protect threatened species.

On the website, you can find a list of 100 species which are on the verge of extinction and frankly, it’s an upsetting read. I genuinely just feel shit when reading stuff like this. It’s depressing that we (humans) can be so stupid. I mean, every case is a travesty, but it’s the ones which you see are being driven to extinction because of hunting etc which really make you question whether a worldwide plague of bird flu would be such a bad thing.. Humans are shit.

There’s a definite risk of me being hypocritical with this post.. Seeing as I probably don’t contribute to the cause as much as I could but does that really matter(?) Blah.. I’ll save that discussion for another day. Like I said up top, I just wanted to lend a link to this project. Go and read up about these astounding animals and do whatever you can to help.. even if it’s just spreading the word..

If they are lost there is nothing similar to them left on the planet. It would be a bit like the art world losing the Mona Lisa - they are simply irreplaceable.

I’ll leave you with the Bactrian Camel.

There are less than 1000 of these superb animals living in the wild. The area of the Gobi Desert in North China that they call home has been used for half a century as a nuclear testing site and yet they’ve still managed to survive.. They’ve even adapted to be able to drink salt water (making the Bactrian unique among the mammal world) and yet still their numbers are in decline. They’ve done all they can to adjust to humans taking away their habitat and it’s about time we made allowances for them. Goto http://www.wildcamels.com to read more..

it’s not bad looking is it. mobile phone, touch screen iPod and “a breakthrough Internet communications device with desktop-class email, web browsing, maps, and searching“.

whoa.

unlike what appears to be the vast majority of the world nowadays, i don’t actually own any Apple stuff. i’m not really fussed about any of the things going on at macworld. but i can’t deny the coolness of this, so i wont try. nor will i try to convey any exclusive news about it because it’s been done to death by now.. i just wanted to add: is this going to change the way we design webpages? if it proves to be half as popular as the iPod, then are really going to have to reconsider how webpages are laid out. it doesn’t look like it’ll require massive changes (it seems to run safari rather well) but you never know. i realise that mobile browsing etc has been around for a fair bit by now but let’s be honest, it’s not exactly ingrained into the public consciousness. whereas iPods are. so will the iPhone be too..? give it a year and we’ll find out. exciting stuff.