The reason eBay is no good for buyers

Well actually eBay the worlds largest tat bazzar is actually no good for sellers either but for buyers the saying buyer beware has never been more accurate.

Take for example the regular scams that appear. Okay some of them are not exactly scams but they are dubious. It would be easy for eBay to stamp them out but they get fees from the sale so they don’t really care if it’s good for the purchaser or if they get ripped off.

Take for example the idea of selling the URL for a website – crazy you think right? Well no. TV Catch Up is a website that allows you to watch UK freeview on the web or indeed a specially formatted version for the iPhone. Now I’ve been using it for ages and it’s really rather cool.

Now some wag has decided to take screen grabs of this running on their iPhone and sell this idea on eBay.

So for 99p or more you can pay to be sent the URL to a freely accessible website. More importantly you can sell the URL for a website you don’t own or work for or have any affiliation with. Money for old rope? I think so!

Feel free to search on eBay and pay to watch freeview on your iPhone but it will be cheaper and easier to do a search online or simply type in http://tvcatchup.com/ to your browser.

On another related note eBay should also ban people from posting in the wrong category. If I narrow my search by phone I don’t want to see adverts for ‘software’ or accessories, I want to see phones…

Why Grindr has become boring…

Grindr became successful in London and the UK mainly because of some fantastic word of mouth advertising from Stephen Fry. Also because people ‘advertised’ their app on other networks and websites.

Now however Grindr is successful and they forbid ‘advertising’ any other apps or services within your profile. Their now frankly ludicrously long list of things they prohibit at http://grindr.com/guidelines/ is getting out of control. It might simply be easier to publish a list of things you are allowed to do. I think it will be a much shorter list.

“No advertising of services, goods, events, websites or apps.” which means that you can no longer say ping me in your Grindr profile for fear of being wiped for ‘advertising’ an instant messaging app on iPhone called… Ping!

“A link to your Facebook profile is allowed in the Facebook field. MySpace, Twitter and YouTube links are allowed in the About field; these links cannot contain advertising or pornography or they will be removed. No other web link of any kind will be allowed in any of the profile fields.”

Grindr you are successful because people want to use your service – they tend to use other services too – don’t be naive and think that preventing people mentioning other URLs or services means they won’t use them – it just means you are likely to get excluded from the list that people advertise on other site. I used to link to my blog as the about field is quite limited but clearly you frown upon that. The web is all about links and sharing please don’t stifle that. Plus it would be nice to know if you plan to ‘support’ other social networks soon or not. What’s wrong with Orkut or last.fm?

So Grindr thanks – it’s was fun while it lasted, let me know when you are planning to be a little more open…

iPhone 4 price comparison

Okay so finally Vodafone have released pricing for the UK iPhone 4 release. So that means Orange and o2 can be compared with the tariffs for Vodafone now. Three haven’t yet released their pricing strategy for the iPhone but given their 3G network coverage they shoudl be one to watch.

Usual disclaimers about checking pricing is correct before purchasing etc. Prices correct at time of publishing etc etc…
I’ve only compared the lowest two tariffs for each as to be honest I’m not interested in the more expensive tariffs as I hardly use my call or text allowance as it is.

iPhone comparison

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