| LED Digest 2095: AOL & Yahoo Charging for Email? |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Reg. from a Trusted Leader pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. February 13, 2006 Issue #2095 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ======= NEW ===================== --== AOL & Yahoo to Charge for Email? ==-- ~ Red Charie "I feel this is a blatant effort to wring yet more money out of the internet users..." --== AOL, Goodmail & the Telcos ==-- ~ Ronni Rhodes "Is the 'free' internet going to disappear?" ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Outsourcing ==-- ~ C. Currey "...any 'savings' are short term for the bean- counters' reports and not the final bottom line." ~ Peter D'Aprix "Communicating certainly seems to be at the heart of outsourcing problems..." --== Shopping Cart Abandonment ==-- ~ Jay C. Everson "There are a number of reasons why I abandon shopping carts..." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Banking Horror Stories ==-- ~ Nancy Cardinali --== Phish Spam ==-- ~ James Miller ~ Wes Hopper =========== NEW ================================== From: Reg Charie Subject: AOL and Yahoo planning to charge for email. AOL, Yahoo Planning Postage Charges for Email http://snipurl.com/mar2 [consumeraffairs.com] -------------------------- "AOL and Yahoo are planning to begin charging what amounts to postage for those sending multiple email messages to their subscribers. They're positioning it as an anti-spam measure, but it will also have hamper distribution of free information by small and non-profit publishers. AOL and Yahoo say the charge will amount to a penny or less per email." -------------------------- While it is true that this is a small amount, look what it would mean to lists like this LED Digest if other ISPs follow suit. Assuming a membership of 75,000 being emailed their LED Digest "fix" 5 times a week, this would cost the list owners $195000 a year at a penny a pop. Even taking their low ball suggestion of .25 of a cent per would still be MUCH more than the list owners could afford. Man, those pennies really add up. I feel this is a blatant effort to wring yet more money out of the internet users, and if AOL and Yahoo get their foot in the door, other suppliers are certain to follow suit. What can you do? First, if you use either (or both) services, write to or phone AOL: http://snipurl.com/mhwq [corp.aol.com] For Yahoo (Go to Yahoo Mail, then to Mail Help, then, at the bottom, to 'Contact Yahoo Mail Customer Care') and complain. This is important - your complaints might be the only thing that might persuade these companies to change their mind. However, if you don't complain, other email services will be encouraged to do the same thing. Red Charie www.dotcom-productions.com/cms -------- new post - related topic --------- From: Ronni Rhodes Subject: AOL, Goodmail & the Telcos Let's cut to the chase, folks.:-) What are the ramifications going to be if charging for "superior" access to e-mail boxes happens? Or, for that matter, having to pay for "superior" access to broadband pipes? Is the "free" internet going to disappear? Warm regards, Ronni Rhodes Ignite Your Site with Sound and Motion! http://www.wbcimaging.com ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: C. Currey Subject: Outsourcing - do not believe the hype I have been working with offshore programmers mainly from India for almost 10 years and I can tell you that IMO any 'savings' are short term for the bean-counters' reports and not the final bottom line. While pleasant and courteous in general the results from the programmers are not high. Typically the face contacts are experienced, good and well-versed, but from there it goes downhill hard and fast. The total ROI (return on investment) IMO is not worth it. E.g. there is a very definite language barrier, a very definite cultural difference, the programmers that one gets who actually do the coding are not that experienced nor good, the code that I have seen is quick and dirty, the code is practically devoid of in-line comments, the design has had to be done to such fine detail one may as well have had the designer do the coding themselves, the normal frustration of long distance and different time zones loses much in the final product, the costs of manager travel, extra hours and phone costs were tracked elsewhere although they are the costs of offshoring. Just to give you one simple example, I have seen a project where the colleagues offshore QA'd everything as complete and good. However, it turned out that because of legal requirements 'real' signatures from someone in person were necessary so all the QA had to be redone onshore. The bean-counters charged all QA costs including those done offshore to onshore costs. I have worked as a programmer in many different countries and on multiple projects with offshore programmers both in the U.S. and elsewhere. IMO it is a bad deal for all involved, including the offshores who are good, but get paid low wages. The only beneficiaries that I see are the large corporations who are still living off experienced programmers to manage and mentor the offshores, but that will start changing as these programmers either retire or move to other professions because of wage dumping. Regards, C. Currey ------- new post - same topic ------ From: Peter D'Aprix Subject: Outsourcing - Robert Bass > I spent a year in China teaching C++ to college > students. Although C++ is a fairly straight forward > programming language if you are fluent in English, > it becomes ridiculous to the Chinese due to the > language / culture barriers. - Robert Bass, LED 2094 Dear Adam Having revisited this thread (for which I am most grateful for the input to date and I believe it has been a topic in the past) I would like to inject a bit more at this point. Robert Bass has introduced a fascinating poste which is way over my head as I am not a programmer. I passed it on to my brother in Australia who has also used programmers from various countries and was interested in his comments and thought perhaps those readers of LED who understand this higher level of programming conversation might agree or take issue with. As follows: From Michael D'Aprix: ------------------------ "I am not convinced that Robert Bass is entirely correct in his position. If what he says was true, then all science and engineering would face the same problem. I have worked with many developers from many nations and some of the neatest, fastest and cleanest code emanated from developers for whom English was most definitely their 2nd language. "There are some very specific constructural methods for documenting requirements in Object Oriented languages know as "Use Cases" that use a very specific set of terms known as UML (unified modeling language)... all of which is purpose-built to overcome the ambiguities of using conversational language to describe a requirement... which is always fraught with miscommunication. (google the "agile manifesto" and follow the theme from there) "The norm when teaching advanced languages like C++ commands such as "do while" is to translate back to earlier generation languages such as Cobol, Fortran, Basic or even Assembler (for the true purists!) to explain their meaning in much more specific engineering terms... not plain English which tends to confuse the issue badly. "From what he says in his poste, I suspect Robert may be a better linguist than he is a programmer but perhaps he did not want to overburden the poste with too large a development of the theme which could become an overly large one if fully explored." ------------------------ We have certainly heard success stories over the last few days with outsourcing and the recounting of problems involved as well. Communicating certainly seems to be at the heart of outsourcing problems so far rather than programming competence. Knowing the slang that we Americans often use in place of the English language, I wonder how much of the problem lies at our own doorsteps. I hope we can hear more experiences from other countries including programmers in India and China. Peter D'Aprix Visual Communications http://peterdaprix.com ------- new post - new topic ------ From: Jay C. Everson Subject: Cart abandonment Wow, I just checked and discovered that I subscribed on Feb. 8 1998 and this is my first attempt at posting. I, all of a sudden, feel very selfish and would like to thank everyone who actively participates in the discussions... Anyway, I shop almost exclusively online. There are a number of reasons I abandon shopping carts, most of them I have seen mentioned already. However, the number one reason I abandon shopping carts is not one that can be fixed by any strategy that I can think of. In reality, 90% of the time it's because I've added numerous items (sometimes in an attempt to get free shipping) and discovered that what they add up to is far more than I'm willing to pay at the time. It has nothing to do with hidden charges; it's the unexpected sum at the end. You could argue that displaying the cart total every time something is added will prevent that, but honestly it doesn't. Once confronted with the astonishing final amount, I find it too difficult to choose what to remove so I move on, figuring to comeback on another day when I'm in a different mood. I'm not sure how common or uncommon that is. In fact I'm not even sure it helps anyone. But, "it is what it is" Jay C. Everson http://www.all-offroad.com "If you're falling off a cliff, try to fly. It can't hurt." ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Nancy Cardinali Subject: Banking Horror Stories How about this for worries in a banking system: I recently opened a business account at Bank of America. During the process the manager had to get on line to set up my password. Earlier, she had tilted her monitor so I could see it. When I saw Netscape 3.x flash page I nearly screamed! I could not believe that was the browser they were using! I'm no expert on these things but seems to me it would be REAL easy to track (hack) transactions on that level browser. When I asked her about this she shrugged and said very softly, "You wouldn't believe..." At this point my account must remain in their clutches (long story) but I would think long and hard before I would open any other services with them or recommend them. Of course, BofA doesn't have a great reputation to begin with. Any other bank horror stories? Nancy Cardinali ------- new post - new topic ------ From: James Miller Subject: Phish spam > The banks are not the target, the general public > is the target. The larger banks are the ones used > by the phishers simply because they increase > the odds that someone would respond. - Scott Marino, LED 2094 I believe that the number of phishing e-mails for a particular bank does reflect that bank's security, in that the better the security the less likely a customer is to be fooled. Remember, by security I would include the publicity and information that banks send to customers to warn of on-line fraud. Take Nationwide, which is quite a large UK bank, where I have had contact with the security department. Scams were tried on this bank a couple of years ago and I have been told that they were not very successful. I have not seen one since. If I was a scammer, I wouldn't bother if I didn't get any money. Scams were also tried on most other UK banks. Again nothing at all in the last year or so! So as Barclays and Halifax get nearly all of the e-mails, I am pretty sure that these are the only banks where the scammers have been successful. Intriguingly, I believe that these scam e-mails are one group of fraudsters. Why for instance, do Barclays stop and then Halifax start? And vice-versa! I'm analysing some of the e-mails in detail to see if I can find more evidence of one group. Now if it is one group, why aren't the banks doing more to stop it? As I have said before, we need a law which would make each bank show how much they lose to fraud each year and to what methods. This would mean they had to get it right, as they wouldn't want to see business disappear. James Miller Daisy Analysis www.daisy.co.uk -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Wes Hopper Subject: Phish spam My bank, Bank of America, has recently started 2-step authentication for online banking. In this process, I only enter my user name on the BofA page. This takes me to a second page where 2 things can happen - if the bank recognized my IP, I get a place for my password, along with a unique image that I selected when I signed up. If I don't see my image, I don't proceed. If the bank does not recognize my IP, I get a random choice of 1 of several security questions that I also selected at signup. Upon passing that test, I go to the image / password page. This process both authenticates me, and authenticates the web site. It does require the consumer to think, though, so it's not perfect. I've never understood why so many people fall for these lame emails. Wes Hopper http://www.createsuccessseminars.com ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2006 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong." - Richard Buckminster Fuller |
