Nope, I needed to send some ID and utility bills. The process was fairly simple, I took a photo of my phone bill, my AmEx report and both sides of my National ID. In the Paypal documentation they say a phone bill is not ok, but since my apartment is not on my name I don’t pay bills per se. Nevertheless, I sent these all off.

After some mucking about (the form was not the best), Paypal accepted these documents and this, as a lot of government and verification processes puzzles me a bit. I mean I could’ve Photoshopped all that right? Unless they actually checked with my government and bank and carrier service, which I’m sure they didn’t, they replied in like 2 days, they can’t be really sure.

My reasoning is that someone like me would have to go to more trouble to prove his identity and location truthfully, than a money launderer would have to go to to forge this stuff. If I didn’t have a camera I would’ve had to spend about $30 to photocopy, print, scan and so on. A money launderer may have to pay $1,000 for a good forgery, but hey, he has a printing press right, money comes easily.

The point is, that all I proved is that I have an internet connection and probably an ID. Is this a process that is supposed to deter people on the wrong side of the law? I doubt if it does, it did deter me though, my account was even frozen for a while!

Paypal anti-laundering safety regulations

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What are the Adobe AIR apps that you couldn’t live without?  Tell us in the comments!

DeskTube - DeskTube lets you get complete control over YouTube on your desktop. Search, watch, comment, get embed codes, upload your own videos and even download the videos you are currently watching as MOV files.

Dorame - Dorame doesn’t add much to the Pandora listening experience, but it does give you the freedom of being outside of your browser and changing up the appearance of the service.

EarthBrowser - EarthBrowser gives you live updates of clouds, earthquakes, the weather, satellite overlays, volcanoes, fires and a whole lot more.

Feedalizr - Many people have downloaded service specific apps like TweetDeck, Twhirl and so on, but Feedalizr rolls several social tools into one app.  You can work with Facebook, Flickr, FriendFeed, Jaiku, Twitter and VideoVideo all from this one handy interface.

Google Analytics - While most people love looking at statistics about their websites, Google Analytics can be a bit slow at times for those webmasters that use their tools.  This Adobe AIR app gives you the ability to open reports in multiple tabs for easier switching and allows you to change date ranges faster.

MiniTask - A desktop tool for creating detailed to-do lists that you can separate out by categories, copy the items out to other programs, set reminders, print out task sheets and more.

Posty - Get all of your FriendFeed. Identi.ca, Jaiku, Pownce, Tumblr and Twitter updates in one handy application with built-in URL shortening, spell checking, message search and more.

TweetDeck - While it seems that apps only work with one social site are becoming passe, TweetDeck gives you so much control over how you see your Tweets, it is well worth it.  Your incoming messages are already split into columns for timeline, replies and direct messages, and then you can build custom columns for things such as work, friends and more.

Twhirl - The odds are fairly high that this is the application you installed Adobe Air for in the first place, but that doesn’t exclude it from the list in case it wasn’t.  Probably the most popular of the Twitter clients, Twhirl also supports interactions with multiple accounts for FriendFeed, laconi.ca, seesmic and Twitter.

Yammer - Yammer, the private corporate microblogging service, gets a desktop client that runs on the Adobe AIR platform, allowing you to use all the features of the service freed from your browser.

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Although much is said about the economic conditions in the US, it seems that UK might be even worst off as British media companies could cut tens of thousands of jobs in the coming years due to economic turmoil. According to a Reuters report half of all UK media jobs will become history by 2013:

Claire Enders, founder of independent consultancy group Enders Analysis, told Reuters she expected about half of all UK media jobs to go by 2013 under current economic conditions.

“We calculated the total jobs in the media in the UK at about 400,000, that includes newspapers, radio, TV, production companies, advertising and so on, at the end of 2007.

“Between the beginning of 2008 and 2013 we’re expecting half of those jobs to go. The big employers are the regional press, magazines, local advertising sales. Real numbers are in print.”

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Huffington Post has raised $25 million from Oak Investment Partners at a valuation of “south of $100 million,” according to a BoomTown source. Huffington Post is projecting itself as the Internet Newspaper and has apparently been able to live up to the hype by attracting huge readership, at a time when print based magazines and news papers are absolutely struggling. Press Release follows:

The Huffington Post Announces $25 Million In Funding From Oak Investment Partners

New York, NY (December 1, 2008)–The Huffington Post, a leading news and opinion site, today announced that it has secured $25 million in funding from Oak Investment Partners, a venture capital firm based in Palo Alto, California. The Huffington Post (”HuffPost”) will use the proceeds to invest in the growth of the company and for select and focused acquisitions. The company said it would invest in its technology and infrastructure, increase its in-house advertising capabilities, and continue to expand its content offerings–including a new investigative journalism initiative and a rollout of local versions of The Huffington Post in select cities. The announcement was made by Arianna Huffington and Kenneth Lerer, co-founders of The Huffington Post.

“This commitment from Oak Investment Partners will allow us to accelerate our growth, with more verticals, more video, more citizen journalism initiatives, more cities for our local editions, and a fund for investigative journalism,” said Arianna Huffington. “We are particularly excited to have Fred Harman of Oak join our board; his deep knowledge of the new media landscape will help us to take HuffPost to the next level.”

Said Kenneth Lerer: “We are thrilled to bring on board a partner like Oak to work with Softbank Capital and Greycroft [Partners] as we move forward. Since launching the site three and half years ago, the company has built a strong brand and an audience of millions who rely on the site for its mix of smart news and opinion. The additional capital from Oak will enable us to go full-steam ahead with operations and select acquisitions.”

Fred Harman, general partner at Oak Investment Partners, said, “Much of the news media business needs to be reassembled online around an ad-supported model and the timetable for this has been accelerated, not slowed, by this economic down cycle. We believe that The Huffington Post has built a platform and business model to be among the leaders in aggregating this audience online. Our financing will provide the resources necessary to scale the company, both organically as well as through acquisitions of additional talent and new media companies. We are also very excited to have the opportunity to back Arianna, Betsy, and the company’s strong entrepreneurial team.”

Betsy Morgan, CEO of The Huffington Post, said, “With funding from Oak, The Huffington Post is perfectly positioned to build on its incredible growth. Oak brings to the table a team with enormous experience and insight, and we look forward to working with them to seize the opportunities ahead of us.”

The Series C financing round comes as The Huffington Post continues to experience significant growth following the expansion of the site in 2007, when HuffPost began rolling out a variety of new sections, including entertainment, politics, media, living, style and green. The site also started its first local version, HuffPost Chicago. This year, The Huffington Post received widespread attention for its original reporting on the 2008 presidential race, including the coverage provided by its OffTheBus team of citizen journalists. HuffPost currently has 46 employees.

Harman joins The Huffington Post board of directors, whose members include: Eric Hippeau, Managing Partner of Softbank Capital, Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer and Betsy Morgan.

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Whatever the case is, Facebook Connect has continued to rollout on a number of sites over the past month and that trend will continue. Almost a month ago Facebook announced that they would begin accepting site submissions. Unfortunately since then we have had few updates on the status of site submissions and what developers’ experience had been.

So far none of the sites mentioned in the New York Times article appear to have live versions of Facebook Connect. Mike Arrington is saying that yesterday was the day that Facebook began making their full court press on the media but the only indication we’ve seen of that is the New York Times article. Congrats to Facebook on a large print article in the New York Times, I’m sure it’s well deserved!

One interesting tidbit coming out of Arrington’s article is that Twitter is going to hold off on MySpace Data Portability integration until they have rolled out their Facebook Connect support. I’m not sure what additional benefits their will be over the existing Twitter Facebook application. It’s clear that the battle for major partners is ramping up and so far the clear winner is Facebook as no large partners have publicly rolled out their implementation of MySpace’s previously announced Data Portability service.

If most partners decide to use Facebook Connect over MySpace’s service, Google’s Friend Connect service is going to face an uphill battle expanding its reach. When Facebook rolled out their platform last year, they became the default social platform for developers. That trend looks like it will continue as social networks race to expand their identity management service to the rest of the web.

Welcome to the WrapUp by CyberNet. This is a collection of news stories, downloads, and tips that we have collected over the last few days, but never got around to writing about. Don’t forget to send in your own tips, or just leave a comment on this page if you think you’ve got something we should include.

–News–

I Want Sandy & Stikkit Close
Two popular online productivity applications, I Want Sandy and Stikkit, have announced that they will be shutting down soon. Both services are run by the same company and recently got acquired by Twitter. It was hinted that some of the technology would be integrated into Twitter later on.

Google Admits to Breaking App Store Terms
After a little searching around a group of individuals managed to find out that Google had used undocumented API’s in their iPhone application, which is against Apple’s SDK rules. There’s been no word from Apple yet regarding whether Google will have to change how their program works.

eBay’s Traffic Plummeting
According to some data eBay’s traffic in the U.S. has been sharply dropping. In October 2007 they were receiving 13.5 million unique visitors, but in October 2008 they received just 9.1 million unique visitors. And it continues to drop from one month to another. Will eBay be able to come back?

Apple Finally Got Safari Right on the iPhone
Looks like I’m not the only one noticing a dramatically improved Safari browser on the iPhone 2.2 firmware. I used to see Safari crashes several times each day, but haven’t had a single hiccup since the iPhone 2.2 firmware update. Yay!

Google Maps Updated
Google has updated their maps service with a refreshed interface, and spruced up the Street View a bit. Now when using Street View the imagery will take up the entire map area on the screen instead of being contained in a bubble. This is a dramatic improvement for anyone that uses the Street View regularly.

G1 Gets Visual Voicemail and Opera Mini
The T-Mobile G1 powered by Google’s Android operating system now has two long awaited apps: visual voicemail and Opera Mini. The only downside is that the visual voicemail service is run by a third-party, but it is still free.

Watch Out for the New Digsby Installer
I’ve been a huge fan of the Digsby instant messenger client ever since it became available, and have managed to get dozens of friends, family, and co-workers using their software. Now, however, they are doing something I’m not all that fond of… asking users to install toolbars and other things during installation. I’ll continue to recommend their software, but I’ll be sure to warn people about the things it will try to install.

–Tips, Tutorials, and Reviews–

Lunascape Browser Uses 3 Rendering Engines
Lunascape is a new browser available for Windows that lets you view websites using the Trident (Internet Explorer), Gecko (Firefox), or WebKit (Safari/Google Chrome) rendering engines. You get to pick and choose which rendering engine you want to use!

Zenbe Brings All Communication Into One Place
Zenbe is truly on the bleeding edge of email and communication innovation. Their email client will let you do things like manage tasks, sort through your calendar, post to Twitter, view Facebook updates, and much more from one central interface.

Share a Printer over the Internet
There have been times where I’ve wanted to print something when I’ve been away from my home. This freeware app will let you do just that by using your Internet connection to share your printer.

–Downloads–

• 7-Zip 4.61 ^Beta [Mirror]
• BurnAware Free 2.1.7 [Mirror]
• CCleaner 2.14.750 [Mirror]
• Deluge 1.0.5 [Mirror]
• Digsby Build 38 ^Beta [Mirror]
• FeedDemon 2.8.0.7 ^Beta [Mirror]
• FileZilla 3.1.6 [Mirror]
• Flock 2.0.2 [Mirror]
• Google Chrome 0.4.154.25 ^Beta [Mirror]
• HandBrake 0.9.3 [Mirror]
• ICQ 6.5.102 [Mirror]
• MediaCoder 0.6.2.4215 [Mirror]
• PeaZip 2.4.1 [Mirror]
• Recuva 1.21.373 [Mirror]
• Trillian 3.1.12 [Mirror]
• uTorrent 0.9 ^Beta
• uTorrent 1.9.13485 ^Alpha

Copyright © 2008 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox
WrapUp: I Want Sandy Closes, Share a Printer Over the Internet, and More

Related Posts:

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According to AllThingsD, this puts the valuation for The Huffington Post at 100 million dollars. It’s a big valuation, and the 25 million dollar round is bigger than the previously rumored 15 million. A question that inevitably still pops up after any news such as this is: “How does this make sense? It’s just a blog!” I, however, don’t see why not.

I’ve checked out Huffington Post - which I rarely normally do as I’m not interested in politics - and I don’t see any crucial differences between this site, and any big media publication on the web. They’ve got news, reports, features, they seem to be timely and thorough, and they produce a lot of content. On the internet, that’s pretty much all that matters: whether you’ve got a team of 100 people behind the site or it’s just a one man gig, all your readers care about is the content.

The only difference between a blog and any other media publication is that blogs scale very well. Traditionally, if you want to start a newspaper, you need editors, journalists, graphic designers, you need money for print, you need marketing, and a zillion other things just to start off. And it all costs a lot of money.

On a blog, starting out is not only cheap: it’s free. You just start writing. If you’re good, then you get audience, and you can add all those things mentioned above as you go along. However, this doesn’t at all mean that a blog cannot be bigger than the New York Times: there’s absolutely no reason why it couldn’t. And one day, it’ll happen. In fact, blogs usually understand the new media better than old giants. Valuating The Huffington Post at $100 million may be brave, but it’s definitely not insane; we’ll see if this particular bet pays off.

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eBay Companies See Black Friday Shoppers Clicking for Great Deals

Saturday, November 29th, 2008

Nintendo Wii Console is The Most Popular Product on eBay

Nov. 29, 2008, SAN JOSE, Calif. - Black Friday saw a buzz of shopping activity, as consumers took to their computers to snap up hot holiday gifts. eBay Inc. (Nasdaq: EBAY) companies, including PayPal and Shopping.com, all saw consumers going online for great deals. The companies reported key online shopping trends, popular categories and hot gifts.

'Results from Black Friday show that shoppers continue to turn to the Web for their holiday shopping needs, especially for consumer electronics,' said Jim 'Griff' Griffith, eBay Marketplace Expert. 'Online shopping is convenient and allows consumers to find the best values and vast selection. Shoppers can visit eBay and Shopping.com to purchase all of their holiday items at unbeatable prices, and can pay quickly and securely with PayPal.'

Shoppers are Clicking for Deals
With money tighter than ever, shoppers are hitting the Web to find the best values for their hard-earned cash. A recent Nielsen study found that 78 percent of adult online users made a purchase on the Web in the past six months. Additionally, a recent survey conducted by Survey.com on behalf of eBay found that getting 'great deals' was the most important criteria for shoppers when choosing where to shop online this holiday season.

Shoppers are taking advantage of the great deals on eBay to find must-have gifts. Black Friday online shoppers took advantage of eBay's great deals, including the Daily Deal, $1 Holiday Doorbusters, Bid from $1 and Microsoft Live Search cashback. Consumers also turned to Shopping.com for their holiday shopping needs, searching most often for Nintendo Wii Fit and Nintendo Wii.

Yes, this is a consumer-facing release, designed to lure shoppers with promises of great deals. But we have to believe that, if there was some good news to print about Black Friday sales, eBay would have printed it.

(PayPal sales, meanwhile, jumped an impressive 26% year-over-year, and eBay was quick to report that.)

See Also: eBay's Traffic Collapsing