This holiday season's expected increase in online sales is likely to be accompanied by more incidents of bogus transactions.
By Staff and wire reports
Published December 1, 2003
"What we are seeing is about 3 to 4 percent of a retailer's bottom line is being consumed by fraud," said Trevor Healy, vice president of VeriSign payment services, according to the New York Times.
"Because of the rush, there will be less time for smaller merchants that do some or all of their own fraud screening, to do it well," said Tom Mahoney, founder of Merchant911.org, a fraud-prevention Web site.
The most common problems for merchants are people using credit card and other personal information stolen from Web sites, and claims that orders were not received.
RCA jukebox plays MP3s and video
RCA's new Lyra Audio/Video Jukebox at $399 isn't perfect, San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News' Mike Langberg writes, but it's the first credible product in what could be a very exciting new category: handheld hard-disc players that display video and photographs on top of providing music.
By now, almost everyone knows about portable hard-disc music players because of Apple Computer's very successful iPod. There's also the Nomad Jukebox line from Creative Labs and the new Dell Digital Jukebox, among others. These players run from $250 to $500, offer hard drives from 10 to 60 gigabytes, and feature small monochrome LCD screens for navigating through a collection of songs.
The Lyra AV Jukebox (www.rca.com) also known as the model RD2780, adds one more crucial ingredient: a 3.5-inch color LCD display replacing the small monochrome screen. Along with a beefed-up processor, this lets the Lyra store and play back up to 80 hours of video programming, or hold a mix of video, music and still pictures.
What's especially impressive is the price. At $399 with a 20-gigabyte hard drive, the Lyra AV Jukebox costs the same as Apple's 20-gigabyte audio-only iPod.
Yes, the iPod is the best-designed, slimmest and lightest portable hard-disc player, Langberg writes. Yes, the Lyra AV Jukebox is almost 50 percent heavier at 10.5 ounces. Yes, the Lyra AV jukebox's stated battery life is only four hours, half the iPod's.
But, Langberg writes, there's no denying the appeal of video; the Lyra AV jukebox is more like a pocket-size TV where iPod and the others are more like radios.
Transient Web troubles online research publishers
Some researchers have a problem. Often, the Web addresses linked to from their published works' footnotes and references disappear.
Dr. Robert Dellavalle and co-workers on the faculty of the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center saw it happening to their work. "Every time we checked, some were gone and others had moved," he told the Washington Post. After exploring the idea more thoroughly, Dellavalle published an article in Science magazine last month.
The team looked at hyperlinked footnotes for scientific articles in three major journals for 27 months after publication. As many as 13 percent of online citations were not available.
"It's a huge problem," said Brewster Kahle, of the Internet Archive (archive.org) in San Francisco. "The average lifespan of a Web page today is 100 days. This is no way to run a culture."
Web sites become unavailable for many reasons, including people moving on to other things or changing Web addresses.
Archive.org would welcome MP3.com content
The Internet's nonprofit library, Internet Archive (archive.org), could become home to the millions of music files that Vivendi said will be deleted now that it has sold the assets of MP3.com to CNET.
Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, told the United Kingdom's Register.com that he would be happy to have the collection.
"MP3.com's collection is 5 terabytes. No sweat. We've been adding 40 terabytes a month," he said.
The Web repository is funded by donations and government grants.
Cell phone sales could grow by 10 percent in 2004
Sales of cell phones continue to rebound and should increase by more than 10 percent next year, according to Finnish mobile phone giant Nokia Oyj.
That's good news to an industry that saw sales decline in 2001 and increase only slightly last year. Manufacturers such as industry leader Nokia have hinged their hopes for increased sales this year on new phones with cameras, color screens and built-in digital music and game players.
"In these past seven weeks, it really has been a well-developing market," Nokia chief executive Jorma Ollila said, adding that the industry could sell more than the estimated 460-million phones. "The mobile phone market has been strong. The industry demand has been healthy."
Nokia predicts the industry will increase handset sales by a 10 percent next year with more than 500-million phones shipped to retailers. That estimate is similar to estimates from other handset manufacturers, including No. 3 Samsung.
Tampa's Computer Mentors looks for donations
Computer Mentors in Tampa needs donations to provide 200 computers to underprivileged families for Christmas. A $100 donation to the nonprofit group, which works with inner city youth, will pay for one system. Donations of old PCs will be accepted, but they must be at least a 233-megahertz Pentium.
The PCs will run Windows 98 and include a modem and free Internet access. Families interested in applying to get a PC and donors can call the group at 813-236-1191, e-mail program director Ralph Smith at RSmith@computermentors.org or visit www.computermentors.org/sponsor.htm
Online baseball tickets a hit
Major League Baseball announced it sold 7.4-million tickets online at MLB.com, the league's official Web site, and the 30 individual sites operated by local clubs.
That number is a 90 percent increase from the 3.9-million tickets sold for the 2002 season, which was also nearly double the number sold for 2001.
"Online ticket sales already surpass the number of tickets sold by telephone or at ticket outlets," said Noah Garden, senior vice president of e-commerce for MLB Advanced Media LP.
