Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Save time with an upload manager

Photographs selling their pictures on Micro Stock websites always have to cope with a cumbersome task: tagging their pictures and uplaoding them. The easier way si to use softwares like Photoshop to tag pictures and an ftp manager to upload them. But it still remains the boring part of the job. Creation is fun administration is not. Moreover moderation is sometimes erratic and a good picture that would sell might get rejected and the tagging and uploading time might just be a waste of time.

One software can rationalize those operations:prostock master. It manages very easily tagging and uploading on major microstock sites (8 of them so far). And because it uses Java it is Multi platform.

I wonder what will be the consequences if this kind of software get massively used. The market might be reshaped. Anyway this high growth market might still surprise us in many ways…

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McDonald’s, Virgin Mobile, Part of Sweeps Scam, AG Warns

Jun 26, 2007 6:05 AM, PROMO Xtra, By Patricia Odell

The Nebraska Attorney General last week warned consumers about a fraudulent sweepstakes that appears to be sponsored by major companies including Virgin Mobile USA and McDonald’s.

AG Jon Bruning called the mailing “a new type of sweepstakes fraud that lists false sponsorships to deceive consumers into participating.”

In addition to McDonald’s and Virgin Mobile, the notices, which state that consumers have won tens of thousands of dollars, also appeared to be sponsored by Wal-Mart, Pizza Hut, Sears, Budget Rent-A-Car and Gap, the AG said.

However, an inquiry by the AG’s consumer protection division found that these businesses were not involved in the promotion, Bruning said.

The letter tells consumers that they must pay a “clearance fee” to receive the prize because the award money is bonded. A check from one of the “sponsors” is enclosed in the letter to cover the costs of the clearance fee. The consumer is instructed to deposit the check and send the money back to the sweepstakes organizers.

“The check is fraudulent, and consumers lose the money they send,” Bruning said in a statement.

One “sponsor” learned that checks for up to $4,720 were being written from one of its bank accounts and immediately closed it, Bruning said.

“If it seems too good to be true, it probably is,” he said. “Nebraskans work too hard for their money to lose it in a scam. Being skeptical and researching an opportunity is the best way to avoid falling victim.”

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Monday, June 25, 2007

Intel's Core 2 Duo E6750 revealed, benchmarked

Intel's taken the wraps off of one of the four E6x50-series Core 2 Duo processors it first announced earlier this year, which are primarily notable for their new 1333 MHz front-side buses. The one getting all the attention at the moment is the next to top-end E6750, which clocks in at 2.66 GHz and is set to run $183 when it lands July 22nd. Coinciding with Intel's loosening of secrecy, the folks at The Tech Report got their hands on the processor to put it through their usual range of tests finding, not surprisingly, that the processor does indeed offer some modest performance gains over the previous E6700. The real gains, however, seem to be reserved for those willing to go the overclocking route, with Tech Report finding that they were able to push the processor all the way to 3.64GHz, making it the fastest dual-core processor they've seen to date. Read - DailyTech, "Intel Unveils Core 2 Duo E6750 Performance" Read - Tech Report review

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front page of AOL Search for "cards"

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Xerox Enters Search Market

xerox.jpgXerox announced its entry into the search market this week with FactSpotter, document search software that is claimed to go beyond conventional keyword search.

FactSpotter is text mining software that combines a linguistic engine that allows users to make queries in everyday language. FactSpotter looks for the keywords contained in a query along with the context those words have.

According to Xerox, FactSpotter is capable of combing through almost any document regardless of the language, location, format or type; take advantage of the way humans think, speak and ask questions; and discriminate the results highlighting just a handful of relevant answers instead of returning thousands of unrelated responses.

Frédérique Segond, manager of parsing and semantics research at XRCE said that the tool is more accurate because it delves into documents, extracting the concepts and the relationships among them. “By understanding the context, it returns the right information to the searcher, and it even highlights the exact location of the answer within the document”.

Whilst it sounds appealing, FactSpotter will not be coming to a browser near anyone, anytime shortly. Xerox plans to launch FactSpotter next year as part of the paid Xerox Litigation Service platform and has no plans for a wider or public release. Here’s betting that a Steve Jobs character comes along and steals the concept and turns into the next Google; history often does repeat itself.

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