.: On Tokyo Time :.

It finally started snowing up in Tahoe! Not much/enough but it’s a start.

I remember finding snow depth information on Yahoo! Weather last year but can’t find it today.

However they do have snow alerts. I selected Northern California where you can pick up to 10 resorts. You can also specify the minimum snowfall to trigger the alert, I chose 5 inches. 3 delivery methods are available: Email, mobile phone and Yahoo! Messenger. No RSS. I picked email (will have to set up a filter I guess).

You can manage your alerts (turn on/off, edit, remove) and there are tons of other alerts available.

I also found Ski Bonk which overlays snow information over a map of the area. Very nice.

I’m ready for the snow! Bring it on!

I have received a flood of emails today all replying to the entire mailing list with messages from

Please remove me from your list.

to

Hey…take me off too and everyone please stop copying me with any of this…thanks…not sure at all how I got into the mix…

Someone got really desparate

STOP STOP STOP

and someone else seemed seriously confused

I gave you my information so I could send you my empty ink cartridges, and I even sent an empty in a few weeks ago. My inbox is full of these Ginko Balls messages, and I think the originator was 3 ring ranch. Please remove my information from your files. I regret that I signed up with you in my desire to help animals. My contributions in the future will go elsewhere.

I got quite a laugh out of it. Every message asking to stop was actually part of the problem and made it worse. I was waiting for the mail server to collapse but it kept up just fine.

I set up a filter (move to Trash) once I realized where this is heading. Unfortunately someone started a new thread with a different subject asking everyone to stop. And later a third thread. Note to self: Filter on recipient, not subject!

Anyway, the admin finally realized what was going on and stopped the madness. Also, he sent out an email explaining what happened. However I do not quite buy the story because I do not remember signing up for this list at all. I searched my email archive and couldn’t find a reference either. And I never send empty ink cartridges anywhere!

But the original message wasn’t spam either as far as I can tell. Just something about Ginko balls. Anyone know what that is?

This story makes you wonder though if this is how people are trying to fight spam…

Window Live Mail exposes a button to remove yourself from a mailing list (as seen in the Channel 9 video). This makes a lot of sense and is based on the mail headers. They were present in every single message:

List-Post: <mailto:news@threeringranch.org>
List-Help: <mailto:news-help@threeringranch.org>
List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:news-unsubscribe@threeringranch.org>
List-Subscribe: <mailto:news-subscribe@threeringranch.org>

It would be great if every mail program exposed this. Although spammers would figure this out and probably abuse it.

Pretty bad day for someone in Hawaii. Go to bed. Tomorrow is going to be a better day.

One last hint: Your last email was sent to a list again (new name, same story though). BCC the list next time instead of asking people not to reply to the list.

Update 11/28/06: The inevitable happened! About 10 people replied to the entire list thanking for the apology email! I’m still laughing! They were all pretty positive along the lines of:

I just wanted to say please keep me ON the list.

It’s a shame some people haven’t learned the art of patience & Internet 101.

But not everyone appreciated all the replies to the apology:

I didnt mind the first emails, accidents happen and it’s no biggie to me. But could everyone please stop replying to the appology email, or if so please reply personally. I am getting all of those too and it does get a little irritating after a while.

Lesson to be learned: BCC is good!

P.S. I still have no clue how I ended up on this list…

Update 12/02/06: I just received their December newsletter including a 2.7 MB pdf attachment. Needless to say that I unsubscribed. I still don’t know how I ended up on that list though.

Read/Write Web has become one of my favorite blogs with insightful posts. Most recent example:

Seeking Alpha also notes that many of the fastest-growing websites are localized Google properties - showing two clear trends, the importance of Google and the internationalization of the Web. The former gets plenty of press and blog coverage, the latter less so. But both are of equal importance in my view.

The second point is the essential one for this post!

The majority of the future Internet growth comes from outside the U.S. (and Europe for that matter). Succeeding means succeeding globally. The emerging markets out there are evolving quickly. Act now before someone else becomes the leader.

Localization can be tricky but is often essential to succeed in a local market. That’s one of the reasons local competitors can survive next to the global players.

Interestingly enough YouTube doesn’t have a localized version and is still very successful globally.

I’ve seen a trend here in the U.S. (a slow evolution, can’t tell when it started): More and more people start calling ‘cell phones’ ‘mobile phones’. Is this the States catching up with the rest of the world? Or is this limited to the Silicon Valley?

In related news: I accessed Yahoo! Mail on my RAZR for the first time (actually twice this weekend). I was stuck somewhere and had to look up some information. Useful although a little slow (I was using the browser). We still have a long way to go with the mobile phones. I know that mobile applications are going to be big (ask the kids) but don’t quite get it yet myself…

It is still early days for mobile applications. And the market is very complicated with the variety of phones and providers. I hope Yahoo! keeps investing in this field even if the returns are small right now. It will be really hard to enter the market later.

I spent some time tonight updating my LinkedIn Network, something that I’ve been putting off for far too long. While doing this I realized two things:

• A ton of people are on LinkedIn
• I don’t remember using LinkedIn for anything other than connecting to people I already know

Is it just connecting for the sake of connecting or will it serve me in some way eventually?

Someone mentioned once that only job seekers are really using it. Is this it? LinkedIn definitely is the ‘professional network’ under the networks. Could this be hurting it in the long run? Should I not connect to my boss in that case? No worries, I’m not planning on switching jobs anytime soon.

I’ve also wanted to play around with MySpace for quite a while now to better understand this phenomenon. Next weekend maybe…

GOOG passed the $500 line on TUE (11/21/06) for the first time.

I remember when analysts predicted it would go up to $1000. Did anyone ever slap them?

So what is the word on the street today? How Google Hits $1000 a Share

Some people never change. I believe it when I see it…

Last month I questioned if the discount provided on Google checkout meant that it wasn’t successful - see Google Checkout Struggling?. Now Google made it free for merchants through the end of the year and Internet Outsider is asking: “Is Google Checkout a Dud?”

I haven’t heard of anyone using Google checkout so far…

Update 12/06/06: John Battelle tried using it and ran into some problems…

Cingular just sent me my monthly statement. I smells really phishy just like Citibank’s email (see Citibank is Phishing Me - Do Banks Never Learn?).

The “Log in” link points to http://cwclick.cingular.com:8080/106…..0.%2Fmycingular. When clicked, IE and Firefox pop up the following warning dialog:

Warning! It appears that you are about to access a website that has non-standard web address format. Such sites may contain harmful entities such as viruses. We recommend you use extreme caution. Please change your preferences if you do not want to see this message again.

Very reassuring!

These companies should lead by example instead of being part of the problem. Tons of people get phished every day and such emails are definitely not sending the right signals. “Don’t worry about the funky looking URL. You can trust us. See the Cingular logo? There you go!”

Yahoo! is one step ahead and is educating its users. Only sign-in if you see your personal sign-in seal.

Brad Garlinghouse wrote [via Infectious Greed]:

I hate peanut butter.

This has caused quite some waves. Read the whole article to understand why.

Also have a look at “An Open Letter to Jerry Yang and David Filo“.

Phishing is a huge problem and you would think banks know better.

What is Citibank thinking? The email I just received contains:

Link text: www.citicards.com

Actual link (see status bar): http://info.citibank.com/WAR….4CA8377332533513….

Link destination: https://www.accountonline.com/View?docId=LoginCTP&siteId=…

Login form? Check

Citibank logos all over the place? Check

Domain that isn’t citibank.com? Check

SSL certificat not issued to Citibank? Check

So this must clearly be a phishing email, right? Actually I think it’s not. But it’s definitely not very smart.

Citibank has some instructions so I will report this as phishing. Let’s see what their reply is…