Blogger My Doom outage

If you can't scroll down properly to see all of July's posts, bear in mind that Blogger owner Google (who power this blog) had a pretty rough day yesterday when the search engine got hit my My Doom, so hopefully all will be back to normal soon...

Beckham balls up on E-bay

Much to everyone's surprise, it appears that Beckham's infamous vertical penalty in Euro 2004 DID actually land in the stadium and is not currently part of the UK's next Mars mission. The Spaniard that caught the ball, concealed it under his shirt in a seemingly convincing pregnancy impression, has decided to auction it on E-bay.

True to form, there's yet another cock-up as pranksters have placed false bids up to 10 million Euros, meaning embarrassment for E-bay as they try to authenticate the actual bid, with a climbdown to a 23,650 Euros top bid.

Rumours that the top bidder is Alex Ferguson looking to fill a few gaps in the trophy cabinet have not been confirmed...

Putting a stop to the Gmail "gold" rush

This blog has been following efforts to make a quick buck by selling off beta Gmail accounts. From the initial boom days of $30 listings on Ebay, through to the sorry $1-3 sales of recent times, this blog has resolutely held onto its Gmail account. And now the chance of a quick buck (literally, a buck) is gone with Google attempting to put a stop to the practice by putting a ban on users selling email address.

It has changed the terms of the membership policy to put the clamps on selling, trading or transferring the free email accounts "for any unauthorised commercial purpose", although selling Gmail invitations are still fair game for now.

Given what's happened with the bid price, the chances are that market forces will soon put an end to it in any case with dwindling prices, competitor offerings and the actual launch of the full service.

Nice as it may be for kudos to have billgates@gmail.com, I can't see people forking out as they might for their precious brand-name domains.

Spam will find a way

As a blogspot blogger, I received an invitation to join the beta test for Google's G-mail service. I haven't been using it yet, having decided to hold out for hotmail's reaction, and have only logged in twice. I've not sent a single email, let a single person know about the address or even posted the email address, but, sure enough, spam has found a way.

In logging in this morning, I was greeted by something about 'Best of the best' which came through as source html and someone angling for a Gmail invitation from my new best friend Herb Green (who's clearly been smoking some).

For all the hype of the new product launch, you just can't escape good old spam.

Watch your back, Google, Bill is on your case

MSN has released it's new-look search facility to take on the Google phenomenon - and, guess what, it looks just like Google! The new minimalist clean white design, boxed ads at the top and text ad boxes down the right-hand side are all eerily familiar, and with MSN's heavy investment in search technology, the battle is on for search supremacy.

That much talked about Google float may come sooner rather than later and provide valuable funds to keep Google at the top as when Bill puts his mind to something not much stands in his way (isn't that right Netscape?).