Brilliant!

A website called PleaseRobMe claims to reveal the location of empty homes based on what people post online.

The Dutch developers told BBC News the site was designed to prove a point about the dangers of sharing precise location information on the internet.

The site scrutinises players of online game Foursquare, which is based on a person’s location in the real world.

PleaseRobMe extracts information from players who have chosen to post their whereabouts automatically onto Twitter.

“It started with me and a friend looking at our Twitter feeds and seeing more and more Foursquare posts,” said Boy Van Amstel, one of PleaseRobMe’s developers.

“People were checking in at their house, or their girlfriend’s or friend’s house, and sharing the address – I don’t think they were aware of how much they were sharing.”

Mr Van Amstel, Frank Groeneveld and Barry Borsboom realised that not only were people sharing detailed location information about themselves and their friends, they were also by default broadcasting when they were away from their own home.

The website took just four hours to create.

“It’s basically a Twitter search – nothing new,” said Mr Van Amstel. “Anyone who can do HTML and javascript can do this. You could almost laugh at how easy it is.”

He said that the site would remain live but stressed it was not created to encourage crime.

“The website is not a tool for burglary,” he said. “The point we’re getting at is that not long ago it was questionable to share your full name on the internet. We’ve gone past that point by 1000 miles.”

Mr Van Amstel added that in practice it would be “very difficult” to use the information on the website to carry out a burglary.

Charity Crimestoppers advises people to think carefully about the information they choose to share on the internet.

“We urge users of Twitter, Facebook or other social networks to stop and think before posting personal details online that could leave them vulnerable to crimes including burglary and identity theft,” said a spokesperson.

“Details posted online are available for the world to see; you wouldn’t hang a sign on your door saying you’re out, so why would you post it online?”

Taken from Inc.com a very good read to see even the big players can get it worng! Very wrong!

Top 10 Awkward Social Media Moments

Happy New Year readers! As a little gift to my most loyal of readers I am giving away a great read, my best read of 2008, the book Sex.com. If you want a chance at winning this, simply leave a comment on this post about what you think about UKpreneur!  

Ok so this book was brought out some time ago, doesn’t matter, the story is awesome!

On the face of it, Kieren McCarthy’s Sex.com was a book that could have written itself: a notorious, well-publicised feud over the most valuable domain name in existence, between two charismatic men—one a serial entrepreneur with a weakness for hard drugs (Gary Kremen), the other a gifted con-man with delusions of grandeur (Stephen Cohen). It’s a story replete with vicious acrimony, multi-million dollar lawsuits, and rumours of gunfights between bounty hunters in the streets of Tijuana.

Thankfully, McCarthy wasn’t content to just bundle together all the articles he’s written about Sex.com over the years and slap a cover on the front: the level of detail in his book, and the range of people interviewed, demonstrate that a great deal of painstaking research went into its writing. The result is that Sex.com is the best book on the subject of “internet history” (for that is surely what this story will become) since Where Wizards Stay Up Late, and certainly the best book about the Domain Name system that I’ve ever read. The narrative is compelling, well-informed and highly readable.

McCarthy is not afraid to tackle the quasi-political implications of the Sex.com story, in particular the stranglehold that the old Network Solutions (now VeriSign) had – and continues to have—over the domain name system, and how some of its then employees treated the suspected hijacking of Sex.com with pure contempt—allegedly, even up to the point of threatening physical violence against an expert witness. We’re probably lucky that this book was actually written last year—given his current occupation (as ICANN’s general manager of public participation) it seems unlikely that McCarthy would have produced such a no-holds-barred version of events as he has, had it been written during his current employment.

Apart from all the legal to-and-fro, ultimately this is a story about two men—both intelligent, ruthless and driven – and McCarthy does an engaging job of telling this story from both points of view. Ultimately, Cohen is the villain of the piece, but he’s no cookie-cutter bad guy, and Kremen is by no means an innocent. This book could easily have been a hatchet-job on Cohen, but McCarthy doesn’t make that mistake, and the book is better for it.

A couple of remarkable coincidences are worth mentioning: first, Stephen Cohen attended the Van Nuys High School in Los Angeles at around the same time as Internet pioneers Jon Postel, Vint Cerf and Steve Crocker. Second, one of the reasons that Cohen was sucessful in hijacking Sex.com was that Gary Kremen’s registered e-mail address had been broken into by Kevin Mitnick, the notorious hacker who has himself been the subject of several books.

One final remark: Gary Kremen recently sold Sex.com for twelve million dollars, the largest sum ever paid for a domain name!

So if you fancy a chance at winning this book, which was my best read of 2008 then simply leave a comment on this post about what you think about UKpreneur! Its that easy!

An 11-year-old township boy became a millionaire Friday.

But Kyle Mayer’s sudden windfall was short-lived, as the Myers Elementary School fifth-grader had to give the money back at the end of the school day.

“He didn’t mind,” said his dad, Scott, adding his son got to keep the $20 in interest the million earned.

Kyle’s million was the result of a school contest sponsored by Team One Credit Union as a way to reward students for putting money into savings accounts.

The Saginaw-based credit union transferred the million into his account for the day and gave him a number to call so that he could hear for himself that he was rich.

As for that $20 in interest, Kyle won’t be flashing any cash around school on Monday.

“That’s going back into the savings account,” said his father.

Here is a great story that is said to be true!

A man walked into a bank in New York City one day and asked for the loan officer.

He told the loan officer that he was going to Philippines on business for two weeks and needed to borrow $5,000. The bank officer told him that the bank would need some form of security for the loan.

Then the man handed over the keys to a new Ferrari parked on the street in front of the bank. He produced the title and everything checked out The loan officer agreed to accept the car as collateral for the loan.The bank’s president and its officers all enjoyed a good laugh at the guy for using a $250,000 Ferrari as collateral against a $5,000 loan.

An employee of the bank then drove the Ferrari into the bank’s underground garage and parked it there.Two weeks later, the guy returned, repaid the $5,000 and the interest, which came to $15.41.

The loan officer said, “We are a little puzzled. While you were away, we checked you out and found that you are a multi-millionaire. What puzzles us is, why would you bother to borrow “$5,000?.

The millionaire replied: “Where else in New York City can I park my car for $15.41 and expect it to be there when I return”

After meeting up with a friend this weekend the conversation turned to business, my friend runs a facilities management company and although he has been going only 2 years has 4 blue chip clients he looks after.

His business has just gone through quite a tough expansion phase over the past 6 months and to keep up with the workload and maintain some form of quality he has been taking on more and more staff.

This then left him with the task of either promoting existing people or bring in new management. I remember offering him some on advice on this some months back and we agreed the best way would be to promote people within the business that have been doing well.

My friend being a self confessed crap manager gave this task to somebody else. The problem he has now is the wrong people managing and who think they have more power than Super Man! The result? The good people could not work under this poor manager and have left leaving my friend in a right mess!!!

It goes to show the true meaning of power and promotion!!!! Its like this old story i have heard at many business talks on people management and power:

A young business man was finally promoted, with this promotion came a private office all to himself, finally he had got himself out of the open place office from the rest of the workers, where eagle eyes watched 9 to 5.

On his first day he sat proudly in his chair in his office. Feeling proud and full of power he sat there not doing much work until there was a knock on his door. Eager to impress and present his ‘power’ to the world he shouted “come in” and then quickly picked up his phone and began speaking:

“Yes i appreciate how big this problem is, i totally understand the seriousness of this issue but please don’t worry, i am the right man that can sort all of this out, please don’t worry, leave it with me …”

He then slammed the phone down and said to the man standing at the door “and what can i do for you?”

The man at the door replied

“Nothing, i have just come to connect your phone up …..”

Thought i would publish a few money related facts – this comes after a conversation between a couple i know this weekend after some ale. These are based on American facts:

1. More of our fantasies are about money… than sex.
2. 65% of Americans would live on a deserted island all by themselves for an entire year for $1,000,000.
3. For $10,000,000 most of us would do almost ANYTHING! Including abandoning our family and friends and our church. A very high percentage of us would, for that same amount of money, change our race or sex. And, 1 in every 14, would even murder someone for ten million bucks.
4. 92% of us would rather be rich than find the love of our lives.
5. If you get your money out of a Hitachi ATM machine in Japan, it will be laundered. The way they do it is, they briefly press the bills between rollers at high enough temperatures to kill most bacteria.
6. One out of every four Americans believe their best chance of getting rich is by playing the lottery.
7. A person who drives 10 miles to buy a lottery ticket is 3 times more likely to be killed in a car accident while driving to buy the ticket… than… he is to win the jackpot!!!
8. More than one-third of American women consider money more important than good sex to the success of a marriage.
9. Money is the leading cause of disagreements in marriages.
10. Which would you rather do: Shop till you drop… or… have great sex?For men, this is a no-brainer.

    However, more women would actually rather have an unlimited shopping spree than spend a weekend with a fabulous lover. In fact, the #1 favorite fantasy of women is to have a blank check to shop at their favorite store.

    Gents – if you do have to go along with the woman shopping, you can at least check out the female sales assistants ….

Ok – bit of a joke website but business related as firing is part of the process i guess! SimplyFired.com is a website with stories of people who got fired for what they do!

Here is one, “Fired For Wearing Shorts”

“Last summer my boss approached me about a problem with an employee we’ll call “Will.” My boss had a problem with Will, Will wore shorts to work. The problem? We work in a kitchen, and it is a liability to allow a employee to dress in shorts (spattering, cuts, sanitation, etc.). I approached Will about his wearing of shorts. He replied he will sign any waver he needed to and he simply didn’t have any pairs of pants and no money. The situation never really resolved itself in full, I told Will to go to a thrift store soon and pick-up a pair of pants, he agreed, however my boss responded by firing him citing his “poor sanitation skills.” I felt really bad too, as Will was actually a good worker”

There are two reasons investors say no to your idea:

“It’s been done before”

“It’s never been done before”

My advice is to be prepared for both!

CLIENT: I’m about to talk to the pharma client, I need a computer graphics budget for an interactive CD-ROM.

ME: Great, email me the project details, how many screens, client deadlines, etc.

CLIENT: Well, can’t you just give me a ballpark figure?

ME: A ballpark figure? But, I don’t know any of specs, nor any of the client info. Please send me what you have, I’ll look over it this weekend and I’ll have something for you first thing Monday morning.

CLIENT: Well, we need to send them something today, by 4:30PM. Can’t you just estimate it?

ME: Okay, £100,000.

CLIENT: £100,000! Why is it that much?