the recession it appears is starting to effect another internet player — Yahoo. Yahoo has not had the revenue strength of say a Google but they have a well stocked technical larder. The layoffs though expected are surprising by their depth.

The Sunnyvale-based company’s biggest purge since the dot-com bust most likely will be announced next week, a person familiar with the matter said Tuesday. The person asked not to be identified because the exact number of jobs to be cut is still under discussion.

Yang and his management team already have committed to jettisoning at least several hundred jobs to help boost Yahoo’s profits and placate investors demanding more action to reverse a steep decline in the company’s stock price.

Securities analysts are betting Yahoo will trim its 14,000-employee payroll by about 5 percent - or 700 workers. If that many people are dumped, Yahoo could save about $100 million, JP Morgan analyst Imran Khan estimated in a Tuesday note.

Besides trimming Yahoo’s expenses, job cuts could help buy Yang more time to carry out his strategy to re-establish Yahoo as a main entry point to the Internet and create a more compelling online advertising network.

Many investors had been questioning whether Yang was too emotionally attached to the company that he started in 1995 to make the tough decisions needed to turn it around, said Standard and Poor’s equity analyst Scott Kessler.

“A lot of what drives the market comes down to perception and, rightly or wrongly, there is a perception that Yahoo needs to be repaired,” Kessler said. “To gain credibility, you need to make hard choices like this.”

Linky.

Bob Sullivan, author of the Red Tape Chronicles and a MSNBC technology contributor introduces us to the tangled web of Telco Hell. Now Bob is a pretty smart guy based on alot of articles I have read from him. He paints a pretty accurate picture too –

From the start, wireless providers have worked hard to lock you up into losing situations, constructing walls with cancellation fees, service-specific phones, and the loss of your phone number.

Worse yet — cell phone companies can, and do, change their side of the contract unilaterally. Consumers seemingly have no options to decline the higher prices. In other words, they can raise prices, and you can’t quit. Consider this note of complaint, filed with the Pennsylvania Public Interest Research Group by a consumer named Kerry:

I’m currently in the middle of a two-year contract with Verizon Wireless. They just notified me that they are dramatically increasing the charges I pay for receiving each text message from 2 cents to 10 cents.

Except not quite accurate enough there Bob. YOU CAN get out of Cell Phone Hell. If you do it Bob’s way, no you won’t be released. You call up the company and talk to a CSR. You voice your complaint and ask for your options. Well a lovely screen pops up. The CSR reads them off. Not good choices as Bob relates. You hang up, a little miffed, but still paying the new charge rate, whatever it is. That, Bob, is exactly what the Telcos want YOU to think. But you are playing their game and did not do very well for yourself. Why? We forget that we have a signed contract with the carrier. Oh you don’t remember that long register tape you signed? Your loss but you signed one.

Well Dog what SHOULD I have done? Well in a sense get your act together before the buy first of all. Then keep a few simple records.–

1) When you go into store make your selection and go to checkout. The rep is going to ask you to sign a register slip. Ask for a copy of the slip. Also ask the rep to circle the the section that details the rates. If it is referenced off the web site ask it to be printed out and initialed.

2) File this paperwork somewhere you will know where it is.

3) Go on about your life. Do however keep tabs on any changes that occur against your contract. I suggest www.Consumerist.com. They keep pretty good tabs on most of the major vendors when they change terms.

4) If the price change OR service change is material to you, then you now have the out to escape the contract. But lets be serious here. If you want out because you hate them and you choice is because they lowered their text messaging rate. Sam, that’s not the Plan. No court would back you that a decrease is a material change to the contract.

5) Call up the carrier. Tell the CSR that you want out of the contract b, ased on the fact that they voided the terms. You also state you will be exempt from the ETF charges on that basis, no prorates. If they hesitate then insist on talking to a supervisor. Sure they are going to try and talk you out of it. But stand your ground, you are in the right here. The carriers know it too, that is why they eventually fold on the issue. They are just trying to do a retention job on you.

A little painful? Sure. But just like a mortgage on your house is a contract of which you retain the paperwork. So too is the paperwork for your cell service.

The good thing is the market will probably not permit this pain to continue. Verizon is already preparing to open up their network to foreign devices. When you buy your cellphone outright (ouch it will cost a little.) the need for the carriers to lock you in will disappear. The only reason they do now is that $49 phone really cost $225 and part of your cell service is covering the differential between the two prices.

But Bob, you need to keep up, there ARE ways out of this

Linky

At this juncture I figure everybody has heard of VoIP. The Boss and I use VoIP regularly for business and pleasure. Fact I will probably be moving off Vonage sometime this year to another VoIP carrier.

Well there is a very nice website that will help you in your search — MyVOIPProvider.com The list is reasonably extensive and has search capability. Some of the providers are not the cheapest for international calling. You can get cheaper for PC to Phone international calling. You just have to put up with service outages from time to time due to network load. But hey I am cheap.

YMMV & usual disclaimers apply.
HT: LifeHacker

Do you do business on the Internet using a debit card account? Or do you have an account with someone using automatic debit? I would advise you reconsider. –

Dreamhost would like you to know that its very very sorry for accidentally billing its customers $7.5 million it wasn’t actually owed. You see, someone typed 2008 when they really meant 2007 and their billing system decided to charge all of their customers in advance for the entire 2008 calendar year. This included debiting huge amounts of money from people’s checking accounts and all the “worst possible scenario” situations you could possibly imagine.

Tom, friend of the blog, and master of the internet, was among those affected:

Well, this morning I got a billing email from them:

This is just a notice that your DreamHost [redacted] (”zug’s Account”) has a balance of $380.87 (including any charges not due until 2009-01-14), with $340.97 due (since 2008-12-14).

Dreamhost is a very reputable hosting service and has been around longer than most. But they billed out erroneously $7.5m to all their customers. Granted its not a lot of money nor is any individual account a lot of money. But many live on the financial edge. So getting hit with a $500 unexpected withdrawal on the 20th could be the difference between paying the rent or mortgage or not.

Alternatives –

1. Get a low value credit card, say no more than $500. Use it only for internet purchase/services. Any merchant who is unwilling to take it does not deserve your business.
2. Along a similiar vein get a reloadable cash card with MC/Visa linkage. WalMart, Walgreens and others have these available. Just walk in and reload it in any increment you desire.

Keep in mind that credit cards have certain protections that debit cards lack. Like total exposure is $50 if fraud is reported quickly. But the bigger issue is the debit system is in the merchants favor. Try to get a debit cycle cancelled. It near impossible. So they can keep sending you erroneous bills even after you have terminated service. Eliminate the credit card account however and there is little the merchant can do.

Someday an intelligent secure payment system will arise. But till then be very wary.

[Update] Just to reinforce the point. Read this over at Consumerist.

You are on the No Call List right? Well you should be if you aren’t. But even still there are loopholes for charities and politicians. Well you can fool the predictive dialers a lot of these organizations use. –

omated phone bots keep interrupting your dinner with their pre-recorded marketing messages? Play the U.S. Special Information Tone signal for “vacant circuit” when you pick up the phone. Our brother site Consumerist says a reader who kept getting automated debt collection calls added the tone to the beginning of his voicemail greeting:

The next time the robot called, it thought it was getting a dead line and dutifully erased the number from its system. Voila, automatons be gone. Some places have autodialers that don’t (or have been tweaked) to respond to SIT tones, but if you’ve got a persistent unwanted robot caller, it’s worth a shot.

The tone is nothing but a WAV file. But the dialer in hearing it will mark your entry as ‘no line’. Pretty cool trick.

LifeHacker link.

If you are a parent and are concerned about what your kid might be doing with their cellphone there is now a service that can tell you. RADAR —

he RADAR system is designed to let parents keep an eye on their kids’ cellphone activity. You start by installing their software on the phone (it supports most of the major platforms and more are on the way) and signing up for an account on the website www.mymobilewatchdog.com. Once you’ve done that, the phone sends a copy of every text or photo sent and received to your (i.e. the parent’s) cell, plus you get a record of phone calls made and received.

The system as demonstrated seemed to work pretty well and the website gives you lots of options to whitelist/blacklist contacts so you don’t get bothered every time the child contacts a known/trusted friend.

At a minimum it would keep your young one from wanting to pull a phone prank knowing that you can monitor their phone usage. Now if it could only get them to clean their room!

Coolet Gadgets.

We have all known that family member or friend that could not find themselves out of wet paper bag. Well they now have relief. –

BEDFORD HILLS, New York (AP) — A Global Positioning System can tell a driver a lot of things — but apparently not when a train is coming.

A computer consultant driving a rental car drove onto train tracks Wednesday using the instructions his GPS unit gave him. A train was barreling toward him, but he escaped in time and no one was injured.

The driver had turned right, as the system advised, and the car somehow got stuck on the tracks at the crossing. He jumped out and tried to warn the engineer by waving. He got out of the way just before the train slammed into the car at 60 mph, Metro-North railroad spokesman Dan Brucker said Thursday.

The car was pushed more than 100 feet during the fiery crash.

Some 500 train passengers were stranded for more than two hours during the Wednesday evening rush hour. The accident also heavily damaged 250 feet of rail, Brucker said.

The point is as our machines get smarter we need to be just as cognizant of our dependency on them so we are not the fool looking down the lights of a 200 ton train!

Linky.

Mike Egan over at ComputerWorld has written an opinion piece subtitled ‘Big Brother is always watching you. But who’s watching Big Brother?’ It is an apt question in this increasingly watched over world we live in. —

In my first year as a reporter for a local newspaper back in the year (mumble, mumble), I sat down to interview three candidates for city council who were running as a “slate.” I pulled out my tape recorder, and one of them said, “I’m sorry, but we’re not willing to do the interview if you’re going to record it.” When I asked why, he said, “Because we don’t want to be misquoted.”

The candidates didn’t trust me because the editorial page of the newspaper I worked for had endorsed their opponents. But the encounter always bothered me. How can a verbatim record of a conversation increase the chance of being misquoted?

At the time, I hesitated for a moment and considered walking away from the interview. But I changed my mind and put the tape recorder away. In hindsight, I should have said, “Look, I can’t take notes as fast as my tape recorder can. Why don’t you go grab a tape recorder, too. We’ll both tape it. If I misquote you, you can prove it.”

The problem they had — and one problem with surveillance in general — is that it upsets the balance of power. Whoever has the tape has the power to use, not use, selectively use or misuse the information or proof or evidence recorded.

As Egan mentions in the article, maybe the problem isn’t totally an issue of privacy but one of equity. Those who use surveillance technology should be compelled to permit other to tape them as well. It at least realigns the balance of power. In a ThirdPipe wireless world getting people on video will be a slamdunk so we as a society might as well even the playing field.

A highly recommended read.

Mark Andrejevic is the author of a book called iSpy. No its not a review of the old TV series but the matters of digital capture of your personal habits. The matters he touches on will be of considerable importance to the wireless ThirdPipe world we will live in, in the not too distance future.

Program is from C-Span. Approximately 1hr. Select your appropriate viewer of choice once you arrive at the page.

And we haven’t even mentioned RFID as another tool to be used to track us…;l

As the ThirdPipe infrastructure deploys everyone needs to be cognizant of the nasties out there. Worms and Trojans as a fact of life in the digital age. No doubt this trend will continue for quite a while. The folks over a Strategy Page offer some perspective of how this is developing –

Computer network security personnel are encountering more and more ugly surprises when they take apart the hacker programs that are planted in PCs. These hacker “payloads” have become much more powerful over the last few years. Much like the AI (Artificial Intelligence) in computer games has become more realistic, so have the tools hackers build into their payloads. The most powerful of these new payloads still concentrate on the key objectives of their kind; don’t get caught, and steal something useful. But now they do so with much more powerful tools.

The defensive abilities have multiplied to include the ability to detect the anti-virus defenses of the PC they have infected, and a wide range of tools to defeat anti-virus software. A few years back, a clever payload would simply shut off the anti-virus, but today, top-grade payloads modify the anti-virus system so that the user thinks the PC is still protected, when it isn’t.

Payloads, which are usually less than 50,000 characters of code, quickly establish communication with their owner, and receive additional tools as needed. This would include additional analysis tools, to get a better idea of what the infected PC has to offer the hacker. The analysis proceeds in several stages, and if it looks like a very valuable find, human hackers will intervene to supervise the looting.

As an old TV show used to say — Be Careful out There!

Link for full article.