Peoplesearch latest trend… SMS me a beach BBQ… P*rn still lurks at work… eCommerce complaints

• Peoplesearch latest trend
• SMS me a beach BBQ
• P*rn still lurks at work
• eCommerce complaints

Peoplesearch – the latest web trend

It’s fun to Google yourself, but increasingly keen web users want to find information about other people – and a wave of new websites are making it much easier, according to VentureBeat, including everything from their job, to their personalities, their age and even where they live.

Here are four of the new entrants to the burgeoning peoplesearch field:

• Zoominfo, lets you search a large database of people and company profiles, and will soon open to let developers build applications on its platform. You have to pay to search high numbers of people, and to search by, for ecample, a certain sub-category of occupation. Recently the site announced plans to integrate services with business networking site Xing.
• Viadeo, a site that lets you add a profile and then search for contacts according to the industry they work in, or any other number of variables, in a similar way to LinkedIn. It has more than 1.3 million members and is expanding into China through a partnership with the Xing site.
• Spock, a recent Silicon Valley start-up focused on peoplesearch. Spock lets users tag other people in profiles with words to describe them, making for some controversy when people object to the tags they’ve been given.
• PeekYou. Advertises itself as an online white pages for people, Peekyou allows users to set up social network-like profile pages and search according to work, school and geographic location.

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SMS me a BBQ

It is a fact universally recognised around the world that there are few things better than a barbie at the beach. According to Springwise, lucky Dutch beachgoers feeling a bit peckish can now order an instant BBQ simply by sending a message to a new business called Sommergrill.

Hungry sunbakers simply call or SMS Sommergrill from the beach to have a ready-to-go BBQ set delivered which includes marinated meat, salad, bread and dessert, plus a disposable barbecue, plates and napkins.

A set for two is priced at around $40, pretty reasonable for an instant meal delivered to you on the beach. If it can work in Denmark, a nation not noted for its world-beating beach culture, it would have to be an absolute winner in Australia’s summer months.

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P*rn lurks at work despite security

Employees can often still find ways to access and store online p*rn at work despite the security precautions of their employers, an IT security firm has told iTNews.

Sydney-based SelecTech Solutions says many of the 250 audits it has conducted of workplace IT systems over the past year have uncovered stashes illicit content, despite tight network and gateway security controls being in place.

“Recently in Europe we found 83,000 video files, which included almost 40 full-length p*rn videos,” said Selectech’s Mike Solomons told iTNews.

SelecTech has found that a huge amount of illicit material still ends up on PCs through USB sticks, camera phones and laptops, although security controls such as gateways and firewalls are successful at filtering some content.

Malicious p*rn-peddlers are also pasting images in popular file formats like Powerpoint or Word to deceive filters, according to SelecTech.

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Sharks on the net

The New South Wales Office of Fair Trading has received 1500 complaints about e-commerce in 2007 – a 22% increase.

The office can investigate complaints about Australian operators, but usually has no power to pursue online retailers based overseas.

NSW Fair Trading Minister, Linda Burney, told the Sydney Morning Herald almost 50% of complaints relate to the partial or non-delivery of goods, products not matching the description, or faulty or damaged goods. Consumers should be wary of packaging and delivery costs and currency conversion charges, Burney says.

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