Google are now offering $500 in cold hard cash to anyone who submits a valid security bug report. If your find is particularly important, the reward could stretch to $1337… (only the techies will appreciate that seemingly random number!).
photo credit: paulamarttila
So if you’re the type of person who regularly discovers loopholes in chrome’s security, then this is your lucky day… If you’re the type of person who reads this and thinks they can discover security loopholes in chrome, then good luck to you too, you’ll need it 
Google have admitted they’ve blatantly ripped the idea from Firefox. Firefox offer the exact same $500 reward for bugs and have done for quite some time. You would have thought Google would up the pay a bit just because they can, but no… it seems discovering a hole in security is worth just $500. I’m sure the real hackers out there could make far more than that by actually exploiting the bug or selling the information on to someone who could exploit the bug.
Still, it’s good to see rewards like this in place… it can only help with security in the long run.
Back in June/July last year i created hotelsrevealed.com. As i was putting it together, i blogged about what i was doing. Since then, the site has remained pretty much untouched, but i do have plans to inject it with more love, so it makes sense that i continue the trend of blogging about the changes i make, as i make them.
My immediate goal is to add more content. Lots of it. That will naturally increase traffic. I then have to think about building a community around it. I have no idea how i’ll do that at present, so simply ‘thinking’ about it is work enough for me.
Longer term the site needs a new look, a slogan and more graphics / icons. Here’s a list of stuff that is wrong;
Don’t be afraid to add more to that list – in fact, just pretend you don’t know me and criticise the site to the best of your ability because that’s what i do when i’m coming up with a list of flaws…
Anyway, the whole point of this is to prove myself right… i know this is a pretty big niche, i know i can increase traffic… i know it has ‘potential’ in it, so just like theleavingcert.com, i’m hoping to unlock that potential and keep the site growing.
I’m in the middle of revamping this blog and one of the main problems i face is choosing to go with a magazine theme or just leave it the way it is – as a traditional blog where there are no ‘read more’ links.
Up until now i’ve never been a fan of magazine themes on personal blogs, but i’m slowly warming to them. Advantages of a magazine theme?
Disadvantages of magazine theme?
I have to say i’m leaning towards the magazine type style for this new design mainly because it looks better and it will force me in to writing better. For example on theleavingcert.com, i know the title of the post must be interesting. The opening sentence must also be interesting & the thumbnail image must also grab attention, otherwise people won’t bother clicking on the ‘read more’ link.
Although i’m leaning towards the magazine style, there are very few existing magazine themes which i like, so i’ll probably have to pick the best of a bad lot and then spend a lot of time modifying it.
Defined as “the concentration of attention or energy on something”. For the past few weeks, i’ve been focusing on theleavingcert.com… apart from this blog, my other online projects have taken a back seat. The result in just a few weeks?…
Average daily traffic has more than tripled and the site is starting to go places. I’ve always been confident when it came to theleavingcert.com… i knew it had potential and more importantly i knew i had the potential to fulfill it’s potential.
But that ‘potential’ word was being used an awful lot (by me). So before Christmas i decided to focus on the site more and i’m still doing that today. If i can maintain what i’m doing on a day to day basis with the site, i can finally turn that ‘potential’ in to something more solid… Concrete results.
A quick session with the calculator tells me that as things stand, we’re on course for about 150,000 visits in 2010. That would mean my goal of doubling traffic to the site would be complete. I’d have more than tripled traffic to the site.
However, now that i’ve got a taste for it, i’m eager to do what i initially set out to do with the site…. become the no.1 leaving cert site in the country. It’s ambitious, but it’s doable and all it requires is focus.
The problem with focus is that by it’s own definition, it requires you to sacrifice other stuff. I don’t like doing that, but right now i’m happy to focus on theleavingcert.com… up until june anyway. That’s because i know the site can only grow and grow until that time and because it’s already grown significantly, i’m curious as to how far i can actually take it…
A few days ago i stumbled upon a great deal – a blu ray dvd player for €1.05 
“I’ll have some of that” i said to myself So i went ahead and ordered it on pixmania.com for about €16 incl shipping.
Was it a mistake? Was it genuine? Was is a cunning plan to get some publicity? I didn’t care. If i see something that’s good value and i can afford it and can find a use for it, i’ll buy it, like most people. Do i care about mistakes i didn’t make? No. So once i’d placed my order, the ball was in pixmania’s court. I could sit back, relax and watch the inevitable mess that would unfold 
I knew that if pixmania failed to honour my order, i’d get a ’sorry’ reply along the lines of “Tough luck, we can cancel this order under section 2357.256a of our terms and conditions, better luck next time, smartass”.
After i’d ordered, i got a confirmation email and then another email a day later saying the item was out of stock but i’d get it as soon as it came back in. Then the day after that i got this email;
Subject: Request for refund
Dear Sean,
We wish to inform you that your refund request for order CCL116465043 is currently being processed.
You will receive a confirmation by email shortly.
Best Regards… bla bla bla
Great, thanks. But oh wait, i didn’t request a refund 
You see this is what you call ‘digging a hole for yourself’. We all know somebody most likely made a pricing error, so why try to cover it up and confuse issues further???
Why not just come out and say ‘we messed up, very sorry, but as per gray area no 367.443232478 on our terms and conditions, we’re entitled to refund people…. however, as a gesture of goodwill, here’s a €5 off voucher when you spend €10,000+’
Surely it makes more sense to issue that sort of response…. a polite but firm response that only an idiot will take further action with. Pixmania don’t have a great reputation for customer service and yet again they’re not doing themselves any favours here.
Quite often, a ’smart’ company can turn this sort of negative publicity in to positive publicity. Vouchers, some sort of alternative deal, a freebie…. anything. But when a company tries to play dumb and just refunds customers without notice when THEY got the order / prices ‘wrong’, that can’t possibly end well for anyone…
Aer Lingus did it a while back too when they messed up business class prices… Ryanair caused massive controversy when they took a swipe at a blogger for outing a flaw in their pricing system. It happens. It will happen again. Some will go undetected, most however will be detected.
Anyway, there have been reports that one or two orders slipped through the system. Most people however got the same response i did. Some rang up to complain, some fired off emails to all sorts of consumer rights groups… check out this thread on boards.ie to watch how events unfolded.
