Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins
Latest from Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins
Inside the Mind of a 419 Scammer
Ze Frank’s Dramatic Reading of a 419 Email Everyone, at least everyone who follows my words, is well aware of the 419 Scam, commonly known as the Nigerian Email Scam, or the “Advance Fee Fraud.” It’s almost literally one of the oldest tricks in the book when it comes to the web (witness, Ze Frank’s ...
Let’s All Just Ignore EPIC and the CDD From Now On
Can we stop quoting EPIC? I mean completely – just stop publishing anything the “Electronic Privacy Information Center” says, even when it’s a lawsuit against a well known tech giant? I know that the only time I ever bring them up in a post is to talk about how wrong they are. I’ve never, ever ...
Windows Mobile: For Everything from Phones to Tablets
I’m not going to start off by setting unreasonable expectations for the readers here. Maybe my honesty will garner more attention than the typical fare (“Windows Mobile Should Scare Apple” or “Window at War with Apple”). Apple and WinMo phones are likely going after completely different market segments – Windows has never been all that ...
Privacy on Google Buzz: Quit Whining and Figure It Out
I’m pretty annoyed by this blog post up on Techmeme and Techcrunch at the moment. Fuck You, Google. There’s a BIG drop-off between them and my other “most frequent” contacts. You know who my third most frequent contact is? My abusive ex-husband. Which is why it’s SO EXCITING, Google, that you AUTOMATICALLY allowed all my ...
Google Buzz and Contact Management Oddities
When Google Buzz launched, I made note of prior gripes I had about it’s contact management: In Google Reader, one of the least social of all my social media tools, I have a friend named Richard Schwarting, a computer scientist and avid post-sharer. Last night he shared with me the culmination of his frustration with ...
Google Buzz: the Good, the Bad, and the Exciting
I just finished watching the press conference debuting to the public the new social network “Google Buzz.” Aside from a confusing name (there are already a handful of products from all the major companies, including Google itself, entitled Buzz), it looks like a stellar product and something to actually get excited about. Perhaps it’s a ...
What Does the Mobclix-Nielsen Deal Really Mean? [Reading Between the Lines]
The big mobile news today is that Mobclix has entered an exclusive deal with Nielsen to help with their analytics. What does that mean? The story has been long on extensive product details, which were most succinctly described by Colin Gibbs over at GigaOM: Mobclix has struck a deal to integrate Nielsen’s ad targeting data ...
Was Deleting All Daniel Brusilovsky’s Posts an FTC Blogger Guideline Violation? [#bruhaha]
[Update: Mike Arrington contacted John this afternoon and clarified that “the posts were turned off, not deleted.” This really doesn’t change my analysis in the post, since the damage has been done, and attempting to remove the posts from public view rather than disclose is still contrary to the spirit and letter of the FTC ...
Mothers Next Door? Sons and Daughters? Hate the iPad? Get Over Yourself.
Steven Hodson says I should get over myself: Well you bunch of tech-heads and early adopter dweebs need to get over your ego puffery and delusions of self-importance. Just as with the iPod and the iPhone before it the iPad wasn’t created to give you all a great big woodie. The iPad was created for ...
Another Year, Another Unanswered Davos Question
In two years, at least to me, the World Economic Forum in Davos has gone from irrelevant to insane, with a brief stop over in interesting town. In general, I’m a cranky cynic about most things (but you already know that), but I’ve always held particular skepticism towards the World Economic Forum. Perhaps it’s because ...
