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Viral web FlareUps are entertaining to watch. This week’s FU began on Fox news. Supposed-psychologist Cooper Lawrence was being interviewed about video games, sex, and violence. She ranted on about the XBox game Mass Effect – claiming that “You’ll see full digital nudity and the ability for players to engage in graphic sex”. Turns out, Ms know-it-all hadn’t played the game, and (before you rush out to buy it) Mass Effect doesn’t have any graphic sex scenes…

The gaming community turned into a mob – attacking Amazon’s listing of Lawrence’s books and sending her ratings plummeting! It got so bad that Amazon intervened and removed all user reviews and ratings. Now the gaming mob is accusing Amazon of censorship, and threatening a boycott! The mob even sent Lawrence’s MySpace page into private hiding!

There’s one lasting effect left on Amazon: User-generated tags. The top tags for author Cooper Lawrence: ignorant, hypocrisy, garbage, hack, junk, biased, stupid, uninformed, unprofessional… the list goes on…and on… nothing too flattering.

There’s a few issues worth considering:

The profession of psychology is always degraded when pop-tart authors spew uninformed opinions.
Despite Lawrence’s lame-ass opinions, did the gamers over-react? I don’t think so. They are gamers after all, and this was just another combat zone.
Amazon should have pulled Lawrence’s book (at least temporarily) instead of simply deleting reviews and ratings.
For any “supposed experts” being interviewed anywhere, do your homework first!

This indeed had a Mass Effect. I just hope it doesn’t boost her sales of “The Cult of Perfection: Making Peace with Your Inner Overachiever”. Barf.
[tags]Cooper-Lawrence, Amazon, Fox-New, Electronic-Arts, Mass-Effect, Censorship, Being-Wrong, Pop-Psychology[/tags]

Popularity: 35%

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Business, Media, Pirates, Web 3.0 Amazon, Being-Wrong, Censorship, Cooper-Lawrence, Electronic-Arts, Fox-New, Mass-Effect, Pop-Psychology

Updated Post: There’s a nasty Amazon Phishing Scam being sent out. Be sure you don’t fall for it.

You can see what the phishing email looks like (safely) by opening this unedited image of my email inbox.

Here are some resources to fight phishing:Antiphishing.org and MS: How to recognize phishing scams and fraudulent e-mails

Update: there’s a follow up phishing attack email you might get a couple days later. The included links to the phishing server are not shown here, but the email states:

Hello from Amazon.com!
As a precaution, we’ve reset your Amazon.com because you may
have been subject to a “phishing” scam.
Here’s how phishing works:
A scam artist sends an e-mail, which is designed to look like it came
from a reputable company such as a bank, financial institution, or
retailer like Amazon.com, but is in fact a forgery. These e-mails
direct you to a web site that looks remarkably similar to the
reputable company’s web site, where you are asked to provide account
information such as your e-mail address . Since that web
site is actually controlled by the phisher.

Go to amazon.com/phish
to read more about ways to protect yourself from phishing.

To regain access to your Amazon customer account:

1. Go to “Your Account” link at the top of
our web site.
2. Please sign in to your Amazon account and update your billing information:
3. If your account information is not update, your account on Amazon will be terminated.

[tags]phishing,scams,Amazon[/tags]

Popularity: 31%

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Bones, Pirates Amazon, Phishing, scams

Nothing says “love ya babe” more than sharing your lead isotopes! This cute little cannister is going for $23 at Amazon. The customers who bought uranium also bought the book “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Understanding Intelligent Design”, as well as dead rabbits, and UFO detectors!
(makes you wonder, huh?)

Over at eBay, the bidding is fierce for radioactive rocks: A 2 inch hunk of Tobernite measures 17,000 counts per minute on the seller’s geiger counter is clocking in at $29.

If uranium isn’t quite romantic enough for you, could we recommend some asbestos? Perhaps some lead paint? Agent orange? You gotta love e-commerce, don’t ya?

Popularity: 32%

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Business, Long Tail, Web 3.0 Amazon, ebay, gifts, packaging, uranium-ore

Just in time for the fireplace season, Amazon introduces The Kindling…errr The Kindle . What an atrociously ugly hunk of plastic this thing is. And what’s with all those angled buttons?? Amazon is quoted as saying it’s really proud of all the innovations that went into this Kinder egg: like a price that’s $100 higher that the Sony Reader, and RSS feeds that users actually subscribe to with real MONEY ($0.99).

For this, Amazon surely deserves the Innovation of the Year Award. What’s coming next from ALabs? Paid subscriptions to Facebook / iotum’s Free Conference Calls? Pay-per-view PBS?? Maybe they should charge people just to browse Amazon.com! [tags]eBooks, Amazon, Industrial-Design[/tags]

Popularity: 28%

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Business, Innovation, Pirates Amazon, eBooks, Industrial-Design

Well, it was rumoured here not very long ago by Baxter that Amazon was in the process of linking in YouTube commercials for their products. Noticed this week, TigerDirect.ca now have YouTube video commercials for some of their products such as this Pentax Camera.

It’s a wonderful idea since they drive traffic to their site via YouTube as well as through their own site.   Plus the commercials are made by TigerTV!  Sure, the commercials are a little funny at times, but at least they give you an idea of the size and quality of the product.

Update: Amazon’s response is to let visitors to the site create their own video reviews.  Good idea if people started using it.  It’s too bad Amazon doesn’t let you link to the reviews that have already been uploaded to YouTube.

Popularity: 45%

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Innovation, Long Tail Ads, Amazon, TigerDirect, YouTube

Rumour has it that text reviews are simply not enough any more for Amazon. “You just cannot convey in text what you can with video.” So YouTube will be hosting advertisements for Amazon products. The rumour also states that there are now over one hundred products on Amazon with video clips on their pages. Manufacturers are in a rush to upload video footage for each of their products. It’s a simple process using YouTube. The target length for all ads is less than 30 seconds. Enough to give people a sense of the product. Amazon has been overwhelmed by the response from its clients. “Everyone wants video, and it’s great for us. Ads sell product. It’s what we need this year!”

[tags]YouTube,ads,Amazon[/tags]

Popularity: 45%

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User Experience Ads, Amazon, YouTube