The idea of Yelp.com is simple: it’s an online site where anyone can leave a review on any business or address. For example, are you looking for a Chinese restaurant in NE Portland, Oregon? Yelp can help steer you in the direction of one and give you first-hand reviews of patrons to help form your opinion.

However, according to the East Bay Express, the newspaper has found many instances of Yelp.com sales people calling restaurants and, for a price, offering to move negative reviews down on the page.

This would make the business appear more appealing because, to an unknowing Yelp user, the positive reviews for the restaurant would bubble to the top, making that restaurant’s reviews more favorable.

This is outright EXTORTION with a capital E, if the allegations are true! Depending on how this shakes out, I may stop Yelping immediately.

I have some contacts at Yelp and will be following up with what I find out!

UPDATE: Yelp.com’s CEO responded with a blog post.

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Yelp.com is Extorting Businesses?

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Starbucks/Boingo Speed Report: Salem, Oregon

from OSU Flickr Commons

The contributed OSU images show the Civilian Conservation Corps show what life was like in Oregon’s earliest history and celebrate forestry and conservation.

The Flickr Commons was launched in January of 2008 and is in partnership with the US Library of Congress. Since the launch of the Commons, 21 meuseiums, libraries, and cultural organizations have offered images to increase the visibility of cultural photography.

It’s very cool that my alma matter is taking part in this social media cultural exploration from Flickr. To see more info, check out the Flickr blog post.

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Oregon State Becomes First University To Join Flickr Commons

So, in reply, I’m going to start a weekly question and answer feature that will probably take place on Wednesdays.

Please send me questions…to get them to me, email them to me at jason@techcraver.com or send them my way on twitter – I’m harrisja on Twitter.

I look forward to helping serve those who have questions!

What questions should you ask?

It’s completely up to you. Curious about an upcoming phone? Want to know who has a good rate plan for Blackberry services? Fire the query my way!

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Trying Something New: Ask Me a Cell Phone Question!

However, yesterday, Apple announced the new capabilities of iLife ’09. In this update, iPhoto ’09 specifically will include:

• facial recognition that will allow you to find and categorize your pictures based on the faces of who is in them,
• publish your photos directly to Facebook and Flickr,
• new slideshow features,
• location awareness in a new feature called Places!

This last feature is of special interest to me. You see, Nokia NSeries phones have GPS chips on board. Therefore, photos taken on most NSeries can be geo-encoded, if you set the preferences up to do so.

This means each photo I take on my N82, N96, or other handset have the GPS coordinates for me to utilize. If I want, I can see all the photos I took while I was in Barcelona as an example.

With iPhoto ’09, the software will now be able to read the GPS coordinates on the photos and show me a global map overlayed with my photos. So Cool!

Flickr does this now in a limited fashion. That is, when I upload a photo into Flickr, I can place it on a map, allowing you to see your photos overlaid onto a map.

However, Flickr doesn’t seem to parse the existing GPS data as a part of each JPG that comes off my Nokia NSeries phones. This is weird!

Even more weird is the fact that Flickr sees the GPS coordinates in the EXIF information, but doesn’t auto-magically place that photo on the map without me manually doing it.

In Conclusion:

iPhoto ’09 in tandem with my Nokia NSeries handsets will make for a very functional way of interacting with and categorizing my photo collection. I am happy Apple has supported location awareness into iPhoto’s feature set!

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Nokia NSeries Phones and iPhoto ’09 Are A Perfect Combination

Ignite Portland has been a huge success and I’ve been very happy to watch the Ignite community really watch their program turn in to a success.

This is why I was so happy to see that Bend, Oregon is going to start their own. That’s right: Announcing Ignite Bend!

According to Hack Bend.com, the Event is schedule to take place on February 12, 2009 from 7:30 to 10:00pm at the The PoetHouse Art in the tbd Loft – entrance through The Wine Shop at 55 Minnesota Avenue, Bend, Oregon.

I’ve been to every Ignite Portland event and I’m very excited to see Bend start their own Ignite event. I’m planning on being there as part of a Central Oregon Roadtrip – who’s with me?!
I can’t wait to meet some other Bend social media types.

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Helping Announce: Ignite Bend is Coming

According ot the technologists and thought leaders they asked, survey respondents thought the mobile phone would have a major stake in the way we live in the next decade.

I agree with the survey. As I have adopted a smartphone, I use my laptop much less and my iPhone carrying friends have reported the same behavioural change.

Being able to access email on your mobile and the web lessens the needs to be in front of your computer.

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By 2020, You’ll Access The Mobile Web, Primarily

This potential development correlates with my interview with Frank Meehan, where I asked Meehan if the SkypePhone might cross the pond.

He paused and answered by saying 3 wouldn’t be bring it over directly, but “if a U.S. carrier wanted to take a look at the phone and license it or work something out, we’d be open to that.”

When I posed the question, I asked whether 3 was in the US to work out deals or make an announcement, and he shyly said no. However, my suspicion is that this highly ranked GM from 3 wasn’t in San Francisco to merely make a showing at a conference, but rather to also seek partners or affiliates to spread the SkypePhone to the US market as well.

In my interview with Mr. Meehan, he pointed out how much time and R&D energy went into creating the 3 SkypePhone, and I can easily see a situation where they’d like to generate some revenue from the device by licensing or other revenue model.

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3 Looking to Bring SkypePhone Across the Pond?

Photo Credit: Flickr User wajakemek

Ever use your debit card to buy gas? If so, you’re putting yourself at risk, as many swiping victims are finding out. According to police agencies around the country, an increasing number of credit cards and debit cards are being skimmed by criminals and identity thieves.

Why are debit card holders foolish to use their debit cards when buying gas? Because rather than just racking up a balance on a credit card, the criminals can drain your entire bank account before you even know it. Additionally, it can take days if not weeks for your financial institution to fix the issue and re-instate your balance.

According to the Yahoo story,

Though the most recent cases don’t necessarily represent an epidemic, the Secret Service is investigating incidents across the country, says Ed Donovan, spokesman for the agency, which has financial and electronic crimes units.

Skimming devices have been used for several years, most often at ATMs. Thieves increasingly target pumps because it’s a cheap, easy way to steal credit and debit card information, Van Dyke says.

“Card fraud at gas pumps is a significant problem, and that’s because of the unintended nature of the checkout devices,” he says. “Essentially, every gas pump is an electronic cash register.”

Just keep an eye out next time you’re at the pump…if something looks funny, move on to another gas terminal.

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Skimmers Are At Work: Don’t Use a Debit Card to Buy Gas

After looking at the coverage map for the Bend area (a metropolitan area of about 150,000 people in the central part of the state), I did see that Bend is in the covered area for AT&T service, as seen in the screenshot below.

However, I noticed the link above this map that says “GoPhone” and clicked it. I’m a pre-paid AT&T customer, meaning I use the “Pick Your Plan” option to avoid a yearly service agreement. Clicking the GoPhone gave me this map, which doesn’t include the Bend area.

Why would AT&T do this to their pre-paid customers? I imagine at least some pre-paid customers are those who are trying out AT&T to see if they like the service. If the coverage areas are separate and not as broad, AT&T may lose out on some customers who don’t like to be treated indifferently.

So why the difference in coverage areas? My guess is that AT&T doesn’t have towers of their own in the region specified above and are using a peer carrier to make calls. Using a peer carrier costs AT&T by the minute and I imagine they don’t make a good profit margin on service in these areas, making it illogical to give pre-paid customers coverage in these geographic areas.

One note – I’ve used T-Mobile pre-paid before, and T-Mobile doesn’t treat their pre-paid customers any differently with respect to coverage areas. T-Mobile pre-payers have access to the entire T-Mobile network without restriction.

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AT&T Has Differing Coverage Areas For Pre-Paid vs. Contract Customers?