Fake Buyers / Spoofing on Amazon

I just recently listed my camera for sale on Amazon. I was well pleased with the listing as the rates on Amazon was much higher than on eBay or any other website. However, I happened to leave a link on the listing asking buyers to check out the photographs I obtained with the camera on my photography website. Amazon objected to me providing links (“contact information”) and I had to re-list it.

Anyway, 2 days later I got an enquiry from Amazon, purporting to be from a buyer asking for product details. Here`s the mail:

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Hello from Amazon.co.uk,

A buyer has sent you a message regarding an order or an item from your store on Amazon.co.uk. If you need to respond to the sender, you can reply to this e-mail.

Item: Sony DSLR-A200K 10.2MP Digital SLR Camera + Zoom Lens Kit (18-70 mm F3.5-5.6) [Electronics]

Important Notice: Amazon.co.uk will retain copies of all e-mails sent and received using this service, including this message. By using this service, you consent to this action.

-------------- Begin message --------------------

i don't seems to get pics on here pls send them to : darren.young77@yahoo.com

-------------- End message -----------------------

Amazon.co.uk will never e-mail you and ask you to disclose or verify your Amazon.co.uk password, credit card or bank account details. If you receive a suspicious e-mail with a link to update your account information, do not click on the link--instead report the e-mail to Amazon.co.uk for investigation. Go to amazon.co.uk/phish to find out more.

Amazon.co.uk uses filtering technology to protect buyers and sellers and to identify possible fraud. Messages that fail this filtering - even if they are not fraudulent - will not be transmitted.

Only ship to the address shown in your seller account. Do not honour buyer requests to ship orders to any address other than the one provided by Amazon.co.uk. Do not accept any payment method other than Amazon Payments (checkout via our Shopping Cart or 1-Click). Payment for the sale may be withheld if these guidelines are not followed.

[commMgrTok:A36RXRAQHRGP6M]

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So, thinking it to be a genuine buyer, I responded immediately with pictures of the product, hoping to attract the buyer to my sale.

The next day I got this mail from the buyer:

______________________________________________________________________________________

Ok,get back to me with the link of the item also the name that you use to put ur item on amazon.co.uk site so that i can be able to make the payment for you asap hope to hear from you soon.

______________________________________________________________________________________

…and sure enough I soon get this mail from what looks like Amazon: which has listed as its subject:

Sold,Dispatch Now.Sony DSLR-A200K 10.2MP Digital SLR Camera + Zoom Lens Kit (18-70 mm F3.5-5.6)

and the senders address is : Amazon.co.uk [payment-message@amazon.co.uk]

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Your Amazon.co.uk Marketplace Sale has been CONFIRMED. We have Deposited your Earnings from the Sale of this Item into our Payments Account, but it's yet to be Transfered into your amazon Account.This includes a Postage Credit of £65.00 If you haven't already Provided Us with your Bank Account Information, Please do so at your Earliest Convenience, because we can not Transfer Funds to you until you Provide your Bank Account Detail's and if we do have your Bank Account with us already, we hereby inform you that you should go ahead with the Item Shippment within the next 1or 2-Days and email us back with the Shippment Tracking Number.

PLEASE DISPATCH ITEM IMMEDIATELY

1 Sony DSLR-A200K 10.2MP Digital SLR Camera + Zoom Lens Kit (18-70 mm F3.5-5.6) [Electronics]

You have agreed to Dispatch no later than One or Two Working Days after the Buyer's Purchase on 09.11.2009. In the Unfortunate case that you cannot Provide the Item which you have Sold on amazonco.uk or do not want to ship outside the UK and Payment has been removed from the Buyer's Account, you should Issue a Full Refund through Western Union Money Transfer or eMoney Gram from the Post Office and email Us back with the Full Payment Sent Detail's.

ACCOUNT:

http://s1amazon.co.uk/exec/varzea/subst/your-account/seller-account-payments.html

Your Buyer's Delivery Address is below ( please use your own address as the return address and enclose the packing slip for your Buyer's Reference):

NOTE: You WIll have to Ship Item and email Us the Tracking Reference Number of the Shipment for the Release of Funds to be Authorised to your Current Account. Also Item will be ended up once this is done. Get back to Us on:cus-o4-ser :(support-seller-dtp@mail.com).

Here are the details of your Completed Amazon Marketplace sale:

Order #: 278-4888592-9283706

Listings: 1

Total Item Count: 4

Listing 1 Sony DSLR-A200K 10.2MP Digital SLR Camera + Zoom Lens Kit (18-70 mm F3.5-5.6) [Electronics]

Listing ID: 052DS67N3R

SKU:

Quantity: 1

Buyer's Price: £285.00

Postage & Handling:£65.00

Total Amount: (£350.00)

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Less Amazon.co.uk Marketplace Fees: ( £7.76) Less VAT on Amazonco.uk Marketplace: (£9.90) Total Due Seller: £340.01 For General Questions about Amazon.co.uk Marketplace: You will find more information here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/3149141/

Amazon.co..uk Marketplace -- Amazon Services Europe S.a.rl.Sell Your Stuff http://www.amazon.co.uk/marketplace

PACKING SLIP:

Amazon.co.uk Marketplace Item: Sony DSLR-A200K 10.2MP Digital SLR Camera + Zoom Lens Kit (18-70 mm F3.5-5.6) [Electronics] Listing ID: 052DS67N3R

Quantity: 1

Purchased on: 09.11.2009

Dispatched by: xxxxxxxxx(edited)

INVOICE ADDRESS:

Name: James Abeey

Address Line 1: 01,bayoola Street Off Bishop Road Address Line 2:

Town / City : Ipaja

County: Lagos State

Post Code: 23401

Country: Nigeria

DELIVERY ADDRESS:

Dispatch to : James Abeey

Address Line 1: 01,bayoola Street Off Bishop Road Address Line 2:

Town / City : Ipaja

County: Lagos State

Post Code: 23401

Country: Nigeria

Buyer Name: Darren Young

Buyer e-mail: darren.young77@yahoo.com

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - DISPATCH LABEL

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Name : James Abeey Address : 01,bayoola Street Off Bishop Road City : Ipaja State : Lagos Zip-Code : 23401 Country : Nigeria

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Three things about the mail made me suspicious:

Fisrt of course was the Nigerian address! Hell, I wasnt going to ship to Nigeria even if it was a genuine sale!

Second, all links provided did not lead to Amazon!

Third, if you noticed, the postage fees provided was simply too high.

So I logged into my Amazon account to verify the sale and Lo , the item was still unsold!!

The sale was one big scam, hoping I would dispatch the camera to him without bothering to look at my Amazon account.

A few minutes later, the scammer sends me another mail:

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Hi  ,

How are you doing? hope you're fine. i just want to inform you that i went ahead to make payment for your item a short while ago and i have finished the procedure for the check-out and i believe amazon would notify you as soon as possible, am sending this item as a gift to my cousin and i don't want you to write the content on the package because it is expected to be a surprise gift, you may just write gift item on it.I have promised that i am going to surprise him on his birthday and i don't want to disappoint him this time when his birthday is around the corner. Please use international signed for priority handling delivery at the post office and here is the shipping address below...

James Abeey
01,bayoola Street Off Bishop Road
Ipaja
Lagos
23401
Nigeria

here is my number +447024085728

i will be awaiting your reply as soon as possible concerning postage details.

Thanks

_______________________________________________________________________________________

The cheeky b*@~#£$d!! I`m not going to fall for a scam like this. I promptly contacted Amazon and sent them copies of the mails. They took their time to reply, and a day later sent me this confirming that the sale was a spoof attempt.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Thank you for contacting Amazon.co.uk Marketplace.

We certainly appreciate you contacting us regarding this situation, and are sorry to hear of it.

I can confirm that there has not been a genuine sale for the Sony DSLR-A200K 10.2MP Digital SLR Camera + Zoom Lens Kit (18-70 mm F3.5-5.6) and ask that you do not fulfil the delivery request. Payment has not been taken and the listing for this item is still available on our website for prospective buyers.

Please note that Nigeria is not a country which is Marketplace-enabled and sellers are not permitted to sell electronic items overseas. Therefore if you receive emails purporting to be from Amazon which request items be sent to Nigeria or electronic items be sent overseas you can be certain they did not originate from Amazon.co.uk and are not confirmatory of a genuine sale.

As advised on the Seller Announcements Board, we have had a number of contacts from sellers stating they have received fake "Sold, Dispatch Now" e-mails recently. The person who sent you the fake "Sold, Dispatch Now" email obtained your email address from your reply to their Product Detail Enquiry. Please exercise caution when deciding to respond to such enquiries for electronics items, especially if you have been asked for a picture, the condition of the item or a listing ID - information already covered by your listing.

Please be aware that Amazon does NOT provide the buyer information in the "Sold, Dispatch Now" e-mails. A "Sold, Dispatch Now" e-mail showing an address for dispatch has not been sent by Amazon.

This business action was taken in order to further protect the Buyer and Seller information, ensuring that sellers will now need to log onto their Seller Account in order to verify the sale and obtain the dispatch address.

If you are using the "Sold, Dispatch Now" e-mails as your primary means of order notification, you will need to check the validity of the order in the "Manage Your Orders" section of your Seller Account before dispatching the item.

You can always determine the validity of your transactions online from your Seller Account. There are two easy ways to access your Seller Account:

- Click the Your Account link at the top of our home page, and then

click on "Your Seller Account" in the box on the right.

- Go directly to this URL: http://www.amazon.co.uk/selleraccount

Next, under the heading Manage Your Orders, click to "Search your Marketplace orders". On the search page itself, select the search option you prefer and then click the "Search" button. You can click on the order ID for your sale to view order details, including the delivery address. You can also print a packing slip from the Order Details page by clicking on the "print shipping label and packing list" link.

We would appreciate your reporting any future requests for direct payment, or fraudulent e-mails, to: stop-spoofing@amazon.com and thank you for your vigilance.

Thank you for selling at Amazon.co.uk.

Best regards,

Carol

Amazon.co.uk Seller Support

Check your seller account: http://www.amazon.co.uk/selleraccount

To contact us again about this issue, please use the Contact Us form using the following link:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/contact-us/selling-at-amazon.html?caseId=5492462

Please note: this e-mail was sent from a notification-only address that cannot accept incoming e-mail. Please do not reply to this message.

 

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Subsequent to this, I have had two more spoof emails from more Nigerian scamsters and their emails are: Rebecca Barton [rebeccabarton250c@rediffmail.com]

and chika.mero@yahoo.com .

If Amazon doesnt do anything about this soon, This is going to be a big problem!

Beware of your sales on Amazon.

Cannot register as a seller on eBay – text of exchanges with dumb customer support!

I`ve been trying to sell a few items on Ebay and have been unable to do so for more than a month as eBay does not allow me to pay my seller fees. I searched a lot of forums and was unable to find a solution. However, I discovered that this problem was very common, and had people speculating if eBay was intentionally doing this to reduce the number of sellers (dont ask why)
Anyway after trying all options to pay including Paypal, credit card, debit card and direct debit, I hit a stone wall with it refusing to allow me to pay after giving me blatant lies such as –technical difficulties or invalid card! (hell it worked as a buyer on ebay itself!)
So I fnally got in touch with their customer support. Here`s what ensued. The blue text is my mail, the green text is their reply!
 
Message: Hi,
I`ve been trying to register as a seller for the past One month. But 
everytime, i get to the payment page and try to make payment by Paypal 
it gives me this message:
Sorry. We're currently experiencing technical difficulties and are 
unable to complete the process at this time. 
(for 1 month?!!)
So I try to pay with a credit card and it says:
This is an unsupported card brand. Please try another card brand.
(Mastercard is unsupported?)
I`ve checked the internet and I`m not the only one having such issues.
Please help.

 

Hello Thomas,

Thank you for your email regarding the issue you are facing while 
setting up a seller account.

Based on the error message yu've received, it seems that you are using a
prepaid or cash cards (Duh! i clearly mentioned it was a Mastercard!). For your reference, eBay's Seller Verification 
System requires all users who wish to sell on eBay.co.uk to enter:

- credit (Visa/MasterCard) or debit (Switch/Solo/Visa Delta/Visa 
electron) card details and
- current bank account details.

For further investigations, kindly write back to us with the information
below:

- Kind of card you are using
- Logo of your card
- Exact error message you've received
(all of which as you can read I already mentioned!!!)
Thank you again for your cooperation. We look forward to hearing back 
from you.

Kind regards,

Mary Dunne
eBay Customer Support

anyway, I replied again:

 

Hi,
You have obviously failed to read my mail with attention. I have already
mentioned all the information you have asked for! Anyway, here it is 
again.
I am not using a prepaid card. My card is a credit card. It is a 
Mastercard.
The exact error message is " This is an unsupported card brand. Please 
try
another card brand." 
I tried another brand and that doesn't work either.
I tried using paypal and this is the exact error message : " Sorry. 
We're
currently experiencing technical difficulties and are 
unable to complete the process at this time."
I know its not a temporary hitch because I have been trying for a month 
now.
Please help with this.

 

and the stupid morons reply thus:

Hello Thomas,

Thanks for getting in touch about setting up your credit card for 
automatic monthly billing on eBay.

Credit card companies don't tell us why cards are declined, so I'm 
afraid I can't tell you why the authorization failed. But there are some
things you can do now. 

First of all, there are a few things you should check - for some of 
these, you'll need to contact your credit card company. If you find the 
problem, re-submit your details. I've included the instructions further 
down.

1) Are you entering your billing address exactly as it appears on your 
credit card statement? You have to enter it exactly the same, including 
capital letters, periods and spaces.

2) Are you entering the exact same ZIP or postal code as the one on your
credit card statement? For better verification, enter your nine-digit 
ZIP code - you can get it here: 

 http://zip4.usps.com/zip4/welcome.htm 

3) Are the number and expiration date on your credit card valid? 

4) Is your account in good standing? 

5) Is there enough credit available on your account to cover a $1.00 
authorization hold? We charge a temporary $1.00 'hold' to your account 
to verify that the card is valid. (If you don't have at least $1.00 
available credit, your card will be declined). The hold charge is 
removed by your bank or credit card company within 5-7 business days.

6) Does your account have a block on Internet and phone orders? 

7) If it's a new credit card, has the account been activated? 

8) Are you using a debit card instead of a credit card? A debit card 
isn't a credit card, even when it has a credit card logo on it. Debit 
cards may have daily and/or transaction limits. Contact your bank to ask
if there are daily and/or transaction limits or any other restrictions 
that may be causing your card to decline.) 

9) Also make sure you enter only the numbers without any dashes ("-"), 
slashes("/") or spaces while entering your credit card number.

Here's how to re-submit your credit card information:

1. Go to My Account > Payment Information.
2. Click 'Edit Payment Information'. You'll need to enter your password.
3. Type in your details carefully. You need to make sure they're exactly
the same as how they appear on your statement, including capital 
letters, periods and spaces.

The change will take effect on your account within 24 hours. 


I hope this information helps you find the problem and set up your 
credit card for automatic payment. If there's anything else we can help 
with, please get in touch.

Kind regards,

Yan Pommel
eBay Customer Support 

 

Are the customer support people illiterate or just pure morons! This was really getting to me, so I replied again:

I am not asking why my credit card was declined. For your information, 
it
was NOT declined! My card works fine on every other site including as an
ebay buyer. Please read through my original message. My problem is that 
I
cannot register as a seller. Please stop sending me irrelevant 
information
and help me register as a seller.

 

Finally someone decides its time to stop toying with me and acknowledges that theres a real problem:

Hello,

Thank you for your email about creating a seller?s account.

We have received similar reports and have now managed to identify the 
issue. Based from our investigation, this problem is caused by the old 
PayPal verification process that members are getting when creating a 
seller's account. 

To resolve this, you will have to select Direct Debit or credit card as 
your automatic payment method instead of PayPal for eBay fees. 

I fully understand your frustration and I apologise for any distress or 
inconvenience that this matter may have caused you. If you need any more
information please get in touch.

Kind regards,

Maurice Trent
eBay Customer Support 

whew, I head back to the site and this time Paypal is not a payment option. I use a credit card and it appears to let me through. Finally!!!

How to get feeds for sites that do not have RSS feeds or customize existing site feeds.

I love the Google reader and I subscribe to all my favourite websites through RSS feeds. However, some sites do not offer full feed function and I often just get a preview of the content in my reader. For example a website may not offer images in its feed and it may be annoying to click through to get its full content. Worse still some websites dont have an RSS feed. How do you get RSS feeds from a site that doesnt offer RSS feeds? I was looking for a solution and found Dapper.

Using Dapper you can make feeds for feedless web sites or customise existing feeds. It may be a little confusing at first but they offer step by step instructions and tutorials as you go along.

But heres a few of mine to help you get started.

1. First click on create a new dapp link at the bottom of the search box.

2.  Paste the address of the website whose feed you want. Either use an existing feed or start with the website itself. You can choose the Dapp XML to start with.

when  you click “Next”, the Dapp engine finds and loads your site.

3. now, instead of loading the home page, click on a post to get the page for that individual post. When that loads, click “add to basket”.

Now, go back to the home page using the green arrows next to the URL and click on another post and load that to the basket. Repeat that for a few pages. What we are trying to do is add many representative pages for the engine to find similarities.

4. In the next step, the engine analyses your pages and finds similar bocks such as titles, images, posts, ads etc.

Now as you move the cursor over the page you will see boxes, select a box and allot a name to it. If you select title, the engine will recognize the same thing in all the pages you added. Similarly you can add images  and text. Include only the content you will need to receive in your final feed.

5. In the next step, you need to group all the above step. For instance, in my feed title, image and text compose a single feed, so I group them as a post. As you select groups, u get an instant preview of what the resulting feed will look like.

 

6. Save your Dapp . You have the option of making it private.

Once saved, you get the result as a Dapp feed. You then have the option to convert it as any type of RSS or Atom feed;

which then gives you an option to choose what to put as your feed title and what to put in the feed text and previews the feed. It also gives you the feed address:

which you can then add to your feede reader to get the customised feed:

In my case I have successfully customised my feed to include pictures where the original feed came without images or detailed text.

How to customize the right click (context) menu in Firefox

After using Google chrome for a while, where drag and drop links were not yet available, I returned to Firefox and found myself using right click followed by “open in new tab” in the right click menu to open links in new tabs. However, unlike chrome, where that is the first option, I found myself unwittingly clicking on the first option in the right click menu of  Firefox which was to “open in new window”. Thats really annoying when you don’t want multiple windows open.

Furthermore, a lot of firefox plugins add unwanted selections to the menu and it becomes a pain in the  ~’@? to find what you actually need.

So , i decided to find something to customise my right click menu.

Thats how I found the Menu Editor plugin:

After install, you may access the options through the addon options from the addon menu, or simply press ctrl+shift+s to bring it up.

Simply choose the mu you want to edit and untick, those option you do not wish to appear. As you can see below, I`ve unticked “open link in new window”

…and hey presto, the link is gone from the context menu , and the first option is “open link in new tab”, just like I wanted it.

This is one reason I keep coming back to Firefox, Chrome just doesnt allow a similar degree of customisation just as yet.

Install multiple freeware applications with a single installer - Ninite

 

Ever had to install many applications one after the other on a PC? Maybe when you re-installed Windows or shifted to a new laptop. Then you would know how time and labour consuming it is.

Now there’s a solution – a website called Ninite. It lists some of the most commonly used freeware applications on a well designed page, including web browsers, Instant messaging applications, media players, image and document editors and viewers, runtime and antivirus software, file sharing and other utilities. All you have to do is select all the programs you wish to install and click on the “Get Installer”  button at the bottom.

You will then get a single installer, for all the applications you chose. Simple but oh so useful! Brilliant.

How to download and keep BBC iplayer video files DRM free

As you may be aware BBC iplayer is a fantastic way to catch up on programmes that have already been shown on any of the BBC channels. However, the video files will disappear from the player days after you first watch it. In short they are DRM files and it doesn’t allow you to save the files.

I may often like a program but be unable to watch it for a long time and by the time I get around to it, it may no longer be available to watch. I was thus looking for a solution to download the files and keep it for as long as I want and I came across this great solution. Its called as ipdl.exe and according to a video on youtube comes from Paul Battley from www.po-ru.com. So all credits to him.

All you got to do is download   and double click it to run. It presents you with an interface which asks you for the program ID. Now head over to the BBC iplayer and navigate to the program you wish to download.

Now copy the address as seen in the URL bar:

and paste it in the ipdl program ID box and click download. It then asks you where to save the video and gives it the default name of the programme. Once thats done, you are on..it downloads it..and its fast.

The file is saved as a quicktime (.MOV) file which you may then view with Quicktime or another media player such as VLC video player.

Fantastic, works like a dream !!Thanks Paul Battley .

How to choose a laptop – use Windows PC Scout

Thinking of buying a new laptop but confused by the amazing selection out there? Wish someone would just recommend the perfect laptop for you? Here`s just the tool you need – from Microsoft -  Windows PC scout

Once you get started, a screen pops up which takes you through a long and boring introduction about the whole process and what it will take you through.

You then have a choice depending on what level of user you are to go through more explanatory basics or go to the end, if you really are the confused lot, click “Start it”.

The wizard then asks you questions on how you intend to use your laptop etc. At each step, it offers an explanation of the component basics which you may choose to skip.

Finally it asks you to choose your screen size, which may be one of the most important user choices.

and finally it summarises what specification it recommends for your needs.

and based on the budget you choose and the above specification comes up with the top recommendations, which you can then compare.

Of course you could skip the wizard and use the sliders seen on the left in the above screen to choose your own specifications. If you`d rather do that straight away, just skip everything else and go Here.

All in all I`d say its a useful tool to get the topmost laptops recommended by Microsoft, it still doesn’t include the rest of the choices though.

Tonights gonna be a good night

I heard the song – I got a feeling that tonights gonna be a goodnight on X-factor and wondered who sang it. Of course I`m not up to date with the music scene. Anyway, it turns out that the Song is -

"I Gotta Feeling" by the Black Eyed Peas. Here is an embedded video of the same:

Of course you can also listen to it by searching for it on Spotify. If you havent started using Spotify I suggest you try it out. Its amazing and free!.

Also available on iTunes.

Best Free Anti virus / Anti malware – Microsoft Security Essentials

Anti virus has always been a problem with me, Initially I depended upon the dependable AVG antivirus until it let me down on a couple of occasions. I then migrated to using 3 and 6 month trial versions of some very good anti virus and anti malware packages such as Kaspersky and Avira. However, it would always be a frantic search at the end of the trial period to unearth another trial offer to cover my computers security…The truth is I`m cheap and hate having to pay for an antivirus which I believe should be in built into the operating system.

I think Microsoft is coming around to the same idea and thats why it now ships with a sloppy Windows Defender antivirus. However, lately it has begun to take pride in what it is doing and as a result Microsoft Security Essentials emerged.

I must say that initially I had my apprehensions about this package. So as my former antivirus was expiring, I decided to try MSE out. As soon as you install it, the software intergrates with your computer and dowloads the latest definitions before it does a quick scan of your system. It wasnt ultra quick but it wasnt bad either…but was it good?

Oh yes this thing is good. It detected two trojans and the remnants of a hidden Keylogger that was on one of my PCs which didn not have any protection on it. The key logger I had installed myself and had believed I uninstalled !! MSE removed all of them effortlessly.

Once you finish the quick scan, you have the option of doing a full detailed scan which will be more thorough. You can also ask the program to do scheduled scans at selected times and dates. Updates though are automatic.

What impressed me most though was the small footprint it left. The memory consumption on my laptop never went above 6000K and when running in the background stays at around 2500k or lower.

Even while running a full scan, it remains unobtrusive, just how Microsoft intended it to be.

So far this is great and it remains as the only antivirus on both my laptop and my desktop. I`ll let you know if that changes. If you are looking for a the best free antivirus / antimalware package, get it from here.

Use Fences to Manage your Desktop

If you, like me have trouble managing the clutter of files and folders accumulating on your desktop, do yourself a favour and install Fences. Fences is free and comes from the makers of Objectdock. Fences allows you to  create fences on your desktop and organise files within. Well, it can also automatically sort the files for you. You can drag and drop files into the fences, create or modify the size or color of the  fences and scroll within fences. I  just installed it and I must say I`m very impressed. Here`s a video of its demo:

Best Completely Free Photo Sharing / Hosting Site - Zooomr

I`ve so far been hosting and sharing my pictures on Flickr. Without doubt, Flickr is the best site to host and share your photos if you are into photography. Some of the features that set it apart are the ability to share your photos in different sizes, the brilliant Flickr communities and groups, and its interoperability and outreach with a host of other sites and applications, ranging from mobile phones to social networking sites. If I had a choice, I`d stick with Flickr year after year, but there's a con. For unlimited capacity for uploading and sharing, one has to have a paid account, and it comes at $24 per year. That's only about £15 and well worth it, but I just taken the decision to return and settle in India and I have no Idea what awaits me there...and with a membership costing more than Rs 1100, i have to reconsider my options.

And so I began my search, I came across several sites which professed to be free, but they all had restrictions on upload capacity per month (picasa, smugmug, photobucket etc). However I soon found one that appeared to be truly free – Zooomr

..and whats more, Zooomr is a clone of flickr, intergrating most of flickr’s best features into it …albeit a bit clumsily. I would say Zooomr feels like the poor man’s Flickr!

Signing up for Zoomr is easy enough, but what I found most annoying was that there was no demo or FAQ section explaining what exactly Zoomr is about and what its restrictions are.

Once I signed up and logged in, I was presented with a clunky, cluttered interface which threw too many things at me. They call it a zipline, and it presents an update on all your contacts in Zooomr. I hated the dull blue colour of the header too.

 

The problem was the owners were automatically in my zipline, and I couldnt figure out how to get rid of them for a while. Finally I discovered that I could do so by placing my cursor on their name, which brings up an option to unfollow them. Coming from a very professional Flickr interface I initially found Zooomr unimpressive. Well, once you get the hang of it and you accept that it all comes free Zooomr starts to gain on you.

Once that was done, my next aim was to upload a few photos. This was simple enough as the “upload” link above the page took me to the web upload page. That was when I realised that Zooomr did not have its own desktop application for uploading multiple images at one go!

But there was a saving grace – a third party application that works with Zooomr called jUploadr which could be accessed from the Zooomr knowledge centre.

Interestingly jUploadr works without even an install and can also handle Flickr accounts. Only that you need to authorise it to your Zooomr account just as you would for flickr. Photos can be dragged and dropped into the uploadr. You can change the preferences to set your photos as public or private, and options to resize it to various sizes before upload.

Once the upload is complete, photos can be seen on your zipline and clicking on an individual image will take you to the photo with a number of options . See the video below for available options.

 

As seen above, the photo may be tagged, geo tagged, allotted a licence and copyright  etc. The Exif information available was indeed impressive, and better that of even Flickr. One noticeable feature is the ability to set a value for your image – right from within Zooomr. Brilliant!

Clicking on the magnifying lens sign above each photo gives you options to download various sizes of it and the code for embedding the photo.

Annoyingly, it doesn’t give the photo’s url, but thats not really a problem as the url can be accessed in other ways.

All in all, as I mentioned before, Zooomr reproduces most of Flickr’s features and even goes one up on it on a few areas. However, one thing I will greatly miss is the Flickr groups . The interface is not to my taste though and sometimes the way it loads is messy and flawed. What zooomr also lacks is the ability to organise photos in bulk as in the flickr organiser.I hope that as Zoomr becomes more popular, it will not only get better but will also have more third party clients and plugins available (eg: for windows live writer or importing photos from flickr etc). Meanwhile while Zooomr tries to figure out if its more of a scoial networking site or a photography site, I`ll stick with flickr until its time to leave.