Glenn Beck is considering following in Oprah Winfrey’s footsteps and starting his own channel, sources tell the New York Times . Beck’s contract at Fox is up at the end of the year. With the network rumored to be considering dropping him , Beck is looking into taking over all or part…
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• Waitrose.com went live a fortnight ago and cost £10m • Angry shoppers complain of slow speeds and ‘endless scrolling’ Waitrose has seen an exodus of online shoppers after a disastrous launch for its new £10m website. Waitrose.com went live with much fanfare a fortnight ago but has been beset with a number of problems such as slow speed. The upmarket grocer faces a barrage of criticism from customers, some of whom say they have switched to Sainsbury’s or Tesco. Waitrose’s troubles will also be a boost to rival online grocer Ocado. Before the launch, Waitrose, owned by the John Lewis partnership, claimed the new site would be easier to navigate and make ordering easier and quicker. However, a spokeswoman admitted on Wednesday: “We’ve had some teething problems and are working 24/7 to rectify these problems. We’re using our forum to let our customers know what changes have been made.” On the online forum , angry shoppers called on Waitrose to bring the old website back, with CheshireCat saying: “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Sea_the_stars wrote: “After 2 hours, I don’t know what I have ordered and what I haven’t. I copied and pasted my list into Tesco’s shopping list and completed the order in less than 15 mins and 10% cheaper than Waitrose including their delivery charge, So it’s goodbye from me!” Another disillusioned shopper, Priya , wrote: “Waitrose seems to have completely overlooked the most basic requirement for a user interface – ease of use. The old website had a simple design and no performance issues that I can remember. Using the new site for the first time yesterday was incredibly painful – extremely slow response time, and the endless scrolling that was necessary due to the very poor design meant it took me over 40 minutes to create a short order – previously done in under 10 minutes.” In its latest update on the website, the grocer apologised for the problems to customers and said it was working on the overall speed of the site “as a matter of urgency”. Recent changes mean that customers can now add more than 12 items from their lists to their trolley and Waitrose promised to provide a new button to allow customers to add all items in their list. It has also improved the logons, and offer codes will now not be lost when an order is edited. However, the changes have done little to appease angry customers. “Bad to worse this morning, it seems… Oh dear. How are the mighty fallen!” Sarah by the Brook wrote on Wednesday. Supermarkets John Lewis Retail industry E-commerce Ocado Julia Kollewe guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Hacker nets two years in jail after pilfering £7 million in virtual poker chips
March 23, 2011 No Comment
Crime, it just doesn’t pay. Well, actually it does, to the tune of
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Ogle at the classics of bike design in Cyclepedia: A Tour of Iconic Bicycle Designs by Michael Embacher
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Large parts of Allan Bank property in the Lake District destroyed by overnight fire after a suspected electrical fault One of the “big three” Wordsworth houses in the Lake District has been seriously damaged by fire after a suspected electrical fault. Large parts of Allan Bank at Grasmere, Cumbria, have been destroyed in spite of an overnight operation by fire crews from five stations. No one was hurt at the National Trust property, which William Wordsworth made notorious by repeated complaints about its smoky chimneys. Two women tenants were safely evacuated after the alarm was raised at 1.30am. Firefighters from Grasmere and Ambleside were reinforced by crews from Coniston, Windermere and Keswick as the blaze spread through the large mansion, completely gutting the first floor. Extensive water damage is also expected throughout the remains of the late 18th-century building, which the poet and his family also disliked because of its incurably damp walls. Initial tests suggest that an electrical fault in the roof-space may have caused the fire at the house, which overlooks Easedale valley and the rocky southern face of Helm Crag. Allen Bank is not open to the public but well-used footpaths crisscross its grounds. Wordsworth grumbled about it initially as an eyesore from his then home at Dove Cottage, the other side of Grasmere Lake. He disliked not only its bulk but the “belching” smoke from its ineffectively built chimneys. When he moved there in 1808 to have room for his growing family and regular visitors such as the writer Thomas de Quincey, he found the smoke often filled rooms as well as the garden and grounds, because of the hopeless down draught. He also fell out with the landlord and in 1813 moved to the much grander Rydal Mount, two miles away, where he lived until his death in 1850. Both Dove Cottage and Rydal Mount are open to the public and among the Lake District’s biggest attractions. Allan Bank was bought in 1915 by Hardwicke Rawnsley, an clergyman and one of the founders of the National Trust. Rawnsley left it to the organisation when he died five years later. The National Trust has only recently completed repairs to Wordsworth’s birthplace at Cockermouth, which was damaged by the Cumbrian floods in November 2009 but has reopened while restoration of its garden continues. William Wordsworth Martin Wainwright guardian.co.uk
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Ruling party in Sana’a assembly backs President Saleh’s move to suspend constitution, ban protests and allow tougher powers of arrest Yemen’s parliament has enacted sweeping emergency laws after the embattled president asked for new powers of arrest, detention and censorship to quash a popular uprising demanding he step down. The move significantly escalates the showdown between US-backed leader Ali Abdullah Saleh and the movement that has unified military commanders, religious leaders and protesting youth behind demands that he quit immediately. The law suspends the constitution, allows media censorship, bans street protests and gives security forces 30 days of far-reaching powers to arrest and detain suspects. Its adoption was a virtual certainty because Saleh’s ruling party dominates the 301-seat legislature. The accelerating conflict has raised fears that Yemen could be pushed into even greater instability. Rival factions of the military have deployed tanks in the capital, Sana’a – with units commanded by Saleh’s son protecting the president’s palace, and units loyal to a top dissident commander protecting the protesters. Saleh, who has worked closely with a US offensive against the Yemeni branch of al-Qaida, has already dramatically stepped up the crackdown on anti-government demonstrators, with his security forces shooting dead more than 40 protesters on Friday in Sana’a. On Tuesday he offered to quit by the year’s end, but the opposition rejected his offer. He also warned of civil war following the defection of senior army commanders to the opposition. Tribal leaders, diplomats, politicians, provincial governors and newspaper editors have also joined the opposition. Saleh, who has ruled Yemen for 32 years, has also called for a dialogue with the leaders of the youth movements leading the protests at a central Sana’a square which has become the movement’s centre. The defection on Monday of Major-General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, a high-level regime insider who commands the army’s powerful 1st armoured division, has been seen by many as a major turning point towards a potentially rapid end for Saleh. Clashes broke out late on Monday between Saleh’s republican guard and dissident army units in the far east of the country. On Tuesday, republican guard tanks surrounded an important air base in the western Red Sea coastal city of Hodeida after its commander, Colonel Ahmed al-Sanhani, a member of Saleh’s own clan, defected to the opposition. The turmoil raised alarm bells in Washington. The US defence secretary, Robert Gates, said during a trip to Russia that “instability and diversion of attention” from dealing with al-Qaida was a “primary concern about the situation”. He refused to discuss whether Saleh should step down. Yemen Middle East Arab and Middle East unrest Human rights Censorship Protest guardian.co.uk
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No 59: Elizabeth Taylor 1932-2011 Born in London to well-off American parents, Taylor was taken to America when war broke out and was in show-business from the age of 10. She became a major child star, giving one of her finest performances as Velvet Brown, the farmer’s daughter and Grand National winner, in National Velvet (1944). Her steady development from charming child to alluring adult star culminated in Vincente Minnelli’s Father of the Bride (1950). (Twenty one years later, Peter Bogdanovich used a clip from this in The Last Picture Show to present her as the belle id
Continue reading …Megyn Kelly Allows Wingnut Radio Host Gallagher to Claim There’s No Oil Remaining in the Gulf
March 23, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media While complaining about President Obama going to Brazil and encouraging them to do more offshore oil drilling, Fox’s Megyn Kelly allows right wing radio talk show host Mike Gallagher to get away with saying there’s no oil remaining in the Gulf after the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster. GALLAGHER: No, he’s worried about another one because one accident, which by the way, they still can’t find any remaining oil. That was supposed to be the catastrophe that ended our planet. We were all going to curl up and die from the BP oil spill. Remember how that was reported? And now they can’t even find any residue, any oil remaining. It was not the catastrophe that the do-gooders thought it was going to be. Mike wants the Fox viewers to believe that just because the media refuses to report on the remaining oil, it must have magically disappeared. That wasn’t the only ridiculous thing he said during this segment but it certainly was the most outrageous. I guess no one bothered to show him this, not that it would matter. I imagine he’d still lie about it even if they did. — Oil Still Leaking New Deepwater Horizon Drill Site enlarge Credit: Courtesy of Huffington Post (Jerry Moran/Stuart Smith oilspillaction.com)
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