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Want some fries with that auction? Soon, patrons of the fast-food restaurant chain Burger King will be able to rack up points that they can redeem on auction web site eBay. The deal takes effect early next year, and when it does, Burger King diners will be awarded points for buying certain fare from Burger King’s 8,400 outlets in the U.S. Customers can deposit those points on a combined eBay-Burger King web site, which puts them in the running to bid on one million prizes that will be auctioned off over the course of the year. The companies claim that this is the first fast-food-dot.com collaboration of its kind. It also happens to be Burger King’s second partnership with an internet company; a few weeks ago, the mass hamburger emporium teamed up with AOL Time Warner for a co-branded promotional web site featuring music downloads and other goodies.
Oops: Ohio attorney general links to bestiality site
Ownership of site domains changes hands quite often, faster than many webmasters can handle it. This difficulty holds particular resonance with Ohio attorney-general Betty Montgomery's office, which didn't know it was linking to a pornography site until it was tipped off by a web surfer last week. A once-legitimate legal link was connecting users to a site offering bawdy content, including bestiality and cartoon and group sex. Joe Case, spokesman for the Ohio attorney-general’s office, said that programmers for the site will monitor the links more carefully in the future. "It's nice to know someone found it, because it means somebody uses the site," he said. "That is not something we support, nor is it something we would link to.”
Muslim council: Someone's doing us dirty
The American Muslim Council says it is the victim of either a hacker attack or a deliberate computer virus infection. The council believes the timing of the infection is suspicious: The virus infected its email list on Friday the week before last, just as the holy month of Ramadan was about to begin. But the event may not have been malicious after all. Virus experts say that the council has fallen victim to a computer virus that’s been around for a while. The virus in question is called Snow White. Typically, it arrives in an email message from hahaha@sexyfun.net, titled “Snowhite and the Seven Dwarves–The REAL Story!” As with most viruses and worms, it carries an attachment, and when the recipient clicks on it, it tries to self-replicate by emailing itself to all the email addresses in the recipient’s address book. It also updates itself by connecting to a newsgroup.
Prozac donation: WebMD offers free antidepressant
The economy is depressed, and ever since the patent on Prozac expired, so is pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly. Prozac, once wildly popular, has ceded 80 percent of its market share to its generic version. In an effort to make up for lost ground, Eli Lilly has paired up with money-hemorrhaging health site WebMD to give away a month’s supply of Prozac. Specifically the giveaway covers the once-a-week pill, which is still under patent. Consumers can download a coupon from the WebMD site and take it to a pharmacist, along with their doctor’s prescription. The campaign actually commenced about six months ago but has apparently ratcheted up a little in the past two months. Eli Lilly denies that it is capitalizing on national angst over terrorists, anthrax or Afghanistan.
Nerve.com spins off online personals
Sex-on-the-brain webzine Nerve.com has plans to spin off its internet personal ad services as a separate company. Spring Street Networks, as the spinoff is to be called, will power online personal services for other companies, among them Salon, TimeOutNY and CityPages.com. Nerve officials claim that its personal ad business, its single biggest revenue stream, has helped it become profitable, making it a rarity among content-based web sites. While browsing the ads is free, love seekers must pay if they respond to an ad. The Nerve personals have so far been fairly racy; company CEO Rufus Griscom describes them as the “eBay of people.”
November 19, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
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