In 1977, Ken Olsen, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, said, “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” Flash forward to 2011 and it turns out Ken was a little off. Computers have become indispensable components of many peoples’ lives. Internet use is a huge part of that. Whether you’re utilizing cloud services like onlinestorage.com or searching for new careers, the ‘global village’ created by the worldwide web is a vital part of contemporary human existence.

It’s generally agreed upon that your average Joe or Jane Internet user considers factors like security, performance, technology, customization, and features when deciding on a web browser. Most people end up choosing Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, or Safari. But remember that there are other options. You may discover that certain browsers are more compatible with achieving your online objectives than others.

1) Compatibility with coding languages

Making sure your browser is compatible with a plethora of coding languages ensures that you’ll have access to online movies, music, and other forms of entertainment without having to rely on flea-ridden external software. HTML, CSS, Flash, and many other coding languages have cross-browser compatibility issues (most notably in Internet Explorer) that affect the user’s ability to view websites and access media.

2) Downloading/uploading speeds

You live in the 21st century—you upload pictures, stream music, and video chat over the web. You need your downloading and uploading speeds to be fast. Otherwise, you risk getting the dreaded LAG, brother to the spinning beach ball of death. Using fast browsers like Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox is a sure-fire way to guarantee your streamed episode of Mad Men won’t stall out.

3) Accessible features

User-friendly features such as toolbar search boxes and “add-ons” are also important. For example, Firefox users can download a handy URL generator directly into their toolbar to swiftly shorten URL’s for social media purposes. Presently, Internet Explorer, Opera, and Firefox are the three major browsers that offer add-ons.

4) Mobile compatibility

Let’s say you’re searching for a browser that is compatible with your iPad or smart phone. Most major browsers offer mobile apps, but the user’s ability to synchronize browsing data across devices varies. Your mobile browser may allow you to access your home computer’s history, bookmarks, tabs and passwords.

5) Open-source browsers

If you’re into collaboration, you may want to choose an open-source browser. Users here are treated as co-developers, which is why updates and fixes are frequent and often. Users of open-source browsers also benefit from diverse and decentralized crowd-sourcing that improves the software. Open source browsers end up becoming community projects.

Most people open the first browser icon they see on their desktop and don’t think twice about issues of compatibility and accessibility. But if you’re working in a high-tech work environment with demanding deadlines and vexing project criteria, knowing what you can and can’t expect from your browser is an important part of establishing your workflow. Knowing your browsers is a big part of understanding how Internet functions optimally.

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Television watchers have a new way to enjoy their favourite shows, which is Internet protocol television, or IPTV for short. Essentially, IPTV is any service which plays television shows as streaming video files through an Internet connection. Some IPTV services work as applications that you must download and install. However, there are many services that will allow you to enjoy online streaming television by simply visiting a web site. Some IPTV services include BT Vision and Virgin Media, though even popular video-on-demand sites like Netflix and Hulu fit into the category.

The best part about IPTV services is that users can decide what TV shows they want to watch and when they want to watch them, while traditional TV broadcasts are stuck to a rigid schedule that may not fit into the busy lives of their target audiences.

As any broadband expert can tell you, a large percentage of the world’s Internet traffic is currently being devoted to watching streaming videos through IPTV services. During the early days of IPTV, users would have to access these services through their computer. Video could be transferred to a television by connecting the computer with an HDMI cable, but these cables are very costly and not very convenient for desktop computer users.

However, the advent of web-enabled televisions has allowed IPTV users to conveniently watch the service right in their living room, providing stiff competition to traditional over-the-air and cable TV broadcasts. Some television manufacturers that have begun to embrace the growing IPTV trend include Samsung, Philips, LG, Sony, Vizio, Panasonic and Toshiba. Unfortunately, users who want to watch IPTV from a web-enabled TV will also be limited to specific services chosen by the manufacturer. Users who watch IPTV from their desktop or laptop computer will not face such limitations.

Another highlight of IPTV is that the growing popularity of these services are allowing companies to produce TV shows specifically for Internet audiences. Netflix and Hulu have both already began producing their own original content. For example, Netflix recent outbid major cable networks, including HBO and AMC, for the rights for the show “House of Cards,” which is set to star Academy Award winner Kevin Spacey.

It is worth noting that IPTV services will also require a significant amount of Internet bandwidth to work properly. Currently, it requires a broadband connection with a download rate between 500 to 1,500 kilobytes per second to access a standard definition video stream over an IPTV network. To watch a high definition stream, connection speeds must be over 3,500 kilobytes for second. But it does not take a broadband expert to realize that most broadband Internet connections will have no trouble handling at least a standard definition video stream.

Overall, IPTV is a great way to enjoy TV without the restrictions placed by normal TV broadcast methods. The technology is still being developed and quality is being improved with each upgrade. In fact, IPTV may soon become the standard for TV watchers around the world.

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For the last 6 years or so, I’ve been a Giganews user.  Giganews is the largest Usenet provider in the world, and although they might be a bit pricier than other services, the premium is worth it because of Giganew’s outstanding retention and speeds.

However, recently I’d been unable to get more than a few Kbps, yes Kbps, at certain times of the days on my Virgin Media connection.  My first suspicion was that Virgin Media have intensified their traffic management antics and I was correct.  After a bit of research I learnt that Virgin Media is now throttling port 563 traffic, which is the port that Giganews uses for it encrypted traffic.

Luckily Giganews had already produced a solution for users like me who are getting capped by their ISPs, by supporting port 443 traffic.  Port 443 is the port used by https traffic or 256 bit SSL encrypted traffic.  Capping this port is much more problematic (and probably suicidal) for ISPs, and after switching to this port I’m now getting consistent download speeds of 48Mbps from my 50Mbps service.

If you are using a different Usenet service to Giganews and are suffering from speed issues, I recommend that you consider switching to Giganews.  There’s even a 14-day Free trial to make the switch less painful.

More: Giganews

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I’ve just updated the Broadband Speed Test page, which I hadn’t realised had stopped working.  The test couldn’t be simpler to use; just click on ‘Start Speed Test’.

The test is one of the most accurate I’ve seen, so if you think you aren’t getting your full line speed, then use the broadband speed test results as ammunition to confront your ISP.

More: Broadband Speed Test

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One of my favourite features of Google Chrome is the extension synchronization.   Adding extensions to Google Chrome from the chrome web store is easy, and because Chrome adds new extensions in a very sensible way your toolbar never gets cluttered.  That is, unless you add dozens of extensions…..

If you are a Google Chrome user, here are Five Essential Google Chrome Extensions For Bloggers.

Webpage Screenshot

Quickly capture screenshots, including whole webpage.  Drawing tools available allowing annotations to be quickly added.

More: Webpage Screenshot

Click & Clean

This plugin is principally designed as a security tool to remove your browsing history, cookies etc but I use it to check site changes have been applied correctly, which can be difficult if your site uses caching plugins or software.

More: Click & Clean

Picnik Extension

Picnik is a great online tool for editing images.  With this extension you can automatically transfer images from the current page to Picnik.

More: Picnik Extension For Chrome

SitezMeter

Checking out the competition?

More: SitezMeter

RSS Subscription Extension

I’m amazed this isn’t a default part of Google Chrome.  This extensions adds a RSS icon to the addressbar/omnibox allowing you to subscribe quickly to RSS feeds.

More: RSS Subscription Extension

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Latest stats for browser usage in the UK shows that the Google Chrome browser has overhauled Firefox, to become the second most popular browser behind IE.  22% of UK users now use Chrome, whilst 45% still use some flavour of Internet Explorer.  Globally, Chrome is the 3rd most popular browser with 20% market share.

The numbers don’t surprise me as Google’s share of the search market is higher in the UK running at around 80%.  Google have also been marketing Chrome very heavily in the UK; Chrome was the first ever Google product to be advertised on TV and has also been pushed heavily in display and print advertising.

Google Chrome has really taken over from Firefox the mantle of being the browser that your internet savvy friend will recommend you use.  It’s a real shame that Firefox have really lost their way.  I started using Firefox in 2003/4 after being introduced to it by the hardcore techies at the ISP I worked for.  The latest Firefox 5 just doesn’t have that air of superiority about it anymore, whereas Chrome is nice and clean and just gets the job done.   For me, not only is it the easiest browser to use (although I think the layout of some of the option windows isn’t the best), but the sync function works much better than the other browsers, or any 3rd party tools like Xmarks – all it is missing is the syncing of history and tabs.

What’s your main browser?  Are you still using Internet Explorer?

More: The Telegraph

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Google announced yesterday a new service designed to help speed up websites, Google Page Speed Service.  The new service works in a similar fashion to Cloudflare or a CDN, where requests for your website are diverted to Google rather than to the actual server where your site is hosted.

By doing so, Google are then able to control how your webpages are loaded and can apply several tweaks to improve the speed with which they load:

The beauty of this service is that although webmasters can apply most of these fixes themselves, it can be quite fiddly, and this could be a quick and easy way for novice webmasters to access these tweaks.  Google claim that speed improvements of 25%-60% can be achieved.  If you’re not sure if your site will benefit, then Google have provided a url to test your site.

The results page for this site is below:

According to the tests you can see that this site would load faster on repeat page views with the Google Page Speed Service.  A word of caution on these results though – although this site isn’t the fastest mainly due to the adverts I have to serve, in my own testing it loads a lot faster than in 6 seconds, so I don’t think this test is very accurate.  The overall test result is generally correct though as this site is already heavily optimised, and it was unlikely that Google Page Speed Service could improve upon this.

I have a suspicion though that it might still be beneficial for even optimised sites to be delivered via Google Page Speed Service.  Why?  Well, by signing up to the service all of your traffic will be going via Google, so Google should get a better view of visitor behaviour on your site, which I’m sure at some point will filter though to their ranking algorithms.

The service will be chargeable and Google say the price will be competitive; whether this will be in the $5-20/pm range of services like Cloudflare remains to be seen.  During the testing period Google are opening the service up to a limited number of webmasters free of charge. You can request access to the service by filling out this web form.

More: Google Page Speed Service

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Gone are the days of computer games being played over dialup or barely-there internet connections, as technology has become more advanced, and as computers have become more powerful, games have become incredibly more demanding. So, if you’re in the market for an internet connection that will outshine your competitors’, what are the things you need to consider when doing a broadband comparison?

The Wiring

Today’s broadband internet connections generally fall into three groups, as far as wiring is concerned: there are copper connections, coaxial connections, and fiber-optic connections. Each of these has a certain set of features and drawbacks that affects the way your online game will be played.

Copper cable is generally associated with phone-line-based DSL connections, and offers the slowest internet speeds (and highest game-killing latency) of any broadband internet connection. While it’s great for casual internet users, it simply will not hold up to the demands of online gaming. Its latency will prove problematic, and its slow speeds may result in lost connections and lost games.

Coaxial cable is generally offered by cable broadband operators; these are the same cables that transmit television signals to digital cable set top boxes across the country. These connections are good, though the high speeds required for gaming will prove more expensive and rarer to find in rural markets. However, this is the predominant type of internet connection worldwide, and provides a solid way to take on the online gaming universe.

Finally, there’s the emerging market for fiber-optic internet connections. These connections are, far and away, the fastest internet connections in the world. And, as an added bonus, they typically have the lowest latency numbers of any type of internet connection. This makes them the ideal fit for gamers who need a huge amount of bandwidth that suffers from virtually no latency.

The Location

The game that you will be playing most likely operates through a central server, or a series of decentralized and user-hosted servers. These servers all have a physical location, just like your internet provider’s central office. The distance between that central office, and your online game’s servers, will determine just how much latency is experienced during game play.

Therefore, it’s important to research where your future internet provider’s main servers are located. Your distance from those servers, and their distance from your game’s host, may be the difference between virtual life and death. Remember that latency accelerates over long distances, so do your best to keep everything in the same general location or region of the country!

The Limitations

It’s no secret that bandwidth has opened up a new world of media downloads, demanding online games, and media streaming that has strained internet service providers worldwide. For this reason, many internet service providers have instituted strict limits on bandwidth use in order to keep users from abusing the ever-increasing speeds of their broadband networks.

When conducting a broadband comparison for your online gaming internet connection, pay special attention to these limits (known as “broadband caps”). Some providers may limit users to a certain number of gigabytes per month — no matter what — while others may allow unmetered usage during off-peak hours (such as the early morning or late at night). You know your game-playing and internet-using habits better than anyone else, so make sure your internet service provider works with them instead of against them.

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Whether it was The Social Network movie or the website’s habitual line-stepping on privacy issues, something has turned off over 7 million people to Facebook.  Last month was not only the first in years that the social networking site didn’t get to enjoy an increase in active users, but was actually the first in years that saw a decline (7 million is the number that most sources have been coming out with).

Although CEO and de facto Princess of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg is vehemently denying these numbers, they have yet to release their own “official” numbers, which is not doing much to help with their argument.  Regardless of whether Facebook is really following the paths of friendster and myspace or if this is all just speculation like they want us to believe, it begs the question: would the world be better off without the social networking giant?

Last year, identity theft cases increased over 12%, due much in part to online scams like spyware and phishing on social networking sites.  When you combine the facts that Facebook was the #1 most visited website in 2010, and has a constantly mutating privacy setting, there is no place better for scammers and hackers to “do business.”  Even if you are cognizant enough to avoid phishing attempts when you enter your login info, the information on your page alone may be enough to lose you substantial amounts of money.

Facebook’s “open” approach to your information doesn’t just put your spam folder at greater risk of receiving more “business proposals” fromNigeriathan usual, but actual burglaries as well.  Many burglars these days will create fake accounts and friend you (or simply read your page if you haven’t been keeping up with Facebook’s privacy setting A.D.D.) in order to find out your address, work schedule, when you’re leaving for vacation, etc.  If you’re thinking, “But what are the chances of that, I only accept friend requests from people I know,” you should keep in mind that a study done in 2009 found that out of 200 test subjects, more than 40% accepted a friend request from a person they didn’t know.  And yes, if you guessed that that random person was a 21 year old girl, then you guessed correctly.

So, what do you think?  Will Facebook’s demise precede worldwide drops in rates of identity theft, burglaries, and annoying crap filling up your spam folders, or will another social network (*cough* Google) step up to take its place?

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By now, just about everybody knows that using social plugins from Facebook and allowing Opengraph lets your data be mined and used.

On the one hand we have to accept that Facebook is a public platform and that privacy is a very subjective term. On the other hand, some people feel there are limits to everything – including the regular changes in Facebook’s privacy policy.

On a positive note:

• By being able to study your behavior, likes and dislikes advertisers are able to provide more targeted adverts – which are more likely to be something you may want. Your history is taken into account in order to provide less irrelevant ads. Quite the contrary in fact – you are likely to be served with tailored offers based on your unique behavior.
• The fact that the information is shared, allows you to see what your friends are interested in. To many people, this could be important – especially for someone who wants to buy an item, but has no clue about making a good choice, and needs to rely on the judgment of others.
• If you have already decided you like a product or company, you would probably welcome the benefits brought about by the targeted applications.

On the negative side:

• Knowing that your data is going to be used and possibly abused could create a psychological barrier. As human beings, we tend to be selective about what we share with whom. As such, knowing the potential consequences of allowing any application is likely to be a deterrent for many folks.
• Wherever any private information is being collected, there is always the possibility of abuse. Your information could be sold by unscrupulous companies – and you have no control over that. You may sign up for something which is taken over by another company with different views. Additionally, it is possible that you can be sent excessive information – it happened with email, and Facebook is just another medium open to abuse.
• Living in a bubble – while it might be nice to only see things you are interested in, could also cut you off from being exposed to new things that may be of interest to you. If your activities on Facebook do not include all your interests, you will undoubtedly not be served with ads relating to all of your interests.
• For some, the lack of privacy may really become an issue – not everybody wants everybody to know what they just bought or did (at least not all of the time).

How these will affect you is likely to be a matter of personal preference. For some it may be a problem, and for some it won’t. As the average user becomes better informed however, we may just very well see a reduction in the numbers of people allowing Opengraph.

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Malaysian government sites reported that they were the victims of the most recent hacker attack. No one is for certain as to why the online world has seen such activity on the part of hackers. There’ve been reports all over the world from different countries, companies, and web sites that are seeing an upswing in these malicious attacks. News from Tokyo came out recently that the server for Nintendo’s U.S. web site was hacked. Though absolutely no data or information was compromised, it still causes room for concern. The attack on Sony Corp.’s PlayStation Network was far less benign. Hackers breeched the company’s site and stole over a hundred million-user account details. Even the U.S. Government has voiced concerns about recent attacks.

Malaysian officials stated that the attack that took place was a part of an attempt to hack 51 different government web sites. It was also released that 41 of those attacks were successful in disrupting services. It is still unclear as to the level of damage that’s been caused when the sites’ security were compromised. The nature of the attacks is still unclear but government officials stated that, “We do not expect the overall recovery to these websites to take long as most websites have already recovered from the attack.” This is good news but trouble all the same.

No group has come forward to take credit for the attack but one group, “Anonymous”, said that this attack was in response to the Malaysian government blocking some web sites. It was further explained that, earlier this week, Malaysia began censoring films and TV shows and is blocking access to some file-sharing sites that, some have argued, is a denial of basic human rights. It’s uncertain if this is the real reason for the attack nor is any government clear on how to proceed.

Malaysia hasn’t been the only government to find themselves at risk. It seems that wherever the people are, that’s where the hackers go. Even the U.S. Government has released reports in the last several months of attacks on its sites in the attempts to access sensitive materials. In fact, the American government has taken this so seriously that, as MSN reported, the U.S. has decided that hacking can be considered an act of war.

As governments, businesses, and citizens are looking at the reports, this global trend raises serious questions about, not only to our online security, who is coordinating these attacks. These attacks have come on the heels of, what seems to be; a global movement as one country, company, and business is attacked after another. It’s making the world wonder if there’s anyone safe. It’s become increasingly important for sites to make their online security and data storage a number one priority. There are companies around the world, like San Francisco Data Center, that securely offer power and connectively capacity to support any level of need. Even with that said, the world is going to have to redouble it’s efforts to fight this growing tide of hacker attacks.

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SONY who is trying to get back on its wheels after the hack attack that brought it down, may have it’s stomach wrenched at rumors abound that another attack is planned for this weekend.

“Observers of the Internet Relay Chat channel used by the hackers told CNET that a third major attack is planned this weekend against Sony’s Web site. The people involved plan to publicize all or some of the information they are able to copy from Sony’s servers, which could include customer names, credit card numbers, and addresses, according to the source. The hackers claim they currently have access to some of Sony’s servers.”

What happened in the Last Attack

A massive security breach affecting over 100 million online accounts occurred and they confirmed that personal data from 24.6 million user accounts was stolen in the hacker attack last month. The personal data, included credit card numbers, that may have been stolen from another 77 million PlayStation accounts.  The attack may have started as early as April 19, because Sony started to investigate unusual activity on its servers. To their chagrin, the attack was in full force by April 20th, but they did not inform their users or customers of the breach. This lack of candor has lawyers calling for a class action suit against Sony.

Anonymous

Who is behind the attacks, and Why? Who is not clear, and the why may be a revenge factor by a group of hackers upset with the way Sony treated another hacker, George Hotz, pictured below.

George Hotz is an American hacker known for unlocking the iPhone, and allowing the phone to be used with other wireless carriers, which is  contrary to AT&T and Apple’s intent. And he is also noted for hacking the PlayStation 3 and subsequently being sued by Sony. But Hotz’s attitude is that ” he has denied any responsibility for the attack, and said “Running homebrew and exploring security on your devices is cool, hacking into someone else’s server and stealing databases of user info is not cool”"

According to Sony, they suspect a group of hackers called Anonymous is behind the attack because the found a file on one of its servers and the tag line “we are legion” also referring to what Anonymous calls itself some time.

New Attack Coming?

Not withstanding the security work that Sony is implementing, there are rumors that a new series of attacks against Sony are in the works. Apparently,  it now seems that the same group of hackers that was able to infiltrate the Play Station servers is planning to hit back against Sony.

Source: Cnet

Washington Post

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Reported today (05/09/11) from Reuters that Apple has surpassed Google as the most valued brand.  Google fell to number two after leading the pack for four years.

Apple, the iPhone and iPad maker’s brand, is now worth $153 billion, almost half Apple’s market capitalization.  This occurred because Apple’s portfolio of  consumer goods propelled it past Microsoft to become the world’s most valuable technology company last year.

Other Brands

Of the top 10 brands in Monday’s report, six were technology and telecoms companies: Google at number two, IBM at number three, Microsoft at number five, AT&T at number seven and China Mobile at number nine.

Here is the list of the top 10 brands.

1. Apple (Tech)
2. Google (Tech)
3. IBM (Tech)
4. McDonalds (Fast Food)
5. Microsoft (Tech)
6. Coca Cola (Drink)
7. AT&T (Tech)
8. Marlboro (Tobacco)
9. China Mobile (Tech)
10. General Electric (Tech)

What makes Apple stand out? They’ve hit the cord with their customers. Their unique product line, which everyone wants to copy, and which makes their customers happy to own, stands them apart. And oddly enough, the high price of their products is not a dent maker or business killer.  Customers see a high price as a differentiator, not a drawback.

It was reported on Reuters that Apple was breaking the rules in terms of its pricing model. Apple is performing in the same way that luxury brands do, where the higher price the brand is, the more it seems to underpin and reinforce the desire for the product.

Blackberry And the Future

However, things don’t look so good for Blackberry. Over the course of the last year, Research In Motion’s (BlackBerry) brand lost twenty percent of its brand value. But among technology companies, only Nokia’s 28 percent decline was steeper.

This lead to the question, where is the technology going? Five years ago, no one foresaw the new products, and new technologies, but with the success of Apple, FaceBook, Twitter, and hundreds of other companies, where will the next innovative technology come from?

Source: Reuters

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I think we all know that one of the most challenging places to reach on earth is Mount Everest. Standing at 8,848 meters it’s the tallest mountain in the world, it’s also one of the most dangerous and physically challenging things for a human to do. I’m fairly sure the last thing you would ever think of doing is going onto twitter as you’re scaling the final part of the climb to the summit?

Well as it turns out this was the one thing on English mountaineer Kenton Cool’s mind. He’s the very first person to make a tweet from the top of Mouth Everest as of yesterday. He also made the worlds first video call from the top of Mount Everest.

But how you’re all wondering? Surely there’s no signal up there? Well back in October Mount Everest – one of the most remote places on earth – got it’s very own 3G coverage ( I doubt that there’s much congestion on that section of the network) Kenton Cool made the tweet and video call off the new Samsung Galaxy S II. He made the tweet to @samsunguk who were making use of some very “cool” marketing.

It was Kenton’s 9th time to climb Mount Everest to the summit. That’s very impressive, especially when you consider that for every 10 successful summit, Mount Everest usual claims one life.

I wonder why he didn’t check in on Facebook while he was at it?

You can see the tweet here

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With all the publicity of Bin Laden’s death, especially with the possible release of some of the death photos, it should come as no surprise that malware hackers are taking advantage of this phenomenon.  While the US Government is still debating on whether to release the photos or not, hackers have made it a point to announce that recipients of e-mail can indeed view the photos.

But watch out.

As was reported earlier today  (05-04-11) by a CBS affiliate, hackers are using the incident to spread malware. Here is what is happening, hackers and scammers are using emails and links that  promise users to view those pictures; but the goal of the hackers is to try to infect your computer. Apparently enough of this is going around that the FBI says these emails could even appear to come from your friends, claiming to show either photos of bin Laden dead or a video of his death.  But don’t buy into it. It’s actually a virus or malware that could steal personal information or cause your entire system to crash.

The malware is so bad that officials are also warning that Internet searches can direct you to sites with malware or virus. And the bad links are also popping up on Facebook and other social media.

Common Sense

Two things need to be clear. Until the US government releases the photos, and there is an ongoing debate about this don’t assume that someone has picked up the photos and you can view them. If they are released, you will know about it from legitimate new sources, not blogs.  Check www.refdesk.com for information as it comes out.

Secondly, this is a good time to check your malware anti-virus software and make sure that it is up to date. And don’t be fooled by e-mails from friends or acquaintances. Apparently social engineering is now a big way of getting viruses into PC’s.

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The announcement of Osama Bin Laden’s death last night had everyone in a frenzy, and it would seem that everyone felt the need to tweet about it on Twitter. After the announcement of his death, the whole twittersphere went it chaos. At the peak of the event around 11pm EST there was 5,106 tweets per second.

That doesn’t claim the number one spot however, the all time record is still New Years Eve 2010 in Japan when there was a staggering 6,939 TPS at its peak. However it did manage to beat the Super Bowl 2011 which only reached 4,064 TPS.

According to Twitter, the event had the highest sustained rate of tweets ever. It had an average of 3,000 tweets per second between 10:45 and 2:20am. There was an incredible 38.7 million tweets in those 3 hours and 35 minutes. At it’s peak there was an average of 3,440 tweets per second from 10:45pm to 12:30pm EST. That’s an average of 12,4 million tweets an hour.

“Last night saw the highest sustained rate of Tweets ever. From 10:45 – 2:20am ET, there was an average of 3,000 Tweets per second. At 11p.m. ET, there were 5,106 Tweets per second. At 11:45p.m. ET, when Pres. Obama finished his remarks, there were 5,008 TPS. Note: The TPS numbers we reported last night were incomplete”

To put all the events into a little perspective, here’s a list of some other notable events and their TPS records:

* The all-time record is still NYE 2010 in Japan, with 6,939 TPS at its peak

* On the day of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami (On March 11th) Twitter usage reached 5,530 TPS. (Passing the 5,000 TPS mark five times that day).

* The 2011 Super Bowl reached 4,064 TPS

* Japan’s victory over Denmark in the World Cup reached 3,283 TPS

* Final game of the 2010 NBA finals peaked at 3,085 TPS

* Last Friday’s Royal Wedding reached a peak of 3,966 TPS at 4pm London time

Were you one of those who tweeted?

Source:

Techcrunch

Twitter

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I think it’s safe to say that we all know that the Android Market is growing at a rapid pace. Every month there’s new reports on how Android sales have overtaken every other device on the market, so it’s only obvious that developers are going to be making more and more apps for it’s market.

Well according to the latest report from Distimo, Google’s Android Market now offers 134,342 free apps, while Apple’s App Store only has 121,845 free Apps. However, overall Apple still has the largest number of Apps at 333,214 while Android is a bit behind at 206,143.

If you look at the Android Market, you will see that there is more free apps than paid ones, on the contrary, Apple’s app store is the reverse, with many more paid apps than free ones.

While Apple’s App store is the largest, it was the slowest out of all the App stores in terms of growth for March.

Apple’s iPad App Store managed to grow by 12 percent last month to a reasonable 75,755 applications, with 34,120 of those designated for the iPad only. Overall when you combine the iPhone and iPad App Store Apple have an impressive 367,334 available.

Interestingly the iPad apps have become more expensive over time, while all the other app stores have gone in the opposite direction. The average iPad app price is now a steep $5.36 and only 30 percent of apps are free.

Distimo are also forecasting that RIM’s Blackberry App store will double in size over the next 6 months and will probably surpass Nokia’s Ovi Store by the end of May. What’s more, they expect the Android Market to continue growing at it’s furious pace and to become the largest App Store on the market within 5 months! That would put them ahead of Apple’s App Stores, Windows Phone 7 Marketplace, Blackberry App World and the Nokia Ovi Store.

Things aren’t really looking too good for Nokia’s Ovi Stores, the company itself is loosing a lot of its market share over the last couple of months, and Distimo reckon that Windows Phone 7 Marketplace will be larger than it within a couple of months.

Now these figures have been calculated by Distimo themselves, and are not supplied from the various App Markets themselves. However they are generally fairly accurate.

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With 18% of the UK’s population using smart phones alone and that number growing everyday, the implementation of portable Internet access has never been a more pressing issue for the average family. What was once the family computer tethered to the web is now a growing collection of iPads, laptops, and smart phones competing for service on a wireless router.

While Wireless Routers have been around for years, their importance is becoming more and more apparent with each advent of new portable Internet accessing technology. What was once the convenience of being able to move around your living room with your laptop is now the necessity of being able to look up a toolkit manual in your driveway.

Today’s advanced wireless router manufacturers have not only anticipated this rapidly growing demand for home-based wireless access, but have foreseen the need to cater to the furthering demand for wireless access in remote places by the same families who use it at home. For instance you might find your family on a long train ride with five separate portable devices. Utilizing the rail service’s pay-as-you-go Wi-Fi is impractically expensive, and is typically the only choice for everyone to get to use their devices consistently unless you bring along a portable wireless router.

This new method of delivering wireless Internet virtually anywhere you can take your router and modem works in the same way as your wireless connection hooked up at home except that like your smart phone service it’s retrieved via satellite signal. That means anywhere where you can point to the sky; you can receive a wireless connection that can be networked to your whole family.

But the benefits of home network portability don’t stop with making everybody happy on those long trips. Once arrived a your destination, whether it’s a wayward aunt’s house or a hotel with a baiting Wi-Fi add-on, you and your family can continue to access the information superhighway as much as you need.

With the Internet getting bigger and the devices to access it getting smaller and more diverse, an investment needs to be made in universal and transportable Internet access. We either don’t realize or don’t like to admit how much we rely on this access to information, but just take a random minute one night and walk around your house, and surely one if not more members of your family will be at that moment accessing information online with a portable device. Whether a good thing or not, the demand for consistent reliable Internet access is there, with ever increasingly savvy ways supply it.

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What is SkyFire?

It is one of the more popular alternative browsers for the Android platform. This is due to the fact that it can play Flash videos on Android-powered devices. By itself that would not be enough to make an impact since most have the ability get Adobe’s Flash from the Android Market.  However, Skyfire essentially converts and compresses videos on their services, streaming it to you in a manner that’s customized for your screen and connection speed. Now SkyFire has released updates to the web browser with eight new features.

New Features

The browser comes with a customizable scolling SkyBar that includes the following:

• Twitter
• Groupon
• Share
• Google Reader
• Sports
• News
• Finances
• Settings

What does Skyfire offer?

• Searching with a search box to the top of the toolbar UI
• Search experience includes data from more content providers
• Play More Video: many sites and video formats are standard
• Performance enhancements and fine-tuning are standard

Other standard features are Flash Video, User Agent Switching, Facebook QuickView, Fireplace Feed Reader, Popular Pages, Related Ideas, Skyfire Search, Facebook Like Button.

There is on-demand video, where video thumbnails don’t suddenly appear when you load a page; instead, you can choose which videos you want to play by hitting the video button and then loading it from there. There are new in-browser tips, tricks and tutorials to help users get the most out of Skyfire.

You get a three day free trial vor SkyFire Video and then a one time service fee of  $2.99 one time fee. Verizon Android owners who download this new version soon will also get the video optimization feature for free. The three million beta testers who have used this version also get the video optimization feature for free .

For Android users this is a good App to have. There are current upgrades in the works for other platforms.

[Download Link]

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Most of you are not surprised to hear that malware attacks can hit any browser, Internet Explorer is not necessarily weaker than other browsers in the security camp, they just get hit more often. So some reports are coming out that Google Chrome is now the malware authors browser of choice.  In a series of malware screen attacks clever hackers are targeting Chrome users with “recommendations” about getting rid of malware.

Here is how it starts do a google search for Silverlight datagrid reorder columns. On the fifth page you’ll see a site hit. Click on it, and the problems start.

Type a description in Google Chrome

Step 2

This dialog box pops up over the page and falsely suggests that the browser, Google Chrome, has found malware. If you click OK, it begins a fake scan.

Step 3

A "realistic" Chrome security warning page - but fake

Here is where the malware becomes viable. That red background and the big icon at the top are visually similar to actual security warnings that Google Chrome uses. The malware author has also inserted a reference to Google Chrome in this fake “scanning” screen.

Step 4

The recommended fix is now given to the user.

Bad grammar might give it away…Meaning that this social-engineering attack is likely to fail with an English-speaking victim, who should be suspicious of the bad grammar. But a user whose primary language is something other than English might well be fooled.

For the last few months, warnings have been issued to users about new malware attacks. They’ve learned to be more suspicious and their browsing habits have changed. But so have malware authors. With this change  malware authors are also adapting to the changing habits of PC users. There is no obvious message to the effect of  ”press this link and a virus attack will start.” Instead you are likely to see something like “you’ve been infected, click here to remove the virus.” And if anything, the malware authors are more patient; anticipating that not every attack that they have will work, but if one in 10 work, that is still significant.

Source: ZDNet

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About a month ago, Google changed its ranking algorithm which is used to identify which sites get to the top of the viewing area. For some companies, like Demand Studios, or Brighthub, the change was a concern since sites like these depend on traffic views to make money.

Now Apple has also decided to make some changes to its App placement algorithm meaning that Apps will be at the top of the list and others further on down. Being at the top means that the App will more likely see more hits and downloads, and hence more sales.

The Change and the Issue

Apple’s New Algorithm for Apps is now based on how often applications are used (once downloaded) by daily and monthly users to better signify their ranking.

At issue here is that, the move has a dramatic impact not just on games and applications, which depend on placement on Apple’s list for new downloads and purchases but also the businesses that have sprung up to promote them. Behind this is that it also provide more accuracy about what’s hot at any given moment than downloads alone.

But for all of this the bottom line is that there’s still very little proof outside of some out-of-character rank jumping to point that there has been an overwhelming shift in how much it takes for an application to get on and stay on the list. There are a number of factors, word of mouth, cost, interest in the app, ease of use. These determine the scale and speed of those jumps. The real question remains what else is a part of the mix that determines what takes an app to the top, and if Apple is trying to keep that a moving target. It is not to say that the approach is helter-skelter or random, but how an app is perceived by the public and becomes a success is not wholly understood.

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Two stories have made the round about Facebook this week. One involving the twins, Winklevosses, who were appealing an earlier legal ruling stating that the twins will have to accept their original settlement of $65 million in Facebook shares which are now valued at $100 million.  (I wonder if they’ll have enough money to go to McDonald’s and get a value meal.)  Apparently they suggested the idea of Facebook to Mark Zuckerberg while they were at Harvard. The original social network was to be called CONNECTU.  Zuckerberg took the idea and transformed it into Facebook. A lawsuit was filed in 2004, and a settlement was reached in 2008.  And the appeals court ruled this week in Zuckerberg’s favor. The settlement was legit.

But this week, a new story appeared that Zuckerberg had given half of his company to Paul Ceglia for a $1000 investment.

Who is Paul Ceglia?

For starters he is a convicted felon who is claiming that Mark Zuckerberg sold him half of Facebook in 2003 for $1,000, and he has the contract and emails to prove it. He later put in another $1,000 for a total investment of $2,000, but if he gets anywhere close to what he’s asking for (half of Zuckerberg’s share, which could be worth as much as $10 billion), he could go down as the best tech investor in history. But that story is taking some steam.

Mark Zuckerberg (Center) and the Winkelvoss Twins

Consider that there are some emails, which Facebook says are fake, look pretty convincing. (To read about the e-mails see The Business Insider. ) They paint a picture of  Zuckerberg playing Ceglia for some extra cash to help develop Facebook when it was only a dorm room project at Harvard. (Zuckerberg was doing work for hire for another Ceglia project, and got him to fund development of Facebook as well, at least according to Ceglia’s latest complaint).

So where does all of this stand? To early to tell, but there have been rebuttles coming on this story now.

To see a Facebook response about the story see:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJLjD98QcZ4

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I’m sure some of you have often wondered, just how much data we transfer around the world each year? Well many, including myself would have thought it impossible to work out, but a dedicated group of San Diego academics felt they were more than up to the task.

The same people who worked out how much data is in the world have had a go at this. PhysOrg published their findings this month and they are, well mind blowing to say the least. According to their research, some 9.57 zettabytes made their way in and out of servers all around the world during 2008. That’s 9,570,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes or 957,000,000,000,000 Gigabytes….

So as I’m sure you can gather there’s a lot of it..

The report say’s that there’s roughly 27 million computer servers around the world and according to the study it estimates that server workloads are doubling every 2 years or so. They do admit that you might have got the odd email in there that’s been counted more than twice if it’s passing through more than one server, but one email is nothing compared to that figure.

In fact they reckon that this figure is underestimated because it doesn’t include the data processed by privately built servers. You know the ones only the biggest companies like Google, Microsoft and Apple have running on their campus’s.

Just to put that a gigantic number into perspective a bit more for you, on a per worker basis (of about 3.18 billion workers) that’s 12GB of data daily per worker, or around 3TB a year.

So while that distant dream of having a paperless office seems well away in the distant future, we’re certainly not taking anytime in digging into the digital world.

Source:

PhysOrg

via Engadget

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Recent events in the area of Internet security have shown that big players can make a difference and shut down hackers or hacking sites. But on the other hand, hackers are still successful. Point in fact. Epsilon, an outsourcing e-mail provider was hacked on March 30. Epsilon provides e-mail services for a number of private companies and the names and e-mail addresses of individuals, and in some cases, the account balances,  were compromised. In fact, as I was writing this post, I got an e-mail from my bank telling me that their e-mails database had been compromised. The e-mail provider? Epsilon.

Epsilon’s e-mail Client Stadium

Epsilon is no small player in the outsourced e-mail market. They have a base of over 2,500 clients and send over 40 billion emails annually last year. Their client base includes 7 clients of the Fortune 10 to build and host their customer databases.

What the hackers expect to get is unknown. Perhaps it is nothing more complicated that saying that they can do it, but it also may play into the idea that as a learning experience the hackers can feel confident that their approach was successful. This in turn may lead to another attack in the not so distant future.

Who is to Blame?

Obviously the hacker. But from a business point of view, you have to look at Epsilon itself. How secure was their operation? Obviously, what ever their security was, it was not enough. But again let’s face it. Even the Pentagon has been hacked into. And you know that they are really tight with their security. The point? The point is that a determined hacker will succeed, it is just a matter of time. Who knows how long the hacker took. Maybe they’ve been at it for about 2 days, or 2 years. But it does pose a different question, why  don’t the companies keep their own mail server in house? It’s possible, and they could hire a consulting firm to maintain and manage the e-mail service if they didn’t have their own expertise.

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Friday Afternoon – A report from Websense came out that an attack may have affected some 500,000 Web sites, and perhaps as many as 1.5 million. The attack occurred in such a way that that visitors are tricked into downloading fake PC security software.

Here is the notice from Websense’s Website:

“The LizaMoon mass-injection campaign is still ongoing and more than 500,000 URLs have a script link to lizamoon.com according to Google Search results. We have also been able to identify several other URLs that are injected in the exact same way, so the attack is even bigger than we originally thought. All in all, a Google Search reveals over 1,500,000 URLs that have a link with the same URL structure as the initial attack. Google Search results aren’t always great indicators of how prevalent or widespread an attack is as it counts each unique URL, not domain or site, but it does give some indication of the scope of the problem if you look at how the numbers go up or down.”

What the Attack Does

The hack tries to trick Web users is already infected by viruses and prompts them to download fake security software that itself causes further problems.  Apple and the iTunes Store were among the sites serving up the links to the fake software but Apple supposedly has cleaned up the code from its site.

SQL Server  Injection – Origins of the Attack

Right now the most commonly affected computers are those sites using Microsoft SQL Server 2003 and 2005 are at risk, but SQL Server 2008 doesn’t appear to be affected.  The reason for the vulnerability has to do with SQL Injection method.

SQL injection attacks involves is a code injection technique that exploits a security vulnerability occurring in the database layer of an application. In other words, the sql attacks take place when malicious code–essentially commands to a Web server to do things it’s not supposed to do — are inserted into routine queries of a Web site’s data base.

One way to carry out these attacks involves small changes to a url bar; here if you  add extra commands into the URL bar of a the browser when visiting a vulnerable Web site the hack begins to operate.

Some analysts  say that what is different is that people are putting the code that runs their Web sites in the database itself.  What you have done is to expose your code to an attacker so they can go modify it.

What happens with LizaMoon?

Basically, you receive a warning that your computer may be infected, which is not true. They run a scan showing that your machine is indeed infected, again not true. And they get you to buy their removal software, which won’t do anything, because your machine is not infected.

Here is a video from Websense that shows how the Lizamoon Hack Attack works.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKI5dg1cs74

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The Rustock Botnet was taken down earlier this month. It had accounted for billions of spam e-mails daily.  According to Symantec’s March 2011 MessageLabs Intelligence Report this is a big accomplishment because the botnet may not be able to recover its operation.

Last Years Spam Cycle

By the end of last year, this Rustock was responsible for sending out 44 billion spam messages per day, or more than 47 percent of the world’s total output, making it the leading purveyor of spam. Though Rustock lost some steam this year, it still managed to send out more than 13 billion daily spam e-mails earlier this month prior to its takedown, said Symantec.

Who was responsible for the take down

Legal actions by Microsoft and other organizations like Pfizer, FireEye and others, plus raids by federal law enforcement managed to cut off the network a few weeks ago. As a result of the take down, overall global spam messages dropped to around 33 billion per day, compared with 52 billion the prior week.

Other Botnets

Rustock may be down, and even out, but by no means is it the only botnet out there doing spamming operations. According to Symantec, Bagle has now become the most active spambot in 2011 so far. Bagle has been around for a number of years and it has spawned at least 70 variants since the virus emerged in January 2004. Some iterations have been more sophisticated than others, blending mass-mailing and Trojan horse techniques. Last year it was sending out more than 8 billion junk e-mails per day; most of them linked to pharmaceutical products, said the report.

Then there are other botnets such as Festi and Cutwail. They have accounted for a big amount of overall spam. For March, slightly more than 83 percent of all global spam was triggered by botnets, a gain of 6 percentage points since the end of 2010.

Source: Dvorak Uncensored

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Last week, I wrote about a study predicting the 39% of Small to Medium Size Business would be moving to the cloud in the next three years. (Survey shows that 39% SMB Will Move to the Cloud) Now Cisco announced that it was planning to acquire newScale a software company whose portal software allows IT service providers to build catalogs of standardized services that customers can select and deploy off the shelf and on their own.

What does newScale Provide?

newScale’s portals make many desktop and data center support services “self-help,” allowing enterprise customers to initiate the provisioning of their own systems and infrastructure on an as-needed basis. This plays into Cisco’s hands because they intend to apply that same methodology to cloud computing. This is similar to Amazon Web services. In fact the Cisco-newScale pairing would allow customers to build, engage, and expand their own private cloud infrastructure using an as-needed basis, which is based on standardized service options.

Is the Cloud One Dimensional?

What this means is that the cloud is evolving, and no one set of operations will make it tangible, there can be multiple settings. Consider that by some views, the cloud is just a repository of files. A backup plan. But Microsoft, Amazon, newScale are challenging that notion.

Microsoft is making a heavy investment in cloud services, and they have demonstrated that their Cloud Efforts are Slowly Building Steam. For example, they have recently commited with Manpower, Tampa General Hospital, Advocate Health Care,  Shell, and other companies to make the transition to having IT services run through the cloud.

In the long run, companies will be better positioned to make such a move, in part because cloud services can be cheaper in the long run. The technology on the cloud will be state of the art, and companies will lease services and hardware, that they couldn’t afford otherwise.

See Also: Netflix Goes to the Cloud with Amazon

Source: MarketWire

Image: DefineTheCloud

Source: Cisco

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Medical information is easy to get now that so much of it is on the Internet. But how about getting medical information from a doctor, a real doctor, using FaceBook?

That is not happening yet but consider that if you do go on facebook, take a picture of some injury or bodily condition, what is to stop that picture from being used to contact a doctor who might make a diagnosis and even prescribe some medicine.

I don’t think it is far fetched but it does lead to some interesting views of medical information.  If so much of it is so readily available, why stop there; why not go the extra step and contact a physician who can speak with you and make a diagnosis? Clearly some elements must be addressed in order to go that far.

First is privacy. Do you really want all of your Facebook contacts to know about your medical conditions? Probably not. So there would have to be some specialized structure that allows you and your doctor to communicate privately. Second, will you be able to get a full or complete diagnosis? In some cases, sure, if you will only have an easy medical condition which can be diagnosed with two or three questions from the doctor. He/She may be able to make a prescription and call it in to a pharmacy.  But for more advanced conditions, a FaceBook or Internet medical meeting will not work very well. The doctor will probably say, “make an appointment to see me at my office, or go to the emergency room at a hospital.”

So in the end, the problem with Facebook medical diagnosis, is that it is good for small problems, but not for larger ones. In some ways, this may be good, because a doctor can see or talk to a patient and make medical recommendations. But I wonder how many doctors are going to make a prescription recommendation without having seen the patient personally.  There is the question of legal liability that doctors may be thinking about, and limit their involvement to just those patients that they have seen or know about or have treated before. Otherwise, the doctor will probably not  be inclined to make a diagnosis.

See also: ZDNet

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As social networks go, Facebook and Twitter are dominant. MySpace, which once was a dominant social network site, may be on the verge of collapsing.

Consider that in one month MySpace lost 10 million registered users. That right, 10 million. According to comScore figures, MySpace lost that number  between January and February of this year, going from 73 million to 63 million in a matter of four weeks. Facebook on the other hand now has 30 million registered users in the UK.

What is MySpace?

MySpace is a free online community composed of personal profiles aimed at young people. Well, instead of directly competing with FaceBook, MySpace executives decided to make a change about what the site was about. Instead of a social network, it became  a social entertainment destination site. The site is pinning its hopes of renewed success with a return to its music and content roots.

Originally MySpace was a social networking website with headquarters are in Beverly Hills, California. Its immediate owner, News Corp. Digital Media, is owned by News Corporation. However, over the course of the last two years, Facebook has grown and attracted many users, but MySpace failed to adjust to the competition.

So What Happened? A Troubling Survey

But the main problem may have been self induced and it involves a profile.  MySpace members may choose to fill out  an initial survey, which asks such questions as whether the member has ever had sex, skinny-dipped, smoked, drunk alcohol, or taken drugs. For some strange reason, the MySpace administrators readily believed the members who  post their profiles to MySpace expect them to be read only by kids their own age. Somehow, the often suggestive answers  are supposed to be typical of teenage bravado. But the  profiles provide a  hunting ground where potential predators can choose, stalk and befriend victims … sight unseen.  So with this plethora of personal information, a predator can easily manipulate the potential victim into a false sense of security and familiarity while misrepresenting himself entirely through his own false profile. Though forbidden by MySpace, you cannot prevent false profiles from being planted  within the framework. And unfortunately there have been reports of predators finding children.

So now, with this problem set, coupled with the growth of Facebook, people are reluctant to use MySpace as their social network vehicle. And News Corp is actively trying ways to cut costs, and sell MySpace.

Source: The Telegraph

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If you didn’t know this, and I’m sure most of you reading this do know, the Ipv4 numbering scheme is about to max out.  So sometime around June or July of this year the won’t be any more IP v4 numbers to distribute. Companies that want an Internet connection will get an IP v6 number, a 128 bit vs 32 bit number.

Microsoft already handles that issue quite well with Windows 7 and Server 2008. IPv4 numbers are automatically converted to an IPv6 model. But for some companies, that is not in the game plan. They need IPv4 numbers now.

Supply and Demand Economics

As you would expect, when there is a shortage of one item, the laws of supply and demand kick in, and it creates a market where one product is sold to consumers at a specified price. Even if that product doesnot have a long shelf life. Here the product is IPv4.

So recently, Microsoft offered to buy Nortel’s 666,624 IPv4 addresses for $7.5 million. That comes to about $11.25 per IP address. Nortel went bankrupt, and Microsoft saw an opportunity to get more IPv4 numbers. Just what they will do with those numbers is anyone’s guess.

ARIN and the Market for Address Space

IP addresses are virtual property, but American Registry for Internet Numbers ARIN, which governs the release of those numbers,  has its own set of rules on how the numbers can be transferred. First of all, a buyer has to show that they need the addresses and they can only sell a year’s supply at a time. As for the price ARIN is not a party to that. Whatever price-product transfers occur is strictly between the buyer and the seller.

Does this market have only a short duration? After all, IT departments will be fully knowledgeable about the ins and outs of IP v6 in one, two or at most three years, so why stick with IPv4?

Source: ZDNet, IETF

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There have been updates and releases to several browsers this month. So here is a quick comparison about how they pan out.  The browsers are IE9 vs Chrome 10 vs Firefox 4 vs Opera 11.01 vs Safari 5.  These are the versions tested.

• Internet Explorer 9 (9.0.8112.16421) 32-bit
• Internet Explorer 9 (9.0.8112.16421) 64-bit
• Firefox 4
• Chrome 10.0.648.151
• Safari 5.0.4
• Opera 11.01

The following graphs come from ZDnet.

Benchmark Test #1: Sunspider

What is the Sunspider Test? This benchmark tests the core JavaScript language only, not the DOM or other browser APIs. It is designed to compare different versions of the same browser, and different browsers to each other.

Best: IE9 32 Bit

Worst: IE9 64 Bit

Benchmark Test #2: V8

What this bench mark tests: This test measures JavaScript speed for rich Web applications. The new V8 code, improves JavaScript load speed. Chrome includes the V8 code and the other browsers do not.

Best: Chrome10

Worst: IE9 64 Bit

Benchmark Test #3: Peacekeeper

What this benchmark tests:  Peacekeeper measures a browser’s performance by testing its JavaScript functionality.  By measuring a browser’s ability to handle commonly used JavaScript functions Peacekeeper can evaluate its performance.

Best: Chrome 10

Worst: Firefox 4

Benchmark Test #4

What this benchmark tests: Kraken was put forward by Mozilla and it focuses on realistic workloads and forward-looking applications. It tests Mozilla’s new beat detection scripts, which uses experimental audio APIs, and image processing tools like the ones that apply a Gaussian blur or desaturate a JPG using JavaScript.

Best FireFox 4

Worst: IE9 64 Bit

Summary

Overall, the loser is IE9 64 Bit. And the Winner is more like a tie, although Chrome 10 did win 2 out of 4 test, but the rest were fairly close. Which should you use? I personally like Google because of its speed and the way it picks up on letters to form words, especially when the url code is available. I also use Opera. I have installed a version of IE9 64 bit, but it is very slow, so I don’t recommend it.

Source: ZDnet.com

See Also: Extreme Tech

PeaceKeeper

WebMonkey

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We’ve been following the development of  Apps stores for a while. Apple and other companies are fully intent to make their mark in this new entrepreneurial market. Even if they haven’t created knock out apps, they are still offering a variety of apps. So Amazon is teaming up with Google to present a new App store that offers a twist.

Currated Platform

One problem that users may have with Apps is reliability. That is a big problem. If you download an app, will it do what it says it will do? And is your privacy protected or invaded? Big Questions. Big issues. So Amazon has a solution is is using a curated platform for App delivery.  This means that the App stock in the App store will be subjected to tests and verification before it is allowed to be downloaded. So according to Amazon’s rules, the apps must work properly and be safe, both in terms of consumer data privacy and the impact to the mobile device itself. The Apps won’t slow your phone to a crawl or drain your battery. And it will be screened for malware before it is downloaded.

Other features

Besides the currated platform, Amazon will offer developers a different policy than allowed by Apple for app purchasing policies, such as the one-way pricing that knocks developers. With more freedom, the developers may have more incentive to produce more successful apps.

Kindle e-Reader

Another reason for the move into the Apps market comes with speculation connecting Amazon’s entry into the apps market which is the Kindle e-reader. There is some talk about the fact that by teaming up with Android, a new type of table will be in the offing, one to compete with the iPad.

So while the App stores are starting to populate the market, it is also possible to see how the tablet market can shape up in other ways than existed before. The launch is expected on Tuesday 3/22/2011.

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It’s been years in coming. The .xxx top level domain has finally been approved by ICANN. And the odd thing is that besides conservatives who though that this would encourage the adult/porn industry, the biggest opposers were the adult porn industry purveyors.

First what happened? Meetings have been held for the last decade over it would be appropriate to have adult websites designated with the .xxx domain nomenclature. The argument for it was that you could now clearly identify an adult site from it’s domain suffix. Playboy.com would become Playboy.xxx, and numerous other sites that tend to hide their identity with a innocent sounding name like newmuse.com would now be identified by newmuse.xxx.

But while it may have common sense behind it, there have been objections to the move. Some religious conservatives have objected to the move basically on the belief that now there would be an explosion of adult websites.

But oddly enough the biggest opponents to the move, has come from the adult industry itself. Why? Because there is the belief that the owners of the websites would now have to pay fees to TLD.  The  problem comes with the fact that the .XXX domain already has an owner, it is the ICM Registry. So if you want an .XXX site, the adult industry fears you’ll have to pay ICM big bucks to register it.

In fact, according to a spokesman for the adult industry, “I do not support this. I would support it only if there were different criteria for the creation of this entity, that would allow anyone to open a dot porn, or whatever that would compete with .XXX. The effect now is to create a monopoly for one company in this area. The adult community has invested in how it is structured now. It is unfair to us all to add an additional expense to our business without competition for the services that this new business, .xxx, would provide.”

Source: ZDnet

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Not to be left in the cold, Amazon.com will be creating it’s own Android store to sell Android Apps. The Apps war is certainly turning interesting, because if this is successful, could iPhone apps be next?

The site is not online yet, but earlier parts of it were, and you could see some of the apps and developers/publishers that will be featured in the Appstore and how the prices are planned in contrast to Google’s Android Market. There are some well-known games, tools and apps among Amazon’s first lineup, such as Zenonia, Raging Thunder II, SetCPU, The Moron Test and SwiftKey.

There is a price difference that Android is already noting. For instance,  Scan2PDF Mobile 2.0, which costs $6.44 in the Android Market, will sell for $3.99 at Amazon’s App store. Farm Frenzy costs $3.21 in the market is $2.99 at Amazon, and Akinator, which is $2.06 from Google is $1.49 in the Amazon store. There are also some Amazon exclusives apps, such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: Force Recon ($2.99), Brainwave Tuner ($3.99).

The Apps market has grown considerably over that two years. Apple, Google, and Microsoft are now well entrenched in it.  But we are starting to see outside players make their own move. While Amazon may be the first one, consider that other retailers may also have designs of their own. For example, in the last three weeks, Borders announced that it was filing for bankruptcy and closing down over 300 stores nation wide.

One way to bail out of that problem is to have their own Apps store, catering exclusively to their type of clientele, book lovers and readers. The same can be said for other retailers like Barnes and Noble, or Walmart, or even automobile dealers who could offer exclusive apps to their car owners. In other words, this market is just beginning to open up.

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A new kind of device will be release by Samsung. It may be an ultra-mobile devices or a mini tablet, or a jumbo iPod touch. Or Android smartphones without the phone.

What is the Galaxy Player?

Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy Players will come in two sizes a 4 and 5-inch screen. In New York, on Wednesday, Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Players at its 2011 product preview at the Samsung Experience showroom. They are mini versions of the Galaxy Tab.

What is the Galaxy Tab?

The Samsung Galaxy Tab is a light weight device that fits in the palm of your hand. It has the full virtual QWERTY keyboard and SWYPE technology, and this device is ideal for typing on-the-go. It has  the latest Google platform with good performance and speed, and better enterprise capabilities. It also has as a faster and more powerful browser. The Galaxy tab is integrated with Google apps, so users can check Gmail, perform quick Google searches, and download apps from the Android Market.

Specs of the Galaxy Player

Here are the Samsung Galaxy Players’ key specs:

• 4 or 5-inch (WVGA) screen sizes
• Run on Android 2.2 (Froyo), upgradeable to 2.3 (Gingerbread)
• WiFi and Bluetooth wireless connectivity
• Cortex A8 1GHz processor (same as Galaxy Tab’s processor)
• Will be available in 8 and 16GB versions
• microSD card slot accepts cards up to 32GB
• Rear camera (3.2 megapixels); front camera (VGA)
• Weight: 5 and 7 ounces respectively
• Support for Adobe Flash 10.1
• Stereo speakers, with Virtual 5.1 surround sound and Samsung’s SoundAlive post-processing technology
• Battery life: unknown

It runs on the same 1GHz processor as the Galaxy Tab and features front and rear cameras and the 5-inch model has a flash. The microSD expansion ports, It has WiFi (802.11 b/g/n) connectivity, and support for Adobe Flash 10.1. Both models will start off running the Android 2.2 OS (Froyo) but will be upagradable 2.3 (the Gingerbread version).

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2 alerts are out dealing with vulnerabilities, one for Blackberry and the other for Adobe.

Blackberry

The research firm, Research in Motion (RIM), has taken the step to urge BlackBerry users to disable JavaScript in the smartphone’s browser, this in order to block exploits from a security vulnerability that was brought to the public attention at this year’s CanSecWest Pwn2Own contest. What is the vulnerability? It exists in the open source WebKit browser engine provided in BlackBerry Device Software version 6.0 and later,was exploited to hack into a BlackBerry Torch 9800 smart phone to steal the contact list and image database.

How does the exploit occur?

Successful exploitation requires that the Blackberry user to browse to a website that the attacker has maliciously designed. A hacker can make a successful exploit possible by using the BlackBerry Browser to access user data stored on the media card and in the built-in media storage on the BlackBerry smartphone, but not to access email and other personal information on the file system of the BlackBerry smartphone.

Adobe

Adobe is warning against a different type of attack. This is a zero day attack using Microsoft Excel files and the Flash Player.

Adobe says that the “critical” vulnerability affects the latest versions of Adobe Flash Player for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris and Chrome.   It also exists in the authplay.dll component that ships with Adobe Reader and Acrobat X.

Reports are showing that the attacks have been limited so far.  The targeted attacks via a Flash (.swf) file embedded in a Microsoft Excel (.xls) file and delivered as an email attachment.

What does the vulnerability allow?

This vulnerability could cause a crash and potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system.  Adobe is not currently aware of attacks targeting Adobe Reader and Acrobat. Adobe Reader X Protected Mode mitigations would prevent an exploit of this kind from executing.

So what is being done about it? Adobe expects to ship a patch for Flash Player 10.x and earlier versions for different operating systems including Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris and Android. The release date of the patch is March 21st.

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Why are movies a success? Because they are good? Because of the publicity? Because of the main actors? Nope it’s because of the word of mouth. If you like a movie, you tell your friends, and they tell their friends, and so on. That’s why movie studios don’t advertise a movie beyond the first week of its launch. Word of mouth takes over. So it  is no surprise that Steven Spielberg and Paramount Studios will be using Twitter to launch the publicity campaign for Super8, which will be released in June.

Super8 is a story of a catastrophe. After a terrible train crash, a group of kids who must endure the arrival of an unknown force wreaking havoc on their community.

Paramount says that this is the first time it has launched a trailer on Twitter. By the same  token it’s also the first time Twitter has been the original home to the first run of a theatrical preview. But what this says about the rise of the social media is that it can be influential in more ways than previously envisioned. Film studios are starting to realize that social media could play a central role in the popularity of movies from now on.

Just think, within moments of the end of a movie, your friends are twitting the outcome. “You gotta see the movie.” or “Steer Clear.” Even if it is not a four star movie, it can benefit from the twits making their way through the social network. This says that if this process is a success, then wait for Facebook or other networks to become players in the Hollywood delivery system.

It also means that Hollywood will start looking for different ways to advertise their upcoming movies. The standard ways are for the stars to go to Letterman, The Tonight Show, etc. But now there may be Interviews on Facebook, or short YouTube videos.

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A new Trojan horse, called Blackhole Rat, which is a security threat has recently surfaced  as a backdoor Trojan for OS X. This malware lets an attacker connect to a system using a client application and performs tasks on the computer like shutting it down, restarting it, creating files on the desktop, opening URLs in a Web client, requesting administrative passwords, and messaging the current user. Some of it may be harmless, if annoying. But others may be distressing and disturbing.

Any Trojan horse program pretends to be something that it is not. Which fools the user to install a program, or application thinking it is a legitimate, and safe  package. Instead, however, of being a standalone program that alters configurations (like the DNSChanger Trojan) or sends data to remote systems (like a botnet hack), this Trojan is worse because it installs a program on your system, that acts like a server. This program allows a hacker to connect and administer the user system with a small remote client program (appropriately called a remote administration tool, or RAT). It works by having the hacker enter your IP address into the client program, he then connects the malware service installed on your system, and can then send remote commands to your system using the RAT system.

Prank or not

This is not a unique program. In fact it is similar to NetBus and Sub7 RATs for Windows. Security personnel can characterize this application more as a prank than anything else. Still, it does still pose a security risk if installed because users can be tricked into supplying their administrative passwords to the hacker, among other things.

One of BlackHole RAT’s functions pops open a full-screen dialog with only a ‘reboot’ button, and the following,  message:

“I am a Trojan Horse, so i have infected your Mac Computer. I know, most people think Macs can’t be infected, but look, you ARE Infected!

I have full controll over your Computer and i can do everything I want, and you can do nothing to prevent it.

So, Im a very new Virus, under Development, so there will be much more functions when im finished.”

Is this a high risk?

Does this change the nature of OS X security?  Given the measures required to install and enable this threat, it may only be a low risk.  And while there is always concern that OS X’s security features can be circumvented and result in malware being automatically installed, so far this malware, as with most other Trojans, requires you to manually run an installer to load a separate standalone program. The supplied OS features and services are not touched and their security measures are left intact. So if the user is careful, he/she will not touch this program if they suspect that there is something not right.

Source: DownloadSquad

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Here is the latest take on Apple Apps, which you may have heard of.  If you distribute paid content on the iOS platform, you now  have to provide an in-app capability to handle the purchase transaction through Apple, which takes a 30 percent cut of each sale.  30%? Yes.

Lately there has been a lot of discussion about Apple’s new policy of requiring publishers/software developers who create content distribution applications for iOS devices to provide in-app purchase capability directly through the App Store. This is an option that comes about if they also have the ability to purchase content outside the App Store.

Who is affected by this new Policy?

For starters,  this affects ALL developers of iOS applications regardless of size. In particular,however, this affects e-book vendors like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo.

On the magazine end, it affects companies like Zinio which converts popular magazines to electronic tabloid formats using their special viewer, as well as various magazine publications with dedicated iOS subscription apps such as Maxim and Wired, and at the comic book level, it affects the Marvel and DC apps for purchasing electronic comic books.

What is the overall effect?

Most end-users are likely to opt for the in-app purchase of the content rather than go out and use an external interface like a web UI that is used by Amazon’s Kindle application. However, for content providers it means that they are either going to bump up their prices within the App relative to pricing on their own external content distribution mechanisms, which is probably something that Apple won’t like,  or suck it up as a cost of doing business on Apple’s App Store ecosystem.

How Much Time Do they have to Comply?

Apps which currently offer external content purchasing options have until June 302011 to comply with the new rules. Some vendors may eventually decide that Apple has gone too far with their demands, that this cost of doing business is too high, and may withdraw from the system entirely, in favor of other platforms such as Android which has a much more liberal development and content distribution model. Google, for example, only take 10%. And, alternatively, some of providers might just look at writing web-based content distribution mechanisms that are completely platform independent.

The App Mall

There is however another option for Apple which could be proposed as an alternative monetization arrangement in order to avoid the real possibility of some of their most desired content suppliers on the iOS platform from leaving for greener pastures. They need to take a page from commercial real estate management and turn the App Store into an App Mall.

Here is how it could play out.  Apple may allow certain providers, those which are willing to make  financial commitments to developing on iOS and staying with the platform, the ability to “Buy In” to the App Store,  so they can set up their own app stores within the App store. This could be an App store within the App Mall.

This commitment could be in the form of a “Lease”, in which the developer commits a certain negotiated up-front payment to cover X number of years of space on their store, in exchange for no per-sale cuts. It could work.

Source: ZDNet

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Google announced that it was changing some of its search algorithms to reduce the rankings of content farm products.

What Do content Farms Do?

Like most websites, content farms have a main goal, which is to generate revenue, and some do it with advertisements. So a content farm, is a company that employs large numbers of often freelance writers to generate large amounts of textual content which is specifically designed to satisfy algorithms for maximal retrieval by automated search engines.

The articles in content farms often get information from other  sources, which can lead to copyright disputes over copyright infringement. They are written people who are not specialists in the area. On the other hand the advocates of the content farms claim that from a business perspective, it is better to look for some expertise, which can be developed one article at a time. Traditional journalism, they claim is inefficient because stories are chosen by a small group of people that frequently have similar experiences and outlooks. (That in fact is the claim by most conservative commentators, that the mainstream media is too narrowly focused with the same ideas and perspectives.)

Content farms often commission their writers’ work based on analysis of search engine queries that proponents represent as “true market demand”, a feature that traditional journalism lacks.

Google’s Shift

Google launched a big algorithmic improvement to ranking, which will impact just under 12 percent of queries. Google raised the awareness level with this change. Because, according to Google, this update is “designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites–sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites–sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.”

The end result is that splashy articles, that don’t have sufficient content will not appear at the top of the rankings.

Source: PaidContent

PBS

Image: Business Insider

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Not content to be the dominant power in mobile devices, Apple has released a ’Developer Preview’ of Mac OS X Lion to allow developers time to get acquainted with the new OS.

It’s good news for consumers that own a Mac, although it will be a while before the final version is released to the public.

What does Lion offer?

Here are some of its more salient features. Start with Mission Control, which is a new view of everything running on your Mac. Then there is Launchpad, a place to put all your Mac apps; and a full screen apps that use the entire Mac display; and new Multi-Touch gestures. Lion also has a built in Mac App Store, so you can find, install, and automatically update Mac apps.

What is Mission Control?

This is an entirely new feature that unifies Exposé, Dashboard, Spaces, and full screen apps. You are able to see a bird’s eye view of every app and window running on your Mac using this application.

What is LaunchPad?

If you’ve ever been at a loss about where an application is on your computer, Launchpad will make it easier to find and launch any app. With a single click, Launchpad displays all your Mac apps in a full screen layout where you can launch them, re-order or organize them into folders.

What about Multi-Touch?

The Multi-Touch gestures and fluid animations provide a way for you to have a natural and intuitive way to interact with your Mac. What gestures? Well, these include pinching your fingers to zoom in on a web page or image, swiping left or right to turn a page or switch between full screen apps and swiping up to enter Mission Control.

When will it be released?

The Lion preview is available to Mac Developer Program members through the Mac App Store today, and the final version of Lion will ship to customers this summer.

Source: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/02/24macosx.html

Image: http://aleptu.com/how-to-upgrade-to-mac-osx-lion-os-10-7-10191653.html

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The rumors have been floating around the web for the last week or so that Apple will be holding a press event on March 2nd to announce details of the iPad 2. Well today Apple have gone and confirmed all those rumors and have sent out invites for the official press event entitled ” Come see what 2011 will be the year of”

I think it’s fairly obvious to assume from the picture that it will be an iPad that’s going to be the focus of the event. We’re not clear as to whether or not the iPad will actually be available on March 2nd or not, but one things for certain we will find out whats going to be in the iPad 2. It will be interesting to see if its any smaller in size as rumors have suggested and Apple will almost certainly want to be putting at least one if not two cameras in there if they want to keep up with the competition.

One thing’s for certain, we’ll know on the 2nd March! The event will be held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts at 10:00 am where Apple have launched products before

What do you think the iPad 2 will be like?

Let us know in the comments

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There are several versions of the Android OS in play now. There is Gingerbread officially known as Android 2.3. Google’s Android Gingerbread introduces a collection of improvements to the operating system, both on the surface and under the hood. The most significant core changes — in terms of what will directly affect users — revolve around four main areas: Faster speed, better Android battery life,  better application management, and an updated user interface.

Honeycomb, or Android 3.0, is a big  step toward the unified, mobile world that Google is trying to bring to us. Why? Because Google hopes to have, a tablet-ready version of the Android operating system, which it hopes can beat back Apple’s iOS and the iPad. Up to now, all the Android tablets that have shipped have used a modified version of the OS found in a typical Android smartphone. The problem with the Android OS on the tablet is that it looks and acts like stretched out versions of  a handset. But that is not what people want in their tablets. So along comes Honeycomb, which is an overhaul to the Android OS, and it changes that perception.

As Google is near to issue the  release of the XOOM tablet sometime this week,  the Android focus shifts to the horizon beyond Honeycomb. What will happen beyond Android 3.0? Are handsets ever going to see Honeycomb, or what? Will there be two different versions of the same OS? As it turns out, the answer is a little of both.

Ice-Cream

Well Ice-Cream  or Ice Cream Sandwich, which is the next iteration of Android should resemble both Gingerbread and Honeycomb.  Why the combination? Well, as you might expect, not everything will be the same on phones and tablets. That is because scaling up a phone experience to a larger tablet screen has not worked well. So the next version, Ice-Cream should be a version that sits well with both phones and tablets.

Source: ComputerWorld and Cnet

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A recent survey by the NPD group shows that consumers are starting to move away from the PC and over to the tablet.

What do Consumers Want?

According to the report, consumers have adapte their e-mail usage, Internet browsing, and social networking from their PC to a tablet, and consequently consumer PC usage is on the decline.

If you think about it, it makes sense. Why do you need a PC? If you are a business, for data gathering, manipulation, analysis, and control. If you are a gamer for speed. But what if you are neither? Just a lowly consumer, who likes to surf the web, share pictures on Facebook, and send and receive e-mail. That sums it up, in a nutshell. From a consumer’s point of view, the PC’s time has come and gone.

Stats

Thirty percent of tablet owners said they are e-mailing and browsing the Internet less on their PCs, and 28 percent said they are using social networking features less. Then among smartphone owners, e-mail has the most occurrence, even more than tablets, which come in with 35 percent of owners shifting their e-mail consumption from their computer to the phone.

Meanwhile, Internet browsing and social networking, have taken much less usage time from the PC when compared to tablets.

Overall, tablet owners are happy with the results of this migration away from their PC. In fact, levels of satisfaction are high ranging from 68 percent of consumers saying they were very satisfied with their Internet experience on their tablet, and 67 percent with e-mail, and finally to 60 percent were happy with social networking.

Tablet vs Mobile phone

Now compare those three tasks between tablet owners and mobile phone users. Smartphone owners are finding much less satisfaction when they shift usage to that platform. Fifty-nine percent of smartphone owners said they were very satisfied with e-mail, 49 percent with social networking, and 42 percent with browsing the Internet.

Overall, the tablet, because of its size, not too big, but bigger than a mobile phone, and not too heavy, but heavier than a mobile phone, allow users a comfortable working technology experience.

Source: ZDnet

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What are the App rankings by sales? Well, IHS reports state that while Apple is well ahead of the game in sales, wiping the floor with the rest of the mobile market, but BlackBerry is in second place overtaking both Android and Nokia.

Who is buying the most mobile apps? Well the figures show that iPhone users buy and download the most applications. Though BlackBerry users are in a far away second place downloading even more applications as they become available.

Since 2009, the Apple App store has lost about 10% of its share of the App market, but it still has a whopping 82%. Nokia and Google have just under 5% each and Blackberry just under 8%.

In short, the figures do not show a direct correlation between Apple and BlackBerry users and application sales through their respective application stores, you can see Apple’s dominance in the market.

The actual dollar values are impressive. The Apple App Store is raking in over $1.78 billion in 2010, with BlackBerry taking second place at 7% and $165 million.

What is also important here is that even though Android is the world’s most used mobile operating system, with an overwhelming 350,000 Android applications per day, it shows that the Android Market is falling behind all the major players – even Nokia. Yet with all of this, losing 10% market share in one year is significant for Apple. But that could be only a small reflection since the iPhone is still the one to beat when all is said and done. And Apple knows how to keep users at bay with new upgrades, or new releases that make users pause before buying another mobile device.

Finally consider the Nokia and Microsoft deal and combining the Windows Phone Marketplace and the Ovi Store. How will this combination play out? It will probably dent the figures to be sure. But, the merger will probably hit the BlackBerry maker Research in Motion more than Apple.

Source: MobileSyrup

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A few days ago, President Obama met with some IT company executives, Steve Jobs and others Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, Cisco’s CEO John Chambers, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, Genentech Chairman Art Levinson; Google CEO Eric Schmidt; former state controller and venture capitalist Steve Westly Doerr, and Stanford University President John Hennessy.), to talk about job creation in the US.

Yesterday, the President and CEO of Intel, Paul Otellini, announced that that it will invest more than $5 billion in a new chip manufacturing plant at its Chandler, Ariz. facility, with construction beginning later this year.

This can only be good news for the US President. With US unemployment at about 10%, under employment at about 17% job creation has been weak the last several years, but this will help in more ways than one. As I see it, it’s not that job creation has been weak, it’s that jobs keep getting shifted overseas. So when the US government announces that there was job growth in a particular month, it is frequently offset by jobs going to Asia. The growth in that case is minimal if at all.

This has been happening for several years. It happened under the Presidency of GW Bush, and also under the current administration.

This problem has also contributed to the enormous US financial deficit. Not only are tax revenues drying up with jobs going elsewhere, but it is also hard to recover those lost tax funds. Both US political parties are to blame for this. The Democrats are scared stiff about suggesting new taxes, and the Republican mantra is no new taxes. So budgets are in the red, all over the US, state as well as Federal.

So when Intel plans a new plant, it is welcome news. The facility, designated Fab 42, will be completed in 2013. It is supposed to create thousands of construction and permanent jobs.

But the US President, should be aware that this will only put a small dent in the problem unless fewer jobs are shipped overseas. Will this actually happen? Probably not. President Obama met with Steve Jobs. Apple has most of its mobile device manufacturing done in Asia. It would be great if the jobs came back to the US. But that is not likely to happen.

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The Guinness Book of World Records 2011 Gamer’s Edition has recently come out, and it includes a list of the 50 best video game characters of all time. Now firstly, who decided on this list? Well the results were determined by a poll on the Guinness website. So readers and fans determined the results of the poll. Over 13,000 different votes were counted so it’s a pretty conclusive result in my opinion.

Want to hazard a guess as to who got the number one spot? Well I don’t think it’s any surprise really, Nintendo’s Mario of course claimed the top spot. This iconic little guy first appeared back in 1981 and the Mario franchise has blossomed ever since.

Link from Zelda was another one for Nintendo with him coming in second place. Master chief from Halo claimed the 3rd spot for Microsoft and Sony’s Solid Snake coming in 4th. I think you’ll find that the majority of the top 10 are held by older characters from the classic games with the exception of one or two.

Looking further down the list you see characters such as “Soap” MacTavish from the Call Of Duty Franchise as well as others.  Most of these characters have been around longer than I have and I’ve never heard of several of them, but somebody must have if they managed to make it into the top 50 characters of all time

Have a look at the list below and let us know what your list is in the comments below

1. Mario (Donkey Kong, Nintendo, 1981)
2. Link (The Legend of Zelda, Nintendo, 1986)
3. Master Chief (Halo: Combat Evolved, Microsoft, 2001)
4. Solid Snake (Metal Gear, Konami, 1987)
5. Cloud Strife (Final Fantasy VII, Square, 1997)
6. Pac-Man (Pac-Man, Namco, 1980)
7. Lara Croft (Tomb Raider, Eidos 1996)
8. Gordon Freeman (Half-Life, Valve, 1998)
9. Kratos (God of War, Sony, 2005)
10. Sonic (Sonic the Hedgehog, Sega, 1990)
11. Crash (Crash Bandicoot, Sony, 1996)
12. “Soap” MacTavish (Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Activision, 2007)
13. Nico Bellic (Grand Theft Auto IV, Rockstar, 2008)
14. Samus Aran (Metroid, Nintendo 1986)
15. Ratchet (Ratchet & Clank, Sony, 2002)
16. Nathan Drake (Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, Sony, 2007)
17. Captain Price (Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Activision, 2007)
18. Kirby (Kirby’s Dream Land, Nintendo, 1992)
19. Marcus Fenix (Gears of War, Microsoft, 2006)
20. Pikachu (Pokemon Red/Green, Nintendo 1996)
21. Yoshi (Super Mario World, Nintendo, 1990)
22. “CJ” Johnson (Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Rockstar, 2004)
23. Mega Man (Mega Man, Capcom, 1987)
24. Sam Fisher (Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, Ubisoft, 2002)
25. Shadow (Sonic Adventure 2, Sega, 2001)
26. Jak (Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy, Sony, 2001)
27. Duke Nukem (Duke Nukem, Apogee, 1991)
28. Dante (Devil May Cry, Bandai, 2003)
29. Naruto (Naruto: Konoha Ninpoch, Bandai, 2003)
30. Altair (Assassin’s Creed, Ubisoft, 2007)
31. Zelda (The Legend of Zelda, Nintendo, 1986)
32. Sephiroth (Final Fantasy VII, Square, 1997)
33. Donkey Kong (Donkey Kong, Nintendo, 1981)
34. The Prince (Prince of Persia, Broderbund, 1989)
35. Ezio (Assassin’s Creed II, Ubisoft, 2009)
36. Leon S (Biohazard/Resident Evil, Capcom, 1996)
37. Ash Ketchum (Pokemon Red/Green, Nintendo, 1996)
38. Guybrush Threepwood (The Secret of Monkey Island, LucasArts, 1990)
39. Spyro (Spyro the Dragon, Universal, 1998)
40. “Ghost” Riley (Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Activision, 2009)
41. Goku (Dragon Daihikyoe, Epoch, 1987)
42. Max Payne (Max Payne, Rockstar, 2001)
43. Jill Valentine (Biohazard/Resident Evil, Capcom, 1996)
44. Princess Peach (Super Mario Bros., Nintendo, 1985)
45. Larry Laffer (Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards, Sierra, 1987)
46. Augustus Cole (Gears of War, Microsoft, 2006)
47. Bowser (Super Mario Bros., Nintendo, 1985)
48. Eddie Riggs (Brutal Legend, EA, 2009)
49. Ryu (Street Fighter, Capcom, 1987)
50. Sackboy (LittleBigPlanet, Sony, 2008)

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Researchers do an awful lot of work and it’s thanks to them that we have most of the major advancements in technology, medicine and many other aspects of our daily lives. But I must congratulate the researchers at physorg.com who went and took on one of the biggest challenges. To calculate just how much information there is in the world!

Why don’t you go and take a wild/educated guess first yourself as to how much you think there is? A couple of million gigabytes? Billion or two? Well according to these guys there’s an incredible 295 Exabytes of data out there. That’s 316 753 838 080 gigabytes! They got that figure by looking at both digital memory and analog devices.

Still trying to wrap your head around that figure? Well I’ve got a few more for you. To put that immense number into perspective, the researchers contrasted it with things we can relate to.

Put another way, if a single star is a bit of information, that’s a whole galaxy of information for every person in the world. Which is 315 times the number of grains of sand in the world. Think that’s alot? Well it’s still less than one percent of the information that is stored in all the DNA molecules of a human being.

The researchers took 2002 as the beginning of the digital age since it was the first year worldwide digital storage capacity overtook total analog capacity. As of 2007, almost 94 percent of our memory is in digital form.

In 2007 alone, humankind managed to successfully send 1.9 zettabytes of information through broadcast technology like  televisions, satellites and GPS. That’s equivalent to every person in the world reading 174 newspapers every day.

On two-way communications technology, such as cell phones, humankind shared 65 exabytes of information through telecommunications in 2007, that’s the equivalent of every person in the world sharing the contents of six newspapers with each other every day.

In 2007, all the general-purpose computers in the world computed 6.4 x 10^18 instructions per second, that’s roughly the same number of nerve impulses executed by a single human brain. Doing these instructions by hand would take 2,200 times the period since the Big Bang.

From 1986 to 2007, the period of time examined in the study, worldwide computing capacity grew 58 percent a year, ten times faster than the United States’ GDP.

I think you will agree that these numbers are pretty phenomenal but they are nothing compared with the amount of information that is present in nature. As you can see from some of the above stats, humans still far over achieve the computing abilities of technology. However the level of information in technology is constantly growing, while it’s remained fairly constant in nature.

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Control is the name of the game; control of your home, your environment, like the thermostat, the heating and cooling, and lighting. As electronics goes green, here is a company Control 4 that is offering hardware and software solutions to make that control, realistic and affordable.

But now, Cisco, the routing and switching company, has made an arrangement with Control4 to help provide some technology and marketing assistance to make the control more universal.

Cisco will sell Control4 products, such as the home energy management dashboard, under the Cisco brand. Control 4 software is like an operating system for connected devices in a home, including consumer electronics, home appliances, lights, and thermostats. For Control4, having access to Cisco’s sales force and relationships with cities and utilities will accelerate the move to the connected home and home automation.

The devices on high-end home media systems use Control4′s software and touch-screen controllers to stream video and audio to different rooms. This is part of the home energy management system, which in turn is part of a smart-grid program. It is a small dashboard device tied to a utility meter.

How does this work for Cisco? Cisco intends to tie Control4′s software to its consumer products, such as its home networking gear, consumer videoconferencing, and voice over IP phones.

The Cisco Move

This move for Cisco may be one where they are trying to move in a new direction, not away from their traditional one, but looking at new avenues to use their technology. Since energy control and efficiency are beginning to be part of the social fabric, it would make sense for a company with the technology wherewithal to get involved. So for Cisco, the goal is to have a full suite of products when selling home automation to utilities. It also ties into Cisco’s “smart and connected communities” strategy for urban development through which  cities invest in a modern technology infrastructure, including connected devices and broadband access.

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LiveStand

Since the Internet took off, many publishers, newspapers, magazines, and network news organizations have seen their numbers decline. You can get news anytime, from anywhere. So Yahoo announced LiveStand as a way to help some publishers.

Specifically, it is a way for magazines to inject some new content into their magazines. The platform isn’t ready for distribution yet, but Yahoo is looking at helping content providers and advertisers to begin placing their content on Yahoo’s home page or within the Yahoo email inbox.

The idea behind LiveStand is about personalization. One potential magazine client that they are looking at helping is the one that has a niche product, like cooking, or workouts, or tattoos, football junkies. Because the publication has a focus in one area, potential consumers might not feel ready to use the product.

By using LiveStand,  the publisher would be able to put new and differentiated content onto the site, enough to garner the attention of potential customers and bring them to the regular magazine. For publishers, they wouldn’t be doing this on their own. So, their initial cost would be less than starting up their own website.

Here is how Yahoo sees the effect on publishers:

• “Transforms one-size fits-all approach into a highly personalized experience.
• Drive increased engagement with dynamically personalized content.
• Develop your publication once and easily deploy it on the most popular tablet devices.
• Amplify your distribution by accessing Yahoo’s massive audience as they adopt tablets.”

Here is how Yahoo sees the benefits for advertisers:

• “Engage your audience within a highly personalized digital newsstand.
• Create personalized brand experiences with ads that adapt and respond to user interaction.
• Combine the interactivity of a tablet with a brand building, TV-like, ad experience.
• Bring fun and excitement with tactile Magazine-style ad formats.
• Access Yahoo’s massive audience as they adopt tablets.”

That is the future; for now, most of the content is Yahoo based. But that is sure to change if this model takes off. It could help publishers, advertisers, but most importantly Yahoo, which seems to be in the doldrums lately with not showing any new products or features.

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