Kamis, 27 November 2008
PayPal Adds SMS Authentication Service
PayPal wants to use cell phones to makes its customers feel more secure with their online transactions.
The online payment company announced it would be offering users the option of having a unique six-digit code sent via SMS to their cell phones before logging on to their accounts. By using a code along with their user name and password, this two-factor authentication should add to security and help protect consumers from fraud like phishing attacks, PayPal said.
"PayPal was built from the ground up with security in mind, and we've always been committed to using cutting-edge technology to protect our customers' accounts," Michael Barrett, PayPal's chief information security officer, said in a statement. "Now, we're taking the additional protection provided by two-factor authentication and delivering it to something most people don't leave home without -- their mobile phones."
The text messaging service uses the same security infrastructure as the PayPal Security Key, which is part of the VeriSign Identity Protection Network. The SMS security option is now available to customers in Australia, Austria, Canada, Germany, and the United States.
The SMS authentication is PayPal's latest move toward the mobile space. The company has already implemented a service that lets customers transfer funds from their PayPal accounts to another person by using text messages.
The company is also working on a program that lets customers use their phones to buy products. This system would have merchants putting special codes on ads, and the buyer could get the product by text messaging the product code to a number in the advertisement. The product would then be shipped to the buyer's address that's on record with PayPal.
Article source: Informationweek
Retailers Brace For Holiday Traffic, Cyber Monday
The retail outlook for the start of the holiday shopping season is mixed, as consumer spending reports showed a slowdown not seen since 9/11, but reduced gas prices and pent-up demand offer a glimmer of hope for sales.
The National Retail Federation reported Tuesday that up to 128 million people would shop Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, and online retailers prepared to handle a surge in retail traffic.
The NRF commissioned a survey by BIGresearch and found that 49 million people definitely planned to visit stores over the weekend, while another 79 million said they would wait to see weekend deals before making any decisions. Those figures are down from the 135 million people who planned to shop over the holiday weekend last year.
The e-commerce shopping season begins Monday, dubbed Cyber Monday by retailers, who see an increase in traffic beginning that day. This year, Cyber Monday promotions are expected to rise.
Shoppers could have some extra money since the average price of gas at self-serve pumps has dropped to $1.91, and pent-up demand from consumers who have waited all year for discounts could fuel additional spending. And the NRF has predicted that this Black Friday could be the most heavily promoted in history.
"Shoppers who held off buying a DVD player or winter coat over the last few months will find that prices may literally be too good to pass up," Tracy Mullin, NRF's president and CEO, said in a statement.
On the downside, the U.S. Commerce Department reported Wednesday that durable goods orders decreased by 6.2% last month to $193 billion. Economists had predicted a 3% drop. Personal consumption also declined 1% in October. Both figures have dropped at least three consecutive months.
Article source: Informationweek
India's Outsourcers Undaunted By Mumbai Terror Attacks
The trade group for India's burgeoning outsourcing industry said Thursday that the Mumbai terror attacks would not shutter IT operations in the country.
"We will not bow down to terror," said the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom), in a statement.
"As an industry that is international and services customers across the globe, we continue our operations, uninterrupted, from centers across India and even Mumbai," said Nasscom.
The group said Indian outsourcers in the area are taking precautions "to ensure the safety and security of our employees, facilities, and visitors."
A number of major IT outsourcing companies, including Wipro, Infosys and TCS, maintain offices in Mumbai. The city also hosts offices for U.S. service providers such asIBM (NYSE: IBM), HP (NYSE: HPQ), EDS (NYSE: EDS) and Computer Sciences (NYSE: CSC) Corp.
Virtually all major Fortune 500 companies are dependent to some extent on IT services and software development sourced from India, which boasts a highly skilled technology workforce and low costs. The country exported more than $30 billion worth of software and related services last year, with exports growing about 25% per year.
Islamic terrorists attacked hotels and other public areas in Mumbai Wednesday, killing more than 100 people, including some foreigners, according to Reuters and other news agencies. One terrorist who spoke to an Indian television station said the attacks were meant to draw attention to the treatment of Muslims in Kashmir, a disputed region claimed by both India and Pakistan.
Nasscom called the attacks "dastardly" and said they were "clearly an act of terror designed to create fear and panic."
The group said its member companies are communicating with customers to keep them updated on the situation. It also said its own offices in the region are open and that all scheduled events will go on as planned.
Article source: Informationweek
"We will not bow down to terror," said the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom), in a statement.
"As an industry that is international and services customers across the globe, we continue our operations, uninterrupted, from centers across India and even Mumbai," said Nasscom.
The group said Indian outsourcers in the area are taking precautions "to ensure the safety and security of our employees, facilities, and visitors."
A number of major IT outsourcing companies, including Wipro, Infosys and TCS, maintain offices in Mumbai. The city also hosts offices for U.S. service providers such asIBM (NYSE: IBM), HP (NYSE: HPQ), EDS (NYSE: EDS) and Computer Sciences (NYSE: CSC) Corp.
Virtually all major Fortune 500 companies are dependent to some extent on IT services and software development sourced from India, which boasts a highly skilled technology workforce and low costs. The country exported more than $30 billion worth of software and related services last year, with exports growing about 25% per year.
Islamic terrorists attacked hotels and other public areas in Mumbai Wednesday, killing more than 100 people, including some foreigners, according to Reuters and other news agencies. One terrorist who spoke to an Indian television station said the attacks were meant to draw attention to the treatment of Muslims in Kashmir, a disputed region claimed by both India and Pakistan.
Nasscom called the attacks "dastardly" and said they were "clearly an act of terror designed to create fear and panic."
The group said its member companies are communicating with customers to keep them updated on the situation. It also said its own offices in the region are open and that all scheduled events will go on as planned.
Article source: Informationweek
8 Sites for Watching English Evolve
In one of my favorite television shows, “Futurama,” there is a running gag that in the future, the word “ask” has been replaced by the more colloquial “aks” (pronounced axe). It might be a long time before the accepted spellings and pronunciations of common words like “ask” change, but the joke highlights a very real aspect of language: it evolves. The English language has changed a lot over the past 150 years, for example, in both spelling, pronunciation, and addition and subtraction of words.
For logophiles — those who have a love of words — the following list of web sites presents a selection of places around the web where you can keep tabs on how the English language is evolving through the addition of new words and neologisms. Careful, though, these sites are very fascinating and can be addicting to browse through.
Addictionary
Addictionary is a community of neologists who submit new words and vote on the submissions of others. The site has a lot of fun, interactive features, such as the “Wordoff,” in which two new words are pitted against each other, and “There Oughta Be a Word,” where users suggest a definition and others come up with the new word.
Sample: friendvy, noun, Envy over how many friends someone has on Facebook.
Wordspy
Wordspy is a blog that tracks neologisms. They only post about new words that have been used in more than one credible source (such as newspapers, magazines, or popular blogs). That sets it apart from the other sites on this list. Words found at Wordspy might be closer to actually entering the English vernacular because they’re apparently in semi-common use at respected publications.
Sample: tweetup, noun, A real world meeting between two or more people who know each other through the online Twitter service.
The Unword Dictionary
The Unword Dictionary is another user generated site full of new and emerging English words. The site is well organized, and founder Steve Kiehl put a book out last year based on the site’s 1,000 best words.
Sample: gank, verb, To take for one’s self; to steal a part of a song from another song and pretend it’s one’s own.
Pseudodictionary.com
Pseudodictionary.com is a large user generated new word site, but it’s honestly not as well organized or as well moderated as Addictionary or the Unword site. Still, it offers a very large collection of words to search through.
Sample: cankle, noun, The fatty deposit between one’s calf and one’s foot.
Urban Dictionary
Urban Dictionary is a huge site documenting English slang. Online for 9 years, it’s amassed over 3.4 million definitions for words that don’t exist outside of casual speech. Be careful: this site has a much higher tendency than others to serve up NSFW content (being a slang dictionary, a lot of the entries deal with content of a sexual nature).
Sample: bleep, noun, A substitute for a profane word.
Rice University Neologisms Database
Over 5,500 words are collected at Rice’s actively maintained database, making it a great place to keep tabs on what’s new in the English language. Because it is a University-backed project, you can expect high quality and very complete definitions, including sourcing and etymology.
Sample: digerati, noun, Those people who are the literati of the tech world. The savvy and knowledgeable users of computers and the internet.
The International Dictionary of Neologisms
A well maintained list of neologisms that actually comes from the University of Minnesota. You’ll find some gems among the over 2,600 entries, but the definition quality varies widely on the site depending on the source of the word. Some entries in the database go back over 20 years.
Sample: loguum, noun, A vacuum in the language; a not yet named concept or object, or a not yet adequately named concept or object — i.e., a place in the language which clamors for a neologism.
The Double-Tongued Dictionary
There are people who love language, and then there is Grant Barrett. Barrett is a lexicographer who hosts a weekly radio show about words, and is the editor of The Official Dictionary of Unofficial English. His site, the Double-Tongued Dictionary, is a great compendium of “undocumented or underdocumented” words in the English language. Only well-sourced words make the cut.
Sample: schmoopiness, noun, Behavior that is excessively cutesy, precious, or adoring.
Article source : Sitepoint
10 Essential Tips For Landing Your Next Job
We’ve noticed recently on Twitter that a lot of people are talking about having been laid off over the past couple of months. TechCrunch reports that there have been almost 80,000 layoffs in the technology sector since August, and entire blogs have been started about web and tech people losing their jobs. But even with all that doom and gloom, many companies are still hiring. If you find yourself looking for work, or trying to find some freelance gigs on the side to supplement your income, here are some tips to help you stand out, stay organized, and ultimately land a job.
1. Get Your Resumé in Order
Your resumé is a record of your entire professional life condensed on a single page (or two). 95% of the time, it will be the second thing a potential employer will see (first is your cover letter, which we’ll talk about next), so that makes it supremely important that everything is in order.
First and foremost, that means making sure your resumé is up-to-date. Double check that all of your contact information is correct, and that all of your prior work experience, including your most recent position, is accounted for. Try to emphasize the positions that best relate to the jobs you’re most interested in finding, and remove the ones that don’t relate, especially if your resumé is getting too long (a lot of HR people won’t both with resumés over two pages in length).
Remember to give a brief synopsis of your responsibilities at each job because job titles don’t mean much. A product manager at one company might do less than an assistant at another.
2. Never Reuse Cover Letters
The cover letter is the first thing a potential employer will see when you apply for a job. It will often determine if your resumé even gets looked at, so it is vitally important that you put proper time into crafting a good one.
Your cover letter is your chance to tie in the work experience detailed on your resumé to the actual job you’re applying for. Go into detail about why your past experiences will help you excel at the position you’re gunning to land.
You should always tailor your cover letter to the specific job you’re applying for. You may not have to do a full rewrite each time, since you’re likely to be applying to similar job opportunities, but you should never send out a form cover letter that’s the same for every application.
3. Network (Offline)
Networking is essential to finding a new job. Neither of my last two jobs were advertised via traditional channels — I happened into them by meeting the right people, letting them know what I was good at, and making a positive impression.
You should set aside some time to become a regular at the local tech meetups (most cities have a few these days, even the smaller ones), join the local user groups about the technologies you’re interested in — and present at them, and attend nearby conferences. For the unemployed, conferences can be an expense that’s hard to justify, but if you can manage to afford the cheapest pass (the one that gets you into just the expo hall usually), you can meet some great people hanging around in the lobby and hallways.
4. Network (Online)
Remember that networking happens both offline and online.
Online it means developing and maintaining a network of active professional acquaintances on services like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook, and making positive contributions to professional discussion communities like Hacker News and SitePoint Forums.
5. Start Blogging
Blogging is an excellent way to raise your visibility. Blog about the things you hope to be doing at your next job and start to establish yourself as an expert in your field. Along with all that networking you’re doing, blogging will help raise your profile and could attract recruiters. It’s never a bad thing when you apply for a job and the person on the other end reading your cover letter thinks, “Where have I heard this name before? … Oh right, he wrote that great article about unit testing!”
And who knows, blogging might even land you a job interview at Google.
6. Check Job Boards Often (Like, Right Now)
You’ll never find a job if you don’t actively look for them. Very rarely do jobs come to you — yeah, it happens sometimes, but it’s the exception, not the rule. In October, we published a list of 20 job boards that can help you find a job in web development or a freelance gig. These are a great starting point, and while you’re conducting your job search you should live on these sites.
Many of them offer RSS feeds of new jobs. Those RSS feeds are your new best friend. Subscribe to them all, set your RSS reader to check for updates as often as possible, and be the first to apply for new jobs and gigs as they go up. For sites that don’t have any RSS feeds, don’t be shy about using a service like Dapper to create your own. Staying on top of as many job opportunities as possible is essential to finding a new job — this is a marathon, not a sprint.
7. Know Your Price
Especially for freelancers, knowing your price is very important. It’s not enough that you can beat the other guy to the pitch, you have to be able to quote fast as well. As more and more people are pushed out of work and into the job market, and less and less jobs are available to go around, competition is getting really stiff for each new open position. Being able to quote quickly and accurately will raise your chances of landing that consulting gig.
8. Don’t Stop Learning
How many programming languages do you know? How good are you with CSS? Photoshop? Dreamweaver? Can you set up Apache in your sleep? That’s not good enough. Someone else out ther knows more, and knows it all better. The job market is competitive and you shouldn’t rest on your laurels and assume that what you know is enough to get by. Staying on the bleeding edge of web technology is a great way to set yourself apart from other job applicants, and honing your knowledge of your current skills is important to standing out in the crowd (also, why not blog about all the new things you’re learning, so recruiters can bone up on what you’re boning up on?).
You want to be the guy telling your potential next boss about new technologies even he hasn’t heard of and why he should be using them. That’s the sort of passion that will make an impression on employers.
9. Follow Up with Past Clients
A perhaps overlooked source of potential new jobs is past clients. Just because they haven’t contacted you recently, doesn’t necessarily mean there isn’t work to be done. Be proactive and ping past clients about what you can do for them. If nothing else, it’s a great way to reconnect with people that can act as potential references or talk you up to others in their industry that might be looking for help. Keep yourself on the radar screens of those who do the hiring and you’ll be rewarded for the effort eventually.
Similarly, if you haven’t heard back from them, it’s a good idea to follow up on jobs you’ve applied for a week or two after emailing your application. Ask if they’re starting interviews soon and reaffirm your interest in the open position. A well-timed follow up and move your resume to the top of the pile just as the employer is sorting through, and often times that sort of ambition will be looked upon favorably and rewarded. More than once in my past that type of follow up has led to an interview.
10. Keep it all Organized
Finding a new job rarely means just applying for a couple. I’ve read more stories than I care to count about people who had to apply for 15, 20, 40, or even more jobs before they landed just one interview. That shouldn’t be discouraging — finding a new job is hard work and could take months — but it does illustrate why you need to be organized about your job hunt.
Applying for the same job twice, or accidentally addressing a cover letter to the wrong employer would be major faux pas that you definitely want to avoid. We recommend Happy Job Search, a application written by web developer Daniel Higginbotham after he found himself laid off from work twice in the span of three months.
Happy Job Search is a very simple application, but it’s an exceptionally useful one. It lets you quickly log information about jobs that you come across in your search, and then keep track of the stage of your application — whether you’ve applied, heard back, have an interview scheduled, etc. When you’re applying to tens of jobs each week and scanning hundreds of job ads, an organizational application like Happy Job Search could quickly become your new favorite piece of software.
As always, if you have any other advice for job seekers, please share in the comments!
Article source: Siptepoint
Label:
10 tips,
job search,
jobs,
linkedin,
list post,
networking,
resume
Yahoo! Wants to Power Your Site Search
When CNN launched their new site in June of 2007 they dumped Yahoo! in favor of Google to power their site search on CNN.com. Yahoo! was still used on the international version of the site, however. As I’m based in the US, I don’t often check the CNN International site, but I decided to look today. I’m not sure who is powering the search on the site now, but the Yahoo! logo is gone, so it looks like they dumped Yahoo! there, too. Anecdotally, that seems to be a common trend — I see a lot more “Powered by Google” buttons next to site search boxes than “Powered by Yahoo!” badges.
Google’s Site Search is so easy to plug in, and the resulting user experience is so good, that is has become a mainstay on an ton of sites around the web. Today, Yahoo! announced a revamped site search product that aims to take a bite out of Google’s search marketshare.
Yahoo! Vertical Lens is part of the Build Your Own Search Service (BOSS) platform, and allows developers to create site search engines that go beyond Google’s plug’n'play offering. Yahoo!’s launch partner for the initiative is technology blog TechCrunch, who are now using Vertical Lens for their site search.
Among the features that the new product offers are:
* Real-time indexing of proprietary content - When new blog posts or comments are added to the site, the search index updates almost immediately to reflect those changes. (Google is pretty good at keeping on top of site changes as well, so not much new here.)
* Customized ranking - BOSS is all about customizing Yahoo! search results, so Vertical Lens allows sites to find tune the algorithm to fit their audience and user experience.
* Structured search - Maybe the coolest aspect of the new Vertical Lens is that it supports faceted refinement of searches. For TechCrunch, their new search engine allows users to narrow query results by author, number of comments, blog category, or date, for example.
* Blending Web with proprietary content in a single search display - Vertical Lens can search both site and web content and blend results together in a single display.
Yahoo! Vertical Lens is currently only available to partners, but Yahoo!’s YaJie Ying promises that the company is “working to share the technology more openly through the BOSS API.”
Article source: Sitepoint
Senin, 24 November 2008
If Twitter Charges, Users Would Pay: Survey
Author and investor Guy Kawasaki posted a poll today asking, “How much would you pay to use Twitter?” Surprisingly, about 50% said they would pay some amount, the majority thinking the service worth $5 per month. That idea seems so reprehensible to blogger Mike Arrington (probably one of the service’s heaviest users with over 30,000 followers), that he a quickly urged his thousands of blog readers to vote for the $0 option. (Which is why that 50% figure is rapidly declining.)
The results aren’t particularly surprising, though. Arrington himself famously wrote last April, “I now need Twitter more than Twitter needs me.” Many people have come to rely on the service and the networks they have built for themselves through it. So it follows that a number of Twitter users would be willing to pay for the service.
In fact, in an April poll on TechCrunch, about 25% of respondents said they would pay to have ads removed on Twitter if they service started putting ads in the feed (and 50% supported the idea of ads — which might be a better way to generate revenue than to charge end users directly).
That said, a July interview with Twitter founder Evan Williams, also on TechCrunch, indicates that charging casual users is not something Twitter is planning on doing any time soon. So Arrington, who seems to have a short memory, need not worry. What they might be looking at, according to Williams in the interview, is charging corporate users.
Given the results of that April poll, it might be wise for Twitter to instead think about charging for ad-free accounts. Following the Get Satisfaction model, Twitter could likely do very well charging corporate users to remove third party advertising from their accounts.
Would you pay for Twitter? Let us know in the comments.
Another option: transactions. A new startup that launched today Twitpay, allows users to send and receive money via Twitter. The service handles transactions form $0.01 to $50. It takes a 5 cent fee on any transactions over 99 cents, and allows users to promise money to other Twitter users and have the transaction completed automatically once their accounted is funded to above the promised amount.
Speaking of Twitter, remember that you can get a free copy of SitePoint’s The Art & Science of CSS book just by following @sitepointdotcom on Twitter! Visit our Twitaway page for more details. You can also follow me @catone, though I can’t give you any free stuff.
Article source: Sitepoint
Brownbook directory lets you get in on the action
Brownbook, a global business directory that allows users to edit information about companies, launched recently for visitors all over the world.
According to the company, Brownbook aims to combine the power of wikis, peer production, and social networking to change the way business directories are presented online. Instead of providing a directory for users, Brownbook allows users to edit and update business listings, provide reviews with video and photos, and receive rewards by commenting on businesses.
The premise sounds simple enough and some may think it's interesting, but after using it for a while, I'm not quite sold on its usefulness. I perused the site, looked for different companies, read reviews scattered across the service, and found myself asking the same question each time: what value does this site really provide?
It's not that a business directory isn't nice, but there are a slew of them across the Web, like Yellowpages.com and Yahoo's business directory, which present pertinent information in a much nicer package.
Brownbook claims that over 27 million businesses have already been indexed. But when I searched for a major firm like Wal-Mart, the site returned a results page that listed Canadian stores and their phone numbers, but little else. That may be fine for Canadian customers who want to know a particular store's phone number, but the rest of the world is left out. And after viewing incomplete information about each store, I quickly realized that it's much easier to use Wal-Mart's store locator to find important information instead of Brownbook.
Article source: CNET
The Third Beta of KOffice 2.0 Arrives
Last night (November 19th) the KOffice team announced the third beta release of the upcoming KOffice 2.0 open source office suite for KDE (K Desktop Environment) users, and not only. This new beta introduces improvements in all its components, such as Karbon, Krita, KPlato, KChart, KPresenter, KSpread, KWord, the KOffice libraries, and plug-ins. It also repairs many of the issues related to the non-translatable strings, and improves the layout of many dockers.
"KOffice is in beta because the development team wants to receive feedback and bugreports from actual users. Since the last beta release a significant set of improvements and speedups have been integrated for all applications and this release shows the continuous focus on bug fixes until 2.0 is released." - said the KOffice team in the official release announcement.
Highlights of KOffice 2.0 Beta 3:
Unified Look and Feel
A new and improved GUI layout (Graphical User Interface) was created for all KOffice's components, in order to suit today's wide LCDs. The new GUI layout is made up of a workspace and a sidebar where users can dock the tools. For full flexibility, the docked tools can be undocked and kept in their own window, and later redocked. Moreover, the session will be saved and reused the next time KOffice is started.
Platform Independence
The KOffice suite is now available for Linux (KDE and GNOME), Windows and Macintosh users, while Solaris/openSolaris is to follow soon, after the final release. KOffice 2.0 was build with the latest KDE4 libraries and the Qt Cross-Platform Application Framework version 4 from Nokia, which acquired Trolltech at the beginning of this year.
Native Support for ODF
KOffice 2.0 will include native support for the OASIS OpenDocument Format, also known as ODF, the ISO standard for office document interchange. Why? Because the OASIS OpenDocument Format is now the national standard for many countries from all over the world. The native support for ODF implemented in KOffice 2.0 guarantees interoperation with other office suites, such as OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office.
And now for the bad news, we want to inform everyone that the KOffice development team decided to include only the following components in the final version of the KOffice 2.0 project, because of their maturity:
· KWord - A frame-based word processor capable of professional standard documents;
· KSpread - A powerful spreadsheet application;
· KPresenter - A full-featured presentation program;
· Karbon14 - A vector drawing application;
· Krita - A pixel-based image manipulation program like The GIMP or Adobe Photoshop;
· KPlato - A new project management application.
For a full list with all the changes since the Beta 2 release, please visit the official changelog.
Article source : Softpedia
Finally, Adobe Releases 64-bit Flash Player for Linux
Today is a historical day for Linux users, as Adobe has finally decided to listen to them and released a 64-bit version of its Flash Player. Until today, 64-bit Linux users had to install the 32-bit version of the Flash Player, which was forced to work with the help of the NSPlugin wrapper package and the 32-bit libraries.
However, this could cause some issues, and I'm pretty sure that users of the 64-bit Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) operating system know about the "grey box" problem of the Flash Player plugin, and are aware of the fact that you had to reload the page to see a flash movie, or even restart your browser... which was very annoying in some cases.
The first alpha version of the 64-bit Flash Player plugin from Adobe has been released today, a few minutes ago, and it is available for download here. At the moment, it is only available for English users, and Adobe stated that it would only accept feedback for the plugin in the English language. Moreover, the 64-bit version contains all the features from the 32-bit edition!
How to install?
· Download the 64-bit Flash Player for Linux from Softpedia (see below for download link), and save it on your desktop;
· Close your browser;
· Extract the archive and you will see a libflashplayer.so file;
· Open your Home folder and go to "View -> Show Hidden Files," or hit the CTRL+H key combination to view the hidden files and folders;
· Look for the .mozilla plugin, open it and create a folder called "plugins" (without quotes);
· Drag and drop the libflashplayer.so file from the desktop to the .mozilla/plugins folder;
· Open your browser and verify the installation of YouTube or any other website with flash content.
Also, check out our step by step tutorial with screenshots on how to install the 64-bit flash player from Adobe on Ubuntu 8.10 AMD64 (Intrepid Ibex) here.
Article source: SOftpedia
MySpace app for BlackBerry a RIM record-breaker
Remember that little old BlackBerry app for MySpace that premiered last week? Apparently it struck a chord with users because RIM reported just after midnight on Friday (EST), that it hosted more downloads for the product's first week than it has for any other app.
While 400,000 downloads in one week for the BlackBerry-compatible MySpace software is a drop in the bucket compared to Firefox 3's 1 million downloads in 24 hours, it did beat out the initial release of RIM's Facebook app.
RIM did not reply with comparative numbers.
In a statement, RIM's co-CEO Jim Balsillie regards the download count as a proof of "an evolving consumer lifestyle where social connectivity and information access are more important than ever." Yet, the spike could as easily correspond to a more concerted marketing push, to a growing adoption of BlackBerry phones among consumers versus business users, or to first-time BlackBerry owners responding to the sexier looks of the Bold and Storm.
Either way, RIM has a lot of work to do if it wants to join Mozilla in the Guinness Book of World Records.
Article source: CNET
ollowing an overhyped post-launch download frenzy, reality is setting in for Google Chrome. Google launched its own breed of open-source browser at th
Following an overhyped post-launch download frenzy, reality is setting in for Google Chrome. Google launched its own breed of open-source browser at the start of September 2008, and managed to cause strong reverberations across the market, only to settle in the cozy under 1% usage share segment two months later, where all percentages were equivalent to pseudo-anonymity. The fact that Google Chrome continues to be in Beta, a label that fails to recommend the software as a viable alternative for Internet Explorer or Firefox, has been, of course, contributing to this.
At the debut of September, Google delivered what it referred to as a “fresh take on the browser,” namely a new open-source project based on the WebKit rendering engine, already being used in the Android OS. Chrome's initial uptake recommended the newcomer to the browser market as a threat to IE and Firefox, especially with Google's domination in terms of Internet search engines. After just a month on the market, Google Chrome jumped past Opera, according to Net Applications, and over the 1% usage share worldwide.
However, despite the initial disruption, Chrome's usage share has dropped to approximately half of its peak. According to Internet metrics company OneStat, “Google's Chrome browser has only a small global usage share of 0.54% since the introduction. Microsoft's Internet Explorer dominates the browser market with a global usage share of 81.36%. In February, the total global usage share of Microsoft's Internet Explorer was 83.27%. The most popular browser on the Internet is Explorer 7, with a global usage share of 56.68%. Mozilla's global usage share has increased 0.90% since February. The global usage share of Mozilla is 14.67%.”
In comparison to these numbers, data from Net Applications indicated that, at the start of November 2008, Internet Explorer enjoyed an usage share of 71.27%, while Firefox was credited with 19.97% and Google Chrome with just 0.74%. The drop in Chrome usage could be attributed to the inherent issues associated with Beta software. By Google's own confirmation, Chrome users hit a range of plugin compatibility issues related especially with the ubiquitous Adobe Flash.
The past week, Sundar Pichai, Google vice president, Product Management, revealed to The Times that the Mountain View-based Internet giant was exploring scenarios in which Chrome would be preloaded onto OEM computers. Google currently estimates that a problem-free variant of Chrome would be made available for download in early 2009. However, Google has an extremely poor history of taking products and services out of Beta, with a variety of projects seemingly stuck in this perpetual development milestone.
Article source: softpedia
Rabu, 19 November 2008
Microsoft: 100 Million Silverlight Downloads in 4 Weeks
In what is increasingly becoming a war of words between Microsoft and Adobe, the two companies seem to time announcements about Silverlight and Flash respectively in an effort to steal the other’s thunder. Last night, a few hours before the embargo lifted on a bundle of announcements Adobe was making at their annual MAX conference, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of the .NET Developer Division Scott Guthrie put out a post on his blog about the state of Silverlight and hinted at upcoming features in Silverlight 3, which should ship next year.
Guthrie was obviously very positive on Silverlight and the strides Microsoft has made in 2008 in getting the browser plugin out onto consumer machines. According to Guthrie, since the release of Silverlight 2 last month, the plugin has been downloaded over 100 million times, and some version of Silverlight is installed on 1 in 4 web connected computers. That’s pretty good for a technology that initially debuted under 20 month ago.
Guthrie also took some direct shots at Adobe’s competing Flash technology. “In the August 2008 edition of Web Designer Magazine (a Dutch publication) a [Dutch television network] representative reported that they were able to serve 100,000 concurrent users using Silverlight and 40 Windows Media Servers, whereas it would have required 270 servers if they had used Flash Media Servers,” he wrote. Guthrie also specifically noted that Flash is being replaced by Silverlight in Blockbuster’s MovieLink application.
One of reasons Microsoft is in a position to be able to take on Adobe’s Flash, which has an 11 year head start and nearly ubiquitous deployment, is the strength the company has in the enterprise. Microsoft has been able to lean on its corporate partners to score some high profile deployments of Silverlight very quickly, including at NBC, Netflix, AOL, Toyota, and Akamai. There aren’t many companies that could do that and push out a new plugin so quickly. (Google comes to mind as another who has the muscle to get it done — and Steve Gillmor recently suggested that they may actually be headed into the fray as well.)
In his post Guthrie also hinted at some features in the upcoming version 3 release of Silverlight, that should drop next year. According to Guthrie, Silverlight 3 will include:
* Major media enhancements (including H.264 video support) [Note: we reported on H.264 video and AAC audio support in Silverlight in September]
* Major graphics improvements (including 3D support and GPU hardware acceleration)
* Major application development improvements (including richer data-binding support and additional controls)
Guthrie says that further new features will be announced closer to release. In addition, Guthrie notes that new versions of Visual Studio (pictured below) and Visual Web Developer Express coming next year will include fully editable and interactive design tools for Silverlight, as well as new data-binding tools. Though it’s hard to tell, it appears that Visual Studio might be inheriting some features of Microsoft Blend.
Blend is a UI design tool for WPF and Silverlight projects that might be looked at as the Microsoft equivalent of the Adobe Flash Catalyst tool launched today (our coverage), though it seems less polished in my opinion, despite being older. (Though, I’m a writer, not a coder or designer, so take that opinion as you will.) Blend already supports seamless transition of code between it and Visual Studio, but it appears that Microsoft might be taking that a step further by integrating Blend-like UI design tools directly into Visual Studio.
Article source: Sitepoint
Senin, 17 November 2008
Adobe answers cries for 64-bit Flash on Linux
Starting to answer the clamorous demand from open-source fans, Adobe Systems plans to release an alpha version of its Flash Player technology on Monday for those using 64-bit Linux software.
Linux has moved more rapidly than Windows or Mac OS X to support 64-bit processors, in part because the developer-friendly compile-your-own-software ethos that prevails makes it easier for the technically savvy to make the switch. But one of the obstacles in the switch is that people could only use the 32-bit Flash plug-in, which meant that they only could use the 32-bit version of Firefox.
The company plans to release the software at its Adobe Max conference in San Francisco.
The 64-bit support will arrive on other operating systems later, Adobe said, but Linux fans get it first because they were the most vocal in their desire for it.
"Release of this alpha version of 64-bit Flash Player on Linux is the first step in delivering on Adobe's plans to make Flash Player native 64-bit across platforms," Adobe said in a statement. "We chose Linux as our initial platform in response to numerous requests in our public Flash Player bug and issue management system and the fact that Linux distributions do not ship with a 32-bit browser or a comprehensive 32-bit emulation layer by default. With this prelease, Flash Player 10 is now a full native participant on 64-bit Linux distributions. We are committed to bringing native 64-bit Flash Player to Windows and Mac in future releases. We expect to provide native support for 64-bit platforms in an upcoming major release of Flash Player. Windows, Macintosh and Linux players are expected to ship simultaneously moving forward."
Article source: CNET
Linux has moved more rapidly than Windows or Mac OS X to support 64-bit processors, in part because the developer-friendly compile-your-own-software ethos that prevails makes it easier for the technically savvy to make the switch. But one of the obstacles in the switch is that people could only use the 32-bit Flash plug-in, which meant that they only could use the 32-bit version of Firefox.
The company plans to release the software at its Adobe Max conference in San Francisco.
The 64-bit support will arrive on other operating systems later, Adobe said, but Linux fans get it first because they were the most vocal in their desire for it.
"Release of this alpha version of 64-bit Flash Player on Linux is the first step in delivering on Adobe's plans to make Flash Player native 64-bit across platforms," Adobe said in a statement. "We chose Linux as our initial platform in response to numerous requests in our public Flash Player bug and issue management system and the fact that Linux distributions do not ship with a 32-bit browser or a comprehensive 32-bit emulation layer by default. With this prelease, Flash Player 10 is now a full native participant on 64-bit Linux distributions. We are committed to bringing native 64-bit Flash Player to Windows and Mac in future releases. We expect to provide native support for 64-bit platforms in an upcoming major release of Flash Player. Windows, Macintosh and Linux players are expected to ship simultaneously moving forward."
Article source: CNET
Severe Decrease in Spam Activity
Security researchers, anti-spam groups and the whole security community in general were taken by surprise yesterday when reports of a sudden drop in junk mail activity started flowing in. This was the result of ISPs depeering McColo Corp., a U.S. based company offering web hosting services to many international cybercrime organizations.
McColo Corp. is based in San Jose, California and offers web hosting solutions. Nothing bad so far, but according to many reports and an important amount of evidence, a large number of their clients are shady at best. Security experts estimate that the spam generated by the illegal activities hosted by McColo amounts for a whooping 75% of the junk mail sent everyday on a global level.
Brian Krebs, reputable journalist at The Washington Post, informed on the Security Fix blog that he was involved with forwarding evidence of the criminal activity to Global Crossing and Hurricane Electric, McColo's two major Internet service providers. “For the past four months, Security Fix has been gathering data from the security industry about McColo Corp. [...] On Monday, Security Fix contacted the Internet providers that manage more than 90 percent of the company's connection to the larger Internet, sending them information about badness at McColo as documented by the security industry,” he writes.
According to Krebs, while the response from Global Crossing was rather evasive, Hurricane Electric was a lot more responsive to the abuse report and even quick to act about it. "We looked into it a bit, saw the size and scope of the problem you were reporting and said 'Holy cow! Within the hour we had terminated all of our connections to them," Benny Ng, the Freemont-based ISP's Director of Marketing, told Krebs.
As a result, McColo's website went offline and the global spam activity registered a sudden drop. Based on the statistics graph generated by the SpamCop service, the decrease in junk mail activity occurred a bit after 16:20 EST on Tuesday and continues to remains at low levels at the time of writing this article. “I admit, I was very surprised when I checked my email today after being offline for 7 or so hours, and discovered that there had only been a dozen or so pieces of spam in my inbox, when I normally receive hundreds (after filtering) over the same period of time,” writes Sandi Hardmeier, long time Microsoft MVP, on her spyware tracking blog.
As the Washington Post journalist points out, illegal activity originating from McColo's IP block was not limited to spam and also consisted of phishing campaigns, malware distribution and even the hosting of illegal content involving minors. This makes McColo's banishment from the Internet an important win over international cybercrime and comes after another recent major criminal activity hub in the US, the infamous Intercage (Atrivo) hosting company, suffered a similar fate.
Also recently, the authorities shut down the funding source and arrested the owners of what was considered the biggest spam network in the world, HerbalKing and in addition, the number one domain registrar used by spammers and other criminals is also currently having accreditation problems. All of this raises our hopes that change might be coming.
Article source : Spam
Adobe Flash Player Fix Stops 'Clickjacking'
Adobe Systems on Wednesday released a security bulletin to address a critical vulnerability in its Flash Player software that could let an attacker spy on victims through computer-connected Webcams or microphones or dupe victims into unknowingly authorizing harmful actions on their computers.
"Potential vulnerabilities have been identified in Adobe Flash Player 9.0.124.0 and earlier that could allow an attacker who successfully exploits these potential vulnerabilities to bypass Flash Player security controls," the bulletin states. "This update addresses a potential 'Clickjacking' issue in Flash Player. Clickjacking is an issue in multiple web browsers that could allow an attacker to lure a Web browser user into unknowingly clicking on a link or dialog. This update helps prevent a Clickjacking attack on a Flash Player user's camera and microphone."
Adobe recommends that affected users upgrade to Flash Player version 10.0.12.36. Flash Player 10 includes tighter security controls on content access across domains and a variety of other security-related changes.
The company plans to update Flash Player 9 in early November.
Earlier this month, Flash developer Guy Aharonovsky published a proof-of-concept exploit to demonstrate how the clickjacking vulnerability can be used to spy on people.
Clickjacking also can be used to direct user clicks to authorize unintended actions without the user's knowledge.
Clickjacking isn't a vendor-specific issue. According to Jeremiah Grossman, founder and CTO of WhiteHat Security, and Robert "RSnake" Hansen, founder and CEO of SecTheory, who identified the flaw, it's a broad cross-platform browser exploitation technique that affects multiple products. Thus, while Adobe's fix may prevent a clickjacking attack directed at Flash Player, users may still be vulnerable through their Web browsers or other software that they're using.
Echoing Grossman's advice on how to mitigate the risk of clickjacking, US-CERT suggests disabling browser scripting, plug-ins, and iframes until the issue is widely addressed, though this may make some Web sites nonfunctional. The NoScript Firefox plug-in provides an easy way to do this.
"Potential vulnerabilities have been identified in Adobe Flash Player 9.0.124.0 and earlier that could allow an attacker who successfully exploits these potential vulnerabilities to bypass Flash Player security controls," the bulletin states. "This update addresses a potential 'Clickjacking' issue in Flash Player. Clickjacking is an issue in multiple web browsers that could allow an attacker to lure a Web browser user into unknowingly clicking on a link or dialog. This update helps prevent a Clickjacking attack on a Flash Player user's camera and microphone."
Adobe recommends that affected users upgrade to Flash Player version 10.0.12.36. Flash Player 10 includes tighter security controls on content access across domains and a variety of other security-related changes.
The company plans to update Flash Player 9 in early November.
Earlier this month, Flash developer Guy Aharonovsky published a proof-of-concept exploit to demonstrate how the clickjacking vulnerability can be used to spy on people.
Clickjacking also can be used to direct user clicks to authorize unintended actions without the user's knowledge.
Clickjacking isn't a vendor-specific issue. According to Jeremiah Grossman, founder and CTO of WhiteHat Security, and Robert "RSnake" Hansen, founder and CEO of SecTheory, who identified the flaw, it's a broad cross-platform browser exploitation technique that affects multiple products. Thus, while Adobe's fix may prevent a clickjacking attack directed at Flash Player, users may still be vulnerable through their Web browsers or other software that they're using.
Echoing Grossman's advice on how to mitigate the risk of clickjacking, US-CERT suggests disabling browser scripting, plug-ins, and iframes until the issue is widely addressed, though this may make some Web sites nonfunctional. The NoScript Firefox plug-in provides an easy way to do this.
Study: Young people, men more optimistic when tech fails
When faced with a technology breakdown, levels of optimism and frustration vary depending on age and gender, according to a new study to be released on Sunday.
That's the straight lead. The one I was pondering writing is:
I'm a late-baby-boomer woman and I hate technology.
That's not entirely true. I love technology when it works and is easy to use. But I get annoyed when my computer gets jangy or my wireless goes down. And apparently, I'm not unusual for my demographic.
"Younger users are generally much more optimistic than older adults when their gadgets fail," says the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project which sponsored the survey of 2,054 U.S. adults.
"Although young adults age 18 to 29 years old are no more likely to be able to fix devices on their own, they were significantly more likely to be confident that they were on the right path to fixing it, and they were significantly less likely than older adults to feel discouraged or confused about fixing devices," according to the report.
There is no data on whether they were successful in fixing the devices, only that they thought they could. (Elsewhere, the data shows that of the 52 percent of tech users who are comfortable learning to use new devices on their own, 35 percent fix broken technology on their own.)
Meanwhile, the gap between the percentages feeling confident when their devices fail versus discouraged and confused narrowed as the age ranges went up.
Now for gender-based differences:
"Men were significantly more likely than women to be confident about the problem solving (76 percent versus 68 percent), but they were no less likely than women to report being confused, discouraged, or impatient during the course of trying to solve the problem," the report says.
Also, men were more likely than women (33 percent to 22 percent) to fix the gadget problems by themselves. Women were more likely than men (18 percent to 12 percent) to seek help from friends or family.
What about income and education? No significant differences were found in emotional reactions to device failure there.
Overall, 48 percent of those surveyed said they need help setting up a new device and learning how to use it.
And of the people who reported having problems with their Internet connection, computer, cell phone, PDA, or other gadget, how did they solve their problems?
Fifteen percent didn't get the problem fixed at all; 38 percent said they got help from customer support; 28 percent fixed the problem themselves; 15 percent got aid from family or friends; and 2 percent found what they needed to solve the problem online.
Article source: CNET
Adobe To Unify Developer Apps With Flash Platform
Adobe Flash isn't just online multimedia software anymore. It's a platform, as Adobe intends to make clear in a series of announcements coming out of the Adobe MAX 2008 conference that starts on Monday in San Francisco.
"We've wrapped all of our branding and messaging around the Adobe Flash Platform," explained Michele Turner, VP of product marketing and product management for Adobe's platform business unit. This isn't new, she said, "it's just packaged the way it should have been years ago."
Flash powers 80% of the video on the Web, said Turner. And Adobe would be happy to increase that percentage. So too, of course, would Microsoft, which has been promoting its Silverlight technology as an alternative to Flash.
To fend off Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), not to mention the growing use of open-source technologies like HTML, CSS, and Ajax for sophisticated graphics online, Adobe is rolling out new and updated products to cement its role as arms supplier to multimedia designers and developers, whether they're working on the desktop, on the Internet, or on mobile devices.
Toward that end, Adobe plans to roll out a new product called Adobe Flash Catalyst, a design tool for creating application interfaces without coding. Demonstrated previously under the code name Thermo, Adobe Flash Catalyst ingests files from Adobe Creative Suite 4 applications so they can be published to Flash or AIR, Adobe's framework for running rich Internet applications outside the browser, and allows them to be used for design and development collaboratively, in conjunction with an upcoming version of Flex Builder.
"It's an Eclipse-based tool that has an integrated two-way work flow," explained Turner. Its aim is to allow developers and designers to work on projects in parallel.
Adobe plans to release a preview version of the new Flex Builder that integrates with Adobe Flash Catalyst called "Gumbo" on Monday. The company hopes Flex Builder 4 will appeal to a broader audience of developers. Beyond its new collaborative capabilities, the software features enhancements to the core IDE (integrated development environment), debugger, and editor. It also includes new code profiling components and data-centric development capabilities.
Turner said that Flex Builder has been popular with JavaScript developers but less so with general scripters. Adobe, she said, wants to make Flex Builder a more general purpose programming tool.
Adobe also plans to release AIR 1.5, which now incorporates the open-source WebKit HTML engine and "SquirrelFish" JavaScript interpreter, support for encrypted SQL Lite, and Flash 10 technologies like native 3D transformation and animation.
The company plans to release Adobe AIR 1.5 for Mac OS X and Windows on Monday, with a Linux version planned for release before the end of the year.
Linux users will get something sooner, however. Adobe intends to offer a pre-release 64-bit version of Flash Player 10 for Linux though its Adobe Labs site. This enables 64-bit systems to run Flash without 32-bit emulation.
Adobe has also updated its Flash Media Server technology to enable dynamic streaming for servers, and to include enhanced AAC audio and improved content protection. And the company plans to demonstrate Flash Player 10 for smartphones (though not the iPhone).
Article source: Information Week
Kamis, 13 November 2008
12 Killer Ways to Make Extra Income On the Web
If the tumbling world economy has you worried, don’t despair: we’ve got your back. The Internet, as you may have heard, is a wonderful place, full of money making opportunities if you know where to look. Our list of 12 ways to make extra cash online will point you in the right direction. None of these ideas will likely net you a full time income on their own — though there are certainly people who have managed to do so with each — but a couple of them in tandem, or in addition to your usual freelance work or day job, can make you some much needed extra cash.
If you know of any others, we’d love to hear your money making tips. Please share them in the comments.
Freelance Projects
Even as companies are laying off workers left and right, that work still need to get get done by someone. Often times, companies will turn to freelancers on a per project basis as a way to save money and get things done quickly. Further, for smaller, one-time projects, it doesn’t make sense for many companies to hire a full-time employee, so frequently they will turn to the freelancer marketplace. There are many places to look for freelance jobs, but the large bid-based job boards are a good place to start. eLance, Guru, ScriptLance, and sologig are some of the best known.
Become a Topic Expert
About.com provides users with a guided tour of the web’s best sites in a wide range of topical areas. Each area of the site is maintained by a paid guide who is an expert in that area. The job of a guide is one part blogger, one part directory curator, and one part columnist. There are always openings for new guides and compensation starts at $725 per month. Guides are paid based on the amount of traffic they bring in and some make in excess of $100,000 per year.
Moonlight as a Designer
More and more smart companies are turning toward design contests to crowdsource their design work and get professional-quality results more efficiently. For designers, contests offer a steady stream of potential clients and a way to build up their portfolios. The clear market leader in the space is SitePoint’s own sister site 99designs. With almost $3 million in prize money awarded, and hundreds of open projects at any one time, you’ll never lack for work. ReadWriteWeb has a good list of other contest sites for designers to find even more opportunities.
Sell Your Stuff
Becoming an eBay millionaire is far from a piece of cake, but making some extra money in tough economic times is definitely doable. We all have some stuff in the attic that we never use, have outgrown, or just no longer need. Put it up for sale on eBay or Craigslist and make some extra cash. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, after all.
Cash in on Your Photos
Amateur-produced stock photos are a huge business. Last year iStockPhoto paid out $20.9 million in royalties to contributors. So selling your photos is indeed a possible way to make some extra, passive income, and there are a number of places where you can try to sell your pictures. We recently published a list of 15 such stock photo web sites, many of which give bonuses for exclusivity.
Flip a Website
Buying and selling web sites has also become big business, and unlike the house flipping market, the bottom hasn’t fallen out of the web site market. SitePoint’s Marketplace has grown into the web’s number one place to buy and sell web sites, and many people make a living doing just that.
Help People Search
If you’re good at finding things one the Internet, then you can make a few extra bucks helping people locate the information they need. Web search site ChaCha employs an army of search guides that help people do web searches. You won’t make big bucks doing it, but it’s not a bad way to make some spare change in your down time.
Sell Your Writing
Finding a full-time job as a writer isn’t easy (trust me, I should know!), but selling your freelance writing (and audio, video, and images) has never been easier thanks to Associated Content. AC is a network of content producers that allows anyone to submit content and be paid for it when it is distributed to their partner sites. The site says it has paid out over $1 million to content producers.
Name a Product
Even if you’re not a designer, you can still get in on the crowdsourcing action. NameThis is a contest site similar to 99designs, but rather than competing for design projects, users compete to come up with names for new products and services. If you fancy yourself a clever wordsmith, there is money to be earned at NameThis.
Design a T-Shirt
On the other hand, if you’re a design star, you may want to try your luck at t-shirt design for Threadless. Winning designs get $2,000 in cash, and $500 worth of free t-shirts, plus all the prestige that goes along with being a Threadless winner. Non-designers can submit slogans for a shot at a $500 cash prize.
Do Odd Jobs
Amazon Mechanical Turk is a people-power API from Amazon that lets companies easily outsource tasks to humans. These tasks are often mundane, and don’t pay much on their own, but they can be a good way to make extra cash just by doing things like reviewing restaurants, evaluating search results, and rating videos.
Shill Products on Your Blog
Have a blog? If you want to make a little extra cash, PayPerPost offers a way to write sponsored blog posts about products and services for money. There are some ethical ramifications here, so we’d advise that you always clearly disclose when a post is paid and avoid jobs that require a positive review.
Article source: Sitepoint
Get Ready to Download Windows Live Messenger 9.0 (2009) RTW
Microsoft is gearing up to make available for download the gold version of Windows Live Messenger 9.0/2009. The Redmond company has so far managed not to indicate a delivery deadline for the next version of its instant messaging client. In this regard, Microsoft's Brandon LeBlanc only mentioned that the next version of Windows Live Messenger, along with the additional services and applications making up the Windows Live Wave 3 release, would start being rolled out to end users soon.
"Windows Live Messenger, the No. 1 instant messaging service worldwide with more than 330 million active customers, now includes more personalization, a "what’s new" feed with updates from contacts across the Web, drag-and-drop photo sharing in the conversation window, a favorites list to designate the most important contacts, and group IM to chat simultaneously with up to 20 people at the same time," Microsoft revealed.
In mid-September 2008, Microsoft made available for download Windows Live Messenger 9.0 (2009) Beta Build 14.0.5027.908. The Beta version continues to be up for grabs as the Redmond company moves onward to the RTW (release to web) version of the IM client. Version 9.0 (2009) of Windows Live Messenger has been overhauled in terms of the graphical user interface and will offer end users new features and capabilities including: Groups, What’s New Feed, Personalization, Photo sharing, etc.
Windows Live Messenger 9.0 (2009) Beta Build 14.0.5027.908
Enlarge picture
Windows Live Messenger will deliver "a unified contact list where you control permissions – who can see when you’re online, whether they can view your profile, or which of your groups they can access. Anywhere you see people, you can e-mail them or send them and instant message. You’ll also have a simple and polished way to share photos and files. Since we’re all about connecting people, we’ve made groups part of your e-mail, IM, and photo experiences. Your group can have its own website, calendar, shared files, network, and other ways of keeping on top of what matters to the group," explained Brian Hall, general manager for the Windows Live Business Group.
Article Source: CNET
AVG update cripples some Windows XP systems
On Tuesday an update for AVG 8 suggested that a Windows system file is a Trojan horse, and users who delete the file form the system could leave their Windows XP systems endlessly rebooting or unable to reboot at all. The problem only affects users of AVG 8 products running the Dutch, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish language versions of Windows XP. AVG immediately sent out a corrected update to its customers, including those using the free editions of AVG.
A representative for AVG said, "AVG is actively working to remedy the problem some users are experiencing related to the most recent update to commercial and free versions of AVG 7.5 and AVG 8.0 in some languages. A number of users who installed the update mistakenly received a warning that the Windows system file user32.dll product version 5.1.2600.3099 was infected with a Trojan virus and were prompted to delete a file essential to the operation of Windows XP."
In response, the Czech antivirus company has posted details and a fix tool on its site.
For users unable to use their Windows XP machines, AVG says they "should contact their AVG reseller or ask a friend to download the information and fix tool for them."
AVG has suffered some embarrassing glitches of late. Last month, an AVG update declared some ZoneAlarm firewall files to be part of a Trojan horse. In July AVG had to reconfigure its Linkscanner tool after various Web sites complained about the increased traffic as a result of the tool's proactive scanning for malware.
Should You Retire the Word “Freelancer?”
Freelancers are amateurs. They’re not as talented as the designers, writers, and programmers who work for major development shops. They’re not as professional, use lower quality tools, and don’t produce the same quality of work. As such, they deserve less pay. Want to save a buck? Hire a freelancer. The work won’t be quite as good, but the cost savings will be immense.
Or at least, that’s how the professional world views freelancers according to designer Arron Lock. “It is unfortunate but as long as there are wannabe designers calling themselves freelancers there will be people that simply won’t take us seriously,” he writes on his blog.
According to Lock, there exists a negative stigma around the word “freelancer.” “In most people’s opinion freelancers are not professional designers,” Lock writes. That’s why when you pitch a client a $X,XXX price tag for their project, they might reply, “Yeah, but my nephew can do it for fifty bucks.” The problem is that freelancers have a reputation of being amateurs and should be paid peanuts as a result.
There are two ways to avoid that negative connotation, though, says Lock. First, stop calling yourself a freelancer. Lock suggests something like “Independent Designer” instead. That might not fool anyone, though — they’ll still know they’re hiring a contractor, so the stigma might continue to apply. Lock’s second piece of advice is to file the necessary paperwork to form an actual business, even if you’re the sole proprietor.
“Trust me, people take you far more seriously when they hear you are a business owner,” he says. That’s a sentiment echoed by my friend and freelance designer Kelli Shaver (who made the freelancer graphic above). She told me that people are generally much more inclined to hire her once they find out that she owns a local computer repair shop.
So our question to you: Should the term “freelancer” be retired?
Vote in our poll and leave a comment below.
Article source: Sitepoint
Jumat, 07 November 2008
Salesforce 2.0 Adds Voice, IM With Ribbit
The Web phone company Ribbit said it has improved its communication services with the launch of Ribbit for Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) 2.0.
Ribbit, which bills itself as Silicon Valley's first phone company, created a platform that allows developers to integrate voice communications into software and Web sites. The company's software-based call-switching technology allows developers to tie voice from any Flash-enabled browser to a public telephone network or VoIP networks.
The original integration linked cell phones to Salesforce's customer-relationship management software. The latest version retains that link, but it also enables calls, voice mails, and voice memos to automatically flow into the Salesforce CRM.
Besides sending an audio file into the Salesforce CRM, there's also the option of getting a transcription of the voice messages. This makes searching and organizing client information easier, Ribbit said. The latest version also integrates Skype and Google Talk.
"We're thrilled to launch the new version of Ribbit for Salesforce and to partner with a group of leading companies in the Salesforce.com ecosystem which share our goal of maximizing customer productivity," said Greg Goldfarb, general manager of enterprise applications for Ribbit. "The integration capabilities for Ribbit for Salesforce open up many opportunities for customers to meet day-to-day sales challenges, which are especially relevant in today's climate."
Ribbit for Salesforce 2.0 starts at $25 a month per user, and there's a 30-day free trial. There are upgrade options available for transcription services and outbound calling as well. Ribbit executives said they understand businesses may be reluctant to spend on new services with the current economic climate, but Ribbit said the productivity enhancements more than make up for the initial costs.
The company was recently acquired by British Telecom for $105 million. At the time, the telecom said the voice platform could lead to powerful business apps, and the telecom shut down its own Web21C SDK program and replaced it with Ribbit.
Article source: Informationweek
Google Launches Forum Search
Alex Chitu reports that Google has soft launched a forum search engine as part of an expanded search offering in its Google Groups product. Searches on the site are now no longer confined to just Google hosted groups and Usenet discussions, but include forum topics from across the web.
The technology certainly isn’t perfect, though, as we noticed some pages from blogs and other non-forum sources mixed in with the results. It’s not clear how Google is determining whether a site is a forum, but clearly their method has some kinks to work out.
Chitu points out the Google is using the same enhanced search snippets for the Groups forum search that it added to regular search results last month. For any page that is positively identifies as a forum thread, it includes the numbers of posts, the number of different authors, and the date of the last post. That’s helpful for searchers to determine the how recent the information is and the likelihood of whether a question posted to a forum might have the searched for response.
In other Google forum-related news, the company is migrating its own help forums away from Groups and to a Yahoo Answers-like Q&A service that is apparently code named “Confusions.” The Google Talk, Chrome, and AdSense help forums have already made the switch. Chitu says there is a possibility that Google will release the code for the platform once all of its help forums are migrated over to the new system.
Article Source: Sitepoint
Google CEO Could Be Obama's Tech Advisor
Rumor has it that Google CEO Eric Schmidt will be occupying the newly-formed tech advisor position to the president of the United States. Barack Obama created this position just shortly before visiting the Google headquarters during his campaign, and some believe that the reason this happened was because the job was promised to Schmidt.
The president-elect announced his support for maintaining the Internet neutral, meaning that he (and Google) opposed the addition of more fees for data transfer to end-users. Under Obama's tech policy, ISPs will be strictly prohibited from hampering data flow around the web. He says that the network is an indispensable tool in today's economy, and that it motivates growth by making trade simpler and easier, so any obstacle will mean a loss of capital.
The head of Google endorsed the Democratic candidate throughout the elections, though the ads the company posted on various sites were mostly Republican. However, Google employees donated far more to Obama's campaign than they did for John McCain – about $487,355, and $20,600 respectively, as estimated by the Wall Street Journal.
The naming of the Democratic candidate as the new president comes at the same time as the decision of the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to open up unused TV broadband frequencies to wireless Internet traffic. They will enter use when the entire television grid moves to the digital format.
No one can be sure that Eric Schmidt will be named as Obama's tech advisor until the event actually happens. But, in light of the relation they had during the campaign, and the earnings that Schmidt's endorsement brought the new president, it stand to reason that he will be, at the very least, considered for the job. In addition, Google's efforts to go "green" are in line with Obama's policy towards climate change and global warming, so this is another common ground for the company and the White House.
Making Money On MySpace: Payments and Virtual Gifts Coming Soon
In the platform wars between Facebook on the one side and MySpace, Google, and the whole OpenSocial crew on the other, the side that makes it easier for application developers to make the most money will win. Advertising in social networks has always been problematic, and with an advertising recession upon us those already-low ad rates are going to get lower, not higher. The other way to make money on these platforms is to try to charge for apps themselves or sell things through the apps. But to do that developers first need a payment and billing system to tap into.
Less than an hour ago, MySpace COO Amit Kapur revealed at the Web 2.0 Summit that MySpace is working on its own payments and virtual gift products that MySpace developers will be able to add to their own apps.
Facebook has its own virtual gifts, but has not yet opened that to developers. (Although there is a gift economy inside Facebook powered by other companies). And Facebook has been rumored to be working on a payments system since forever.
iPhone’s App Store has proven that, at least on mobile phones, people are willing to pay for apps. Bringing that model to social networks could work if the quality of the apps goes up and the number goes down. One problem with Facebook and MySpace apps is that there are too many of them. there are no barriers to entry. Charging for apps, or trying to sell add-on services through them, would force the startups and developers creating them to build something that people are actually willing to pay for.
And it is not just the developers who are in a sudden rush to figure out how they are going to make money. Facebook and MySpace are also under more pressure to ramp up revenues these days.
The challenge to switching over to such a model from the current free-for-all is that the value of many of these apps is directly correlated with how many people use them. (More specifically, with how many of your friends use them). The minute someone charges for an app, the adoption rate goes way down. So some aspect of most of these apps will likely always be free. But the ability to charge for extras or for a more fully-featured experience might actually result in better apps being produced.
In any case, the race is on to provide alternative revenue streams besides ads to app developers. Will MySpace beat Facebook to the payments party?
Article soure: Techcrunch
Smart Move: Get Satisfaction Adds Ads
Get Satisfaction, which we recently said was a great place to monitor your customers’ concerns and speak to them directly, has added Google AdSense ads to their site. But most of the site’s users won’t see them.
“We’re going to aim at keeping [ads] in one place on Get Satisfaction: in the spaces where active customers and companies won’t see them,” says Eric Suesz on the company’s blog.
That may be a terrible proposition to advertisers, but it sounds great for users, and it’s actually an extremely smart roll out for the company that should make them more money — but not from ads. Let me explain.
Here’s how Get Satisfaction’s ad integration works: All guests and non-logged in users will see AdSense ads on the site, while all logged in users won’t see the ads. Further — and here’s the really brilliant part — any company that signs up for one of the premium accounts that the company announced earlier this week will have ads removed for all users, including guests.
Because competitors often bid on keywords related to your product or services, restricting AdSense from those pages should be a major motivating factor toward signing up for a premium account for many companies. No one wants their competitors advertising on a page where customers are getting together to vent about issues they’re having with your product or service. My guess is that Get Satisfaction doesn’t expect to make much more than peanuts from these ads, but hopes that their presence will be an excellent sales tool for their new premium services.
Adding advertising to an existing service isn’t easy. When your users are used to getting everything for free, suddenly asking them to look at advertising or pay doesn’t always go over well. Get Satisfaction did both this week, and they did it in a way that makes a lot of sense, should keep users happy, and will likely help them sell premium accounts.
Article source: Sitepoint
The Google and Yahoo Marriage Is Dead
Google has backed down from an online advertising marriage with Yahoo amid antitrust concerns raised over the partnership of the number 1 and 2 search providers worldwide. Back in June 2008, Yahoo opted for an alliance with Google, defying cries over a monopoly on the online advertising space from Microsoft and other rivals. Yahoo's measure was first and foremost a tactic designed to keep it out of the grasp of Microsoft, which had made an unsolicited bid to acquire the Internet giant in February 2008.
David Drummond, senior vice president, Google Corporate Development, and chief legal officer, revealed that the Mountain-View search giant continued to believe that the agreement with Yahoo would have been beneficial for all parties involved, even as it was walking away from it. "Why? Because it would have allowed Yahoo! (and its existing publisher partners) to show more relevant ads for queries that currently generate few or no advertisements. Better ads are more useful for users, more efficient for advertisers, and more valuable for publishers," Drummond explained.
Back in June, when the Google and Yahoo partnership was announced, the duo agreed to postpone implementation as long as it took for antitrust regulators to give the agreement a green light. After these four months, Google is walking away from Yahoo, abandoning the online advertising alliance altogether rather than face legal issues.
"However, after four months of review, including discussions of various possible changes to the agreement, it's clear that government regulators and some advertisers continue to have concerns about the agreement. Pressing ahead risked not only a protracted legal battle but also damage to relationships with valued partners. That wouldn't have been in the long-term interests of Google or our users, so we have decided to end the agreement," Drummond added.
At the debut of the year Microsoft was willing to pay over $30 per share for Yahoo, namely approximately $45 billion. But Yahoo refused the deal and chose to go with Google instead. That unsolicited Microsoft offering must look pretty sweet to Yahoo shareholders right now, as the shares of the Internet giant have dropped to just over $10.
"We're of course disappointed that this deal won't be moving ahead. But we're not going to let the prospect of a lengthy legal battle distract us from our core mission. That would be like trying to drive down the road of innovation with the parking brake on. Google's continued success depends on staying focused on what we do best: creating useful products for our users and partners," Drummond concluded.
Article Source: Softpedia
Rob McMillan at IDG has the scoop on new research that shows it’s possible to partially crack the WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) encryption standard. F
Rob McMillan at IDG has the scoop on new research that shows it’s possible to partially crack the WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) encryption standard.
Full details of the theoretical attack is not yet known but McMillan reports that two security researchers — Erik Tews and Martin Beck — plan to discuss the issue at next week’s PacSec conference in Japan. “[They] will show how he was able to crack WPA encryption, in order to read data being sent from a router to a laptop computer. The attack could also be used to send bogus information to a client connected to the router.
From the report:
To do this, [the researchers] found a way to break the Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) key, used by WPA, in a relatively short amount of time: 12 to 15 minutes, according to Dragos Ruiu, the PacSec conference’s organizer. They have not, however, managed to crack the encryption keys used to secure data that goes from the PC to the router in this particular attack.
To pull off their trick, the researchers first discovered a way to trick a WPA router into sending them large amounts of data. This makes cracking the key easier, but this technique is also combined with a “mathematical breakthrough,” that lets them crack WPA much more quickly than any previous attempt, Ruiu said.
Tews is planning to publish the cryptographic work in an academic journal in the coming months, Ruiu said. Some of the code used in the attack was quietly added to Beck’s Aircrack-ng Wi-Fi encryption hacking tool two weeks ago, he added.
It’s important to note, as Thierry Zoller explains, that this is only a partial crack that doesn’t give an attacker access to data transmited over a wireless network.
Article source: ZDNet
Selasa, 04 November 2008
A worm designed to exploit the recently patched vulnerability covered in Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) Security Bulletin MS08-067 has been detected, US-CERT, the government's cybersecurity organization, warned Monday.
Just over a week ago, Microsoft issued MS08-067 as an out-of-band patch to fix a critical flaw that could allow a remote attacker to take over Windows computers without any user interaction. The flaw has to do with the way the Microsoft Windows server service handles Remote Procedure Call requests.
Christopher Budd, a Microsoft Security Response Center program manager, said in a blog post that "the vulnerability is potentially wormable" on older versions of Windows. And other security researchers echoed his concern.
It now appears such concerns were well-founded. Proof-of-concept binaries designed to exploit MS08-067 appeared last week.
And on Monday, F-Secure said it had received reports of a worm designed to exploit MS08-067 in the wild.
"We've received the first reports of a worm capable of exploiting the MS08-067 vulnerability," the company said on its blog. "The exploit payload downloads a dropper that we detect as Trojan-Dropper.Win32.Agent.yhi. The dropped components include a kernel mode DDOS-bot that currently has a selection of Chinese targets in its configuration."
F-Secure also identified the worm component as Exploit.Win32.MS08-067.g and the kernel component as Rootkit.Win32.KernelBot.dg.
Other vendors may use different names to identify the malware.
In its Security Intelligence Report for the first half of 2008, Microsoft on Monday said, "The most common system locale for victims of browser-based exploits was Chinese, accounting for 47% of all incidents, followed by U.S. English with 23% of incidents." It also said that Trojan downloaders and droppers accounted for more than 30% of all malware removed from computers by Microsoft security products worldwide.
Article source: Informationweek
Langganan:
Postingan (Atom)