NgTh InfoTech

Ben 10 Savage Pursuit

2010-08-20T20:38:00.000-07:00

Wooden Shed Blogger Template

2010-08-20T20:31:00.000-07:00

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TAEYANG - I'll Be There [HD]

2010-08-20T20:27:00.001-07:00

Photoshop CS5 Portable

2010-08-13T06:16:00.000-07:00

Mirror 1: http://www.mediafire.com/?jondndmtnyr

Mirror 2: http://megashare.vn/dl.php/1063315

Dominator Joomla Template

2010-08-13T06:10:00.000-07:00

Dominator March '10 professional Joomla template was created to fit any kind of website - from news portal to social network. It has a simple and extremely stylish look with advanced features like MightyGear image slideshow and bonus slideshow positions. Also Dominator has Mighty checkboxes and radiobuttons with improved typography.
All you need to make your website that special is included in this Dominator Joomla 1.5 Template package. Easy way to rise above all of your competitors with this website template.

Dominator Template Features:

• 8 preset styles
• 24 module positions
• Improved MightyGear
• XHTML 1.0 Transitional
• CSS 2.1
• Cross-browser support (IE7+, Firefox, Opera, Safari, Chrome)
• Mighty checkboxes/radiobuttons
• 4 bonus slideshow positions
• Tableless layout
• Typography
• Joomla 1.5 native

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5StarHotel Joomla Template

2010-08-13T06:01:00.000-07:00

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10 Stupidly Simple Steps to Making Your First Affiliate Sale in 24 Hours For Free

2010-08-09T03:11:00.000-07:00

Everyone needs to start somewhere in their internet marketing career, and the sooner you believe you can do it, the less time you'll waste. Information overload seems to be a big problem these days, so this guide is designed to be extremely simplistic. Obviously there are many tips and tricks along the way that could improve the process, and some tweaks would be required to make this more effective long term, but this is the bare minimum.

The Ten Steps

1. Go to clickbank.com and set up an account.

2. Choose a product with high gravity in a big market. This is for the purpose of our traffic strategy and trying to make this guide as simple as possible.

3. Grab your affiliate link for that product and save it somewhere.

4. Sign up to Squidoo. There are many other hosted sites, but I believe Squidoo gives you the most options for expansion.

5. Write a review of the product you have chosen on your Squidoo lens. Usually you'd buy the product to actually check it out, but I said free so I don't want to lie to you. You can get around this point by writing a review like you'd write a research paper. Check out what everyone else is saying about it, rewrite your research in your own words, mix it with some rewritten bullet points from the product sales letter, tack on an image of the product, and there you have your review.

6. Embed affiliate links frequently and prominently in the review. You get paid when people go through your link and buy the product. If they can't see it, it's a lot harder to click it. Don't go overboard though, and try to put them in logical breaks of the review.

7. Write an article. This should be around 350 words, related to the subject matter of the product. For best traffic, check EzineArticles for the titles and categories that are receiving the most views, and try and model your title in the style and categories of those articles. For reasons covered in step 9 we will not be using EzineArticles, but they have the most information to easily sample from.

8. Write a resource box or bio box talking about your Squidoo lens, what they'll get from going there, and link back to it. They will follow the link out of self interest, not charity.

9. Submit the article to directories without manual reviews. This will allow you to get traffic instantly instead of waiting for the review period. The drawback is these directories usually have less traffic. You can do a Google search to find these.

10. Repeat steps 7-9 ad nauseam.

Check out this free video that reveals how you could make money online within 15 minutes, including proven methods that have created full time incomes in only an hour per day. Just visit http://www.internetmarketingonlinereviews.com.

Source: Ezine

Firefox 4 Beta

2010-08-04T01:04:00.000-07:00

Once you install the Firefox 4 Beta, you will notice the Feedback Add-on in the upper right corner. You can use this to provide instant feedback at any time. You will also be notified about user studies (run by Mozilla Test Pilot) which collect information about how you use Firefox, but not which websites you visit. You have control over your participation, and can choose to opt out of any study, or see what data has been collected. You will be asked before any data is sent to Mozilla. Please see the Feedback Add-on privacy policy for more information.

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Lexus - WordPress Theme

2010-08-01T04:33:00.000-07:00

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Kvik - WordPress Theme

2010-08-01T04:27:00.000-07:00

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Laker Girls strike a pose

2010-07-19T19:48:00.000-07:00

Star Wars Subway Car

2010-07-16T02:00:00.000-07:00

Summer Fun Wordpress Theme

2010-06-25T02:01:00.001-07:00

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The Gorilla CelebrityPress [Wordpress]

2010-06-11T06:20:00.000-07:00

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Fashion Week [Blogger]

2010-06-11T06:09:00.000-07:00

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Until the Stroke of Midnight

2010-05-25T06:06:00.000-07:00

The King of Fighters Wing

2010-05-25T06:00:00.000-07:00

Avatar Arena

2010-05-25T05:52:00.000-07:00

TV Bill cop's hounded by sex attacker

2010-05-25T05:36:00.000-07:00

THE Bill's new commander helped nick a serial sex pest in real life - after he harassed her on a train.

Actress Julie Graham, who plays Lisa Kennedy in the ITV1 show, was STALKED by pervert Frank Olalaye during the late-night journey.

He started by staring at her on the platform then sat opposite her in the carriage.

Then he tried talking to her several times so she moved to another carriage where there were other passengers. But Olalaye followed her, and ignored all her requests to leave her alone.

And when she finally got off the train he chased after her.

Julie, 44, who was on a 12.30am London to Brighton train after a night out with pals, said: "He was getting closer and I was starting to get worried.

"He got to within a couple of feet of me so I told him to back off."

The mum- of-two alerted station staff and Olalaye ran away.

They called the police, who arrested him a few minutes later. Last week Brighton Crown Court heard that Olalaye was BANNED from approaching lone women following two similar incidents.

He was also convicted of sexually assualting a barmaid in 2007.

The 35-year-old, from Greenwich, South-East London, admitted breaching the order, and was remanded in custody for sentencing on June 25.

Florida Right Round

2010-05-24T07:11:00.001-07:00

Google TV Details : Everything You need to Know

2010-05-24T07:09:00.000-07:00

What iPad did to Tablets, will now Google TV do to the HDTVs.

Google TV is essentially a Fusion of a SetupBox running Android OS meant to upscale Android mobile OS apps plus full Browser right on your TV.

Why? There’s one entertainment device that people know and love which has the brightest and the best picture: your HDTV. Till now, TV had been seriously lacking the power of the web. With the web, finding and accessing interesting content on TV is fast and often as easy as a search.

All in One: Live TV, OnDemand, Browsing

With Google Chrome built in, you can seamlessly access all of your favorite websites and easily move between television and the web. It can be a photo slideshow viewer, a gaming console, a music player and Android apps.

Browsing is based on Full Chrome Browser coupled with Flash 10.1 bringing in the best web experience.

Searching/Navigation

Google TV uses a unified search that searches your local apps, LIVE TV programs, Live TV channels, On-demand videos/movies, plus videos from Youtube, Hulu that match the searched criteria.

Open and Extensible

Because Google TV is built on open platforms like Android and Google Chrome, so the current potential is just the beginning. The whole of Google TV project is Open Sourced via Android, chrome source tree.

Google TV SDK and web APIs for TV will be released sometime soon, and will let developers develop some great apps for the TV.

Hardware

Google has partenered with Sony and Logitech to put Google TV inside of almost any televisions, Blu-ray players and STBs. The Processor is based on Intel Atom processor, now it makes sense why Intel ported Android to x86 Atom processor. It is rumored that it is powered by 1.5Ghz Atom processor.

Availability & Pricing

Google TV will go on sale fall 2010, and will be available at Best Buy stores in US, worldwide availability starts in 2011.

This is an incredibly exciting time — for TV watchers, for developers and for the entire TV ecosystem. Right now there is no word on official Pricing, but it is rumored that the complete package would be priced under $300.

Norton Internet Security 2011 beta

2010-05-23T07:28:00.000-07:00

Crimeware and other threats can take all of the fun out of the Internet. Take it back with Norton Internet Security 2011 beta. It stops viruses, crimeware and protects your identity online so you can work and play safely. It provides fast and light protection that won't slow you down or get in your way. It proactively notifies you when other applications are slowing you down and impacting your PC performance. It also protects your online identity so that you can search, shop and browse with the confidence of knowing you won't be a victim of cybercrime.

What's new in this version:

Sometimes PCs become infected with difficult to remove "scareware" programs or they get so infected by threats that are deeply buried in the PC's operating system that special tools are required to remove them. That's where Norton Rescue Tools can help. The Norton Bootable Recovery Tool and Norton Power Eraser are designed to target and eliminate these hard to remove threats and unique types of crimeware that according to the FBI are costing unsuspecting consumers more than $150 million per ... see all new features

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Free WP Template – Modern Black Room v1.0

2010-05-23T07:23:00.000-07:00

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Kiss Kiss - Chris Brown feat T Pain (DJDevZ Remix)

2010-05-23T07:06:00.001-07:00

Facebook page tied to Pakistan ban now down

2010-05-22T07:44:00.000-07:00

A Facebook page that led Pakistan to temporarily block the social-networking site this week has been taken down.

The page promoted "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day," scheduled for Thursday following an American cartoonist's satirical suggestion that people draw images of the prophet to promote free speech. The page attracted tens of thousands of supporters.

But on Friday, the page no longer appeared on the site. Facebook said Friday it had not taken any action on the page, according to the Associated Press. It was likely removed by its creator, possibly because "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" is over, but the reason is unclear.

In addition, a blog spawned by the idea of "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" was on Friday virtually devoid of content, and had been renamed "nothing," after featuring several caricatures of Mohammed earlier in the week.

The Facebook closure happened Wednesday after an Islamic lawyers association in Lahore, Pakistan, argued that the contest essentially equaled blasphemy and won a court injunction against the social-networking site. In what could be a wider Internet crackdown, Pakistan also banned YouTube over "sacrilegious" content. Some Muslims consider images of Mohammed to be blasphemous.

Pakistan has said it would consider restoring Facebook and other sites featuring offending content if the content was removed. While the country's telecommunications regulator said Thursday that the YouTube ban had been lifted following the removal of "blasphemous" footage, a YouTube spokeswoman said the video site is still being blocked there, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Published caricatures of Mohammed also led to massive protests in the streets of Pakistan this week. Pakistani protesters shouted "Death to Facebook" and "Death to America," and burned U.S. flags to vent growing anger over online depictions of the prophet that they view as sacrilegious.

The idea for "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" went viral quickly after Seattle cartoonist Molly Norris posted a drawing last month depicting objects like a domino, a spool of thread, and a handbag, saying they were the "real likeness of Mohammed." The cartoon also included a fake group called Citizens Against Citizens Against Humor calling for an "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day."

Norris said she drew her cartoon as a show of support for the creators of Comedy Central's "South Park," which earlier this year featured an episode depicting the prophet Muhammad in a bear suit.

That episode led a New York-based Web site called RevolutionMuslim.com to warn creators of the animated series that "what they are doing is stupid, and they will probably wind up like Theo van Gogh," a Dutch filmmaker who was murdured in 2004 after producing a film exploring violence against women in some Islamic societies.

Norris, who strongly distanced herself from the concept of "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day," did not create the Facebook page touting the event and actively opposed it. Instead, she joined a Facebook group called "Against Everybody Draw Mohammed Day - May 20." Its page still appeared live on the site Friday afternoon, with more than 43,000 members.

CNET

Love is Everywhere

2010-05-22T05:36:00.000-07:00

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Funny Counter Strike

2010-05-21T22:09:00.001-07:00

K'NAAN - Wavin' Flag [Southafrica 2010 Song]

2010-05-21T22:05:00.001-07:00

ASmoke WordPress Theme

2010-05-21T22:00:00.000-07:00

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[WordPress] Hollywood Graves

2010-05-21T21:51:00.000-07:00

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AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition 9.0.730

2010-05-19T07:24:00.000-07:00

AVG Free provides the bare necessities when it comes to security, but that should be enough for savvy Windows users. You'll get a combined antivirus and antimalware engine, LinkScanner, and e-mail scanning. AVG Free 9 introduces a few new features, with improvements focused on performance, including claims of faster scan and boot times. One new feature is the Identity Theft Recovery Unit. Only for users in the United States, ITRU is a business partnership with Identity Guard which provides "consumer identity theft solutions," accessible only from the AVG toolbar in Firefox and Internet Explorer.

The interface is nearly unchanged from the last version, and generally it's easy to use. From the main window, though, you must double-click to get further information on any feature, whether virus scanning, LinkScanner settings, or updating. Streamlining this to one click would be helpful. A scheduling utility automates both scans and updates, while the upgrade ad at the screen's bottom can be easily hidden using the Hide Notification button. When starting a scan, a slider makes it easy to jump between Slow, Automatic, and Fast scans: the faster the scan, the less comprehensive it is, so users should take advantage of the scan optimization that is recommended during installation to speed up that first scan. A progress meter for regular scans would've been useful, though. Should a virus create serious problems, AVG creates a rescue disk to scan your computer in MS-DOS mode.

The LinkScanner feature protects you from third-party code exploits before they load in your browser and for ranking search results. Annoyingly, when you install its optional toolbar, it commandeers your new-tab page, decidedly inappropriate behavior. The program doesn't obviously tax your system when scanning or when running in the background, although CNET Labs determined that it will significantly slow down your system's boot time, and slightly delay shutting down. AVG also detected some image files as threats, when two other scans decided they weren't--we decided these were false positives. AVG might not be the fastest or the most effective free security option, but it still gets the job done and you're better off with it.

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CNET

Microsoft sues Salesforce.com over patents

2010-05-19T07:20:00.000-07:00

Yahoo has acquired Associated Content, one of a few companies that has been scrambling to fill the Web's appetite for cheap, fast, diverse media content. A price tag was not formally named, but reports place it at either $90 million or slightly over $100 million.

This puts Yahoo, inching away from its roots as a search company into the same game as "content mill" Demand Media, as well as AOL and its Seed.com division--but AOL CEO Tim Armstrong will be getting a boost here, as he had been an investor in Associated Content. The 6-year-old company boasts 380,000 contributors in its media network, which has syndication deals with companies like USA Today and Thomson Reuters. Yahoo will likely keep those deals in place, as well as work to expand Associated Content beyond its current U.S.-only market.

"Combining our world-class editorial team with Associated Content's makes this a game-changer," Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz said in a release. "Together, we'll create more content around what we know our users care about, and open up new and creative avenues for advertisers to engage with consumers across our network."

CNET

Parallels starts selling Windows 7 upgrade tool

2010-05-19T07:16:00.000-07:00

Parallels said it is ready to start selling a program that uses virtualization to help ease the migration to Windows 7 from older versions of the operating system.

The company's $50 software uses virtualization to help consumers migrate from an older version of Windows to Windows 7.

The new software, dubbed Parallels Desktop Upgrade to Windows 7, will be available from Amazon and Parallels almost immediately and will hit store shelves on May 31, Parallels announced on Wednesday. It will sell for a suggested price of $49.99, including a high-speed USB transfer cable, or $39.99 without the cable.

Kim Johnston, Parallels' vice president of consumer and small business marketing, said that the software is an ideal tool to safely move to Windows 7.

"Ninety percent of customers haven't upgraded yet," Johnston said. "This is a perfect solution for them."

The product would appear to remove several key hassles. Moving to Windows 7 from XP or even some versions of Vista requires a complicated clean installation, ordinarily requiring users to back up and restore their data and then reinstall all of their programs. Also, some programs designed to run in Windows XP won't run in Windows 7, a problem that Parallels elegantly solves by running a virtualized copy of the older operating system. However, this latter technique may raise legal issues for those who use it.

The Parallels product is designed to move any version of Windows XP or Vista to any version of Windows 7 and run the older operating system inside a virtual machine that is largely invisible to the person using the software. However, in many cases the user is not properly licensed to be running both copies of Windows.

The license terms that accompany the typical upgrade version of Windows 7 don't allow a user to keep using their old copy of XP in a virtual machine. Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate do include a virtualized copy of XP, but only for use with Microsoft's own XP mode. Users who buy a full, rather than upgrade copy of the OS would appear to be properly licensed, though those copies can cost several hundred dollars.

For its part, Parallels said the burden is on the user to make sure they are properly licensed.

"We remind the customer to check the status of all of their third-party licenses," Johnston said. "We just have no way of knowing what their software and hardware licensing is."

So far, Microsoft hasn't commented on the licensing issues surrounding Parallels product, although Johnston points out that the software was formally announced at a Microsoft event in Paris, in which the company was specifically invited to speak.

"We collaborate with Microsoft a lot and they are a great strategic partner," she said.

CNET

Lil Mama - L.I.F.E.

2010-05-19T07:13:00.000-07:00

Low - Florida feat. T.Pain

2010-05-19T07:08:00.000-07:00

[Blogger] Soul Vision

2010-05-17T07:57:00.000-07:00

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HP won Palm in six-company bidding war

2010-05-17T07:25:00.001-07:00

Hewlett-Packard landed Palm by raising its bid following interest from other suitors after intellectual property and a potential licensing arrangement for the WebOS.

The proxy statement, which sparked a good bit of discussion, provides an interesting read on how HP landed Palm. Simply put, HP almost fell short of acquiring Palm. Palm outlines the process to sell itself and the role of "Company C," an unnamed outfit that was in the running until the HP deal was actually announced.

Palm covers a lot of known ground such as:

The company was in a tailspin after a Verizon Wireless partnership failed to deliver sales;
Liquidity was about to become an issue;
And Palm didn't have the scale of rivals to really compete.

Once Palm's fate was largely sealed, the company went about auctioning itself off. Palm said it received interest from 16 companies including HP. Six including HP entered nondisclosure agreements.

CNET

Google to hone Android, Web pitch at Google I/O

2010-05-17T07:12:00.000-07:00

How much bigger can Google's world get?

As Google prepares for its third major developer conference, it's getting ready to pitch its vision for the future of computing to 5,000 developers and media at San Francisco's Moscone center. When I/O kicks off on Wednesday, don't expect Google CEO Eric Schmidt to break out into a passionate "Developers!" chant like his counterpart at Microsoft, CEO Steve Ballmer, did all those many years ago.

However, this is clearly one area in which Google and Microsoft--bitter rivals otherwise--can agree: developer support is crucial to the growth of technology platforms. Google has scheduled press briefings for its enterprise, Wave, Chrome, and Android technologies, giving us a pretty good idea of what topics it intends to highlight during the show.

One major thing has changed between last year's show and this year's, in that Android is now a mainstream operating system that is increasingly butting heads with Apple's iPhone for mindshare among consumers and developers.

We already know that one major highlight of Google I/O will come from Adobe, which plans to demonstrate Flash Player 10.1 running on an Android phone at the show. Google will also likely use the occasion to launch--or at least show off--Android 2.2, code-named Froyo in keeping with Google's sweet dessert theme of codenames for Android releases.

Both of those launches could have an impact far beyond the development community, as Google and Adobe will force the issues raised by Apple CEO Steve Jobs in his "Thoughts on Flash" letter by seeing what the market thinks of Flash on smartphones. That may not come until later in the summer when Android 2.2 devices ship with Flash, but I/O will set the stage.

It's quite possible Google could also use the occasion to show off what Android can do outside of smartphones. Several reports have indicated that Google and other partners are working on set-top boxes and televisions loaded with Android software and dubbed "Google TV," and it would not be a surprise to see the first examples of that project onstage at Google I/O.

Expect to hear more about other Google hot-button technologies such as Google's push into the enterprise and its social-networking technologies, namely Wave and Buzz. Google chose the 2009 Google I/O as the coming-out party for Google Wave and has since promised to open the service up to the general public by the end of June.

The third Google I/O comes at a time when Google is rapidly maturing into an industry powerhouse and a company that many love to hate. Its reputation as a search giant remains unchallenged, but its Web-based software development efforts are more and more familiar to everyday Internet users than they were two years ago, as interest in products such as Google Apps and Google Chrome grow and start raising competitive hackles around the tech industry.

That means Google I/O is becoming more than a gathering place for developers seeking more information and education regarding Google's world. It's a stage for Google that will draw the attention of those who can't code, debug, or predict the future of social media.

That's just an outgrowth of Google's push into more areas, the same way Apple's developer conferences became much more than a gathering of the Mac and iPhone development communities as Apple chose to introduce new products like the iPhone 3G or strategies such as shifting to Intel's processors. At some point, these gatherings become media events as much as anything.

Google executives are among the most often seen in Silicon Valley, discussing their products, technologies, and ideas nearly every day of the week. But as Apple would say (assuming Apple ever said anything), there's something to be said for having your own big stage with a friendly audience when making a pitch to the world.

Google will take that stage Wednesday. We'll have live coverage both Wednesday and Thursday, and plenty of reaction to whatever Google puts on the agenda this week at Google I/O.

CNET

Facebook launches new security feature

2010-05-16T05:59:00.000-07:00

Facebook has announced a new security feature that aims to keep hackers from tapping into users' personal information.

The change comes amid rising concerns about privacy and security on the online social network, which has 400 million members worldwide.

The new feature, announced Thursday, makes Facebook a bit more like an online banking site. Users can identify certain "approved" computers and mobile phones that are allowed to access their Facebook accounts. If an unauthorized device tries to log in, the user will be notified of that activity by e-mail or text message, allowing them, in theory, to shut down an attack before any information is stolen.

In order to access a Facebook account from a new computer, or from a friend's phone, for example, users may have to answer a security question.

Facebook says the feature is unique in the social networking world.

"We're confident that these new tools and systems will do a lot to prevent unauthorized logins and the nuisance they can cause," Lev Popov, a Facebook software engineer, writes in a company blog post. "As always, though, the first line of defense is you. We need you to help by practicing safe behavior on Facebook and wherever you go online."

Facebook users must choose to activate this change. To do so, log in to Facebook and click the "Account" button at the top right of the screen. From that menu, select "Account Settings." Scroll down to "Account Security" at the bottom of the page and click the link that says "change."

The site asks: "Would you like to receive notifications for logins from new devices?" If you would like to receive such updates, then click the button by "yes."

Facebook has come under fire in recent weeks for changes to its privacy policy and its announcement of the "open graph," which essentially extends Facebook's social features onto a number of other websites, including CNN.com.

Some users have complained they are uneasy about their personal preferences showing up on sites other than Facebook.com. Recently, an unknown number of people, including some notable tech pundits, have deleted or deactivated their Facebook accounts in response to privacy concerns.

Last month, a group of U.S. senators sent a letter to Facebook asking the company, which was started in a Harvard dorm room and is now valued at billions of dollars, to give users more control of their private information.

The new security features do not address the issues most users have been complaining about, such as whether Facebook will keep their information private. Instead, the latest feature aims to protect Facebook users from external hackers. It does not change company policy.

The online media this week jumped on news, confirmed by CNN content partner CNET, that Facebook called an "all-hands" meeting in response to the swell of concern over privacy issues. Facebook makes no mention of this meeting in its blog post, and it remains unclear whether Thursday's changes were a result of that meeting.

Thursday's changes are drawing some skepticism online.

Dan Nosowitz, a blogger at Fast Company, questioned whether Facebook should have made its new privacy setting active by default.

"Oddly, this system is 'opt-in,' meaning by default it's not enabled. You have to dig through Facebook's labyrinthine privacy settings to turn it on," he writes. "This might be a mistake, given how complex and intimidating Facebook's privacy settings already are."

On PC World's website, JR Raphael writes that the changes may not do much to ameliorate the concerns of angry Facebook users: "Facebook has just unveiled a new set of user controls, but it isn't likely to do much in the way of calming anger about the social network's privacy policies."

Let us know what you think of the changes in the comments below. What do you think of Facebook's efforts to integrate into other websites? Do you feel secure when using the site?

CNN

Twitter's Forced-Follow Flaw Fix Purges Users' Fan Files

2010-05-16T05:50:00.000-07:00

A Twitter flaw surfaced last weekend in which users could force other users to follow their feeds. Twitter tackled the bug quickly; however, in so doing, it apparently emptied the follower lists of some users, a few of whom had millions of followers. "Maintaining a real-time site is like changing the engine in your car when you're going down the freeway at 60 miles an hour," said analyst Carl Howe.

Twitter has stomped out a bug that for a brief period allowed users to force other users to follow them on the microblogging site. In eliminating the glitch, however, Twitter emptied out some users' list of followers entirely.

"Like other social networks, Twitter was originally designed to serve a pretty small community, and when it grew so big, funny things were bound to happen," Yankee Group analyst Carl Howe told TechNewsWorld.

Twitter's real-time nature exacerbates the problem. "Maintaining a real-time site is like changing the engine in your car when you're going down the freeway at 60 miles an hour," Howe explained.

You Will Be My Friend
The bug, which struck over the weekend, let users unilaterally decide to add anyone they wanted as followers. This was a reversal of Twitter's normal approach, in which the decision to "follow" someone -- to see that person's tweets as they're posted -- is left up to the follower, not the followee. In some cases the person being followed may need to also grant permission.

Twitter on Monday announced that it had resolved the problem. However, it was rolling out the solution in stages, so users who were still being forced to follow others unwillingly had to block or unfollow them, it said.

In addition, the solution deleted some Twitter users' followers. Several celebrities, including Ashton Kuchter, Demi Moore and teen star Justin Bieber, complained about losing their followers.

"Twitter is being hacked by some Turkish hacker," Kuchter wrote on the microblogging site. "Haha I have 0 followers. Whew! There's an update from Twitter, 'Missing relationships are being restored'."

"Hackers, I send a warning -- U have now p**ssed off over two million teenage girls. They are more dangerous than Navy Seals," Bieber wrote.

Twitter's Woes
The "follow" bug that surfaced over the weekend was the third problem to hit Twitter in less than two weeks. On April 26, outbound emails were delayed for up to five hours. However, no tweets were lost.

"Twitter is one of the more fragile of the social networks, because it was originally designed to do a set of things and do them very well, and it's morphed into this giant website and so had to go through a lot of changes," Howe, who's director of anywhere consumer research at the Yankee Group, pointed out.

The forced following flaw was probably caused by a programmer taking "a couple of shortcuts" before implementing Twitter's "accept" feature, which governs followers, Howe said. Here's how "accept" feature is supposed to work: If you want to follow someone you admire on Twitter, find his or her page and click "follow." If your idol has certain privacy restrictions implemented, he or she must first grant permission; otherwise, you are now one of that person's Twitter followers.

However, the real-time nature of sites like Twitter sometimes obligates admins to take shortcuts because service needs to be restored as quickly as possible after a problem surfaces.

"Always-on, real-time sites are a maintenance nightmare because most of the problems occur under load when millions of people use them; most of them occur in funny ways when millions of people use them; and you can't bring them down for maintenance," Howe said.

Twitter cofounder Biz Stone did not respond to requests for comment by press time.

Dominance Is Good
On the other hand, although users may be voluble in their complaints, they have little recourse.

"Any interruption in service is problematic, but there's no rival service out there to Facebook or Twitter," Josh Martin, a senior analyst at Strategy Analytics, told TechNewsWorld. "Occasional hiccups in service are expected in the Web 2.0 world."

Still, putting a little thought beforehand into planning might alleviate some of the problems Twitter and other social networking sites are facing, Yankee Group's Howe said.

"All the things we tend to do in the real world, like making sure we know who we're talking to and making sure we know they are who they think they are, should be implemented in the online world," he added.

"In the electronic world, people never seem to think that others might use technology outside their use case," he concluded. "They need to think out of the box."

technewsworld.com

Facebook's Curious Social Monopoly

2010-05-16T05:47:00.000-07:00

Wrath over its privacy policies is taking on tidal wave proportions, but Facebook doesn't seem to be buckling at the knees. It's latest move? Calling a company-wide meeting to calmly discuss what some onlookers view as nothing short of a crisis. Why the steady nerves? In large part, Facebook's equanimity may be due to the incontrovertible fact that it has no real competition.

Facebook reportedly held a company-wide meeting Thursday to discuss how to deal with the negative publicity surrounding its privacy policies.

To be sure, Facebook has been fielding complaints and criticism -- and even mass protests by its users on its own site -- for years. However, a series of recent events has pushed those complaints to a zenith. In short, Facebook is having a vulnerable moment.

As the company decides how to move forward -- and it did just announce a security fix to prevent hackers from accessing users' personal information -- it is worth asking: Why isn't anyone reacting to Facebook's woes besides Facebook? Why aren't other social networks stepping up to present themselves as viable alternatives?

Social Diaspora
Sure, there is the Diaspora movement. Four programmers from NYU's Courant Institute are seeking funds online to build an open source answer to Facebook that would alleviate the privacy woes many of its users experience.

"We believe that privacy and connectedness do not have to be mutually exclusive," they say on the Disapora home page. "With Diaspora, we are reclaiming our data, securing our social connections, and making it easy to share on your own terms. We think we can replace today's centralized social web with a more secure and convenient decentralized network."

As of Friday afternoon, 3,904 people had pledged $141,267 to the goal.

Who Can Step Up?
With 400,000 users, Facebook is hardly quaking in its shoes. Nor is it likely afraid of other upstart rivals, such as OneSocialWeb, Elgg, Appleseed and Nexopia.

MySpace -- once Facebook's chief rival -- has largely ceded the competition, choosing instead to focus on the music-lovers niche.

Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) is a possible contender; there are rumors that it plans to step up its social networking ambitions with a strong focus on privacy.

Indeed, the only rival that seems to be growing as fast as Facebook is Twitter, and the two services differ in some important ways. Both Facebook and Twitter posted faster growth compared to other social networks during the month of March, reported the Nielsen Co.

Facebook claimed 117.1 million unique U.S. visitors that month -- compared to 69.1 million in March 2009. Twitter reported 20.1 million visitors, compared to 13.8 million a year earlier.

Myspace.com had the second-highest audience in March, with 42.1 million visitors -- but the figures show it is clearly in decline, having attracted 55.9 million the year prior. In 2008, it had 61.2 million visitors -- when Facebook had just 24.9 million. LinkedIn and Classmates.com also posted declines in March, according to the Nielsen data.

There are a number of reasons behind Facebook's popularity -- besides just the viral nature of its early growth, Andrew Ballenthin, president of Sol Solutions, told the E-Commerce Times.

Facebook has managed to achieve a tight and deep integration into media communication. "It is not just a social networking site anymore," he said. "It is used as a business and news network site. Its entrenchment in these communication channels has created an ultimate win-win scenario for keeping the competition out."

Smaller sites, even if they have the same functionality, he said, just can't compete. "They don't have the marketing clout."

Pivotal Moment
Given those strengths, the fact that Facebook might be nervous enough about privacy complaints to call a company-wide meeting is telling. Facebook has said little publicly about the meeting, leaving observers to speculate.

"These privacy issues are hitting a new height or pitch right now," said Paul Verna, senior analyst with eMarketer.

"It is not anything new -- and it is too early to tell whether recent events will have a lasting effect on Facebook," he told the E-Commerce Times.

There is something different, though, about this protest compared to, say, the outcry over Beacon or the hostile reaction to changes to Facebook's page layout, Verna said. For one thing, several high-profile tech pundits have very publicly closed their Facebook accounts recently.

"There seems to be an new energy behind these protests," Verna remarked.

Indeed, momentum is building. On an hourly basis, the blogosphere and mainstream media seem to be cranking out articles about how difficult and complex it can be to tinker with Facebook's privacy settings. The New York Times, for example, notes that a user has to navigate 50 settings with more than 170 options.

Then there is the reappearance of an IM from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's college days -- when he was just launching Facebook -- reprinted in Business Insider:

Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard

Zuck: Just ask.

Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS

[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?

Zuck: People just submitted it.

Zuck: I don't know why.

Zuck: They "trust me"

Zuck: Dumb [f*cks].

No Contest
Facebook's heft will likely save it, Verna concluded. It would have to take something huge -- bigger than what is already out there -- for Facebook to feel any real pain.

"MySpace has been struggling, and people view it as different kind of network," he said, "and for a small startup to get anywhere near the scale of Facebook will take a very long time -- and it would have to struggle with the same privacy issues that Facebook is right now."

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2010-05-15T08:30:00.000-07:00

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Google to shutter Nexus One e-store

2010-05-15T08:24:00.001-07:00

Google will stop selling its Nexus One online because the Android phone's store hasn't caught on with potential buyers, the company said Friday.

When Google launched the phone in January, it expected the store to provide a "quick and easy" way for people to buy the Nexus One while bypassing the middleman. It hasn't quite worked out as planned.

"[The online store has] remained a niche channel for early adopters, but it's clear that many customers like a hands-on experience before buying a phone, and they also want a wide range of service plans to chose [sic] from," wrote Andy Rubin, an engineering vice president, in an official blog post.

Google will now start increasing the phone's availability in retail outlets through partnerships and, once retail availability reaches a certain level, Google will strip out the e-commerce capabilities from the store's Web site, which will then only offer information.

"We believe that the changes we're announcing today will help get more phones to more people quicker, which is good for the entire Android ecosystem: users, partners and also Google," Rubin wrote.

In addition to sagging sales, Google also struggled with providing timely support to buyers, many of whom complained loudly about poor responsiveness from the company to their queries and complaints.

IDG News Service

Google stops sniffing Wi-Fi data after privacy gaffe

2010-05-15T08:06:00.001-07:00

Google has decided to stop its Street View cars from sniffing wireless networking data after an embarrassing privacy gaffe.

The company revealed Friday that Street View vehicles had been sniffing the content of users' Internet communications on open wireless networks, despite the company's earlier statements to the contrary.

Google has since discovered that it has been mistakenly collecting the content of communications from non-password-protected Wi-Fi networks, the company said in a statement posted to its blog Friday afternoon.

Google Street View cars are best known for driving around cities and logging snapshots of the area, which are then posted online and integrated with Google Maps. Google cars had been sniffing some network data -- SSID (Service Set Identifier) information and MAC (Media Access Control) addresses -- that was then used to help the company get a better fix on the locations of things in order to improve its Web products. Google had said that it wasn't sniffing other data sent over the networks, but it turned out that this wasn't true.

Google says it was all a mistake.

"In 2006 an engineer working on an experimental Wi-Fi project wrote a piece of code that sampled all categories of publicly broadcast Wi-Fi data," Google said, "A year later, when our mobile team started a project to collect basic Wi-Fi network data like SSID information and MAC addresses using Google's Street View cars, they included that code in their software -- although the project leaders did not want, and had no intention of using, payload data."

Google discovered its error after auditing its Street View Wi-Fi data at the request of the Hamburg, Germany, data protection authority.

The company will now hire a third party to audit the software that Street View used and ensure that all potentially sensitive data was deleted.

"In addition, given the concerns raised, we have decided that it's best to stop our Street View cars collecting Wi-Fi network data entirely," Google added.

Because the Street View cars are usually in motion, they probably would have recorded only snippets of information from open networks, but they could have picked up sensitive data from unencrypted Web sites, including Google's own Gmail service, which only recently started requiring encrypted (HTTPS) Web connections.

"Next week we will start offering an encrypted version of Google Search," Google said.

Google's sniffing is only a problem for people who used open, unencrypted networks. Google wouldn't have been able to log any comprehensible data from networks that used encryption technologies such as WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) or WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access).

"The engineering team at Google works hard to earn your trust," Google said. "And we are acutely aware that we failed badly here."

ComputerWorld

Adobe announces angst-laden iPad software effort

2010-05-14T06:50:00.000-07:00

Adobe has begun a new effort to bring imaging software such as Lightroom to the iPad and other tablet computers--but the leader of the work also is fretting over the control Apple has over it.

"I love making great Mac software, and after eight years product-managing Photoshop, I've been asked to help lead the development of new Adobe applications, written from scratch for tablet computers. In many ways, the iPad is the computer I've been waiting for my whole life," Adobe's John Nack said in a blog post Thursday. "I want to build the most amazing iPad imaging apps the world has ever seen."

Nack also took advantage of the opportunity to further Adobe's agenda in its corporate power struggles with Apple.

At the same time he proclaimed his longstanding fervor for Mac computers, though, he also pointed to Adobe's ad campaign criticizing Apple for restricting choice, saying the disagreement extends beyond Adobe's Flash software foundation to other realms as well. Specifically, he discussed the competition between Adobe's Photoshop Lightroom and Apple's Aperture, both programs for editing and cataloging photographs, in relation to Apple's control over software distribution.

"Apple refuses to carry Lightroom in Apple retail stores. That's okay; Lightroom is doing just fine against Aperture, thank you. But what if the Apple store were the only store? How would Apple customers get the benefits of competition?" Nack asked, noting that many people requested a mobile version of Lightroom when Nack asked what Adobe applications people would like to see for the iPad. "I think that such an app could be brilliant, and many photographers tell me that its existence would motivate them to buy iPads."

And of course, for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch, Apple does control distribution of software through its App Store. "Would Apple let Lightroom for iPad ship? It's almost impossible to know. Sometimes they approve apps, then spontaneously remove them for 'duplicat[ing] features that come with the iPhone.' Other times they allow competitors (apps for Netflix, Kindle, etc.), or enable some apps (e.g. Playboy) while removing similar ones. Maybe they'd let Lightroom ship for a while, but if it started pulling too far ahead of Aperture--well, lights out."

In a response, Apple didn't directly address the App Store issues, but reiterated earlier criticisms that for all Adobe's embrace of openness, its Flash technology is proprietary.

Although Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs criticized Adobe Flash for being behind the curve in supporting multitouch interfaces, Nack wondered what would happen if the shoe was on the other foot. "We have some really interesting ideas for multitouch user interfaces--things you've almost certainly never seen previously. Of course, 'groundbreaking' almost inherently means 'inconsistent with what's come before,' and Apple can reject an app if, say, it uses two-finger inputs in a new way," Nack said. "They do this to preserve consistency--until, of course, it's time for them to deviate innovate. (Think Different, as long as you're Apple.)"

Nack also speculated that raising his concerns could hurt Adobe's iPad effort. "Can you imagine a world where, say, constructively criticizing Microsoft could destroy your ability to ship a Windows application? It's almost unthinkable, and yet that's the position in which Apple's App Store puts us," Nack said.

CNET

iPhone 4G LCD, Digitizer + Metal Middle Plate Assembly

2010-05-13T05:27:00.000-07:00

New DoS attack uses Web servers as zombies

2010-05-13T05:17:00.000-07:00

Researchers have uncovered a botnet that uses compromised Web servers instead of the usual personal computers to launch denial-of-service (DoS) attacks.

Security firm Imperva said on Wednesday it uncovered a botnet of about 300 Web servers after one of its "honeypot" servers was used in an attack and based on a search of attack code via Google. Web servers were commonly used in such attacks a decade ago but had been replaced by the more ubiquitous Windows-based PCs, said Amachai Shulman, chief technology officer at Imperva.
In the DoS attack Imperva observed, two Web servers were targeting an unnamed hosting provider based in The Netherlands, he said. The hosting provider was aware of the situation, Shulman said.
It appeared that the Web servers were being compromised with code that exploits a vulnerability in PHP, a computer language used for processing Web pages, and it can affect servers running Apache, Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS), or other server software, he said.
The attack employs a simple user interface that allows someone to specify the victim's IP address and port as well as the how long the attack should last. The information is submitted on a form that includes a message in Indonesian that says "don't use it on your friends," according to a screenshot provided by Shulman.
The attacker, identified as "Exeman," was hiding his or her whereabouts using the anonymity-providing Tor network, he said.
Using Web servers provides much greater bandwidth for an attack and thus requires fewer zombies than when personal computers are used and lessens the chance that the compromise will be discovered because Web servers don't typically run antivirus software, Shulman said.
"Instead of using 50 personal computers you can use a single server," he said. "To some extent, it's easier to maintain this kind of attack because there are fewer computers (involved) and there's less of a chance for the (attack) code to be detected."
Many DoS attacks are used to extort money out of Web site owners, Shulman said when asked what the motive for the attacks could be.

CNET

Cisco touts growth in latest earnings

2010-05-13T05:06:00.000-07:00

Cisco Systems on Wednesday reported solid third-quarter financial results, noting that company witnessed a "return to strong balanced growth" across the board that has not been seen since before the economic downturn.

For the quarter, Cisco reported net income of $2.5 billion, or 42 cents per share, a 40 percent increase from the same quarter a year ago. Revenue was $10.4 billion, a year-over-year increase of 27 percent. Wall Street analysts had been expecting earnings of 38 cents per share on revenue of $10.24 billion. (Statement, Preview)

In a statement, Cisco CEO John Chambers said that the company is coming out of the downturn stronger, gaining market share and a "larger share of the total wallet spend of our customers" with next-generation products in across almost every category.