Recent Posts

Google has been selling search servers to America’s Intelligence Agencies to assist them in defending America.

According to the SF Chronicle, the Google powered search appliances are used for storing and searching internal documents, with Agencies able to use the devices “to create their own mini-Googles on intranets made up entirely of government data.”

The Google servers are being used to power Intellipedia, a Wikipedia like service for spooks that offers a cross departmental database of national intelligence.

There was no mention of Google powering A-Space, the MySpace network for spooks we wrote about in August. They might also want to do work on some of their search results: according to Google Osama’s Cave is at 1133 21st St NW, Washington, DC

Article source

Barnes & Noble officially launched how-to site Quamut this week, and it’s already attracting link spammers.

The main service offers online guides that cover more than 1,000 topics written by experts in each field. Guides include illustrations and pictures and can be purchased as PDF’s or laminated how-to sheets. It’s a reasonable offering; nothing ground breaking but clean, thorough, and usable.

Quamut also offers a user-generated how-to wiki with similarities to Squidoo, but with no revenue sharing model for contributors. With no revenue sharing model there’s no obvious reason why someone would contribute to the Wiki (after all there’s no for the good of humanity angle like Wikipedia), but one week in free Google juice has become a driving force behind user contributions. Around half of all pages in the Quamut Wiki tested included links to external services, most clearly focused on gaining Google juice, for example links on terms like search engine optimization and web design (page here). A check of the source code on these pages show that links are not tagged link=nofollow.

B&N will likely crack down on this shortly, but it’s a lessoned learned: anywhere you offer unmoderated user contributions without safeguards, someone will always end up trying to exploit the situation.

Article source

Compared with other forms of human interaction, online social networking is really not all that social.

People visit each other’s MySpace pages and Facebook profiles at various hours of the day, posting messages and sending e-mail back and forth across the digital void. It’s like an endless party where everybody shows up at a different time and slaps a yellow Post-it note on the refrigerator.

Now a new wave of Silicon Valley companies is bringing live socializing back into a medium that has, in the parlance of the technologists, grown overly asynchronous.

Vivaty, a start-up based in Menlo Park, Calif., is creating 3-D virtual chat rooms that people can add to the Web pages and social networking profiles on the sites where they spend most of their Internet time.

The company has been quietly working on its technology for three years and will begin a private test period on Facebook this week in advance of a wider introduction this summer. It is backed by the blue-chip venture capital firms Kleiner, Perkins Caufield & Byers and Mohr Davidow Ventures.

Vivaty turns a flat profile page into a three-dimensional live chat room. Users choose characters to represent themselves from a list of preternaturally handsome avatars — a requirement for any such service — and proceed to one of a dozen environments, like a gothic urban warehouse or seaside villa.

With videogame-like precision, they can then navigate that virtual space, which may feature their Facebook photos hanging from the walls and a YouTube video playing on a widescreen TV. Up to 15 others can choose avatars and enter the same room at the same time for text-based live socializing.

“We want to take all your content on the Web and move it to a more visually immersive, immediate experience,” said Keith McCurdy, chief executive at Vivaty and a former vice president at the big game maker Electronic Arts.

Similar online services like Second Life and games like World of Warcraft have existed for years. But they are not accessible through a Web browser. Instead they require users to install large and cumbersome programs and have plenty of Internet bandwidth for a satisfyingly immediate experience.

Vivaty chat rooms, on the other hand, will be scattered across the Web. A user can stick an existing Vivaty virtual environment, or create a unique one, wherever HTML code can be imbedded. The company plans to make money partly by allowing companies to start their own virtual rooms on their own Web sites, where they can control the décor and their marketing messages.

Article source

Red Hat, the distributor of open source software, said Thursday that its fourth-quarter profit rose 7 percent, as higher expenses related to sales and marketing offset a jump in revenue.

Red Hat, which is based in Raleigh, said it earned $22 million, or 10 cents a share, in the quarter, its first under its new chief executive, James Whitehurst. That result compared with $20.5 million, also 10 cents a share, a year earlier.

Red Hat said its revenue rose 27 percent, to $141.5 million, in the quarter ended Feb. 29.

The results were in line with expectations of analysts polled by Thomson Financial, who on average had predicted the company would earn 10 cents a share on revenue of $141.1 million.

Article source

Take-Two Interactive Software told shareholders Wednesday to reject a $2 billion hostile bid from a rival video game publisher, Electronic Arts, as too low, but said it had begun to explore a sale or other options.

Take-Two said it was still open to a combination with Electronic Arts or another company, but not before the April 29 release of its Grand Theft Auto IV, widely expected to be the best-selling video game this year.

Electronic Arts responded by saying its offer was “full and fair” and reflected the value of Take-Two’s game franchises, employees and improving operations.

“By advising its stockholders to reject the offer, Take-Two’s board is exposing them to further delays which may reduce the value and the certainty of a potential transaction,” Electronic Arts said.

Take-Two said its board had begun considering strategic alternatives and preparing materials that any potential buyer would need to conduct due diligence. It said it had indications of interest from other companies since Electronic Arts made its $26-a-share offer, but had not held any substantive talks.

Take-Two also adopted a 180-day shareholders’ rights plan, or poison pill, to guard against Electronic Arts’ hostile bid and delayed its annual meeting in New York to April 17 from April 10. The Electronic Arts offer expires on April 11, although the company can extend it.

Electronic Arts, the world’s largest video game publisher, took its all-cash bid directly to stockholders this month. It faces stepped-up competition from a rival, Activision, which is merging with the video games unit of the French conglomerate Vivendi.

Many analysts expect that the bid by Electronic Arts will ultimately succeed, but that the company may have to raise its offer.

“This thing is very much in play, and we’re seeing public bargaining,” said Todd Mitchell, an analyst with Kaufman Brothers.

Article source 

April Fools Day isn’t until next week, but Sony has already fallen prey to one nasty trick. The electronics giant updated the consumer alerts section of its official PlayStation Web site to say that “there has been a possibility of unauthorized access to personal information on the PlayStation Store through PCs…”

From the description given, it appears users’ passwords were at risk. Given access to such passwords, unauthorized users could sign on to an account, obtain the real user’s personal information, change their password, and rack up charges on the PlayStation Store. While the store saves credit card numbers, it does not display the full number to the user, so thieves would be unable to swipe credit card information for use elsewhere.

Sony said it has already fixed the issue and that the network’s security has been restored. The company has contacted users that it believes may have been victims of the security breach, and suggests that concerned gamers can ensure their accounts are safe simply by logging in with their pre-set password.

If users are unable to log in, Sony is asking them to reset their passwords, check to see what unauthorized activity has taken place, and e-mail the company at PSN_account_support@playstation.sony.com for assistance.

Article source

The scam involves a notice appearing on the wall of user profiles as a message from a friend, saying “Hey, I got a new facebook account. Im going to delete this one, so add my new profile” then with a link that appears to be a link to the new profile. The actual link goes to a URL on view-facebookprofiles.com, a domain registered (and whois protected) on Namecheap and hosted at Softlayer that looks identical to the Facebook login page:

Users fooled into resubmitting their Facebook details on this page then have their Facebook accounts hijacked and all of their contacts receive a similar message, propagating the phishing scam.

It’s not clear yet exactly what the phishing scammers are planning on using the compromised accounts for, or how far it has spread. One tipper claimed that many of his friends had been caught as well.

Article source