a) can't I do that already? I thought I could do that already.
b) you mean like email? I don't want more programs on my computer. Or
c) OK, sounds good but what kind of things can I get?
Don't get me wrong. RSS, or something like it, is the future. But it's a hard sell to folk who haven't downloaded a program in their life (more people than you're care to imagine; I wonder what the stats on that look like), or to folk who are so worn out by spam they don't want to sift through more bits and pieces arriving on the computer. But even if people do like the sound of it, RSS still doesn't lend itself to grabbing information. It's great for folks looking to read what other people are writing, or even keeping up to speed on general news, but it doesn't quite have the customisation necessary to lure ordinary folk. Not everyone considers reading blogs in another format to be their idea of fun.
This may be changing (not the idea of fun, the customisation of RSS.) Klips, an RSS-type desktop feed from Serence, have introduced modules that include feeds of more specific, user-defined data, allowing you to track selected currencies, UPS and FedEx packages and stocks. (While I love the design and simplicity of Klips, I don't think they work for large bodies of information, such as blogs and news, so expect to see Klips move more and more in the direction of small clumps of changing data, such as traffic reports, flight departure and arrival times, or hot deals, scattered around your desktop.)
RSS could do a lot of this too, but so far hasn't. You can harvest a lot of information via RSS but most of it is passive: You can't tailor it too much. Either take the feed or don't. This will change, and already is beginning to, thanks in part to a guy called Mikel Maron from the University of Sussex. He's come up with a way to deliver some of the personalized data from your My Yahoo! account to an RSS feed, a neat trick that arose from his university studies. (If you're interested in the technical aspects, here they are in PDF form.) So far his feed -- which is not related to Yahoo! in any way -- can handle market quotes, weather and movie listing, depending on how you've configured your Yahoo! account. But of course his approach offers great potential for funnelling all sorts of personalized data straight to your RSS browser. Let's hope Yahoo! support, or even buy, Mikel's efforts.
(Thanks to Chris Pirillo's LockerGnome RSS Resource for pointing out Mikel's site.)
According to the report, the top five applications are Windows Media Player, AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, MSN Messenger Service and Real Player. Of these top five applications, Windows Media has the largest active user reach at 34 percent. AOL Instant Messenger was next at 20 percent, followed by Real Player also at 20 percent, MSN Messenger Service at 19 percent and Yahoo! Messenger Service, which reaches 12 percent of the active user base.
Interesting. But what does it actually tell us? First off, we shouldn't get confused by the data. This doesn't mean that folks are eschewing the browser, just that a lot of other programs are also connecting to the Internet (where is e-mail in all this?). Second, if Real Networks and MSN Messenger are anything to go by, a lot of these programs access the Internet without the user doing anything (or even knowing about it) so does this actually count? Lastly, there's been plenty written already about how Microsoft is moving past the browser to incorporate similar functionality into its Office and other products -- say Microsoft Word 2003's Research Pane, for example -- so it's clear the big boys would have us move to more proprietary, locked-in environments, which all of the top five applications have in common. We're not so much witnessing a demographic change as a deliberate shove by the main players.
My wish list? I'd like to see all of these players stop hoodwinking the end-user by loading their programs into the start-up queue automatically (you know who you are). It's deliberately misleading (read: sleazy), it hogs resources and it skews data like Nielsen's. I'd also like to see AOL, MSN and Yahoo all agree to share their instant messaging lists so folk like me don't have to use great alternatives like Trillian to pull together our disparate buddy networks (Trillian will lump all your different Instant Messaging accounts into one easy to view window, minus all the ads and annoying pop-ups).
I see no danger in the browser gradually being phased out for plenty of web-related tasks. But, if the Internet has really become 'part of the desktop' let's try to make it a place where ordinary folk can hang out without too much hassle.
There's some interesting ticklers in the details too: While every category went up, a lot more was spent on practically everything except music this year. While folk seemed to spent a lot on clothes ($3.1 billion spent, up 40% over 2002), the biggest increase was in DVD and video ($1.4 billion, up 58%), a jump that could be explained largely by the rising popularity in DVD players, one of the biggest selling consumer items this year.
But it's the meagre 20% rise in online music spending that gets me. They splashed out only $790 million this year -- a bit more than half of what they spent on books or video. Now while some of this discrepancy may be blamed on the rise of the DVD -- they weren't available in such numbers last year, they're usually sold in the same store as music CDs -- it doesn't really hold water when you compare it to the books category, which has been available for years online (at least 1996, if not earlier) and yet also showed an impressive 39% growth, with folk spending $1.4 billion on tomes this year. Could this either be a sign of the lingering appeal of online file sharing, suspicion about the spread of 'hobbling technologies' that restrict usage of CDs, or a growing lack of interest in what is on offer at current prices?
I've asked Nielsen for more data, so perhaps there's another explanation for this.
The future of Microsoft: Is 2004 going to be Redmond's swansong? Some people think so, including The Inquirer, which says that the company's flat first quarter earnings are a sign "it is running low on wiggle room, the core customers are negotiating hard, and Microsoft is giving way". Interesting, if somewhat aggressive, reading. For the usual Slashdot discussion of the topic, go here. Certainly it's going to be a difficult year for Microsoft, and one way the company may go is to try to further lock in users to its formats -- Word, audio, Excel, whatever -- and to lock other software companies out.
That's also the tack that veteran commentator Steve Gillmor believes Apple is taking with its iPod. He points out that what was once a MP3 player is now threatening to be a lot more than that, from a PDA to a video device (to a handphone, as well). But Gillmor also points out that this is part of a bigger battle to try to establish one kind of Digital Rights Management over another. (This basically is a legal and software trick that limits your freedom to copy or alter files, whether they're music, words or pictures. Say your version of Microsoft Word supported DRM, you may find yourself unable, say, to copy a document you're viewing, or to save it in another format, or, more insidiously, unable to access a Word document composed in a non-Microsoft program, say, Open Office. DRM effectively removes the kind of supremacy you've enjoyed over what you own: In music, for example, DRM would mean you rent rather than own your CD collection.)
Gillmor discusses Apple's approach, which is slightly different, but with seemingly similar goals: To lock the consumer into using a proprietary format. I think consumers will -- and should -- fight any attempt to limit access to their files, whether they be music, words, pictures or movies, tooth and nail. Legitimate fears of piracy and security should not allow any corporation to dictate the size or make of wall protecting us (look at e-voting for the lessons we should learn on that.). This year will define where we go on this issue. Or as Mr Gillmor says: "With the election looming as a referendum on issues of security, rights and opportunity, and the Internet emerging as a major player for the first time, DRM may be democracy's Last Waltz."
What benefit could RB possibly derive from such spam, unless it was to discredit the honest folks at North American? A disgruntled employee? A rival? Certainly spam is a potent way to damage reputations: I recall a year or so back trying to find out who sent out spam in the name of TemplateStyles.com. The company itself denied all knowledge, but some angry respondents were suspicious, pointing to the lack of proper information about the company on its website. A year on it seems the site is now up for sale, so either the doubters were right or the spam killed off the company's chances. Either way it brought home how easy it would be to dent a reputation by sending out spam in someone's name.
Then there's the Spam Slur: A few days back I started receiving an email alleging that some German individual "is a knave" who apparently does not deliver goods he has contracted to deliver. (I'm afraid I foolishly deleted several copies of the email, which was clearly sent out in spam-like quantities.) No one can trace the source of the slur, but the target is bound to have felt some pain at being labeled a knave. I haven't been called that since school.
-- More than 60 unique new phishing email fraud attacks have been launched against consumers in the last 2 weeks
-- Over 60 million email fraud attacks are estimated to have been sent out in the same period - timed for the peak of the holiday season
-- eBay customers were the most highly targeted by scammers, with 24 unique email fraud attacks over the past 60 days
-- Online financial institutions, including banks, Visa and PayPal, represented the largest target group with 35 unique email fraud attacks reported over the past 60 days
It seems that phishing has been remarkably rewarding for the scammers involved. The Anti-Phishing Working Group reckons an average of 5% of recipients respond to such emails, resulting in financial losses, identity theft, and other fraudulent activity. And, perhaps worse, this "activity threatens the integrity of companies that do business online". (I'm assuming they're talking about banks, eBay and other folk who rely on ordinary folk to maintain their faith in the security of online commerce.)
There are a number of ingenious scams that play on the holiday theme -- which also highlight that it's not just banks and big-ticket items that the phishers are targeting. One example is a fake online Christmas card, designed to compromise AOL accounts. In this scam, the recipient receives a spoofed email from the "AOL Hallmark" team, and is asked to visit a website to pick up his/her card. In order to access the site (which is run by the scammer), the user is asked to log in to his or her AOL account, thereby divulging the account name and password. The compromised account can then be used, anti-Phishing says, to launch further phishing attacks, virus attacks, spam, or other nefarious activity.
Clearly this sort of thing is going to grow, becoming more sophisticated as users wise up to the scams. Recent emails now play upon the growing awareness of scams by claiming to be from your bank, warning you about such scams and telling you to ignore other emails. They then, of course, go on to tell to visit the legitimate website to confirm your password. (The main component of this trick is that 90% of the email is genuine, in that the images are all from the bank's website, and if you hover your mouse over the link you're being asked to visit, it may well look genuine too. What you're actually seeing, is a clever ruse: the real website is buried at the end of the link, hidden after a lot of empty space. So checking that sort of thing is no longer enough. It should go without saying that you shouldn't react to any email that requires you to do anything with your password. For a good resource on such scams, check out Codefish.)
In the end all this will help educate users about the Internet and improving their own security. I don't see it doing any serious damage to online commerce, at least in terms of undermining public confidence. I do believe, however, that we've seen only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the sophistication of scammers, and banks and other online institutions must improve their awareness of the threat, as well as protect and educate their customers.
Have a phishing-free Christmas.
Now The Washington Post has written up the experience of the Neistat brothers, and presented it as an example of the disposability of electronics, and of irate consumers fighting back.
It's a great piece. Trouble is, I don't think the story is quite as simple as that. First off, there's some suggestion the brothers haven't been completely upfront. According to one academic who briefly hosted their video on his server, Dave Schroeder, there are some holes in their version: He says Apple began offering the replacement program nearly a week before the brothers' website was registered (ipoddirtysecret.com, on November 20; Apple's replacement program was announced on November 14). As Schroeder acknowledges in his letter to the Washington Post (posted at Slashdot), it was 'coincidentally close', but was before Apple had was aware of the brothers' video. (The Post article says the Apple announced expanded warranties for new iPod owners to purchase for $59, and also introduced a new $99 battery-replacement mail-in service for others "days after the movie made the rounds" of websites like Schroeders. The Neistat brothers themselves are more cautious on their website, saying "After we finished production of the film, but not necessarily in response to it, Apple began offerring a battery replacement program for the iPod for a fee of $99 and an extended warranty for the ipod for $59".)
But did the brothers know about this before they posted their video? Schroeder says yes, saying he agreed to post their video on condition the brothers post a link on the same site to the Apple replacement program, something which he says they never did. (Schroeder has kept a record of their communications here.) If this is true, I don't see any way one can link the Neistat's campaign with Apple's decision to offer a refurbishing service.
But what about the allegation that Apple is building in obsolescence into what are already pricey gadgets, using batteries that die after 18 months and steering punters into replacing the whole unit for $400, while making it hard to replace the batteries without damaging the unit? not everyone agrees it's hard to replace the battery: Here's an example of one user who felt confident her mother could do it without help. But I have to say, I've fiddled around with my iPod a bit, trying to get the back off according to instructions, and would conclude that my mother wouldn't enjoy doing it. It's certainly tricky, and hard to do without scratching the iPod body.
My conclusion? I think Apple have been remiss in a) not introducing a refurbish program earlier, b) not making it easier to replace the batteries, and c) not immediately guiding the brothers to websites which sell do-it-yourself batteries. While the iPod is beautifully designed, I can't really see a reason for not including screws in the casing.
But having said all that, I think we must be careful about guerrilla consumer actions such as those undertaken by the Neistat brothers. We may not not yet know the whole story (I've emailed both them and Apple asking for more information), but so far it seems that their campaign may have misled hundreds of thousands of users by not including, either in it or on websites where it was posted, information about alternatives to buying a new iPod. Consumer activism should not copy advertising. It should be informative, not deceptive.
I have to say I have enough problems with real business cards that aren't the right shape or where the text is the wrong way up. Out here in Asia these small CD sized name cards came and went -- at least in my line of work -- a few years back, and I'm pretty sorry to hear that they may be making a comeback. First off, how exactly is 100 MB of Flash really going to help? And if the ones I received are anything to go by, folk would usually jazz up even the most basic contact details with fancy graphics so you could forget about simply copying and pasting the salient details into Outlook. Sorry but I'd rather the guy say 'Here's my name card but I'll email you my vCard". Or "Are you all Bluetoothed up? Let me beam it to you now." Or, if you like the guy and want to make a firm commitment, ask him: "Are you on Plaxo?"
Sure, I can understand the use of CD-Roms to hand out data about reunions, parties and whatnot, but most folk who would know what to do with that sort of thing are wired, so why not email it to them? I already have way too many CD-Roms in my den; the last thing I want is funny shaped ones to add to them.
The story is well worth a read (subscription or day pass only), if only for its glimpse on the moral responsibilities a corporation running a community may have. If someone opens a virtual brothel for online folk to indulge in a little cyber-sex, is the company managing that world -- in this case Electronic Arts -- guilty of prostitution? And what happens if there's evidence the 'madam' of that brothel, and some of its employees, are underage? And then, exploring the matter further, is Electronic Arts guilty of censorship by terminating the account of the academic who chronicled such allegations in his online newspaper, Alphaville Herald? And if there's (ultimately) real money involved, should the police be called in to this virtual world?
I'm not surprised a philosophy professor is interested in these kind of issues. Going back to the early days of the Internet, the virtual world has a habit of impinging on the real. In that sense there's nothing different between real estate and virtual estate. If humans interact on it, it's turf and it needs to be policed. It will be interesting to see how EA handle this case, and whether they start patrolling their creation more thoroughly. And if they do, will it cease to be economically viable?
More discussion on this on Slashdot. Here's an 'interview' by Ludlow with Evangeline (parental discretion advised, via Boing Boing Blog)
Are spammers, for example, the enemy of ordinary Internet folk, or virtual Robin Hoods eluding corporate control of the web? We all hate them now, true, but may we look back on them -- at some future point when corporate and governmental control dominates the web -- as tolerable evidence of the Internet's chaotic freedom? By trying to push them off the Internet through legal means, are we just tying our own future in knots?
Another thought: are micropayments the saviour of small business on the Internet, or just a trick by big corporates to tie us into their trickling subscription model? Living in Indonesia -- banned by PayPal and many smaller online sellers, which won't accept any payments from such a lawless country -- I know a little of what it feels like to hostage to the bigger e-commerce sites, because they're the only ones to accept my dollar. In the future, will it only be the big companies who have the risk models and infrastructure to do online business in a world of online IDs, DRMs and micropayments?
I'm confident that the anarchic tendencies of the Internet will undermine many corporate efforts to lock in customers: The online music site that thrives will be the one with the broadest range of file formats and the smallest limitation on how those files are used, stored and copied. Methods to cripple or limit use of software will always be cracked. Indignation will limit the advance of chip-based IDs -- in your computer, around your neck, in your handphone.
But I think those of us calling for regulation, standardisation and crackdowns on the Internet to make it safe for the ordinary user need to think harder about other threats to its future, in particular anything that punishes or banishes anonymity, anything that discriminates against the user accessing the web based on his/her point of entry (country, state, neighbourhood) and, in particular, any corporate which tries to set up tollbooths to grab a nickel every time we do something we used to be able to do for free.
In theory, there are some 4 billion public IP addresses on the Internet. The Slammer worm was released on January 25, 2003 around 04:31 UTC. By 04:45 it had scanned through all Internet addresses - in less than 15 minutes! This operation can be compared to an automatic system dialing all available phone numbers in the world in 15 minutes. As on the net, only a small number of phones would answer the call but the lines would certainly be congested.
Or the Bugbear.B worm, which tried to steal information from banks and other financial institutions: To this end, the worm carried a list of network addresses of more than 1300 banks. Among them were network addresses of American, African, Australian, Asian and European banks. As soon as this functionality was discovered, F-Secure warned the listed financial institutions about the potential threat. The response time of the F-Secure Anti-Virus Research Unit was 3 hours 59 minutes from the detection of the worm to the release of an anti-virus update. F-Secure also published a free tool to clean systems affected by Bugbear.B.
Or Sobig.F, which waited for a couple of days after infecting a machine and then turned affected machines into e-mail proxy servers: The reason soon became apparent: spammers, or organizations sending bulk e-mail ads, used these proxies, which Sobig had created, to redistribute spam on a massive scale. Computers of innocent home users were taken over with the help of the worm and soon they were used to send hundreds of thousands of questionable advertisements without the owner being aware of this.
A great read, and fodder for a novel were it not just the start of a difficult time for the Internet.
It is likely that there's a virus writer group behind Sobig. They planned the operation, then used the worm to infect a huge number of computers and then sold various spammer groups lists of proxy servers which would be open for spreading spam. It was clearly a business operation.
But, BusinessWeek point out, "with every new service, Google takes a slice of someone else's pie. Its ability to find pizza places within any given Zip code ultimately eliminates the use of YellowPages. Using it to find word definitions diminishes the business proposition of online dictionaries."
The argument goes that "Google becomes the omnipresent middleman and a clear and present danger to just about any company that relies on the Internet for commerce." But where is the revenue? I think BusinessWeek is right in saying the money will be in providing the gateway to those sites. Most folk I know go to Google first, indeed have it as their homepage. The more you can access from that fast-loading, uncluttered page, the more you'll use it as your homepage. Who cares where you go next?
It has nothing to do with stickiness in the way we used to think of it. Google doesn't need people to stay at Google. But folk like UPS and FedEx need to have the link with Google -- especially if their competitors have it. For them Google becomes their customers' first stop. Whether it's cinema tickets, airline tickets, packages or whatever, Google will act as a kind of fast-searching gatekeeper for other sites. Those other sites may not have much choice -- they don't already, with the site: hack on Google working as a better search engine for individual sites than the site's search page -- but they'll all draw benefit. And presumably Google will collect a toll, in advertising or something else.
It's the New Portal: Empty, except for what you need, and fast.
As Russell says, "There's sooooo much to be gleaned from Nokia's site it's incredible." He points to just one document, a presentation Music, video, streaming contents services Demand in Asia Pacific which has some fascinating facts about current mobile data services world wide:
There's enough there for a dozen columns. But what I like is that Nokia have taken the trouble to present all this information in an accessible way. My grumble with Nokia until now is that their sites are not intuitive -- unlike their cellphones -- but you can't say that anymore. I wish more companies would do this kind of thing. It's not rocket science but it is helpful.
It looks to me as if there's quite significant consolidation within the security software industry, not just from the point of view of big guys buying the smaller guys, but of companies trying to create products that offer an all-round 'security solution'. Symantec have long peddled this type of idea, but in their 2004 editions have increased the coverage to include cutting out spam, spyware and even pop-ups. With Check Point focusing on server-side software it makes sense that they grab Zone Labs, whose strength is software for desktops and notebooks.
Expect to see software companies trying to push more integrated software that offers this kind of overall solution to corporates and to ISPs. While it obviously makes sense for companies to farm out these kind of problems -- viruses, spam, any kind of disrupting influence on their networks -- Internet Service Providers will doubtless see a market to sell something similar to the individual user, keeping such rubbish out of their inbox and away from other subscribers.
My only worry is that such 'packaged solutions' may not offer the best individual component: Just because a company makes all the products you need, doesn't mean they're all great. I use Norton Antivirus but stick with Zone Alarm because it tells me more about what's going on.
My posting, which didn't actually make any specific comment about the news, prompted this from Mike Rowehl of Bitsplitter who says, among other things, that "surre, there are plenty of issues to be worked through with RFID, but it’s hardly the boogeyman that everyone makes it out to be. A cell phone can just as easily (and in the future, more easily most likely) be used to determine a users location".
Actually, Mike, I'm not sure that's right. Cellphones work in large areas, and can narrow the location of a phone (and its user) down to quite a small area, but RFID works in small, enclosed areas. As one of the delegates, Olivier Piou of Axalto told the conference last Friday:Wireless technologies also present a similar threat to privacy: while it is relatively easy to turn off a cellular phone (because all of them have an ON/OFF button!), radio-frequency identification systems - also known as RFID or contactless systems - are activated from a distance. It becomes so very easy to install a reading antenna, in the subway or in any place like in this conference room, to detect who is there without awareness and consent.
Numerous books and movies have predicted that our civil society would not be wise enough to protect its basic universal human rights in this digital age. However, the more we have powerful tools available to us, the more we have the duty to use them for the best of humanity. This is why I wanted to raise your awareness today.
This is why also, we at Axalto believe that it is essential that digital identity be designed to ensure trust and confidence in modern digital systems, and that it be combined with conventional physical identity into a secure portable object that citizens can voluntarily present to be identified, to authorities in the physical world and to on-line services in the virtual world.
That this comes from an industry insider -- Axalto is the new name of Schlumberger unit SmartCards, of which Olivier Piou has been president since 1998; he has been in the smart card business since 1994. (Smart cards are microprocessor cards used mainly for ID) -- should give some weight to concerns raised by the use of RFID at the summit. That the summit itself, supposedly concerning itself with the information society, should not be more aware of a) the privacy aspects of its tags and b) unable to answer questions raised by privacy advocates, does not inspire confidence.
While I don't agree with the more outlandish claims that RFID is a new kind of big brother, there's little doubt in my mind that it's a technology which needs some serious attention before it can be deployed in public.
If you're an RSS feed user, please change your feed to this one (right click, copy the address, and paste it into your newsfeed reader. (I'm using Luke Hutteman's excellent SharpReader).
Email subscribers will be catered for, although I'm not quite sure how at the moment. Those who can, I'd encourage to take the RSS feed and then unsubscribe from the mailing list. Let me know if you have problems doing so.
I'll keep this site going a while longer, but will have to stop at some point.
Not that Microsoft gets it either: NYT quotes Simon Marks, the product manager for PowerPoint, as saying that the opposite is 'data density', shoving tons of data at an audience. You could do that with PowerPoint, he says, but it's a matter of choice. ''If people were told they were going to have to sit through an incredibly dense presentation,'' he adds, ''they wouldn't want it.''
NYT's conclusion: If you have nothing to say, maybe you need just the right tool to help you not say it.
RFID is Radio Frequency ID, which means the tags could have contained and given off all sorts of information, including the wearer's exact location. The badges were handed out to more than 50 prime ministers, presidents and other high-level officials from 174 countries, including the United States. Researchers questioned summit officials about the use of the chips and how long information would be stored but were not given answers.
The three-day forum focused on Internet governance and access, security, intellectual-property rights and privacy.
What I found interesting about the story, apart from the granny bit, is that the spammers interviewed say they have established Internet accounts in countries where spam isn't controlled, though they won't say where. "You're not going to stop it," one of the spammers is quoted as saying. "Most of us go offshore now. You have to hide where you are." This is where Asia comes in, big: Korea, China, India, Pakistan and possibly Malaysia top my list of suspects.
(More discussion about the people in question, by people who apparently go to church with them, on Slashdot, the place where everybody knows your name.)
"Windows 98 support isn’t dropping off the face of the earth according to Microsoft. $35 per incident phone support is. How many people do you know who have spent $35 for a phone call to Microsoft lately?
And a quote in C|Net indicates that security updates will probably still be released as needed. The company's policy would not ordinarily call for Microsoft to provide any security-related patches, but in an e-mailed statement, the company said it would evaluate future threats as they emerge.
"In addition to the robust set of third-party security products we encourage all Windows customers to use, including antivirus and firewall products, (after Jan. 16) we will evaluate malicious threats to our customers' systems on a case-by-case basis and take appropriate steps," Microsoft said.
That bit about “more than 80 percent of companies surveyed were still using Windows 98 and/or Windows 95.” would be more interesting if they quoted percent of desktops. By their method, a company with thousands of Win XP machines and a single Win 98 box in the basement running the boiler would add to that 80 percent number – but not in a meaningful way."
Thanks, Jim. All good points.
In Version 2, eWeek says, Grokker has its own intelligence engine that analyzes content in order to categorize it on the fly. It also pulls search results from significantly more sources of information. Don't expect Grokker 2 to be cheap: Grokker 1 cost $100 for a single user license.
The new "Search by Number" feature also brings up information linked to other kinds of numbers, such as patent numbers, equipment identification numbers issued by the Federal Communications Commission, and airplane registration numbers from the Federal Aviation Administration (for checking flight delays).
As Gary Price of ResourceShelf points out, offering such specialized information is not new: Ask Jeeves has been working on something called Smart Answers, AltaVista on Shortcuts for even longer. It's intriguing that what folk a few years back thought would be popular -- lots of noisy graphics and titbits of news in an all-flashing, all-dancing big brand portal -- is being overtaken by something very, very simple: a quiet, white interface that lets you find what you want, whether it's a recipe or a patent, fast. I kinda like that.
Here's an example, courtesy of InfoSync World: the word 'mobile' on this page for example, has a link and pop-up box that says 'Windows Mobile--Your stuff, now available on the fly. Software for Smartphone, Pocket PC, or Pocket PC Phone Edition. Click here to see it for yourself!' which then takes you to a vibrantmedia page (which seems to be a broken link at time of writing).
The word Internet, meanwhile, offers you 'DIRECWAY - Internet Access -- Surf the Web via satellite. Available nationwide. Only $69.97 down and $99 a month. Includes the Direcway System and professional installation. Always on connection requires no phone line'. That link does, after a lot of waiting while the request goes through the Vibrant Media servers, take you to a Yahoo webpage where you can subscribe to Direcway, if the feeling so takes you.
This is cheeky, though perhaps not offensive. What's also cheeky is that you don't have any easy way of telling where the link might be taking you: Right-clicking on the link appears to be disabled. Neither can you view in the status bar of your browser the link in question: instead there lurks more text along the lines of the above.
This reminds me of something called RichLink from Sentius, which does pretty much the same thing (well, officially, 'software that automates the management of links and metadata to deliver point-of-interest content to end-users at the word, phrase, and metadata level for any Web application'). If I recall it used to provide medical definitions for the Reuters Health website.
Too early to make a judgement, but my first stab is that in a world increasingly annoyed by popups, the danger of alienating readers with links that aren't anything more than ads of questionable relevance seems to be quite high.
"On January 16th, 2004, Microsoft Windows 98 enters the non-support portion of its support lifecycle. Windows 98 is considered obsolete, and security-based hot fixes will not be generally available for users of Windows 98 or Windows 98-Second Edition," eWeek quoted Steve O'Halloran, managing director of AssetMetrix Research Labs, as saying.
This is daft. According to some reports, Microsoft doesn't need to do all this until next September, raising suspicions that it's just trying to make Sun -- owner of Java -- look like the evil wolf, and to force buying folk to migrate to XP. If any of this is true, I'd like to see Microsoft agree to provide security updates for at least Windows 98 users for as long as they can. I can't see Sun, or the courts, objecting to that.
Anyway, Alan asks, "Wouldn't you think that with all the money the handset vendors and cellular operators can spend on advertising and marketing, they would be able to come up with commercials that not only target the right demographics, but also wouldn't wave a red flag in front of people who want to ban phones?" I agree. The ads I've seen in this part of the world only convince me that marketing folk haven't got a clue about what users could do with these gadgets and so build their commercials around nonsensical scenarios involving butterflies, ocean-going yachts and beautiful people in tight sweaters. I think municipalities should ban the commercials, not the phones.
The product, ScanZoom, is made by US-based software company Scanbuy. The article points out that a similar technology is already available in Japan, where phones can recognize e-mail addresses, web site URLs and telephone numbers through their embedded cameras.
Meanwhile Logitech has announced that its own candidate, the Bluetooth Wireless Hub, now works with the latest Bluetooth phones from Sony Ericsson and Nokia; new PDAs from Toshiba, HP, and palmOne; as well as hands-free headsets from Sony Ericsson, Motorola and Nokia. It's worth checking out, although one word of warning: As far as I can work out, the hub will only work if you connect it directly to a USB port -- and not to an external hub. If your PC only has one or two USB ports, and you're using a lot of (non Bluetooth) USB gadgets, that can be a major no-no.
The file is a tad over a megabyte, and installs both into Internet Explorer and your taskbar (the bit at the bottom of the Windows 98/XP screen). Type a phrase in there and it will search nearly every search engine, and throw up a melange of results familiar to anyone who's used Copernic the program. It's elegant, configurable -- and free.
None of these issues seem any clearer with the announcement by the world's largest software and music companies, who on Wednesday, according to Reuters (via Techdirt), issued an initial set of technology specifications in a bid to create a system in which users would share customized Internet links, called "content references," instead of swapping song or film files directly.
From what I understand this would be like accessing a file on the Internet via hyperlinks -- basically how you use your browser now -- for which you would pay, either by subscription, or each time you listened to it, or whatever. I know it's a knee jerk reaction but to me this all sounds dumb.
A subscription approach may work for certain products -- movies, say, which folk may only want to watch once -- but music is a movable feast. We want to listen to it on the road, in the gym, in the bath, at the top of a mountain, on a long air/road/boat/train ride. Music, almost by definition, is not a static product. What's more, clearly this new approach is designed to squeeze more money out of the punter. For what? Do we actually end up owning the music, getting great sleeve notes, a product with lots of memories attached to it? Almost certainly not. It's a dripfeed revenue model, where we pay cents, thinking we're saving dollars, whereas all we're doing is paying a toll for something that once upon a time we could actually buy and keep. Or am I overreacting?
By 2006, over half of all mobile phones shipped will include cameras, Canalys reckons.
Wired reports that ATMs at two banks running Microsoft Windows software were infected by a computer virus in August, the maker of the machines said. The ATM infections, first reported by SecurityFocus.com, are believed to be the first of a computer virus wiggling directly onto cash machines. (The Register said in January that the Slammer worm brought down 13,000 Bank of America ATMs, but they weren't directly infected: the worm infected database servers on the same network, spewing so much traffic the cash machines couldn't process transactions.)
But how can an ATM get infected? SecurityFocus says that while "ATMs typically sit on private networks or VPNs, the most serious worms in the last year have demonstrated that supposedly-isolated networks often have undocumented connections to the Internet, or can fall to a piece of malicious code inadvertently carried beyond the firewall on a laptop computer." In other words: the folk who write worms are smarter than we are.
Recent MiMail variants collected and forwarded PayPal account details to the worms' creators. 'The business of the mafia is business, and there could be a lot of money to be made from malware and spamming. As they consolidate control, the business of hacking and virus writing they will squeeze out independents. Spam will be an early target,' he said.
What's the interest for the mafia? Stealing commercial valuable secrets, bringing down networks for extortion, grabbing money from PayPal accounts.
His argument: "Every user's inbox is a reflection of what Internet users are buying through spam. No spammer sends emails in the interests of the public good: they do it for profit, and that profit is only generated when Internet users open spam, read spam, and buy from spam. To stop spam, we have to stop buying from spam. That's why I have created the "Spam. Don't Buy It." campaign, to help educate Internet users on their role in the ongoing spam problem."
Actually, the website does have some interesting bits. I'm just not quite sure what a "Permission Email Pioneer" is.
The bill criminalises common spamming tactics, such as using false return address. But it overrides Californian laws which had allowed spam recipients to sue spammers. The bill requires online marketeers to act on requests to "opt out" of future emails, unlike European Union legislation which requires them to seek the permission of consumers first.
The Can-Spam Act is expected to be signed into law by President Bush before the start of next year.
The new version turns Aliencamel into a kind of email account in its own right, including the ability to preview email in a web browser before tagging it as spam or downloading via your normal email program, full webmail access to your mailbox, as well as disposable email addresses you can use to deal with suspect web sites and third parties you're not sure about. On top of that the service's Pending Email Advisory -- a sort of floating alert that lets you know of new email that is suspect without actually sending it to you -- changes to reduce frequency of advisory emails.
Most important, I think, is the fact that Aliencamel are going to embrace Bayesian filters -- the simple method of assigning a probability of spamminess to emails by looking at the innards of the email (content, header, HTML code) and comparing it to other emails it has looked at. I adore Bayesian filters (I still use POPFile) so I think it's great that Aliencamel are moving in that direction.
(Aliencamel, by the way, is an anagram of clean email. It took me months to get it.)
The interface will allow users to virtually transfer picture, music and text files so they can be viewed from computers outside the home or office. The handset is smaller than a cellular phone and uses IP (Internet Protocol) for conversations. It also has the ability to interact with a PC via a wireless or infrared connection. (Somehow I doubt we're going to be using infrared in the future, but there you go.)
I guess so. Most Wi-Fi spots are mere loss-leaders, ways to get people into your establishment and keep them there. Folk who charge may have provide other services to go with it: nice work environments, free coffee, printers -- or else be in places where there's no competition, like truckstops.
Here's the neat bit: In Boston, where the service is in place, the Trident bookstore is considered an affiliate of Amazon so if users of this service later buy one of the books they browsed for on Amazon, Trident earns a commission. Whether other bookstores are brave enough to do this I'm not sure, but it's a possible answer to the problem outlined in the earlier post. The beauty of it is that the bookstores play to their strengths: a great, comfortable place to browse and hang out, and the unmistakable allure of allowing customers to have that book in their hands, right now.
CNET quotes a study that "while nearly half of those surveyed use the Internet to look for products and then buy them either in a store or through a catalog, 45 percent are buying online after researching gifts in stores and catalogs". If everyone did that, there would be no stores to do your research in. For sure, folk are not going to buy something that's much more expensive, but they should consider the longer term impact of where they buy. As a former bookseller, I know customers don't think that hard about what life would be like without a bookshop until it's too late to stop buying their fare at the big mall at the end of the street.
I wonder how all this is going to pan out. All these sites use various kinds of Digital Rights Management -- DRM -- and formats -- MP3, WMA, etc -- which is going to make it hard for punters to use them on different gadgets (and even different desktop programs). Indeed, that's the point: As The Register rightly points out, these new players in the game aren't interested in getting into the music industry, they're interested in getting new customers to use their hardware, or, in the case of soft drink manufacturers, to buy their primary product.
There are privacy issues: who exactly gets to see your data? And then there's the money issue: how is Plaxo going to make money out of it? These sort of things worry folk: David Coursey, a columnist like myself but with more readers, trashes Plaxo, as does Mike in his excellent TechDirt blog. Plaxo was fine when people you knew added themselves and shared their info, but what happens, as Mike points out, when complete strangers do it? 
I started to get peeved when I noticed that insurance salesmen started adding their contacts to my Plaxo setup. Surely that couldn't happen? I thought folk needed permission to do that? I asked Plaxo about this a few weeks back and was told: "If you are a Plaxo user and someone sends you a Plaxo card, there is a link in the notification to add them to your address book. They are only added if you explicitly click on this link." But I'm not sure that's true. I'm a journalist so I've got a lot of people in my address book I couldn't identify in a police line-up, but I'm pretty sure I didn't let some of this pondlife into my Outlook. 
Bottom line: Plaxo need to address this and other issues before folk believe them. Sure, 800,000 people are using it in over 200 countries (how many countries are there? I thought it wasn't much more than that) but they'll leave in droves if they feel their privacy is being compromised.
Startup Inspector lists all these annoying programs, and will even try to tell you more about them than merely their name, via an online database of some 3,400 known programs. I have disabled about half of the programs that have loaded themselves uninvited and it definitely helps, even when you've got lots of memory to play with. They hog memory, but they also take time to load. Even sneaky little programs like RealNetworks' Tkbell.exe (a silly little reminder program) will try to reload itself automatically into your start-up queue whenever you use the RealPlayer (my advice: don't use it if you can possibly help it.)
Windows Startup Inspector is Freeware. If you like it you can make a donation to the author, through PayPal. Or you can buy his laptop, which he seems to be selling on eBay. Hard times for software authors?
Ratio of spam to email is 1 in 2.5 – up 77 per cent in 12 months
Ratio of virus to email now 1 in 33 – up 84 per cent
Basically, this means that virus writers are hijacking innocent computers and turning them into open proxies -- a sort of free sorting office for spam, churning it all and in the process hiding the original sender from anti-spammers.
Here's the link: Highlights of 2003 include Sobig.F breaking the world record in August to become the fastest spreading virus ever with one million copies stopped in a day by MessageLabs. MessageLabs also reckon that 66% of spam was coming from computers infected by viruses such as Sobig.F. At its peak, 1 in every 17 emails stopped by MessageLabs contained a copy of the SoBig.F. By December 1, more than 32 million emails containing the virus had been stopped by MessageLabs, putting Sobig.F at head of the Top 10 Viruses List for 2003.
The irony continues: Although the main download site is down, users can apparently still obtain copies via the Kazaa network: In other words, use the Kazaa program to find the 'illegal' version of Kazaa to download music (illegally).
What strikes me is on the discussion sites (here's Metafilter and Slashdot), you realise just how many other similar programs there are to Kazaa, or Kazaalite. I guess online music swapping in one form or another is going to continue as long as there are clever programmers out there.
Anyway, there are a lot of readers out there. A lot. Even since the last time I looked a few months back. I won't recommend one, but you should check out FeedDemon, NewzCrawler. But there are dozens more: Abilon looks cute, as does RSSNewsTicker, which is less of a reader and more of a ticker scrolling across your screen.
The creativity in the blogging and RSS field at the moment is extraordinary. Very impressive.
More on the Neistat Brothers and their complaint about an iPod battery. Seems there's something of a backlash brewing by folk who feel they didn't have much of a case. (beautiful website, that one, by the way).
At last, someone is doing something about spam. Part of the problem behind spam is that email allows sleazier folk to fake where the email is coming from (the 'From' part of the email's address fields, or header.) But if email didn't allow that, and authenticated a sender before passing it on to the recipient, you might kill off spam in a second.
Folks, my humble apologies to those of you who haven't received your blog update for a while. One subscriber alerted me to the problem and I believe I've fixed it. For those of you who haven't been receiving anything for a few weeks, I won't bombard you with back-issues, but please visit the site as, apart from a few days in October, it's been updated several times a day.
Interesting piece from the New York Times about Wi-fi for truckers. Turns out they like Wi-fi because it's spreading to truckstops and their "cabs are not only workplaces but often sleeping quarters as well".
The Recording Industry Association of America Inc is not letting up. IDG News reports that the RIAA is firing off a new wave of lawsuits and lawsuit-notification letters to users alleged to have illegally distributed significant amounts of copyright-protected music files online.
Got my first Mimail-L virus email this morning. The social engineering is excellent. The header looks credible, the subject and address line plausible and the email itself is readable, literate and, while pornographic, a compelling storyline. It also got past my Bayesian spam filter which is unusual.
billing.authorizenet.com
billing.spamcop.net
billing.carderplanet.net
billing.cardcops.com
billing.register.com
billing.spews.org
billing.spamhaus.org
Possible message texts:
Hi Greg its Wendy.
I was shocked, when I found out that it wasn't you but your twin brother!!! That's amazing, you're as like as two peas. No one in bed is better than you Greg. I remember, I remember everything very well, that promised you to tell how it was, I'll give you a call today after 9.
If you're trying to get more out of your PDA, phone, Treo or whatever, here's the blog for you: MobileWhack.
File sharers beware: there's nowhere to hide, even in supposedly 'anonymous' filesharing networks. The NewScientist.com news service reports that Japanese police have arrested two people suspected of distributing pirated films and computer games through a program called "Winny", which is meant to hide the identity of a user from everyone else on the network.
Diebold, the electronic voting company and the subject of a recent Loose Wire column, have confirmed that they've decided not to sue folk who published leaked documents about the alleged security breaches of electronic voting.
I've written before about how printer manufacturers gouge us by selling us cheap printers but expensive cartridges. But either I'm missing something or these guys won't stop at anything to make a bit more cash: I noticed for the first time yesterday that, with my HP DeskJet 640c, if I change the settings to print from colour to black (or vice versa) the software will automatically change my Draft output setting to Normal -- meaning I'll use more ink. Where is the justification for that? I can't think of any, but I bet I'm not the only one who only notices the change after I've printed a page or two -- if then. Sleazy.
Psst! Wanna buy the latest version of Windows, years before you're supposed to? Head off to Malaysia's Johor Bahru, where CDs containing software Microsoft has code named "Longhorn" are on sale for six ringgit ($1.58).
Seems the guys -- the Neistat Brothers -- who were complaining about not being to replace their iPod batteries without expensive customer support were wrong, and even the guy who hosted their video isn't happy.
Nice story by the New York Times' Rob Walker on the history of the iPod, two years old this month. I have to say after initial skepticism I'm a convert, whisking it around with me on forays to the jogging track, the pool, and the car. 
Further to my post about the war between a spammer and three Dutch bloggers, I've heard from one of the bloggers, Bas Taart:
Further to my column about e-voting a few weeks back, Diebold, maker of electronic voting machines, has apparently withdrawn its suit against an ISP and some individuals for posting leaked company documents about some of the problems with their system. 
A Segway rider in San Francisco hit a 3-year-old girl while riding -- illegally -- on one of the city's sidewalks, ABC reports. The man fled the scene (on his Segway). 
There's an interesting piece in Fortune, apparently, on how Google is a company "in disarray". 
I wrote a few weeks back in my column about how a village in Northamptonshire, England, overcame the failure of the national carrier, BT, to install broadband by building their own Wi-Fi network. Neighbouring villages have taken a different route.
Further to my previous post about DRM, or digital rights management, here's a story from IDG News Service about software that may allow Windows-using customers of Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes Music Store to break the DRM technology that protects files downloaded from that service.
For those of you interested in the debate about copyright protection for music (digital rights management, or DRM, as it's called) here's an interesting article from the industry point of view -- and a lively discussion on the lively Slashdot forum (some contributions are more, er, erudite than others).
If you need convincing that blogging is not some nerdy fringe activity, here's some: Iranian vice-president Mohammad Ali Abtahi is a blogger. 
My latest column (subscription only; very sorry) was about Microsoft Office 2003 and how, despite all the upgrades, a lot of old bugs never get fixed. That and why does every new feature appear to be more of a money spinning operation than a time saver?
More grim reports about how computers aren't doing what they're supposed to. BBC quotes new research that says computer systems at work are not working as they should, mainly because workers do not have enough guidance about technology, support staff are cut off from other staff and managers are "naive".
The old 'uns are getting online. Nielsen//NetRatings reports (PDF file) that senior citizens age 65 and older were the fastest growing age group online, surging 25 percent year over year in October 2003.
Sounds like an episode from Six Feet Under: the family of a deceased motorcyclist are suing a funeral firm after the dead man's cell phone started ringing - from inside the coffin.
Just when you thought it was over.... The Register reports that Test-Aankoop, the Belgian consumer watchdog that reported Nokia batteries as dangerous and then had it corrected, says Nokia still has a problem. The Finnish mobile phone maker cannot guarantee that its batteries are safe, because consumers cannot distinguish between original and non-original batteries, the watch dog says.
Microsoft is taking on Google, at least in its news. The New Scientist says Microsoft is testing a a news-gathering web site that tailors the stories selected to individual users. Once MSN Newsbot is fully functional, Microsoft says the site will personalise results within 10 minutes of a user starting to browse.
Here's more on the dangers of cellphones: the BBC reports that people who chat on their mobile phone while walking could be hurting their back, according to scientists at Australia's University of Queensland.
Good article on the health effects of using cellphones. The Sun Sentinel says the U.S. is preparing to launch an investigation into the matter, and quotes Gary Brown, an adjunct professor in technologies at Nova Southeastern University, as saying people don't realize the issue of cell phone safety has not been settled.
The kind of story I love: technology used to bring the oppressor to book. The Register reports that documents of the East German State Security Service (Stasi), torn into shreds and stored in 16,000 brown sacks, may soon be pieced together by a software program developed by the Fraunhofer Institute.
Nokia, hit by a recent spate of reports, from Vietnam to the Netherlands, of its batteries overheating and catching fire or exploding, says a follow-up test by a Belgian consumer watchdog had shown its own-made batteries were safe for use, Reuters reports.
A potential loophole in security for Bluetooth phones, which could see strangers hacking into your address books, has been uncovered. BBC reports that researchers have managed to steal information including address books and images from handsets by exploiting shortcomings in Bluetooth security.
Microsoft's Bill Gates has announced new junk e-mail filtering technology called SmartScreen. AP reports the technology will use algorithms to judge whether incoming e-mail messages qualify as junk e-mail and filter them out before they get to the end user's e-mailbox.
More music download site musical chairs: CNET Networks will buy MP3.com, one of the first online music services, from Vivendi Universal Net USA. AP reports that CNET, an online magazine/download site, will launch new digital music service launching next year.
Further to my recent column on e-voting in FEER and WSJ.com (my apologies; available on subscription only), the story continues. Avi Rubin, the Johns Hopkins University computer scientist who identified security lapses in the voting system Maryland is adopting appeared before state legislators in testimony that illustrates the issues involved, and entrenched positions of those trying to defend weak voting software.
Sometimes I wonder whether it's ever going to be possible to produce a watertight way of limiting access to digital music. Take Apple's very popular iTunes, for example. CNET reports that an independent software developer has created a program that lets users of iTunes for Windows grab song files from other people on a computer network, using a streaming feature already available in iTunes. The MyTunes software fits neatly into iTunes and, unlike Apple's software which makes no permanent copy of the song, captures that "stream" of music, making a copy that can be burned to a CD, uploaded to the Net or streamed to another PC.
Seems that Nokia may have been right about those exploding batteries being fakes. The Register reports that the Belgian consumer organisation which last week claimed that three Nokia batteries were unprotected against short-circuiting is to re-examine its findings. It seems that Test-Aankoop may well have been hoodwinked and tested fake Nokia batteries instead of the real thing.
Nokia has confirmed a story doing the rounds yesterday: that hackers have cracked the copy-protection codes for its newly launched N-Gage gaming device, allowing copied games to be downloaded over the Web, according to Reuters. 
It seems that there's a purpose behind the viruses we've all been getting: old-fashioned extortion. Reuters reports that extortionists -- many thought to come from eastern Europe -- have been targetting casinos and retailers, but one recent high-profile victim was the Port of Houston. The attacks, which can cripple a corporate network with a barrage of bogus data requests, are followed by a demand for money. An effective attack can knock a Web site offline for extended periods.
There's more spam-trojan-banking scams around: these are emails that look like legit communications from your bank manager. Australia is the probably source of a new one discovered in the last 24 hours, according to MessageLabs, which at least looks plausible because it says your credit application has been rejected. (I know the feeling.)
From: "Account Manager" <accounts_manager@citibank.com>
Subject: Re: Your credit application
Text:
Dear Sir!
Thank you for your online application for a Home Equity Loan. In order to be approved for any loan application we pull your Credit Profile and Chexsystems information, which didn't satisfy our minimum needs. Consequently, we regret to say that we cannot approve you for Home Equity Loan at this time.
hard copy by mail withing [sic] next few days.
Pop Up ads are doomed, now that Microsoft will make blocking them part of its browser, Internet Explorer. Explorer, ZDNet says, joins other web browsers by doing it, but because of its huge market share, it's likely to kill off the concept entirely. No bad thing, you may say, but it will also hit advertising revenues and may kill off more than a few ventures that depend on ads.
An interesting tale that is not that technology-oriented, but illustrates how stories now tend to unfold in real time, in front of everyone, leaving less and less wiggle-room for companies and institutions involved. Merriam-Webster, The Register says, is revising a web page for its online Collegiate Dictionary after a McDonalds executive complained about the inclusion of the word 'McJob'. The publisher, however, insists that the two events are not related, and says the word remained in the dictionary and would be restored online.
An Illinois lawsuit against a school district is bringing attention to the possible health effects of wireless networks. Wi-Fi Networking News takes a closer look at concludes that while a study used by the parents in the case "should certainly disturb those in the cell industry, it?s applicability to Wi-Fi is very very low."
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, Microsoft have got their eye on blogs, RSS feeds and all those things that we love down here at Loose Wire. Microsoft Watch reports a prototype of software code-named "Wallop" -- the company's foray into social-networking software. While part of the application is a blogging tool, it also includes Sapphire, technology for simplifying and unifying data storage/retrieval; Stacks, technology for organizing photos; Personal Map, technology for organizing contacts; and MS Connect and Point-to-Point, which show connections between people (via Active Directory), as well as between individuals and groups.
It never rains but it pours for Apple. Its stuff seems to be selling well, but it still seems to run into trouble. Britain's TV standards authority the Independent Television Commission has banned an ad for the the PowerMac G5 which claims it was "the world's fastest, most powerful personal computer". Viewers (well, eight of them) said it was misleading because the main claim was based on the results of limited tests in which the specification of the computers used was configured to give Apple the best results.
Sony is taking the route I (and I'm sure, hundreds of others) have been pushing for: offer the consumer a reward, or compensation, for going legit. But they still don't get it right. Reuters reports that Sony Music will introduce new CD technology in Germany that prevents users from copying songs to file-sharing sites, but allows them to make copies for their personal use.
Seems there's only room for so much porn. Offline, hardcopy pornography -- porn mags, to you and me -- is going the way of all flesh. AP quotes veteran pornographer Al Goldstein as saying he has "stopped publishing Screw magazine and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, giving him a chance to cut costs, relaunch the magazine and refocus attention on his Web site." 
A Belgian consumer watchdog reckons Nokia's claims that exploding batteries in their phones -- more than 20 cases this year, according to Nokia -- are non-original replacements is not necessarily true. Test-Aankoop, The Register says, claims that some Nokia batteries are also unprotected against short-circuiting.
Not the catchiest name, but Practisearch seems to do a lot of what the Google Deskbar does: Select the text you want to search, press a hotkey, and a Google web page will open already with the search results for that text. It also does other stuff. It costs $20. 
CNN reports that more than a million households deleted all the digital music files they had saved on their PCs in August, a sign that the record industry's anti-piracy tactics are hitting home. It quoted research company NPD Group as crediting the ongoing anti-piracy campaign by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and said publicity about the move led more consumers to delete musical files. In August, 1.4 million households deleted all music files, whereas prior to August, deletions were at much lower levels, according to Port Washington.
It sounds good in theory, but I have my qualms. Smartalec Internet Security Suite 2004 combines a firewall, and anti-worm block, and a spam blocker, all for $20. But when I click on the main link to buy it from their online website, Live Wire Media, I'm diverted to a website inviting me to get paid for doing surveys. Is this a mix-up, an elaborate scam, or is the company that makes Smartalec also on the other side of the spam business? I like to use software which isn't from the big boys, but nowadays it pays to check the provenance of even the most kosher-sounding programs.
If you're not a big user of Internet Explorer, Microsoft's browser -- and therefore no fan of Google's Toolbar -- you may be interested in their new Deskbar. 
The Federal Trade Commission has accused a California pop-up advertising company of digital-age extortion. MSNBC reports that D Squared Solutions allegedly hijacked Internet users' computers by bombarding them with Windows Messenger pop-up ads -- as frequently as every 10 minutes. The ads hawked $30 software that promised only to stop future pop-ups from the company.
I've not been keeping score, but more and more Nokia phones seem to be exploding. Another one did in Finland, The Register reports. Nokia has confirmed that it was one of its 3310 handsets equipped with a rogue battery which exploded and caused minor injuries to a woman in Finland yesterday.
Internet payment system Worldpay is under hack attack from unknown assailants, hitting thousands of online retailers around the world, the BBC reports. The company's payment and administration networks have been flooded with computer-generated requests, clogging the system and slowing transactions - also known as a "denial-of-service" attack. Worldpay is owned by the Royal Bank of Scotland Group. It has 27,000 clients around the world, ranging from heavyweights like Vodafone and Sony Music Entertainment to numerous small online retailers.
Microsoft is a mite upset, and is offering $500,000 reward to inform on the virus writers responsible for the Blaster and Sobig worms. (In August, if you recall, the Blaster-A worm infected many unprotected home and business computers, attempted to launch a denial of service attack against a critical Microsoft security update website, and, most importantly, mocked Microsoft chairman Bill Gates. The worm exploited a critical security hole in versions of Microsoft Windows. Just days later the Sobig-F worm, which spread on the Windows platform, bombarded email users around the world, clogging up email servers.)
Here's a new way of finding what you want to buy: Ask Jeeves. Ask Jeeves started out as a place you could ask normal questions ('How long is a piece of string?') and get answers that closely match your question, culled from the web ('Want to buy a G-string?'). At least that's been my experience. Still, it's sometimes useful. Now, its new Smart Product Search feature, Reuters reports, will help consumers find, price and compare products on the Web. 
If you've already upgraded to Microsoft Office 2003 (why, exactly?) there's an update you should download. This update, Microsoft says in its understated way, "fixes a problem that occurs when you try to open or to save a Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003 file, a Microsoft Office Word 2003 file, or a Microsoft Office Excel 2003 file that includes an OfficeArt shape that was previously modified and saved in an earlier version of Microsoft Office."
The document may be corrupted.
The document may open but with missing content.
You might receive an error message."
This whole online MP3 download service business is getting nasty. The Register reports that MusicMatch and Apple, once in cahoots, are now doing what they can to elbow the other off the stage. "Apple and MusicMatch are locked in a battle to see who can infect as many personal computers with DRM (digital rights management) as quickly as possible," The Register says. Good point: with different systems in place for managing the MP3s you download, users will find it hard to have two or more subscriptions to these services going at the same time. The upshot: whichever software you use will determine which subscription service you use.
Very interesting article from Fast Company on where blogging may be going: turning an individual into a virtual organisation and leveraging the Internet's natural community-building tendency to run it. The focus is the legendary Joi Ito.
Interesting discussion about Bluejacking -- the new craze whereby folk send messages to unsuspected cellphone/PDA users across the room -- on Slashdot. The impression I get is that parts of Europe have already been using the Bluetooth function on phones to spam other people for some time. One contributor says that in Copenhagen
Soon you can burn more than 8 gigabytes onto a DVD. Technology co-developed by drive maker Philips and media specialists Verbatim and Mitsubishi Kagaku, adds a second recording layer to a standard-thickness DVD+R disc The Register reports. That's enough for four hours of DVD-quality material, 16 hours of VHS-quality content or two hours' archive footage. The discs are playback-compatible with existing DVD players and DVD-ROM drives.
Apple are having a hard time of it of late. According to CNET hundreds of owners of Apple Computer's new 15-inch PowerBook G4 are complaining about an apparent design fault that causes white spots to show up on the notebook computer's liquid crystal display. 
Microsoft has launched new voice recognition and control software to allow mobile phone and handheld computer users to control most functions of their phones without fiddling with tiny controls. Microsoft Voice Command, Reuters reports, will be sold as a $40 add-on for the Windows Mobile Pocket PC software for PDAs and mobile phones, allowing users to call up a contact on a device by simply asking for a person's name. It will also launch applications, control phone functions and look up and read back calendar appointments.
If you're confused about the abundance of online music sites, here's a chart comparing what they offer, and what they lack, from The Philadelphia Inquirer.
If you start receiving weird messages on your Bluetooth-enabled phone (or, I guess, a PDA) from strangers, you've probably been Bluejacked. For more, read here. Nice. Although of course it's open to abuse so expect the vulnerability to be exploited by spammers, hackers and the marketing fraternity. 
Interesting piece on the downside of Amazon's new book-searching feature, launched last month, which allows customers to do a full-text search on more than 120,000 books. The Register reports that it has quietly disabled printing after researchers managed to print out 108 consecutive pages from a bestselling book.
Further to my posting about SpamCop, it seems that a new virus, actually a worm, is aiming at bringing down SpamCop and some other anti-spam sites. Is it more evidence of collusion between sleazy spammers and spotty virus writers?
It's not clear whether this is another salvo in the Spam War, but if it is, it's a novel one. A major anti-spam website, SpamCop, was taken off air -- by the registrar, SlashDot reports. Could it be a move by a spammer frustrated by the efforts of SpamCop to eat into their little game?
In the end this may be more important than anything else in the evolution of technology: information is growing very, very fast. The BBC quotes a study by the University of California, Berkeley that:
A story from Reuters that says one of the biggest hurdles facing RFID tags -- the widgets that store information about products -- is that they still aren't very good. "The tags fall far below the 99 percent reliability rate of UPC tags because of the difficulty of transmitting clean radio signals," the piece says.
I'm sure this is true in other part of Asia: The majority of Chinese computers are infected by viruses, according to a survey conducted by the public information network security supervision bureau of the Ministry of Public Security. CyberAtlas says 85 percent of computers in China were affected by viruses in 2003 - 1.59 percentage points higher than in 2002 and 25.57 percentage points higher than measurements in 2001.
Windows & .NET Magazine report that Microsoft have given some details about their next Windows XP update, called Service Pack 2 (SP2), which is due in the first half of 2004. Some important changes:
I've always thought this would be the way forward: fold out computers. Now IBM are onto it, according to ZDNet. 
A rose by any other name? CNET reports that Gator, the controversial advertising software and e-wallet company, has "changed its name to better reflect its business in behavioral marketing". The change, CNET says, distances the company from a name that has become synonymous with "spyware"--that is, ad-tracking software that can be installed surreptitiously.
Microsoft must be rubbing its hands with glee. Mac users are reporting a major problem with Apple's new operating system, Mac OS X 10.3, better known as Panther: it erases data on external drives. For many this is fatal, Wired reports, since many Mac users backed up their files to an external FireWire drive before installing the Panther upgrade. In some cases, the glitch erased files on the main machine and the external backup.
One in the eye for the printer manufacturers: IDG reports that a ruling this week from the U.S. Copyright Office could have broad effects on the market for low-cost, third-party printer cartridges.Lexmark is suing manufacturer Static Control Components (SCC) of Sanford, North Carolina, which makes computer chips for third-party ink cartridges. Lexmark says SCC's chips contain copyrighted Lexmark computer code and consequently violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) ban on circumventing digital technology that protects copyrighted material.
Hard times for Bloggers Like Us: MicrosoftWatch reports that a temp worker, Michael Hanscom, has become the first Microsoft employee to lose his job over his blog. But, as with all these cases, it gets murkier the more you look at it. Hanscom doesn't believe it was the act of blogging, per se, that led to his firing but for taking a photo inside the company, and possibly revealing information in his blog about his work. The irony: Microsoft is busy encouraging its own employees, as well as others working with its products to blog. Here's a list of them.
Here's an example of RFID -- the intelligent radio tag technology -- used without people's permission to do something a tad scary. The Singapore Straits Times reports (no link available as yet) today that a local start up, Tunity Technologies, installed a tracking system using RFID that would pinpoint every delegate's physical position at the recent Global Entrepolis@Singapore expo at Suntec City venue -- in real-time.
Hitachi today is now shipping one-inch diameter drives storing 4 gigabytes with a a data transfer rate that is 70 percent faster than the previous-generation Microdrive. Hitachi reckons it's the "world's smallest hard disk drive", weighing just over a half an ounce and equivalent in size to a matchbook.
Hitachi will continue to offer its current 1GB Microdrive to customers throughout the world and is planning to introduce a 2GB version of the Microdrive later this year. The company expects the new 4GB Microdrive 3K4 to be available on retail shelves in major markets this November for about $500.
Interesting article by Reuters' Franklin Paul on the death of the PDA (no link available, I'm afraid). "The truth is, the PDA as it was first envisioned - as nothing more than a fancy digital pocket organizer - may be nearly extinct," he writes. Three years ago, consumers rushed to buy PDAs, but "today, its the mailroom guys and soccer moms who are toting handhelds, and the slick executives carry new wireless devices that look more like cell phones, or thin notebook computers able to link to high-speed web access at various business sites."
British users are finding broadband isn't all it's cracked up to be, if it means confronting spam and other detritus of the Internet. According to a report by the iSociety project at The Work Foundation to be launched today: "Ordinary people are promised that broadband makes the internet better; in fact it sometimes leads to a disaster on the desktop which makes people consider stopping using the net altogether."
Aaron Heskel from Belgium suggests Agnitum's OutPost as an alternative to ZoneLabs' ZoneAlarm firewall. I'll definitely check it out. 
Is this some kind of joke my jetlagged brain doesn't get? Trawling through my inbox of press releases (a glamour killer of a chore if ever there was one) I came across one suggesting I Do My Part in Reducing Online email Spam!
Trend Micro today released PC-cillin Internet Security 2004, the latest version of an antivirus program that I have written fondly of in the past. There don't seem to be any new bells and whistles this time around, but then again it doesn't really need it: Internet Security includes a personal firewall and "advanced privacy and spyware protection to protect passwords, bank account numbers, and other personal information". It also blocks spam and inappropriate (adult) Web sites. It sells for $50 which will get you a year of updates. 
I'm now back on a reliable Internet connection so expect loose wire blog updates shortly. My apologies for the gap.
I kinda liked this correction from online survey/ratings firm Nielsen//NetRatings:
Emusic.com, the pioneer among online music sites, has been sold, and, more importantly, is scaling back its service. It's still the only service offering downloads in the standard MP3 format, still has the best selection of independent labels, but is now owned by Dimensional Associates LLC, a private equity group, but has limited its main subscriber base, paying $10 a month, to no more than 40 downloads a month.
Folks, this blog won't be updated as regularly as usual as I'm on the road. But here's something for those of you who either bought the Logitech io digital pen, or were thinking about it: a free software update that includes handwriting recognition, meaning you can search through everything you write -- before you could do so only through text that you had entered into fiddly little boxes. You can also convert handwritten stuff to digital text.
AP is reporting that not all products that flaunt the latest version, USB 2.0, are as speedy as consumers might expect. It turns out that while a growing number of devices feature USB 2.0, some actually transfer data at the slower speed of its predecessors -- i.e. 40 times slower than they should. Also, there's a significant difference between "full-speed" and "hi-speed" USB 2.0. 
All you need to do to be infected by this virus is visit the homepage of Web hosting provider FortuneCity.com. CNET reports that a malicious program, dubbed QHosts, infects PCs using a recent flaw in Microsoft's Internet Explorer to take control of how computers look up Internet addresses. The program takes advantage of a critical flaw in Internet Explorer , which Microsoft has made an integral part of its Windows operating system. The Trojan horse used a banner ad that the attacker somehow placed there to install the Trojan horse on the user's PC.
I haven't tried this but it sounds a great idea: The Easy Bee is software that automates Web navigation tasks and builds aggregated pages with always up-to-date Web extracts. The Easy Bee lets you create Web agents?Honeybees?that will periodically navigate, extract and aggregate for you any web content, even web pages that require form filling and button clicking. What you end up with is a page of all the bits and pieces from the web that you need, be they newsfeeds, stock quotes or whatever.
More on disguised branding, this time with newspaper-related sites. Steve Outing points out on Poynter that newspapers are putting up bloglike sites to appeal to the younger crowd, while playing down the site's connections to the owner. Steve cites the Arizona Daily Star's AZNightBuzz, where "there's no indication on the home page that the site is connected to the newspaper, even on the About Us page".
The free, open source Office suite, OpenOffice, is now officially into version 1.1, including enhancements such as "revolutionary" XML file format, one-click PDF (Adobe Acrobat) export and Macromedia Flash export for presentations and drawings, according to The Register. 
On the heels of its launch of fresh handhelds, Palm has launched some new accessories, including a wireless keyboard, multifunction stylus, six cases, a camera card, handheld device protection units and complete accessory kits.
It's about to get tougher for hackers and virus writers, or at least for those who get caught. TechNews.com reports that those convicted will soon will face significantly harsher penalties under new guidelines which focus on the harm caused. Hackers, for example, will face up to a 25 percent increase in their sentences if they hijack e-mail accounts or steal personal data -- including financial and medical records and digital photographs. Convicted virus and worm authors face a 50 percent increase.
Clearly there is no ?marketing gimmick? or concealed identity and by no means do we want there to be. Further to my posting about AkibaLive, and my comments that it was a marketing tool masquerading as a blog, here's the owner's reply (I won't post his earlier message, since as he says, it was "fired it off in a state of unexpected agitation"):
A Singapore company has just launched what they say is a technology that will change the way which we compress, store and distribute digital content. MatrixView says that, compared to existing compression solutions such as JPEG and MPEG that are based on complex and predictive techniques to eliminate redundant data (JPEG is a widely used format for storing pictures, MPEG for video), its Adaptive Binary Optimisation (ABO) does not eliminate data. "On the contrary, it achieves significantly higher compression ratios by value-adding to data in such a way as to permit superior speed and security without data degradation." 
The email contains a graphic which is designed to look like "text" with a hyperlink - but is actually a mime part that has a gif. Clicking on the graphic causes you to jump to a web page purportedly from ebay. It disguises the fake web page using hex encoding of parts of the URL so that when the user opens the web page with a web browser, it apppears to be from scgi.ebay.com, but they don't observe that the real site is at 211.217.224.10 on port 4901. If you click on the email, it sends you to: <scgi.ebay.comindexupdateyourinformationsecure@211.217.224.102:4901/check1/index.htm> What's unbelievable is that it the scammers attempt to get: - Your ebay userid and password This is clearly a very well orchestrated attempt to fraudulently obtain banking information as well as ebay account info. You should alert people to it ASAP. Thanks, Syd. Definitely these scams are getting better. My advice: never trust any email that asks you to do anything, unless it's to call your mother more often. Sydney Low from anti-spam service AlienCamel warns of a new take on the email scam which tries to get you to hand over all your personal details. This one, which has been reported in a couple of places elsewhere, is worth repeating here to show how realistic these things are.
- Your name
- Your date of birth
- Your US Social Security number
- Your Credit card number
- Your Expiration date
- Your credit card's verification code
- Your ATM PIN number
From the About Time Dept comes news that Microsoft realises the whole 'issue a patch to cover a hole, knowing only a few people actually download it' approach may be, er, flawed. CNET reports that Microsoft plans next week to outline a new security effort focused on what the company calls "securing the perimeter". Details are thin, but appear to involve a deeper relationship with firewall providers.
Online porn is big. Really big. According to figures collected by CyberAtlas:
It's now pretty clear where this Instant Messaging thing is going, and why Yahoo and Microsoft have suddenly started blocking third parties from piggybacking their services. Microsoft have announced a hook-up with news agency and financial data transporter Reuters allowing users of the Messenger network to chat with the 50,000 members of Reuters own internal network (used mainly by traders).
From the guys who make the excellent Diskeeper ("set and forget") defragmenter software comes an interesting utility that "allows a user to retrieve and recover those files that belong to him without special configuration by the System Administrator". There's a home version too. I haven't tried it but if Diskeeper is anything to go by, it's worth a try.
Virus writers are getting smarter. It's official. The latest bi-annual Internet Security Threat Report from Symantec found that 64 per cent of all new attacks targeted vulnerabilities less than one year old. The Blaster worm, for example, appeared only 26 days after the vulnerability it exploited was announced, according to The Register.
As threatened, Palm have released new models: the Tungsten T3 handheld, "for the most demanding professionals who need a best-in-class colour and wireless handheld", the Palm Tungsten E handheld, for "cost-conscious professionals who need premium power and performance". 
Further to my earlier posting about marketing masquerading as blogs, here's some mail from Brooklyn reader Sam Bailey:
At first glance AkibaLive looks like a cool new blog on Japanese gadgets. But it's not. It's a marketing gimmick by Dynamism.com, "the leading U.S. retailer of next-generation electronics from Japan and around the globe". The press release says it all: "Retailers have yet to leverage the targeted, personal impact blogging has on consumers," it quotes Douglas Krone, founder and CEO of Dynamism.com, as saying. "The collaborative nature of this technology makes blogs ideal for customer relations, and promotional and advertising initiatives. It's a smart way to attract and provide value for the technophiles that make up our business."
A positive early review of Musicmatch's new online music store, from Paul Thurrott of WinInfo Update. "Musicmatch Downloads also has some unique advantages over competing services, such as higher-quality downloadable songs," he says. Musicmatch Downloads currently offers more than 200,000 songs for download, and the company says that more than 500,000 songs will be available by the end of the year. Like the competition, the Musicmatch service doesn't require a subscription fee.
A few folk have written in to my column asking how they can fight back at spammers. Here's one tale that offers hope. Wired reports the saga of graphic artist Andy Markley who found himself the victim of a major spammer who sent thousands of spam messages carefully crafted to appear as if they had originated from Markley's domain. His ISPs didn't help, so he took matters into his own hands, tracking down the spammer and getting him booted off his ISP.
More on the health effects of handphones, this time for 3G: Reuters quotes a Dutch government study that found users exposed to base station signals "felt tingling sensations, got headaches and felt nauseous". There was no negative impact from signals for current -- i.e. GSM -- mobile networks.
Pointed out by my old friend Robin Lubbock, here's an excellent essay by Dan Gillmor on the self-righting Internet community, where one bad turn is usually overwritten by several good ones. He makes some sharp comments on the VeriSign 'domain-stealing' controversy, which I haven't touched on in this blog. The bottom line: there are some pretty awful people out there, but they usually get drowned out by the decent folk. Long may it last.
Riding on the success of Apple's iTunes, Musicmatch has announced its own digital song-selling business, according to CNET. The service has access to songs from five major labels and more than 30 independents, with pricing set at 99 cents per song and $9.99 for most albums. 
A wonderful innovation with Opera's browser was the mouse gesture, where you could, for example, return to a previous page by holding down the mouse button and moving the mouse a little to the left. Intuitive and seriously time-saving. Now Internet Explorers have the same feature, courtesy of a bit of freeware (software you don't have to pay for) from UnH Solutions. 
Spammers may be using viruses to attack their enemies. Further to my column on how virus writers and spammers may be in cahoots to deliver spam, The Register reports that anti-spam activists have produced fresh evidence that recent assaults -- called Distributed Denial of Service attacks, or DDoS, -- on their websites have been enabled by the infamous Sobig worm.
Seems like the IM wars aren't over yet. Further to my postings about Yahoo and Microsoft Messenger apparently blocking third party chat aggregators like Trillian, seems the latter's patches don't seem to be enough to keep folk connected. CNET reports that Yahoo has begun blocking Cerulean Studios' Trillian software from communicating with its own instant messaging software as part of its plan to limit third parties from piggybacking on its service.
Another Blaster suspect has been arrested. Prosecutors refused to release any information about the suspect, not even the youth's gender or home state, AP reported. The variant the juvenile allegedly created was known as "RPCSDBOT."
These days the Internet reads like a bad movie script. Reuters reports that security holes in Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser have been exploited by hackers to hijack AOL instant messaging accounts and force unsuspecting Web surfers to run up massive phone bills. Some Internet Explorer users are also finding that malicious Web sites are secretly slipping trojan programs onto their computers, according to eEye Digital Security, which discovered the original security vulnerability. Such stealth programs can include keystroke loggers that record everything a person types or software to erase the hard drive, among other things.
Matterform Media, who make anti-spam software for the Mac, have said that October 1 their Spamfire will be available for Windows. Matterform Media's Spamfire for Windows is available at a suggested retail price of $39.95, which includes one year of automatic filter updates at no additional charge, and is available for immediate download from the company's website, www.matterform.com.
A blow for Segway, the Human Transporter scooter stand-up thingy, which is being recalled after it was found that riders might fall from the device as the batteries are drained of power. The recall, ITWorld reports, affects about 6,000 two-wheeled units sold between March 2002 and September 2003. The Manchester, New Hampshire, company has received three reports of incidents related to this problem, including one person who endured a head injury requiring stitches after falling off , the CPSC said.
Warning of a new computer worm, this time from South Korea. Yonhap reports Friday that W32/Smess.worm, BadTrans, appears attached to an instant message in MSN's instant messenger service. The worm is a mutant version of another worm called Sinmsn, which was detected last July.
One of the authors of the security paper (PDF file) that said Microsoft was a threat to national security has been fired, according to CNET. Cambridge, Mass-based @Stake, where Dan Geer worked as chief technical officer, said in a statement Thursday that the researcher had not gotten his employers' approval for the study's release, and that he was no longer associated with the company. Although independently financed and researched, the study was distributed by the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), a Washington-based trade association largely made up of Microsoft's rivals.
Nokia are blurring the line between phone and other kinds of accessory with their newest releases. Gizmodo reports on a bunch of new products, including the 7600 Imaging Phone (which is a WCDMA/GSM phone with a 65,000 color display, Bluetooth, and a built-in digital camera), and a new line of "Imagewear" products for displaying and viewing digital photos, including two medallions with tiny LCD screens, two digital picture frames, and a digital photo kaleidoscope. 
Amazingly, Palm are releasing another batch of Tungstens. It seems only yesterday they were doing the same thing. (Actually it was two months ago.) Anyway, The Register got a scoop by scanning local stores' websites, which mistakenly posted details of the products before their October 1 release date.
A longish piece from Slate on our old friends RFIDs -- Radio Frequency Identification Devices -- which are feared and admired for their ability to hold all sorts of data about what you're doing, buying, washing or eating. Earlier this month Hitachi announced the release of a tiny wireless ID chip that can be "easily embedded in bank notes."
From Estonia comes news that the guys behind file-swapping legend Kazaa are launching an Internet phone service they claim could put traditional phone companies out of business. AP says the service, called Skype, purports to offer free, unlimited phone service between users with sound quality near to existing phone lines. 
For file searching and indexing fans, X1 is about to release version 3.0 (probably on Monday). And it's not going to be in a free version anymore. This from Mark Goodstein: "Version 2.0 will remain free (the non-Pro version of the product) but there will no longer be a free component of version 3.0. We decided we were simply giving away too much (and we have starving children and pets, as a result). So if you've never paid for X1 and don't intend to, don't upgrade to version 3.0, just stay with version 2.0."
Some of the U.S.' main technology security experts -- including author Bruce Schneier -- today issued a report warning that computers and critical technological infrastructure worldwide are increasingly vulnerable to attack because of the security practices and dominance of Microsoft software in desktop computing. As a result of Microsoft's concerted effort to fortify and expand its monopolies by tightly integrating applications with its operating system, and its success in achieving near ubiquity in personal computing, our computer networks are now susceptible to massive, cascading failures, the report stated.
Apparently one of the reasons your Bluetooth gadgets won't work well with each other is that they might be fake. Bizarre? Yes! True. Possibly. According to NewsWireless, over 50% of Bluetooth equipment on sale in the UK is counterfeit, according to a survey. And that figure is set to rise. The group that sets Bluetooth standards says that by year end, as little as 15% of the "Bluetooth" equipment on sale in retail outlets may be genuine. 
And more on the growing pains of technology and journalism from Poynter: "Chi-Chu Tschang, a Chinese journalist who worked for the Bloomberg news service, was fired because of statements made on his personal Weblog. Tschang is not the first journalist to experience troubles because of his personal Web site. A long-time writer at the Houston Chronicle was fired for what a Chronicle editor called "gonzo journalism" on the reporter's personal Web page, and a columnist at the Sacramento Bee must now obtain an editor's approval before posting his blog."
More from Poynter Online on the rise of photo phones: In the first six months of this year more camera phones were shipped than digital cameras. And folk are using them: Poynter says "photo phones have begun to change the traditional journalism style and now more people are able to get involved in the news-telling process." An example:
Email spam may be the least of our worries. According to Forrester Research there will 100% compound annual growth in enhanced message services, multimedia message services, instant message services and e-mail using next generation phones in 2004 and beyond. Much of this, according to it- analysis, will be little more than spam. Although the article (which looks like it's been edited by a chimp) doesn't have much else to say, that's a scary thought in itself. (I can't find the actual Forrester report.)
AP reports that Taiwan has sent a formal letter to rival China asking for help in tracking down computer hackers who allegedly sent a virus to a Taiwanese software company.The letter alleged that on Sept. 2, Taiwan-based Eha Technology Ltd. received e-mail that contained a virus, said the Straits Exchange Foundation, a semiofficial organization that handles Taiwan's relations with China. The e-mail came from four Web sites registered in the Chinese provinces of Fujian and Hubei, the foundation said. The Web sites were stockfound.com, Lsaeraid.com, Feeledu.net, memoryfree.com, according to the foundation's letter.
AP reports that the State Department's electronic system for checking every visa applicant for terrorist or criminal history failed worldwide for several hours late Tuesday because of a computer virus, leaving the U.S. government briefly unable to issue visas. The virus crippled the department's Consular Lookout and Support System, known as CLASS, which contains more than 12.8 million records from the FBI, the State Department and U.S. immigration, drug-enforcement and intelligence agencies. Among the names are those of at least 78,000 suspected terrorists. There was apparently no backup.
Good piece by the BBC on how micropayments may not be taking off online, but are with handphones. "While many of us are happy to use a credit card online, spending tens, hundreds, and occasionally thousands, of pounds, parting with just 50p is less common." Despite the lack of any common system for micropayments, the BBC says, "spending via mobiles is starting to take off, albeit only for extra mobile phone content."
From the Useful Research Dept comes a report that narrow exits may be safer. Nature magazine says that research indicates that, faced with a narrow door, mice form a kind of queue and make a relatively orderly escape. Wider doors cause the animals to block one another, making their getaway sporadic and inefficient. Escape is also erratic when there are several doors, as crowds around one can obstruct the next.
An independent reviewer of anti-spam tools I hadn't heard of called Spamotomy has awarded its highest rating ever for a desktop anti-spam product to InBoxer from Audiotrieve, which I also haven't heard of. And I thought I was on top of the whole spam thing. 
I guess it's not a particularly liberal view of the Internet, this wondrous playground where everyone can find what they want and access it, but it's probably inevitable: some high-volume users are going to find their usage curtailed. CNET reports that some cable Internet service subscribers are quietly capping the volume of downloading they allow their subscribers to do. So far, it's only affecting the heaviest users.
Salam Pax, the Baghdad Blogger, is bringing out a book. 
This from Graham Holliday, a Mac user, on some Mac alternatives to what I've been discussing in previous weeks:
Canada seems to be getting into SMS/texting, call it what you will. Next week Toronto's Café Havana will host the country's first text-messaging party ('Text And The City') as part of a (somewhat belated, I can't help feeling) awakening of the potential for SMS. According to the Toronto Star, SMS volumes still don't compare to Europe (or Asia, I'm assuming) but they're picking up. 
Novel approach to handphone keypads: Intel's Fastap keypad fits 26 letters alongside the numbers on a handset, doing away with the need to press keys several times to scroll through the letters associated with each number. Here's what it looks like, courtesy of the BBC: 
Something I've often wondered about: why is a 20 gigabyte hard-drive actually only 18.6 GB? Some folk in LA are not only wondering, they're suing. The Register reports that US PC users have banded together to protest against "deceptive advertising" of hard drive capacity by filling a lawsuit against the world's biggest computer manufacturers. The lawsuit objects to the notation used in describing the capacity of hard disk drives in manufacturers' promotional material. For example, a "20 GB" hard drive would only have 18.6 GB usable capacity, the complaint maintains.
The Swen Worm is turning out to be a nasty one. It can execute code automatically, it looks like a genuine Microsoft email and it randomizes itself, making it hard to identify. TechNewsWorld reports the worm, also known as "Gibe" or its more technical name of "w32.swen@mm," takes advantage of a well-known vulnerability in Internet Explorer that was first announced in March 2001. A software patch and removal tools for affected Windows systems are available, but because of its persistence -- the worm infects via e-mail or network sharing automatically -- it may be difficult to eliminate. Most of those infected are home users.
Another unique feature of Swen is its ability to communicate with a Web site that keeps track of the number of computers it has successfully infected. As of late Friday afternoon, the counter was up to more than 1.5 million infected computers.
MessageLabs, the email security company, are warning of a new virus, called variously Gibe or W32/Swen.A-mm. Initial analysis would suggest that this strain is a mass-emailing virus, and is similar to the earlier Gibe strain of viruses, however, there latterly may be sufficient differences to give rise to a new family and further analysis will be required.
Some file names appear to have random letters in their filename, and others may include the following, in some cases with numbers appended): Install.exe, Patch.exe, Update.exe, upgrade.exe, q433137.exe, q478121.exe, q489667.exe, Q653143.exe, Q734269.exe, q762531.exe, Q818418.exe, Q944661.exe, q963681.exe.
From the Simple But Useful Dept comes news of software from China that helps you back up drivers -- software needed to run hardware -- so if something goes wrong, you don't end up rummaging through old CDs, cardboard boxes or floppy piles to find the right driver. Driver Magician can also back up and restore more items such as My Documents folder, Desktop, Registry, Internet Explorer favorite folder, Outlook Express mail files, Outlook Express mail rule, Outlook Express mail accounts and Outlook Express address book. Full version costs $25.
