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Atari Online News, Etc. Volume 12 Issue 28
Volume 12, Issue 28 Atari Online News, Etc. July 9, 2010
Published and Copyright (c) 1999 - 2010
All Rights Reserved
Atari Online News, Etc.
A-ONE Online Magazine
Dana P. Jacobson, Publisher/Managing Editor
Joseph Mirando, Managing Editor
Rob Mahlert, Associate Editor
Atari Online News, Etc. Staff
Dana P. Jacobson -- Editor
Joe Mirando -- "People Are Talking"
Michael Burkley -- "Unabashed Atariophile"
Albert Dayes -- "CC: Classic Chips"
Rob Mahlert -- Web site
Thomas J. Andrews -- "Keeper of the Flame"
With Contributions by:
Fred Horvat
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=~=~=~=
A-ONE #1228 07/09/10
~ Atlanta Has Bad Honor! ~ People Are Talking! ~ Firefox 4 Betas!
~ North Korea Off Hook? ~ Google, China Unsure? ~ GeoCities Going!
~ Newspapers Seek Profit ~ Google Back in China! ~ Gmail Gets Fancy!
~ Prince: The Web Is Over ~ Paper-reading Faster! ~ Spam Like Vuvuzelas!
-* Hot Topics Fuel Malware Flame *-
-* Interpol Asks Web-Surfers To Help! *-
-* New Internet Sales Tax Bill Is Introduced! *-
=~=~=~=
->From the Editor's Keyboard "Saying it like it is!"
""""""""""""""""""""""""""
There are heat waves, and then there are HEAT WAVES!! So far, the past six
days here in my area have been in the 90's. Not just 90 or 91, but mid to
upper 90's, with at least one of those days hitting 100 degrees! Working
outside in that heat (and humidity!) was a challenge. Fortunately, we were
spared somewhat, by working part-days. In part it was for our health, but
also because to protect the golf course and the machinery - that much heat
takes a toll on that stuff also. It's been a long week, and, again, I'm
exhausted.
So, it's late, as usual for me at the end of the week. I just don't have
the energy to do much more than finish putting this issue together and get
it out at a reasonable timeframe. No commentary again this week,
unfortunately. So, as I seek some refuge with some air conditioning, I'll
let you all seek your mode of relief, and enjoy this week's issue.
Until next time...
=~=~=~=
PEOPLE ARE TALKING
compiled by Joe Mirando
joe@atarinews.org
Hidi ho friends and neighbors. First of all, let me apologize for missing
last week's issue.
Unfortunately, my laptop was acting up and kept me from being able to get
a column done.
It's back up and running now, but the keyboard was, for lack of a better
description, useless. It seems that I'm somewhat hard on keyboards. I must
pound on them a lot harder than I realize, because I usually get about a
year out of a keyboard before I have to replace it. Yes, that's right, i
replace the keyboard on my laptop. I've actually gotten pretty good at it.
I can remove the old keyboard and replace it with a new one in about 6
minutes.
Basically, the problem this time was the spacebar. Sometimes it took 2 or
three 'thumps' to get a space, and sometimes I would get two or three
spaces from hitting the spacebar once.
So I did what any geek would do... fired up my browser and searched eBay
for a replacement.
I got burned the last time I had to find a replacement keyboard for the
laptop. I found one, either bid on or bought it outright after comparing
the picture, description and part number of the keyboard offered. I
waited patiently for it to arrive, opened the bulk-rate shipping envelope
when it arrived... and found that it was the wrong keyboard. Very wrong.
It was simply not what was pictured or described or promised. Whoever
packed up the thing must have just plain grabbed the wrong one and not
known any better.
I emailed the seller and pointed out that it was the incorrect item,
hoping to get the thing straightened out quickly.
"No problem," they said, "just mail it back to us with postage to cover
the new shipping, and we'll get it resolved as soon as we receive it".
I was stunned. I re-emailed the company, asking if I understood them
correctly. Did they really expect me to pay not only shipping costs to
return to them the incorrect item that they sent me, but also shipping
costs to actually GET the correct one? Yes, they explained. Shipping costs
were not covered under their return policy, and since my purchase was for
the price of the item PLUS shipping, they felt that shipping should be
paid again. Shipping each was cost almost as much as the new keyboard
(they're cheap, mass produced things, and the big cost is usually
installing them in the laptop case, but since I've done it a couple of
times before..), and I wasn't about to end up paying almost twice the cost
of the item for shipping just to fix their mistake. So I kept it. I still
have it somewhere, as a matter of fact, if you're interested. I even tried
re-selling it on eBay, but had no takers.
So this time, before I ordered or bid, I emailed the company (a different
company) and asked them not only what their return policy was but gave
them the specific example and asked how they would handle it. "Oh," they
replied, "we would send you a 'call tag' with the new keyboard and you
could just send the incorrect one back to us without having to pay for
it".
Yay! Right answer! So I ordered. I even received it in good time, having
installed it yesterday in plenty of time to get my column out of the
way... I thought.
Actually, there WAS one snafu. The keyboard connects to the main board of
the laptop with this little plastic connector. You know the kind. The
connection is a silk-screened piece of plastic and at the end of that
there is a plastic connector that fits into another connector on the
motherboard.
Well, that connector was not supplied on the new keyboard. Damn. I went to
the website and checked... sure enough, although it wasn't mentioned in
the description, the picture of the keyboard clearly showed a 'bare' piece
of plastic with the conductors 'painted' on it.
Okay, my bad. So I grabbed the old keyboard, since it was useless anyway,
and tried to carefully remove the hard plastic connector. Damn. I broke
the tabs that hold the two parts of the connector together. Well, I
pressed on anyway. I was able to insert the mylar strip into the connector
and close it around the thing until two drops of that instant glue stuff
(yes, I'm avoiding brand names here) effectively fused the two halves
together forever. I took a deep breath and inserted the keyboard side of
the connector into the MoBo side of the connector and held the breath as I
'flipped the switch'.
It fired up and everything is lovely again... for now. Until my incessant
hammering on the keyboard ruins this one too. Maybe by that time I'll be
able to afford a new laptop instead of a $14.00 replacement keyboard. Who
knows? Stranger things HAVE happened, and laptop prices HAVE been coming
down as their abilities have been catching up quickly with desktop
models. I even read recently that laptop sales either HAVE or WILL top
desktop sales for the first time ever. Pretty cool stuff. Who would have
thunk it during the old days of the STacy? I certainly wouldn't have.
Well that's about it for this week, friends and neighbors. I think that
next week I'll probably have to tell you about my latest foray into the
dark, strange world of medical treatment (nothing serious, but I DO have
some observations to make). Until then, keep your ear to the ground, your
shoulder to the wheel, you back against the wall and your eye on the
horizon... and see if you can get any work done THAT way. [grin]
So until next week, just keep your ears open so that you'll hear what
they're saying when...
PEOPLE ARE TALKING
=~=~=~=
->In This Week's Gaming Section - New PS3 with Bigger Memory!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" Bye-bye Trolls?
Blizzard Retracts Policy!
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE's Game Console Industry News - The Latest Gaming News!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Sony To Introduce New PlayStation3 with Bigger Memory
Electronics giant Sony said Tuesday it will introduce an upgraded
PlayStation 3 videogame console in Japan at the end of July, with a bigger
memory and a new white version on offer.
The company will sell a 160-gigabyte model for 29,980 yen (341 dollars),
the same price at which the Tokyo-based company had previously offered
its 120-gigabyte console, it said in a statement.
It will also introduce a 320-gigabyte model for 34,980 yen. Both models
will be available from July 29 in Japan. Sony did not indicate worldwide
release plans in the statement.
The move comes amid heightened competition between Sony and gaming rival
Microsoft, with both giants looking to release motion-sensing
controllers later this year in response to the runaway success of
Nintendo's Wii.
PlayStation Move wands will hit the market in time for the year-end
holiday shopping season in the United States.
The devices let PS3 play be controlled with swings, jabs and other
natural movements instead of toggle-and-button commands that have been
trademarks of play on PS3 and rival Xbox 360 consoles by Microsoft.
Microsoft's Kinet technology will use a 3-D camera and gesture
recognition software to let people play videogames using natural body
movements instead of hand-held controllers.
Bye-bye Trolls? Blizzard Forums To Use Real Names
Activision Blizzard Inc.'s move to require people to use their real names
if they want to post messages in online forums for games is the latest sign
that online anonymity is falling out of favor with many companies.
The upcoming change has upset many gamers who prize anonymity and don't
necessarily want their gamer personas associated with their real
identities.
Blizzard, the maker of "World of Warcraft," said Tuesday that the new
rule will go into effect later this month. It will apply first to forums
about the highly anticipated "StarCraft II," out July 27; other games
are to follow.
Blizzard hopes that making people use their real names will cut down on
nasty behavior in the forums and create a more positive environment.
Players will have the option - but not a requirement - to display the
name of their main game character alongside their real name.
Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information
Center, said Blizzard is the latest company to require real identities.
But he added businesses have "a lot of freedom" in doing so.
Facebook, the world's most popular online social network, asks users to
sign up with their real names. The company tries to delete fake profiles
it comes across. A growing number of blogs and news sites are also
abandoning anonymity. The Buffalo News said last month it will start
requiring commenters on its website to give their real names and the
towns they live in, just as they would do in a printed letter to the
editor.
Online games are among the last truly anonymous frontiers. As such,
Rotenberg called Blizzard's decision a "bit of a sad day" in the world
of gaming.
"Part of the fun of the online gaming would was the sense that you could
construct a character different form who you were in the real world," he
said.
"World of Warcraft" has more than 11.5 million subscribers who pay
monthly fees to play the game worldwide.
Under Pressure, Blizzard Retracts Real ID Policy
Whether gutsy, forward-thinking, or just plain scatterbrained, Blizzard's
plans to force you to use your real name when posting to the company's
official forums have been shelved just three days after the company
announced them.
In a forum statement dispatched this morning (Friday), Blizzard CEO Mike
Morhaine explained that the company had listened to player feedback (broadly
negative) and reconsidered the matter internally.
"As a result of those discussions," wrote Morhaine, "we've decided at
this time that real names will not be required for posting on official
Blizzard forums."
The response was instant and overwhelming: Hundreds of kudos, ranging
from enthusiastic thank-you's to grateful albeit more reserved
acceptance. While the former were unreservedly jubilant, the latter seem
to view Blizzard's move as temporary damage control after the original
decision on Tuesday triggered waves of caustic disdain.
"You should never, ever place much trust in a corporation," wrote one
user of the course reversal. "It's a purely business relationship (at
least for them) and it always will be."
"They're not changing [the name display policy] for now. They might in
the future. They can't deliver in absolutes because no company is stupid
enough to give absolutes."
"What baffles me is that they thought we wanted this garbage in the
first place," wrote another, likening the issue to simple misguidance.
"I do have [F]acebook and I use it sparingly to keep in touch with a
couple of my friends from college and the like.
"I do not use it to keep in touch with my gaming friends. I use...games
and Ventrilo to keep in touch with my gaming friends. Duh, Blizzard, duh."
Real ID will remain an optional feature on the gaming side, as
planned, wrote Morhaine. It's already live in World of Warcraft, and the
same opt-in system will grace StarCraft II's interface when Blizzard's
sci-fi real-time strategy game launches later this month.
Specifically, when the new StarCraft II boards go live, Morhaine says
you'll post with your StarCraft II Battle.net character name plus character
code, not your real name, as previously planned. The same will apply to
Blizzard's Cataclysm forums when they launch in tandem with the upcoming
World of Warcraft expansion.
While that solves Blizzard's suddenly unpleasant image problem, it's
probably not the end of it. "Over time, we will continue to evolve Real
ID on Battle.net to add new and exciting functionality within our games
for players who decide to use the feature," wrote Morhaine.
Translation? Rule nothing out, long term.
=~=~=~=
A-ONE's Headline News
The Latest in Computer Technology News
Compiled by: Dana P. Jacobson
Interpol Asks Web Surfers To Help Catch Fugitives
International police agency Interpol on Monday urged Internet users to help
track down hundreds of fugitives wanted for murder, rape, child sexual
abuse and other serious crimes.
The round-up operation was launched on May 3 targeting 450 people either
convicted or suspected of serious offences and wanted by, or believed to
be located in, 29 countries.
More than 100 fugitives have already been arrested or located worldwide,
the agency based in the French city of Lyon said in a statement.
The arrests included some high-profile suspects such as former Colombian
model Angie Sanclemente Valencia, caught in May in Argentina where she
is wanted for drug-trafficking, and Mouamba Munanga from the Democratic
Republic of Congo, wanted by France and Bahrain for counterfeit currency
and money-laundering, who was picked up in South Africa on June 16.
"The operation has been very successful in locating and arresting a
large number of these targets, but what we are now left with are the
cases where we have no new information on their whereabouts, which is
why we are asking for the public to help," said Martin Cox, assistant
director of Interpol's Fugitive Investigative Support (FIS) unit.
Interpol has released to the public pictures of 26 fugitives to back its
appeal for help from Internet users, especially on social networking
sites and chatrooms.
"It is more likely that someone will recognize one these fugitives from
a social networking site or a chatroom than spotting them walking down
the street," Cox said.
But he added: "No matter how a member of the public has the information,
we would ask that they pass it on."
Information on the whereabouts of the fugitives or any internationally
wanted person can be sent to fugitive@interpol.int, or be given
anonymously to national Crime Stoppers programmes or via
www.csiworld.org.
US Largely Ruling Out N. Korea in 2009 Cyberattacks
U.S. officials have largely ruled out North Korea as the origin of a
computer attack last July that took down U.S. and South Korean government
websites, according to cybersecurity experts.
But authorities are not much closer than they were a year ago to knowing
exactly who did it - and why.
In the days after the fast-moving, widespread attack, analysis pointed
to North Korea as the likely starting point because code used in the
attack included Korean language and other indicators. Experts now say
there is no conclusive evidence that North Korea, or any other nation,
orchestrated it.
The crippling strikes, known as "denial of service" attacks, did not
compromise security or breach any sensitive data or critical systems.
Officials and experts say the agencies are better prepared today. But
they acknowledge that many government and business sites remain
vulnerable to similar intrusions.
The incidents underscore the increasing threats posed by computer-based
attacks, and how they can disrupt service as well as inflame political
tensions.
Pinpointing the culprits for such attacks is difficult or even
impossible, officials say. Some suggest the July 4 weekend attacks a
year ago may have been designed as a political broadside.
These officials point suspicions at South Koreans, possibly activists,
who are concerned about the threat from North Korea and would be looking
to ramp up antagonism toward their neighbor. Several experts familiar
with the investigation spoke on condition of anonymity because the
results are not final.
According to U.S. officials and private computer analysts, the attacks
were largely restricted to vandalizing the public Web pages of about a
half dozen federal agencies, including the Treasury Department and the
Federal Trade Commission. About three dozen other sites were targeted,
including some private companies and a number of South Korean government
sites, which reportedly had the most damage.
While the questions of who did it and why are unanswered, many
investigators and experts now do not consider it a critical case.
"It's about as frightening as someone driving around the block blowing
their horn a lot," said James Lewis, cybersecurity expert and a senior
fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "A lot of
people could have done it, and it doesn't leave a lot of clues to their
identity."
To Don Jackson, director of threat intelligence for Atlanta-based
SecureWorks, a computer security consulting company, "it's a dead end as
far as who did it. I don't think we've ever gone past that."
Those responsible, he said, "pulled it off so well, managed it so well -
this was someone who has experience at running these types of attacks."
Jackson, whose company was among several private firms that studied the
codes after the attack, said one possibility is that hackers in South
Korea were the culprits.
South Korean sources had a mission and may have "wanted someone blamed
for it," said Jackson. "It would further the point that North Korea has
elite squads" of hackers targeting Seoul.
South Korean officials have pointed to North Korea as the suspected
assailant, and experts agree that it is within the North's abilities to
wage cyberattacks. More recently, however, a government-run website in
South Korea was hit with a similar - although smaller - denial of
service attack that officials said was traced to China.
"There are a number of national intelligence agencies who are creating
cybercapabilities. It's a natural area of exploration," said retired
Gen. Wesley Clark. "I wouldn't underestimate North Korea's potential in
this space."
Denial of service attacks, Lewis said, don't leave detailed forensic
clues that a more directed intrusion, such as an effort to breach a
sensitive government program, might leave.
Still, officials worry that even a large, well executed attack against
critical controlling computer servers could interrupt service if
directed at a power company or utility. A strike could disrupt financial
markets if directed at Wall Street or hinder travel if aimed at
transportation sectors.
Those systems tend to be more heavily protected. But an attack against a
bank's website could prevent customers from having online access to
their accounts and prevent them from paying bills. Such attacks can
prove lucrative as an extortion tool, when hackers take down popular
gambling sites and demand payment to end the disruption.
Despite the lack of a clear culprit, there are things investigators do
know about last year's denial of service attack.
The malicious computer code was distributed through nine main control
servers in four countries. It fanned out to infect about 60,000
computers around the world. Those computers - likely on the desktops of
innocent victims - were linked together in what is called a botnet, and
they flooded government websites with traffic, knocking them offline or
slowing them down over the Independence Day holiday weekend.
Altogether, 43 sites were targeted, and the size of the attack suggested
it required several people to carry it out. While some Treasury, FTC and
State Department sites were slowed or shut down by the software attack,
others such as the White House and Department of Homeland Security were
able to fend it off with little disruption.
Other targets included Nasdaq and New York Stock Exchange, Voice of
America, U.S. Postal Service, and Amazon and Yahoo.
Government officials and analysts say there has been some improvements
in dealing with future strikes. Private contractors, such as the web
hosting giant Akamai, has a redundant system that will move government
sites to other servers if one is seeing an unusual or massive flow of
traffic.
Agencies are now better prepared.
But, Jackson said, "as far as any better capability in tracking down
actors or in attributing attacks to any individual or group, I don't
know that we're any further along. I would seriously doubt it."
Natural Disasters and Global Warming Fuel the Malware Flames
Malware and spam developers understand that the easiest way to lure a
user into clicking on a link, opening a file attachment, or reading a
message is to target hot topics that those users are already interested
in and discussing around the proverbial water cooler. AppRiver, a
provider of e-mail and Web security solutions, has compiled a report
based on the first half of 2010 analyzing the current threat from malware
and spam, and highlighting the opportunistic nature of the attacks.
In general, people are good. They want to contribute, and offer support
in a crisis to help their fellow man. Sadly - and ironically - nobody
understands the altruism and caring of the population better than the
minority that would rather exploit it and capitalize on events for a
quick profit.
One of the easiest targets for spam and malware is natural disasters.
When events like the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, or the massive
volcano eruption in Iceland capture the headlines, people are curious
about the details and anxious to offer support in any way they can. In
the wake of such disasters, users are very likely to click on and
respond to invitations that seem even remotely legitimate.
AppRiver reports that within days of such events malware and spam
threats begin to rise. AppRiver found 419 phishing scams purporting to be
charities seeking donations for natural disaster victims, as well as
attackers using spam and Web links targeted at keywords related to the
disaster to siphon money and spread malware.
Unless you consider the noise pollution of the vuvuzelas, the FIFA 2010
World Cup tournament is not a natural disaster. Still, a global event
focused on the most popular sport in the world (outside of the bubble of
the United States at least), with an expected audience of 30 billion is
simply too enticing for malware developers to pass up. Fans eager to follow
the spectacle are gullible targets for World Cup-themed attacks.
Another popular theme that attackers appear to have targeted is global
warming. Everyone else is "going green", so why not malware? Attackers
launched a spear phishing campaign targeted at companies involved in cap
and trade programs to steal carbon credits. It is estimated that
attackers stole as many as 250,000 carbon credits valued around $4
million.
The AppRiver report explains "The emails pretended to be from the German
Emissions Trading Authority who is responsible for handling the
implementation of emissions trading as per the Kyoto Protocol.
Recipients were told that they needed to re-register their accounts with
the Agency and when they did, the attackers gained complete access to
these accounts."
One thing seems consistent throughout the AppRiver report: attackers are
opportunistic. Whether its natural disasters, global sporting events,
tax time, or the death of a celebrity, attackers will take advantage of
current events to greatly increase their odds of success.
Obviously, companies should have security measures in place to identify
malware threats, weed out unwanted spam e-mail, and generally guard
against cyber attacks. But, IT administrators should also be aware of
breaking news, and prepared to be more vigilant in detecting and blocking
threats related
to major events.
Atlanta Has Dubious Honor of Highest Malware Infection Rate
New York and Los Angeles are major metropolitan areas with exponentially
larger populations than most other US cities, so they lead the way for
total volume of malware infections. If you break the infection rate down
per capita based on population, though, Atlanta comes out on top (or is
it on the bottom?) of the heap with the highest malware infection rate.
map displaying the infection rate in cities across the United States. If
you are looking to establish or relocate a business, perhaps you should
consult the map first to avoid regions that seem more prone to malware
infection.
"Malware makers are becoming more and more sophisticated, and the risk
they pose to your computer and your valuable personal information is
growing," says Enigma Software Group CEO Alvin Estevez. "We think it's
important to keep an eye on where the malware is doing the most damage
and our Malware Tracker map helps us and consumers know what's going on."
The Enigma Software Group map shows overall malware infection rates, but
also allows you to drill down by specific malware threats - displaying
results specific to the top 10 current malware threats. According to a
statement from Enigma, it "recently pulled a 30-day history of infections
in the 100 largest cities in the United States. Not surprisingly, New York
City had the most infections - because New York has the most computers.
But when the number of infections was factored in as a percentage of a
city's population, New York ended up near the bottom of the list and
Atlanta, Georgia came out on top."
Birmingham AL, Denver CO, Chesapeake VA, and Madison WI round out the
top five worst cities. On the other end of the spectrum, Jersey City, NJ
has the lowest per capita malware infection rate, followed by Santa Ana
CA, Detroit MI, Boise ID, and Memphis TN.
So, is there something special about Jersey City, NJ that makes it
impervious to malware attack? Is there something insidious about Atlanta,
GA that invites malicious software infections? Or is it purely random
chance?
I asked Estevez for additional insight related to these findings, and he
responded to say "It's impossible for us to guess why any particular
city is at the top or bottom of the list at any given time. But one
thing we DO know is that any time you have a city with high Internet
connectivity and a large population of younger people, the internet
traffic is higher and so is the risk for malware infections. Atlanta is
a well-connected and relatively young city (the average age of its
citizens is five years less than the national average)."
Perhaps areas with greater Internet connectivity and younger populations
are also more involved in the world, and more likely to respond to scams
and malware attacks exploiting natural disasters and other global
catastrophes to steal identities and compromise PCs.
Based on that analysis, it seems that there is no need to choose a city,
or shy away from a given region based on the malware infection rates.
However, analyzing the malware infection rate for your area may indicate
an increased need to improve malware defenses and provide additional
security awareness training for users to protect company computers and
network resources from suffering the same fate as the rest of the area if
your business is located in a region with a notably high per capita
malware infection rate.
Google's China License Problem Remains Unresolved
After five days of waiting, Google is still in the dark about whether
the company's operating license in China will be renewed.
As of Monday morning, Beijing time, the search engine giant had yet to
hear back from the Chinese government regarding the license, said
Jessica Powell, a Google spokeswoman.
The license, which is issued by the Chinese authorities, is necessary
for Google to continue operating its China-based Web site, Google.cn.
But tensions between the company and Chinese officials have put the
license's renewal in doubt.
In March, Google decided to stop censoring the results to its Google.cn
search engine by shutting the site down. All internet traffic from the
site was then redirected to Google's uncensored Hong Kong search engine.
The move quickly angered Chinese officials, who demanded that the
company comply with Chinese laws that require companies to censor search
results.
Now, with Google's operating license up for renewal the company has
decided to take a step back from its previous actions in a bid to comply
with government demands. Last week, Google.cn was restored as a "landing
page," where users are given a link to the company's Hong Kong page
rather than automatically redirected to it.
Since Google's license went up for renewal last Wednesday, the company's
web search services have also been partially blocked in China. Google
Suggest, a feature that provides probable search terms when user types
their query, continues to be blocked, Powell said.
Google Wins Permission To Keep Website in China
Google won permission Friday to maintain its website in China and keep its
toehold in the world's most populous nation after bowing to pressure to
eliminate a virtual detour around the country's online censorship
requirements.
Entering search requests at Google.cn from within mainland China now
requires an extra click, a change made last week to appease communist
regulators. Users who click anywhere on the page are then taken to a site
based in Hong Kong, which isn't subject to Beijing's censorship rules.
Since March, Google had been automatically rerouting search requests
from the mainland to the Hong Kong service.
The small concession was enough to persuade China's regulators to renew
Google's Internet license for at least another year, the company said.
There was no immediate statement on the website of China's Internet
regulator, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
It's the latest twist in a diplomatic dance that's been unfolding since
Google vowed in January to end its four-year practice of omitting search
results that the Chinese government considers subversive or
pornographic. Google reversed course after blaming Chinese computer
hackers for an attack aimed at stealing the company's technology and
e-mail information from human rights activists.
As soon as Google published a Jan. 12 blog post publicly challenging
China's censorship polices, "it became clear that Google.cn could never
operate the same way again," Internet analyst Scott Kessler of Standard
& Poor's said.
Even if Web surfers in mainland China click on Google.cn to get to the
Hong Kong search engine, China's government can still block results by
using technology controls commonly known as its "Great Firewall."
Google and the Chinese government have been trying to uphold their
conflicting principles while protecting their economic interests.
Google Inc., based in Mountain, View, Calif., wants to remain in China
because the country is expected to be an Internet gold mine for decades.
China's government seems to realize losing a technology powerhouse would
be a setback in its effort to cultivate more innovation and raise its
citizens' standard of living.
The latest compromise threatens to curtail Google's growth in China
simply because it requires hundreds of millions of users to take an
extra step to get to Google's search engine. The single additional click
could diminish traffic and send Web surfers to more convenient options,
such as the homegrown Baidu.com.
If that happens, Google will have fewer opportunities to show the ads
that bring in virtually all its revenue.
Still, investors were relieved that Google get did not get kicked out of
China's rapidly growing Internet market. Google shares edged up on the
news, gaining $10.93, or 2.4 percent, to close Friday at $467.49. The
stock remains down by about 25 percent so far this year, partly because
of fallout from the company's stand against China's stringent censorship
rules.
Google already has been losing ground in China. The company's search
market share in China now stands at about 30 percent, down from roughly
35 percent at the end of last year, according to the research firm
Analysys International. Baidu's share has risen slightly to about 60
percent.
China is not yet a big moneymaker for Google, accounting for an
estimated $250 million to $600 million of Google's projected $28 billion
in revenue this year.
But China is expected to become far more lucrative as its economy
matures and even more of its population comes online. Susquehanna
Financial Group analyst Marianne Wolk believes Google could be pulling
in $5 billion to $6 billion annually from China's online advertising
market just four years from now if it can manage to keep its market
share in the 30 percent range.
The makeover of Google.cn is bound to hurt the company, but "it's a
sacrifice well worth making if it means they can stay in China," Kessler
said.
Google's ambitions in China extend beyond Web searches. The renewed
Internet license, set to expire in 2012, means Google can continue
offering music, language translation and shopping-comparison services
throughout the Chinese website. The company also is trying to get a
license for an online mapping service and is hoping to build up its
mobile phone business in China, which has been derailed in recent months.
Motorola Inc. had replaced Google services with rival offerings from
Baidu, and Google postponed the launch of two phones that were supposed
to rely on its Android software.
But all of Google's peripheral services could suffer if its main traffic
magnet, the search engine, loses its allure in China.
Ad spending will shift to Baidu and other Chinese sites, predicted
Vincent Kobler, managing director of EmporioAsia Leo Burnett, an ad
buyer for a list of customers that includes Marriott International. He
said the firm was recommending clients switch to Baidu.
"Even last year, before this crisis, Baidu always was in a stronger
position," Kobler said. "In terms of media buying, customers in general...
are still more comfortable with Baidu."
For Beijing, the renewal tones down a high-profile dispute at a time
when American and European businesses are complaining about unfair
treatment by the government and saying China has become less
accommodating to foreign businesses.
Renewing Google's license "was a smart move on the part of the Chinese
government to kind of defuse the situation," said Paul Denlinger, an
Internet consultant for startups. He doubts the friction between Google
and China will disappear but thinks it will dissipate for now.
New Internet Sales Tax Bill Is Introduced
Federal officials keep trying to chip away at the longstanding rules
that have prevented online shoppers from paying sales taxes for
purchases made online and out of state.
The latest effort, CNET reports, comes from Democratic Rep. Bill Delahunt
of Massachusetts. He wants to rip out the framework of mail-order sales
taxes as we know them and replace it with a new one.
Delahunt isnt just looking to relax the anti-tax sentiment on the Web,
he pretty much wants to rip the whole thing out altogether. The latest
version of his Main Street Fairness Act - just introduced formally - would
essentially establish a national sales tax collection system, using a 2002
Act called the Streamlined Sales Tax Agreement to simplify the convoluted
system of state, county, and city taxes that every physical retailer has
to collect.
CNET says 24 states have signed on to the Streamlined Sales Tax Agreement,
and brick-and-mortar retailers including Wal-Mart, Target and IKEA have
rallied behind Delahunts attempts to normalize online and offline sales.
This issue, shockingly, has been in front of lawmakers since 1992, when
the Supreme Court first decreed that states cannot levy sales taxes on
operators that arent physically located there. This has led to some nasty
skirmishes between various states and larger online retailers - most
notably with New York's attempt to collect sales tax from Amazon.com after
arguing (successfully) that the companys affiliate sales (by individuals
who put up virtual stores to sell goods via the Amazon website)
constituted a physical presence. Amazon responded by canceling the
affiliate accounts of everyone in the state - and two other states that
tried the same trick.
Delahunts bill is far from becoming a law. Stay tuned as it winds its way
through Congress which may be not be very far, as the bill currently has
zero Republican support and little more from a cash-strapped populace.
Mozilla Releases First of Firefox 4 Betas for Testing
Mozilla has launched an early beta of the Firefox 4 browser and plans to
release further betas for testing every two to three weeks. The goal,
Mozilla said, is to improve the development process by receiving
feedback from developers quickly and getting fixes and changes tested
earlier than in previous Firefox development cycles.
"Firefox 4 beta 1 includes dozens of major features and improvements,"
wrote Firefox Director Mike Beltzner in a blog. "By testing them early,
we'll be able to respond to your feedback for future versions."
The most noticeable improvement to Firefox 4 has to do with the look of
the browser. "We moved the tabs to the top to make it easier to focus on
the web content and easier to control the tools in your web browser,"
Beltzner wrote. "Also, if you have Windows 7 or Windows Vista, the Menu
bar was replaced with a single Firefox button so you can get to the
most-used options with just one click."
The other big visual change is the addition of support for the new
HTML5-based WebM video format being championed by Google. "If you're
part of the YouTube HTML5 beta, WebM videos should play pretty well,"
Mozilla blogger Christopher Blizzard wrote.
What's more, Mozilla's initial Firefox 4 beta integrates strong support
for hardware-based video acceleration. "If you're using HTML5 video and
you go full screen, we'll use OpenGL on Macs or Linux and DirectX 9 on
Windows to accelerate video rendering," Blizzard wrote. "If you're on
Windows 7 or an updated Windows Vista, we also have full support for
D2D-enabled rendering."
These changes are welcome improvements and part of the heated-up browser
war, noted Al Hilwa, program director of applications development
software at IDC.
"While browsers themselves are free to consumers, they have become
money-making gateways to the Internet, and, as gatekeepers, browser
vendors stand to gain financially by charging for routing to search
engines and other potential sites," Hilwa said. "Mozilla makes quite a
bit of money out of Google, which explains why Google is so eager to be
a leader in the browser space itself."
Hilwa expects that all browsers will implement the WebM video standard
within a year. "But it may take another three to five years for users to
be on the latest browser releases, so the journey to standardize the
video inside of HTML is just beginning," he said.
Under the hood, Firefox 4 integrates a new add-on manager that provides
users with more space to handle add-ons, themes and plug-ins. Developers
also will be able to build Firefox add-ons more quickly using the new
Jetpack SDK to safely connect to existing libraries using js-ctypes.
With Firefox 4, users will no longer have to restart the browser in
order to install a new add-on or recover from a crash. "When a plug-in
crashes or freezes, you can resume browsing by simply refreshing the
page," Beltzner wrote.
Firefox is known for its add-ons, where it has established one of the
richest environments for new capabilities, positioning it as a platform
unto itself, Hilwa noted. "We are seeing these HTML extensions and apps
becoming important for browser vendors because it creates stickiness
with users," Hilwa said. "Safari is building a more robust extension
system as well."
Future beta releases of Firefox 4 will enable users to synchronize
settings, passwords, bookmarks, history, open tabs, and other
customizations across multiple devices. Mozilla also expects to add
"support for a JavaScript-driven full-screen API for video," Blizzard
wrote.
Newspapers Look for Ways To Profit in Internet Age
Newspapers worldwide are being forced to reinvent themselves for the
Internet age - and will be watching closely the success of two experiments
launched in London, analysts say.
Suffering a long-term fall in sales and a collapse in advertising revenue
as the world goes online for its news, the press has for years been
scrambling to decide how to respond.
In Britain, Rupert Murdoch's Times and Sunday Times finally went ahead
from Friday with their long-promised plan to start charging readers for
online access to their journalism, the first non-specialist papers to do
so here.
The move comes after the less expected news last week that London's
city-wide daily, the Evening Standard, hopes to break even after turning
itself into a freesheet for commuters, ditching its 50 pence cover price.
That decision cut the paper's distribution costs from 30 to four pence
per copy, and sent readership soaring from just over half a million to
1.3 million, its new Russian owners said last week.
"The industry is still at a very early stage of this rapid evolution
forced on it by digital technology," Karin von Abrams, a senior analyst
at eMarketer, told AFP.
"The game clearly has changed for most old business models, but we don't
yet know what the successful new ones are going to be."
For newspapers, one model to study is that of the freesheets.
The Metro, a free morning paper available at train stations and on
public transport in 16 British cities, is read by more than 3.5 million
people every weekday, according to the National Readership Survey (NRS).
Owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust, it relies entirely on
advertising revenue.
Over the past seven years it has consistently performed well, even
making an operating profit through the worst of the economic crisis, to
the envy of the traditional dailies.
More recently, the Evening Standard was a well-established but
loss-making London evening paper until its new owner, Russian tycoon
Alexander Lebedev, bought the paper in 2009 and turned it into a freesheet.
Access to commuters seems to be a key to the success of the free model.
The Metro, the Standard and the City AM, another successful but smaller
London freesheet aimed at business people, are all handed out near tube
and train stations.
This saves on costs. And with the demise of two free evening rivals last
year, the morning and evening papers have something of a captive market.
This, of course, appeals to advertisers.
"Giving away print works if the free circulation is relatively high and
there is a good advertising base for the printed version.
"It is easier to gain advertising in print than online and the prices
are higher," Professor Robert G. Picard, a media economics expert from
Sweden's Jonkoping International Business School, told AFP.
"The Evening Standard model has shown that the freesheet model is well
worth exploring," adds George Brock, professor and head of journalism at
City University London.
"But it's not right to assume all newspapers can perform the same
trick," he told AFP.
He points out that freesheets don't have high editorial costs: they
don't invest in lifestyle features, foreign correspondents or business
experts. "That wouldn't keep a general newspaper competing," he told AFP.
So if free print is not the answer, should newspaper websites follow
Murdoch's lead and retreat behind a paywall?
"News Corp has no more idea than the rest of us if this is going to
work," says Brock, who believes it will take months to gauge the
reactions of readers and journalists to the paywalls.
Eventually though, analysts agree most newspapers will have to find a
way of making money from their websites.
Business paper The Financial Times makes readers pay for online content,
while the Wall Street Journal - also part of Murdoch's media empire -
is currently the only major US paper charging readers for full access
online.
The New York Times announced in January that it would start charging for
online content in early 2011.
"It does seem that many serious news sites will follow Murdoch's lead
and charge for their content, or at least establish some kind of content
menu, allowing readers to choose from a range of one-time charges,
subscription periods and so on," predicts Abrams.
"This is not very expensive to institute, and so can be tried
experimentally."
Brock, too, is in favour of a pick and choose model. His advice to the
embattled newspapers industry is to "get into a charging experiment" to
discover what works and what doesn't.
"Newspapers need to experiment aggressively, they need a way of getting
people to pay for the value they're getting," he says."
For Picard, this means offering the readers something unique.
"Paywalls will only work if the news and information behind the wall is
not available elsewhere for free - such as television, radio, free
papers, or the Internet - or if it is of such high quality or adds
services not available in print versions," he concludes.
Reading On Paper Is Faster Than iBooks on the iPad
It will take you longer to read a book on an iPad or Kindle compared to
the printed page, according to a recent study. Dr. Jakob Nielsen of the
Nielsen Norman Group - a product development consultancy that is not
associated with Nielsen, the metrics company - compared the reading times
of 24 users on the Kindle 2, an iPad using the iBooks application,
a PC monitor and good old fashioned paper. The study found that reading
on an electronic tablet was up to 10.7 percent slower than reading a
printed book. Despite the slower reading times, Nielsen found that users
preferred reading books on a tablet device compared to the paper book.
The PC monitor, meanwhile, was universally hated as a reading platform
among all test subjects.
Nielsen's findings were based on the performance of 24 users who "like
reading and frequently read books." The subjects each read different
short stories by Ernest Hemingway on all four platforms, and were
measured for their reading speeds and story comprehension. Overall, it
took each user an average of 17 minutes and 20 seconds to read a story
regardless of the platform and comprehension levels were virtually
identical on all four reading formats. However, Nielsen says the printed
book was the clear winner in terms of speed. Users were reading 6.2
percent slower on an iPad compared to paper, and 10.7 percent slower on
the Kindle 2. Nielsen did not provide any statistics on the reading
time for the PC monitor.
Interestingly, Nielsen's results appear to show that reading on the iPad
is significantly faster compared to the Kindle 2. But Nielsen was quick
to dismiss this conclusion arguing that the reading speeds between the
two devices were "not statistically significant." "The difference
[between reading times on the iPad and Kindle 2] would be so small that
it wouldn't be a reason to buy one over the other," Nielsen wrote.
The study also asked each user to rate how they liked each format on a
scale of 1-7. The iPad, Kindle 2 and printed book were nearly tied at
5.8, 5.7 and 5.6 respectively, while the PC monitor ranked last at 3.6
points. The test subjects said that reading on the PC felt too much like
being at work, while they found it more relaxing to read a printed book
than on an electronic device.
So it appears technology hasn't quite figured out yet how to replicate
the experience of the printed page. That said this study leaves a lot to
be desired owing to its small test group size, but it would be
interesting to see a similar study on a much larger scale. I'd be
curious to find out, for example, if there's any big difference in
reading speeds based on age groups.
Would people in their 20s read faster on a screen than a book since
they've spent a majority of their lives consuming digital content? How
would the younger group compare to people in their late thirties and
early forties who also grew up with electronic devices such as the
Commodore Vic-20, the original Mac and IBM clones?
This study also left out reading on a laptop, which is a far more mobile
reading experience than a desktop PC and could therefore be more
enjoyable. I'd also like to know if the iPad would remain a faster
reading experience than the Kindle in a larger study. On the one hand,
the iPad can render a new page faster than the Kindle, which could
account for the uptick in speed. But you would think the Kindle's
ability to closely mimic the printed page, thanks to its e-ink display,
would bring its reading speeds closer to the traditional book.
Regardless of how fast people can read on an electronic device, the
e-reader is becoming more popular every year. E-books raked in $313
million in 2009 growing by 176.6 percent compared to 2008 overtaking audio
book sales. In 2010, e-book sales are currently growing at a rate of 217.3
percent versus 2009, according to estimates by the Association of American
Publishers.
GeoCities is Shutting Down
The 90s are over. Like, really over. Even more over now than they were
a week ago. Back in April, Yahoo! Inc. - owner of the once-very-popular
Web-hosting site GeoCities - announced it would shut GeoCities down on
Oct. 26, annihilating 15 years of personal Web sites made by millions of
people all over the world. This was 90s Internet history, a time when
the Internet wasnt as sophisticated and hadnt yet begun to ruin whole
industries. GeoCities represented an era; amateur designers and avid
hobbyists and Internet enthusiasts made Web pages that, compared with
today, were primitive, endearing and earnest. Unless the makers of these
sites made copies of or signed up for Yahoo!s paid hosting service, all
of that history seems to be gone.
GeoCities was one of the first, and one of the most popular, free
Web-hosting services on the Internet. Begun in 1994, the site was
originally called Beverly Hills Internet, but was renamed GeoCities in
1995 for the way the sites under its domain were organized into
neighborhood directories. Hollywood was for sites centering on movies and
entertainment. EnchantedForest was for kids stuff, NapaValley was for
wine, Wellesley for topics relating to women, Petsburgh for pets, Area51
for science fiction and fantasy, and so on.
Because of the neighborhood thing, GeoCities users became known as
Homesteaders, and there were a million of them by 1997. Many pages were
shrines to various cultural niches, with rudimentary, cartoony and
chintzy designs, graphics and fonts. Other pages dedicated content to a
specific subject, like speaking the Hawaiian language, or 20th-century
Polish history. And many others were personal profiles and portfolios,
with kind of a MySpace feel to them: rants, blogs, pictures, interests,
etc. These sites took, like, minutes to load; the MIDI computerized-music
files and bouncing animated GIFs were hilarious, but
broadband-challenging.
Dan Flynn, from Franklin, Mass., was a GeoCities user in high school.
Flynn is an illustrator for Soup2Nuts, a production company in Watertown,
Mass., and his high-school GeoCities account was a collection of the
drawings and artwork he worked on as a teenager.
"I remember GeoCities back in the 90s, when you had to code everything
yourself," he wrote in an e-mail. "And you couldnt just make a domain
name yourself. You had a page of house icons, and each house would be
occupied by someone - and you had to skim through dozens of pages
until you came across the inevitable house for sale, where you could
set up your own Web page. Good times."
In 1999, Yahoo! bought GeoCities and screwed a bunch of things up. They
changed the terms of service, declaring themselves sole owners of all
GeoCities user-generated content, but later modified those terms when
Homesteaders revolted. Then in 2001, Yahoo! implemented a monthly limit
on data transfer, which basically meant that if too many people logged
onto your site within a month, your site would stop working, unless you
upgraded to a paid account. By this time, GeoCities was losing steam,
and around 2003, many users sites had stopped working, having been
forgotten, retired or abandoned for newer technology.
Its not hard to believe GeoCities stopped making any money. It slipped
into technological obsolescence at least five years ago. With Facebook,
et al., and with significant improvements in, and higher expectations
for, Web design, GeoCities is irrelevant, ugly and limiting, and
requires some basic knowledge of code. (Compare it with a site like
Tumblr that requires virtually no knowledge of code at all. All you do
is plug in your e-mail address and password, then pick a template - you
look like a pro.) GeoCities got old and became high-maintenance.
Imagine if you got an e-mail tomorrow that said in six months your
Facebook account would totally evaporate unless you started paying for
it. As it is right now, every time Facebook modifies its home page,
people start freaking out and joining One-Million-Strong-Against-Facebook
groups. If Facebook shut down, thered be bloodshed.
David Deyette, an East Hartford 26-year-old who started his GeoCities
site when he was 17, was concise in his thoughts about the shutdown.
"Its clearly the end of an era," he wrote in an e-mail. He has
nostalgia, but "it is the sort reserved for Surge [soda] or Spider-Man
Unlimited. In a way, one has to be glad its all gone," he wrote. Like
Deyette, many are eager to have this proof of their adolescence
eliminated and safe from Googles search crawl.
Clive Thompson, who writes frequently about Internet culture and trends
as a columnist for /W//ired/ and a contributing writer for the /N//ew
York Times Magazine/, said in an e-mail that what interested him about
the shut-down is the way it "highlights the weird differences between
computer memory and human memory." The second we begin to remember
something, it immediately becomes faded or altered or distorted as time
goes on and we retread our memories.
"Digital memory, in contrast, is absolutely perfect, a pristine copy of
information," he wrote. "[E]xcept when it fails, it fails catastrophically:
Either the disk corrupts and you cant read it, or somebody just decides to
shut it down or erase it, as Yahoo! is doing to years and years of
GeoCities stuff. Our society is increasingly relying on automatic storage
of memories, which works really well 99 [percent] of the time, until it
doesnt."
Jason Scott, whom I talked to by phone while he was at home in Waltham,
Mass, was trying to make copies of as many GeoCities sites as he could
before the shutdown, which then was still a couple of weeks away. Hed
recruited several other people to start making copies as well, which was
good, he said, especially if, "God forbid, we end up with two [copies]
of something."
Thompson relayed a similar sentiment in his e-mail. "It also reminds me
of a point that Cory Doctorow once made," he wrote. "If you really want
a piece of information to live forever, you ideally want as many people
as possible to make copies of it. Then theres no single point of
failure - no central digital brain that can collapse and take your
memories along with it."
Scott is the creator of textfiles.com, an archive site of bulletin board
systems (which are sort of like forums) about which he made a documentary
in 2005. Hes a vocal advocate for Internet archiving ("I never delete
anything," he said), and he worked with the Internet Archive (also called
the "Wayback Machine," at www.archive.org) and various other small-scale
projects taking on the very large-scale project of preserving GeoCities
sites. (Also, Yahoo!-rival Web-hosting sites like Jimdo launched
GeoCities rescue missions: "Lifeboat for GeoCities." And theres also
geocities-closing.com.)
But its difficult even to know how many sites were out there to be
saved. Yahoo! wont reveal the exact amount of server space GeoCities
used.
"Yahoo! refuses to tell us," Scott said. "They cite privacy of the
people, which is kind of like citing the privacy of the people in the
house youre burning down."
What Scott and his team do know is that in 1999, Yahoo! bought a
10-terabyte disc array, which, "could mean anything," Scott said. All that
tells the archivists is that there may have been as many as 10 terabytes
of sites to track down, or seven terabytes, or four. They dont know.
The crew was searching Google for "terms that were big in 95" to find
the sites. They would Google "Netscape," for instance. "Another one is
Commodore, or Atari ... things that still had kind of a meaning" in the
90s, Scott said. They were looking for "these crazy terms that are of
that era."
When they had first started to scan, the archivists were finding
hundreds of sites, easily. But as the shutdown date approached, they
were dredging the bottom of the Web, grabbing any remaining Homesteads
hiding in obscure places, buried in esoteric search terms.
With about two weeks to go, Scoot said he was 'lucky' if he was able to
get a gig or two of new material.
"Ive heard these arguments before: Who cares, its GeoCities," said
Scott, "which is totally understandable if youre not looking at it from
any sort of historical perspective whatsoever. Its totally
understandable if you dont remember that time in that fashion, if you
kind of stumbled into cable modems in 2004 and now youre like, Who
cares, that stuff looks like garbage." Those people just arent getting
the point, Scott says.
"Dozens and dozens of people are gonna find [these archives]," he says.
"This is a very interesting, very vulnerable audience. I am completely
sure I have lots of Web sites of people who died, and their Web site is
still there."
Erin Brown, a Web site producer living in Ft. Lauderdale, shares Scotts
reverence and Thompsons appreciation for the era.
"What stands out to me were the mom-and-pops," she said. "Now sites have
a very corporate presence. The mom-and-pops were the best sites you
could go to. They were pouring their energy and all of their knowledge
into it, trying to be the definitive source on a subject. Nowadays,
because its so easy to use computers and post online, you dont need to
have the skills that you needed in the past. [The mom-and-pops] were a
much more organic thing. There wasnt that question of Do you trust
everything on the Internet? There werent many voices, so you kind of
did."
Say that somehow Scott and his team were able to catch all of these
mom-and-pops (maybe even a couple times over). Thompson pointed out the
potential and unfortunate problem with archive or storage sites like the
Wayback Machine is that even though these sites are storing data, its
not so easy to find it. Google only puts its feelers in so deep.
"[U]nless Im mistaken, Google doesnt crawl the Wayback Machine, so
eventually most of those GeoCties sites that once would have turned up
on the far, far right end of societys long-tail Google searching
will
wink out of existence, as far as the searchosphere is concerned,"
Thompson wrote. "Those sites will only be surfed by people who a) go
looking for information, b) find a link to a long-dead GeoCities site,
and then c) are so motivated to read the long-dead site that they take
the URL, plug it into the Wayback Machine, and go and retrieve an old
copy."
Scott is currently working on a documentary to put a 'human and
narrative' face on GeoCities sites. In the end, Scott predicted that, if
theyre lucky, the archivists would be able to salvage about 40 percent
of the sites created in the 15 years since GeoCities launched. Hes
proud of that 40 percent, and his hope is that his documentary will
deliver a strong message. "This is what we almost lost," he said.
"Its too bad," wrote Thompson, "because many of those GeoCities sites
were precisely the sort of ultra-weird personal-obsession sites that
are, for me, one of the chief delights of the Internet."
Gmail Signatures Get Fancy with Rich Text Editor
Tired of your bland plain text Gmail signature? Want to spice it up with
your company logo and some bold formatting? Google has done you right -
now Gmail signatures support rich text format.
Here's how you can transform your contact information into an eye-catcher:
* Sign into your Gmail account
* Access the "Settings" page from the top right-hand corner
* Halfway down the page you'll see the "Signature" section
* Experiment with photos, hyperlinks, fonts, text sizes, colors, etc.
* Be sure to click "Save Changes" at the bottom of the page
As long as your Gmail signature is turned on, your rich text creation will
be appended to the bottom of all outgoing messages.
If you have multiple Gmail accounts, you can customize signatures for each
individual account - the ideal way to separate business and pleasure. To
find out more about combining your Gmail addresses, check out Google's
help page.
Road warriors beware: rich text signatures are currently not supported
in the mobile version of Gmail. You'll have to connect with the latest
desktop version of Gmail.
Also, older versions and the HTML version of Gmail are also not supported.
Of course, you can always suggest it.
10 Ways Spam Is Like Vuvuzelas
If you've been glued to the World Cup, you'll know that there's more to
the matches than soccer (football for our international audience). I'm
talking about those incessant horns - the vuvuzelas. They're really
catching people's attention, for all the wrong reasons.
It got me thinking . . . In this week's Security Levity, *how is a vuvuzela
just like spam?*
Vuvuzelas and spam? Have I gone mad? Never fear, dear reader, let me
count the ways...
**10. It's continuous and unavoidable**
The vuvuzela emits a loud, irritating, continuous noise that's impossible
to avoid - ruining many people's World Cup experience. Spam is eyecatching,
irritating, continuous noise that's impossible to avoid - ruining many
people's email experience.
**9. It didn't begin this way**
The vuvuzela started life ages ago inside dispersed village communities,
far away from the mainstream; it only came to worldwide attention within
the last 10 to 20 years. Spam started life ages ago (in internet time)
inside dispersed USENET communities, far away from the mainstream; it only
came to worldwide attention within the last 10-20 years.
**8. The "wisdom" of the crowds**
The vuvuzela is blown by hordes of people simultaneously. Spam appears
to be sent by hordes of (fake people simultaneously.
**7. **Sociopathic a**nonymity.**
Vuvuzela blowers are basically anonymous and don't care what other people
think about their noise. Spammers are basically anonymous and don't care
what other people think about their spam.
** 6. It's unhealthy**
The vuvuzela is a health concern for other people in the crowd, due to
its loudness - a staggering 120 dB(A) at 3 ft. /Spam that advertises
fake pills is a health concern for other email users - the pills can be
poisonous, or at least ineffective./
**5. "It's my right"**
Some Southern African people see blowing the vuvuzela as their cultural
right. /Some West African people see scamming westerners via "419" spam
as their cultural right (or, at least, as fair retribution for
imperialist acts)./
**4. Infection vectors**
Vuvuzelas are said to spread bacterial and viral infection, in a similar
way to coughing, but far more effectively. Spam can spread Trojan and
virus infection, in a similar way to USB keys, but far more effectively.
**3. Found in other places**
The vuvuzela phenomenon has spread outside of soccer, into venues such
as YouTube. The spam phenomenon has spread outside of email into venues
such as YouTube (and the comments below!)
**2. It's illegal, theoretically**
Authorities in many countries are trying to ban the use of the vuvuzela,
with limited success. Authorities in many countries are trying to ban
spam, with limited success.
**1. The only workable plan: filter it**
Technologists have tried to filter the noise, initially with poor results
- also filtering the commentary - but with increasing sophistication and
success (including the use of adaptive filters). Technologists have tried
to filter spam, initially with poor results - also filtering legitimate
email - but with increasing sophistication and success (including the use
of adaptive filters).
* Yes, I think you'll agree: vuvuzelas are remarkably like spam!*
Prince: 'The Internet's Completely Over'
Well, that's that then.
Funk-rocker and current Jehovah's Witness
The-Man-We're-Now-Calling-Prince-Again declared that the Internet is
"completely over," in an interview with the U.K. tabloid The Daily Mirror
over the weekend.
"The internet's completely over," Prince told the paper. "I don't see why
I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They won't pay me an
advance for it and then they get angry when they can't get it."
The Purple One allowed reporter Peter Willis exclusive access to his
Minneapolis mansion, where Willis played drums alongside Prince in his
in-house concert hall. The reason? The release of Prince's latest album,
20TEN, which inexplicably will be released as a free insert inside the
paper this coming Saturday. Prince, his wife, and three backup singers,
partied with still water, fruit smoothies and melon.
Prince has also banned YouTube and iTunes from using any of his music,
and has shut down his Web site. Apparently, the Internet's time has come
and gone.
"The internet's like MTV. At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became
outdated. Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good.
"They just fill your head with numbers and that can't be good for you."
Prince also said he believed that playing electric guitar has helped him
keep his hair, apparently in an attempt to regain the crown of "oddest
80s pop icon," a title that Michael Jackson's death has left vacant.
=~=~=~=
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