Microsoft and Asus to smother Linux?

Microsoft and Asus are partnering up in an effort to stifle the already declining Linux netbook presence – as if Microsoft needed a better market position, or another ad campaign for that matter. The two companies have launched a website propagating an unsurprisingly irritating mantra: “it’s better with Windows.” The promotion revolves around the concept that Windows will deliver a dependable and familiar experience, free of major incompatibility issues.

Once a Linux-rich division, Microsoft has all but stolen the netbook show. According to an NPD report last month, netbooks that ship with Windows have risen from 10% in the first half of 2008 to 96% in February 2009. That's not to say Linux is no longer receiving attention, Intel's Moblin OS is perhaps one of the most interesting projects currently around for netbook users.

While I’ve dabbled with various Linux distributions myself and have always crawled back to Windows – am I the only one who is irked by "it's better with Windows"?

Source: TechSpot

Microsoft: "Bing" the decision engine

Microsoft's new search "Bing" which was originally to be named "Kumo" is being released just around the corner (June 3).

Here is what Microsoft is saying about Bing:

You probably didn't wake up today expecting an entirely new search experience.

But — Bing! — here it is.

So, why a new search engine? Why the new name? Why now?

Well, because even though search is a pretty amazing thing, the current state of search engines has some equally amazing statistics.

So far in 2009, there are four and a half websites created EVERY SECOND as the web continues to expand. While more searchable information is cool, nearly half of all searches don’t result in the answer that people are seeking.

At the same time, the way the world searches is changing. You want more than just information. You want knowledge that leads to action.

The truth is you've evolved. It's time search caught up.

So we had an idea. Start over. And we did.

We took a new approach to go beyond search to build what we call a decision engine. With a powerful set of intuitive tools on top of a world class search service, Bing will help you make smarter, faster decisions. We included features that deliver the best results, presented in a more organized way to simplify key tasks and help you make important decisions faster.

And features like cashback, where we actually give you money back on great products, and Price Predictor, which actually tells you when to buy an airline ticket in order to help get you the best price — help you make smarter decisions, and put money back in your pocket.

We sincerely hope that the next time you need to make an important decision, you'll Bing and decide.

Well I'm curious enough to "Bing" at least once, but I find it hard to compete with Google and all it's resources...even search.

Google Wave: Developers Preview

From Google:
Here's how it works: In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It's concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use "playback" to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.

As with Android, Google Chrome, and many other Google efforts, we plan to make the code open source as a way to encourage the developer community to get involved. Google Wave is very open and extensible, and we're inviting developers to add all kinds of cool stuff before our public launch. Google Wave has three layers: the product, the platform, and the protocol:

1. The Google Wave product (available as a developer preview) is the web application people will use to access and edit waves. It's an HTML 5 app, built on Google Web Toolkit. It includes a rich text editor and other functions like desktop drag-and-drop (which, for example, lets you drag a set of photos right into a wave).

2. Google Wave can also be considered a platform with a rich set of open APIs that allow developers to embed waves in other web services, and to build new extensions that work inside waves.

3. The Google Wave protocol is the underlying format for storing and the means of sharing waves, and includes the "live" concurrency control, which allows edits to be reflected instantly across users and services. The protocol is designed for open federation, such that anyone's Wave services can interoperate with each other and with the Google Wave service. To encourage adoption of the protocol, we intend to open source the code behind Google Wave.

Source: GoogleBlog

HP rolls out Mi Linux-Atom netbook

In a pre-emptive strike against the expected onslaught of ARM-based netbooks running Google Inc.'s Android operating system, Hewlett-Packard Co. on Tuesday announced a new Intel Atom netbook that will run HP's custom version of Linux and cost just $279 upon its debut.

The HP Mini 110 will avoid the Moblin Linux operating system developed by Intel Corp. and backed by Novell Inc., in favor of the Mobile internet (Mi) desktop environment HP built on top of a Ubuntu Linux core, said Jonathan Kaye, director of marketing for consumer notebooks at HP.

The Mi interface is a smartphone-like user interface that bundles some simple apps such as mail, and uses large customizable icons for easier navigation. It was first offered late last year in the HP Mini 1000.

"We do think we offer a very simple experience for users that enables them to have this 'Internet snacking,'" Kaye said.

Those are similar benefits as touted by supporters of the Android OS that is emerging on smartphones today and is expected to debut in a number of netbooks in the second half of this year.

One Chinese maker, Guangzhou Skytone, has already announced its intention to release a 1.5-pound, $250 Android netbook using the ARM processor that is dominant on smartphones today. More announcements are expected from the Computex conference in Taipei next week.

But HP's 2.3-pound Mini 110, expected to be available in the U.S. as early as June 10 via the HP Direct Web site, will cost just $29 more than that, while sporting a faster Intel Atom N270 1.6 GHz CPU.

Kaye declined to comment on how quickly HP could cut prices on the Mini 110 in order to match Android netbooks, which many predict will quickly dip to under $200.

Independent analyst Jack Gold called HP's custom Mi Linux "interesting," though he doesn't expect it -- or any other Linux distro, including Moblin and Android -- to gain dominant market share in the near term.

Highlighting HP's emphasis on fashion with its netbooks (the Mini 1000 came in a $699 version linked with fashion designer Vivienne Tam), the Mini 110 will come in black, pink and white, all with "swirl" designs. The latter two colors will be available to U.S. consumers on July 8.

HP is also bringing out an XP-based version of the Mini 110 that will cost $50 more, or $329. A new business-oriented netbook, the Mini 1101, also starts at $329 and will be available June 1. Both models will come with 10-inch LCD screens and in variety of solid-state or hard-disk drive options.

The business model will include a Broadcom "crystal" HD video decoding chip to offer "smooth, skid-free HD playback" at either 720p or 1080p resolutions, said Kaye. It will compete with netbooks such as Lenovo's newly announced S12, which comes with the optional Nvidia Ion chipset for better multimedia.

HP's Mini 1101 will come with software to automate synchronizing data between itself and a primary notebook or desktop PC.

Source: Computerworld

Best recruiter for Linux is Vista, IBM exec says

According to a senior IBM executive, Microsoft's Windows Vista launch was the best recruiter for Linux on the desktop.

Bob Sutor, vice president for Linux and open source at IBM, was speaking on the publication of a global survey on Linux deployment on the desktop, commenting that there was a gradual erosion of Windows use within enterprises.

"It's not a full frontal assault," he said.

He said that users were learning that there were other alternatives to Microsoft.

"It's not just about Linux," he said. "It's the growing use of Macs and the rise of smartphones as alternatives to Windows desktops."

He said that Microsoft must be hoping that it gets Windows 7 right or it's really in trouble.

According to the research, "Linux on the Desktop: Lessons from Mainstream Business Adoption," which was carried out by Freeform Dynamics on behalf of IBM, cost was the main driver for Linux deployment with more than 70% of respondents giving that as the primary reason.

The survey counted the views of 1,275 IT professionals from a spread of countries, 90% of the respondents had direct experience with desktop Linux deployment in their business.

Interestingly, despite Linux's reputation as a techies' tool, the survey respondents found that Linux migration was best achieved when it was aimed at non-technical users.

Business IT news and reviews

"Some users care a great deal about their desktop computing environment and may be emotionally or practically wedded to Windows," said Dale Vile, research director, Freeform Dynamics.

"The trick is to avoid getting distracted by these, and focus on the users for whom the PC on their desk is simply a tool to get their job done."

Sutor endorsed this point of view.

"I see Linux deployment being aimed at particular types of users, call center workers for example."

Other factors given by the survey respondents for adopting Linux included ease of securing the desktop and the lowering of maintenance overheads. Sutor dismissed suggestions that there was skills shortage.

"It's true that there are more people with Windows skills," he said.

"But Linux needs far fewer people to maintain and support it."

Earlier, speaking at the Cloud Expo conference in London, Sutor said that the growth of cloud computing was an ideal environment for Linux to thrive.

He cited security, scalability and costs as key areas that would aid growth.

Source: Computer World

Windows 7: Microsoft Plays Hard Ball

When Windows Vista proved too big to fit early netbooks, Microsoft resurrected XP at a lower price to satisfy that market. Microsoft would only sell XP to an OEM if the system was sufficiently underpowered that it couldn't run Vista. Microsoft has already said that all versions of the slimmer Windows 7 should run on netbooks, so what will happen with Windows 7?

Microsoft has been mum on details, but there have been some worrisome rumors that the company might come out with a "Windows 7 Starter for Small Notebook PC" and limit its use to netbooks. (Given that they did it with XP, it's not a stretch to think they'll try it with Windows 7.) Let's go back to the charges leveled against Microsoft by the Department of Justice in the 1990s. In that document, you'll see this claim:

66. Furthermore, Microsoft expends a significant portion of its monopoly power, which could otherwise be spent maximizing price, on imposing burdensome restrictions on its customers [OEMs] — and in inducing them to behave in ways — that augment and prolong that monopoly power.

One of the outcomes of Microsoft's consent decree was that OEM pricing was based on volume; OEMs that have the same sales volumes pay the same price. It was intended to prevent Microsoft from playing favorites -- rewarding or punishing OEMs for other related actions that pleased Microsoft. In this case, Microsoft would be pleased if competing operating systems didn't take over on netbooks. Before Microsoft brought back XP, Linux had a huge market share on netbooks. If Windows 7 is to maintain a hold on the netbook market, Microsoft has to offer OEMs a price that won't kill their budgets.

Microsoft has every right to do crazy things with feature sets in order to segment the market and produce a Windows 7 version they can sell at a low cost. The three-running-application limit in Windows 7 Starter is one such crazy thing. Microsoft crosses the line by attempting to contractually limit OEMs on the hardware that Starter can use. That shouldn't be Microsoft's decision. If Starter is good enough for netbooks then it should be available to OEMs for whatever hardware that can run Windows 7. If Microsoft fears Starter will hurt the reputation of Windows 7, they shouldn't offer it.

Naturally it would be good for Microsoft if they could charge different prices depending on the final cost of the product. That would be too obviously predatory, though, so a hardware-limited Starter is a "subtle" solution they hope will pass anti-monopolistic muster. The use of netbook hardware requirements to set prices and limit the use of Starter sure looks like it's just a diversion for the real issue, which is the threat of other operating systems gaining a foothold on netbooks. Besides all the Linux competitors, arch-enemy Google may be getting Dell to deliver an Android-based netbook, which must have Microsoft concerned.

Microsoft wants to maintain its market-share lead on netbooks without sacrificing profit margins on full-sized PCs. But OEMs should be able to buy any Windows 7 OS for the same volume-defined price and use it on any hardware with no restrictions. Allowing Microsoft to adjust pricing and limit distribution based on target hardware is a page from their old mid-1990s monopoly playbook, this time intended to muscle out OS competitors. If Microsoft does try such a ploy, it should be stopped.

Source: Information Week

New Google Suggest Features

Here are some of the new Google Suggest features that Google blogged about today:

1. Suggestions are now appearing on the results page search box - not just on the Google home page.

2. Personalized suggestions - the list may be related to your recent searches, if you're signed in. This could be helpful if you found a specific site recently but can't remember the exact query that located it.

3. Navigational suggestions - if your typing looks like you might want a specific website, that suggestion appears at the top of the list, at least until further typing rules it out.

4. Adwords links are now appearing at the bottom of some suggestion boxes.

5. The "result count" column has been dropped, as not being very helpful. I certainly agree with that. Now, if they want to show "total searches last month" I'm all eyes.

9 Issues Stopping Website Owners From Search Engine Traffic & Success

Some major problems can easily be avoided, that are all to often carelessly overlooked or not understood.

When it comes to succeeding in the search engines, you must pin-point problem areas and eliminate them with lightning speed. Professional search engine optimization is a competition that doesn’t have room for errors, believe me!

1. Don’t fall for obtaining low quality links. Always research out the popularity of websites that you obtain links from, and avoid obtaining links from link farms.

2. Don’t obtain links using the same anchor text and description repeatedly in short bursts, that is a red flag to the search engines that you want to manipulate their well thought out algorithm.

3. Make sure you always have unique Meta and Title Tags for EVERY page. You need to understand that every title should have at least one unique element to set it apart from your other pages. Include major keywords in your title and make it appealing so that it actually receives clicks!

4. Update your website regularly. You should run a blog with bi-weekly updates at a minimum on your website if you really want to succeed. Also research out the blog topics and use titles and keywords that will generate an increase in website traffic you are not tapping in to.

5. Don’t over do reciprocal linking, and have a diverse link portfolio! According to Google, reciprocal linking is valuable - however it can be harmful if it is overdone. You should obtain links from Blogs, Blog Posts, Forums, Reciprocal links, Articles, Social Media bookmarks and more!

6. Don’t be deceitful to the search engines. Don’t try to over use keywords, hide text or create doorway pages. Everything on your website should be well thought out, unique and valuable to both search engines and users. These are often times signs of black hat seo.

7. Network with other website owners. You need to create great relationships with powerful website owners and use those relationships to benefit both yourself and the other website owner. Get advice from them, get links from them and give something back!

8. Research out your competition. You need to know what your competition is doing in every way. Find out where they are getting links from. Find out what they are doing on their website, and determine any new ideas they are using to generate traffic, links and business!

9. Work hard and don’t give up. Search engine optimization is a tiring and hard to accomplish effort, and once you have put in effort you need to stick with it and never consider giving up. Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal.

By Joel mclaughlin

Source: PromotionWorld

Microsoft to show new search

Microsoft Corp. is expected to show a new version of its Internet search engine next week, in a renewed effort by the company to compete against Google Inc., people familiar with the matter say.

The software giant, these people say, plans to demonstrate its new search engine publicly for the first time at D: All Things Digital, a technology conference in Carlsbad, Calif., put on by the Wall Street Journal, which is owned by News Corp...
For months, Microsoft has been testing a prototype of the new search engine, code-named Kumo, with Microsoft employees. The technology is designed to cut down on the length of typical Web searches by grouping the results of a search for, say, a particular model of car into helpful categories like parts, used car listings, online discussion forums and videos showing the vehicle.

Source: WSJ

Researchers develop "smells" for computer games

Researchers at Birmingham University in the Human Factors Integration Defence Technology Centre (HFIDTC) developed the system to release certain smells into air using a computer simulation.

The technology has been designed to train soldiers that the presence of certain smells could signal danger.

Research director professor Bob Stone says smell is the most underrated and underused of our senses.

"If we rely only on sights and sounds, we are in danger of closing our minds to what is going on around us," he said.

"For a soldier that can mean the difference between life and death."

Stone's "scent delivery system" uses a compressed air chamber and eight different pots of wax which have been chemically treated with particular odours.

The system can already deliver the smell of cordite, burning electrical wire as well as sea and hospital smells with other odours like mildew and even cat urine soon to be added.

Computer games already play a big part in military training with the devices used to operate the latest technology resembling gaming controls.

"Within three to five years there could be games on the market with smells designed to confuse or excite the player," Stone said.

Source: News.com.au

Computer mystery stumps experts

Mary LaMour can't understand why her computer works at other people's homes, and outside, but not inside her house.

Neither can a computer technician.

"It's uncanny," said Chuck Freisinger, of Phoenix Computer Services in Dubuque. "My other technician and I looked at that situation. When it's in their house, it doesn't work. When it's outside, it works fine. She took it to a friend's house and it worked fine."

LaMour proved it recently. Standing on her front step, she started her Dell laptop and the computer operated normally.

Carrying the computer back across the front door threshold, an ominous blue screen replaces the desktop.

"This particular thing is completely out of the ordinary," Freisinger said.

The error screen reads in part:

"A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer. IRQL--NOT--LESS--OR--EQUAL. Check to make sure any new hardware or software is properly installed."

The LaMours aren't computing novices.

"I'm not computer crazy, I'm not one of these computer geeks," Mary LaMour said, "but we have had a computer for years."

Dick and Mary LaMour moved into their new Asbury home in February. They soon learned there was only one spot in the house the laptop would work.

"There is one place in the sun room," Mary LaMour said, "but you had to be on your hands and knees."

"The only thing that really springs to mind is electromagnetic interference," Freisinger said.

Electromagnetic interference can interrupt, obstruct or otherwise degrade or limit the effective performance of an electrical circuit.

"Perhaps the laptop is particularly sensitive to electromagnetic interference," Freisinger said.

The LaMours don't reside under any power lines, and Asbury's radio stations are not located nearby.

If there were buried power lines, why would the problem only occur inside the home, not outside?

"Alliant said it couldn't be wires underground," Mary LaMour said.

Someone suggested the LaMours encase their laptop in a combination of cardboard and aluminum foil to mitigate any possible electromagnetic effects.

"It worked for a minute," Dick LaMour said, "then it shut down again."

What else could it be?

"I was asked if I had a plate in my head -- I said 'No, do you?"' Mary LaMour said. "I was asked if my bracelets were magnetic, but I took a magnet off the refrigerator and proved that they're not."

What about ghosts?

Jokingly, Freisinger asked Mary if her house home was haunted.

"If we do have ghosts, they are friendly," she said. "So I don't care."

Source: Chicago Tribune

Facebook Phishing Attack

Hackers launched an attack on Facebook's 200 million users on Thursday, successfully gathering passwords from some of them in the latest campaign to prey on members of the popular social networking site.

Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt said on Thursday that the site was in the process of cleaning up damage from the attack.

The hackers got passwords through what is known as a phishing attack, breaking into accounts of some Facebook members, then sending e-mails to friends and urging them to click on links to fake websites.

He said that Facebook was blocking compromised accounts.

Schnitt declined to say how many accounts had been compromised.

Today's Google Outages

All day there have been widespread reports of Google service outages, mainly across the Northeastern United States. Boston, New York, and Connecticut residents seem to be having the biggest problem accessing Google services. Some of the reported outages include Google News (about 3 1/2 hours), Gmail, mobile Apps, and even search.

Google's response:

We've "received reports that a small portion of certain Internet service providers' users are having difficulty accessing Google services" and that they "are currently working with the ISPs to investigate."

If you experienced outages, please comment below.

UPDATE 5/15/09:

From Google:

An error in one of our systems caused us to direct some of our web traffic through Asia, which created a traffic jam. As a result, about 14% of our users experienced slow services or even interruptions.

'Me So Holy' Apple App Rejected

The latest iPhone and iTouch application to get the ax, "Me So Holy," lets users superimpose their own faces on religious figures, including Jesus and photos of nuns. Once the new image is created, users can e-mail it to friends or upload it directly to Facebook.

Benjamin Kahle and Heather Lipner, the app's co-creators, received a rejection letter from Apple Monday, saying that the app "contains objectionable content" and is in violation of its developer's agreement.

The letter went on to say that, "Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or other content or materials that in Apple's reasonable judgment may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod touch users."

On their blog, Kahle and Lipner wrote: "You may be familiar with recent snafus over the baby-shaker app and the rejection of the Nine Inch Nails apps. Our question is, is religion really to be placed in the same category as these violent apps? Sex, urine and defecation don't seem to be off-limits, yet a totally non-violent, religion-based app is.

"We feel that Apple is being too sensitive to its perceived user group and are disappointed that this otherwise creative, freethinking company would reject such a positive and fun application. The message to developers is that they should think inside the box, rather than outside it."

Kahle and Lipner hope Apple reconsiders and that they'll emerge victorious from this latest "battle of values" playing out in the Apps store

Source: ABC News

New: Google Squared, Google Search Options, Rich Snippets...

Days before the planned launch of the Wolfram Alpha search engine, Google on Tuesday announced a series of new search products intended to provide more relevant results.

The new offerings include Google Search Options, Google Squared, Rich Snippets, and an astrology-related Android app.

Google Search Options is a "rich set of tools that let you slice and dice your results," Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience, said during a presentation at Google's Mountain View headquarters.

Specifically, once you conduct a normal Web search, you can drill down with different genres, including elements of time, visualization tools, recently added, blogs, or images, combining a variety of Google search products into one.

The idea is to combine relevancy and "recentcy", she said.

Doing a normal search for "shuttle launch" could turn up results from any number of shuttle launches in countries around the world. Using Search Options, you can choose to search Web sites or blogs that were updated in the past 24 hours or week, increasing the chance that it will include results pertinent to this week's launch.

Choosing "images from the page", meanwhile, will display pictures pulled from the site alongside search results.

During the demo, Mayer and her team also searched for "solar oven" to demonstrate another feature of Search Options, dubbed sentiment analysis. If you are searching for reviews of solar ovens, for example, the program will try to determine if a particular review is positive, negative, or neutral and display that in the search results.

Search Options also includes a timeline that displays the popularity of the topic searched over time.

Search Options also includes a feature known as the Wonder Wheel. The term "solar oven" would be displayed in the middle of this wheel, with related searches branching out from it in a circle. In the same way that you might weave your way from a Wikipedia page on Google to a page about tropical fish thanks to the hundreds of links within Wikipedia posts, you can click on the various Wonder Wheel "arms" and crawl into a nice little search wormhole.

Next up was Google Squared, a Labs project set to debut later this month. It is similar to Search Options in that you can drill down your search results, but Squared lets you add or delete results to produce the most useful "square" of information that you can save to your Google account and refer back to later.

Rich Snippets, meanwhile, is intended to provide you with more useful information in the blurbs that sit below the URL on the search results page. Searching for a restaurant, for example, could produce a Yelp review with a snippet that shows its average rating is 4 stars based on 17 reviews – a more useful return than a line with its name and address.

Google updated snippets in March to increase the number of lines in the snippet for longer searches, but Tuesday's announcement was geared more toward webmasters.

Starting today, Google will be supporting open HTML standards not just for formatting, but for the meaning as well. Those who want to participate in Rich Snippets can add quick tags to give Google a better understanding of what on their pages, Mayer said.

Google also announced an update to the Sky Map Android app, which uses GPS and the compass sensors in G1 phones to produce constellation maps.

"Not only does it know where on the planet [your phone] is, it also knows which direction you're holding the phone," said creator John Taylor.

Google made improvements in performance, redesigned the user-interface, and made it an official Google app. Users can now search for specific stars or constellations. Hold the phone in the air and a circular arrow will direct the user to the spot in the sky where that constellation is – changing from blue to red as you get closer.

It is available in the Android Market starting today.

Mathematica founder Stephen Wolfram next week is expected to launch Wolfram Alpha, an upcoming search engine that aims to more thoroughly answer Web users' questions rather than just serve up existing data.

Udi Manber, vice president of engineering at Google, said that he and Google co-founder Sergey Brin were given a demo of Wolfram Alpha "early on, but we were asked to be confidential about it and we respect that."

Source: PCMag

Shuttle Launch Streamed Live

NASA's latest shuttle launch is set for today at 2:01 PM EDT. The self-assessed "high risk" mission is an attempt to repair the Hubble telescope one final time.

According to the weather reports for Cape Canaveral, there's a 90 percent chance of favorable launch conditions.

The 11-day mission will include five spacewalks, at up to 7hours each. "This will be the most challenging servicing mission that's been faced by our astronauts in terms of the total amount of work," said mission manager, Preston Burch. If the mission succeeds, it will add up to five years onto the life of the 19-year-old telescope.

NASA is running a live feed of the launch all day with commentary over on its official site

How Hacked Servers Hurt Traffic

Unfortunately there are all kinds of devious server hacks making the rounds these days. They usually depend on two factors: sites that use a common CMS (such as Wordpress) and site owners who do not update their software to keep security solid.
But the average site owner may not have the resources or understanding to investigate thoroughly. All they know is that their Google traffic went away.

But if you can discover that you've been hacked, the fix is straightforward:

1. fix the security problem
2. restore a clean version of the site
3. request reconsideration

Malware
One thing that hackers do is find sites to help distribute malware. This one should be easy to detect, because Google will post a warning notice in the SERPs "This site may harm your computer." This discussion covers the details of how to handle a malware hack.

One common footprint for a malware hack is an iframe that doesn't belong in your code - especially one with a lot of hex coding.

Defacement Hacks
These are really "old school" - they're more like online graffiti than anything else. The hacker usually just wants to brag that they got you, and they put up a message on your pages for all to see. Well, that's easily detected because you just go to your pages and there it is!

But as I said, this is old school and many hackers are looking for something with some financial value these days.

Robots.txt Hacks
This one is either done for sheer malicious delight, or perhaps for competitive disruption. How often do you check your robots.txt file? If someone replaced the first line and disallowed all indexing, how fast could you catch that?

In addition to visually inspecting your robots.txt file on a regular basis (and especially if your urls start disappearing from the Google index) you can also set up a Webmaster Tools account and check it regularly. Google will report to you when urls get blocked by robots.txt.

Parasite Hosting
This one is sneakier and depends on the value of backlinks, either for PageRank or for the traffic itself. The hacker places links on your pages (they may be hidden through various means) and you may not be inspecting your content close enough to see those links.

The tool you need is a link checker, such as Xenu LinkSleuth, that can give you a report on all your external links. You are careful about who you link out ot, right? So anything really bogus is going to jump out at you from that list. Running a link checker on a regular basis has many other benefits as well, such as keeping those accidental 404s out of your site. So I consider it to be something like getting a regular physical (but I recommend doing it more often.)

Cloaked Hacks
Now we're really getting devious. Over the past year or more, hacks have been showing up that cloak their parasite content so that only googlebot sees it. If you visit with a regular browser (user agent) you only see what you expected to see.

Your main tool here is a user-agent spoofer of your own, such as the User Agent Switcher extension for Firefox. Just fire it up with a googlebot user agent string and see if your page content changes.

Complex Cloaking - using IP and cookies
This is getting deep - and it's also not so common, but it is out there "in the wild." The hacker in this case paces complex scripting on your site so that not only do they cloak for googlebot by user agent, they also cloak by IP address. In some cases the script also places a cookie so you get only one chance to see what they're doing.

And your tools here are 1) learning how to browse your site with coolies turned off and 2) studying your server logs for what your server replies to googlebot.

DNS Troubles
Some of the sneakiest hackers have used various kinds of DNS tricks. Over two years ago we discussed this rare but still possible problem in this thread.

If your traffic totally dries up, you would hit the panic button pretty quickly - so these hackers have been more clever than that. With DNS tricks they might syphon off only 20% of your traffic. One thing you would see was a traffic drop with no corresponding drop in rankings.

There's been some good effort here on the part of the DNS servers to get more secure from this type of thing, but it's still worth mentioning as a potential. The moral is to check your DNS settings and fix any warnings you get. It might seem like a foregin language to you if you never waded into these waters before, but it's worth climbing the learning curve - especially if your traffic is evaporating. However, it's something that I wouldn't suspect until I ruled out all the rest of the hacks I listed above.

It might be an employee, too
Sorry to say, it's not always an external hacker. Sometimes a person your trusted with server access gets greedy and places parasite links to earn some csh on the side. We've had such reports here, and it even happened at Google a few years back.

Don't get crazy about this possibility, but if you do find junk on your server and there's no real sign of an external hack - then consider who you might have given server access to. This is one solid reason always to changes passwords (strong ones) when anyone leaves the company, or when your contract is over with anyone who had access. Even great companies sometimes hire a bad apple.

Source: WebmasterWorld

Missile data found on hard drives

Sensitive information for shooting down intercontinental missiles as well as bank details and NHS records was found on old computers, researchers say.
Of 300 hard disks bought randomly at computer fairs and an online auction site, 34% still held personal data.

Researchers from BT and the University of Glamorgan bought disks from the UK, America, Germany, France and Australia.

The information was enough to expose individuals and firms to fraud and identity theft, said the researchers.

Professor Andrew Blyth said: "It's not rocket science - we used standard tools to analyse the data".

The research involving the Welsh campus was led by BT's Security Research Centre and included researchers at Edith Cowan University in Australia and Longwood University in the US.

In addition to finding bank account details and medical records, the work unearthed job descriptions and personal identity numbers as well as data about a proposed $50bn currency exchange through Spain.

Details of test launch procedures for the THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defence) ground-to-air missile defence system was found on a disk bought on eBay.

The missile system, tested as recently as March 2009 following a controversial missile test by North Korea, is designed to destroy long-range intercontinental missiles launched by terrorists or countries the US considers to be "rogue states".

The missile system was designed and built by US defence group Lockheed Martin and the same computer hard disk also revealed security policies and blueprints of facilities at the group, and personal information on employees.

The researchers said a disk from France included security logs from an embassy in Paris, while two disks from the UK appear to have originated from a Scottish health board.

The disks had information from the Monklands and Hairmyres hospitals, part of Lanarkshire health board, and revealed patient medical records, images of x-rays, medical staff shifts and sensitive and confidential staff letters.

Another disk, from a US-based consultant, formerly with a US-based weapons manufacturer, revealed account numbers and details of proposals for the $50bn currency exchange as well as details of business dealings between organisations in the US, Venezuela, Tunisia and Nigeria.

Personal correspondence was also found from a member of a major European bank.

'Illegal'

Prof Blyth, an expert in computer forensics and principal lecturer at the University of Glamorgan's faculty of advanced technology, said the results were in line with previous studies which showed 40%-50% of second-hand disks that can be powered up contained sensitive data.

He said: "While it's not getting worse, its not getting any better either.

"It's not rocket science. I could probably take somebody who is 14 or 15 years old and in a day have them doing this."

Dr Andy Jones, head of information security research at BT, said: "It is clear that a majority of organisations and private individuals still have no idea about the potential volume and type of information that is stored on computer hard disks.

"Businesses also need to be aware that they could also be acting illegally by not disposing of this kind of data properly."

In a statement, Lanarkshire health board said: "This study refers to hard disks which were disposed of in 2006. At that time NHS Lanarkshire had a contractual agreement with an external company for the disposal of computer equipment.

"In this instance the hard drives had been subjected to a basic level of data removal by the company and had then been disposed of inappropriately. This was clearly in breach of contract and was wholly unacceptable."

The board has carried out a review of its policies and now no longer uses external companies to dispose of IT equipment, the statement added.

A spokesman for Lockheed Martin said the company was not aware of any "compromise of data" related to the THAAD programme, and no government or law enforcement agency had notified it of any such loss.

The results of the study, the fourth in a five-year project, will be made available in a paper appearing in the next issue of the Journal of International Commercial Law and Technology (JICLT) 2009.

Source: BBC

Twitter Search Changes to Rival Google

Twitter Search will become a lot more useful soon, the microblogging site's new vice president of operations said Wednesday night.

Santosh Jayaram, who until recently was vice president of search quality for Google, was on a panel I was moderating in the evening. During the panel and later in a one-on-one discussion, Jayaram confirmed that Twitter Search, which currently searches only the text of Twitter posts, will soon begin to crawl the links included in tweets and begin to index the content of those pages.

This will make Twitter Search a much more complete index of what's happening in real time on the Web and make it an even more credible competitor to Google Search for people looking for very timely content.

Twitter Search will also get a "reputation" ranking system soon, Jayaram told me. When you do a search on a "trending" topic--a topic that is so big it gets its own link in the Twitter.com sidebar--Twitter will take into account the reputation of the person who wrote each tweet and rank the search results in part based on that.

Jayaram did not say precisely how reputation will be calculated; he indicated that engineers are still figuring that out. But this, again, will make Twitter Search more valuable.

Currently, if you search for a hot topic on Twitter, the results may be swamped by re-tweets and low-value content from hundreds or thousands of other users. A ranking system will help a great deal. See "Twitter search is broken" and "Three start-ups attack Twitter Search."

I'm looking forward to these changes.

Also, here is a real-time search story from Jayaram, which he used to illustrate the immediacy of Twitter Search during the panel discussion. He told of being in the Twitter offices in San Francisco on March 30, when the Twitter engineers noticed that the word "earthquake" had suddenly started trending up. They didn't know where the earthquake was.

Several seconds later, their building started to shake. The earthquake had been in Morgan Hill, 60 miles south of San Francisco, and the tweets about the shaker reached the office faster than the seismic waves themselves.

Source: CNET

Regulators Scrutinize Apple-Google Ties

The Federal Trade Commission has begun an inquiry into whether the close ties between the boards of two of technology’s most prominent companies, Apple and Google, amount to a violation of antitrust laws, according to several people briefed on the inquiry.

Google Inc.Apple and Google share two directors, Eric E. Schmidt, chief executive of Google, and Arthur Levinson, former chief executive of Genentech. The Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 prohibits a person’s presence on the board of two rival companies when it would reduce competition between them. The two companies increasingly compete in the cellphone and operating systems markets.

Antitrust experts say the provision against “interlocking directorates,” known as Section 8 of the act, is rarely enforced. Nevertheless, the agency has already notified Google and Apple of its interest in the matter, according to the people briefed on the inquiry, who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity because the inquiry was confidential.

F.T.C. officials declined to comment. Spokespeople for Apple and Google also declined to comment. A spokesman for Genentech declined to make Mr. Levinson available for comment.

The inquiry, which appears to be in its early stages, is the second antitrust examination involving Google to have surfaced in recent days. It suggests that despite the company’s closeness to the Obama administration, Google will not escape scrutiny from regulators.

Mr. Schmidt campaigned for then-Senator Barack Obama during his presidential campaign and advised the transition team and the administration on various matters. He was recently appointed to President Obama’s advisory council on science and technology.

Christine A. Varney, who was recently confirmed as the head of the antitrust division of the Justice Department, last year singled out Google as a probable source of future antitrust concerns because of its near monopoly on Internet search and advertising.

Some antitrust experts said they did not expect Google’s ties to the administration to play a role in antitrust issues.

“I expect the administration to be aggressive, generally, on antitrust enforcement,” said Sanford Litvack, a partner at Hogan & Hartson. Last year, while working for the Justice Department, Mr. Litvack built a case to block a prominent advertising partnership between Google and Yahoo. “I don’t expect Google to either be singled out or to receive a free pass because of Schmidt’s relationship with the administration,” he said.

Antitrust experts say that investigations of interlocking directorates rarely lead to major confrontations between companies and the government. Executives typically choose to resign from the board of a competitor if it poses a problem rather than face a lengthy investigation or a bruising legal fight.

Like many companies in the technology industry, Google and Apple are both allies and competitors. Google, for instance, worked with Apple to design early versions of some its services, like Gmail and Google Maps, for Apple’s iPhone.

But the areas in which the companies are bumping up against each other as rivals have been increasing.

Mobile phones, in particular, loom large in the future of both Google and Apple. Much of Apple’s fortunes these days are tied to the success of the iPhone. Google, for its part, has said repeatedly that one of its biggest strategic opportunities is to expand its online advertising empire into mobile phones.

While Google benefits from the success of the iPhone, which drives more traffic to its mobile services than any other device, it also produces the Android operating system for mobile phones that compete with the iPhone. The system currently powers the T-Mobile G1, a phone that some analysts say is the most capable of a number of rivals.

Other phone makers are planning to roll out devices powered by Android later this year. And the Android operating system is being built into lightweight portable computers known as netbooks, which may compete with some Apple laptops.

Google and Apple compete in a variety of other areas. Apple makes the Safari Web browser while Google makes the competing Chrome. Apple’s iTunes and Google’s YouTube are increasingly competing as venues for distribution of music and videos. And the two companies have photo-editing services.

It is not clear whether regulators have singled out any of these areas of competition as particularly troubling. Under the Clayton Act, interlocking directorates are not considered a problem if the revenue from products in which the companies compete is less than 2 percent of either company’s sales.

“Government actions under Section 8 are rare, but they are brought under circumstances when the presence of a common director on competing boards is likely to be anticompetitive,” said Andrew I. Gavil, an antitrust expert and a professor at the Howard University School of Law.

Both Google and Apple share a rival in Microsoft, which competes with the two companies in some areas. But Professor Gavil said regulators were not likely to see that as a problem, even if the two Silicon Valley companies were discussing ways to compete more effectively with Microsoft.

Mr. Schmidt joined Apple’s board in 2006, about five months before it unveiled the iPhone. Google announced its plans for Android, its mobile phone operating system, nearly a year later. Since then, analysts have speculated that Mr. Schmidt’s position on Apple’s board could become untenable. Google has said he recuses himself when Apple’s board discusses mobile phones.

Source: NYTimes

Apple’s Budget Macs: Possibility or Wishful Thinking?

Apple computers are expensive. Whether or not you think that price is justified, you can’t deny that even machines on the lower end of the scale will cost you a decent amount of coin.

The Mac Mini is the cheapest machine in the bunch, and you don’t get any crucial peripheral gear like a monitor, keyboard or mouse without paying extra. Putting aside for a second our dear devotion to the Cupertino brand, if you know absolutely nothing about computers, and you’re presented with two all-in-ones side by side, and the price tag on the Dell is a lot cheaper, you’re probably going to get the Dell. You’d be wrong, but that doesn’t change the fact that that means a sale for Dell, and nothing for Apple.

Why It Sounds Reasonable
Given that chilling scenario, recent rumors that Apple is prepping some lower-cost hardware to bring to market makes sense. They showed recently that they were relatively resilient, even in tough economic times, by posting record gains yet again for the second quarter of 2009, but Mac sales actually slowed during the same period, meaning that Apple is likely looking for a way to improve those sagging numbers.

AppleInsider cites “people familiar with the matter” as the source of the pleasant prospect of cheaper machines coming out of Cupertino. Their source maintains that the cheaper hardware to be introduced is designed as a stop-gap solution to counter the runaway success of netbooks until Apple is ready to release its own Newton-esque tablet-style device, which is taking longer to develop than anticipated. Apple’s new, lower-cost menu is said to include cheaper versions of both the 13-inch MacBook and a new entry-level iMac, possibly priced in line with its education-only predecessor.

Why It Doesn’t Make Sense
Sounds like a good idea, and there’s no doubt consumers would appreciate it, but does it make sense from Apple’s perspective? I think not, for a couple of reasons. First, they would be coming pretty close to interfering with their own clear price level demarcations. Apple is very good at pricing their products in such a way that each fits into its own clearly demarcated space, but that you also see the obvious value of going up to the next level. To start introducing products that clear the next level up by only a hundred dollars (and ones that probably offer significantly downgraded specs) would throw this delicate balance out of whack.

Second, as I’ve just mentioned, the new machines would probably have to offer big concessions in terms of hardware (they’d never sacrifice build quality) in order to provide profit margins acceptable to Apple. Crippled specs would just have people complaining that they could get a Dell with 10 times better internals for the same price, which would put us exactly where we are now: Apple fans saying the product is better overall, even if on paper it doesn’t look it, and PC faithful clamoring about the Apple Tax.

So no, I don’t think Apple will introduce new, cheaper machines to bolster Mac sales. They have to do something, though, if the dip repeats itself for a second quarter in a row. No doubt their solution will be much more interesting than just a price/quality cut, which is exactly the kind of uninspired move a PC manufacturer would make.

Another Option
If Apple really wanted to cause people to sit up and take notice, and sell computers to customers like me who already own multiple Mac desktops and laptops and to people looking for their first Mac, they’d give us a reason to look at a Mac Pro. Or not the Mac Pro exactly, but something like it. Give us a tower with accessible internals, with minimal specs but lots of potential for self-installed upgrades down the road. Then sell us those upgrade parts through the Apple Store with official Apple branding. It’s almost a cheap razor/expensive blades sales model, but I admit it involves a lot of risk, since you might get undercut by third-party providers on the upgrade components. Still, it would be unexpected coming from Apple, and that is sort of their thing.

Source: The Apple Blog

15 Website Analytics solutions aside from Google

Here are 15 great website analytics solutions. Yes, there is more out there then just Google Analytics, for instanse the rich feature set and "live" stats available with Woopra. Enjoy the list!

AT Internet - A provider of both Web analytics and online intelligence solutions, AT Internet's XiTi Analyzer II has key features that include optimized tagging methodology, ClickZone heatmaps and overlay, customizable dashboards, measurement of rich media, navigation optimization, qualitative analytics, mobile analytics and on-demand reporting.

Auriq Systems - AuriQ systems's RTmetrics features several interesting website analysis features, including an intuitive visual path analysis, search engine optimization reports, clickstream analysis, mapping features, and flexible data collection methods. A 30-day trial is available at no cost.

BLVD Status - One of the more popular free analytics providers, BLVD Status offers a robust suite of features including RSS and form conversion tracking, outgoing link conversion tracking, real-time tracking and other commons analytics functionality and reports. WordPress bloggers can even use the BLVD Status WP Plugin.

Coremetrics - As one of the premier providers of analytics solutions, CoreMetrics Analytics features a robust content analysis, scenario analysis, profile mining, onsite search, multichannel and multi-site analytics. Suited especially for merchants, Coremetrics offers the ability to map product and promotional effectiveness based on site goals.

DC Storm - DC Storm provides an integrated Web analytics and PPC optimziation solution. Its analytics offering, Storm Analytics, offers users several standard features, but differentiates itself through the use of custom rules applicable to distinct traffic sources, helpful for tracking PPC and organic traffic.

etracker - The various analytics solutions provided by etracker (ranging in price from US$15-$215 based on page impressions) is a SaaS solution with decent features including overlay maps, tracking forecasting, and several other basic features. Advanced features are available only on advanced and unlimited plans.

eVisit Analyst - Offering a suite of reporting tools that focus on customer interaction and through advanced filtering and key data analysis can reveal individual customer behavior. eVisit Analyst offer specific solutions for mobile analytics, analytics for retail enterprises, governmental and education institutions, finance and media properties.

Facilitate Digital - More of a digital marketing system, the FaciliateOne system from Faciliate Digital brings together data from multiple digital marketing touchpoints. From online display and rich media to Web analytics to workfllow toolsets, the solution offers one view from one system for multi-channel marketers.

Intellitracker - Web analytics from Intellitracker are focused solutions to help online marketers understand their visitors with features such as deep profiling capabilities, Intellimap (which stores every click a visitor makes), the collaborative Desktop working environment, Applink which can stream data to third-party apps and a whole lot more.

Lyris (Clicktracks) - The Web analytics software solutions from Lyris are a powerful way to identify visitor-conversion performance data (even down to the keyword level). The software enables users to compare segments, understand visitor behavior, and develop landing pages populated with the correct tracking ocde. Merchants can even import shopping cart data.

MarketWave - A Web analytics solution for businesses, MarketWave provides tracking of key performance indicators through its online dashboard, offers a conversion manager and funnel reporting, automatic ROI calculations, DataLink functionality (which connects online and offline data) and quite a few more interesting features.

Omniture - More of an online business optimziation suite than a web analytics provider alone, Omniture's SiteCatalyst touts an actionable offering with features such as pre-built reporting and analytics, mobile analytics, innovative work flow, video and social optimization reports, advanced segmentation and flexible data integration.

SmarterStats - This web log analytics tool is suited to either single websites or those across a distributed network. Features include smart reporting tools that understand real traffic (and note spider traffic), robust data mining tools, an architecture that allows for multiple installations methods to log files locally or remotely, and a reliable administration system.

VisiStat - Website tracking solution VisiStat provides all of the traditional analytics data, but differentiates itself through its more powerful features, such as user notes that can be included "sticky-style" into reports to indicate important events or reminders, a Stats API for advanced users to take raw data and create custom reports, page grouping and isolation, browser filtering, and much more.

WebTrends - Another of the leaders in Web analytics and marketing intelligence, WebTrends offers an solution that can be tailored to specific users or lines of business, provides detailed reporting, a subscription pricing model, automatic upgrades and flexible support options.

Woopra - One of the richest user interfaces of all providers, Woopra is a personal favorite that is unique as it provides live tracking and web statistics. Users can manage multiple blogs or websites, features searchable data, a click-to-chat feature and visitor and member tagging.

Yahoo! Web Analytics - Formerly IndexTools, the website reporting system - in addition to its real time analytics - offers a helpful exeutive dashboard to quickly set goals, custom reports, advanced path analytics, marketing workflow management, comparative reporting and advanced PPC campaign management to track and optimize PPC campaigns.

Source: Website Magazine

Conficker worm invades hospital equipment

A computer worm that has alarmed security experts around the world has crawled into hundreds of medical devices at dozens of hospitals in the United States and other countries, according to technologists monitoring the threat.

The worm, known as “Conficker,” has not harmed any patients, they say, but it poses a potential threat to hospital operations.

“A few weeks ago, we discovered medical devices, MRI machines, infected with Conficker,” said Marcus Sachs, director of the Internet Storm Center, an early-warning system for Internet threats .

Around March 24, researchers monitoring the worm noticed that an imaging machine was reaching out over the Internet to get instructions — presumably from the programmers who created Conficker.

The researchers discovered that more than 300 similar devices at hospitals around the world had been compromised. The manufacturer of the devices told them none of the machines were supposed to be connected to the Internet — and yet they were.

Normally, the solution would be simply to install a patch, which Microsoft released in October. But the device manufacturer said rules from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration required that a 90-day notice before the machines could be patched.

“For 90 days these infected machines could easily be used in an attack, including, for example, the leaking of patient information,” said Rodney Joffe, a senior vice president at NeuStar, a communications company that belongs to an industry working group created to deal with the worm.

Source: Chron.com