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Google Goes Pay To Track
February 15, 2012 by admin
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Amid widespread concern about its new privacy policies, Google is now facing additional criticism over a deal to offer users Amazon gift certificates if they open their Web movements to the company in a program called Screenwise.
Google says the program launched “near the beginning of the year,” but the company’s low-key offer was disclosed Tuesday night on the blog Search Engine Land.
Google is asking users to add an extension to the Chrome browser that will share their Web-browsing activity with the company. In exchange, users will receive a $5 Amazon gift when they sign up and additional $5 gift card values for every three months they continue to share. (Amazon is not a partner in the project.) Users must be over age 13, and minors will need parental consent to participate. The tracking extension can be turned off at any time, allowing participants to temporarily close their metaphorical shades on Google.
The company says the program will help it “improve Google products and services and make a better online experience for everyone.”
Google Ordered To Pay $660K
February 10, 2012 by admin
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A Paris Court earlier this week ordered Google France and its parent company Google to pay plaintiff Bottin Cartographes 500,000 euros (about $660,000) for providing its free mapping services to companies across the country. The court also required Google to pay a 15,000 euro fine for its practice.
“We proved the illegality of (Google’s) strategy to remove its competitors,” Jean-David Scemmama, attorney for Bottin Cartographes, a company that provides mapping services to the enterprise, told the AFP in an interview earlier this week. “The court recognized the unfair and abusive character of the methods used and allocated Bottin Cartographes all it claimed. This is the first time Google has been convicted for its Google Maps application.”
According to Scemmama, Bottin has been arguing its case against Google for two years, claiming the search giant was engaging in anticompetitive practices by using its free service to take control over the online-mapping industry.
In a statement to the AFP, Google said that it will appeal the court’s decision, adding that Google Maps is still facing competition in that market.
Hacked Companies Still Not Alerting Investors
February 9, 2012 by admin
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At least a half-dozen major U.S. companies whose computer networks have been breached by cyber criminals or international spies have not admitted to the incidents despite new guidance from securities regulators urging such disclosures.
Top U.S. cybersecurity officials believe corporate hacking is widespread, and the Securities and Exchange Commission issued a lengthy “guidance” document on October 13 outlining how and when publicly traded companies should report hacking incidents and cybersecurity risk.
But with one full quarter having elapsed since the SEC request, some major companies that are known to have had significant digital security breaches have said nothing about the incidents in their regulatory filings.
Defense contractor Lockheed Martin Corp, for example, said last May that it had fended off a “significant and tenacious” cyber attack on its networks. But Lockheed’s most recent 10-Q quarterly filing, like its filing for the period that included the attack, does not even list hacking as a generic risk, let alone state that it has been targeted.
A Reuters review of more than 2,000 filings since the SEC guidance found some companies, including Internet infrastructure company VeriSign Inc and credit card and debit card transaction processor VeriFone Systems Inc, revealed significant new information about hacking incidents.
Yet the vast majority of companies addressing the issue only used new boilerplate language to describe a general risk. Some hacking victims did not even do that.
Google Defends New Privacy Policy
February 6, 2012 by admin
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In a letter sent to eight members of Congress, Google yesterday defended its decision to consolidate its privacy policies and users’ personal information.
The 13-page letter explains Google’s decision to change its privacy policies and answers specific questions from the legislators. In sum, Google contended that its approach to privacy remains the same, that users still have control over how they use the company’s various online services, and that private information stays private.
“Some have expressed concern about whether consumer can opt out of ourupdated privacy policy,” wrote Pablo Chavez, Google’s director of public policy, in the letter.
“We understand the question at the heart of this concern. We believe the relevant issue is whether users have choices about how their data is collected and used. Google’s privacy policy – like that of other companies – is a document that applies to all consumers using our products and services. However, we have built meaningful privacy controls into our products, and we are committed to continue offering those choices in the future,” he added.
Google stirred up something of a privacy firestorm last week when company executives disclosed plans to rewrite privacy policies and to meld user information across its various products and services.
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Apache Finally Goes To The Cloud
The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has announced Hadoop 1.0.
The open source software project has reached the milestone of its first full release after six years of development. Hadoop is a software framework for reliable, scalable and distributed computing under a free licence. Apache describes it as “a foundation of cloud computing”.
“This release is the culmination of a lot of hard work and cooperation from a vibrant Apache community group of dedicated software developers and committers that has brought new levels of stability and production expertise to the Hadoop project,” said Arun Murthy, VP of Apache Hadoop.
“Hadoop is becoming the de facto data platform that enables organizations to store, process and query vast torrents of data, and the new release represents an important step forward in performance, stability and security,” he added.
Apache Hadoop allows for the distributed processing of large data sets, often Petabytes, across clusters of computers using a simple programming model.
The Hadoop framework is used by some big name organisations including Amazon, Ebay, IBM, Apple, Facebook and Yahoo.
Yahoo has significantly contributed to the project and hosts the largest Hadoop production environment with more than 42,000 nodes.
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Apple Goes Down In Court
Apple has lost a move in US District Court in San Francisco to keep some of its software ‘secrets’ out of view of the public.
It had asked Judge William Alsup to keep documents sealed that had surfaced in its lawsuit against Psystar, Bloomberg reports. The information about Apple’s Mac OS X operating system covers topics such as technological protection measures, system integrity checks and thermal management techniques.
The court turned down Apple’s request, however, noting that the company didn’t deny that the information was already public or claim that it had been misappropriated. Apple had argued that it still deserved trade secret protection because it didn’t release the information and had never confirmed it, but that didn’t convince Judge Alsup.
The information at issue is available on a web site about the Mac OS X operating system, the judge noted, adding that Apple’s decryption key haiku is available to any user that compiles and runs publicly available source code on a Macbook Air laptop.
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Stratfor Security Hit By Anonymous
January 4, 2012 by admin
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The Stratfor, security firm whose website was compromised over the weekend by members of the anarchic computer-hacking group Anonymous, has reported that victims of the attack have had their credit cards used again.
Victims of the attack, mostly employees of major companies or agencies which use Stratfor’s, learnt at Christmas that their names, addresses and credit card details had been published online. The cards were then used to make large donations to major charities.
Now it seems that Stratfor is warning that the cards were being used again if the victims complained to the press. On another webiste Anonymous used another website to mock victims who spoke to the Associated Press about their experience. Its said “We went ahead and ran up your card a bit.”
GoDaddy To Drop SOPA Support
Giant domain name registrar GoDaddy.com has yanked its support from the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act after owners of several websites stated they would take their business elsewhere.
Negative feedback about SOPA from a number of customers forced GoDaddy to take a second look at the legislation, said Warren Adelman, Go Daddy’s newly appointed CEO. Go Daddy has concerns about the free speech and Internet security implications of the legislation, but until now, has worked with lawmakers to address those issues, he said.
“It’s clear to us the bill’s not ready in its current form,” Adelman said Friday. “Looking at this over the last 20 hours, we’re not seeing consensus in the Internet community, we’re hearing the feedback from our customers.”
On Thursday, Reddit user selfprodigy said he was pulling 51 domain names from GoDaddy because of the registrar’s support of SOPA. The same day, Ben Huh, CEO of the Cheezburger family of humor websites said said his company would move its 1,000-plus domains off Go Daddy unless it dropped its support for the bill, known as SOPA.
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Google Buys Clever Sense
December 21, 2011 by admin
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Google has purchased Clever Sense, the developer of Alfred, a personalized restaurant and bars recommendations app, for an undisclosed amount, both companies stated.
The Internet giant has been strengthening its local offerings. It acquired in September for example a restaurant ratings publisher Zagat to boost its online maps and local business listings with trustworthy reviews and recommendations.
Alfred, which currently provides recommendations on restaurants, bars, and night life in the locality where the person is, could however down the line broaden its scope, potentially making it the Android alternative to the Siri personal assistant on Apple’s iPhone 4S.
Clever Sense’s co-founder and CEO Babak Pahlavan suggested in a notice on the company’s website that Alfred may include other information sources and services.
Discovering local information is extremely important to both users and businesses, and the acquisition of Clever Sense will benefit both, Pahlavan said. “With Google and Clever Sense working together, our entire team looks forward to building more intelligent, serendipitous and magical services!”, he added.
Apple Helps Samsung Sell Tablets
December 20, 2011 by admin
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Samsung has thanked Apple for the free advertising for its Galaxy Tab created by the legal disputes between the companies.
Tyler McGee, VP of telecommunications at Samsung Australia, said that Apple had made Samsung’s tablet computer “a household name”, which the firm believes is more than it could have managed with its marketing alone, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
This ironic twist of fate means that instead of slowing Samsung down and keeping its products off the market, Apple has inadvertently created a lot of buzz for those devices, which is now paying off with high demand as the Galaxy Tab returns to shop shelves in Australia.
Samsung has shipped a significant volume of tablets to Australia in time for the 16 December launch, perfect timing for the busy Christmas shopping period. However, McGee warned that demand is higher than supply, suggesting that there will be shortages of the device.
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