Flickr co-founder Presses Beta Button

Flickr co-founder Presses Beta Button

Once you're lucky, twice you're good? So went the title of a recent book about Web 2.0 entrepreneurs. Pretty soon, we may have an idea whether it applies to Caterina Fake.

Fake, the co-founder of Flickr, announced on her blog Friday afternoon that her new start-up, Hunch, is sending out invitations to try the service, now in beta test.

What is it? I'll hand the reins over to Fake and let her explain:

Look. Decision-making is difficult, and decisions have to be made constantly. What should I be for Halloween? Do I need a Porsche? Does my hipster facial hair make me look stupid? Is Phoenix a good place to retire? Whom should I vote for? What toe ring should I buy?

It's dark and lonely work. Coin-flipping, I Ching consultation, closing your eyes and jumping, postponing the inevitable, Rock-Paper-Scissors, and asking your sister are all time-honored means of coming to a decision--and yet we think there's room for one more: Hunch.

Hunch is a decision-making site, customized for you. Which means Hunch gets to know you, then asks you 10 questions about a topic (usually fewer!), and provides a result--a hunch, if you will. It gives you results it wouldn't give other people.

Will it fly? Who knows, but in the midst of this miserable economic depression, there probably are lots of people out there who feel as if they don't have a clue anymore.

Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10206217-2.html

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Successful Internet Marketing

Successful Internet Marketing

Successful Internet Marketing Little Mistake You Are Making That Is Costing You A Lot Of Potential Money

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More Attacks Expected on Facebook, Twitter in 2010

More Attacks Expected on Facebook, Twitter in 2010

Social-networking sites like Facebook and Twitter can expect more attention from cybercriminals in 2010, according to a new report (PDF) released Tuesday by McAfee Labs. Also at risk are users of Adobe Systems products including Acrobat Reader and Flash. And move over Microsoft; the security firm predicts that Google’s Chrome OS will “create another opportunity for malware writers to prey on users.”

The company also anticipates smarter and more dangerous Trojans that “follow the money,” as well as a “significant trend toward a more distributed and resilient botnet infrastructure that relies much more on peer-to-peer technologies.”

In a recorded interview (scroll down for audio) David Marcus, McAfee Labs‘ director of security research and communications, said that he expects “an explosion of Facebook and other services targeted by cybercriminals.” In addition to malware like Koobface that spreads among Facebook users’ friends list, Marcus expects an increase in rogue Facebook applications.

“When you click yes to ‘do you want to allow this application to access your Facebook account,’ you’re giving that application access to all the data in your Facebook account,” he said. Facebook vets the third-party applications that it distributes, but rouge developers are finding other ways to get people to install unauthorized apps.

“A lot of the spammers and scammers will send fake Facebook application requests to users’ inboxes,” he said. Marcus recommends that you only install apps from within Facebook by clicking “browse more applications” in the Facebook application installer.“

Twitter vulnerabilities
According to McAfee, Twitter is vulnerable mostly because of URL-shortening services like bit.ly and tinyurl.com. There’s nothing wrong with Twitter or these services, but when you click on a shortened URL you have no idea where you’re going until after you get there. I would like to see a URL-shortening service that vets each URL for security and rejects those that are potentially dangerous. Twitter, according to the McAfee report is “also serving as a control vehicle for botnets.”

Criminals are now being more surgical in their attacks, singling out individuals and corporations as targets. The report points to the 10-month investigation of “GhostNet,” which McAfee Labs describes as a “network of at least 1,295 compromised computers in 103 countries” that “primarily belonged to government, aid groups, and activists.” The malicious code was delivered by e-mail with subject headings related to the Dali Lama and Tibet, according to the report.

The report also sites “a very targeted wave of attacks against the management of major companies,” as well as attacks carried out against “journalists from various media organizations, including Agence France Press, Dow Jose and Reuters based in China.”

Adobe products and Google Chrome vulnerable
Adobe products, especially its Acrobat Reader and Flash, are likely to replace Microsoft Office as the No. 1 software target, according to McAfee. It’s nothing they’ve (Adobe) done wrong,” Marcus said. “The bad guys go where the masses go” and because of the increasingly widespread use of Adobe products, “that tends to be what the bad buys will start looking to exploit. It really is nothing more sophisticated than that.”

Criminals are infecting PDF files and leveraging exploits in the opening of PDF documents, according to Marcus.

“Instead of viewing a PDF you’re actually taken to a website that downloads some type of malware to your machine.” Adobe plans to patch a critical hole in Reader and Acrobat on January 12.

There is also concern about Google’s Chrome operating system, which is expected to be officially released in 2010. Chrome, which will run Web-based applications, is likely to be vulnerable to attacks in HTML 5–the newest version of the hyper-text markup language that, says the report, “holds all the promises that today’s Web community seeks–primarily blurring and removing the lines between a Web application and a desktop application.”

McAfee also warned of banking Trojans with “new tactics that went well beyond the rather simple keylogging-with-screenshots” that were used earlier. Trojans now use rootkit techniques to hide on a victim’s system to disable antivirus software.

“Often the victim’s computer becomes part of a botnet and receives malware configuration updates,” the report said.

Cause for optimism
The report did end with some optimism, calling 2009 a good year for law enforcement. In November 2009, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted nine individuals “from Russia, Moldova, and Estonia who were allegedly responsible for $9 million in customer payroll data compromises at RBS WorldPay.”

The year also “saw the conviction of the infamous “Godfather of Spam,” Alan Ralsky of Michigan, and his criminal syndicate, which was responsible for generating a significant portion of the world’s unsolicited e-mail,” McAfee said.

“You started to see that not a lot of resiliency was built into some of those botnets, they were taken down, and poof they disappeared for very long periods of time,” Marcus said. He said he thinks “the bad guys will learn from that and build in some redundancy,” but he remains optimistic. “The good guys and regular users are getting tired of getting exploited and we’re finally starting to see more offensive and aggressive take downs of botnets…we’re starting to see people wanting to take back the Internet.”

Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-19518_3-10422760-238.html

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With Search War Stalemate, Google Branches Out

With Search War Stalemate, Google Branches Out

Google continued to lap the competition in 2009, but found itself jousting with a formidable foe: the U.S. government.

Scrutiny from federal regulators played a role in almost every major story that involved Google this year, from its continued domination of the search and search advertising markets, to its battle with authors and publishers over the effects of the Google Book Search settlement, to CEO Eric Schmidt's role overseeing both Google and Apple as a director. At year's end, no major federal action had been taken against the company, and Google showed no signs of slowing down its innovative engineers with plans to move into operating systems and possibly consumer electronics.

Google's settlement with groups representing authors and publishers technically took place in 2008, but the battle over its propriety raged throughout 2009. And the year will end without a clear decision regarding how Google will be allowed to display portions of out-of-print yet copyright-protected books that it has scanned. However, a second final settlement drafted in consultation with the Department of Justice was approved in November.

Opponents accused Google of trying to corner the market on digital books, while the company insisted it was doing the world a favor by improving access to books. A final hearing on whether to approve the revised settlement is scheduled for February 2010, meaning this story isn't done just yet.

Google will end the year about where it began when it comes to search market share: around 65 percent of the U.S. market, according to ComScore. Microsoft's launch of Bing, a revamped version of Live Search, was definitely noticed in Mountain View, but Bing seemed to take more share from Yahoo than it did from Google as the year progressed.

Not all was rosy for the Google economic engine: the company was forced to lay off employees for the first time due to the prolonged economic slump in the advertising market. Still, Google appeared to weather the storm far better than its competitors, and once the dust had cleared opened up its checkbook for strategic purchases such as On2 Technologies and AdMob.

It was a banner year for one of Google's most important side projects. Android, its mobile operating system, started to gain traction among the phone makers of the world, and led to a landmark deal between Google and Verizon to develop "a family of devices" based on Android.

However, late in the year, Google was reported to be planning to sell consumers a phone of its own: the $199 Nexus One, given out to Google employees at a holiday party. The company has not yet commented on whether the Nexus One will be its first consumer electronics product, or just another developer phone sold to a limited audience.

Android began setting itself up as a main contender to Apple's iPhone, which is probably why the government raised an eyebrow at Schmidt's role as a director at both Apple and Google. For a while, Schmidt shrugged off the controversy, but eventually stepped down from Apple's board after acknowledging that the overlap between the two companies had become too great.

That decision came after Google decided to shake up the computer market with plans for its own operating system--Chrome OS--based on its Chrome browser. Chrome OS is not expected to arrive on Netbooks until late next year, but the company showed off its novel approach to operating system development late in the year during an event for the media. Chrome OS is designed as a lightweight, fast operating system that runs nothing but Web applications; that might appeal to some, but it's still not clear if the masses are ready for such a product.

And while cloud computing through products like Chrome OS may be the future, the current cloud situation can be stormy from time to time. Google suffered a prolonged outage in May that knocked out traffic to just about all of its services, and sporadic Gmail outages frustrated users on several occasions.

Source: http://news.cnet.com/2702-1023_3-426.html

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Consumer Groups Urge Block of Google-AdMob Deal

Consumer Groups Urge Block of Google-AdMob Deal

Two consumer groups have added their objections to Google's proposed acquisition of mobile advertising network AdMob, saying the deal would be anticompetitive and cause privacy concerns.

The Federal Trade Commission has already signaled that it wants to take a closer look at the $750 million deal, which was announced in November. AdMob runs an ad network across mobile sites and applications, and critics such as Consumer Watchdog and the Center for Digital Democracy are concerned that the company will give Google a big advantage in extending its dominant share of the search advertising market into the fast-growing mobile space.

"The mobile sector is the next frontier of the digital revolution. Without vigorous competition and strong privacy guarantees this vital and growing segment of the online economy will be stifled," said John Simpson of Consumer Watchdog and Jeffery Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy, in a letter sent to the FTC Monday (click for PDF).

It's not clear exactly what the FTC is examining during its current review of the deal, but Google said last week that the receipt of a "second notice" would push back the expected completion of the deal by a few months. This is getting to be the new normal for Google, which is coming off a year during which it faced more government scrutiny of its growing online power than ever before.

Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-10422400-265.html?

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Free Article Directory» Why You Need for SEO? | SEO, Search Engine Optimization

Free Article Directory» Why You Need for SEO? | SEO, Search Engine Optimization

Free Article Directory» Why You Need for SEO? | SEO, Search Engine Optimization

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Social Media Marketing With Twitter – An Introduction

Social Media Marketing With Twitter – An Introduction

As a business owner, you have likely heard of social media marketing. You may even have been curious enough to investigate it. And you may have been overwhelmed by the many options available to you. Between Digg, Delicious, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and all of the many others, it is difficult to know where to start.

Twitter is one of the newer entries in the social media marketing field. Launched in 2006, it has become an enormously popular way for people to connect and keep in touch. Like any form of social media, it has also attracted businesses keen to get on the bandwagon of social media marketing.

Using Twitter as a Marketing

Twitter is often referred to as a micro-blog. Instead of posts, you write “tweets” of 140 characters or less. You can follow other users with similar interests, and they can follow you. Each time you add an update, all of your followers receive a message. They can choose to respond or not.

As with any social media marketing site, using Twitter requires you to be involved. You need to follow and be followed. You also need to provide information of value to the people who follow you. One example is links to your blog or other relevant information on your site.

Using Twitter for marketing does take time (as does any attempt at social media marketing). You need to build a community of followers and engage with other users to create credibility. To make links, you have to have something interesting to share with people, which means you need to spend time creating enough current, relevant, interesting and (occasionally) thought-provoking content for your followers to read.

Tips for Using Twitter as Part of Your Online Marketing

There are some basic rules to follow when using Twitter for marketing. In fact, many of these rules apply to other social media sites too, like Facebook.

Do not spam or engage in hard selling. Remember to be sociable and offer information of value. Blog posts on the benefits of your product or services, interesting conferences or professional development opportunities that are coming up – these are good examples.

• Always link back to your site or blog. That is why you are doing this in the first place.
• To get followers, put a link on your site or blog inviting people to follow you on Twitter. Twitter provides the code for a “badge” that you can drop into your Website or blog.
• Search Twitter for likeminded users/businesses and see who they are following. You may be interested in following the same users.
• Follow the lead of those who came before you. There are users with hundreds of followers. Check out what they are tweeting about so you can get ideas.

Use Twitter as Part of a Detailed Social Media Marketing Strategy

Of course, if you are using social media for marketing, you need to have a comprehensive plan. To create a plan like that, you may need help from a search engine marketing consultant. In addition to tweeting on Twitter (which can eat up a lot of your time) you need to have a schedule for blogging and writing articles to link to.

As part of this strategy, develop a plan for your content. Don’t throw any old thing up there just to have something to link to. A consultant can show you how to create compelling copy that makes your blog, articles and Website work with your social media marketing, so that you are drawing traffic through as many channels as possible.

Source From: homebasedblogging.com

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Open Source CMS market share report 2009

Open Source CMS market share report 2009

The 2009 Open Source CMS market share report was released a couple of weeks ago. The report concludes that WordPress, Joomla! and Drupal maintain a large lead on the rest of the pack, and that they are the dominant players in the market.

Despite the rather lengthy nature of the survey, more than 600 persons completed the question set. The demographic data gathered shows the survey group to be primarily composed of senior IT professionals working in smaller organizations of 1 to 5 people. More than 80% of the participants had heard about Joomla!, Wordpress and Drupal, though most of them were more familiar with Wordpress and Joomla!. Continue Reading

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7 Creative and Interesting Infographics about Twitter

7 Creative and Interesting Infographics about Twitter

By Xavier Lur

With over 54 million users worldwide and close to 7 billion tweets being posted, Twitter is the world’s most popular micro-blogging platform, fueled by smartphones and online bursts of 140 characters. 2009 is the year of Twitter. It soared to lofty heights over the past year, all thanks to the active presence of celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher and Oprah Winfrey. The San Francisco-based Internet company isn’t a social networking website like Facebook or MySpace. Instead, the main focus of Twitter is about real-time information of the things you care about — work, industry, company, news.

2010 will be the revenue year of Twitter. The micro-blogging juggernaut will focus on generating revenue in the year ahead, and may explore options including an initial public offering. “2010 is really going to be the revenue year. I don’t know if we’re going to be profitable, but we have plenty of time,” said co-founder and creative director Biz Stone during an Oxford University event in November.

Today, I’d like to share with you guys ‘7 Creative and Interesting Infographics about Twitter‘. Enjoy and don’t forget to tweet about this post!

1. The Journey of a Tweet

Timon Singh from NGONews has created an infographic which shows the journey of a Tweet and how it evolves from a simple 140-character long message to a Google news story.

2. The Many Users of Twitter

Ordinary people use Twitter to share with their friends and co-workers what they are doing; bloggers, Internet marketers, and businesses use Twitter to promote their articles/products; politicians use Twitter to garner support; celebrities use Twitter to stay in touch with their beloved fans, and spammers use Twitter to send unsolicited messages.

Inspired by Guy Kawasaki, “The Many Users of Twitter” is an infographic designed by the folks at NGONews. According to Guy Kawasaki, there are six types of Twitter users – Newbie, Brand, Smore, Bitch, Maven, and Mensch. So which one are you?

3. Information creation and circulation before and after Twitter

Designed by Burson Marsteller, the “before Twitter” infographic shows that time is necessary for the information to spread before its arrival on Twitter. On the other hand, the “after Twitter” infographic reveals the changes of the information circulation with the development of the use of Twitter.

Before Twitter

After Twitter

4. Facebook VS Twitter

Although one is a social networking websites whereas the other is a micro-blogging platform, but both have been ruled as “arch-rivals”. The “Facebook VS Twitter” infographic depicts the exponential growth of the two websites.

*The statistics are outdated, but at least it’s worth taking a look.

5. More Truth About Twitter – Twitter Stats

Based on surveys and statistics, InformationIsBeautiful has designed an infographic that shows the percentage of active and non-active Twitter users; the number of people out of 100 whose tweets are pointless babble, and when are the peak days and hours.

6. The History of Twitter, So Far

In July, we gathered information from various sources and compiled the list of “The History of Twitter in pictures“.

However, Manolith has done a better job in telling the story of Twitter by squeezing a long-form blog post into an attractive infographic that puts some key moments of the service’s history in visual form.

7. Le Twitter Hack

Apparently, Twitter needs better security. The “Le Twitter Hack” infographic shows a timeline of events regarding the July’s Twitter attack.

Credit: techxav.com

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Web 2.0’s Social Suicide Machine

Web 2.0’s Social Suicide Machine

I haven’t logged into Facebook in a few months now. However, I’m still being bombarded with emails from the service, and apparently, my Facebook friends are being commanded to write something on my wall in an attempt to get me sucked into the service. Sorry, friends, it’s not going to work. For people burned out on social networking, like me, there’s always the option of suicide: Web 2.0 Suicide Machine to the rescue!

What the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine does is it logs into your social media home, like your Facebook, LinkedIn, or MySpace, and it removes you. It changes the password, unfriends all your contacts, and removes every trace of your content on the service as best it can. Best of all, you can watch your former web life disappear right before your eyes as the service works its magic!

I had a friend recently pull the plug on her Facebook, and she’s not regretted it for an instant. I’m sure I could do the same to my Facebook and MySpace and whatnot, but first I’d have to remember what the passwords to those things were before I could set the Suicide Machine to work on them. It’s easier just to not use them in my case. Don’t think I didn’t think about trying the service out for myself, though; there’s still a chance I might!

source: http://www.popfi.com/2009/12/21/web-20s-social-suicide-machine/

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Facebook affecting Indian firms' productivity: Study

Facebook affecting Indian firms' productivity: Study

London, December 22 (ANI): Facebook is becoming a problem for employers at offices in India, as employees have started spending so much time on the social networking site that it is beginning to affect productivity, a new survey has revealed.

The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Assocham) have found in their survey that office staff on average spend an hour a day on sites like Facebook, resulting in a loss of productivity measuring 12.5percent.

The study noted: "Close to 12.5 percent of productivity of human resource in corporate sector is misappropriated each day since a vast majority of them while away their time accessing social networking sites during the office hours."

Seemingly, the workers use Orkut, Facebook, Myspace and Linkedin for "romancing".

"As a matter of fact, [the] growing use of browsing sites can be dangerous for overall productivity and IT companies have already installed software to restrict its use," the BBC News quoted Assocham secretary general DS Rawat as saying.

As part of the study, a total of 4,000 employees between the ages of 21 and 60 from different cities in India including Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Surat, Mumbai (Bombay), Pune, Chandigarh, Lucknow and Kanpur, were questioned.

It was observed that nearly half of office employees accessed Facebook during work time.

Moreover, four in every 10 workers built their entire Orkut or Facebook profile at office.

Also, 83 percent of the employees think there is no harm surfing at work during office hours. (ANI)
ANI

Source: Yahoo NEWS

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Facebook's Favorite Gadgets

Facebook's Favorite Gadgets

Oliver J. Chiang, Forbes.com

Know a friend or a loved one who is obsessed with her Facebook page? Of course you do. So why not get her a gift this holiday season that works with the social network?

At a recent Silicon Valley event focused on gadgets, Facebook's chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg and vice president of engineering Mike Schroepfer rattled off a list of gadgets that can enhance the Facebook experience. From cameras to cuff links, a surprisingly wide range of trinkets have become integrated with the social network, making them must-have gifts for those who spend far too many hours updating their status or playing FarmVille.

In Pictures: Facebook's Favorite Gadgets

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One of Sandberg and Schroepfer's top picks was the Canon PowerShot S90 ($400). Hailed by reviewers as the photography enthusiast's compact camera, the PowerShot S90 can also be set up to automatically upload photos to an online album on your Facebook account.

In Pictures: Facebook's Favorite Gadgets

In mobile, a recent trend is phones that provide easy Web access to social networks. So it's no surprise that Sandberg and Schroepfer highlighted the Palm Pixi, which like the Palm Pre, runs the webOS operating system that makes it easy for users to import contacts from online accounts like Facebook, Google and LinkedIn right onto the phone. In addition, the Pixi comes preloaded with a Facebook application that lets you view your friends' status updates and post your own.

Schroepfer also gave high marks to the Logitech Squeezebox Radio ($200), a wi-fi-enabled music box that can play tracks from Internet radio stations or from streaming music services like Pandora or Last.fm. The Squeezebox also lets you send a message to your friends on Facebook recommending songs you heard and liked on the device.

Schroepfer also touted a companion piece to go along with the radio, the iPeng app for the iPhone ($10), which turns your Apple smart phone into a remote control for the Squeezebox.

But who says that the social networking addiction has to end at gadgets? Facebook meets fashion with the F Me Cufflinks ($50) from CuffLinks.com, designed with the same white-on-blue aesthetic of the Web site.

Facebook-related gadgets weren't the only holiday gift picks from the Facebook executives. Sandberg also is a fan of the Clarisonic Skin Care Brush ($195), a device that cleanses and moisturizes facial skin.

Meanwhile, the strangest gift of the event was the Woozee, an animatronic doll resembling a blue bear with horns, from Social Gaming Network spinoff ToyBot. Woozee is also souped up with 3G, wi-fi and GPS connectivity. This allows for cool features: Woozee can recite text messages sent to it remotely through mobile or Internet-connected devices. Though the doll won't be on the market till mid-2010, the techie tykes in your family may want to get a head a start by putting this on their future wish lists.

Follow Oliver J. Chiang on Twitter or e-mail him at ochiang@forbes.com.

See Also:

Grab-'Em-While-You-Can Gadgets

Oliver J. Chiang, Forbes.com

Source: Yahoo NEWS

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Opera 10.5 pre-alpha goes Chrome hunting

Opera 10.5 pre-alpha goes Chrome hunting

The latest Opera browser preview version may not be entirely stable, but it's definitely got its jetpack strapped on. Opera 10.5 pre-alpha, for Windows and Mac, is the first browser that's not powered by Webkit to approach JavaScript rendering speeds previously reached only by Chrome and Safari.

In empirical testing done on an HP desktop running an Intel Core 2 Q6600 at 2.66GHz with 4GB of RAM and Windows 7 32-bit, the pre-alpha scored 435.6 milliseconds in the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark. By contrast, Google Chrome 4.0.266.0, the most recent development build, notched 510.4 ms. The current stable build of Opera was more than 7.5 times slower, at 3284.4 ms.

Opera attributes this dramatic improvement to the new Carakan JavaScript engine, which they have designed from scratch to replace the Futhark engine in the stable build. Opera 10.5 also includes improvements to the Presto layout engine, and a new graphics library called Vega.

Other improvements noticeable in the pre-alpha include changing the URL address bar to include the same style of predictive smart search that Firefox and Chrome have, and the search and address bars now both remember searches, support deleting specific items, and have redesigned layouts.

The main browser interface has been redone, too. The tabs are now on top, the menu bar has been minimized behind a drop-down on the left nav, and the browser has better integration with Windows 7 and Snow Leopard. On Windows 7 there's Aero Peek and Jump List support to access Speed Dial and tabs from the Taskbar. For Macs, there's a unified toolbar, native buttons and scrollbars, multitouch gestures, and Growl support. Dialog boxes are now non-modal, which you means you can now switch tabs without a pop-up commanding your browser's focus, for example. This will affect verification and authentication pop-ups, and JavaScript alerts.

There are some known problems, including a lack of printer support in the Mac version and noticeably high memory usage. Users can expect these to get addressed before the stable build of Opera 10.50 is released. The Opera 10.50 official announcement and changes can be read here, while the current stable version of Opera 10.10 is for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

source: http://download.cnet.com/8301-2007_4-10420544-12.html

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