Posts by newsguy

According to recent reports the Android operating system has an impressive 19.9% share of the US mobile web market. That's still some way behind Apple iOS on 58.8% but the iPhone has been around for a lot longer. It should come as no surprise, then, that Yahoo! wants to get a piece of that Android action. Which is why it has now announced the continuing expansion of its reach with the immediate availability of Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Messenger apps plus a Yahoo! Search Widget for Android.

The new apps come complete with new functionality and enhancements that have been optimised for the Android platform, and are available for OS 2.0 or later from the Android Market as free downloads with immediate effect.

The new Yahoo! Mail Android app enables push notification of new messages, full search of email messages, photos uploading direct from the handset camera or gallery, emoticon and rich text formatting support. Importantly for Yahoo!, it also offers advertisers an opportunity to reach a highly engaged mobile audience and Samsung is the first and inaugural advertiser to take advantage of this. The new Yahoo! Messenger Android app enables sending of instant messages via SMS text message, multitasking with the app working and active in the background, push notifications, plus the same photo and rich formatting support as the Mail app.

The Yahoo! Android search widget is essentially just a one-click route to Yahoo! search, accessible from …

This month sees the 75th anniversary of one of the cornerstones in the IT industry and it's name is neither Apple nor Microsoft. In 1935 the Fuji Tsushinki Manufacturing Corporation was founded in Japan, although you will probably know it better by the name it adopted later: Fujitsu.

Quite apart from the fact that it is nothing short of remarkable for an IT company to be hitting a 75 year milestone anniversary, and without wishing to sound too much like the new Fujitsu marketing manager, this is a birthday worth celebrating thanks to a number of breakthroughs and innovations which most of us have either forgotten about or were never aware of in the first place. From the early days of telephone switching in the 1930s; the mainframe and parallel computing generation of the 1970s, to newer inventions such as palm vein authentication and perhaps most recently the world's first 3D PC, Fujitsu are one of the unsung heroes of the technology business.

Commenting on the 75 anniversary, Fujitsu UK and Ireland CEO, Roger Gilbert, says: "Companies with as long a history as Fujitsu inevitably change in shape and focus over the years. We're entering a new chapter of our history as the world changes in the way that technology is adopted and used by the masses, both in the developed and developing worlds. The unprecedented challenges that organisations are facing in today's economy mean that IT is finally being recognised as a driving force in …

There is absolutely no doubt that mobile broadband has been one of those recession bucking sectors which has enjoyed something of a boom in recent years. However, according to new figures from Broadband Expert that boom would appear to be over.

Working on the basis that the number of people using the comparison website to sign up for mobile broadband services equates directly to the popularity of mobile broadband, at least in the UK, the site suggests that consumers are "realising the technology does not live up to the hype" and this accounts for the 57 percent drop it has seen in the last 12 months. Sales have crashed, I am informed, from around 3,000 in May 2009 to just 1,300 in May 2010.

These findings are not to be taken in isolation, of course, but are somewhat supported by Experian Hitwise data which also suggests a dip of more than 50 percent in the amount of searches undertaken for the phrase ‘mobile broadband’ during that same period.

Rob Webber, Broadband Expert’s commercial director, says that UK consumers have been let down by mobile broadband technology, with slow speeds and poor coverage being the main factors: "Mobile broadband experienced phenomenal growth in the UK as consumers expected all the benefits of a home broadband connection whilst on the move" he says, concluding that the impending availability of a super fast Long Term Evolution(LTE) 4G network will give mobile broadband the shot in the arm it …

Martha Lane Fox, who co-founded lastminute.com, has been appointed as the new UK Digital Champion by Prime Minister David Cameron. As part of the coaltion Government's drive to increase transparency and accountability, the Internet entrepreneur will be tasked with encouraging as many people as possible to go online, and improving the convenience and efficiency of public services by driving online delivery. She will be supported in this endeavour by the Cabinet Office. Lane-Fox will also sit on the Efficiency Board, which is co-chaired by Cabinet Office Minister, Francis Maude, and Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander, and which oversees the Government's Efficiency and Reform programme.

"There are more than 10 million adults in this country who have never used the internet and it is my mission to get as many of them online as possible" Martha Lane-Fox commented, continuing "at the moment they are missing out on the massive advantages of being online which the rest of us take for granted, including average consumer savings of over £560 a year and the ability to access vital public services, and I want to change that. And whilst helping to bridge the digital divide is hugely important in its own right, there are also compelling economic reasons why we need to get everyone online. For example the Government could save millions of pounds each year simply by doing transactions online rather than on paper or over the phone."

Prime Minister David Cameron says of the …

It seems that the world has gone football crazy now that the World Cup is underway in South Africa, vuvuzelas and all. But with ticket sales not having been as successful as expected, and reports of rafts of empty seats which FIFA won't sell tickets to South Africans for, overseas the thought of buying cheap last minute cup tickets could be tempting.

However, new research from YouGov which has been commissioned by VeriSign reveals that caution should be used when going online to buy them. Apparently some 46 percent of the UK population online has flocked to the web to purchase tickets for sporting, musical and other cultural events. Unsurprisingly, ticketing websites are appearing all the time to meet this demand, yet not all are what they seem with illegitimate sites on the rise.

The research suggests that some 11 percent of British web users have admitted to not going through with an event ticket purchase due to their suspicions over the legitimacy of the ticketing website. VeriSign is advising users to be prudent and to thoroughly vet ticketing websites before making a purchase, particularly in the light of that spike in demand for last-minute World Cup tickets that is expected if England makes it through its group matches next week.

Cyber criminals take advantage of passionate fans who will do anything to see their favourite teams, players and acts – potentially letting their usual security checks slip – meaning that the cost …

If you thought, or indeed hoped, that the Google Chrome OS would be a thoroughly modern marvel running web apps only then you are about to be disappointed. It would appear that even the brave new future of the OS cannot escape from the legacy of Windows.

According to a Google software engineer, one Gary Kacmarcík, Chrome will support legacy Windows applications. In a Google Groups posting Kacmarcík writes that the "Chrome OS will not only be great platform for running modern web apps, but will also enable you to access legacy PC applications right within the browser" through the miracle, or curse depending upon your viewpoint, of chromoting.

Chromoting is best thought of as being a remote desktop application for a cloud computing powered device I guess. Here's that 'official' Gary Kacmarcík posting in full:

"We're adding new capabilities all the time. With this functionality (unofficially named "chromoting"), Chrome OS will not only be great platform for running modern web apps, but will also enable you to access legacy PC applications right within the browser. We'll have more details to share on chromoting in the coming months."

And there was me thinking that the Chrome OS had been designed to be a cloud-based thing, to run web apps without the overhead required by legacy software? So maybe the question, when it comes to running Windows software under Chrome at least, should not be how but rather why. C'mon people, do you really want to …

Since the BP-contracted Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20th, killing 11 workers and sending tens of thousands of barrels of oil into the sea every day, the oil industry has been subject to an understandable barrage of bad press. Finding a good news story amongst all of this environmental doom and gloom is, to be fair, pretty tough. However, I think I might just have managed it courtesy of that most unlikely of environmental heroes: the data centre.

It would appear that a data centre which was designed and built by Keysource for the oil exploration surveyor Petroleum Geo-Services (PGS) has achieved a pretty impressive annualised Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) figure. PUE is the metric that determines the energy efficiency of a data centre by dividing the power that enters it by the power used to run the computer infrastructure within. The magic PUE number is 1 with overall efficiency improving as it gets closer to that figure. The PGS data centre has achieved a PUE of just 1.17 which makes it one of the most energy-efficient facilities of this kind in Europe.

To put that into some kind of perspective, the data centre has achieved first year savings of £650,000 and a 6.7 million KWh drop in power consumption, equating to a 2.9 million kg reduction in CO2 emissions. It has managed this by using the Ecofris scalable free cooling solution which does not require the use of additional chillers …

Fake YouTube pages which look very similar to the real thing have been uncovered by security experts at eSoft, and they deliver a deadly payload. According to the eSoft Threat Prevention Team there are at least 135,000 of these fake YouTube pages, sitting on thousands of compromised web servers, and each attempting to install a malware executable should an unwary user be fooled into attempting to play the videos contained on them.

There's nothing new in the methodology here: promise videos related to hot news items such as the BP oil spill for example, and then pop-up the 'you need to download this video codec to play the video' warning which is in fact the trigger for a malware executable download and install.

The fact that such a big group of pages, all hosted on compromised but unsuspecting and otherwise genuine web servers and all attempting to fool the user into thinking they are connecting to a kosher YouTube site is worrying, however.

If you get an email purporting to come from Twitter suggesting that you have forgotten your password, even though you know exactly what it is, you will not be alone. It would appear that around 55,000 people have already received these fake notifications which, as if you haven't guessed, are malicious link-filled spam.

The Websense Security Labs ThreatSeeker Network warns that the spam contains a link to a compromised site which will attempt to download a malicious executable named password.exe that is actually another of those rogue AV applications, this one being identified as Protection Center Safebrowser.

The payload is somewhat more mature than most rogue AV scams in that is will display some of the malware files it installs on the user's desktop, making it obvious that the computer has been infected - and so making the perhaps not so fake after all attack notification more believable.

Still, anyone with a modicum of common sense should be safe enough as they won't click through the links in an email telling them they have forgotten their Twitter password when they have not. The usual advice for those who are a little hard of thinking when it comes to matters of online security applies: always connect directly to the website concerned, or send a new email to customer support, rather than click links in any unsolicited email that arouses suspicion.

Many a gadget freak has claimed 'I would kill for an iPad' over the last few weeks, but as the world officially goes iPad crazy ask your self this: would you die for an iPad? That's the rather serious question being asked as the Chinese factory where the iPad is made comes under increasing scrutiny concerning the number of suicides amongst the workers there.

According to The Morning Star "Bosses at Apple contractor Foxconn admitted that at least 10 of their workers had now committed suicide while another 20 had tried to take their own lives at work" and the Daily Mail reports how a 17 year old girl lies crippled in a hospital bed a couple of miles away from the factory after leaping "from her fourth-floor dormitory rather than take her place on the production line" just 40 days after starting work at what is believed to be the largest factory in the world.

The number of suicides has risen to 12 since the Morning Star covered the story and the Independent claims "The deaths are thought to be related to working conditions at the plant – long hours for poor pay and constant pressure to perform" and The Telegraph reckons "the hysteria at Longhua, where between 300,000 and 400,000 employees eat, work and sleep, has grown to such a pitch that workers have twisted Foxconn’s Chinese name so that it now sounds like: Run to your Death."

According to the latest market research coming out of security vendor nCircle the cost of security auditing is heading in one direction, and that's upwards. Some 47 percent of IT security professionals to the nCircle survey expect that security auditing costs will increase during 2010 while only a very optimistic 8 percent see them falling. Interestingly, a huge 83 percent of them reported that they are effectively identifying security and compliance issues prior to any audit, which is certainly good news.

"The increasing complexity of regulatory requirements continues to be a key cost driver for many companies’ compliance initiatives" says Elizabeth Ireland, Vice President of Strategy for nCircle, who continues by adding "It's interesting to note that, while a significant percentage of companies believe they are identifying security and compliance issues prior to beginning an audit, organisations are not yet realising the cost savings that can come from process maturity. Unless companies have a strategy that automates the continuous monitoring required for various regulations and can report on it to suit the requirements of a specific audit, the process remains very resource intensive and costly".

But the celebrity buzz has not wound down, the social media site has simply changed the rules of the game to prevent that buzz from showing it would appear to me.

At the State Opening of Parliament, the Queen has been giving her annual speech on behalf of the UK Government. Written by the new Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition Government itself, much of the speech was devoted to the inevitable cost cutting exercises, the 'Big Society' concept and reform in terms of both the electoral system and Parliament itself. However, one thing amongst an otherwise predictably boring speech came, thankfully, near the start, when Her Majesty stated that "my government will support the introduction of high speed broadband access" for the UK.

Unfortunately she did not mention that her government will repeal the awful Digital Economy Bill that was rushed through before the previous administration disappeared up it's own wazoo. But then that's hardly surprising when, according to reports, it has no intention of doing so despite the Liberal Democrats being very vocal in voting against it.

The British Library is already home to 52,000 local, regional, national and international newspaper titles spanning three centuries. Not surprisingly it has been called one of the world’s finest collections of newspapers, and every year it's used by 30,000 researchers in subjects ranging from family history and genealogy to sports statistics, politics and industrial history.

The problem being that this vast resource is held mainly in hard copy and microfilm, necessitating a trip to the north London Colindale site for people wishing to access it. Which is why the British Library’s Chief Executive, Dame Lynne Brindley, has announced a ten year partnership between the Library and online publisher brightsolid (which owns such online brands as Friends Reunited) which aims to deliver the most significant mass digitisation of newspapers the UK has ever seen.

The firm will digitise content from the British Library Newspaper Library, which it will then make available online via a paid-for website as well as integrating it into its family history websites. This resource will be available for free to users on-site at the British Library and copies of all scanned materials will be deposited with the Library to be held in the national collection in perpetuity.

Digitised material will include extensive coverage of local, regional and national press across three and a half centuries. It will focus on specific geographic areas, along with periods such as the census years between 1841 and 1911. Additional categories will be developed looking at key events and …

The House Ways and Means Committee meets today for a hearing looking at the potential revenue that could come from regulated Internet gambling. The committee will be discussing Rep. Jim McDermott’s (D-WA) proposed 'Internet Gambling Regulation and Tax Enforcement Act' that concentrates upon the revenue that might be generated from online gambling taxes. It is thought that over a five year period a legalised online gambling industry could create some 32,000 jobs and $57.5 billion in tax revenue.

However, analysts at the Competitive Enterprise Institute are urging Congress to reform the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) before doing anything else. The CEI insists that following six month delay, banks and other credit processing companies will soon be required to be in compliance with what it calls a "vague and confusing law" and the end result could be a de facto ban on Internet gambling as from June 1st, 2010.

"The amount of money exchanged in online gambling activities is enormous, and does have the potential to generate substantial tax revenue, but that’s not why the existing law should be overturned" said CEI policy analyst Michelle Minton. "The fundamental issue is consumer choice – it is not the place of government to tell adult citizens what activities they can and cannot engage in from the privacy of their own homes. First and foremost regulators need to correct the egregious violation of individual rights that UIGEA represents. Without this correction, gambling online will …

Gettin’ Over by David Guetta featuring Chris Willis was the one billionth track unknown song identified by Shazam, the mobile music discovery app. Yep, that's right, one billion unknown songs have now been successfully identified by the thing, which is quite an impressive number.

Almost as impressive as the climb from 50 million users just six months ago to a staggering 76 million users today, and a footprint in more than 200 countries across continents. How many mobile services can claim a 100 percent growth in membership in a year, especially when they are not a startup but a well established business with some ten years history behind them?

Andrew Fisher, Shazam’s CEO commented "Shazam is now a brand that consumers know and trust and our one billionth tag is testament to our ever growing fan base of users that enjoy Shazam’s unrivalled music experience. We are confident that the user growth we have seen in the last six months will continue throughout 2010 and that we will exceed 100 million Shazamers by the end of the year".

If you see a message on Facebook, apparently coming from one of your friends, and promising a link to the 'sexiest video ever' then whatever you do, don't click on it. The video link messages promise a 'candid camera prank' seemingly involving a woman in a short skirt riding an exercise bicycle, but according to security experts at Sophos actually delivers a malicious payload via a rogue Facebook application instead.

Like so many scams of the type, this one will inform any Facebook who does click on the link that they need to install specific video player software to view the video. The payload being a double whammy of adware and the posting to all Facebook friends of copies of the same message that made the victim click the link in the first place.

"You may want to watch a sexy video, but you're more likely to end up being plagued by pop-up advertising" warned Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos who adds "it's no surprise that your friends might click to watch the movie when it looks to all intents and purposes that you are the person who has sent it to them."

Sophos advises Facebook users who are worried they may have already clicked on this video link, and it appears victims could number in the thousands, to change passwords remove whatever Facebook application was installed as a result of the scam. Oh, and to scan their computers with up to date …

Back in 1976, along with Stanford University professor Martin Hellman, Whit Diffie produced quite possibly the most important paper in the history of cryptography. That paper, New Directions in Cryptography, laid the groundwork for solving one of the fundamental problems of cryptography, that of key distribution. Now Diffie himself is taking a different direction by joining the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) as Vice President for Information Security and Cryptography.

In his new role, Diffie will provide advice on general security matters related to ICANN's mandate, and to ICANN in the design, development and implementation of security methods for ICANN-managed networks. He will also oversee the continuous improvement and best practices process for information security and cryptography.

ICANN CEO and President Rod Beckstrom expressed ICANN's appreciation for Diffie's exceptional background and the value he brings: "Whit Diffie brings an extraordinary intellect and immense professional achievements to ICANN, and his appointment reflects my strong commitment to improving ICANN's technical security".

Symantec today launched a new hosted security as a service solution for small and medium sized business in the form of its 'Symantec Hosted Endpoint Protection' offering. Delivering a simple and convenient cloud-based service covering Windows-based laptops, desktops and files servers, the solution aims to protect these endpoint systems using advanced technologies for antivirus, antispyware, firewall, and host intrusion prevention all managed from a single online management console.

Symantec Hosted Endpoint Protection features include:

• Always-on Protection for Endpoints: Automated updates occur transparently over an Internet connection to keep employee systems current and consistent with client policies when employees are in the office or on the road – even when they’re not logged into their corporate VPN.
  
• Administrators can access the administration portal over a supported Web-browser and corporate VPN access is not required to monitor and manage each computer. Administrators receive real-time alerts via SMS or email and can easily perform functions such as initiate a LiveUpdate to refresh system protection levels, view history on systems and change local policy settings.
  
• Adds and manages new computers without requiring on-site management servers. Updates occur automatically and new features are introduced as they become available during the subscription period for no additional fee.
  
• Flexibility provided through a hosted model allows the solution to scale to incorporate new endpoints quickly and efficiently without requiring additional hardware or management software.
  
• Can be quickly deployed to users via standard download, an email invitation or silently pushed to …

Last year security vendors were warning that botnets were not only not dead, but bouncing back in a big way. One suggested that botnets would become autonomous and intelligent, with each node containing inbuilt self-sufficient coding in order to coordinate and extend its own survival, during the course of 2010.

Now we are nearly half way through the year, it seems that prediction was pretty much spot on. Certainly the latest Threatscape report from Fortinet would suggest that botnets are alive and well, with multiple botnets showing a worrying level of high activity.

While Gumblar remained in the No. 1 position in Fortinet’s Top 10 Network Attacks list, the Sasfis botnet ranking was bolstered by two of its executables prevalent in Fortinet’s Antivirus Top 10 listing. Like Bredolab, Sasfis is a botnet loader that reports statistics and retrieves/executes files upon check-in. However, Sasfis differs since it is newer and does not employ encryption (all communications are sent through HTTP unencrypted). Nonetheless, Sasfis continues to spread aggressively and typically loads banking trojans among other malicious files.

Additional key threat activities for the month of April include:

Microsoft Vulnerabilities

The Internet Explorer vulnerability MS.IE.Userdata.Behavior.Code.Execution (CVE-2010-0806) was the second-most detected malicious network activity for the second report in a row. While in its zero-day state, Fortinet observed an attack on this vulnerability that installed the infamous Gh0st RAT spy-trojan, a fully-functioning remote administration tool that also streams Webcam video and audio feeds. Secondly, FortiGuard …

Eugene Kaspersky will today be inducted into the Infosecurity Europe 2010 Hall of Fame in recognition of his contribution to the advancement of the IT security industry during more than twenty years in the business. It's not the only award he has received, as the SC Awards Europe 2010 also voted him the CEO of the Year.

The Kaspersky Lab co-founder and CEO was presented with his award to applause from hundreds of IT security professionals gathered at the ceremony at the Wyndham Grand London in Chelsea Harbour.

Commenting on the award, Eugene Kaspersky says "I am truly honoured to have the hard work and significant progress made by our team around the world recognised here in London. Kaspersky Lab's continued success is built on hard work and determination to make the world a more secure place. It is my privilege to lead them".

It has certainly been something of a bounce back since the security vendor fell victim to an alleged SQL Injection attack on the Kaspersky website last year.

The annual Infosecurity Europe show is set to kick off in London tomorrow, which is good news for lovers of security research as the surveys are starting to flow today. Like the one conducted by the organisers of the event which reveals that banks are not to blame for credit card fraud and identity theft according to the victims of those crimes, retailers are.

The survey of 1000 commuters in London suggests a veritable tidal wave of fraud and ID theft in the UK, with 44 percent admitting they had fallen victim to card fraud and 42 percent said their identity had been stolen.

Apparently, the average amount stolen was £1448 per person with 37 percent of those asked saying they did not get their money back from the bank. Yet despite this, they confessed that it was the shops, the retailers, that were to blame according to 60 percent of those asked with only 12 percent blaming the banks. Funnily enough, 28 percent were actually honest enough to consider that it might actually have been their own fault.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, online transactions proved to be the most dangerous with 27 percent saying they were conned either this way or via email. That said, and not far behind, face-to-face transactions in shops and hotels also managed to con 20 percent of the respondents out of cash and personal data.

Over half of those that were subject to fraud or ID theft said that their …

With the iPad taking off in such a big way that inevitably means for the business market as well as consumer, no matter how much some might argue otherwise. And that surely also means it will only be a matter of time before we get word of the first big data compromise involving the device at some enterprise or other which really ought to know better. So, have you got your iPad data locked down yet?

One security vendor says it has. According to DeviceLock the solution to prevent such data leakage through the iPad comes in the form of the iPhone local synchronisation filtering technology which is already built into it's DeviceLock 6.4.1 product which can control local data transfers between the iPad and endpoint computers.

In other words, the iPad can and should join a long list of other removable storage devices which can have some kind of granular access permissions applied.

"DeviceLock customers already have the enforcement technology in place to protect themselves from users locally copying sensitive data from a Windows endpoint to an iPad and from the loss of control over that data should the iPad user then store or send it to destinations that are even further outside the protected confines of the corporate network" said Ashot Oganesyan, DeviceLock CTO and Founder. "The iPad is positioned as a digital book reader, video player, and gaming platform. But, with its bigger screen, keyboard, and a well-funded application development …

While, for the average end user, spam has become less of a problem over recent years as spam filters get better at what they do and simply remove much of it from sight, that doesn't mean that spam volumes are actually reducing. In fact, the opposite is true and the actual amount of spam flowing through the Internet is still ridiculously high. What's more, the spammers are becoming increasingly adept at adapting to ongoing trends and exploiting them to get their often unsavoury message across.

According to the latest Internet Threats Trend Report for Q1 2010 to be published by Commtouch Labs, spammers are now well and truly using the familiar to inspire end user action. Indeed, by using the most familiar of Internet names the spammers are able to give a deceptive legitimacy to billions of emails they send. So, for example, you'll find that between five and ten percent of all spam by volume would appear to have originated from some Gmail account or other. That does not, however, mean that the same volume actually emanates from Gmail.

The message style of Gmail, along with Facebook and PayPal rather commonly, is copied and templated by the spammers, including those with both malware and phishing payloads, in an attempt to use familiarity to bypass human common sense and automated filtering alike. By downplaying the more 'phishy' elements of an email, and playing up the average Gmail message construction instead, spammers hope to evade detection until …

Spotify is fast become the de facto way of listening to music online for millions of in the know users. Rather than buy a copy of a track which is downloaded to a player such as an iPod, Spotify users either pay a monthly fee (for a no advert service) or stream their tracks free of charge in exchange for the odd advert here and there. They don't actually own the track, nor do they download it for offline storage; it's like a digital radio where you are the DJ and control the playlists. Indeed, Spotify has been hailed by many as the answer to music piracy, a method of listening to all the music you could want but without having to pay the kind of money that iTunes demands for a track, which averages out at around 79p here in the UK for example. No piracy worries for the record companies, many of whom have a stake in the Spotify business it should be noted, and no need to take the illegal downloads route for end users. It has over 7 million users, including 300,000 who pay for the commercial ad-free service. So what could possibly go wrong?

Well, according to The British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors (BASCA), the organisation which is responsible for the Ivor Novello songwriting awards, rather a lot. Or should that be rather a little? BASCA reckons that as far as songwriters are concerned "the amounts of money that are actually being …

While reports suggest that Google is planning an Android or Chrome driven slate computer to rival the iPad, fuelled by some loose party talk by CEO Eric E. Schmidt, others have a date and price for their iPad-alike machine already. Take the Linux-powered WePad for example.

The folk at Neofonie, a German company which is behind the WePad, say that they beg to differ that life is all about "the I, and the Me, Me, Me" and the "power of the many beats the power of one". Mind you, they also say "we will never, ever box you in. Or anybody else, for that matter. Not even those who have a big I and prefer to pursue their own Me".

Reading between the highly confusing lines of the official description of the WePad, I gather that it is an 11.6" slate device with an Intel Atom N450 inside alongside either 16GB or 64GB RAM and a custom Linux GUI based upon the Android OS. Both versions of the WePad have a couple of USB ports for connectivity as well as WiFi, and the more expensive of the two models also apparently comes with a promise of being HD capable. Oh, and both support Flash if the demo videos shown at the press conference are anything to go by.

Mind you, that said, journos who were at the Berlin press conference report that "the only demo device in the room …

According to Gartner you, as in everyone, will start spending more on IT this year. Richard Gordon, a research vice president with the information technology analyst outfit, says that strong fourth quarter sales along with "an unseasonably robust hardware supply chain in the first quarter of 2010" plus a little bit of global economical recovery thrown in "sets up 2010 for solid IT spending growth".

Indeed, Gartner predicts that worldwide IT spending will reach a total $3.4 trillion in 2010. That's a 5.3 percent increase from the IT spending of $3.2 trillion during 2009, the industry should show continued and steady growth with spending in 2011 projected to surpass $3.5 trillion, or a further 4.2 percent increase.

As for computing hardware specifically, Gartner is forecasting that worldwide spending will reach $353 billion in 2010, that's a 5.7 percent increase from 2009. Enterprise hardware spending, though, might be set to grow again this year but will still stay below its 2008 level right through 2014.

"Computing hardware suffered the steepest spending decline of the four major IT spending category segments in 2009. However, it is now forecast to enjoy the joint strongest rebound in 2010" said George Shiffler, another research director at Gartner. "Consumer PC spending will contribute nearly 4 percentage points of hardware spending growth in 2010, powered by strong consumer spending on mobile PCs. Additionally, professional PC spending will contribute just over 1 percentage point of spending growth in 2010 as organizations begin their migration to …

More often than not the consumer worries that it will be bad news when a popular software tool from a small developer is bought by a bigger company. However, in the case of Tweetie, one of the most popular Twitter clients for the iPhone, things could be very different. For a start the 'bigger company' in question happens to be Twitter itself, and what's more the application is to drop in price from the existing $2.99. By how much, you might be wondering? The answer is by $2.99 in fact, as Twitter has decided to give the application away free of charge. About the only other change would appear to be the name, which will no longer be Tweetie but instead become Twitter for iPhone.

According to an official Twitter blog posting a "careful analysis of the Twitter user experience in the iTunes AppStore revealed massive room for improvement" as people were "looking for an app from Twitter, and they're not finding one. So, they get confused and give up".

While not finding an official app from Twitter might be true I'm not sure where the notion that people are giving up is coming from. Indeed, the fact that Tweetie existed and was so popular in the first place suggests that they were finding alternatives that did a perfectly good job.

It may well be that the real reason for the Twitter acquisition of Tweetie has less to do with the client itself, and more …

That's cool. According to Google Mail software engineer Manu Cornet, you can now add nested labels to your Gmail. Posting to the official GMail blog Cornet says that labels are more flexible than folders as "a given email can have several labels but can't be in several folders at the same time". Which is why the GMail Labs folks have been listening to user requests, one of which was for the ability to organise those labels hierarchically. You can find the new Nested Labels option in the Gmail Labs tab under Settings.

Cornet adds "You can create complex hierarchies of labels if that's the way you like to organize your mail, and you can expand/collapse labels to save space. You'll always be able to tell whether a given label contains unread messages in its collapsed child labels by looking at whether it's bold or not".

And talking of much requested features which have made it into the Labs for users to play with, how about the ability to preview messages without opening them and keeping them marked as unread? Yep, Google has added a Message Sneak Peak feature that enables a right click preview pane view of messages from the inbox. It even works with a keyboard shortcut of 'h' to open the sneak peak card, which can then be navigated using the j and k keys.

In March, Facebook proposed that there should be a number of changes to its privacy policy in order to allow it eventually share personal data with 'pre-approved' third party websites. Such information, should you be logged into Facebook and then connect to a third party website, as your name, gender, friends and connections, username, profile picture and not forgetting any content that you have marked to share as per your 'everyone' privacy setting configuration. These pre-approved data leaks are not proving popular amongst Facebook users.

When Sophos conducted a poll to see how popular this chjange might be amongst Facebook users I was expecting the dissenting voices to be loud, but I wasn't esxpecting 95 percent of those asked to say that the changes are a bad thing. The study, conducted amongst 680 readers on Sophos's website and Facebook page, found that only two percent in support of the changes and three percent who did not understand them.

Facebook, of course, points out that only a small number of pre-approved sites will be offered this feature, and users will be given the option to disable the feature. Indeed, in a carefully worded response to the dissent, Facebook insists that it would only offer personal data to "carefully selected partners" and those partners would be "required to provide an easy and prominent method" for users to opt out directly from their websites and delete any cached personal data.

"The results of this poll send out a …

According to the latest poll into password habits conducted by security vendor Symantec, some 26 percent of folk have told their spouse what their passwords are. Perhaps less surprisingly, 12 percent have told their IT admin and 5 percent their boss. However, why 10 percent let their friends and 8 percent their co-workers know is beyond me. Do people not actually understand what a password is for, and if not for keeping access secure and private then why bother in the first place?

Mind you, of the 400 people who took part in the password survey, 23 percent use their web browsers to keep track of multiple passwords, 60 percent don't change them regularly and 3 percent even use the word 'password' as their password and admit as much! Mind you. we've been down the dumbass password road all too often. It seems that people, on the whole, just do not take computer security seriously enough, or seriously at all for that matter.

Kevin Haley from Symantec, comments: "Now, I don’t doubt that 3 per cent of us have accounts where ‘password’ is the password, but people, why on earth would you admit it? Thanks for your honesty, but shame on you for doing it. For the rest of you that are still using middle names, birth dates and pet names, what are you thinking? Security by obscurity? That no one but your friends and family could possibly know your pet’s name? …

So after all the hype you've got an iPad, I guess you'll be wanting to break it then? Jailbreak it, that is, so as to set it free from Apple imposed restrictions and allow you to install non-approved software. Jailbreaking is popular amongst iPhone users, and has been since soon after the original iPhone device appeared on the scene, so it was only ever going to be a matter of time before the same thing happened to the newly launched iPad. After all, it uses a tweaked version of the iPhone OS. However, the Apple world has been taken somewhat by surprise at just how quickly the first successful jailbreaking has occurred. Heck, the iPad has only been on sale for two days and already it has been hacked, cracked and pwned by those in the know as this YouTube video footage reveals.

It is not known how many people have currently got a jailbroken iPhone, but it is doubtful that huge numbers of the 300,000 people across America who pre-ordered and took delivery of their iPads on day one will be wanting to void the warranty and start hacking the hardware so early in the ownership game. Not least as first iPad jailbreak appears to be something of a development demo rather than a commercial or even Beta product right now. What's more, given that this particular pwning seems to be based upon a bug that has been used to …

According to the often accurate Apple Insider the iPad has sold out. It claims that consumers who want an Apple iPad on the day of launch, that's April the 3rd in the US at least, are out of luck unless they have already pre-ordered. As of Saturday 27th March the iPad is sold out for delivery on the 3rd and the new expect your delivery date has been moved back to April 12th at the soonest.

What this means is that the media hype that Apple so successfully initiated has turned into sales of hundreds of thousands of iPads for the official launch, which by itself will ensure more hype and more sales further down the road. There's even talk now that the iPad could outsell the original iPhone, which managed to shift 1.2 million units during the first three months. Apple just needs to keep its fingers crossed that those style conscious early adopters are happy enough with their WiFi-enabled iPads to keep the overall review and blog consensus positive enough until the second phase of adoption gets going with the release of the 3G models at the end of April.

So, have you pre-ordered and are you in line to be an iPad early adopter or are you waiting for the iPad 3G or maybe even iPad 2.0 before reaching for the credit card? If you are lucky enough to find yourself in possession of an iPad on April 3rd, …

Now that's cool. Nintendo has confirmed via a press release that it is set to release a brand new DS portable video game console, complete with 3D capability but without the need to look like a total dork and wear those silly glasses. Unfortunately though the Nintendo 3DS, how did they come up with that name, will not be released in time for Xmas it would seem. Likely timeframe is 'before the end of March 2011' which is a bit of a shame if you ask me.

Here's what the Nintendo press release, translated from the Japanese so excuse me for any errors, has to say about the 3DS:

Nintendo will launch the Nintendo 3DS during the fiscal year ending March 2011, allowing games to be enjoyed with 3D effects but without the need of any special glasses. The Nintendo 3DS is going to be the new portable game machine that succeeds the Nintendo DS Series, which has cumulative consolidated sales of 125 million units as at the end of December 2009. It will include backward software compatibility, including games for the Nintendo DS and DSi. We are planning to announce additional details at E3 show, which is scheduled to be held from June 15, 2010 at Los Angeles.

Are there any Nintendo games developers on DaniWeb who, without breaking the NDA, are able to shed some more light on how the console will work with regards to the 3D effects? Engadget is reporting …

Ten percent of people working in the electronics and telecom sector have not read a book for pleasure in the last year. During the same 12 month period, 35 percent had not learnt a new activity or indulged in a new hobby either. According to the Department For Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) in the UK, an encouraging 60 percent did think that learning a new skill or taking up a new hobby would make them more confident at work. Photography led the way, with 18 percent wanting to learn that and 11 percent showing an interest in taking up martial arts.

Ben Fletcher, Occupational and Health Psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire says "a mere 8 percent of people working in the electronics and telecommunications sectors say they aren’t interested in learning a new skill, so the big barriers are likely to be around access. As such, new learning opportunities are great news for the millions of people who want to broaden their horizons. People really grow from informal learning, both personally and professionally. This research reveals that we now need to take the next step – do something different and break the habit of inertia that prevents us from getting more from our lives and gives something back to society too."

Last year a BIS consultation found that people were keen to take up learning opportunities if they were made available and easy to find. Following the consultation the Government committed an additional £30 million during …

Forget about PC gaming, the new geek chic is social gaming and according to one new report it's women and divorcees who are leading the way.

The latest Global Web Index has identified that the most addicted social gaming players do not fit the typical geeky teenage boy computer gamer stereotype. instead, social gaming would appear to appeal more to people with large families, women and divorcees.

Certainly social gaming is revolutionising the gaming market by engaging with a more diverse and larger audience, and by so doing it's making something of an impact on the game types that are typically being produced within this genre.

The majority of respondents here in the UK at least, some 54 percent, claimed that playing games was a main reason for them using the Internet. Globally, online games are competing head-on with PC games with 28 percent of users playing online games and 24 percent playing casual games on a social network. The survey also reveals that 27 percent of women are inclined to play online games and social games compared to just 22 percent of men.

The survey showed that:

• Women play more than men (50 percent vs 41 percent)
  
• Divorcees play more than single users (63 percent vs 41 percent)
  
• Large families are much more likely to play, 56 percent of users with three or more children and 50 percent of users with two children play social games while only 43 percent …

A new survey has revealed that while 78 percent of them agree that it is wrong, a quarter of the kids asked admitted that hacking really is child's play.

The survey of more than 1000 children discovered that the boy hacker stereotype no longer holds true, with 47 percent of those who put their hands up to hacking activity being girls.

The most common scene of the crime would appear to be the relatively safe haven of the bedroom with 27 percent saying this was where they hacked from, while 22 percent were hacking in an Internet Cafe, 21 percent using the ICT suite at school and 19 percent a mate's machine.

When it comes to the reason why, the most popular cause of hacking as far as kids were concerned was simply for fun with 46 percent saying this. However, a worrying 21 percent wanted to cause disruption and mischief while 20 percent thought they might make some money from their hacking activity.

Although only a very small number, 5 percent of those asked admitted they were seriously considering making black hat hacking their career.

78 percent of the hacking kids who lived outside of London did so before reaching their 13th birthdays, while London kids were more likely to be older with 44 percent being under 16 but only 16 percent yet to enter their teens.

Facebook was the most popular target for the kid hackers, with more than a quarter admitting …

Happy Birthday to the .com domain, 25 years old today. Yes, it really was way back on the 15th March 1985 that symbolics.com became the very first true dotcom company by registering a .com domain on the Internet. Today there are no less than 80 million registered dotcom websites.

One new study has found that the economic impact of the dotcom domain should not be undervalued, revealing that the domain serves as a platform for some $400 billion in annual economic activity! The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) report suggests that the broader Internet economy drives an astonishing $1.5 trillion in global annual economic activity. To put that into some perspective, that's more than the global sales of medicine, investment in renewable energy, and government investment in R&D combined.

Indeed, it could reasonably be said that dotcom is at the centre of pretty much every major Internet trend. According to VeriSign’s Internet Profiling Service there are 11.9 million e-commerce and online business websites, 1.8 million sports-related sites and 4.3 million entertainment-related sites with a .com web address.

The dotcom domain has also become part of the fabric of daily life, and according to a recent Zogby poll some 81 percent of Americans visit five or more .com websites every day. Two-thirds of Americans visit between five and 25 .com websites a day. Over half of the 3,800 survey respondents reported finding important medical information on a .com website and one in five said they …

If it were not bad enough that the Iowa Division of Homeland Security official website was hacked, defaced and forced to close down temporarily it appears that another Iowa state government resource was also compromised a few weeks before. At the end of January the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission suffered a database breach which had the potential to impact upon the data of some 80,000 folk.

While the Homeland Security hack is said, following forensic examination, not to have exposed any sensitive information it does surely expose something of a disregard for security within state government. According to data security specialists Imperva the fact this was such a high profile site, affiliated to the Department of Homeland Security, means it simply should not have been vulnerable to hacker defacement or any other kind of hacker threat.

"Although it's fair to say that no IT resource can ever be 100 per cent protected against all types of attacks, the fact that this hack - and the other two state sites that were also defaced - apparently stems from a misconfigured script or server settings sending out all the wrong messages to businesses and hackers alike" said Amichai Shulman, Imperva's chief technology officer.

"As if this wasn't bad enough, the statements by officials also seem to be at odds with each other. On the one hand we have a state spokesperson saying no real damage was done, and on the other we have another set of people trying …

The answer is Baolab Microsystems which has today announced its NanoEMS technology to do just that, construct nanoscale Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) within the structure of a CMOS wafer rather than building on the surface like current techniques. This, says Baolab, means that because it uses less process steps but standard high volume CMOS lines, will reduce the manufacturing costs of a MEMS by up to two thirds.

Using the existing metal layers in a CMOS wafer to form the MEMS structure using standard mask techniques, the NanoEMS process etches the Inter Metal Dielectric (IMD) through the pad openings in the passivation layer using vapour HF (vHF). This etching process uses readily available equipment for volume production, taking less than an hour to complete. As only standard CMOS processes are used, NanoEMS MEMS can be directly integrated with active circuitry as required.

Baolab has successfully created MEMS devices using standard 0.18um 8” volume CMOS wafers with four or more metal layers, and has achieved minimum feature sizes down to 200 nanometres. This is an order of magnitude smaller than is currently possible with conventional MEMS devices, bringing the new NanoEMS MEMS into the realm of nanostructures, with the additional benefits of smaller sizes, lower power consumption and faster devices.

"We have solved the challenge of building MEMS in a completely different way" explained Dave Doyle, Baolab’s CEO. "Existing MEMS technologies are slow, expensive and require specialist equipment. They have to be either built on …

Two headlines grabbed my attention today. The first proclaiming that Linux sucks while the second announced it was possible to boot into a full Linux OS in less than a single solitary second.

Paul Rako reports that one company, an embedded-Linux specialist called MontaVista Software, has gone step further than developing a proper Real-Time Linux implementation by developing a Real-Fast Linux implementation which boots in a second.

Actually, let's be accurate here, it boots in *less* than a second!

Actually, let's be even more accurate here, according to this report MontaVista has not only managed to boot its Real-Time Linux in under a second but can boot a bog standard, conventional, Linux distro in the same time. There's a video demo of the embedded version booting up in double quick time on YouTube which is worth a look if you are intrigued by all this. not even the embedded version of Windows 7 can get this speedy, so how did the Linux lads achieve it?

MontaVista achieved the impressive feat by getting rid of the bloat, and yes you have to admit that Linux is starting to look a little flabby around the middle these days, and paring down the boot loader. A little bit of Direct Memory Access here to move boot tasks into flash or processor memory as required, plus a clever bit of RAM disk usage by loading those parts of the end-user application needed to start …

Call the National Guard. On second thoughts, call someone else. After all, it is the National Guard which has somehow managed to lose an archival data disk containing five years worth of staff records covering some 15,000 personnel.

The US National Guard is now recommending that any current and former members of staff who are potentially impacted by the loss contact a credit reference bureau. US social security numbers are highly valued amongst identity thieves as they are a common method of identification in all sorts of transactions.

Of course, it isn't the first time that National Guard data has gone walkabout. How about back in 2006 when 2.2 million records concerning US military personnel, including 80 percent of the active-duty force at the time, were stolen? Some 430,000 National Guard personnel were amongst those whose data went missing back then, although an in-depth investigation by the powers that be eventually managed to track it down and limit the damage to reputation done. I don't know about the US Military embracing social networking, or the US Army embracing the iPhone for that matter, maybe it ought to start embracing basic security principals such as the importance of data encryption when talking about such sensitive records for example.

"The archival drive reportedly contains the names, addresses and social security number details of at least 15,000 current and former members of staff as at March 2009, and spans back to the start of 2004" Andy …

According to figures revealed with the publication of the IBM X-Force 2009 Trend and Risk Report, not only do web application vulnerabilities remain the largest category of security disclosure for the last year but, worryingly when you consider that the number of such vulnerabilities found by organisations has not decreased or become less of a threat, some 67 percent of them had no patch available by the end of 2009.

With 49 percent of all vulnerabilities being related to web applications in some regard, with cross-site scripting disclosures surpassing SQL injection to take the top spot, this is worrying news indeed.

Not that there was much happy reading to be had in the report generally anyway. It can be summed up as 'attackers increasingly targeted people using the Internet for monetary gain or data theft; new malicious web links have skyrocketed globally; phishing activity also on the up; and vulnerability disclosures for document readers and editors (in particular PDF documents) have soared'.

Specifically, the report found that:

Vulnerability disclosures for document readers and editors and multimedia applications are climbing dramatically. 2009 saw more than 50 percent more vulnerability disclosures for these categories versus 2008.

New malicious Web links have skyrocketed globally. The number has increased by 345 percent compared to 2008. This trend is further proof that attackers are successful at both the hosting of malicious Web pages and that Web browser-related vulnerabilities and exploitation are likely netting a serious return.

Attacks …

Two numbers that Apple fans won't forget in a hurry have made the headlines this week: 10 billion and 40 billion.

The first refers to the 10 billion songs that have now been downloaded from the iTunes Store. The 10 billionth song was the eerily appropriate "Guess Things Happen That Way" by the oh so aptly named Johnny Cash. And cash is waiting for the downloader of that 10 billionth track in the form of a $10,000 iTunes gift card courtesy of Apple. "We’re grateful to all of our customers for helping us reach this amazing milestone" Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of Internet Services stated, adding "we’re proud that iTunes has become the number one music retailer in the world, and selling 10 billion songs is truly staggering".

Cash is also what Apple has in the bank, lots and lots of cash. Which brings us to that second big number of 40 billion. According to numerous reports emerging online, a shareholder meeting held at the Apple Cupertino campus HQ saw CEO Steve Jobs reveal that the company has a stockpile of some $40 billion in cash. There is now plenty of speculation surrounding Jobs telling the investors at that meeting the cash pile would allow Apple to think big and take bold risks.

TV presenter and Twitter hero Jonathan Ross was amongst the glitterati of the gaming, gadget and entertainment industries who were invited to a 'top secret' hands-on briefing about Project Natal, hosted by Microsoft in London yesterday evening. He took his son with him, and his son posted a video of Ross playing with the new Xbox 360 Wii-alike controller to YouTube. If you want to see both in action, you can do so here .

However, Ross senior in Tweeting the news that his son was posting the video might have just let slip the official launch date for Project Natal, something that Microsoft itself has been working pretty hard to keep under wraps. Here's what he had to say:

"OK. Before bed. Natal on X Box impressive. Not quite there yet i think but tye have til october and if they get it right...skys the limit."

So there you have it, an October launch for Project Natal it is then. Probably.

Not having been invited to the event myself I cannot say if Ross had to sign a Non Disclosure Agreement or not, but I doubt he is flavour of the month at Microsoft right now. That said, the video does make Project Natal look rather good, and being Ross the word will no doubt get spread far and wide (hey, even I am writing about it) so maybe he's not in the dog house after all.

File under what just happened here? According to a press release issued by Microsoft yesterday, it has entered into a cross-licensing patent deal with Amazon.

This covers the Kindle as well the Linux-based servers that Amazon uses, and comes back to the Microsoft claim that a number of Linux implementations are infringing upon patents it holds. This is not the first such deal to be brokered by Microsoft, and the amount of money that Amazon is to pay Microsoft in order to continue using Linux has not been disclosed and probably never will be.

Here's what that Microsoft statement had to say on the matter:

"The agreement provides each company with access to the other’s patent portfolio and covers a broad range of products and technology, including coverage for Amazon’s popular e-reading device, Kindle, which employs both open source and Amazon’s proprietary software components, and Amazon’s use of Linux-based servers."

"The licensing agreement is another example of the important role IP plays in ensuring a healthy and vibrant IT ecosystem. Since Microsoft launched its IP licensing program in December 2003, the company has entered into more than 600 licensing agreements and continues to develop programs that make it possible for customers, partners and competitors to access its IP portfolio. The program was developed to open access to Microsoft’s significant R&D investments and its growing, broad patent and IP portfolio. In recent years, Microsoft has entered into similar agreements with other leading companies, including Apple …

The last time we asked that question here at DaniWeb was back in June 2009 when the Internet was, apparently, 183 million big. Of course, it is bigger now, but not actually by that much if the new figures from Internet infrastructure services provider VeriSign are anything to go by. With the 25th birthday of the .com Top Level Domain fast approaching, it would appear that the Internet is now 192 million big.

In the newly published Domain Name Industry Brief, VeriSign reveals that 2009 came to a close with a base of more than 192 million domain name registrations across all of the Top Level Domains. That's up by 15 million since close of play in 2008, just for the record. As far as the fourth quarter of 2009 was concerned, the base of domain name registrations grew by two percent over the third quarter of 2009 and eight percent over the fourth quarter of 2008 while new registrations in the fourth quarter of 2009 came in at around 3.7 million domain name registrations per month.

VeriSign reckons that the overall base of .com and .net domain names grew to 96.7 million domain names at the end of 2009, representing a two percent increase over the third quarter and a seven percent increase over the same quarter in 2008.

New .com and .net registrations added at an average of around 2.4 million per month in the last quarter of 2009 making a …

Twitter users are being warned not to click the links in a Direct Message which has been circulating in large numbers since late Saturday. The message simply says either "LOL, is this you?" or "LOL, this is funny" or "ha ha, u look funny on here" and has a link to click which is meant to trick the unsuspecting recipient into responding to find out. Of course, it's a phishing scam which actually will connect to what looks like a Twitter login page but which is in fact a login data harvesting one.

It's apparently been having some success thanks to the use of domain parking host which enables third-party site redirects. So the URL in the supplied link looks quite legitimate but has a redirect portion built in which takes the user to the faked site.

The DM content is apparently changing as the attack spreads, so Twitter users are being advised no to click any links in direct messages for the time being just to be on the safe side.

Botnets are bad for business, and that's the bottom line. The news that a botnet called Kneber has infected 75,000 computers including government and business machines has been spreading online. But while many, if not most, of these reports are claiming that Kneber is a new botnet the truth is that actually it is nothing of the sort. Not that the revelation that Kneber is actually just another Zeus variation will be of any comfort to those who have fallen victim to the thing, of course. Victims such as, according to security outfit NetWitness which first reported the outbreak, the 68,000 stolen corporate logins for example, or the 2000 SSL certificate files, or how about the "dossier-level data sets on individuals including complete dumps of entire identities from victim machines" for that matter.

"The reason some folks have nicknamed it Kneber is that the malware domains involved in this particular branch of the Zeus botnet have “Hilary Kneber” listed as the domain registrant. Of course, Hilary Kneber is likely a completely made-up name" comments Mary Landesman, senior security researcher at ScanSafe. The Zeus botnet has been active on the Web for over a year. In its 1Q08 Global Threat Report, ScanSafe reported on the surge of Zeus-related activity via the Web and specifically it’s joining forces with the LuckySploit framework. Zeus malware is known for browser traffic sniffing, intercepting POST data and keystrokes associated with the active browser session, as well as clipboard data passed to the …

In 1987, Thomas Knoll developed a pixel imaging program called Display. It was a simple program to showcase grayscale images on a black-and-white monitor. However, after collaborating with his brother John Knoll, the two began adding features that made it possible to process digital image files. The program eventually caught the attention of industry influencers, and in 1988, Adobe made the decision to license the software, naming it Photoshop, and shipping the first version in 1990.

It is hard to believe, but Adobe Photoshop will indeed be 20 years old tomorrow, 19th feb 2010. To help celebrate this milestone, the online Photoshop community has been sharing stories on Twitter and Facebook. The latter has a fan-page with more than 400,000 members and this has been acting as the hub for tales about just how much the graphics software has impacted upon the personal and working lives of the people who use it. Adding the #PS20 tag to any tweet about the birthday celebrations ensures your thoughts get noticed on Twitter, meanwhile. A new “Celebrate” tab on Facebook directs users to a 20th anniversary logo, which can be personalised with your own image (in Photoshop of course) and used as a replacement for your own personal profile image on any social network site.

Celebrations, imaging contests, and exclusive online ‘tips and tricks’ tutorials, will begin today across the UK and the world. In the United States, the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) will be hosting a special