Fla. Panhandle deputy uses Google Earth to arrest, charge man with illegally dumping boat
A Florida Panhandle deputy was able to track down and arrest a man on charges of illegally dumping a boat near his home with a surprising tool: satellite pictures provided by Google Earth.
Deputy Gregory Barnes used the images after finding an 18-foot boat dumped in an undeveloped subdivision about 15 miles north of Pensacola.
Google Earth shows archived satellite and aerial images of communities across the world. Barnes used it to look at the surrounding area and saw a fuzzy image of the vessel at Dwight Everett Foster's home.
Authorities say Foster admitted dumping the boat and his son later removed it.
Police say it cost $18 to dispose of the boat at a landfill. Foster faces a $5,000 fine and up to five years in prison.
Source:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=10241571
Chicago Web Site Design Company
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Monday, March 29, 2010
PayPal is Here!
US-based payment processing firm PayPal this morning arrived in SA, after First National Bank (FNB) inked a deal with the global company.
The official launch of PayPal, shortly before the Fifa Soccer World Cup, allows South Africans to transact with 81 million PayPal account-holders, in 190 markets around the world.
FNB CEO Michael Jordaan says: “We are especially pleased to make this announcement on the eve of the 2010 Fifa World Cup.” He says the deal will enable South Africans to join the global e-commerce market.
Jordaan was speaking at a well-attended media event, in Johannesburg's Newtown, this morning.
The service is limited to FNB account-holders, who can open a PayPal account, link it to their FNB account and receive payments in 21 different currencies.
Jordaan explains that South Africans can “make payments and receive money internationally, without sharing their personal information”. FNB then converts that payment into rands.
Oded Zehavi, who heads up PayPal's business in SA and Israel, says: “With SA's solid financial infrastructure and its status as the continent's largest economy, we're optimistic about the future of e-commerce in the market and look forward to working with FNB on opportunities ahead.”
Open door
Steven Ambrose, MD of World Wide Worx Strategy, says the deal is a “big step for South African commerce”. He explains it will make it easier for thousands of vendors, curio sellers and hospitality companies to accept payment in a foreign currency.
He explains that international tourists and shoppers may previously have been concerned about divulging their credit card details over the Internet to pay for South African goods and services. The agreement removes this worry as PayPal is a trusted global payment provider, Ambrose notes.
“This is another brick in the wall of normalising SA's entry into global commerce,” Ambrose notes. He says the deal was put together quickly, which will allow FNB to take advantage of the anticipated 350 000 tourists entering the country for the Soccer World Cup in mid-year.
However, there are limitations, such as the international provider's services only being available to FNB customers, and the fact that it will not be available on mobile devices yet, he adds.
Despite this, SA's Internet population is growing. Recent World Wide Worx research shows the number of South Africans with access to the Internet had grown 15%, to 5.3 million users in 2009, and it expects a similar growth rate for 2010. Almost 11 million South Africans are expected to be online by 2015.
Ambrose comments that, with the anticipated growth of people moving online, PayPal's entry into SA “makes sense”.
Burst bubble
News first emerged that PayPal was coming to SA last month, with Tweets flying around about the launch expected in April.
Initially, FNB would not officially confirm the rumours, but later relented and admitted it was in talks with the US-based payment processing company a few days after the first Tweets. That news was followed by an invitation to the official launch this morning.
The leak on Twitter seemed to have come from someone who claimed to be a supplier for the project, who Tweeted: “PayPal is launching in SA in April through FNB.”
An FNB executive confirmed the news through Twitter, saying: “Can anyone say 'cat out of bag'?”, and “It's true – but I wasn't going to put a public launch date on it.”
Banking laws require PayPal to either successfully apply for a banking licence in SA, or join forces with a local bank. The partnership with FNB will allow South Africans to be paid by International Consumers Through PayPal, without breaking foreign exchange laws.
PayPal is located in San Jose, California, and was founded in 1998, before being bought out by online retailer eBay in 2002.
Source:
http://www.itweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=31600:paypal-is-here&catid=147:internet&Itemid=68
Professional Web Design Chicago
The official launch of PayPal, shortly before the Fifa Soccer World Cup, allows South Africans to transact with 81 million PayPal account-holders, in 190 markets around the world.
FNB CEO Michael Jordaan says: “We are especially pleased to make this announcement on the eve of the 2010 Fifa World Cup.” He says the deal will enable South Africans to join the global e-commerce market.
Jordaan was speaking at a well-attended media event, in Johannesburg's Newtown, this morning.
The service is limited to FNB account-holders, who can open a PayPal account, link it to their FNB account and receive payments in 21 different currencies.
Jordaan explains that South Africans can “make payments and receive money internationally, without sharing their personal information”. FNB then converts that payment into rands.
Oded Zehavi, who heads up PayPal's business in SA and Israel, says: “With SA's solid financial infrastructure and its status as the continent's largest economy, we're optimistic about the future of e-commerce in the market and look forward to working with FNB on opportunities ahead.”
Open door
Steven Ambrose, MD of World Wide Worx Strategy, says the deal is a “big step for South African commerce”. He explains it will make it easier for thousands of vendors, curio sellers and hospitality companies to accept payment in a foreign currency.
He explains that international tourists and shoppers may previously have been concerned about divulging their credit card details over the Internet to pay for South African goods and services. The agreement removes this worry as PayPal is a trusted global payment provider, Ambrose notes.
“This is another brick in the wall of normalising SA's entry into global commerce,” Ambrose notes. He says the deal was put together quickly, which will allow FNB to take advantage of the anticipated 350 000 tourists entering the country for the Soccer World Cup in mid-year.
However, there are limitations, such as the international provider's services only being available to FNB customers, and the fact that it will not be available on mobile devices yet, he adds.
Despite this, SA's Internet population is growing. Recent World Wide Worx research shows the number of South Africans with access to the Internet had grown 15%, to 5.3 million users in 2009, and it expects a similar growth rate for 2010. Almost 11 million South Africans are expected to be online by 2015.
Ambrose comments that, with the anticipated growth of people moving online, PayPal's entry into SA “makes sense”.
Burst bubble
News first emerged that PayPal was coming to SA last month, with Tweets flying around about the launch expected in April.
Initially, FNB would not officially confirm the rumours, but later relented and admitted it was in talks with the US-based payment processing company a few days after the first Tweets. That news was followed by an invitation to the official launch this morning.
The leak on Twitter seemed to have come from someone who claimed to be a supplier for the project, who Tweeted: “PayPal is launching in SA in April through FNB.”
An FNB executive confirmed the news through Twitter, saying: “Can anyone say 'cat out of bag'?”, and “It's true – but I wasn't going to put a public launch date on it.”
Banking laws require PayPal to either successfully apply for a banking licence in SA, or join forces with a local bank. The partnership with FNB will allow South Africans to be paid by International Consumers Through PayPal, without breaking foreign exchange laws.
PayPal is located in San Jose, California, and was founded in 1998, before being bought out by online retailer eBay in 2002.
Source:
http://www.itweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=31600:paypal-is-here&catid=147:internet&Itemid=68
Professional Web Design Chicago
Sunday, March 28, 2010
In Post-Google China, Censorship is Unfazed
Chinese Internet users have one less Web search option this week, but otherwise it's business as usual as the People's Republic of China uses technology and intimidation to keep citizens away from objectionable content.
Following several months of strategizing and negotiations, Google finally stopped censoring its search results in China and is redirecting visitors to Google.cn to a server based in Hong Kong. There they see unfiltered results and are able to visit sites about Falun Gong, Tiananmen Square, and Tibetan independence.
As noble as the move might be on Google's part, it changes very little for the approximately 400 million Internet users in China who have long lived with restrictions on their online and offline activities.
The departure of Google search from the country is "an obvious reminder of how heavy censorship is in China," Hal Roberts, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, said in an interview this week.
Meanwhile, a mysterious mix-up on Wednesday that sent Domain Name Server (DNS) traffic destined for Google's YouTube, Facebook and Twitter among other sites to servers behind the so-called Chinese Firewall of censorship has some speculating that it was retaliation against Google. How far will the People's Republic go in its geopolitical squabbles over freedom of the Internet?
Google's move out of China was a highly public stance against that country's censorship policies and was related to attacks that the company said originated within China late last year and which targeted Google and human rights activists who use Gmail.
"Google arguably provided a more neutral, more open platform" for about one-third of the Web surfers in China than the local market leader Baidu does, Roberts said on Wednesday before the DNS Problems became public. The search is considered higher-quality, so "Google certainly has an effect on them."
But how much of an effect did Google really have?
In an interview with PBS' NewsHour this week, China Internet and media expert Isaac Mao said that 90 percent of the people in China don't care whether Google stays or not.
"Most people in China won't really be affected by (Google's) decision that much, because they already live within the Chinese language infosphere," James Fallows, national correspondent for "The Atlantic" magazine, said in the PBS interview. "But it's an important symbolic moment."
The cute cat theory
Contrary to the perception in the U.S. that Chinese citizens are clamoring for subversive information, Internet users there tend to be more interested in general information and entertainment--much like Web surfers in the U.S., according to Roberts.
Citing what he called the "cute cat theory," Roberts said Internet users in China are more interested in videos of cats flushing toilets than they are in reading political diatribes. "At the end of the day, the social uses of the Internet are bigger drivers than political and controversial news content," he said.
"You would be surprised how little people want to or need to access stuff that is blocked or restricted by the Great Firewall," the name for the network filtering conducted behind the scenes by the PRC, said Andrew Lih, a visiting professor at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism and author of "The Wikipedia Revolution."
"It does happen, but it's not like people are there wanting to research human rights violations and Taiwan independence, stuff most users won't run into in the course of a normal day," he said. "Probably 98 percent of what they're searching for is not going to be blocked."
This is exemplified by the fact that portals, which dominated the U.S. Internet in the 1990s, are still extremely popular in China. Portals Sina.com and Sohu.com serve as the home page for many Chinese Internet users, providing packaged content that is sure to be favorable to the government.
Chinese Web surfers "don't have the same use characteristics you have in the U.S. where people hop onto Google and search willy-nilly," Lih said.
People in China also aren't as outraged about government attempts to restrict freedom ofexpression as Americans claim to be, experts say. As much as 85 percent of the population think the government should control the Internet, according to a 2007 survey (PDF) conducted by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences that did not specifically address censorship.
While the average user in China may not mind censorship or have relied on Google search, professional workers, academics, and other "sophisticated" users in China did, according to Lih. It may not be a huge number of people, but it's an important group, he said.
Chinese officials are wise in allowing and promoting alternatives to foreign sites they block, such as YouKu, the Chinese version of YouTube, Roberts said. However, there does not appear to be a true substitute for Twitter, a favorite site for political dissidents in Iran and elsewhere.
Unlike other Internet censoring countries like Saudi Arabia and South Korea that display messages about why a site is blocked when citizens try to access them, China's efforts are not transparent by design. By providing no guidelines and keeping citizens guessing about policies and enforcement, the PRC has less to do as citizens and sites heavily self-censor, erring on the safe side.
"If you know all the rules you'll put your toe right up against the line," Lih said. "If the rules are fuzzy you are at a disadvantage. You're not sure how far you can go."
The Great Firewall of China
So, what is the Chinese government doing to censor the Internet?
There are a handful of Internet access "choke points" in China, where all the traffic enters and exits to the outside world. "All countries connect virtually all of their IP addresses through at most dozens of ISPs, but China's network is the most centralized of any large country, with only four ISPs connecting more than 90 percent of its IP addresses to the rest of the Internet," Roberts said.
The Great Firewall is the system of gateways, routers, and servers that China uses to keep objectionable content from reaching users inside the country. Authorities mirror the stream of traffic flowing into the domestic Internet and determine what portions of a Web page the government wants to block, Lih said.
If the traffic is blocked at the domain name system level, users may get a "site not found" message; if the IP address is blocked the message may say "site unreachable;" and if the URL is blocked or a page contains sensitive content a "connection reset error" message may be displayed, according to Lih.
"China's Great Firewall system is so sophisticated and massive, it can tailor blocking for each individual Web surfer because it monitors a person's surfing activity to sites outside of China's domestic Internet, right down to what's contained inside the web page," Lih explains on his Web site (PDF).
"In the case of someone doing a Google search, each search engine results page (SERP) being sent back to a PRC user is being analyzed for sensitive keywords, and the user's Internet traffic to Google can be blocked within seconds. This is happening every day, constantly, regardless of whether the search engine is Google, Bing, or something else," Lih writes.
Web surfers in China are accustomed to the variability in performance and may be uncertain why any particular site is not accessible, he said, adding that most users will just give up and move on to another site when they can't easily get through.
Meanwhile, Internet content providers like portals need licenses to operate and must hire people to make sure the content does not run afoul of the government's prohibitions. The sites are in charge of censoring themselves, but there are more direct forms of coercion, as well. For instance, authorities will send text messages to administrators within the content provider sites telling them what topics are banned, according to Lih.
Chinese officials reportedly were working on new guidelines that would require owners of any Web site to provide identification and a photograph in an attempt to better keep track of all sites in the country.
PRC officials are as subtle in their offline warnings to people who appear to be trying to skirt the rules as they are in their online messages. "You'll rarely get busted outright," Lih said. They'll let you know slowly that they don't approve of your behavior, such as by making it obvious they are following you. They will give you lots of little warnings before they bust down your door."
As if monitoring the Internet traffic and restricting what content providers display weren't enough, the Chinese authorities recently attempted to require filtering software on users' computers. However, officials pulled back from the so-called Green Dam software initiative last year following complaints by researchers that it has serious security holes and would put computers at risk of being compromised.
"Censorship out in the cloud of the Chinese Internet was one thing, but putting a piece of software on computers that could potentially watch every keystroke...that was huge, even for people who approve of the government censoring and (ostensibly) looking out for the good of society," Lih said.
Internet cafes are supposed to require identification and keep track of who accesses the Internet, but most don't do that, he said. Then there are lots of open Wi-Fi hot spots that offer some degree of anonymity, he added.
Tunneling out
For those who crave unfettered access to the global Internet, there are ways to get past China's Great Firewall. People can route their Internet traffic through proxy servers that are located outside China, but this slows things down a bit. For example, Gladder is a proxy Firefox add-on. There's also the Tor network of private tunnels that offers total anonymity.
Many foreign companies with offices in China use virtual private network (VPN) services that create private, encrypted channels for transmitting the traffic past the Chinese monitoring system to servers outside the country. VPNs are faster but come at a financial cost that might be too steep for many citiz
"Most of the time I lived in Beijing (from 2006 to 2009), I was blocked and had to leap over the firewall with a proxy," Lih said.
Moving its search operations out of China is just the latest example of how Google sets itself apart from rivals Yahoo and Microsoft with regard to protecting the privacy rights of users.
Google began offering Gmail users the option of encrypting the traffic between the browser and Google's servers with "https"--the secure version of Hyper Text Transfer Protocol--in mid-2008 and then turned that on by default for all Gmail users earlier this year.
And the company keeps customer data from things like Blogger, Gmail, and other services safe from prying PRC eyes by locating the servers outside China's borders, Lih said.
While Microsoft representatives won't confirm that they keep servers in China, they acknowledge that they do comply with local laws. Yahoo has proven that it does too, to dire consequences. At the PRC's request, Yahoo provided information on several dissident users who were then arrested and sentenced to 10 years in jail.
Yahoo settled a lawsuit in 2007 filed by the arrested men's families. That was one week after former Yahoo Chairman and co-founder Jerry Yang and Yahoo's general counsel were called "moral pygmies" during a congressional hearing on the matter.
Since then, Yahoo has been relatively quiet on the Chinese front, letting Alibaba Group, in which it has a 40 percent stake, use the Yahoo brand for a portal site there.
For its part, China isn't taking the Google action lying down and is trying to control how the stories around the event are reported. PRC officials have issued strict guidelines for how media there should cover Google going forward, including banning anything that is supportive of Google, requiring that they get their facts only from PRC sources and using only government approved experts.
And the PRC may retaliate by expanding its censorship of Google. It's possible, too, that Chinese authorities could block Google.com.hk altogether if matters escalate further, Lih said.
Source:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20001212-245.html
Professional Web Design Chicago
Following several months of strategizing and negotiations, Google finally stopped censoring its search results in China and is redirecting visitors to Google.cn to a server based in Hong Kong. There they see unfiltered results and are able to visit sites about Falun Gong, Tiananmen Square, and Tibetan independence.
As noble as the move might be on Google's part, it changes very little for the approximately 400 million Internet users in China who have long lived with restrictions on their online and offline activities.
The departure of Google search from the country is "an obvious reminder of how heavy censorship is in China," Hal Roberts, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, said in an interview this week.
Meanwhile, a mysterious mix-up on Wednesday that sent Domain Name Server (DNS) traffic destined for Google's YouTube, Facebook and Twitter among other sites to servers behind the so-called Chinese Firewall of censorship has some speculating that it was retaliation against Google. How far will the People's Republic go in its geopolitical squabbles over freedom of the Internet?
Google's move out of China was a highly public stance against that country's censorship policies and was related to attacks that the company said originated within China late last year and which targeted Google and human rights activists who use Gmail.
"Google arguably provided a more neutral, more open platform" for about one-third of the Web surfers in China than the local market leader Baidu does, Roberts said on Wednesday before the DNS Problems became public. The search is considered higher-quality, so "Google certainly has an effect on them."
But how much of an effect did Google really have?
In an interview with PBS' NewsHour this week, China Internet and media expert Isaac Mao said that 90 percent of the people in China don't care whether Google stays or not.
"Most people in China won't really be affected by (Google's) decision that much, because they already live within the Chinese language infosphere," James Fallows, national correspondent for "The Atlantic" magazine, said in the PBS interview. "But it's an important symbolic moment."
The cute cat theory
Contrary to the perception in the U.S. that Chinese citizens are clamoring for subversive information, Internet users there tend to be more interested in general information and entertainment--much like Web surfers in the U.S., according to Roberts.
Citing what he called the "cute cat theory," Roberts said Internet users in China are more interested in videos of cats flushing toilets than they are in reading political diatribes. "At the end of the day, the social uses of the Internet are bigger drivers than political and controversial news content," he said.
"You would be surprised how little people want to or need to access stuff that is blocked or restricted by the Great Firewall," the name for the network filtering conducted behind the scenes by the PRC, said Andrew Lih, a visiting professor at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism and author of "The Wikipedia Revolution."
"It does happen, but it's not like people are there wanting to research human rights violations and Taiwan independence, stuff most users won't run into in the course of a normal day," he said. "Probably 98 percent of what they're searching for is not going to be blocked."
This is exemplified by the fact that portals, which dominated the U.S. Internet in the 1990s, are still extremely popular in China. Portals Sina.com and Sohu.com serve as the home page for many Chinese Internet users, providing packaged content that is sure to be favorable to the government.
Chinese Web surfers "don't have the same use characteristics you have in the U.S. where people hop onto Google and search willy-nilly," Lih said.
People in China also aren't as outraged about government attempts to restrict freedom ofexpression as Americans claim to be, experts say. As much as 85 percent of the population think the government should control the Internet, according to a 2007 survey (PDF) conducted by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences that did not specifically address censorship.
While the average user in China may not mind censorship or have relied on Google search, professional workers, academics, and other "sophisticated" users in China did, according to Lih. It may not be a huge number of people, but it's an important group, he said.
Chinese officials are wise in allowing and promoting alternatives to foreign sites they block, such as YouKu, the Chinese version of YouTube, Roberts said. However, there does not appear to be a true substitute for Twitter, a favorite site for political dissidents in Iran and elsewhere.
Unlike other Internet censoring countries like Saudi Arabia and South Korea that display messages about why a site is blocked when citizens try to access them, China's efforts are not transparent by design. By providing no guidelines and keeping citizens guessing about policies and enforcement, the PRC has less to do as citizens and sites heavily self-censor, erring on the safe side.
"If you know all the rules you'll put your toe right up against the line," Lih said. "If the rules are fuzzy you are at a disadvantage. You're not sure how far you can go."
The Great Firewall of China
So, what is the Chinese government doing to censor the Internet?
There are a handful of Internet access "choke points" in China, where all the traffic enters and exits to the outside world. "All countries connect virtually all of their IP addresses through at most dozens of ISPs, but China's network is the most centralized of any large country, with only four ISPs connecting more than 90 percent of its IP addresses to the rest of the Internet," Roberts said.
The Great Firewall is the system of gateways, routers, and servers that China uses to keep objectionable content from reaching users inside the country. Authorities mirror the stream of traffic flowing into the domestic Internet and determine what portions of a Web page the government wants to block, Lih said.
If the traffic is blocked at the domain name system level, users may get a "site not found" message; if the IP address is blocked the message may say "site unreachable;" and if the URL is blocked or a page contains sensitive content a "connection reset error" message may be displayed, according to Lih.
"China's Great Firewall system is so sophisticated and massive, it can tailor blocking for each individual Web surfer because it monitors a person's surfing activity to sites outside of China's domestic Internet, right down to what's contained inside the web page," Lih explains on his Web site (PDF).
"In the case of someone doing a Google search, each search engine results page (SERP) being sent back to a PRC user is being analyzed for sensitive keywords, and the user's Internet traffic to Google can be blocked within seconds. This is happening every day, constantly, regardless of whether the search engine is Google, Bing, or something else," Lih writes.
Web surfers in China are accustomed to the variability in performance and may be uncertain why any particular site is not accessible, he said, adding that most users will just give up and move on to another site when they can't easily get through.
Meanwhile, Internet content providers like portals need licenses to operate and must hire people to make sure the content does not run afoul of the government's prohibitions. The sites are in charge of censoring themselves, but there are more direct forms of coercion, as well. For instance, authorities will send text messages to administrators within the content provider sites telling them what topics are banned, according to Lih.
Chinese officials reportedly were working on new guidelines that would require owners of any Web site to provide identification and a photograph in an attempt to better keep track of all sites in the country.
PRC officials are as subtle in their offline warnings to people who appear to be trying to skirt the rules as they are in their online messages. "You'll rarely get busted outright," Lih said. They'll let you know slowly that they don't approve of your behavior, such as by making it obvious they are following you. They will give you lots of little warnings before they bust down your door."
As if monitoring the Internet traffic and restricting what content providers display weren't enough, the Chinese authorities recently attempted to require filtering software on users' computers. However, officials pulled back from the so-called Green Dam software initiative last year following complaints by researchers that it has serious security holes and would put computers at risk of being compromised.
"Censorship out in the cloud of the Chinese Internet was one thing, but putting a piece of software on computers that could potentially watch every keystroke...that was huge, even for people who approve of the government censoring and (ostensibly) looking out for the good of society," Lih said.
Internet cafes are supposed to require identification and keep track of who accesses the Internet, but most don't do that, he said. Then there are lots of open Wi-Fi hot spots that offer some degree of anonymity, he added.
Tunneling out
For those who crave unfettered access to the global Internet, there are ways to get past China's Great Firewall. People can route their Internet traffic through proxy servers that are located outside China, but this slows things down a bit. For example, Gladder is a proxy Firefox add-on. There's also the Tor network of private tunnels that offers total anonymity.
Many foreign companies with offices in China use virtual private network (VPN) services that create private, encrypted channels for transmitting the traffic past the Chinese monitoring system to servers outside the country. VPNs are faster but come at a financial cost that might be too steep for many citiz
"Most of the time I lived in Beijing (from 2006 to 2009), I was blocked and had to leap over the firewall with a proxy," Lih said.
Moving its search operations out of China is just the latest example of how Google sets itself apart from rivals Yahoo and Microsoft with regard to protecting the privacy rights of users.
Google began offering Gmail users the option of encrypting the traffic between the browser and Google's servers with "https"--the secure version of Hyper Text Transfer Protocol--in mid-2008 and then turned that on by default for all Gmail users earlier this year.
And the company keeps customer data from things like Blogger, Gmail, and other services safe from prying PRC eyes by locating the servers outside China's borders, Lih said.
While Microsoft representatives won't confirm that they keep servers in China, they acknowledge that they do comply with local laws. Yahoo has proven that it does too, to dire consequences. At the PRC's request, Yahoo provided information on several dissident users who were then arrested and sentenced to 10 years in jail.
Yahoo settled a lawsuit in 2007 filed by the arrested men's families. That was one week after former Yahoo Chairman and co-founder Jerry Yang and Yahoo's general counsel were called "moral pygmies" during a congressional hearing on the matter.
Since then, Yahoo has been relatively quiet on the Chinese front, letting Alibaba Group, in which it has a 40 percent stake, use the Yahoo brand for a portal site there.
For its part, China isn't taking the Google action lying down and is trying to control how the stories around the event are reported. PRC officials have issued strict guidelines for how media there should cover Google going forward, including banning anything that is supportive of Google, requiring that they get their facts only from PRC sources and using only government approved experts.
And the PRC may retaliate by expanding its censorship of Google. It's possible, too, that Chinese authorities could block Google.com.hk altogether if matters escalate further, Lih said.
Source:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20001212-245.html
Professional Web Design Chicago
Friday, March 26, 2010
3 Common Web Design Mistakes (and How to Fix Them)
Effective web design is critical to the success of any online venture. In most cases, potential customers will make up their minds about your business within several seconds of landing on your web site. Therefore, you will want to make sure that the overall layout and design is consistent with the message you want to convey. Without question, a lackluster web design concept can negatively impact your bottom line and limit your chances of achieving long-term success.
Here are 3 Common Web Design Mistakes (and How to Fix Them):
1. Too Much Clutter. When it comes to web design, less is almost always more. Web design choices that result in a visual hodge-podge of conflicting messages, overbearing color schemes and other unnecessary elements should be avoided for a couple of reasons. First, too much clutter will distract web visitors from the primary purpose of your site. For example, if your main goal with a landing page is to capture contact information, everything on that page should directly lead your visitors toward that desired result. You can't assume your visitors will automatically take that next step and if you have too many other things competing for their attention, your odds of a successful outcome will be greatly reduced.
Another major reason to avoid too much clutter is that most human visitors simply respond better to visually appealing layouts. The more time potential customers are willing to spend on your site, the more likely they are to buy from you. Therefore, it makes sense to pay attention to design basics like symmetry, balance and repetition as a way to draw visitors into your site and keep them there.
2. Inconsistent Branding and Marketing Message. Does your web site relate well to your offline marketing materials? If not, you may want to rethink your current strategy. Without question, effective Web Design should incorporate key elements of your overall brand and marketing message (i.e., your company logo, color scheme and marketing tagline). This is important because it helps potential customers differentiate your business from your competitors and helps build trust and credibility in your prospects' minds. A well-recognized brand and a clear marketing message are hallmarks of an established and reputable enterprise, so your web site should reflect the effort you've put into developing your corporate image.
3. Too Many Steps. Above all, your web site should be easy to use and navigate. Web surfers have notoriously short attention spans, so you will want your layout and Professional Web Design to be simple and intuitive. Don't make your visitors wait for a time-consuming Flash intro to load or expect them to jump through a bunch of hoops to get to what they are looking for on your site. Every time visitors to your site have to wait or click through a bunch of pages to get to what they want represents a barrier to doing business with you. Effective web design eliminates these obstacles and greatly increases your chances for online success.
Here are 3 Common Web Design Mistakes (and How to Fix Them):
1. Too Much Clutter. When it comes to web design, less is almost always more. Web design choices that result in a visual hodge-podge of conflicting messages, overbearing color schemes and other unnecessary elements should be avoided for a couple of reasons. First, too much clutter will distract web visitors from the primary purpose of your site. For example, if your main goal with a landing page is to capture contact information, everything on that page should directly lead your visitors toward that desired result. You can't assume your visitors will automatically take that next step and if you have too many other things competing for their attention, your odds of a successful outcome will be greatly reduced.
Another major reason to avoid too much clutter is that most human visitors simply respond better to visually appealing layouts. The more time potential customers are willing to spend on your site, the more likely they are to buy from you. Therefore, it makes sense to pay attention to design basics like symmetry, balance and repetition as a way to draw visitors into your site and keep them there.
2. Inconsistent Branding and Marketing Message. Does your web site relate well to your offline marketing materials? If not, you may want to rethink your current strategy. Without question, effective Web Design should incorporate key elements of your overall brand and marketing message (i.e., your company logo, color scheme and marketing tagline). This is important because it helps potential customers differentiate your business from your competitors and helps build trust and credibility in your prospects' minds. A well-recognized brand and a clear marketing message are hallmarks of an established and reputable enterprise, so your web site should reflect the effort you've put into developing your corporate image.
3. Too Many Steps. Above all, your web site should be easy to use and navigate. Web surfers have notoriously short attention spans, so you will want your layout and Professional Web Design to be simple and intuitive. Don't make your visitors wait for a time-consuming Flash intro to load or expect them to jump through a bunch of hoops to get to what they are looking for on your site. Every time visitors to your site have to wait or click through a bunch of pages to get to what they want represents a barrier to doing business with you. Effective web design eliminates these obstacles and greatly increases your chances for online success.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Brin Urges U.S. to Pressure China
Google Co-Founder Says He's Troubled by "Earmarks of Totalitarianism"
Google co-founder Sergey Brin urged the United States government to pressure China to rethink its censorship of the Internet.
In an interview with The Guardian, Brin said that he hopes the issue is made "a high priority."
"Human rights issues deserve equal time to the trade issues that are high priority now … I hope this gets taken seriously," Brin said.
On Monday, Google announced that it was closing its Internet search operations in the country and was routing users to its uncensored search engine in Hong Kong.
Brin told The Guardian that China's regulation of the Internet had, essentially, become an impediment to free trade.
"Since services and information are our most successful exports, if regulations in China effectively prevent us from being competitive, then they are a trade barrier," he told the paper.
That move has infuriated China, which continued its week-long criticism of Google.
The People's Daily newspaper on Wednesday accused Google in a front-page commentary of cooperating with U.S. intelligence forces and suggesting its decision to move its search engine to Hong Kong was a salvo by U.S. Internet warriors.
"Considering the United States' big push in recent years to prepare for Internet war, perhaps this could be an exploratory pre-dawn battle," said the commentary in the newspaper's overseas edition.
Meanwhile, Tianya.cn, a popular portal with 32 million registered users, said it was taking full control over social networking and question-and-answer services operated jointly with Google. A company spokesman declined to say if the government exerted pressure but said in a statement that the takeover was being done to ``guarantee each product, normal business and good operations."
In a separate interview with the Wall Street Journal's online edition on Wednesday, Brin, who was born in Moscow in 1973, drew a parallel between the repression his family experienced in the Soviet Union and China. Brin, whose family left for America when he was six, said that China has "made great strides against poverty and whatnot" but that in some aspects of their policy, particularly with respect to censorship, with respect to surveillance of dissidents, I see the same earmarks of totalitarianism, and I find that personally quite troubling."
Brin's comments came as GoDaddy, the world's biggest domain name registration company, was preparing to inform officials in Washington that it planned to stop taking new registrations in China because of new government regulations requiring applicants to supply more personal data.
Source:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/24/tech/main6329577.shtml
Professional Web Design Chicago
Google co-founder Sergey Brin urged the United States government to pressure China to rethink its censorship of the Internet.
In an interview with The Guardian, Brin said that he hopes the issue is made "a high priority."
"Human rights issues deserve equal time to the trade issues that are high priority now … I hope this gets taken seriously," Brin said.
On Monday, Google announced that it was closing its Internet search operations in the country and was routing users to its uncensored search engine in Hong Kong.
Brin told The Guardian that China's regulation of the Internet had, essentially, become an impediment to free trade.
"Since services and information are our most successful exports, if regulations in China effectively prevent us from being competitive, then they are a trade barrier," he told the paper.
That move has infuriated China, which continued its week-long criticism of Google.
The People's Daily newspaper on Wednesday accused Google in a front-page commentary of cooperating with U.S. intelligence forces and suggesting its decision to move its search engine to Hong Kong was a salvo by U.S. Internet warriors.
"Considering the United States' big push in recent years to prepare for Internet war, perhaps this could be an exploratory pre-dawn battle," said the commentary in the newspaper's overseas edition.
Meanwhile, Tianya.cn, a popular portal with 32 million registered users, said it was taking full control over social networking and question-and-answer services operated jointly with Google. A company spokesman declined to say if the government exerted pressure but said in a statement that the takeover was being done to ``guarantee each product, normal business and good operations."
In a separate interview with the Wall Street Journal's online edition on Wednesday, Brin, who was born in Moscow in 1973, drew a parallel between the repression his family experienced in the Soviet Union and China. Brin, whose family left for America when he was six, said that China has "made great strides against poverty and whatnot" but that in some aspects of their policy, particularly with respect to censorship, with respect to surveillance of dissidents, I see the same earmarks of totalitarianism, and I find that personally quite troubling."
Brin's comments came as GoDaddy, the world's biggest domain name registration company, was preparing to inform officials in Washington that it planned to stop taking new registrations in China because of new government regulations requiring applicants to supply more personal data.
Source:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/24/tech/main6329577.shtml
Professional Web Design Chicago
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Intel CEO Otellini's Pay Package Jumps 17 Percent
Intel also restores pay raises, promotions as the company emerges from the recession
Intel CEO Paul Otellini saw his pay package jump in fiscal 2009 by 17 percent, which included performance-linked awards for guiding the company out of the recession, as a pay freeze for all employees was lifted, the company said.
Otellini got a total compensation, including cash and equity awards, of $14.12 million in fiscal 2009, compared to a package of around $12.1 million in fiscal 2008, Intel said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday.
Otellini's base salary for fiscal 2009 was $1 million, similar to the previous year, but his cash compensation jumped 28 percent to $6.25 million to reflect the company's financial performance in 2009. He also received equity benefits totaling $7.87 million tied with company performance.
The increase was tied partly to Intel's increased profit in fiscal 2009, according to the filing. The company's net income increased by 12 percent in 2009, excluding some extraordinary charges, compared to the previous year. However, including all charges, the company's net income fell by 17 percent, dragged down by $1.45 billion in fines paid to the European Commission, and a settlement agreement payment to Advanced Micro Devices of $1.25 billion.
Intel also removed pay freezes to employees in the wake of better performance, the company said in the filing. Intel in early 2009 froze salary increases across the company in the wake of poor economic conditions.
The total compensation for Sean Maloney, Intel's executive vice president, was around $6.27 million, growing 27 percent. Maloney, considered by many to be the heir apparent to Otellini, is currently on medical leave recovering from a stroke.
Intel benefitted from a stabilization of PC shipments in the second half of last year, which resulted in increased chip shipments. Otellini in September said that the chip industry was on the brink of recovery after either flat or declining PC shipments in 2008.
"This is an environment where we have had the worst recession in 70 years," Otellini said during a keynote at the Intel Developer Forum in September. "The market is poised for a resurgence and we will see how 2010 plays out," he said.
However, the compensation for AMD's CEO Dirk Meyer declined by 14 percent in 2009, after the company cut the pay of its employees due to the economic downturn, according to a document filed with the SEC. Meyer received compensation of around $4.55 million, down from $5.27 million in 2008. His base salary declined to $792,685 from $856,732.
Source:
http://www.infoworld.com/t/financial-results/intel-ceo-otellinis-pay-package-jumps-17-percent-394
Chicago Web Site Design Company
Intel CEO Paul Otellini saw his pay package jump in fiscal 2009 by 17 percent, which included performance-linked awards for guiding the company out of the recession, as a pay freeze for all employees was lifted, the company said.
Otellini got a total compensation, including cash and equity awards, of $14.12 million in fiscal 2009, compared to a package of around $12.1 million in fiscal 2008, Intel said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday.
Otellini's base salary for fiscal 2009 was $1 million, similar to the previous year, but his cash compensation jumped 28 percent to $6.25 million to reflect the company's financial performance in 2009. He also received equity benefits totaling $7.87 million tied with company performance.
The increase was tied partly to Intel's increased profit in fiscal 2009, according to the filing. The company's net income increased by 12 percent in 2009, excluding some extraordinary charges, compared to the previous year. However, including all charges, the company's net income fell by 17 percent, dragged down by $1.45 billion in fines paid to the European Commission, and a settlement agreement payment to Advanced Micro Devices of $1.25 billion.
Intel also removed pay freezes to employees in the wake of better performance, the company said in the filing. Intel in early 2009 froze salary increases across the company in the wake of poor economic conditions.
The total compensation for Sean Maloney, Intel's executive vice president, was around $6.27 million, growing 27 percent. Maloney, considered by many to be the heir apparent to Otellini, is currently on medical leave recovering from a stroke.
Intel benefitted from a stabilization of PC shipments in the second half of last year, which resulted in increased chip shipments. Otellini in September said that the chip industry was on the brink of recovery after either flat or declining PC shipments in 2008.
"This is an environment where we have had the worst recession in 70 years," Otellini said during a keynote at the Intel Developer Forum in September. "The market is poised for a resurgence and we will see how 2010 plays out," he said.
However, the compensation for AMD's CEO Dirk Meyer declined by 14 percent in 2009, after the company cut the pay of its employees due to the economic downturn, according to a document filed with the SEC. Meyer received compensation of around $4.55 million, down from $5.27 million in 2008. His base salary declined to $792,685 from $856,732.
Source:
http://www.infoworld.com/t/financial-results/intel-ceo-otellinis-pay-package-jumps-17-percent-394
Chicago Web Site Design Company
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Google Unveils Skipfish Security Tool
Free Software Scans Web Apps for Flaws.
Google has released a new development tool aimed at uncovering security holes in web applications.
The company said that the new tool, dubbed Skipfish, will allow developers to scan web applications for possible security vulnerabilities.
Currently in beta mode, the tool is designed to support multiple application frameworks and will run on Windows, Linux, MacOSX and BSD operating systems.
Google said that speed and compatibility were the main priorities when designing the tool. Skipfish was written in C and engineered to run quickly while putting minimal strain on processors.
"The safety of the Internet is of paramount importance to Google, and helping web developers build secure, reliable web applications is an important part of the equation," wrote Google developer Michal Zalewsk in a blog posting.
"We feel that Skipfish will be a valuable contribution to the information security community, making security assessments significantly more accessible and easier to execute."
Protecting web applications and cloud computing services has arguably become the biggest issue in the security world as of late. Analysts and developers alike have noted a distinct lack of trust from users in many web applications, particularly Enterprise IT Services.
As a result, security vendors have stepped up efforts to offer tools and services to web application and cloud computing developers.
Source:
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/170162,google-unveils-skipfish-security-tool.aspx
Professional Web Design Chicago
Google has released a new development tool aimed at uncovering security holes in web applications.
The company said that the new tool, dubbed Skipfish, will allow developers to scan web applications for possible security vulnerabilities.
Currently in beta mode, the tool is designed to support multiple application frameworks and will run on Windows, Linux, MacOSX and BSD operating systems.
Google said that speed and compatibility were the main priorities when designing the tool. Skipfish was written in C and engineered to run quickly while putting minimal strain on processors.
"The safety of the Internet is of paramount importance to Google, and helping web developers build secure, reliable web applications is an important part of the equation," wrote Google developer Michal Zalewsk in a blog posting.
"We feel that Skipfish will be a valuable contribution to the information security community, making security assessments significantly more accessible and easier to execute."
Protecting web applications and cloud computing services has arguably become the biggest issue in the security world as of late. Analysts and developers alike have noted a distinct lack of trust from users in many web applications, particularly Enterprise IT Services.
As a result, security vendors have stepped up efforts to offer tools and services to web application and cloud computing developers.
Source:
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/170162,google-unveils-skipfish-security-tool.aspx
Professional Web Design Chicago
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Banner Design Success Techniques
Banners have been a major part of the World Wide Web world since its early days. Copywriters burn the midnight oil looking for new designs that will grab the visitor’s attention and compel him to click on their banner. This article discusses some of the most successful banner designs.
Teasing your curiosity
“Do Not Click Here”. How many of you have seen this slogan in a banner? What did you do when you first saw it? If you are like most people, when you first saw it, you clicked on it. What makes this simple sentence so powerful that it compels the visitor to click on it? The answer is curiosity !!!
Copywriters and web designers are always looking for ways to arouse the website visitor’s curiosity. As banner designers their goal is to attract the visitor to the banner, usually completely ignoring the other elements on the web page that are more important to the website owner. However, because the “Do Not Click Here” slogan tells us nothing about what is on the next page, it arouses the visitor’s curiosity and makes it almost impossible not to click on this banner to see what’s behind it.
Simple integrated design
When Larry Page and Sergey Brin first introduced their product, “Google”, to potential investors, they mentioned Adwords as a backup option in case they didn’t make any money. We all know how lucky they were that they eventually needed to use that backup plan. What made these “boring” ads such a great success?
Unlike other ads, Adwords neither arouse the visitor’s curiosity nor disturb the main flow of the web page. In fact, the opposite is true. Adwords are meant to look like part of the search results giving the user the feeling that those ads are there because he asked for them. No one has any doubt that this simple design helps Google to promote both their Search Engine and the Adwords Advertising Program.
Take part in the action
Banner designers wisely used interactive technologies like Flash to develop type of banners that invite the user to take part in the action. Drawing the user into the action can be accomplished in many creative ways. Some web designers use popular old games elements as part of the scene. You all know the famous game pacman. One of the banners that I like the most is the one where the user is allowed to let pacman “eat” few dollar signs. At the successful completion of this mission, a nice slogan is revealed asking him to open a saving account that will earn money with a fixed interest rate. The idea behind those interactive banners is simple: Let the user take part in the action and then at the right moment when his mind is less resistant, show him the sales message. Those interactive banners proved to be very efficient. Their biggest disadvantage is that most webmasters will not allow that kind of banner because it distracts too much from the web page content.
Back to Black and White
Website designers are always seeking to be different with their design ideas. One banner fashion trend that can be found lately is Black and White banners. Although research shows that blue and yellow are the most efficient color to use in a banner, Black and White banners have been seen a lot lately. It’s probably something that will eventually vanish, but the idea behind it is to be different and to make the user wonder what’s up and hopefully click on the banner to find out.
Get Out of the box
Have you heard about the dzinestand.com? If not, check out this website before continuing to read this article. This website has proven that creative thinking not only can bring you money but also create a whole new trend. Right after the dzinestand.com got the internet community’s attention, many designers used this idea to deign a banner on which they sell a 10x10 pixel area. Like the original concept, this banner design had its impact. Advertisers are investing money on these ad spaces while at the same time visitors are curious enough time after time looking at those unorganized pixel banners to click on them.
What about the next trends
What the next trends of Banner Design will be is something that probably no one can accurately predict. It’s up to some web designer to come up with a new concept that proves to be efficient. There is no doubt that in the future we will see new ways of designing banners, especially when more and more advertising budgets are being spent on the internet instead of commercial TV and other types of advertising media. I guess we will just need to be patient.
Source:
Chicago Web Site Design Company
Teasing your curiosity
“Do Not Click Here”. How many of you have seen this slogan in a banner? What did you do when you first saw it? If you are like most people, when you first saw it, you clicked on it. What makes this simple sentence so powerful that it compels the visitor to click on it? The answer is curiosity !!!
Copywriters and web designers are always looking for ways to arouse the website visitor’s curiosity. As banner designers their goal is to attract the visitor to the banner, usually completely ignoring the other elements on the web page that are more important to the website owner. However, because the “Do Not Click Here” slogan tells us nothing about what is on the next page, it arouses the visitor’s curiosity and makes it almost impossible not to click on this banner to see what’s behind it.
Simple integrated design
When Larry Page and Sergey Brin first introduced their product, “Google”, to potential investors, they mentioned Adwords as a backup option in case they didn’t make any money. We all know how lucky they were that they eventually needed to use that backup plan. What made these “boring” ads such a great success?
Unlike other ads, Adwords neither arouse the visitor’s curiosity nor disturb the main flow of the web page. In fact, the opposite is true. Adwords are meant to look like part of the search results giving the user the feeling that those ads are there because he asked for them. No one has any doubt that this simple design helps Google to promote both their Search Engine and the Adwords Advertising Program.
Take part in the action
Banner designers wisely used interactive technologies like Flash to develop type of banners that invite the user to take part in the action. Drawing the user into the action can be accomplished in many creative ways. Some web designers use popular old games elements as part of the scene. You all know the famous game pacman. One of the banners that I like the most is the one where the user is allowed to let pacman “eat” few dollar signs. At the successful completion of this mission, a nice slogan is revealed asking him to open a saving account that will earn money with a fixed interest rate. The idea behind those interactive banners is simple: Let the user take part in the action and then at the right moment when his mind is less resistant, show him the sales message. Those interactive banners proved to be very efficient. Their biggest disadvantage is that most webmasters will not allow that kind of banner because it distracts too much from the web page content.
Back to Black and White
Website designers are always seeking to be different with their design ideas. One banner fashion trend that can be found lately is Black and White banners. Although research shows that blue and yellow are the most efficient color to use in a banner, Black and White banners have been seen a lot lately. It’s probably something that will eventually vanish, but the idea behind it is to be different and to make the user wonder what’s up and hopefully click on the banner to find out.
Get Out of the box
Have you heard about the dzinestand.com? If not, check out this website before continuing to read this article. This website has proven that creative thinking not only can bring you money but also create a whole new trend. Right after the dzinestand.com got the internet community’s attention, many designers used this idea to deign a banner on which they sell a 10x10 pixel area. Like the original concept, this banner design had its impact. Advertisers are investing money on these ad spaces while at the same time visitors are curious enough time after time looking at those unorganized pixel banners to click on them.
What about the next trends
What the next trends of Banner Design will be is something that probably no one can accurately predict. It’s up to some web designer to come up with a new concept that proves to be efficient. There is no doubt that in the future we will see new ways of designing banners, especially when more and more advertising budgets are being spent on the internet instead of commercial TV and other types of advertising media. I guess we will just need to be patient.
Source:
Chicago Web Site Design Company
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
When Tweets can Make you a Jailbird
Maxi Sopo was having so much fun "living in paradise" in Mexico that he posted about it on Facebook so all his friends could follow his adventures. Others were watching, too: A federal prosecutor in Seattle, where Sopo was wanted on bank fraud charges.
Tracking Sopo through his public "friends" list, the prosecutor found his address and had Mexican authorities arrest him. Instead of sipping pina coladas, Sopo is awaiting extradition to the U.S.
Sopo learned the hard way: The Feds are on Facebook. And MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter, too.
Law enforcement agents are following the rest of the Internet world into popular social-networking services, even going undercover with false online profiles to communicate with suspects and gather private information, according to an internal Justice Department document that surfaced in a lawsuit.
The document shows that U.S. agents are logging on surreptitiously to exchange messages with suspects, identify a target's friends or relatives and browse private information such as postings, personal photographs and video clips.
Among the purposes: Investigators can check suspects' alibis by comparing stories told to police with tweets sent at the same time about their whereabouts. Online photos from a suspicious spending spree — people posing with jewelry, guns or fancy cars — can link suspects or their friends to crime.
The Justice document also reminds government attorneys taking cases to trial that the public sections of social networks are a "valuable source" of information on defense witnesses. "Knowledge is power," says the paper. "Research all witnesses on social networking sites."
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based civil liberties group, obtained the 33-page document when it sued the Justice Department and five other agencies in federal court.
A decade ago, agents kept watch over AOL and MSN chat rooms to nab sexual predators. But those text-only chat services are old-school compared with today's social media, which contain a potential treasure trove of evidence.
The document, part of a presentation given in August by cybercrime officials, describes the value of Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn and other services to investigators. It does not describe in detail the boundaries for using them.
"It doesn't really discuss any mechanisms for accountability or ensuring that government agents use those tools responsibly," said Marcia Hoffman, a senior attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which sued to force the government to disclose its policies for using social networking.
The foundation also obtained an Internal Revenue Service document that states IRS employees cannot use deception or create fake accounts to get information.
Sopo's case didn't require undercover work; his carelessness provided the clues. But covert investigations on social-networking services are legal and governed by internal rules, according to Justice officials. They would not, however, say what those rules are.
The document addresses a Social Media bullying case in which U.S. prosecutors charged a Missouri woman with computer fraud for creating a fake MySpace account — effectively the same activity that undercover agents are doing, although for different purposes.
The woman, Lori Drew, posed as a teen boy and flirted with a 13-year-old neighborhood girl. The girl hanged herself in October 2006, in a St. Louis suburb, after she received a message saying the world would be better without her. Drew was convicted of three misdemeanors for violating MySpace's rules against creating fake accounts. But last year a judge overturned the verdicts, citing the vagueness of the law.
"If agents violate terms of service, is that 'otherwise illegal activity'?" the document asks. It doesn't provide an answer.
Facebook's rules, for example, specify that users "will not provide any false personal information on Facebook, or create an account for anyone other than yourself without permission." Twitter's rules prohibit users from sending deceptive or false information. MySpace requires that information for accounts be "truthful and accurate."
A former U.S. cybersecurity prosecutor, Marc Zwillinger, said investigators should be able to go undercover in the online world the same way they do in the real world, even if such conduct is barred by a company's rules. But there have to be limits, he said.
"This new situation presents a need for careful oversight so that law enforcement does not use social networking to intrude on some of our most personal relationships," said Zwillinger, whose firm does legal work for Yahoo and MySpace.
The Justice document describes how Facebook, MySpace and Twitter have interacted with federal investigators: Facebook is "often cooperative with emergency requests," the government said. MySpace preserves information about its users indefinitely and even stores data from deleted accounts for one year. But Twitter's lawyers tell prosecutors they need a warrant or subpoena before the company turns over customer information, the document says.
"Will not preserve data without legal process," the document says under the heading, "Getting Info From Twitter ... the bad news."
The chief security officer for MySpace, Hemanshu Nigam, said MySpace doesn't want to stand in the way of an investigation. "That said, we also want to make sure that our users' privacy is protected and any data that's disclosed is done under proper legal process," Nigam said.
MySpace requires a search warrant for private messages less than six months old, according to the company.
Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said the company has put together a handbook to help law enforcement officials understand "the proper ways to request information from Facebook to aid investigations."
Source:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100317/ap_on_bi_ge/us_feds_on_facebook;_ylt=ArZsDFR5.ah6hzSeGZ4EhY0jtBAF;_ylu=X3oDMTJvODFzNDBrBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTAwMzE3L3VzX2ZlZHNfb25fZmFjZWJvb2sEcG9zAzMEc2VjA3luX2FydGljbGVfc3VtbWFyeV9saXN0BHNsawN3aGVudHdlZXRzY2E-
Professional Web Design Chicago
Tracking Sopo through his public "friends" list, the prosecutor found his address and had Mexican authorities arrest him. Instead of sipping pina coladas, Sopo is awaiting extradition to the U.S.
Sopo learned the hard way: The Feds are on Facebook. And MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter, too.
Law enforcement agents are following the rest of the Internet world into popular social-networking services, even going undercover with false online profiles to communicate with suspects and gather private information, according to an internal Justice Department document that surfaced in a lawsuit.
The document shows that U.S. agents are logging on surreptitiously to exchange messages with suspects, identify a target's friends or relatives and browse private information such as postings, personal photographs and video clips.
Among the purposes: Investigators can check suspects' alibis by comparing stories told to police with tweets sent at the same time about their whereabouts. Online photos from a suspicious spending spree — people posing with jewelry, guns or fancy cars — can link suspects or their friends to crime.
The Justice document also reminds government attorneys taking cases to trial that the public sections of social networks are a "valuable source" of information on defense witnesses. "Knowledge is power," says the paper. "Research all witnesses on social networking sites."
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based civil liberties group, obtained the 33-page document when it sued the Justice Department and five other agencies in federal court.
A decade ago, agents kept watch over AOL and MSN chat rooms to nab sexual predators. But those text-only chat services are old-school compared with today's social media, which contain a potential treasure trove of evidence.
The document, part of a presentation given in August by cybercrime officials, describes the value of Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn and other services to investigators. It does not describe in detail the boundaries for using them.
"It doesn't really discuss any mechanisms for accountability or ensuring that government agents use those tools responsibly," said Marcia Hoffman, a senior attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which sued to force the government to disclose its policies for using social networking.
The foundation also obtained an Internal Revenue Service document that states IRS employees cannot use deception or create fake accounts to get information.
Sopo's case didn't require undercover work; his carelessness provided the clues. But covert investigations on social-networking services are legal and governed by internal rules, according to Justice officials. They would not, however, say what those rules are.
The document addresses a Social Media bullying case in which U.S. prosecutors charged a Missouri woman with computer fraud for creating a fake MySpace account — effectively the same activity that undercover agents are doing, although for different purposes.
The woman, Lori Drew, posed as a teen boy and flirted with a 13-year-old neighborhood girl. The girl hanged herself in October 2006, in a St. Louis suburb, after she received a message saying the world would be better without her. Drew was convicted of three misdemeanors for violating MySpace's rules against creating fake accounts. But last year a judge overturned the verdicts, citing the vagueness of the law.
"If agents violate terms of service, is that 'otherwise illegal activity'?" the document asks. It doesn't provide an answer.
Facebook's rules, for example, specify that users "will not provide any false personal information on Facebook, or create an account for anyone other than yourself without permission." Twitter's rules prohibit users from sending deceptive or false information. MySpace requires that information for accounts be "truthful and accurate."
A former U.S. cybersecurity prosecutor, Marc Zwillinger, said investigators should be able to go undercover in the online world the same way they do in the real world, even if such conduct is barred by a company's rules. But there have to be limits, he said.
"This new situation presents a need for careful oversight so that law enforcement does not use social networking to intrude on some of our most personal relationships," said Zwillinger, whose firm does legal work for Yahoo and MySpace.
The Justice document describes how Facebook, MySpace and Twitter have interacted with federal investigators: Facebook is "often cooperative with emergency requests," the government said. MySpace preserves information about its users indefinitely and even stores data from deleted accounts for one year. But Twitter's lawyers tell prosecutors they need a warrant or subpoena before the company turns over customer information, the document says.
"Will not preserve data without legal process," the document says under the heading, "Getting Info From Twitter ... the bad news."
The chief security officer for MySpace, Hemanshu Nigam, said MySpace doesn't want to stand in the way of an investigation. "That said, we also want to make sure that our users' privacy is protected and any data that's disclosed is done under proper legal process," Nigam said.
MySpace requires a search warrant for private messages less than six months old, according to the company.
Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said the company has put together a handbook to help law enforcement officials understand "the proper ways to request information from Facebook to aid investigations."
Source:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100317/ap_on_bi_ge/us_feds_on_facebook;_ylt=ArZsDFR5.ah6hzSeGZ4EhY0jtBAF;_ylu=X3oDMTJvODFzNDBrBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTAwMzE3L3VzX2ZlZHNfb25fZmFjZWJvb2sEcG9zAzMEc2VjA3luX2FydGljbGVfc3VtbWFyeV9saXN0BHNsawN3aGVudHdlZXRzY2E-
Professional Web Design Chicago
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Windows XP's built-in Wi-Fi Security Hole
Ever look for a Wi-Fi connection and see the "Free Public Wifi" SSID? It won't be a good connection, but it's also not an attempt to break into your laptop. It's an
When I'm really, really bored at an airport, I'll start looking around the local Wi-Fi networks with WireShark. This is an outstanding network protocol analyzer. Usually it's used for checking out what's really going on in your business network. Of course, if you know what you're doing you can also use it on Wi-Fi to see just how awful everyone's security is around you. But, that's a story for another day. Recently, I noticed that I kept seeing "Free Public Wifi" APs (access points) showing up. I assumed it was someone trolling for innocents wanting to be infected with malware. I was wrong. It's actually a much more interesting Windows XP security flaw.
A friend of mine pointed me to what was really going on. If you want to know more of the details, I recommend this article Free Public WiFi SSID. The short version is that Windows XP includes a utility, WZC (Wireless Zero Configuration). This was superseded in Vista and Windows 7 by WLAN Autoconfig. In either case, the idea is to make connecting to Wi-Fi APs easy.
The problem is that they make it a little too easy. If you have WZC enabled when you boot up, it starts looking around for a preferred network SSID (Service set identifier), the human-readable name that many APs use to identify themselves.
Let's say it can't find one. Next, it will try to connect to other APs on your 'preferred' list of APs just in case it didn't detect it the first time or the AP isn't transmitting an SSID anymore. If it fails again, it will then start looking for any ad-hoc networks on your preferred list. Ad hoc networks are made up of computers sharing their Internet connection when they're not an AP to be found. Keep that in mind because it becomes important for when the trouble starts.
Now, let's say you have an ad hoc network in your preferred network list, but it's not around either. You'd think at this point that Windows might ask you about joining any new, but unknown Wi-Fi APs in the area. Nope. What actually happens is that it will now automatically and silently setup your laptop as an ad hoc Wi-Fi node.
What fun! Now, somewhere out there at some time, people did use "Free Public Wifi" as the name for an ad hoc Wi-Fi network. Chances are that it was to rip people off. We know that it existed because WZC will use whatever the SSID was in your list of preferred ad hoc networks and "Free Public Wifi" keeps popping up.
Now, let's say your system does this, and someone comes along, say in the row behind you at the airport and they go looking for an Internet connection. They can't find one, but they do find your PC advertising itself as an ad hoc wireless network node. So, they connect to you and, ta-da, now their XP system will start advertising itself as an ad hoc node with the SSID of "Free Public Wifi!" And, on and on it goes.
The problem with this is that you're basically inviting the world to come in and network with your computer. Your firewall -- you are using one right? -- should stop most attacks. Yeah, most attacks. I don't know about you, but I'd rather not invite any potential hacker from pawing away at my computer's defenses.
Keep in mind that I'm using 'Free Public WiFi" as a common example. I've seen other SSID names being used in the same mistaken way. No matter the SSID name, this is an almost invisible viral infection being passed on from one XP system to another. It could work in Vista and Windows 7. I don't know. I do know, however, it can happen to XP systems because I tried it and, sure enough, my XP laptop 'caught' it.
The answer to this problem is to just avoid using WZC. Chances are your laptop comes with its own Wi-Fi connection software that's been optimized for its particular Wi-Fi Chipset.
To stop WZC from doing this you can either turn it off or set it to only use APs. To turn it off for once and all do a Start -> Run and type in "services.msc." Once in the services display, scroll down to Wireless Zero Configuration and right click on it to edit it. There, you'll want to turn it off and set it Startup Type from Automatic to either Manual or disabled.
If you want to keep WZC around, you can stop it from using ad hoc networks -- which isn't a bad idea anyway -- by clicking on the System Tray's Wireless icon and heading to the Wireless Network Connection window. Once there, click on "Change advanced settings," and click on the Wireless Network Tab in the Wireless Network Connection Properties window. From here, click on the Advanced button and set it so that it will "Access point (infrastructure) networks only."
Congratulations! You're now safe from inviting in any Tom, Dick, or Harry from visiting your PC via your Wi-Fi card.
Source:
http://www.itworld.com/security/99820/windows-xps-built-wi-fi-security-hole?source=peer2peerpromo
Chicago Web Site Design Company
When I'm really, really bored at an airport, I'll start looking around the local Wi-Fi networks with WireShark. This is an outstanding network protocol analyzer. Usually it's used for checking out what's really going on in your business network. Of course, if you know what you're doing you can also use it on Wi-Fi to see just how awful everyone's security is around you. But, that's a story for another day. Recently, I noticed that I kept seeing "Free Public Wifi" APs (access points) showing up. I assumed it was someone trolling for innocents wanting to be infected with malware. I was wrong. It's actually a much more interesting Windows XP security flaw.
A friend of mine pointed me to what was really going on. If you want to know more of the details, I recommend this article Free Public WiFi SSID. The short version is that Windows XP includes a utility, WZC (Wireless Zero Configuration). This was superseded in Vista and Windows 7 by WLAN Autoconfig. In either case, the idea is to make connecting to Wi-Fi APs easy.
The problem is that they make it a little too easy. If you have WZC enabled when you boot up, it starts looking around for a preferred network SSID (Service set identifier), the human-readable name that many APs use to identify themselves.
Let's say it can't find one. Next, it will try to connect to other APs on your 'preferred' list of APs just in case it didn't detect it the first time or the AP isn't transmitting an SSID anymore. If it fails again, it will then start looking for any ad-hoc networks on your preferred list. Ad hoc networks are made up of computers sharing their Internet connection when they're not an AP to be found. Keep that in mind because it becomes important for when the trouble starts.
Now, let's say you have an ad hoc network in your preferred network list, but it's not around either. You'd think at this point that Windows might ask you about joining any new, but unknown Wi-Fi APs in the area. Nope. What actually happens is that it will now automatically and silently setup your laptop as an ad hoc Wi-Fi node.
What fun! Now, somewhere out there at some time, people did use "Free Public Wifi" as the name for an ad hoc Wi-Fi network. Chances are that it was to rip people off. We know that it existed because WZC will use whatever the SSID was in your list of preferred ad hoc networks and "Free Public Wifi" keeps popping up.
Now, let's say your system does this, and someone comes along, say in the row behind you at the airport and they go looking for an Internet connection. They can't find one, but they do find your PC advertising itself as an ad hoc wireless network node. So, they connect to you and, ta-da, now their XP system will start advertising itself as an ad hoc node with the SSID of "Free Public Wifi!" And, on and on it goes.
The problem with this is that you're basically inviting the world to come in and network with your computer. Your firewall -- you are using one right? -- should stop most attacks. Yeah, most attacks. I don't know about you, but I'd rather not invite any potential hacker from pawing away at my computer's defenses.
Keep in mind that I'm using 'Free Public WiFi" as a common example. I've seen other SSID names being used in the same mistaken way. No matter the SSID name, this is an almost invisible viral infection being passed on from one XP system to another. It could work in Vista and Windows 7. I don't know. I do know, however, it can happen to XP systems because I tried it and, sure enough, my XP laptop 'caught' it.
The answer to this problem is to just avoid using WZC. Chances are your laptop comes with its own Wi-Fi connection software that's been optimized for its particular Wi-Fi Chipset.
To stop WZC from doing this you can either turn it off or set it to only use APs. To turn it off for once and all do a Start -> Run and type in "services.msc." Once in the services display, scroll down to Wireless Zero Configuration and right click on it to edit it. There, you'll want to turn it off and set it Startup Type from Automatic to either Manual or disabled.
If you want to keep WZC around, you can stop it from using ad hoc networks -- which isn't a bad idea anyway -- by clicking on the System Tray's Wireless icon and heading to the Wireless Network Connection window. Once there, click on "Change advanced settings," and click on the Wireless Network Tab in the Wireless Network Connection Properties window. From here, click on the Advanced button and set it so that it will "Access point (infrastructure) networks only."
Congratulations! You're now safe from inviting in any Tom, Dick, or Harry from visiting your PC via your Wi-Fi card.
Source:
http://www.itworld.com/security/99820/windows-xps-built-wi-fi-security-hole?source=peer2peerpromo
Chicago Web Site Design Company
Monday, March 15, 2010
Before You Contact a Web Design Company Service
So you're getting ready to have a site designed and your next step is to contact a Professional Web Design Chicago service.... Or is it? You see, it sure does help if you spend a little time familiarizing yourself with some of the basics so you can learn and also get an idea of what you want from your site.
It helps to know a little about fashion before you go clothing shopping and the same thing applies to web design. Besides, a better more reputable Web Design Company service rep would prefer that you understand some of the basics.
For instance, you need to decide if your site is going to be a marketing site or a showcase site for perhaps a conventional community based business enterprise. This makes a huge difference because if you're going to be marketing with your site, you may want to familiarize yourself with some of the features that are used for that.
For instance, take a look around the net at some of the top ranked sites in your particular business genre or one that's similar. See what they're doing with things like pop-up ads. Now they may be annoying to you when they pop on the screen but research has proven that non annoying, more discreet ads of this sort just don't produce the same results.
Harvesting email addresses for future marketing and promotional campaigns are real big now too. Especially since spamming was banned. There are several ways to go about getting site visitors to hand over their email addresses, so make a point of scouting around for those types of features as well to see what you prefer.
Free giveaways are the oldest marketing trick in the book. There's a certain percentage of the general public that just can't say no to a freebee. E-books that can be downloaded from your site are a great idea, so take the time to check around for some sites that are doing this. Go ahead and download and read what they are offering.
Now after you have spent a good deal of time scouting around and itemizing all the things that you like and have made up a nice wish list for your site, then try the opposite. That is click back to some of the back pages in the Search Engines and check out the lower ranked sites that are out there.
Make up a nice list of all the things that you find that you don't like. Difficult to read over stylized text. Odd colors that make it difficult to focus and see what's there. Boring videos that you can't stand but a few seconds of at the most. The list just goes on and on. Then after you have your two lists in hand, you can contact a qualified and reputable web design company service.
It helps to know a little about fashion before you go clothing shopping and the same thing applies to web design. Besides, a better more reputable Web Design Company service rep would prefer that you understand some of the basics.
For instance, you need to decide if your site is going to be a marketing site or a showcase site for perhaps a conventional community based business enterprise. This makes a huge difference because if you're going to be marketing with your site, you may want to familiarize yourself with some of the features that are used for that.
For instance, take a look around the net at some of the top ranked sites in your particular business genre or one that's similar. See what they're doing with things like pop-up ads. Now they may be annoying to you when they pop on the screen but research has proven that non annoying, more discreet ads of this sort just don't produce the same results.
Harvesting email addresses for future marketing and promotional campaigns are real big now too. Especially since spamming was banned. There are several ways to go about getting site visitors to hand over their email addresses, so make a point of scouting around for those types of features as well to see what you prefer.
Free giveaways are the oldest marketing trick in the book. There's a certain percentage of the general public that just can't say no to a freebee. E-books that can be downloaded from your site are a great idea, so take the time to check around for some sites that are doing this. Go ahead and download and read what they are offering.
Now after you have spent a good deal of time scouting around and itemizing all the things that you like and have made up a nice wish list for your site, then try the opposite. That is click back to some of the back pages in the Search Engines and check out the lower ranked sites that are out there.
Make up a nice list of all the things that you find that you don't like. Difficult to read over stylized text. Odd colors that make it difficult to focus and see what's there. Boring videos that you can't stand but a few seconds of at the most. The list just goes on and on. Then after you have your two lists in hand, you can contact a qualified and reputable web design company service.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Social Media 'Works in Harmony with Email Campaigns'
Rather than replacing email as a marketing channel, social media works in harmony with it, new research has found.
A study published by Econsultancy and Adestra revealed that more than a third of marketing professionals use email to encourage the sharing of information on social networking websites, with a further 31 per cent planning to adopt the same tactic.
The survey of 900 digital marketing executives found that 21 per cent are employing email campaigns to encourage customer ratings and reviews, with a further 26 per cent set to follow suit.
In addition, the survey revealed the growing importance of video content in email strategies, with 28 per cent including them in a bid to strengthen customer engagement.
Henry Hyder-Smith, managing director at Adestra, said that social networking sites are becoming increasingly important platforms for marketers to reach consumers, however, they still believe that email campaigns are an effective tool as well.
"Instead of cannibalisation, we are witnessing a solid partnership evolving between the two; email and social media working in harmony to fuel one another," he added.
A recent survey by Practical eCommerce found that Facebook and Twitter are the Social Networking sites of choice for online retailers in the US, with 78 per cent having a presence on the former and 75.6 per cent on the latter.
Resource:
http://www.bluhalo.com/news/view/7773/social-media-works-in-harmony-with-email-campaigns
Professional Web Design Chicago
A study published by Econsultancy and Adestra revealed that more than a third of marketing professionals use email to encourage the sharing of information on social networking websites, with a further 31 per cent planning to adopt the same tactic.
The survey of 900 digital marketing executives found that 21 per cent are employing email campaigns to encourage customer ratings and reviews, with a further 26 per cent set to follow suit.
In addition, the survey revealed the growing importance of video content in email strategies, with 28 per cent including them in a bid to strengthen customer engagement.
Henry Hyder-Smith, managing director at Adestra, said that social networking sites are becoming increasingly important platforms for marketers to reach consumers, however, they still believe that email campaigns are an effective tool as well.
"Instead of cannibalisation, we are witnessing a solid partnership evolving between the two; email and social media working in harmony to fuel one another," he added.
A recent survey by Practical eCommerce found that Facebook and Twitter are the Social Networking sites of choice for online retailers in the US, with 78 per cent having a presence on the former and 75.6 per cent on the latter.
Resource:
http://www.bluhalo.com/news/view/7773/social-media-works-in-harmony-with-email-campaigns
Professional Web Design Chicago
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Google Makes its Local Shopping Move
It took a while, but Google has made its big move as a local shopping inventory gatekeeper. The company said Thursday that it will offer mobile device users inventory checks on local stores, allowing them to see if products are available.
The program has already enlisted some key retailers including Sears, Best buy, Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, and West Elm. Rest assured that local merchants, which increasingly rely on Google to send business their way, will follow suit.
These local inventory checks have been talked about for years. In 2006, Google, Intuit, and the Kelsey Group outlined retailing's future and it sounded a lot like what the search giant is rolling out today. Four years later, we're almost to the point where local inventory searches are part of your average Web experience.
In a blog post, Google outlined how it works. You do a search, click on a blue dot to see if a product is near by and then you can check inventory. The search works on the iPhone, Palm WebOS and Android devices.
Source:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20000325-93.html
Chicago Web Design Firms
The program has already enlisted some key retailers including Sears, Best buy, Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, and West Elm. Rest assured that local merchants, which increasingly rely on Google to send business their way, will follow suit.
These local inventory checks have been talked about for years. In 2006, Google, Intuit, and the Kelsey Group outlined retailing's future and it sounded a lot like what the search giant is rolling out today. Four years later, we're almost to the point where local inventory searches are part of your average Web experience.
In a blog post, Google outlined how it works. You do a search, click on a blue dot to see if a product is near by and then you can check inventory. The search works on the iPhone, Palm WebOS and Android devices.
Source:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20000325-93.html
Chicago Web Design Firms
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
LimeWire Enlists AVG for user Protection
LimeWire's peer-to-peer file-sharing network is notorious as a malware ghetto, where distributed files that have legitimate-sounding names turn out to be Trojan horses hiding pernicious threats. In an effort to attract more users to the LimeWire premium upgrade and to protect those users better, the company signed a deal with AVG on Tuesday to extend download file scanning and blocking to LimeWire Pro users.
By integrating AVG's Antivirus SDK engine, all files that LimeWire Pro users download will now be scanned before they run. A pop-up will appear letting users know when a file has been scanned or blocked.
This is a smart move to make, as users become more aware of the risky nature of running audio, video, and program executables from unverifiable sources without scanning them first. However, many security suite options already offer download scanning. Most of the premium ones, such as Norton, McAfee, Kaspersky, and ESET, and some of the free ones, such as AVG, Avast, and Avira, will block a malicious download before anything gets saved to your hard drive. Nearly all will prevent an already-downloaded file from running.
LimeWire pointed out in a press release that it has 50 million users worldwide but didn't specify how many of those were premium-version users who would receive the AVG Protection.
Source:
http://download.cnet.com/8301-2007_4-10467408-12.html
Professional Web Design Chicago
By integrating AVG's Antivirus SDK engine, all files that LimeWire Pro users download will now be scanned before they run. A pop-up will appear letting users know when a file has been scanned or blocked.
This is a smart move to make, as users become more aware of the risky nature of running audio, video, and program executables from unverifiable sources without scanning them first. However, many security suite options already offer download scanning. Most of the premium ones, such as Norton, McAfee, Kaspersky, and ESET, and some of the free ones, such as AVG, Avast, and Avira, will block a malicious download before anything gets saved to your hard drive. Nearly all will prevent an already-downloaded file from running.
LimeWire pointed out in a press release that it has 50 million users worldwide but didn't specify how many of those were premium-version users who would receive the AVG Protection.
Source:
http://download.cnet.com/8301-2007_4-10467408-12.html
Professional Web Design Chicago
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Google Announces Business App Store for Google Apps
(Credit: Google Apps customers now have a wide variety of third-party applications they can integrate into their individual Google Apps domains.)
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Google is bringing the app store concept to business cloud computing, giving software developers a storefront for Google Apps customers.
The Google Apps Marketplace will allow Google Apps users to purchase third-party applications to run atop the Google Apps suite, said Vic Gundotra, vice president of engineering for Google. Developers will have to pay a one-time $100 fee to list their applications in the store, and Google will get a 20 percent cut of all applications sold through the store, he said.
Google's interest in such a store was first revealed last month by The Wall Street Journal. The idea is that although Google has an army of capable software developers, it can't hope to anticipate the needs of every single Google Apps users. Third-party developers can fill those gaps and make Google Apps more useful to businesses with unique needs that don't quite fit into the Google Apps suite.
Take payroll, for example. Google isn't in the enterprise-resource planning software market (yet), but Intuit is, said Martin Gates, chief technology officer for online payroll at Intuit. He demonstrated how Google Apps users can integrate an Intuit-developed Web-based payroll application that's linked with Google Apps, allowing employees to download their pay stubs simply by clicking on an icon in their Google Calendars.
Scott Farquhar, CEO of software tools company Atlassian, showed how Google Apps can be integrated directly into his company's software development tools. For example, software developers using Atlassian's project-management tools can have Gmail, Google Calendar, and Gchat applications integrated directly into the software development tool, so they don't have to leave that window to check their e-mail or chat with colleagues.
Google wants to encourage enterprise software customers to think about using Web-based applications as opposed to more expensive desktop-based applications for their critical business applications. It's both a competitive move against bitter rivals like Microsoft and a bid to cement the idea that the Web is the software development platform of the future.
In order to convince more businesses to make that investment, however, it needs to offer everything a business customer gets from their current software in the Web-based alternative. Famously conservative IT managers aren't likely to make the switch to Google Apps--although almost 2 million businesses already have, Gundotra said--unless Google can assure them of the flexibility of its approach.
Developers will be required to list their applications with the Google Apps Marketplace, Glazer said. However, Google is not imposing any sort of revenue model on those developers, allowing them to charge per application, per user, or on a subscription basis for the applications they sell that are integrated with Google Apps, he said.
Applications are available immediately through the marketplace. Google and its partners are also testing ways to integrate third-party applications directly into Gmail, allowing users to access snippets of their enterprise apps directly from their Gmail inboxes. These "contextual gadgets" will arrive at a later date, Glazer said.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-10466485-265.html
Chicago Web Site Design Company
Monday, March 8, 2010
Top Four Tips to Optimize Your Landing Page
The primary objective of a landing page is to help you to presell your products or services. By highlighting the salient features and benefits of your Affiliate Product, the landing page persuades your prospective customers to click at the affiliate link and buy the product from your website. For all this to happen, your landing page should be properly optimized. Here are top tips to optimize your landing page.
The Headline Should Be Compelling
Studies reveal that prospects take approximately 8-seconds to decide whether a particular landing page is useful or not. For this reason, the headline should be able to grab attention, arouse curiosity and compel the visitor to stay, read on and finally, buy the product. It should be simple, well-structured, easy to understand and appealing. It should have the power to stir up the visitor emotionally as well as convince him that your product would solve all his problems.
The Content Should Be Relevant
Every enterprise has its own specific niche market, and the customers of a particular niche have a unique set of problems and requirements. Thus, the contents of your landing page should target the customers of your niche market. They should clearly state the most important features of your product. Additionally, they should also highlight the benefits of your product. Furthermore, they should be relevant. For instance, if your landing page is promoting a skin care product, then avoid talking about an electronic product. After going through your landing page, the visitor should know what kind of product you are selling and why it is essential for him. All in all, the contents should instigate, motivate and persuade the reader to take action immediately.
Persuasive Message and Call to Action
Every successful sales person has a magical message that he uses in the end to convert a prospect into a customer. Your landing page is that proficient salesperson; so, it should also have a persuasive message. The message, on the one hand, should instill confidence in the prospect, and on the other hand, it should compel him to take action immediately. Convincing messages like, ‘Join millions of satisfied people that use…’ are found to increase conversion rate by leaps and bounds. The accompanying call to action should not be a direct message that asks for some kind of commitment like ‘Subscribe’, ‘Buy Now’ or ‘Add to Cart. Such messages serve to turn off the prospect. On the contrary, messages as ‘Try it Now’ or ‘Try it’ have a softer tone, but they improve the conversion rate dramatically.
Engender Trust and Security
Brand, testimonials and security icons help to generate confidence in a short span of time. A majority of your prospects would be visiting your landing page for the first time. They do not know how effective is your product and how trustworthy are you? It takes time to build confidence, but the irony is that you don’t have that much of time. In such a scenario, brand name, testimonials and security icons, as VeriSign and eTrust, improve the effectiveness of your landing page as well as instill confidence in the prospect.
Source:
http://www.techhamlet.com/2009/09/top-four-tips-to-optimize-your-landing-page/
Chicago Web Site Design Company
The Headline Should Be Compelling
Studies reveal that prospects take approximately 8-seconds to decide whether a particular landing page is useful or not. For this reason, the headline should be able to grab attention, arouse curiosity and compel the visitor to stay, read on and finally, buy the product. It should be simple, well-structured, easy to understand and appealing. It should have the power to stir up the visitor emotionally as well as convince him that your product would solve all his problems.
The Content Should Be Relevant
Every enterprise has its own specific niche market, and the customers of a particular niche have a unique set of problems and requirements. Thus, the contents of your landing page should target the customers of your niche market. They should clearly state the most important features of your product. Additionally, they should also highlight the benefits of your product. Furthermore, they should be relevant. For instance, if your landing page is promoting a skin care product, then avoid talking about an electronic product. After going through your landing page, the visitor should know what kind of product you are selling and why it is essential for him. All in all, the contents should instigate, motivate and persuade the reader to take action immediately.
Persuasive Message and Call to Action
Every successful sales person has a magical message that he uses in the end to convert a prospect into a customer. Your landing page is that proficient salesperson; so, it should also have a persuasive message. The message, on the one hand, should instill confidence in the prospect, and on the other hand, it should compel him to take action immediately. Convincing messages like, ‘Join millions of satisfied people that use…’ are found to increase conversion rate by leaps and bounds. The accompanying call to action should not be a direct message that asks for some kind of commitment like ‘Subscribe’, ‘Buy Now’ or ‘Add to Cart. Such messages serve to turn off the prospect. On the contrary, messages as ‘Try it Now’ or ‘Try it’ have a softer tone, but they improve the conversion rate dramatically.
Engender Trust and Security
Brand, testimonials and security icons help to generate confidence in a short span of time. A majority of your prospects would be visiting your landing page for the first time. They do not know how effective is your product and how trustworthy are you? It takes time to build confidence, but the irony is that you don’t have that much of time. In such a scenario, brand name, testimonials and security icons, as VeriSign and eTrust, improve the effectiveness of your landing page as well as instill confidence in the prospect.
Source:
http://www.techhamlet.com/2009/09/top-four-tips-to-optimize-your-landing-page/
Chicago Web Site Design Company
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Easy money for hackers, big headaches for IT
There's been a huge increase of malware attached to social networking sites and loosely regulated app stores. Should you lock up your users?
Batten down the security hatches. Hackers are poisoning social networking sites, particularly Facebook, and loosely regulated app stores like the Google Android marketplace, with increasing ferocity. A new study by security vendor AVG found that poisoned URLs posted on Facebook soared by 200 percent in February (compared to the previous month) after increasing by 300 percent in January. (AVG derived its statistics by analyzing URLs blocked by its software.)
The huge spike in rogue software on Facebook is part of a pattern that security experts have seen for several years: tricking users into poisoning their own systems and networks through clever ruses that appeal to curiosity, greed, or lust. No matter how often management tells users not to goof around while on company networks, they do. And IT gets stuck with the mess.
Although the numbers in the AVG study focused only on Facebook, Yuval Ben-Itzhak, AVG's senior vice president of engineering, says other social networking sites are also inadvertent carriers of rogue software. Indeed, Facebook appears to take reasonable precautions, he says, which only underlines the difficulty of combating the threat.
An easy $12,000 a day
A favorite trick of hackers these days is the fake antivirus scan, often attached to a Facebook page. All of a sudden a window pops up saying your system may be infected, but we'll do a free scan. In the better -- that is, more malicious -- versions of this scam, it's very difficult to make the pop-up window go away.
And while it might seem, well, stupid to do so, quite a few users will actually pay something for the bogus software. An examination of various Web logs and other sources reveals that even a small gang can net $12,000 a day, according to Ben-Itzhak. "It's a dream come true for the bad guys," he says. In one seven-day period, more than 80,000 users were affected by the rogue scanner malware.
While the users feel the pain of the antivirus scam, another hack making the rounds targets business information. It's a fake codec. A URL leads a user to a site where a video is posted. To play it, the user needs to download the fake codec, which is actually a container for seriously malicious code designed to steal business information.
That particular scam worked especially well in February, when users were hungry for videos of the Winter Olympics. Similarly, visitors to Foxnews.com who wanted to watch certain video clips last year were tricked into installing a tainted codec. Still, it's difficult to zero in on why Facebook has been hit so much harder this year than last.
To be fair to users, it's worth noting that some of the traditional advice they get from IT or popular publications is no longer adequate. IT tells people to go to only trusted sites. Unfortunately, by the beginning of 2009, the majority of infectious sites were mainstream, says Roger Grimes, a security professional and InfoWorld's Security Adviser blogger.
Facebook says it has not noticed a spike in rogue software. "People have a number of options for controlling the information they share with applications. We also have a dedicated enforcement team that conducts spot reviews of top applications and of many other applications, including looking at the data they need to run the application versus the data they gather," says Facebook spokesman Simon Axten.
Axten points out that apps are subject to privacy settings. "That is, you can configure what your friends' apps can and can't access."
Which is worse: Email or Web 2.0?
AVG isn't the only security company pointing the finger at threats related to Web 2.0 and social networking. Four in five IT professionals polled recently by Webroot said Web 2.0-based malware will pose the biggest security threat this year.
Seventy-three percent said Web-based threats are more difficult to manage than email-based threats, and 23 percent said their company was vulnerable to attacks on Web 2.0 applications, including social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.
No one likes to be hated, but sometimes you have to take security measures that will make your users really angry. You might even have to (gasp) pull some PCs off the Internet and treat some employees like children, suggests David Perry, global director of education for Trend Micro, whose global array of sensors (and information exchanges with other security vendors and customers) now detects an astonishing 100,000 samples of new malware a day.
You know the drill: Tell them going to porn and gambling sites and so on will get them in serious trouble. Because they are adults, you might set up a PC in the break room that has Web access but is not on your network. They may waste time on it, but it won't endanger enterprise security.
I don't mean to pick on Facebook. But I do think that Web 2.0 mavens have to think harder about the problems -- indeed, crimes -- that holes in their sites create for IT.
Source:
http://www.infoworld.com/t/hacking/easy-money-hackers-big-headaches-it-578?page=0,1
Chicago Website Design
Batten down the security hatches. Hackers are poisoning social networking sites, particularly Facebook, and loosely regulated app stores like the Google Android marketplace, with increasing ferocity. A new study by security vendor AVG found that poisoned URLs posted on Facebook soared by 200 percent in February (compared to the previous month) after increasing by 300 percent in January. (AVG derived its statistics by analyzing URLs blocked by its software.)
The huge spike in rogue software on Facebook is part of a pattern that security experts have seen for several years: tricking users into poisoning their own systems and networks through clever ruses that appeal to curiosity, greed, or lust. No matter how often management tells users not to goof around while on company networks, they do. And IT gets stuck with the mess.
Although the numbers in the AVG study focused only on Facebook, Yuval Ben-Itzhak, AVG's senior vice president of engineering, says other social networking sites are also inadvertent carriers of rogue software. Indeed, Facebook appears to take reasonable precautions, he says, which only underlines the difficulty of combating the threat.
An easy $12,000 a day
A favorite trick of hackers these days is the fake antivirus scan, often attached to a Facebook page. All of a sudden a window pops up saying your system may be infected, but we'll do a free scan. In the better -- that is, more malicious -- versions of this scam, it's very difficult to make the pop-up window go away.
And while it might seem, well, stupid to do so, quite a few users will actually pay something for the bogus software. An examination of various Web logs and other sources reveals that even a small gang can net $12,000 a day, according to Ben-Itzhak. "It's a dream come true for the bad guys," he says. In one seven-day period, more than 80,000 users were affected by the rogue scanner malware.
While the users feel the pain of the antivirus scam, another hack making the rounds targets business information. It's a fake codec. A URL leads a user to a site where a video is posted. To play it, the user needs to download the fake codec, which is actually a container for seriously malicious code designed to steal business information.
That particular scam worked especially well in February, when users were hungry for videos of the Winter Olympics. Similarly, visitors to Foxnews.com who wanted to watch certain video clips last year were tricked into installing a tainted codec. Still, it's difficult to zero in on why Facebook has been hit so much harder this year than last.
To be fair to users, it's worth noting that some of the traditional advice they get from IT or popular publications is no longer adequate. IT tells people to go to only trusted sites. Unfortunately, by the beginning of 2009, the majority of infectious sites were mainstream, says Roger Grimes, a security professional and InfoWorld's Security Adviser blogger.
Facebook says it has not noticed a spike in rogue software. "People have a number of options for controlling the information they share with applications. We also have a dedicated enforcement team that conducts spot reviews of top applications and of many other applications, including looking at the data they need to run the application versus the data they gather," says Facebook spokesman Simon Axten.
Axten points out that apps are subject to privacy settings. "That is, you can configure what your friends' apps can and can't access."
Which is worse: Email or Web 2.0?
AVG isn't the only security company pointing the finger at threats related to Web 2.0 and social networking. Four in five IT professionals polled recently by Webroot said Web 2.0-based malware will pose the biggest security threat this year.
Seventy-three percent said Web-based threats are more difficult to manage than email-based threats, and 23 percent said their company was vulnerable to attacks on Web 2.0 applications, including social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.
No one likes to be hated, but sometimes you have to take security measures that will make your users really angry. You might even have to (gasp) pull some PCs off the Internet and treat some employees like children, suggests David Perry, global director of education for Trend Micro, whose global array of sensors (and information exchanges with other security vendors and customers) now detects an astonishing 100,000 samples of new malware a day.
You know the drill: Tell them going to porn and gambling sites and so on will get them in serious trouble. Because they are adults, you might set up a PC in the break room that has Web access but is not on your network. They may waste time on it, but it won't endanger enterprise security.
I don't mean to pick on Facebook. But I do think that Web 2.0 mavens have to think harder about the problems -- indeed, crimes -- that holes in their sites create for IT.
Source:
http://www.infoworld.com/t/hacking/easy-money-hackers-big-headaches-it-578?page=0,1
Chicago Website Design
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Brilliant Google Product Policy and Why Buzz Is Wise
Given how huge Google is and the giant’s reputation in the online business world, it is no wonder that everything that Google chooses to launch as a new product never stays unnoticed and gets tons of coverage in the blogosphere and in traditional media.
The latest addition of Google Buzz is no exception, of course, as the blogosphere could not ignore Google trying to popularize the idea of lifestreaming to millions upon millions of users of Gmail, its wildly popular web-based email service. In fact, I think it will be no exaggeration to guess that for quite a number of web users around the world Gmail is the home page in their browsers, the first thing they see when they head online every day. And who will resist clicking that multi-color icon to check what the Buzz is?
Of course the launch of Google Buzz was accompanied by quite a number of criticizing voices about Google jeopardizing users’ privacy (as if it does not all the time by monitoring what we search for and what our email content is) and copying some of the worst FriendFeed features and for numerous other things that left geeks in the tech blogosphere unhappy.
But happy or not, I think we all should admit that Google will now do to lifestreaming what FriendFeed could never achieve - no matter how much we liked the cozy place to chat to our friends and promote each others’ posts over there. It is evident that the number of Gmail users is disproportionately higher than the number of people who ever heard of FriendFeed at all.
And now Google comes and introduces a FriendFeed of its own - a very simple new service that does not seem to need explanation as much as FriendFeed needed when it was first launched, at least because the geeks can help explaining and because the number of connected sites is so limited that you can’t really get lost even if you try to.
Now that I think about it, I can’t help but admire Google’s product policy: they saw something that seemed to be interesting to a number of people, they saw some potential in the idea and they used one of their flagship products, Gmail, to make it truly popular - and make some more millions off Adsense ads wisely integrated into Gmail interface years ago.
Ok, they don’t really want to invent and innovate these days. Instead, they simply follow the market trends and launch their own products to meet demands of their existing user base for these products instead of creating awareness and building new markets. After all, they probably innovated enough after they came up with the best search engine that ever existed, introduced the cleanest possible interface for email and made contextual advertising a hit. Now they definitely can afford following the market trends and launching their own iterations of promising things someone else invites.
Google Buzz is only one example and probably not the most prominent one because only a tiny portion of web users ever knew about FriendFeed - and an even smaller portion actually used the service. But come to think of it, Google’s product policy has not really been about dramatic innovations recently.
When they launched Gmail, internet users knew what email was and many had Yahoo Mail accounts - and the only thing that Google did was packing it all in a much cleaner interface and adding some small unusual features on the road. The growing popularity of their web-based office suite - Google Docs - is not really a wonder either: after all, everyone knows what text processors and spreadsheets are and it’s not really too much of a challenge to explain that it all can be used online via a browser and for free as an additional benefit as opposed to expensive Microsoft products. And was not it logical to launch a web browser of their own? After all, everyone knew what a browser was by the time and many people found the clean interface and speed of Chrome to be very appealing.
Android was their next huge release and again there was nothing revolutionary in it: everyone knows what cell phones and smart phones are and a number of companies develop operating systems for these devices - so Google simply came up with something that would be attractive to their target users, not really inventing but instead improving on others’ products.
Finally, they decided to launch a phone of their own - Nexus One - and again the same pattern: there’s no real need to explain to people what a touch-screen phone is, right? And it only took me 2 minutes to explain to my husband’s younger sister that his new phone actually was a Google phone even though she only heard about Google as a search engine until the moment she borrowed that shiny and new Nexus One to make a call.
The only exception from this policy that I can remember right now is Google Wave that is promised to revolutionize the way we use email - and pretty soon. Right at the moment of Google presenting Wave to bloggers I thought this idea was too complicated to be useful and later on I have never figured out exactly how Wave could improve my life. Google Wave is the service that I’ve received the most questions about from my less techy friends asking what they were supposed to use it for. And the worst part is that I myself could never find any worthy explanation for them. In fact, I have never even given all the invites I have out because I don’t have enough friends who I could explain why they might need it to at all.
But exceptions only confirm the general rules and for Google it looks like a general rule has become this one: follow the market trends, listen to demands, improve on existing ideas and make them work because of the huge user base Google has. After all, everyone needs a text processor, a web-based email, a browser and a phone. And why should not it all be powered by Google?
Source:
http://profy.com/2010/02/19/brilliant-google-product-policy-buzz-is-wise/
Chicago Website Design
The latest addition of Google Buzz is no exception, of course, as the blogosphere could not ignore Google trying to popularize the idea of lifestreaming to millions upon millions of users of Gmail, its wildly popular web-based email service. In fact, I think it will be no exaggeration to guess that for quite a number of web users around the world Gmail is the home page in their browsers, the first thing they see when they head online every day. And who will resist clicking that multi-color icon to check what the Buzz is?
Of course the launch of Google Buzz was accompanied by quite a number of criticizing voices about Google jeopardizing users’ privacy (as if it does not all the time by monitoring what we search for and what our email content is) and copying some of the worst FriendFeed features and for numerous other things that left geeks in the tech blogosphere unhappy.
But happy or not, I think we all should admit that Google will now do to lifestreaming what FriendFeed could never achieve - no matter how much we liked the cozy place to chat to our friends and promote each others’ posts over there. It is evident that the number of Gmail users is disproportionately higher than the number of people who ever heard of FriendFeed at all.
And now Google comes and introduces a FriendFeed of its own - a very simple new service that does not seem to need explanation as much as FriendFeed needed when it was first launched, at least because the geeks can help explaining and because the number of connected sites is so limited that you can’t really get lost even if you try to.
Now that I think about it, I can’t help but admire Google’s product policy: they saw something that seemed to be interesting to a number of people, they saw some potential in the idea and they used one of their flagship products, Gmail, to make it truly popular - and make some more millions off Adsense ads wisely integrated into Gmail interface years ago.
Ok, they don’t really want to invent and innovate these days. Instead, they simply follow the market trends and launch their own products to meet demands of their existing user base for these products instead of creating awareness and building new markets. After all, they probably innovated enough after they came up with the best search engine that ever existed, introduced the cleanest possible interface for email and made contextual advertising a hit. Now they definitely can afford following the market trends and launching their own iterations of promising things someone else invites.
Google Buzz is only one example and probably not the most prominent one because only a tiny portion of web users ever knew about FriendFeed - and an even smaller portion actually used the service. But come to think of it, Google’s product policy has not really been about dramatic innovations recently.
When they launched Gmail, internet users knew what email was and many had Yahoo Mail accounts - and the only thing that Google did was packing it all in a much cleaner interface and adding some small unusual features on the road. The growing popularity of their web-based office suite - Google Docs - is not really a wonder either: after all, everyone knows what text processors and spreadsheets are and it’s not really too much of a challenge to explain that it all can be used online via a browser and for free as an additional benefit as opposed to expensive Microsoft products. And was not it logical to launch a web browser of their own? After all, everyone knew what a browser was by the time and many people found the clean interface and speed of Chrome to be very appealing.
Android was their next huge release and again there was nothing revolutionary in it: everyone knows what cell phones and smart phones are and a number of companies develop operating systems for these devices - so Google simply came up with something that would be attractive to their target users, not really inventing but instead improving on others’ products.
Finally, they decided to launch a phone of their own - Nexus One - and again the same pattern: there’s no real need to explain to people what a touch-screen phone is, right? And it only took me 2 minutes to explain to my husband’s younger sister that his new phone actually was a Google phone even though she only heard about Google as a search engine until the moment she borrowed that shiny and new Nexus One to make a call.
The only exception from this policy that I can remember right now is Google Wave that is promised to revolutionize the way we use email - and pretty soon. Right at the moment of Google presenting Wave to bloggers I thought this idea was too complicated to be useful and later on I have never figured out exactly how Wave could improve my life. Google Wave is the service that I’ve received the most questions about from my less techy friends asking what they were supposed to use it for. And the worst part is that I myself could never find any worthy explanation for them. In fact, I have never even given all the invites I have out because I don’t have enough friends who I could explain why they might need it to at all.
But exceptions only confirm the general rules and for Google it looks like a general rule has become this one: follow the market trends, listen to demands, improve on existing ideas and make them work because of the huge user base Google has. After all, everyone needs a text processor, a web-based email, a browser and a phone. And why should not it all be powered by Google?
Source:
http://profy.com/2010/02/19/brilliant-google-product-policy-buzz-is-wise/
Chicago Website Design
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Facebook's $1B revenues: Now keep it up
Facebook may pull in an excess of $1 billion in revenues, according to estimates and poking around on behalf of industry blog Inside Facebook. That's an increase from the same publication's estimate of $700 million last year.
Facebook board member Marc Andreessen said last year that he projected the company would break $500 million revenue in 2009, and that it had the potential to be a billion-dollar company already, but that it was acting conservatively.
(Naturally, Facebook says that as a privately held company it doesn't disclose its financials.)
What can Facebook credit this big jump in revenue to? It's all about the Social Ads program. Facebook ditched banner ads altogether earlier this year when its longstanding ad partnership with Microsoft ran out and has chosen to focus on its edgier "engagement ads" program instead--and often these are sold by encouraging brands to promote their presence on Facebook with ad space.
However accurate these new estimates from Inside Facebook are, Facebook is certainly making money--and it's making money because the Facebook "fan page" and complementary ad space to promote it are the hottest ticket in brand marketing right now. They won't always be, and Facebook will have to maintain that front-runner status in plenty of advertising innovations down the road as the industry evolves faster than ever.
Plus, it's well-known that some of the biggest buyers of Facebook Advertisements are social-gaming companies looking to pull in more players: how long can they, in turn, keep up their place in the sun? Critics have long since pointed out the number of third-party companies that are effectively dependent on Facebook for traction and revenue, but the reverse is likely true as well.
Facebook has a potentially lucrative new revenue stream emerging when its virtual currency system, Facebook Credits, launches in full--Facebook takes a 30 percent cut of all proceeds. But the developer world isn't totally sold, and the product has grown far more niche from the days when it was rumored to be a "PayPal killer." As Inside Facebook points out, advertising is still the core of the company's business model. And here, it has to stay ahead of the pack more than ever.
Source:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10462824-36.html
Professional Web Design
Facebook board member Marc Andreessen said last year that he projected the company would break $500 million revenue in 2009, and that it had the potential to be a billion-dollar company already, but that it was acting conservatively.
(Naturally, Facebook says that as a privately held company it doesn't disclose its financials.)
What can Facebook credit this big jump in revenue to? It's all about the Social Ads program. Facebook ditched banner ads altogether earlier this year when its longstanding ad partnership with Microsoft ran out and has chosen to focus on its edgier "engagement ads" program instead--and often these are sold by encouraging brands to promote their presence on Facebook with ad space.
However accurate these new estimates from Inside Facebook are, Facebook is certainly making money--and it's making money because the Facebook "fan page" and complementary ad space to promote it are the hottest ticket in brand marketing right now. They won't always be, and Facebook will have to maintain that front-runner status in plenty of advertising innovations down the road as the industry evolves faster than ever.
Plus, it's well-known that some of the biggest buyers of Facebook Advertisements are social-gaming companies looking to pull in more players: how long can they, in turn, keep up their place in the sun? Critics have long since pointed out the number of third-party companies that are effectively dependent on Facebook for traction and revenue, but the reverse is likely true as well.
Facebook has a potentially lucrative new revenue stream emerging when its virtual currency system, Facebook Credits, launches in full--Facebook takes a 30 percent cut of all proceeds. But the developer world isn't totally sold, and the product has grown far more niche from the days when it was rumored to be a "PayPal killer." As Inside Facebook points out, advertising is still the core of the company's business model. And here, it has to stay ahead of the pack more than ever.
Source:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10462824-36.html
Professional Web Design
Monday, March 1, 2010
Apple Shareholders Nix Needless Green Proposals
Apple execs use annual shareholder meeting to tout green achievements
Apple Shareholders this week rejected two proposals that would have forced the company to add superfluous layers of bureaucracy to the company's already-effective sustainability efforts.
As reported by Macworld, shareholders rejected two separate proposals: one that would have forced the company to prepare a sustainability report on its environmental policies and efforts, and another to establish a board-of-directors sustainability committee.
These sorts of proposals might make sense for a company with a shabby environmental track record -- or even one that keeps mum about its success in the realm of sustainability. But as I wrote last month, Apple has an admirable green track record and has been neither shy nor secretive about reporting its efforts.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs told attendees at the shareholder meeting that the company's sustainability efforts weren't just good for the environment, but also the bottom line. He noted, for example, that by decreasing the size of the company's product boxes, the company has managed to reduce annual 747 cargo flights by the hundreds.
Source:
http://www.infoworld.com/d/green-it/apple-shareholders-nix-needless-green-proposals-118
Professional Web Design Chicago
Apple Shareholders this week rejected two proposals that would have forced the company to add superfluous layers of bureaucracy to the company's already-effective sustainability efforts.
As reported by Macworld, shareholders rejected two separate proposals: one that would have forced the company to prepare a sustainability report on its environmental policies and efforts, and another to establish a board-of-directors sustainability committee.
These sorts of proposals might make sense for a company with a shabby environmental track record -- or even one that keeps mum about its success in the realm of sustainability. But as I wrote last month, Apple has an admirable green track record and has been neither shy nor secretive about reporting its efforts.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs told attendees at the shareholder meeting that the company's sustainability efforts weren't just good for the environment, but also the bottom line. He noted, for example, that by decreasing the size of the company's product boxes, the company has managed to reduce annual 747 cargo flights by the hundreds.
Source:
http://www.infoworld.com/d/green-it/apple-shareholders-nix-needless-green-proposals-118
Professional Web Design Chicago
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