According to Mozilla and other sources, Firefox 2 and Gecko 1.8 will soon be left behind some time in mid-December. The end result: no future security or stability updates. This will affect Thunderbird 2, SeaMonkey 1.1, Camino 1.5, and any other projects based on Gecko 1.8. So, if you haven’t already upgraded, there’s no time like the present.
I personally like Firefox 2 better than Firefox 3. To me it is just faster. Thankfully I save all of the installers.
Microsoft Corp. announced yesterday the next generation of Windows Live – an integrated set of online services that make it easier and, ideally, more fun for consumers to communicate and share with the people they care about most. This new generation includes updated experiences for photo sharing, e-mail, instant messaging, as well as integration with multiple third-party sites. The release also includes Windows Live Essentials, free downloadable software that enhances consumers’ Windows experience by helping them simplify and enjoy digital content scattered across their PC, phone and on Web sites.
As we have observed in previous blogs, consumers today are creating online content and sharing it all across the Web. Microsoft believes they are helping to make it simple for the more than 460 million Windows Live customers to keep their friends up to date. So they are partnering with such companies as Flickr, LinkedIn Corp., Pandora Media Inc., and Twitter; to name a few. This collaboration will help to integrate activities on third-party sites into Windows Live through a new profile and What’s New feed. The new Windows Live also gives consumers the added convenience of having a central place to organize and manage information.
As always, this is a grand effort on Microsoft’s behalf to benefit itself and its partners/co-horts. However, as with so many of their products, this just may well be a starting point for a more organized system of the various new apps customers are using. The benefits of this for the consumer should be interesting to trackas the usage grows.
Yesterday, November 12, 2008, MySpace COO Amit Kapur announced that his company is working on its own payments and virtual gift products that MySpace contributors will be able to add to their own apps. In the platform wars of social networking (Facebook, MySpace, etc.), the side that makes it easier for application developers to make the most money will most likely win. Advertising in social networks has always been problematic, and with our current recession continuing on a downward slope, the already- low ad rates are going to get lower, not higher.
Of course, the other way to make money on these platforms is to try to charge for apps themselves or sell things through the apps. But to do that developers first need a payment and billing system to tap into. Hence, this announcement by MySpace is a big one, especially to the investors. It’s not an original idea, more so the intrigue that it may actually happen sooner than later. Facebook has been rumored to be working on a payments system for a long time. They currently have their own virtual gifts , but have not yet opened that to developers. (Although there is a gift economy inside Facebook powered by other companies).
Many are following the example of iPhone’s App Store. It has proven that, at least on mobile phones, people are willing to pay for apps. Bringing that model to social networks could work if the quality of the apps goes up and the number goes down. One problem with Facebook and MySpace apps is that there are too many of them. Many people feel swarmed with the amount out there.
There are no barriers to entry and it seems that each “friend” is using a different one. Charging for apps, or trying to sell add-on services through them, would force the startups and developers creating them to build something that people are actually willing to pay for. The challenge to switching over to such a model from the current free-for-all is that the value of many of these apps is directly correlated with how many people use them. (More specifically, with how many of your friends use them).
Realistically, the minute someone charges for an app, the adoption rate goes way down. So some aspect of most of these apps will likely always be free. But the ability to charge for extras or for a more fully-featured experience might actually result in better apps being produced. In the effort to provide alternative revenue streams besides ads to app developers, the customers may just win with a better product. What a novel idea?!
Your typical videogame controller modification is usually for looks, style or function. But rarely are they ever for necessity.
However, dedicated gamer KitsuneYume of the PlayStation boards had no choice but to modify his controllers. He has Duchennes Muscular Dystrophy (One of nine types of muscular dystrophy, a group of genetic, degenerative diseases primarily affecting voluntary muscles). His condition leaves him unable to use a regular hand-held game controller. Inspired by some of the hottest upcoming games, KitsuneYume made things work by working with an engineer to devise an adaptive controller to help him get his game on.
From his posts on the PlayStation message boards:
One day I was looking at a trailer for Final Fantasy 13, Killzone 2 and Mirrors Edge. I was like… I have to definitely play FF13 because I love it with all my heart… the series I mean. Ever since I played 2/4 I have been hooked. I sat there thinking of ways I could play it and finally came up with this. Me and a guy from Minnesota built and design this controller together.
KitsuneYume worked with broadenedhorizons.com and a gentleman named Mark Felling of GimpGear to create his custom controller. His personalized controller uses movements of his tounge and sips or puffs of air in straws to control games. Fingers and toes help round out many of the other controls. Th set up may not have the aero-dynamic and sleek looks of everyday controllers, but the design is ingenious.
Kitsune’s goal was to share the news with others that may be handicapped, letting them know that a solution is available. Good on him, and good on the the people that are helping him out, including an unnamed donor that paid for some special switches he needed.
In another post he says, “Since 1986 I have lived for gaming and will continue to do so for eternity.”
It is an understatement to say that KitsuneYume is an inspiration to gamers everywhere – living proof that you can’t keep a good gamer down.
Gmail’s budding reputation as a communication hub for more than just e-mail received a major endorsement today with the addition of voice and video chat. Google launched the feature today and will roll it out to users around the world over the next couple of days.
Gmail’s new voice and video features work in modern browsers that support the latest version of its web app, namely Firefox 2.0+, Safari 3.0, IE7, and Google Chrome. Google Apps users will also get this feature as it rolls out, but Gmail voice and video conversations are only supported on Mac OS X, Windows XP, and Windows Vista via a Gmail voice and video chat plug-in that must be installed. Sorry, students, Internet café nomads, and cubicle warriors everywhere, but you may have to beg your admins for this new feature.
Google touts the fact that this new feature is built on open standards such as XMPP, RTP, and H.264, which means that third parties developers and networks are free to incorporate Gmail voice and video chat into their applications.
Voice and video chats can run in chat windows inside of Gmail, pop-out windows, or even be scaled full screen. As of this writing, however, none of the Ars Orbiting HQ staff have seen this feature arrive in our Gmail accounts, so we can’t give it a go.
“Gmail has always been about more than just e-mail,” Google said in a press release. While that may be a debatable statement depending how far back in Gmail’s history you travel, the company isn’t kidding around with this “hub” concept if you consider all the functionality that has opened up via its recent Gmail Labs experiment. While some Gmail application are not much more than cute novelties, everything from more powerful e-mail management to a growing list of third-party gadgets can now be enabled and embedded in Gmail. The addition of voice and video chat, though slightly encumbered by the requirement of a plug-in, is likely to draw new users and give current Gmail users a reason to log in more often.
(As reported by arstechnica.com)
Don’t you ever wonder where branding names come from? Ten years ago the terms iPod and Wikipedia wouldn’t have had meaning or association. Today they are known around the world. Here are a couple of background stories to what are now infamous products. They may seem so logical to us now, but took great ingenuity to get there.
iPod
According to CIO.com, during Apple’s MP3 player development, Steve Jobs spoke of Apple’s strategy: the Mac as a hub to other gadgets. Vinnie Chieco, a freelance copywriter Apple hired to help manme the gadget before its debut in 2001, fixed on that idea. he brainstormed hubs of all kinds, eventually coming tot he concept of a spaceship. You could leave it, but you’d have to return to refuel. the stark plastick front of the prototype inspired the final connection: pod, a la 2001. Add an “i” and the connectio to the iMac was complete.
Wikipedia
According to Wikipedia, the name Wikipedia is a portmanteau of wiki (a technology for creating collaborative websites) and encyclopedia (you remember those large books that kids used pre-internet to ruthlessly plagiarize for school reports). FYI: a portmaneau is a fancy way of saying that the we’re going to take two wwords, jam them together and create a new concept that people will love. So far, so good. Also, in an illustration of the saying “the more things change, the more they stay the same”: Today, kids and adults (myself included!) now ruthlessly plagiarize Wikipedia instead of encyclopedias.
According to an article published Monday in the Sydney Morning Herald, Facebook has been infiltrated by Nigerian scammers and other cyber criminals who use compromised accounts to con users out of cash. Please be careful.
Now that even non-tech savvy internet users know not to respond to, or click on links in, emails from strangers, online thieves have turned to social networks and are finding it is easier to trick people when posing as their friends.
On Friday, Sydneysider Karina Wells received a Facebook message from one of her friends, Adrian, saying he was stranded in Lagos, Nigeria, and needed her to lend him $500 for a ticket home.
Adrian used relatively good English but, after chatting further, words such as “cell” instead of “mobile phone” tipped Wells off that she was not talking to her friend but someone who had taken over his account.
Using sites such as Facebook allows scammers to research and target victims more effectively and avoid having their messages blocked by spam filters, said Paul Ducklin, head of technology at Sophos Asia Pacific.
It is likely the scammer obtained Adrian’s Facebook login details after he was infected with a virus delivered by email or in an infected web page.
There are a number of viruses which, once installed on a computer, send back to the hacker a detailed log of everything entered using the keyboard, including online banking details and passwords for services such as Facebook.
Wells played along with the scammer, who asked her to transfer the money into a Western Union account.
“Naturally I was concerned as, to all intents and purposes, this seemed to be legitimate,” she said.
“I pretended that I would help, obtained all the details of where he was and forwarded them to both Facebook and the relevant authorities.”
But while the Nigerian scammer used the compromised Facebook account coupled with social engineering tactics to try to convince Wells to hand over money, many are using compromised accounts to spread malware.
Typically, the victim receives a Facebook message from a friend with a subject such as “LOL. You’ve been catched on hidden cam, yo” or “Nice dancing! Shouldn’t you be ashamed?”
The body of the message contains a video clip link that appears to go to a legitimate site such as Facebook or YouTube but, when clicked on, it takes the user to a bogus web page.
Before the users can play the video they are told they need to download a video player upgrade, which is in fact a password-stealing virus.
The next time the victim logs into Facebook the malware-laden message is sent to all of their friends and the infected link is automatically added in comments on friends’ pages.
Other less sophisticated attacks on Facebook members use spam emails, some appearing to come from Facebook itself, to spread viruses.
In September security firm WebSense reported on spam emails, purportedly sent from an @facebookmail.com address, that tell the victim they have received an invitation from Facebook to add a friend.
“The spammers included a zip attachment that purports to contain a picture in order to entice the recipient to double-click on it. The attached file is actually a Trojan horse,” WebSense said.
So, once again, please becareful. With all our wonderful technology and the desires of people to share their life with friends near and far, nothing is sacred.
Spammers are turning a profit despite only getting one response for every 12.5m e-mails they send, finds a study. By hijacking a working spam network, US researchers have uncovered some of the economics of being a junk mailer.
The analysis suggests that such a tiny response rate means a big spam operation can turn over millions of pounds in profit every year.
It also suggests that spammers may be susceptible to attacks that make it more costly to send junk mail.
The spam study was carried out in early 2008 by computer scientists from University of California, Berkeley and UC, San Diego (UCSD). For their month-long study the seven-strong team of computer scientists infiltrated the Storm network that uses hijacked home computers as relays for junk mail. At its height Storm was believed to have more than one million machines under its control.
The team, led by Assistant Professor Stefan Savage from UCSD, took over a chunk of the Storm network to make it easier to run their study. “The best way to measure spam is to be a spammer,” wrote the researchers in a paper describing their work.
They created several so-called “proxy bots” that acted as conduits of information between the command and control system for Storm and the hijacked home PCs that actually send out junk mail. The team used these machines to control a total of 75,869 hijacked machines and routed their own fake spam campaigns through them.
Two types of fake spam campaign were run through these machines. One mimicked the way Storm spreads using viruses and the other tried to tempt people to visit a fake pharmacy site and buy a herbal remedy to boost their libido. While running their spam campaigns the researchers sent about 469 million junk e-mail messages. The vast majority of these were for the fake pharmacy campaign. The fake pharmacy site was made to resemble those run by Storm’s real owners but always returned an error message when potential buyers clicked a button to submit their credit card details.
“After 26 days, and almost 350 million e-mail messages, only 28 sales resulted,” wrote the researchers.
The response rate for this campaign was less than 0.00001%. This is far below the average of 2.15% reported by legitimate direct mail organisations.
“Taken together, these conversions would have resulted in revenues of $2,731.88—a bit over $100 a day for the measurement period,” said the researchers.
Scaling this up to the full Storm network the researchers estimate that the controllers of the vast system are netting about $7,000 (£4,430) a day or more than $2m (£1.28m) per year.
While this was a good return, said the researchers, it did suggest that spammers were not making the vast sums of money that some people have predicted in the past.
They suggest that the tight costs might also open up new avenues of attack on spammers.
The researchers concluded: “The profit margin for spam may be meager enough that spammers must be sensitive to the details of how their campaigns are run and are economically susceptible to new defenses.”
