Google Plans New York Expansion: Buys $1.8 Billion Building ,

In a sign that Google (GOOG) is gearing up to hire more people in the largest U.S. city, the company on Wednesday announced it has bought a 15-story building in New York. Google paid more than $1.8 billion for the building, which formerly housed the Port Authority headquarters, according to The New York Times.

The company has been leasing space in the Chelsea building since 2006 and almost 10% of its employees work there. With 2.9 million square feet spread over a city block, the building -- at 111 Eighth Ave. -- is larger than the Empire State Building.

See full article from DailyFinance: 23 Dec 2010

Microsoft warns on IE browser bug

Continue reading the main storyMicrosoft's workaround for the IE bug will not protect all users of its web browser.

Microsoft has issued a warning about a serious vulnerability in all versions of its Internet Explorer (IE) browser.

If exploited by a booby-trapped webpage the bug would allow attackers to take control of an unprotected computer.

Code to exploit the bug has already been published though Microsoft said it had no evidence it was currently being used by hi-tech criminals.

A workaround for the bug has been produced while Microsoft works on a permanent fix.

Code injection

The bug revolves around the way that IE manages a computer's memory when processing Cascading Style Sheets - a widely used technology that defines the look and feel of pages on a website.

BBC News  |  23 Dec 2010

Facebook launches facial recognition software

Thursday 16 DEcember 2010 :

 No longer will Facebook users have to tag their friends in pictures.   Facebook is rolling out a new facial recognition feature to identify which of  your friends are in your pictures.

"Facebook will offer a tag suggestion feature that uses facial recognition software to figure out which of your friends are your pictures.

If you want to opt out you can always just wear your Richard Nixon mask everywhere you go."

   

Google listing of world's top search queries for 2010

AlJazeeraEnglish | December 11, 2010 - As 2010 draws to an end, internet search engines have begun releasing their lists of top search queries.

Google Inc, the world's largest internet search engine, has released "Zeitgeist 2010: How the world searched", an aggregation of billions of search queries the company says "captures the spirit of 2010".

In a nutshell, 2010 has been a year of global struggles ranging from the debt crisis, soaring unemployment, political turmoil to achievements in the medical and scientific fields, and catastrophic tragedies caused by both man and nature.

So what did most people search for?

Kevin Anderson, a freelance journalist specialising in digital strategy, tells Al Jazeera what dominated search queries in 2010

EU launches antitrust probe into alleged Google abuses.

The European Commission has launched an investigation into Google after other search engines complained that the firm had abused its dominant position.

The EC will examine whether the world's largest search engine penalised competing services in its results.

The probe follows complaints by firms including price comparison site Foundem and legal search engine ejustice.fr.

Google denies the allegations but said it would work with the Commission to "address any concerns".

Earlier this year the attorney general of Texas launched a similar investigation following complaints from firms including Foundem.

The objections in both cases are from competitors which allege that Google manipulates its search results.

BBC News : 30 November 2010

Police seek powers to shut websites.

The police are seeking powers to shut down websites deemed to be engaged in "criminal" activity.

The Serious and Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) has tabled a plan for Nominet, which oversees .uk web addresses, to be given the domain closing power.

Nominet said the idea was only a proposal and invited people to join the debate on the form of the final policy.

IT lawyers said the proposal would be "worrying" if it led to websites going offline without judicial oversight.

"It's not policy at this stage," said Eleanor Bradley, director of operations at Nominet.

She said SOCA's proposal emerged from changes made to Nominet's policy development process earlier in 2010, as well as experiences with closing down a series of criminal sites in the last 12 months.

BBC News | 26 November 2010 - read full post.

Pro-Wikileaks hacker group’s DDoS tool downloads top 40,000.

Imperva, the web security specialist, has reported that the tool released by the Anonymous Hacker Group for would-be Wikileaks protesters has been downloaded over 40,000 times, with the majority of downloads occurring in the US.

The company said there were three versions of the denial of service tool that members have been able to use:

• Manual
• Server controlled
• Javascript version with no download

Friday 10 December 2010 ComputerWeekly.com - Read full post :

WikiLeaks vigilante war spills onto Web

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The hackers who say they are sticking up for Wikileaks and Julian Assange continued to flex their digital muscles on Thursday, extending outages at Mastercard.com and Visa.com to a second day. And even as the group claiming responsibility for the attacks openly discussed big new targets like Amazon, Twitter, and Facebook, Twitter took unsuccessful steps to disperse the virtual mob.

Wednesday, December 8 2010 :: read full report :

: Facebook alternative Diaspora goes live :

An open source alternative to Facebook - called Diaspora - has gone live.

The "privacy-aware" social network was founded earlier this year during a period when Facebook came under fire for its privacy settings.

The community-funded project is currently only open to a small number of invited people.

Analysts have questioned whether the network can ever challenge more established sites such as Facebook, which now boasts nearly 600m members.

Diaspora (screen shot -pic) says it hopes to begin adding more people in the coming weeks.

"By taking these baby steps, we'll be able to quickly identify performance problems and iterate on features as quickly as possible," the four US students behind the service wrote in a blog post.

The team say they will continue to refine the site in response to feedback.

"Our number one goal has been releasing something that works. Sometimes that means making a bit of a mess

BBC News : 24 Nov 2010

Facebook alternative Diaspora goes live :

Continue reading the main storyThe early Diaspora screenshots revealed a familiar look

An open source alternative to Facebook - called Diaspora - has gone live.

The "privacy-aware" social network was founded earlier this year during a period when Facebook came under fire for its privacy settings.

The community-funded project is currently only open to a small number of invited people.

Analysts have questioned whether the network can ever challenge more established sites such as Facebook, which now boasts nearly 600m members.

Diaspora says it hopes to begin adding more people in the coming weeks.

Read full report :: BBC News 24 Nov 2010 :

Facebook news feeds beset with malware.

Malware writers are targeting social networks because of their enormous user base

One fifth of Facebook users are exposed to malware contained in their news feeds, claim security researchers.

Security firm BitDefender said it had detected infections contained in the news feeds of around 20% of Facebook users.

By clicking on infected links in a news feed, users risk having viruses installed on their computer.

Facebook said it already had steps in place to identify and remove malware-containing links.

BitDefender arrived at its figures by analysing data from 14,000 Facebook users that had installed a security app, called safego, it makes for the social network site.

In the month since safego launched, it has analysed 17 million Facebook posts, said BitDefender.

BBC News - 24 Nov 2010 : 

Thanksgiving :: 50 Free Apps We're Most Thankful For.

As we prepare to give thanks for our delicious Thanksgiving meals (and impending food comas), let's not forget to pay tribute to the wonderful developers who bring us our favorite free apps [ori pic].

Earlier this week we asked you to share the free apps you're most thankful for, and you came through with thousands of votes for apps covering the desktop, mobile phone, and devices in between. With a little spreadsheet magic and a few choices of our own, we bring you the top 50 free apps we're all most thankful for. Whether you're celebrating the holiday or not, it's a great list of free software that ought to make for some gluttonous downloading. The popular apps are some of the more obvious, however, so be sure to look further down the list for new free software you may not yet know about. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

The 50 Free Apps We're Most Thankful For ::

1. Dropbox

   See also: Dropbox Syncs and Backs Up Files Between Computers Instantaneously, The Cleverest Ways to Use Dropbox That You're Not Using, and Create a Highly Organized, Synchronized Home Folder with Dropbox

2. VLC (Video Lan Client)

MySpace deal looks to Facebook to gain and retain users

By Maggie ShielsTechnology reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley

The new service will start rolling out to users globally right away

Continue reading the main story

Related stories

• Attempt to stem MySpace decline
• Facebook hits 500m user milestone
• The ups and downs of social networks

The once dominant MySpace has turned to the company that stole its crown, Facebook, for help to drive users to its ailing site.

The two launched Mashup with Facebook, to let MySpace users log in to their Facebook accounts through their MySpace page.

This means users can port over their likes and interests listed on Facebook.

In turn users will get a stream of entertainment content based on these preferences.

"We feel this is a complementary service to Facebook," said Mike Jones, MySpace chief executive.

"This new feature is a great illustration of our strategy around social entertainment and enabling the real-time stream."

MySpace is among more than a million websites letting Facebook members extend their social graph on the world's biggest social network to other parts of the web.

BBC News 18 Nov 2010 Read full report :

Jolicloud 1.0 Netbook OS - First impressions

minipcpro | July 14, 2010 - We are taking a first look at the new Jolicloud 1.0 which features a new HTML5 frontend. You can download the recent version at jolicloud

The Ultimate Netbook Operating System: Jolicloud

revision3 | August 21, 2009 - Hands on with Jolicloud, the best operating system for netbooks, it just might be the ultimate Netbook OS for the internet! Check out how it works, and what it looks like, and the secrets of installing it!

Gmail Priority Inbox (Beta)

Get through your email faster:

Google | July 19, 2010 - Email is great, except when there’s too much of it. Priority Inbox automatically identifies your important email and separates it out from everything else, so that you can focus on what really matters.

Learn more about Priority Inbox.

Facebook revamps messaging system

Continue reading the main storyfriends and family.Facebook's current messaging system can only be used within Facebook

Confounding rumours about what Facebook would announce, founder Mark Zuckerberg said the system was "not e-mail".

Instead, he said, it was modelled on instant messaging systems and will route messages to people no matter how they are using Facebook.

"It will handle messages across all the ways you want to communicate," said Mr Zuckerberg.

Fast friends

"This is not an e-mail killer," said Mr Zuckerberg. "It is a messaging system that includes e-mail as part of it."

BBC News - Read full report :

Facebook to launch email service, would you use it?

foxprovidence | November 15, 2010 - The grapevine is abuzz with rumors that Facebook will be launching its own webmail to compete directly with GMail and Yahoo Mail.

Posted by John Moe on November 15, 2010 8:14 AM

By all accounts, Facebook is rolling out an email service. It’s pretty much the most-leaked Facebook announcement I’ve ever seen, actually, so I’d be shocked if that wasn’t the case. Not sure what they’ll call it yet.

Read full post:

Gmail voice and video chat

Google | November 07, 2008 - Talk face to face right in Gmail with free, high quality video and audio. Get started at http://gmail.com/videochat.

Internet pioneer Vint Cerf warns over address changes.

The internet could face years of instability as it moves to a new addressing system, one of the network's original architects has warned.

Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the internet, spoke as the UK was urged to begin using the new addressing system.

With current addresses (pic) due to run out in 2012, nations and businesses must get on with switching, said Mr Cerf.

During the switch internet links could become unreliable, making sites and services hard to reach, Mr Cerf said.

"This has to happen or the internet will stop growing or will not be growable," he said of the move to the addressing system.

BBC News 11 Nov 2010 - read full report :

Facebook eyes mobile domination.

Facebook has set out a strategy it hopes will make it as dominant in mobiles as it is in social networks.

At the heart of its plans is making the mobile phone a more social experience and offering shopping discounts.

The company announced the opportunity for businesses to offer deals to users via their phone.

Facebook also revealed plans for a single sign-on that lets users log in to other phone applications with their Facebook name and password.

Read full report :

Google Buzz ...

Intro to Google Buzz :

Google | February 05, 2010 - Start conversations about the things you find interesting. Share updates, photos, videos, and more

MORE ON GOOGLE BUZZ:
GOOGLE BUZZ PAGE
VIDS ON GOOGLE BUZZ

Ubuntu 10.10 Beta Adds New Photo Manager, Improves Multimedia Experience

An early look at the next release of Ubuntu's Linux desktop hit the web late yesterday. What's in 10.10, or "Maverick Meerkat," for desktop users? Besides app updates, there's a new photo manager, improved multimedia controls, better Ubuntu One syncing, and more.

The full list of changes and new things is listed at the beta page, but what strikes us in a quick look at a live-booting beta (for which we recommend Unetbootin and a USB thumb drive) are the changes to Ubuntu One,

Read full report : 

Trainee detectives to study Facebook.

itnnews | October 28, 2010 - Detectives are to be taught how to track down killers and other criminals on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks.

Twitter & US Hypocrisy

Criminalization of Social Networking Technology - Twitter, G20 Pittsburgh, & Iran

YaBasta5000 | October 07, 2009 - Twerrorism - When anarchists tweet, the state twembles

How Big is Social Networking?

printmything | May 13, 2008 - Social Networking is becoming a ubiquitous tool for connecting and communicating with friends, family & colleagues. This video seeks to show how big it is.

1kevinm | May 24, 2010 - Take a look to see how Social Networking is changing the WORLD.

Video chat and video conferencing soon on Facebook

Facebook and Skype deal to dial friends and family:

Together the deal means access to around 1 billion users

Skype is integrating with Facebook to make it easier to call and video chat with friends and family on the social network.

The deal comes amid fevered rumours that Facebook plans to launch a phone of its own.

Meanwhile Skype is gearing up for a $100m (£62m) share issue.

"The essence of the Skype experience is communicating with the people you care about," said Rick Osterloh, Skype's head of consumer products.

The new Skype for Windows will include a Facebook tab. This means that for the first time Skype users can keep up-to-date and interact with their Facebook news feed including posting status updates, commenting and liking directly from Skype

Technology reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley

Stuxnet Malware:

Iran's Stuxnet Malware Problems:

AttackOfTheShow | September 28, 2010 - Earlier this summer, security experts uncovered the Stuxnet, an internet worm that can wreak havoc upon specific industrial systems, as it has done in Iran. Attack of the Show's Kevin Pereira talks to Wired.com's Ryan Singel to learn more about Stuxnet

Digital Frontiers: The Stuxnet Worm

VOAvideo | October 14, 2010 - The Stuxnet worm has been neutralized, but not before it may have done its damage. But what's to come? More attacks, and more sophisticated cyber-weapons, are safe bets.

Facebook's Older Users

CBS | October 11, 2010 - Internet users 65 and older are the fastest growing group on Facebook. Katie Couric comments that while 18-to-29-year-olds are still the heaviest users, many older Americans are now catching up.