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