The Website of Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences seems to have had what you call major security breach. The whole of the website complete with Server backups, Databases of Students, Site Databases, and the Complete directory structure have been leaked onto BitTorrent
DALLAS -- Dallas say the department shut down its Internet presence after a hacker took over its Web site and filled it with anti-American rants.
Link: Blodget: MicroHoo 'is gonna be a disaster' | TalkBack on ZDNet.
YaSoft the big 3 are... Google - 56.3% Yahoo! - 17.7% and MSN - 13.8% (Nielsen Online 12/07) a. combined they get closer to Google's share.. b. GTalk sucks c. MSN messenger and Yahoo! Messenger Rule.. but are already starting to combine.. (i can add msn messenger peeps onto my yahoo) d. IM merges with mobile.. MSN Live control gets folded into Yahoo! E. Yahoo! buys Ask.com and implements Ask.com's search pages into all 3 search engines.. they become the common view of search with google a bit behind.. F. Google vs. MYhoo - (MyHoo = personalization integrated with windows..) G. Google and Apple fight over Iphone vs. Android.... H. Hell for Google for being attacked at all sides.. I. think Google will buy Apple in the end though... and MySpace... then it's on... LET'S GET READY TO RUMBLE!!!
The rise of social networking websites such as FaceBook and MySpace could bring the rapid growth of UK internet advertising down a gear this year, according to media forecasters at WPP, the marketing services group. GroupM, the umbrella forecasting group for WPP’s media buying teams, cites the increasing time that audiences are spending on such websites as one reason to anticipate a slowdown in the “warp” speed expansion of web advertising. Any deceleration in internet growth would be relative, especially compared with the sluggish state of UK broadcast and press advertising.
Link: FT.com / Companies / Media & internet - Networking sites seen hitting web ad growth.
Link: Portals - WSJ.com.
HONG KONG -- Remember Friendster? Friendster.com helped launch the online social-networking craze back in 2002. By 2004, the Web site had grown so big its software couldn't handle it and slowed to a crawl. Other services, such as MySpace.com, stepped in to take its place. But Friendster never went away -- its user base just shifted to overseas. Today, more than 70% of Friendster's traffic comes from Southeast Asia. It is the most popular Web site in the Philippines, according to site tracker Alexa. It is No. 2 in Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore. It has 10 times the registered users ...
| IT'S 10 A.M. DO YOU know where your brand is?
From cyber squatting to domain kiting, a new study by an Internet security company that has been studying the issue finds that the brands most targeted for attack are those consumers expect to be the most secure: financial services and media companies. "Media companies draw the greatest Web site traffic, and financial services companies draw the highest premiums for pay-per-click keywords, making them especially attractive targets for brand abuse," says MarkMonitor's vice president of communications Te Smith. Financial services companies accounted for 41% of all phishing attacks during the first quarter of this year, a jump from 29% during the same period a year earlier. The yield for online banking credentials is "incredibly high" for phishers, making it no surprise that financial services companies are so often the targets of abuse. Brandjackers also prey on customer confusion resulting from myriad mergers and security system upgrades, she says. "These abuses can add up to big money, too," Smith says. "Customer support centers increase and ad dollars are lost to so-called traffic diversion. Ultimately, these threats contribute to a loss of control for brand owners in how their brands are perceived in the marketplace and threaten customer trust and loyalty, the greatest brand assets of all." The April 2007 "Brandjacking Index" tracked weekly samples of data provided by ISPs and e-mail providers in March and April of 25 brands in eight vertical segments culled from the 2006 Top 100 Interbrand listing. Cyber squatting--the unauthorized use of a brand in a domain name--is the most frequent form of abuse, and leads to other exploitations such as pay-per-click fraud and kiting. Online crooks are becoming more astute marketers, notes MarkMonitor CMO Frederick Felman. "Brand abusers employ online marketing techniques such as search engine optimization to siphon traffic from reputable sites," he says. The number of brands phished each month reached an all-time high of 229 in March compared to earlier studies, which MarkMonitor, a company that alerts others when their brand is being abused, attributed to more successful operations by the bad guys. "Botnets and phish kites have reduced the technology requirements and resources needed to execute attacks," Felman says. "Phishers are adopting direct marketing methodologies to experiment with brands, evaluate efficiencies and exploit lax enforcement." Marketers must keep a close eye on their brands online. According to the report:
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Unlike many corporate areas in the virtual world, the NBA Headquarters incorporates capabilities designed to keep fans coming back, including real-time 3-D diagrams of games as they're played.
The NBA on Tuesday plans to launch NBA Headquarters, a Second Life area with games, interactivity, and community features designed to provide basketball fans with a place to get together and get involved.
NBA's area can potentially bring Second Life basketball fans back for repeat business. That's a contrast to many of the other corporate areas in Second Life, which are sterile places where visitors might come once, but never return. NBA Headquarters, by contrast, has multiplayer games and a variety of other features designed to draw repeat visitors.
The professional basketball organization is trying to recruit fans who are already in Second Life, as well as generate new fans, NBA commissioner David Stern said. NBA Headquarters in Second Life is part of the NBA's strategic drive to embrace new media, including Yahoo, Facebook, wireless communications, and online video including YouTube.
"This is an area we find to be very exciting," Stern said. "It's causing us to rethink overall the concept of how our fans consume NBA content." Stern spoke at a live announcement in two media: Second Life, and a conference call.
NBA recruited The Electric Sheep Co., a virtual worlds consultancy, to help build NBA Headquarters. Electric Sheep looks to help real-world businesses set up areas in Second Life and other virtual worlds. It occupies a position in the virtual world economy similar to the position occupied by Web marketing companies in the first years of the Web.
The simulation has the potential to capitalize on one of the strengths of Second Life. The virtual world is really a social medium, where people from all over the world come together for chat and activities in real-time, using a 3-D interface. Popular activities in Second Life today include listening to live and recorded music and participating in discussion groups. It's a natural step for people to gather in Second Life to watch a real-time diagram of a basketball game in progress, while chatting with each other about the play and watching the game on TV in their separate, real-life living rooms.
NBA Headquarters includes a virtual basketball court, where avatars can sit and watch a real-time, 3-D diagram of NBA games:
And a shop where you can buy NBA-logo virtual merchandise for your avatar. The front of the shop is a reproduction of one in Manhattan:
One feature that will appeal to Second Life users -- the chairs in the basketball arena are "scripted." Once a user sits his avatar in the chair, the user can flick his point of view from the playing field (with its real-time diagram) to the scoreboard, and back again. That's a convenience; in most places in Second Life, the user has to manually change his camera point of view by combinations of keystrokes and mouse movements. The NBA area also features a downloadable toolbar (in Second Life jargon, those are called HUDs, for "heads-up displays") to provide a realtime feed of NBA news and control a couple of in-world games, which allow avatars to play basketball against each other. The games include the playground basketball game H.O.R.S.E., where players take turns shooting baskets, as well as another in which avatars attempt to dunk the ball.
The area also includes four video lounges where fans can watch past playoffs and highlights of past games.
And users can get their pictures taken with the championship trophy. That's my avatar, Ziggy Figaro:
When posing with the trophy, the point-of-view automatically moves into position, and the user has a choice of several goofy poses.
During the press conference, Stern said the NBA was attracted to Second Life in part because of its massive user base, which Stern said was 6 million users. Actually, that's not quite true. As of Monday at 3 p.m. Pacific time, Second Life was indeed on the verge of rolling the odometer over to 6 million accounts created since the virtual world open for business four years ago -- 5,968,396 accounts, to be precise.
However, the number of actual users of Second Life is much smaller. Linden Lab itself estimates the user retention rate at about 10% -- which would be almost 600,000 active accounts. And dedicated users will often create more than one account (the secondary accounts, in Second Life jargon, are called "alts.")
Still, Second Life does have an impressive growth rate, 20% per month, and 40% of the users are women, Stern noted. Second Life will be part of the NBA's effort to diversify its fan base, which also includes programs to recruit Hispanics and women as fans.
The NBA and Electric Sheep declined to comment on financial details for the area, except to say that it is supported by advertising from partners including T-Mobile, Toyota, and Cisco Systems. Different parts of NBA Headquarters bear prominent corporate sponsorship, for example: The T-Mobile Arena and T-Mobile Half Court Shot Contest.
The area is free to all Second Life users.
The NBA is selling merchandise at its store. Pricing is competitive with other virtual merchandise sold in Second Life. For example, a team logo jersey, that users can put on their avatars, is priced at 100 Linden Dollars, competitive with other virtual clothing for avatars. The Linden Dollar is Second Life's in-world currency for micropayments, priced at about 260 L$ per U.S. dollar.
The NBA has an advantage in marketing its site -- it has the vast marketing machine of NBA behind it. The Second Life area will be marketed on the organization Web site, television, blogs, wireless, and broadband channels.
NBA fans will be able to join Second Life through the NBA Web site.. Once that's done, the fans will bypass the general Second Life orientation area, and instead go to one operated by the NBA, where the fans will go through a self-teaching program to learn how to move in Second Life, look around, and interact with other people. NBA is providing the customized logins through a set of APIs that Linden Lab -- the company that created, develops and operates Second Life -- makes available to any company. The cable TV channel Showtime has a similar setup for its show, The L Word.
The NBA area occupies four separate "sims," or software servers, at the data center of Linden Lab, said Michael Morton, a producer at Electric Sheep, who functions as a project manager for the company.
Electric Sheep built the software using the building tools that come standard with the client software that every user uses to access Second Life. They also used Adobe Photoshop for importing images into the game.
Some of the features of the area -- including the online trivia game -- required access to software running on Web servers, which was accessed by Second Life using the Web's standard HTTP and secure HTTPS protocols.
I loved the detail in the press-room build: The tables draped in cloth, the backdrop hung from a bare metal pole, the bare wooden floor in front of the tables, the uncomfortable folding chairs. I've been at about a million press conferences like this in real life. That's me in the hat in the front row, below:
What: Kansas state trooper stops truck driver, arrests him for alleged drug possession, and downloads contents of his cell phones.
When: U.S. District Judge Sam Crow in Kansas rules on April 12.
Outcome: Judge says copying of cell phones' contents was permissible.
What happened, according to court documents:
In December 2006, Kansas Highway Patrol Trooper Clint Epperly was staffing a drug checkpoint at a truck weighing station in Wabaunsee County. Rafael Mercado-Nava was driving a tractor-trailer and stopped at the checkpoint around midnight.
When Mercado-Nava got out of his truck at the scale house, the trooper was suspicious, claiming that the driver was sweating, overly friendly, and the truck was registered in California (which Epperly believed to be a source of illegal drugs).
Mercado-Nava's paperwork was in order. But during an inspection of the cab of the tractor-trailer, Epperly discovered a hidden compartment that allegedly contained 18 kilograms of cocaine under the floor.
The typical sequence of events ensued: Mercado-Nava was arrested, and a drug dog allegedly confirmed that the substance was cocaine.
What makes this case relevant to Police blotter is that Epperly and one of his colleagues copied the complete contents of the suspect's two cell phones. Mercado-Nava's attorney eventually filed a motion to suppress the digital contents from being used against his client in court, claiming they were seized illegally without a warrant.
The U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment, of course, prohibits "unreasonable" searches and seizures. In general, a search without a warrant is viewed as unreasonable.
But searches when a person is arrested are an exception to that general rule. In this case, the judge upheld the search as constitutional, saying that: "An officer's need to preserve evidence is an important law enforcement component of the rationale for permitting a search of a suspect incident to a valid arrest."
This raises issues--especially when hard drives that can store intimate life details are growing in capacity and shrinking in size. If someone is arrested for speeding and has a laptop next to him on the seat, Crow's reasoning could mean that a law enforcement officer is permitted to seize the laptop and copy its entire contents. Homeland Security already has the authority to do that at border crossings, according to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
One lesson that law-abiding citizens, who nonetheless want to protect their privacy, can take from this incident is to use encryption and a strong passphrase whenever possible. Here are some technical tips. Apple's OS X operating system includes a FileVault feature, and PGP offers whole disk encryption for Windows. In addition, there are some legal arguments that people accused of a crime cannot be compelled to divulge their passphrase.
Excerpt from the district court's opinion:
The sole evidence regarding this issue is that two cellular telephones were seized from defendant's person, without a warrant and without consent, contemporaneously with defendant's arrest, and their memories were downloaded at that time, before defendant was processed or booked. No evidence suggests that the contents of the phones were protected by a password or that the information retrieved by the troopers consisted of anything other than stored numbers of outgoing and incoming calls.
Traditionally, there has been no reasonable expectation of privacy in the numbers dialed on one's phone, since by voluntarily conveying numerical information to the telephone company and exposing that information to its equipment in the ordinary course of business, one loses any reasonable expectation of privacy in the existence and identity of such calls.
The same rationale has recently been applied to cell phones. Other courts have found that the expectation of privacy in similar cases is analogous to the expectation of privacy one has in the contents of a closed container, or in a personal telephone book containing directory information.
A warrantless search violates the Fourth Amendment unless it falls within one of the enumerated exceptions to the warrant requirement. These exceptions include, among others, warrantless searches incident to a lawful arrest.
Traditional search warrant exceptions apply to the search of cell phones. Where the accessing of memory is a valid search incident to arrest, the court need not decide whether exigent circumstances also justify the officer's retrieval of the numbers from it.
Police officers are not constrained to search only for weapons or instruments of escape on the arrestee's person; they may also, without any additional justification, look for evidence of the arrestee's crime on his person in order to preserve it for use at trial. The permissible scope of a search incident to a lawful arrest extends to containers found on the arrestee's person.
The need to preserve evidence is underscored where evidence may be lost due to the dynamic nature of the information stored on and deleted from cell phones or pagers. An officer's need to preserve evidence is an important law enforcement component of the rationale for permitting a search of a suspect incident to a valid arrest.
Because of the finite nature of a pager's electronic memory, incoming pages may destroy currently stored telephone numbers in a pager's memory. The contents of some pagers also can be destroyed merely by turning off the power or touching a button. Thus, it is imperative that law enforcement officers have the authority to immediately "search" or retrieve, incident to a valid arrest, information from a pager in order to prevent its destruction as evidence.
The court finds that under the circumstances of this case, the government has met its burden to show that the troopers' search of the cell phones by accessing stored numbers was justified as a search incident to arrest.
Some users of MySpace feel as if their space is being invaded.
MySpace, the Web’s largest social network, has gradually been imposing limits on the software tools that users can embed in their pages, like music and video players that also deliver advertising or enable transactions.
At stake is the ability of MySpace, which is owned by the News Corporation, to ensure that it alone can commercially capitalize on its 90 million visitors each month.
But to some formerly enthusiastic MySpace users, the new restrictions hamper their abilities to design their pages and promote new projects.
“The reason why I am so bummed out about MySpace now is because recently they have been cutting down our freedom and taking away our rights slowly,” wrote Tila Tequila, a singer who is one of MySpace’s most popular and visible users, in a blog posting over the weekend. “MySpace will now only allow you to use ‘MySpace’ things.”
Ms. Tequila, born Tila Nguyen, has attracted attention by linking to more than 1.7 million friends on her MySpace page. To promote her first album, she recently added to her MySpace page a new music player and music store, called the Hoooka, created by Indie911, a Los Angeles-based start-up company.
Users listened to her music and played the accompanying videos 20,000 times over the weekend. But the Hoooka disappeared on Sunday after a MySpace founder, Tom Anderson, personally contacted Ms. Tequila to object, according to someone with direct knowledge of the dispute. She then vented her thoughts on her personal blog.
MySpace says that it will block these pieces of third-party software — also called widgets — when they lend themselves to violations of its terms of service, like the spread of pornography or copyrighted material. But it also objects to widgets that enable users to sell items or advertise without authorization, or without entering into a direct partnership with the company.
A MySpace spokeswoman said yesterday that the service did not remove anything from Ms. Tequila’s page. “A MySpace representative contacted her and told her that she had violated our terms of service in regards to commercial activity,” the spokeswoman said. “She removed the material herself, after realizing it was not appropriate for MySpace.”
Ms. Tequila and her representatives would not comment.
But Justin Goldberg, chief executive of Indie911, said MySpace’s actions undercut the notion that the social networks’ users have complete creative freedom. “We find it incredibly ironic and frustrating that a company that has built its assets on the back of its users is turning around and telling people they can’t do anything that violates terms of service,” he said.
“Why shouldn’t they call it FoxSpace? Or RupertSpace?” Mr. Goldberg said, referring to the News Corporation’s chief, Rupert Murdoch.
The tussle between MySpace and Indie911 underscores tensions between established Internet companies and the latest generation of Web start-ups. Without a critical mass of visitors to their sites, many of these smaller companies are devising strategies that involve clamping on to sites like MySpace and Facebook and trying to make money off their traffic.
MySpace, meanwhile, is trying to show that it can generate stable revenue. Google will pay it at least $900 million over the next three years to serve ads to the site’s users. And last fall, MySpace announced a partnership with Snocap, a San Francisco-based company, to sell music.
Perhaps not coincidentally, this year, MySpace blocked widgets from Revver, a video-sharing site that embeds advertisements in its clips, and Imeem, a music buying service.
“Our users weren’t happy,” said Dalton Caldwell, Imeem’s chief executive, who was nevertheless ambivalent about the MySpace ban because he thought the move might encourage his users to visit his site directly. “If MySpace isn’t really ‘their space’ after all, maybe users will think about things differently.”
In the past, MySpace executives have said that the service failed to block companies like YouTube that began successful businesses from MySpace’s pages.
“We probably should have stopped YouTube,” Michael Barrett, chief revenue officer for Fox Interactive Media, a part of the News Corporation, said in an interview in late February. “YouTube wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for MySpace. We’ve created companies on our back.”
MySpace and its corporate parent say they want to find ways to support and exploit the growing widget economy. Last year, Fox Interactive Media introduced a service called Spring Widget. The service provides tools to help developers create widgets for use both on computer desktops and online networks like MySpace.
In a recent use of its technology, the studio behind the horror film “Dead Silence” used a Spring Widget tool on its promotional MySpace page to count down the minutes until the film’s release.
Fred Wilson, a New York-based venture capitalist who invests in social media companies, said the strategy showed that the News Corporation was trying to take advantage of growing interest in widgets while also trying to carefully control what made it onto MySpace.
But that could be a dangerous strategy, Mr. Wilson said.
“Every attempt everyone has ever made to try to dictate what a person’s Internet experience will be has ended up coming up empty,” he said. “You have to accept the fact that you are never going to be the be-all and end-all of everyone’s experience. They are one click away from everyone else on the Web.”
As for Ms. Tequila, who wrote on her blog that she was a personal friend of Mr. Anderson, the MySpace co-founder, she wrote that she felt bad about blasting the site but that she could not stay silent.
“You guys used to be so cool,” she wrote of MySpace. “Don’t turn into a corporate evil monster.”
| Harris Reports Acceptance Of Mobile Ads On The Rise |
| by Emily Burg, Friday, Mar 16, 2007 6:00 AM ET |
| A NEW STUDY BY HARRIS Interactive finds that getting cell phone users to accept mobile ads might just be a question of matching the right incentive with the right demographic.
The study reports that while 90% of all cell phone users are disinterested in receiving mobile ads, that number drops to 64% if an incentive is offered. Of that overall percentage, the study group's willingness to watch mobile ads is then tempered by demographic, the type of ad displayed and the incentive offered in exchange for the ad. The good news for wireless carriers, advertisers and marketers is that it looks like there's a leak in the dam of cell phone users' tolerance. But with a very small percentage of 40- to-49-year-olds interested in receiving mobile ads at all, and only 13% of people with incomes of between $125,000 and $149,000 interested in receiving ads in exchange for some incentive, mobile advertisers and wireless carriers need to consider each group's tolerance level very carefully when developing a mobile ad strategy. |
Credit Esca for setting sushi-loving Manhattanites straight—the Japanese do not have a monopoly on the expert preparation or innovative presentation of raw fish. Esca means “bait” in Italian, and chef David Pasternack has been reeling ’em in, hook, line, and sinker, with his astounding crudo (“raw”) and equally enticing cooked creations.
Gourmet editor-in-chief Ruth Reichl told Sylvia Carter of Newsday, “I think it’s the freshest fish you can get in New York right now…[Pasternack] wins your trust.”
In his New York Times review, William Grimes concurred: “The crudo appetizers at Esca are the freshest, most exciting thing to happen to Italian food in recent memory…Pasternack works thrilling variations on a very simple theme.”
Beginning Monday, some Yahoo Mail users will be able to chat in real time through their e-mail program. Yahoo said in November that it would embed instant-messaging technology directly into its Yahoo Mail program so that users wouldn't have to open up--or even install--Yahoo Messenger or another IM ,service to chat with each other online.
The rollout is set to be phased over several months. Google added chat to Gmail a year ago, but the experience is not as integrated as the new Yahoo Mail chat functionality, Yahoo has said. AOL's AIM Triton offers integrated e-mail, instant messaging, SMS text messaging, and voice and video chat.
Tila (Tequila) Nguyen, who Time magazine called "the least lonely girl on the Internet" with 1.5 million friends on the Web site, has jettisoned the Maybelline-penciled "Panic Room" star.
The New York wild child claims that for three years, she had a sexual relationship with "an actor," who sources say is Leto - though he kept it hidden and then went AWOL.
The 25-year-old temptress wrote on her page: "A few months go by and all of a sudden I hear from this 'actor' person once again. You won't believe this ... but he was actually looking for an 'apology' from me! Are you f- out of your f- mind, a-? Why do I need to apologize for you being a f- a-?"
Link: New York Daily News - Home - Rush & Molloy: It's Tequila sunset for loverboy Leto.
A Brazilian court has ordered popular video-sharing site YouTube to be shut down until it removes a celebrity sex video from its site, a judicial clerk said Thursday.
Daniela Cicarelli, a model and ex-wife of soccer great Ronaldo, sued YouTube after a video of her apparently having sex in shallow water on a beach with her boyfriend was posted to the site.
For days it was the most-viewed video in Brazil.
Link: Sex video leads Brazil court to shut YouTube | CNET News.com.
Link: 'Second Life' faces threat to its virtual economy | CNET News.com.
Groups of Second Life content creators were gathering digitally Tuesday to protest the dissemination of a program they worry could badly damage the virtual world's nascent economy. The controversy gathered steam Monday when Linden Lab, which publishes Second Life, posted a blog alerting residents of the virtual world to the existence of a program or bot called CopyBot, which allows a user to copy any object in Second Life. That includes goods such as clothing that users purchase for their in-world avatars, and even the virtual PCs that computer giant Dell announced Tuesday it was going to sell in the digital world.
Why Blog?
By Steve Plunkett
A business blog is a valuable, multi-function tool for communicating with customers and employees. Blogs are the newsletters that never go away. They are a great way to post the latest information on the Web about your newest product or service. They provide a platform from which your employees, customers, partners and prospects can share information, data and opinions. And once these moderated discussions are posted, they can be “set in digital stone” for the world to read in perpetuity.
Oftentimes, I hear the question, “Why do I need a blog? I already have a website.”
For starters, a blog complements your website. It does not replace it. A corporate blog is a great way to direct traffic to your company’s site. This helps you to get sales leads from informed customers, provided, of course, that you have posted compelling information on your company’s blog.
Also, a blog lets you communicate faster, more flexibly and less formally than you would through other media. On your website, if you are sounding your own horn about your neatest, latest, greatest product, it’s called a press release. But if you’re blogging, you’re telling a story, complete with personal observations and pictures. You are guiding potential customers along the path of why you think your product is so neat, how it surpasses others in the market and, through a “comments” function, answering questions about your company and its products.
Of course, your readers will understand that your blogs are not completely objective – after all, it’s your company you’re blogging about. On the other hand, your readers also understand that your blog is a personal message to them, not an expensive, varnished piece of communications produced painstakingly over several months by your ad agency. In other words, your readers perceive a measure of earnest communications that just can’t be achieved through traditional media.
To create a successful blog, you need to start with a strategy. You need to plan. And you need to commit to updating your blog at least twice a week. That may seem like a lot, but don’t you have enough going on at your company to write about twice a week? Even if it’s a project that is going to take six months to complete, talk about it. Explain how you do “X” better than your competitors.
Simply put, tell your story. Keep your brand in mind. Plug your key selling points. Direct readers to your website. Be active and responsive. And start selling more.
Selling more. Is there a better reason to blog?
A recent Google collaboration with MTV Networks may have offered a window into what the combination of Google's online advertising network and YouTube's content will look like.
Google began distributing clips from MTV Networks over its AdSense advertising network in August, in what Jennifer Feikin, Google's director of video and multimedia search partnerships, said at the time was the first, but not the last, syndication deal of its kind.
"It's an amped-up form of AdSense," Feikin said. "We really have high hopes for this test, and we will look to roll the model out to other content providers."
Link: What MTV says about Google-YouTube marriage | CNET News.com.
Xanga.com, a social-networking and blog site, has been ordered to pay $1 million in a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission for violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act.
The FTC said in a statement Thursday that Xanga, which has been in operation since 1999, had been letting people create accounts even if the dates of birth they entered indicated that they were under the age of 13. The terms of the child-privacy act, enacted in 1998, stipulate that parental notification and consent are required for a commercial Web site, including a social-networking service, to collect personal information from children under the age of 13.
In addition, the FTC alleged that Xanga's policies regarding children were not sufficiently clear on its site and that parents were not provided a means to access and control their children's information. It is estimated that over the past five years, a total of 1.7 million Xanga accounts had been registered with a birth date that implied the person was under 13. Overall, privately held Xanga has 25 million registered users.
The $1 million penalty is the largest fine ever imposed for a violation under the child-privacy act, the FTC said. Mitchell Katz, an FTC spokesman, said%2
Texas Criminal Defense Attorney JOHN H. READ II, is a well-known criminal defense attorney in the State of Texas. Main office in Dallas, Texas. John H. Read II is one of the well versed in criminal and civil trial law having tried over three hundred (300) jury trials. His trial experience has been developed in the District and Federal trial courts. John H. Read II has tried hundreds of felonies; Capitol Murders (State & Federal), Murders, Aggravated Robberies, Aggravated Sexual Assaults, Aggravated Assaults, Voluntary Manslaughter, Involuntary Manslaughter, vehicular Manslaughter and serious State and Federal Drug cases. John H. Read II has tried cases from as far away as Kansas City, Kansas - Manhattan, New York back to Dallas, Texas.
- My attorney and my friend.. He has gotten me out of somehting that I should not have gotten in trouble for. I'm an american and I should be allowed to have a gun. If I get pulled over 3 blocks from my house with that gun in my car, even if it's loaded I shou8ldn't have to go to jail, have my car towed, etc... He got it dismissed and will also get it removed from my record. If you or someone you know is in trouble this is the guy to call. Seriously.
Friendster said on Monday it received $10 million in new funding to expand abroad and help its pioneering social-networking site survive in a market dominated by younger successors who stole its thunder.
Friendster's initial funding in 2004 set off a speculative boom of copycat investments, which drew comparisons to the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s but also spawned the rise of its now-far-larger rivals, MySpace and Facebook.
Link: Wired News: In Search of New Friends.
- cool, now maybe they can fix the problems with blog spam. but it is too late?
Google This.
by Steve Plunkett
In June of this year Google was added to the Oxford English Dictionary as a verb, then to the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary in July. Here is the definition:
“to search for information on the Internet, esp. using the Google search engine”
Before this, General Motors ran a commercial during the Super Bowl for its
brand. The TV spot showed the letters p-o-n-t-i-a-c being typed into a Google search field instead of giving the Web address www.Pontiac.com. The voiceover said, "Don't take our word for it. Google ‘Pontiac’ to find out!" Pontiac
You might think “Gee, that’s clever and hip!” Well, someone else obviously did – and sold the idea to
. It may be clever and hip, but Pontiac
is sending people to a place where it has no control over the content. Pontiac
The agency representing Mazda, on the other hand, knew a little bit more about search engines. It bought ads on Google because Mazda had information that compared its models to
models. When car shoppers Googled “Pontiac,” like the Pontiac
commercial told them to do, the search results included a webpage that sold Mazda as a better choice than Pontiac
. In essence, Mazda used Pontiac
’s investment to “piggyback” some of its own advertising. Pretty shrewd move by Mazda. And Pontiac
didn’t learn anything from the experience. Pontiac
Which brings me to, as Paul Harvey would say, “the rest of the story.”
now runs similar spots in local markets. While watching television the other night, I saw a Pontiac
ad that said, “Just Google ‘ Pontiac
dealers dallas-ft.worth,’” so I did. The results were pay-per-click ads for a few local Pontiac
dealers. Problem is, studies show that quite a few people never click on pay-per-click ads. (Think about it; do you?) So, out of the predictably tiny percentage of viewers who actually did go to their computers and Google “ Pontiac
dealers dallas-ft.worth,” perhaps a fraction actually clicked the pay-per-click links to learn more. What a waste. Pontiac
And for
, the story gets even worse. Pontiac
When publishers announced that they would include the verb “Google” in their dictionaries, I blogged about the story. And because I used the phrase “Just Google Pontiac” in my post, guess what came up first in Google’s search results for “
dealers dallas-ft.worth.” Yep, my blog beat out the actual Pontiac
website and the local Pontiac
dealers’ websites. Pontiac
Being the SEO specialist that I am, I decided to experiment and try some of my Internet magic. Today, when you Google “
dealers dallas-ft.worth,” the first result will be the article you’re reading right now. Still not Pontiac
or Pontiac
dealer websites. I can’t tell you how I did it. It’s a trade secret. But go ahead and try it. Pontiac
The point is
has given up entirely too much control over its own advertising. A competitor or a prankster with the right Internet skills could hijack all of the company’s hard work, actually using Pontiac
’s investment to take business away from Pontiac
. Pontiac
spent millions producing TV spots, buying airtime and reserving pay-per-click ads. To put it mildly, someone is spending a lot of money poorly. Pontiac
should have hired an organic SEO specialist simply to optimize the websites for individual dealers and, in place of pay-per-click ads, the website of the North Texas Pontiac Dealers. If they had done that, the company would’ve saved itself a lot of money – and they’d be number one in Google instead of me, an SEO specialist with a blog. Pontiac
At a time when GM needs a happier ending, “the rest of the story” could’ve been far more profitable.
Social-networking site Bebo announced in early July that its 25 million members would have unlimited uploading and sharing of music files to its Bebo Bands site. In the last two weeks, more than 25,000 bands and tens of thousands of groupies decided to call Bebo Bands their home, according to Bebo.
Bebo seeks to distinguish its music networking features by becoming a democratic music site that allow members to play DJ, promoter, and groupie.
"The big differential from sites like MySpace is in the way we introduce the concept of playlists and will introduce the Bebo DJ," Bebo founder Michael Birch said.
MySpace, the leading social networking Web site, is the obvious competitor from which Bebo would hope to take market share.
Link: MySpace returns after power outage | CNET News.com.
A record-breaking heat wave that crippled power systems throughout California shut down MySpace.com for nearly 12 hours, starting Sunday night. The popular social-networking site, which recently topped Yahoo Mail as the most-visited Web site in the United States, was disabled entirely as of 6:40 p.m. Pacific time Sunday.
Link: Worm lurks behind MySpace profiles | CNET News.com.
A worm is targeting MySpace users, compromising their "About me" pages and infecting visitors to them, Symantec has warned.
When a logged-in MySpace user goes to another member's "About me" page affected by the ACTS.Spaceflash worm, they are quietly redirected to a URL that holds a malicious Macromedia Flash file, the security company said in an advisory on Spaceflash Tuesday. That file, in turn, will replace the visitor's own "About me" page with one that is compromised.
MySpace. Should It Be Your Space?
By Steve Plunkett
If you haven’t heard about MySpace, you probably haven’t seen the news lately. Some reports would have us believe that the social networking site is a haven for child molesters and pornography. In truth, it’s just like a lot of websites – there are good and bad aspects to it. There’s certainly no denying its popularity, and that has a lot of companies asking if MySpace will benefit them.
Large companies like Nike, Coca Cola and Procter and Gamble seem to think it’s worth the risk to have MySpace pages, and so far, it has been. Your company put up a website on the Internet, right? Building your own MySpace page is like that – except that MySpace reaches 71 million reported users.
MySpace has very quickly become one of the top trafficked websites on the Internet. It’s the second largest destination on the web, by page views (second only to Yahoo). Yes, more people view pages on MySpace than on Google. In terms of the most popular websites in the world, it ranks fifth, Yahoo is first, MSN second and Google is third, with Asian search engine Baidu taking the fourth slot (according to Nielsen//Net Ratings). MySpace adds more than 200,000 users daily. It is the largest growing web entity on the Internet. In addition, because of the bad publicity and the fickle nature of teens, (the largest demographic on the site), MySpace advertising rates are cheap. Very Cheap.
As a U.S. Senate panel prepares for a vote on Net neutrality legislation this week, state attorneys general in New York and California are joining Internet companies in saying that network operators must not be permitted to prioritize certain broadband content and services.
In a letter sent Friday to the leaders of the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat, urged the adoption of a proposal called the Internet Freedom Preservation Act. This is the first time that state officials have entered the Net neutrality debate.
"Congress must not permit the ongoing consolidation of the telecommunications industry to work radical and perhaps irrevocable change in the free and neutral nature of the Internet," wrote Spitzer, who is running for governor in the fall election. He was referring to the recent mergers between AT&T and SBC Communications and Verizon and MCI.
Link: State governments push for Net neutrality laws | CNET News.com.
Sony BMG Music Entertainment wants to give bloggers free music and video--sort of.
The music conglomerate is promoting a new site, called Musicbox Video, that showcases videos, artist interviews, behind-the-scenes footage and other material from a broad portfolio of its artists. Want to see a film clip of Bruce Springsteen singing "The River" from the 1980 movie "No Nukes" or some clips from Franz Ferdinand? The site has it.
But Sony will also actively encourage fan sites and bloggers--who are mostly used to receiving cease-and-desist letters from studios--to link to the material. Links for adding Musicbox content are displayed on the site. Individuals thus could create sites focused around certain artists by linking to video channels on the Musicbox site dedicated to them, or link to several channels which, in the aggregate, comprise the most mawkish artists (in the view of the blogger) that Sony has to offer.
Link: Sony Music wants bloggers to promo videos, music | CNET News.com.
A prominent Republican in the U.S. Congress has backed away from plans to rewrite Internet privacy rules by requiring that logs of Americans' online activities be stored.
Wisconsin Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said through a representative this week that he will not be introducing that legislation after all.
The statement came after CNET News.com reported on Tuesday that Sensenbrenner wanted to require Internet service providers to track what their users were doing so police might more easily "conduct criminal investigations," including inquiries into cases involving child exploitation and pornography. The concept is generally called data retention.
Two New York teenagers have been arrested and charged with attempting to extort $150,000 from MySpace, the popular community Web site.
Shaun Harrison, 18, and Saverio Mondelli, 19, both of whom are from Suffolk County, N.Y., were arrested in a sting operation last week, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office said Wednesday. The pair had traveled to Los Angeles to meet people they allegedly believed were MySpace employees, but who were in fact undercover investigators, according to the district attorney's statement.
The alleged crimes began late last year when the two young men took advantage of a flaw they had discovered in the MySpace Web site in order to obtain personal information on MySpace users, the district attorney said. MySpace discovered the intrusion earlier this year and blocked it. The Los Angeles-based company also reported the incident to authorities. During the course of the investigation, threats were made that unless $150,000 was paid, new exploit code would be released, according to the statement.
Link: Teens arrested in alleged MySpace extortion scam | CNET News.com.
Google's share of the U.S. Web search market continues to edge beyond Yahoo and Microsoft, according to the latest monthly numbers released by analysis firm ComScore Networks.
The search giant's market share among home, work and university Internet users climbed from 42.7 percent to 43.1 percent from March to April of this year--up from 36.5 percent in April 2005, ComScore said Monday.
In second place, Yahoo saw its market share hold steady at 28 percent between March and April, a decrease of 2.7 percent from last year. Less than 6 percentage points separated Google's and Yahoo's respective market shares in April 2005.
Link: Google retains lead in U.S. search market | CNET News.com.
Yahoo Inc.'s Web site is unveiling a new look Tuesday as the Internet powerhouse strives to remain the world's most popular online destination and strengthen its advertising appeal.
The overhaul marks the first facelift to Yahoo's home page since September 2004.
The redesigned page includes more interactive features that reduce the need to click through to other pages to review the weather, check e-mail, listen to music or monitor local traffic conditions.
Link: Yahoo overhauls its home page - Tech News & Reviews - MSNBC.com.
Social-networking site MySpace.com will soon begin offering download-to-own television shows for $1.99, News Corp. announced Monday. The site's video store will open May 22, the same day "24," a popular Fox thriller about a fictional counterterrorism agency, airs its season finale. MySpace also plans to set up a "24" social network, through which fans can sound off about the show. As part of the video store launch, fast-food chain Burger King is sponsoring free downloads for two preselected episodes of "24," one episode of Fuel TV's "Firsthand" and one episode of Speed Channel's "Pinks," News Corp. said.
Lawyers representing Internet search advertisers filed a lawsuit this week in an attempt to block a proposed $90 million settlement to a class-action click fraud suit against Google, a lawyer and the lead plaintiff said Thursday. "The settlement is just a joke," said plaintiff Joseph Kinney, a Pinehurst, N.C., security consultant who said he has lost about $1,500 to click fraud on ads related to his SafeSpaces.com Web site. "A jury needs to hear these issues and Google needs to be held accountable."
Lane's Gifts and Collectibles and Caulfield Investigations sued Google and other search engines in February 2005 in state court in Texarkana, Ark., accusing them of charging advertisers for clicks on online advertisements that were fraudulent or done in bad faith and not with the intention of legitimate commerce.
Google reached a settlement with the plaintiffs in March that provides for $30 million to be used for lawyer fees and $60 million to pay credits to affected advertisers. The settlement would not apply to other defendants, namely Yahoo, Lycos, Miva, Go.com and LookSmart.
Link: Lawsuit seeks to block Google settlement | CNET News.com.
With the launch of its PlayStation 3 video game console six months away, Sony is gearing up for an all-out battle to put the electronics and entertainment conglomerate back on a growth path.
At stake is not just pole position in the $25 billion video game industry, but dominance in the next generation of DVDs, the commercial viability of Sony's Cell microchips and possibly control over living-room electronics around the world.
Sony needs a hit. During the past four years, its revenues were virtually flat as its operating profit rose 3 percent.
By comparison, rival consumer electronics company Matsushita Electric Industrial, the maker of Panasonic brand products, boosted its sales by 20 percent and saw its operating profit soar more than threefold.
Google has made child pornography an "obscenely profitable and integral part" of its business and must be stopped, a new lawsuit claims.
Jeffrey Toback, a representative in New York's Nassau County Legislature, charged in a complaint filed Thursday that Google has been taking in billions of dollars by allowing child pornography and "other obscene content" operators to advertise their sites through sponsored links, which are tailored to a user's search terms and automatically accompany search results. The suit was filed in the New York Supreme Court.
Link: Suit accuses Google of profiting from child porn | CNET News.com.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers have lashed out at a music pirate who leaked the funk-rock band's upcoming album onto the Internet, and urged fans not to download it illegally.
The band's spokeswoman said on Wednesday the offender was being tracked down. The group's first studio album in four years, "Stadium Arcadium," is still on track to go on sale on Tuesday via Warner Music Group's Warner Bros. Records, she said.
In a rambling open letter, the band's bass player, Michael "Flea" Balzary, said he and his colleagues would be heartbroken if fans downloaded the album beforehand.
"For people to just steal a poor sound quality version of it for free because some a--hole stole it and put it on the internet is sad to me," he said.
Link: Red Hot Chili Peppers angered by Net leak | CNET News.com.
Massachusetts on Tuesday called on popular teen social networking Web site MySpace.com to strengthen protection of children against sexual predators, including raising the minimum age for users to 18 from 14.
The arrest on Tuesday of a 27-year-old man in Connecticut on charges of illegal sexual contact with a 13-year-old girl he met through MySpace underlines the risks of the fast-growing Internet site that boasts about 60 million members.
"MySpace has not taken sufficient steps to ensure that the MySpace Web site is a safe place for minors," Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly said in a letter to MySpace.
He said a three-month investigation found that potential child predators were surfing MySpace seeking chats with potential victims and violent images or content were being posted to bully children.
"An adult can register as a minor member and use that profile to seek access to the profiles of countless underage members," he said in a statement.
MySpace allows teenagers and young adults to find friends and express themselves by posting profiles and blogs, or Web journals covering everything from their favorite singers to schoolwork and intimate personal details.
It generated a blizzard of headlines in national media this year that have raised alarm with parents and school authorities--from "Man arrested in MySpace.com teen-sex case" to "Sex predators are stalking MySpace; is your teenager a target?"
Connecticut authorities said in March that two men--one age 22 and the other 39--were arrested on allegations they had sexual contact with minors they met through MySpace. Another man was arrested early on Tuesday at a Connecticut hotel after a mother reported her daughter missing.
In February, California police arrested a 26-year-old for felony child molestation after he met a 14-year-old on MySpace.
"It's happening more and more all the time, both through MySpace and through chatrooms and other blogging sites," said Christina Slenk, a director of Web Wise Kids, a nonprofit Internet safety organization based in California.
Reilly, a Democrat running for governor, said his staff raised the state's concerns in a March meeting with officials at MySpace, which media mogul Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. bought for $580 million last year.
MySpace authorities were not immediately available to comment but its chief executive, Chris DeWolfe, told Reuters in March that it had several measures in place to prevent abuse.
He said the site prohibits children under age 14 from using it and restricts access to the profiles of 14- and 15-year-olds, allowing them to be contacted only by users that they add to their buddy lists.
MySpace also uses software to identify minors, flagging profiles with terms likely to be used by children under age 14. But DeWolfe said there was no fool-proof way to verify the age of all users.
Reilly said his investigation found that the safeguards failed. He asked MySpace to install an age and identity verification system, equip Web pages with a "Report Inappropriate Content" link, respond to all reports of inappropriate content within 24 hours and significantly raise the number of staff who review images and content.
He also wants filters to block sexually explicit or violent images, deletion of profiles of people who have abused the site, removal of all advertisements deemed inappropriate for children and free software that allows parents to block MySpace.
Software giant Microsoft has held discussions to buy a stake in Internet media company Yahoo to compete against Google, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
Although talks over an equity stake do not appear active, Microsoft's top management remains open to a deal with Yahoo as pressure grows from shareholders to perform better against Google, the newspaper cited people familiar with the situation as saying.
Microsoft and Yahoo have discussed possible options over the past year, the newspaper said. Microsoft could sell its MSN online network to Yahoo and take a minority stake in the Internet portal, it said.
Last year, Microsoft had been negotiating to strike a partnership with Time Warner's AOL Internet unit, but it was shut out when Google agreed to invest in a 5 percent stake in AOL. Microsoft
had been in talks with AOL
to use its search technology, which would have given the software giant's fledgling paid-search business a big boost.
Microsoft's earnings outlook last week fell well short of Wall Street expectations, as the company signaled more investments for its software services business.
Analysts said Microsoft planned to spend an additional $2 billion in the coming fiscal year starting July 1, speculating that much of that investment would go toward building an ad-supported online service business.
Second only to watching a company achieve great technological and business success, there is nothing Silicon Valley enjoys more than figuring out how, once attained, that company's success might be outdone. A great deal of this scheming is currently directed at MySpace, the social-networking site that has become the online equivalent of the local mall, a place for teens and twentysomethings to spend lots of time -- lots! -- hanging out.
Because the MySpace business story couldn't be simpler or more spectacular -- two friends start it in 2003 and 24 months later it's bought by News Corp. for $580 million -- there are now dozens of start-ups trying to do to MySpace what MySpace did to the first big social-networking site, Friendster. (Buyouts are being made all the time, like the $102 million Viacom said it will spend for Xfire, a gaming site.)
Hundreds of business books and untold thousands of hours of consultants' time have been devoted to advice on how to make these sorts of industry "disruptions" happen. Many are a combination of deft strategizing, shameless copying, wishful thinking -- and some grasping at straws.
Always curious about how entrepreneurs approach the chessboard of competition, I found four MySpace pretenders and asked each the same question: If there is going to be the next MySpace, why is it going to be you? The question is necessary because to the casual observer, most of these sites look the same.
Link: WSJ.com - Portals.
In the auto business, getting buyers into the showroom to kick the tires is the challenge. Online, that test is even steeper. For Discount Tire, the nation's largest independent tire dealer, keyword search advertising is one of its go-to marketing tools for attracting new visitors online.
Link: Advertising Age - Search-Ad Behavorial Data Can Lift Sales.
ALMOST on a lark, Chris DeWolfe bought the Internet address MySpace.com in 2002, figuring that it might be useful someday. At first, he used the site to peddle a motorized contraption, made in China and called an E-scooter, for $99.
Selling products online comes naturally to him. Having jumped into the Internet business in the early days, Mr. DeWolfe had become a master of the aggressive forms of online marketing, including e-mail messages and pop-up advertising. After the Internet bubble burst, he even built a site that let people download computer cursors in the form of waving flags; the trick was that they also downloaded software that would monitor their Internet movements and show them pop-up ads.
Very quickly, however, Mr. DeWolfe's tactics for MySpace changed. He had noticed the popularity of Friendster, a rapidly growing Web site that let people communicate with their friends and meet the friends of their friends. What would happen, he wondered, if he combined this type of social networking with the sort of personal expression enabled by other sites for creating Web pages or online journals?
Link: For MySpace, Making Friends Was Easy. Big Profit Is Tougher. - New York Times.
The European Commission forced the world's largest software maker to offer a product no one wanted and no one bought, Microsoft told a European Union court on Monday as it began trying to overturn a landmark antitrust ruling.
Microsoft lawyer Jean-Francois Bellis said in his opening statement that the Commission made "fundamental errors of fact and reasoning" in its decision two years ago that the company abused its dominant market position to muscle into media software.
The Commission's order that Microsoft offer customers a version of its Windows desktop operating system without Media Player — intended to give people a free choice of media software — has been a spectacular failure, he said.
In its core market, no computer maker had shipped a PC or laptop with the media-free Windows XP N version. "Not a single one," Bellis told the 13 judges. Some 90 percent of Windows sales come from being pre-installed on computers when they are sold.
XP N sales represent 0.005 percent of overall XP sales in Europe, Microsoft told the court, and many of the ones produced may remain unsold, it said.
French retailer FNAC, the single largest retailer to order XP N accounting for 46 percent of the orders, has said that it sees no consumer demand for the product, Microsoft said.
LONGMONT, Colorado (AP) -- A man who said he bought a device that allowed him to change stop lights from red to green received a $50 ticket for suspicion of interfering with a traffic signal.
Jason Niccum of Longmont, Colorado, said the device, which he bought on eBay for $100, helped him cut his time driving to work.
"I guess in the two years I had it, that thing paid for itself," he told the Daily Times-Call on Wednesday.
Niccum was issued a citation March 29 after police said they found him using a strobe-like device to change traffic signals. Police confiscated the device.
Link: CNN.com - No green light for?driver?with traffic signal gadget - Apr 18, 2006.
Big companies' ad buyers are warming up to the likes of blogs, RSS and podcasts. But analysts warn that marketers need to approach this typically user-generated content with care.
According to researchers at PQ Media, advertising spending on blogs, RSS and podcasts will reach nearly $50 million this year. As user-generated content matures, it is predicted to account for more than $750 million of advertising cash by 2010. Analyst house
JupiterResearch tells marketing professionals to keep their eye on blogs, where opinions that can harm brands can be easily and quickly circulated.
Link: Marketers told to keep steadfast watch on blogs | CNET News.com.
Wired News: "Wondering if registered sex offenders with MySpace pages live in your neighborhood?
To investigate, you can search for your city or ZIP code on your state's online registry. Note: Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington, D.C., don't currently provide this information online. For a list with links, visit the website of Prevent Abuse Now, or the National Sex Offender Registry.
Once you have a list of names, you can go to MySpace.com to search for them. You need to be a member in order to do this. An option enables you to narrow down common names you may be searching for by ZIP code.
Additionally, the monitoring service myspaceWatch.com makes it easy to monitor the MySpace activities of your teenager, as well as up to four others, for $6 a month. If you're generally interested in the emerging genre of MySpace-linked crime, a couple of blogs have sprouted up to track down and post the MySpace profiles and other public websites of sex offenders and murderers currently in the news.
MyCrimeSpace and The Dead Kids of MySpace both read like a veritable Who's Who of putatively perverted sickos on the social-networking site, as well as places like Blogger.com -- even though the crimes are often unrelated to the individuals' online activities." Read More @ Wired News
According to his MySpace page, the 41-year-old San Bruno, California, resident is single, a Sagittarius, a nonsmoker and nondrinker, and counts an online stripper among his six friends. But California's online database of registered sex offenders offers a different profile of the same man: convictions for forced sodomy, oral sex and "lewd and lascivious acts" -- all with a person under the age of 14.
A 22-year-old man in San Francisco comes off as a typical college student on MySpace, professing a love for beat poetry, nature and obscure coffee house bands. His profile doesn't mention that he's a convicted child molester.
Wired News ran the names of randomly selected registered sex offenders in San Francisco and neighboring Sonoma County through MySpace's user search engine, and turned up no fewer than five men whose self-reported names, photographs, ages, astrological signs, locations and (in two instances) heights matched those of profiles on the state's online sex offender registry.
In two additional cases, the information posted on MySpace was sufficient to suggest a probable but not certain match. Repeated e-mails to all seven men through MySpace were not answered.
None of the men appeared to have minors listed on their MySpace friends list. Assuming the profiles are authentic, the easily verified presence of registered sex offenders in the online community highlights the difficulties MySpace faces as it seeks to clean up its content and public image, while maintaining flexibility and privacy that has drawn more than 70 million users to it's website.
Under a proposed $90 million settlement of a class-action lawsuit over alleged click fraud, Google said Wednesday that it would offer advertising credits to marketers who claim they were charged for invalid clicks and not reimbursed.
The total amount of credits, including attorneys' fees, will max out at $90 million, Nicole Wong, associate general counsel at Google, wrote in a Google blog posting.
The lawsuit, filed in February 2005 in state court in Texarkana, Ark., accused the defendant search engines of charging advertisers for clicks on online advertisements that were fraudulent or done in bad faith and not with the intention of legitimate commerce. The lawsuit was filed by Lane's Gifts and Collectibles and Caulfield Investigations a
