The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20111227215345/http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com:80/_nv/more/section/archive?author=suzanne-choney

By Suzanne Choney on Technolog

  • Phishing email seeks Apple billing info

    By Suzanne Choney

    You won't get an email from Apple asking you to update your billing information. But if you think you got one in recent days, delete it; it's a phishing scam designed to snatch that info from you, and it's definitely not from the Cupertino company.

    The "vast phishing attack," as Mac software security firm Intego calls it, began around Christmas Day, and seeks to prey on those who got new Apple gear for the holiday. The spammers don't know whether you did or not; they do know that with Apple products as popular as they were on holiday gift lists, the odds are in their favor of getting some hits on this.

    The email's subject line is "Apple update your Billing Information." Says Intego: "These well-crafted emails could fool many new Apple users, especially those who may have found an iPhone, iPod or iMac under their Christmas tree, and set up accounts with the iTunes Store or the Mac App Store for the first time. The messages claim to come from 'appleid@id.apple.com.'" And here's what it says:

    Intego

    Looks official, right?

    Intego says if you click on the link in the message, you'd be taken to a "realistic-looking sign-in page, then, after entering your Apple ID and password, you’ll be taken to a page asking you to update your account profile, notably entering your credit card information. Again, this page looks realistic, and many of the elements it contains are taken from Apple's own Web pages."

    But if you moved your cursor over the link in the message and waited for a "tooltip to pop up," you'd see this:

    Intego

    The URL that's shown is not an apple.com address, Intego says, "but rather a numerical address (we've blurred the first part of the address). At the end of the address is a page called apple.htm, which could fool people, but that’s not what’s important. Always look at the part right after the http:// in the URL: if it's not something.apple.com (it could be www.apple.com, store.apple.com, or something else), then it's bogus."

    Thanks to Intego for the heads-up and the reminder that phishing scams may be at their worst during the holidays, but can also proliferate after them, too.

    — Via TheNextWeb

    Related stories:

    Check out Technolog, Gadgetbox, Digital Life and In-Game on Facebook, and on Twitter, follow Suzanne Choney.

  • Some call for Dec. 29 as Dump Go Daddy day

    By Suzanne Choney

    Go Daddy is the target of some angry users who want to penalize the Web hosting giant and Internet domain registrar for its support of a controversial online piracy bill, despite Go Daddy recently retracting it after losing more than 37,000 Web domains in just the last several days, according to reports.

    "There's a strange irony to the sudden, seemingly grassroots campaign against Go Daddy," writes Joe Wilcox of BetaNews, which says the "mass call for a Go Daddy boycott ... has taken on mass peer-pressure hysteria — that by association you are somehow evil if you don't transfer domains from Go Daddy":

    Stated differently, Go Daddy protesters block peoples' right to choose, too, by pressuring them to leave the registrar. They're guilty now of what they accuse the government would do in the future — suppressing freedom on the Internet.

    The Go Daddy boycott and "dump day" were organized by users of social news site  Reddit, who also set up a boycott site:

    Since the announcement of the boycott of Go Daddy, Go Daddy has just publicly dropped their support of the heinous Stop Online Piracy Act or SOPA. But, they still support the Senate version of SOPA, called PIPA or PROTECT-IP. If you work on the internet and do business with Go Daddy you're supporting a company who is actively working against your best interests.

    Hollywood studios and record companies favor the Stop Online Piracy Act as much as many major technology companies — including Google, Facebook, Apple, Intel and Microsoft — oppose it. The bill makes the streaming of unauthorized content a felony. But it also would require websites and telecom service providers to monitor content and traffic across their networks for piracy, and let law enforcement actually seize a website and shut it down.

    Last week, the House Judiciary Committee said it would delay debate on the bill, H.R. 3261, until early next year.

    Go Daddy's CEO, Warren Adelman, in a Dec. 23 press release, said the company is pulling its support for SOPA, and that while fighting online piracy is of "the utmost importance .. we can clearly do better. It's very important that all Internet stakeholders work together on this. Getting it right is worth the wait. Go Daddy will support it when and if the Internet community supports it."

    Despite that diplomatic tone, Go Daddy's Christine Jones made it quite clear in the same press release that the company "has always fought to preserve the intellectual property rights of third parties, and will continue to do so in the future."

    Related stories:

    Check out Technolog, Gadgetbox, Digital Life and In-Game on Facebook, and on Twitter, follow Suzanne Choney.

  • Kardashian, Jobs among 2011's most 'stumbled upon'

    StumbleUpon

    By Suzanne Choney

    Never thought you'd see Kim Kardashian and Steve Jobs linked in any way? The two, along with the Occupy movement, the royal wedding and Japan's tsunami tragedy, are among the most "stumbled upon" searches and links of 2011 — that is, those performed by StumbleUpon users.

    The social media tool, that lets you rate Web pages based on your interests, has more than 20 million users who log more than 1 billion Web pages a month.

    "Stumbling through 2011," the death of Steve Jobs on Oct. 5 resulted in a nearly 200,000 percent increase in "explore box" searches for the Apple co-founder's name. Not surprisingly, the death of Osama bin Laden, the royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton and the disasters that struck Japan were also huge for Stumblers.

    San Francisco-based StumbleUpon has been for U.S. users only, but the company plans to expand to other countries next year, starting first with Europe. So, next year's most stumbled upon list may have a very different leader board, although odds are (*sigh*), Kim Kardashian may still be on it. 

    —Via Mashable

    Related stories:

    Check out Technolog, Gadgetbox, Digital Life and In-Game on Facebook, and on Twitter, follow Suzanne Choney.

  • Social media powers these Christmas tree lights

    By Suzanne Choney

    Some wags may think this is the best use of social media ever: Helping to light up a 30-foot Christmas tree in Toronto's Union Station.

    "The tree takes positive Christmas chatter in social media and uses the data to light up the 3,000 LED lights strung around it," explains Sheldon Levine of Sysomos on the company's blog:

    Each color of light represents Christmas spirit coming from a different social channel. White lights represent social networks like Twitter and public Facebook statuses, red for blog and forum posts, green for online news and blue lights for messages sent through text [directly to] ChristmasSpiritTree.ca. The more social media spirit that comes in at one time the brighter the tree shines. As well, there are a few Easter egg words (#santa, #snowflake, #magic) that you can send to the tree to make it do some pretty fancy light patterns.

    Toronto-based Sysomos, which does social media analytics (and data mining), worked with creative agency Tribal DDB, the lead company on the project, and came up with a list of 50 Christmas keywords (like Santa or elf) captured "from social media talk across Canada. We then analyze the sentiment of the messages pulled in. From there all the positive mentions get sent through an API to a machine designed to turn the social media Christmas data into a spectacular light show," Levine wrote.

    The project was funded by north-of-the-border superstore Canadian Tire, which Tribal DDB represents.

    The YouTube video above explains the process, and if you want to watch as the tree changes lights, check out the LiveStream video below. And if you don't have a tree yet, put the live stream on the largest size possible, sip some eggnog — and enjoy.

    Watch live streaming video from canadiantire at livestream.com

    Related stories:

    Check out Technolog, Gadgetbox, Digital Life and In-Game on Facebook, and on Twitter, follow Suzanne Choney.

     

  • 'Facebook' top search term (again) for 2011

    Nicholas Kamm / AFP - Getty Images

    By Suzanne Choney

    For the third straight year, "Facebook" was the top searched term in the U.S., followed by "youtube" and "Facebook login." Why, do you ask, would those be searched for, rather than websites visited?

    Well, we're lazy, for one thing. "Navigational searches dominated the top search results as users typed in terms versus typing in the URL in the browser bar," said Simon Bradstock, general manager of Experian Hitwise, in a press release about the firm's findings.

    "When combined, common search terms for Facebook — e.g., facebook and facebook.com — accounted for 3.48 percent of all searches in the United States among the top 50 terms, which represents a 33 percent increase compared with 2010," Experian Hitwise said. "YouTube terms accounted for 1.36 percent, representing a 21 percent increase compared with 2010. Google terms (including YouTube) accounted for 1.59 percent — an increase of 27 percent compared with 2010. Yahoo terms accounted for 0.59 percent— an increase of 15 percent compared with 2010."

    Among the new terms that entered the "top  50" search terms for the year: addicting games, amazon.com, chase online, cnn, face, facebook sign-up, pandora and twitter.

    Here are some of Experian Hitwise's other lists for 2011:

    Top-visited websites: Dingdingding: Yes, Facebook again, and for the second year, with 10.29 percent of all U.S. visits between January and November. That's a 15 percent increase over 2010. Google.com was second, with 7.70 percent of visits, then YouTube (3.17 percent), Yahoo! Mail (2.95 percent) and Yahoo! (2.47 percent).

    Top public figure searches: Oooh 'Baby': Justin Bieber was No. 1, followed by Casey Anthony, Kim Kardashian, Nicki Minaj, Selena Gomez and Charlie Sheen.

    Top personalities searches (from sites focused on celebrities and stars): "Wedding bell blues" for Kim "follow your heart" Kardashian, then Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Robert Pattinson.

    Top searched for music artists/bands: We were "gaga" for Lady Gaga, then Justin Beiber, Beyonce, Taylor Swift and Chris Brown.

    Top TV show searches: We worshipped "American Idol, followed by "The Young and the Restless," "Dora the Explorer, "Dancing with the Stars" and "Days of Our Lives."

    Yes, those were the days of our lives, via search, in 2011.

    Related stories:

    Check out Technolog, Gadgetbox, Digital Life and In-Game on Facebook, and on Twitter, follow Suzanne Choney.

  • Getting new tech? Safely ditch the old

    Steve Yeater / AP file

    By Suzanne Choney

    Yes, you know what's under the tree, don't be sly about it: That new camera, computer or smartphone. But what are you going to do with your old one? If you're not "re-gifting" it to a friend or family member, consider selling it or safely recycling it.

    The folks at the Consumer Electronics Association have put together a list of websites to help you choose which route to go. First, though, remember before you sell or recycle a smartphone or computer, to wipe its hard drive so you don't leave any info behind for potential identity thieves.

    AccessData, a security firm that works with government agencies and Fortune 500 companies, said it recently ran forensics on "several iPhones and other popular mobile devices purchased from sites like Craigslist, eBay, and from cellular resellers." The company found that while data on the devices "was seemingly wiped clean, they were still able to extract Social Security numbers, financial information, GPS locations, passwords, communications and other information that could be used for ID theft and other criminal activity."

    To lessen the chances of that happening, AccessData recommends users do a factory reset of their phones, "sterilize any SD cards, and if possible update or restore the device's operating system. Some devices allow for a complete overwriting of the data as well."

    For dealing with computers, PCWorld has a handy video, "How to completely erase hard drive," that may be helpful.

    On CES' Greener Gadgets website, you can type in your ZIP code and quickly see what recycling resources are near you. Among the links to recycling programs (in addition to retail companies like Best Buy and Staples) are:

    • Recyclebank, which "offers a points system for recycling, which you can then use for discounts and merchandise. The site boasts more than 2 million users."
    • Close the Gap, which "makes reused and refurbished computers available to underprivileged individuals in Africa and other developing countries."
    • Digital Links, which has "distributed over 50,000 reused computers to the developing world and provided access to technology for over 125,000 individuals."

    CES says that a smartphone's "lifespan" is 18 months, while a TV is more than 10 years," and points out other places that might benefit from recycling of those items, especially if they haven't reached their end of service: Local schools, retirement homes or community centers. If you do so, you'll get Santa's goodies, and get to play Santa yourself.

    Related stories:

    Check out Technolog, Gadgetbox, Digital Life and In-Game on Facebook, and on Twitter, follow Suzanne Choney.

  • Google says there are 700,000 Android activations a day

    By Suzanne Choney

    Andy Rubin, Google's director of mobile platforms, says there are "now over 700,000 Android devices activated every day," sharing the news on Google's social networking site, G+. (Rubin put the words "Bureau of Android Statistics" under his name on the site.)

    "... and for those wondering, we count each device only once (ie, we don't count re-sold devices), and 'activations' means you go into a store, buy a device, put it on the network by subscribing to a wireless service" for Android on a phone or tablet, he added, a few minutes after his original post.

    The numbers are more than double those reported by Google a year ago, when the company said there were 300,000 Android devices being activated daily.

    Google's wireless competitors, including Apple, don't share such activation stats. But in order to give you a bit of context, we crunched a daily sales number for Apple's iPads and iPhones. Based on the last Apple quarterly report, approximately 315,000 were sold every day during the quarter ending Sept. 24.

    Android's share of the smartphone market has continued to climb. Last month, The NPD Group said Android was on 44 percent of all smartphones purchased in the U.S. in the third quarter, an increase of 11 percent from the second quarter. Apple's iOS "held relatively steady versus last quarter, rising one percentage point to 23 percent; RIM OS, fell to third position, declining from 28 percent to 22 percent."

    Rubin's comments on G+ have drawn lots of "yays" from Android users, and some "nays" from those frustrated by the different versions of Android operating systems on phones, and the inability to update the operating system depending on the version and the phone they have.

    Rubin's G+ post served as a means for users to vent. One, named Gaurang Dave, wrote: "I too am an Android user and huge fan of the operating system ... but my only issue is the OS upgrade ... I just bought a new device couple of months ago ... and now am sure that there is no way I can update the OS ... unless I root it and risk bricking my phone ... Andy please fix this ... and find a way so that user(s) can easily upgrade their phone(s)."

    Related stories:

    Check out Technolog, Gadgetbox, Digital Life and In-Game on Facebook, and on Twitter, follow Suzanne Choney.

  • Man sends massive number of tweets via Post Office

    @gilest

    By Suzanne Choney

    Could you do Twitter via the mail? That's the question writer Giles Turnbull posed (on Twitter), then went on to literally post his tweets by post, or snail mail:

    "Twitter is the contemporary postcard — social updates that are limited by size, but not imagination. For a month, with a billion stamps, our correspondent moved his tweets from the laptop to the post office, and rediscovered the joy of mail," says The Morning News, an online magazine, which shared photos of Turnbulls' effort.

    Why would you do Twitter via the mail? Well, Turnbull has a fondness for the post of the past, letters he says, that were once frequently sent, and not automatically long by nature, but shorter — just like Twitter and its 140-character limit on tweets.

    "The mechanics" of his project "took a while to work out" he writes:

    Most difficult was replicating my personal Twitter timeline — how could I post the same thing to everyone? Well, by writing it out lots of times.

    For those “public” tweets, I wrote the same thing out 15 times, on 15 cards, and sent them to 15 different people. This took every moment as long as you might think; possibly a little longer.

    My wonderful collaborators were asked to do more than simply receive my ramblings through their letterboxes. I also asked them to reply with cards of their own.

    The chain reaction was very gratifying to Turnbull, who said that his front door became his "timeline. The sound of the postman (or postwoman, in my case) pushing cards through the letterbox became the equivalent of the little “DING” your Twitter client makes when you have new messages. Like Pavlov’s dog, I began to associate the sound of the postwoman’s approach with the arrival of new, unusually personal messages. I’d get jumpy with excitement, and rush out to the hall the moment they’d been delivered."

    Getting mail "was fun again." And Turnbull's not done with his "mod" of social media. Next up on his list? He shared his plans in a tweet:

    @gilest


    — Via TheNextWeb

    Related stories:

    Check out Technolog, Gadgetbox, Digital Life and In-Game on Facebook, and on Twitter, follow Suzanne Choney.

     

  • Microsoft: No more Consumer Electronics Show after 2012

    Robyn Beck / AFP - Getty Images

    People walk past a Microsoft display before the opening of the 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), January 6, 2010 in Las Vegas.

    By Suzanne Choney

    Microsoft says next month's 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the world's largest consumer technology trade show, will be its last as both a keynote presenter and exhibitor.

    "We’ll continue to participate in CES as a great place to connect with partners and customers across the PC, phone and entertainment industries, but we won’t have a keynote or booth after this year because our product news milestones generally don’t align with the show’s January timing," said Frank X. Shaw, corporate vice president of Microsoft corporate communications, on the company's blog.

    (Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBCUniversal.)

    Traditionally, Microsoft head honcho — in times past, Bill Gates, and now Steve Ballmer — has been the kick-off keynote speaker of the annual event, which drew more than 140,000 attendees last year, and will be held Jan. 9-13.

    In a statement requested by msnbc.com, the Consumer Electronics Association, which puts on CES, made it sound like more of a mutual decision:

    In the fourteen years that we have invited Microsoft to deliver a keynote address at CES, the company has unveiled some great innovations, from operating systems to gaming platforms to mobile technologies,  Both CEA and Microsoft have agreed that the time has come to end this great run, and so Microsoft will not have a keynote at the 2013 CES. 

    When Microsoft talks about not having a "booth," that's not insignificant — in the past, its booth has taken up pretty much an entire exhibit hall at the Las Vegas Convention Center, where part of CES is held. The company has also previously erected large tents on the convention center grounds as well.

    Shaw said that Microsoft asked whether it was continuing to do the show "because it's the right thing to do, or because 'it's the way we've always done it?'"

    The answer, he said, is, "As we look at all of the new ways we tell our consumer stories — from product momentum disclosures, to exciting events like our Big Windows Phone, to a range of consumer connection points like Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft.com and our retail stores — it feels like the right time to make this transition."

    Steve Jobs made a similar decision for Apple, when he said starting in 2010 the company would no longer participate in the Macworld trade show. (Apple has never participated in CES, although its influence is definitely present.)

    Microsoft, Shaw said, "has enjoyed a close-to-20-year working relationship with the Consumer Electronics Association," and "we look forward to working with CEA for many years to come."

    Said CEA: "Microsoft is an important member of CEA and we wish them all the best as they evolve their plans for new ways to tell consumer stories. "

    Related stories:

    Check out Technolog, Gadgetbox, Digital Life and In-Game on Facebook, and on Twitter, follow Suzanne Choney.

     

  • Hall & Oates hotline built to show off phone tech

    By Suzanne Choney

    You really have to have a hankering for Hall & Oates to do this, but if you do, it's OK, you're forgiven! Just call 719-26-OATES, and you'll reach "Callin' Oates: Your Emergency Hall & Oates Hotline."

    Wha? Yes, you'll be offered up a choice of four songs by the '70s duo: Press 1 to hear "One on One," press 2 to hear "Rich Girl," press 3 to hear "Maneater," and 4 for "Private Eyes."

    All of it is apparently a "very viral" test of a new service from Twilio, according to The Atlantic Wire. Twilio describes itself as "providing infrastructure APIs for businesses to build scalable, reliable voice and text messaging apps."

    "It's unclear if it was intended to be a marketing effort, but based on a new but very active Twitter account, @CallinOates, we're pretty sure it is," says Atlantic Wire.

    Related stories:

    Check out Technolog, Gadgetbox, Digital Life and In-Game on Facebook, and on Twitter, follow Suzanne Choney.

  • Timehop takes you back to your old posts

    Timehop

    By Suzanne Choney

    Remember what you said a year ago today on Facebook? Twitter? Instagram? Foursquare? No? Timehop will help you recall your witty (or not-so) postings from 365 days ago with its new, free service that gives you a daily email "that brings it all back to you."

    Timehop co-founders Benny Wong and Jonathan Wegener told Mashable they came up with the idea at a Foursquare hackathon last year, but it was met with a "meh" response. That changed once attendees got the emails and "had nostalgic emotional experiences," Wegener told the website. "Then they tweeted and talked about it, and we had several thousand users in a short time."

    There's no real business plan for how Timehop will make money. But that's never stopped anyone from starting something (ahem: Twitter, which is now finally starting to bring in dough.)

    Folks at TheNextWeb think Timehop "is a brilliant service. After all, what’s the sense in documenting our lives on social networks if we never see that information again? Timehop’s email is a web logger’s dream come true."

    Whether it's navel-gazing or nostalgia (or both), you decide. To use Timehop, you'll need to give permission for the site to access your social media accounts. And be patient: You'll need to wait until the next morning to get your first email.

    Related stories:

    Check out Technolog, Gadgetbox, Digital Life and In-Game on Facebook, and on Twitter, follow Suzanne Choney.

  • The biggest Web outages of 2011

    Gilbert Carrasquillo / Getty Images

    Emma Roberts attends the Missoni for Target Collection launch Sept. 7 in New York City. Online demand was so heavy for the new line that it crashed the site.

    By Suzanne Choney

    Bank of America's website outage, along with those of Netflix, Target and Reddit, were among the biggest Web fails this year, but there's good news: "Though we witnessed a number of minor website outages and performance declines in 2011, we're encouraged to report that there were fewer significant website outages this year than in 2010."

    That's the word from SmartBear Software, which put together the list. Last year's fails — you may well remember these like they were yesterday — included Facebook, Twitter, MasterCard, Visa, JCPenney and Tumblr.

    As for this year's list, the "winners" are:

    Netflix, under fire for its price increases, "had a number of short website interruptions this year, which collectively resulted in prolonged service disruption to millions of Netflix subscribers." The first outage was March 22; "On this day, we tested Netflix's home page 20 times between 6:22 p.m. ET and 7:59 p.m. ET. Of those samples, only two successfully loaded the home page, revealing that the site was unusable for most users during that time frame," says SmartBear.

    Another outage lasted several hours June 19, and the site "also experienced performance issues" July 20 and Aug. 22. (We recall Netflix having some log-in issues with its site in late November, as well.)

    Reddit, Foursquare, Hootsuite, "et al":
    In April, "one of the greatest concerns of cloud patrons was confirmed when Amazon Web Services went down, taking Reddit, Foursquare, Hootsuite, Quora, and a number of other social websites offline with it." AWS serves as the Web hosting and storage center for the sites, and what happened " exemplified the need for cloud customers to do their due diligence and maintain a sense of ownership and responsibility" over their "uptime," says SmartBear.

    Target
    The retail giant's website "came crashing down" Sept. 13 with an "unprecedented number of shoppers" trying to order items from the new Missoni for Target line. "The trouble continued throughout the day with shoppers later greeted, at least, by a customized error page," says SmartBear. "The incident led to a firestorm of criticism and disappointment from shoppers."

    Bank of America
    The bank was "no stranger to website trouble this year, as the company experienced several website outages that make this year's list. On Jan. 14, bankofamerica.com was only 41 percent available and delivered response times in excess of 90 seconds.

    "A month and a half later, the site experienced another brief, though noteworthy, outage," says SmartBear. "On March 1, Bank of America delivered 83.09 percent availability and response times over 15 seconds to users."

    October brought the worst woes for the site, though, with "one of the most extended periods of performance trouble we've witnessed in recent times." Because of that outage, SmartBear ranks it as the biggest Web outage of the year. 

    "For six consecutive days, the site delivered a series of slowdowns and outages, which the bank attributed to a combination of technical issues and higher than anticipated website traffic. The issues began just one day after BofA announced plans to charge a $5 monthly debit card fee," which it rescinded Nov. 1. Coincidence? Perhaps.

    The list from SmartBear, which provides Web load-testing and monitoring tools, does not include website fails caused by hackers, such as Anonymous. Its first widely known denial-of-service attack was launched last December against MasterCard, Visa, PayPal and other financial institutions which disrupted donations to WikiLeaks.

    Related stories:

    Check out Technolog, Gadgetbox, Digital Life and In-Game on Facebook, and on Twitter, follow Suzanne Choney.

Older posts