'70% Chance' Apple Builds Its Own Search Engine In The Next Five Years: Munster

by Jay Yarow at Business INsider

Top Apple analyst Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray is the latest to build on the notion that Apple will build its own search engine in a note on Apple's battle with Google.

Gene writes:

We believe Apple could utilize data unavailable to Google, data generated by the company's App Store, to create a mobile centric search engine, which would be a unique offering to Google's search engine.

An iPhone specific search engine could be a difficult undertaking, but we feel Apple could make a minor acquisition of a search company that has built a web index, like a Cuil, and utilize the index as the base for building its own engine.

We believe the odds of Apple developing a search engine in the next five years are 70%. One hurdle for Apple in developing its own search engine would be generating enough advertiser interest to form a competitive marketplace; however, we believe the rationale for an Apple search product is to protect data rather than generate profit.

 

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http://bit.ly/bvJVJC

YouTube To Roll Out New Design For All Video Pages Today

by by Robin Wauters

YouTube’s video page overhaul, which the company itself says is one of the biggest redesigns in its history, is about to get noticed by a lot more people today.

A YouTube partner just forwarded us an e-mail he received from the Google company, stating that all videos will be transitioned to the newly designed page some time today.

Here is the relevant part of said e-mail, which leaves little to the imagination:

Dear Partner,

We want to provide you with an update on YouTube’s new video page, which we’ve been hard at work on for the last several months.

You can read more about it here:

http://ping.fm/AUmDL

http://ping.fm/qIiWF

On Wednesday, March 31st we’re happy to let you know that we’ll be transitioning all YouTube videos to this new video page.

This new video page makeover is one of the biggest redesigns in YouTube history — and we’re excited to make YouTube a better place for you and your content!

You can read more details about the redesign in the blog posts linked in YouTube’s email to its partners, or check out what Jason wrote when the new video page was publicly released (only opt-in) last January.

In short: less clutter, easier search and no more stars.

Sure, everyone has been able to active the new look for a while now, but not every member of the humongous YouTube community reads the company blog, or TechCrunch for that matter, so chances are many will be seeing the new video page for the first time today.

Remember, this on a site that is seeing more than 20 hours of video uploaded every minute.

Expect lots of confused people roaming the tubes today.

http://bit.ly/cAoFnA

New tech battlefield: Google vs Apple for ad space

by Mike Ferro at Tech.Blorge

There is a new rumor circulating the Web that Apple is gearing up for battle with Google in the mobile ad space. Google and Apple both recently acquired companies that specialize in mobile advertising. According to reports Apple may make the first strike against Google.

Recently, Google refuted allegations of advertisement revenue sharing with carriers with mobile apps. A few months ago Google put in a bid to acquire AdMob, an advertisement company for $750 million. AdMob is one of the world’s largest mobile advertising platforms and was once coveted by Apple.

However, Google was able to get its claws into the company before Apple was able to snatch it up. However, the deal is currently being scrutinized by the Federal Trade Commission to ensure that there will be no anti-competition violations.

Full Story

http://bit.ly/8YSvRB

Facebook Flub Leaks Private E-mail Addresses

by Brennon Slattery - PC World

Private e-mail addresses that many Facebook users wanted to keep hidden were revealed publicly last night on a multitude of Facebook profiles, Gawker reports. The glitch lasted about 30 minutes before Facebook sealed the gap.

An anonymous tipster altered Gawker of the breach in an expletive-riddled message: "6:46PM: I cannot [bleeping] believe it. Everybody's email has been turned on to the public for at least the past 30 min. I tried going into my account to remove my email b/c I have an issue with a crazed stalker. But I wasn't able to. God I [bleeping] hate FB!! When will they ever learn?!"

It might be that Facebook's recently proposed changes to its privacy settings could be to blame for the hiccup. PC World writer Paul Suarez reported that "One of those changes [to Facebook's Privacy Policy and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities] would make it possible for Facebook to send your name, photo, friend list, and any public information about you and your friends to preapproved third-party Web sites." A slight tweak to broadcasting profile information could have resulted in this embarrassing flub.

Facebook desperately wants to be known as a site where users can expect a reasonable amount of privacy, but sometimes this isn't the case. Briefings of previous mistakes make it clear that Facebook has a lot of work to do, possibly at the risk of tarnishing its original smiles and hugs philosophy. Thankfully this most recent trip-up only lasted approximately 30 minutes; any longer would have spelled disaster

http://bit.ly/bj4Bkl

Weak passwords stored in browsers make hackers happy

By John Leyden in The Register UK

Nearly a quarter of people (23 per cent) polled in a survey by Symantec use their browser to keep tabs on their passwords.

A survey of 400 surfers by Symantec also found that 60 per cent fail to change their passwords regularly. Further violating the 'passwords should be treated like toothbrushes' maxim (changed frequently and not shared), the pollsters also found that a quarter of people have given their passwords to their spouse, while one in 10 people have given their password to a ‘friend’.

Password choices were also lamentably bad. Twelve of the respondents admitted they used the phrase 'password' as their, err, password while one in ten used a pet's name. The name of a pet might easily be obtained by browsing on an intended target's social networking profile.

Eight per cent of the 400 respondents said they used the same password on all their online sites, a shortcoming that means a compromise of one low-sensitivity account hands over access to a victim's more sensitive webmail and online banking accounts. The survey respondents came from readers of Symantec's Security Response blog, who might be expected to be more security savvy than the general net population, though the survey shows many of them making the same basic errors that crop up time and again in password security surveys.

Symantec has put together its findings together with a list of suggestions for picking better passwords, a basic but woefully overlooked security precaution, in a blog post here.

The net security firm advised computer users to pick a mix of numbers, letters, punctuation, and symbols when picking passwords. This may be derived from taking a memorable phrase and altering it by replacing characters with symbols, for example. Surfers should avoid personal information, repetition and sequences in passwords, Symantec further recommends. ®

http://bit.ly/auD0g3

Microsoft: Emergency IE patch coming tomorrow

by Ryan Naraine at ZDNet

In the face of an uptick in hacker attacks targeted a zero-day flaw in its Internet Explorer browser, Microsoft has announced plans to ship an emergency IE patch tomorrow (March 30, 2010).

The out-of-band update comes exactly 21 days after Microsoft said it was aware of targeted attacks against Windows users running its flagship browser.

The vulnerability in question only affects Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1 on Microsoft Windows 2000 Service Pack 4, and Internet Explorer 6 and Internet Explorer 7.

Two weeks ago, an Israeli hacker was able to piece together clues to reproduce the vulnerability and release exploit code into the Metasploit hacking tool. Since then, there has been a slight uptick in attacks seen in the wild and this forced Microsoft to push ahead with plans for an out-of-band update.

Read it here

http://bit.ly/9eowvn

Gmail Gets Intruder Alarm

By Thomas Claburn at InformationWeek

Addressing one of the ongoing concerns about cloud computing services, Google on Wednesday introduced a new security feature for its Gmail users that provides notification of unusual account activity.

Since July 2008, Gmail has included a "Last account activity" link below users' inboxes that provides information about when the account was last accessed and the IP address used. But the placement of the link makes it useful mainly to people seeking to confirm an existing suspicion.

The new notification will take the form of "a very big warning," said Google product manager Will Cathcart in a phone interview.

Such a warning no doubt would have been useful to identify the attempts to access the accounts of Gmail-using human rights advocates late last year, part of the "Operation Aurora" attacks on Google's infrastructure that led it to shut down its search engine in mainland China.

"The idea behind the feature is that we already give users an idea about the activity on their account, but we wanted to provide more information," Cathcart said. "We look the login history for an account, specific to each user, and look for changes in that history based on a number of different algorithms."

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Cities of the Future, Part 1: The Self-Aware Metropolis

By Richard Adhikari TechNewsWorld

The world's population is growing and becoming increasingly urban. Our approach to designing and building cities may need to be rethought. Approaches to that end range from using software to help more efficiently manage city services to designing colossal structures meant to house tens of thousands of people in an entirely self-sufficient environment.

Homo sapiens are a fast-growing species: The world's population is expected to double in 61 years, putting further pressure on our resources and, as countries become increasingly urbanized, on our cities.

The infrastructure of today's cities won't be able to cope, and governments, scientists, architects and engineers are looking for new solutions.

Some are looking to building cities that are environmentally friendly; others are looking to create urban marvels to rival Dubai, a desert city where water flows lavishly and some of the world's tallest buildings stand.

Take Masdar City, for instance, which GE is planning to build in partnership with the government of Abu Dhabi. It's being designed as the world's first carbon-neutral, zero-emission city. It won't have automobiles, it will be powered by the elements, it harvests rainwater and it recycles waste to provide energy

Read the full article

http://bit.ly/drQpaD

Survey: 63% don't change passwords very often

by Dong Ngo at CNet News

Security firm Symantec on Friday released results of a survey on password management that showed 63 percent of respondents don't change their passwords very often, 45 percent use a few passwords that they alternate for all accounts, and some 10 percent don't change their passwords at all.

These are a startling numbers as, according to the survey, 44 percent of respondents said they have more than 20 accounts that require a password.

Worst of all, the survey also found that about 10 percent of respondents have used their pet's name as a password. This is as bad as using words that can be easily guessed, such as your name, your significant other's name, or your birthday.

The survey was done online at the Symantec Security Response blog over the course of a few days with some 400 responses from readers.

Symantec says that organizations as well as consumers can take precautions to lower their security risk and the first step is by using effective passwords.

An effective password is one that's hard to guess and yet at the same time easy for the owner to remember.

Here are some tips for choosing a strong password:

• Use a mix of numbers, letters, punctuation, and symbols.


• Take a word or phrase that's meaningful to you and alter it.


• Replace the first few characters in your password with numbers or symbols.


• The longer the better


• Avoid personal information, repetition, sequences, and dictionary words.

For example, you can think of a meaningful sentence such as "Let the sun shine" then alter it, by replacing "e" with "3" and "s" with "$," into "L3tTh3$un$hin3" to use as a password. Of course, you need to make your own sentence.

As cumbersome as it is, having a strong password really goes a long way in protecting your personal information. For more information on consumers' general state of mind in regard to passwords, you can see the full Symantec survey results here.

http://bit.ly/dDdeDW

Is Facebook Prepping Up Something Against Google Analytics

by Arnold Zafra at Search Engine Journal

If you are maintaining a Facebook page, you might have received an email from Facebook containing a summary of the activities that happened in the past on your Facebook pages. This started last week, and a couple of hours ago I received another email again.  While the page analytics contain just some basic data about your page’s activities, its interesting to know that Facebook actually compiles all these activities. And makes you think whether this might be the start of a bigger traffic analytics product.

Well, Nick of All Facebook thinks so when he noticed that Facebook’s latest Javascript libraries suggest that Facebook might be preparing to roll out Insights beyond Facebook and this might be discussed during the f8 conference happening in San Francisco.

Using the following  API call developers will be able to track various types of event, says O’Neill.

FB.Insights.impression(<br />{<br />api_key: 'YOUR_API_KEY',<br />lid: 'EVENT_TYPE'<br />} );

What remains a mystery though is whether this will be integrated in individual websites or will be a part of an enhanced “Like” feature in Facebook.

Is Facebook planning to launch a new product that will compete with Google Analytics? Something that would go beyond what Facebook Insights being use to track activities on Facebook Fan Pages, perhaps? We might know soon.

http://bit.ly/bn6KM8

Tomorrow night, turn off your lights!

Posted by Erik Teetzel, Google GreenKeeper

Tomorrow from 8:30 to 9:30pm local time, hundreds of millions of people around the world will switch off their lights and participate in Earth Hour, the largest climate awareness event ever held. As climate change will effect people on every continent, we think a united, global call for action to address the problem is needed.

At Google we’re working hard to be part of the solution for the climate crisis. A first step was pledging to be a carbon neutral company. Our web-based services run in some of the world’s most efficient data centers, we deploy renewable energy where viable, and we buy high-quality carbon offsets to address the emissions we can’t otherwise eliminate.

Even with these efforts, however, there remains an urgent need for clean, affordable electricity. To that end we have a team of engineers working to develop technology breakthroughs that will help make carbon-free electricity an economically viable alternative to electricity from coal.

We’re also putting our experience with organizing information to work, so we can enable others to do projects in the sustainable space. We recently announced, for example, Earth Engine, a computational platform that enables global-scale monitoring and measurement of changes in the Earth’s forests. And we’re working with our peers through Climate Savers Computing to cut the power used by computers in half.

http://bit.ly/apeZDD