Internet Marketing & SEO

Microsoft Introduces a Trio of New Mice and a Pair of Webcams

Thursday, September 13th, 2007 | Internet News, Microsoft & MSN | No Comments

Microsoft announces new mice and webcams

Today Microsoft has announced a pair of new LifeCam webcams and a trio of new mice aimed at notebook users. The new webcams include the LifeCam VX-7000, which is intended for desktop use with its universal attachment base.

The design of the clamp allows the camera to sit closer to the display for a more integrated look. The VX-7000 has a 2.0 megapixel sensor that allows it to shoot high quality video and uses an all glass element lens.

The camera can also shoot still images at 7.6-megapixels interpolated and uses a 71-degree wide-angle lens. The VX-7000 also automatically adjusts for low-light conditions and will retail for $99.95 in September. Microsoft also announced the LifeCam NX-3000, which is for mobile use with notebook computers. The NX-3000 has a max resolution of 640 x 480 and can shoot still images at 1.3-megapixels. The lens swivels to allow notebook users to adjust the camera for ideal shooting conditions. Microsoft also included video effects for video calls and included a carry case. The NX-3000 will be available in September as well for $59.95.

The trio of new mice Microsoft announced starts with the Mobile Memory Mouse 8000. Microsoft is billing the mouse as the industry’s first notebook mouse to include 1GB of flash-based storage. The flash memory is inside the USB wireless transceiver. The mouse uses a magnetic recharging cable that connects to the end of the USB adapter and to the mouse allowing for charging without the need for a dock.

The 8000 gives you the option of using the wireless adapter or with the flip of a switch, turning the mouse into a Bluetooth device for use sans USB adapter on notebooks equipped with internal Bluetooth. The mobile Memory Mouse 8000 will be available in October 2007 for $99.95.

Other new mice from Microsoft include the Wireless Notebook Mouse 7000 and Bluetooth Notebook Mouse 5000. Both these mice will retail for $49.99 each with the 5000 available in October and the 7000 available in September. The 7000 uses 2.4GHz wireless technology, connects via a USB adapter to your PC, and has built-in Vista shortcuts. The 5000 is a Bluetooth mouse requiring no transceiver for use with notebooks that have Bluetooth built-in. The last desktop mouse announced by Microsoft was the SideWinder Gaming Mouse.

Netscape Relocates Social Site to New Domain

Wednesday, September 12th, 2007 | Domain Names, Internet News | No Comments

Netscape Relocates Social Site to New Domain
Netscape.com will return to original news format

The Netscape social news experience that you are currently using today will be migrated and revealed soon at http://www.propeller.com/. We’re working hard behind the scenes to ensure a smooth transition before we officially launch at this new destination.
It is important to us that you feel empowered to choose how you want to consume your news and participate in the community. As we mentioned in a recent post, the Netscape.com site will soon be redirected to the new Netscape portal, a more traditional and editorially-driven news experience. It’s already live, so you can check it out now if you haven’t already. You’ll notice some elements of our social news site there in short order, so that it will be easy for you to go back and forth and engage in each if you like.

http://blog.netscape.com/2007/09/11/social-news-update/

Facebook Plans to User Ad Targeting Program

Friday, August 24th, 2007 | Contextual Advertising, Internet News | No Comments

Facebook is planning a new advertising system that will target ad delivery based on profile information added by Facebook users.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, the new system will “let marketers target users with ads based on the massive amounts of information people reveal on the site about themselves” with future development that is aiming to (in true Orwellian style…or should that Minority Report style) “predict what products and services users might be interested in even before they have specifically mentioned an area.”

Monetizing social networking platforms through advertising has been a hard task for a long time now. For example, although News Corp may be reaping revenues from MySpace today, most of those revenues comes indirectly, such as through the Google search deal. MySpace rates have previously been reported to be a small fraction of 1 cent CPM.

Facebook seems to be experiencing stronger advertising rates, with recent reports indicating that Facebook charges around $10 CPM. There is always scope to improve, and certainly the more upmarket demographic of Facebook should provide high paying advertising opportunities if and when the ad delivery is sorted out and well targeted.

There will be some who will question Facebook’s moves. Google has previously come under fire for delivering contextual advertising in Gmail based on the content of emails a user had received. Facebook is not only going to use user data and networking activities to deliver targeted advertising, they are going past that and trying to produce preemptive targeted advertising based on what they think you might want in the future.

If Facebook can create a system that accurately preempts user desires, it’s not unreasonable to consider that Facebook could easily become the next Adwords as well; not even Googlecan currently predict the future.

Google Makes Search Easier in 14 Indian & South Asian Languages

Friday, August 24th, 2007 | Google, Internet News | No Comments

Google Labs add on-screen keyboard to aid search in 14 additional langauges.

Keeping up with the spirit and celebrations of India’s 60th year of Independence, we present to you a new platform that showcases our favourite ideas for Indian users: Google India Labs. Enthusiastic bloggers noted our initial announcement on 15th August; now here’s the full story.

Though 60 years young, India has a history dating back to the dawn of civilization. The incredible diversity of this great nation is the kind of challenge Google loves. And in line with our mission of making information universally accessible, we’re now offering an easier way to search in 14 Indian and South Asian languages. You don’t need a special keyboard or software; all you need is a web browser, a mouse, and a Unicode font for your language. So whether you speak অসমীয়া (Assamese), বাংলা (Bengali), ગુજરાતી (Gujarati), हिंदी (Hindi), ಕನ್ನಡ (Kannada), മലയാളം (Malayalam), मराठी (Marathi), नेपाली (Nepali), ଓଡ଼ିଆ (Oriya), ਪੰਜਾਬੀ (Punjabi), संस्कृतम् (Sanskrit), සිංහල (Sinhala), தமிழ் (Tamil), or తెలుగు (Telugu), we can help you find content on the web in your language. To get started, add one or more of these iGoogle gadgets to your personalized iGoogle home page. You can use these gadgets to compose queries, and ask Google to search the vast Internet in your very own language

More on Official Google Blog…

also Visit

http://labs.google.co.in/

Monster Attacked, Security Breached, User Data Stolen

Friday, August 24th, 2007 | Internet News, Security | 1 Comment

US job website Monster.com has suffered an online attack with the personal data of hundreds of thousands of users stolen, says a security firm.

A computer program was used to access the employers’ section of website using stolen log-in credentials.

Symantec said the log-ins were used to harvest user names, e-mail addresses, home addresses and phone numbers, which were uploaded to a remote web server.

Symantec said it had seen reports of phishing e-mails sent out to Monster.com users which were “very realistic, containing personal information of the victims”.

The e-mail encouraged users to download a Monster Job Seeker Tool, which was in fact a program that encrypted files in their computer and left a ransom note demanding money for their decryption.

“To the best of our knowledge, this is not a hack of Monster’s security, rather, legitimate customer credentials are being used to log in to the database,” said Patrick W. Manzo, vice president of compliance and fraud prevention at Monster.

More on Monster Attacked, Security Breached, User Data Stolen…..

Kids Site Sold for $350 Million USD by Disney

Wednesday, August 8th, 2007 | Domain Names, Internet Marketing, Internet News | No Comments

Racing to solidify its dominant position in children’s entertainment on the Internet, the Walt Disney Company said Wednesday that it had acquired a subscription Web site aimed at preteenagers, Club Penguin, in a deal that could total $700 million.

Disney said it would pay $350 million for Club Penguin, a virtual community that has soared in popularity since its founding in late 2005. More than 700,000 users now pay $5.95 a month to customize penguin characters and then chat and play games with other “penguins.”
› Continue reading

PDFs Can’t Always Be Trusted : Security

Wednesday, August 8th, 2007 | Internet News | No Comments

Security vendors have warned e-mail users to be as vigilant about PDF attachments as they would for other documents, after seeing a sharp rise in spam embedded within PDF documents.

E-mail security vendor Messagelabs reports that PDF’s made up 20 percent of image-based spam messages in July, up 10 percent on the month prior. Image-based spam makes up around 22 percent of total spam, the company said.

The security company believes attackers are using the PDF format due the fact that it more easily bypasses antivirus and anti-spam filters, and that users tend to trust the authenticity of a PDF over other types of documents, even if they don’t recognise the sender.

“People have a mindset that the PDF is a locked document,” said Andrew Antal, marketing director for MessageLabs. “Anybody can open and make changes to a Word or PowerPoint document sent over e-mail. With a PDF there is a little more assurance that the file in unchangeable, and is thus in a safe state to receive.”

Marshal Software CEO Ed McNair says PDF spam is more difficult for an organisation to detect.

In a recent interview with ZDNet Australia, McNair said PDF spam tends to arrive as an attachment in a PDF file. “Once opened it displays the spam message, whether that’s a stock trading or an advert for some bogus health product.”

“Organisations are finding it very hard to detect PDF spam at the moment, because it doesn’t behave in a normal fashion,” he said.

Antal said most security software solutions rely on detecting spam by searching for patterns within a message.

“The filtering engines are far smarter when it comes to looking for patterns within Word, PowerPoint on Excel documents than PDFs,” he said. “The algorithms are different.”

While it is very difficult for an attacker to embed any malware within a PDF file, the spam nonetheless can present a malware risk.

On most PDF spam captured so far, the malware doesn’t sit within the PDF and can’t be executed by merely opening the PDF, but tends to be hidden in Web links within the document.

A victim would have to not only open the PDF but also click a link within it to risk infection.

“These links are often pointing to Web sites in which malware resides,” Antal said.

He said the PDF spam once again shows that organisations need a layered defence to better arm themselves against such threats — with security software deployed at the gateway, at the client and at the server.

Wikipedia Criticises Chinese Search Engine

Wednesday, August 8th, 2007 | Internet News | No Comments

The group behind the Wikipedia online encyclopedia has accused Baidu.com, China’s most popular internet search engine, of being the worst violator of its copyrights. Florence Nibart-Devouard, chair of the Board of Trustees at the Wikimedia Foundation yesterday asked the company again to give credit where it is due.