Facebook, Google Vie for Connect Services

One hour after Google did a public launch of Google Friend Connect, Facebook launched Facebook Connect. The simultaneous launch is not a coincidence -- the two competing services are battling for mindshare as they strive to be the frontrunners in data portability.

The companies want users to be able to use their Google and Facebook logins to enter third-party sites. It benefits users and third-party sites and allows Facebook and Google to collect more information about what users are doing online.

There are some key differences between the services. Google's service uses OpenSocial. This means sites using Google Friend Connect can use OpenSocial's open-source applications, such as message boards and ratings gadgets. Google also lets users sign in with their Yahoo!, AOL and MSN usernames.

It's also easier for site owners to use. Google requires adding a few "snippets of code to your site," Stan Schroeder at Mashable reported. However, "adding Facebook Connect apps is a much more convoluted process," he said.

However, Facebook has an advantage in terms of partnering with large third-party services. Facebook Connect is already working with Digg, StumbleUpon and Loopt. Google Friend Connect's partners seem to be smaller sites run by individuals, such as Billboard for the People and Qloud.

It's too early to say how either service will fare, but the Internet is already buzzing with early feedback from site owners.

Loopt, a company with a social-mapping service that lets mobile phone users see whether their friends are in close proximity to them, was one of Facebook Connect's first partners. Evan Tana, the Director of Product Management & Marketing of Loopt, is optimistic about the service.

"Working with Facebook Connect widens the circle of friends Loopt users can interact with, combining the power of Loopt's social-mapping service with an established network of Facebook friends," he said in a press release. "Loopt users will be able to receive an alert whenever Facebook friends are nearby, discover restaurants and bars recommended by their Facebook friends, and integrate their location into their Facebook feed," he added.

Google Friend Connect has also garnered some positive feedback.

Hyperact Design Group is using Google Friend Connect to attract more users to one of its sites - Billboard for the People. The group is trying to raise US$25,000 to create a large billboard in Manhattan to congratulate President-elect Barack Obama.

Danny Peraza, one of the creative directors of Hyperact Design Group, told The Industry Standard that more than 1,000 users signed up for the site through Friend Connect within a few days. He added that hundreds of users have invited their friends to visit Billboard for the People through Google Friend Connect, and that the service has also enabled users to easily add comments to the site.

"There are a few other things I'd like to see," he said. "Like now we've got all these users, and I'd like to have a way to message them, and have a way for them to message each other."

Orli Yakuel, who uses Google Friend Connect on her site GO2WEB20.net would also like to see messaging.

"I think this is a must have feature and needless to say, it's the real way to communicate with someone," she wrote on her blog.

Peraza is hopeful that those additions will come soon. Meanwhile he is happy with what he has.

"It's a step in a right direction," he said. "It means we don't have to set up an online group elsewhere."

source:pcworld.com

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Facebook Virus Turns Your Computer into a Zombie

Hey, I have this hilarious video of you dancing. Your face is so red. You should check it out.

If you've received a message like that through Facebook or MySpace, you may have been exposed to the "Koobface" virus. "Koobface" comes through an e-mail sent by one of your social networking site friends inviting you to scope out a video.

Once the URL is clicked, "Koobface" prompts you to update your Flash player before the video can be displayed. Therein lies the virus, cloaked in a "flash_player.exe" file. According to the Kaspersky Lab, an antivirus organization working closely with Facebook, "the worms transform victim machines into zombie computers to form botnets."

The McAfee Security Blog explains that when "Koobface" infects your computer, it prompts a downloaded service named Security Accounts Manager (SamSs) to load on start-up. SamSs then proxies all HTTP traffic, stealing results from popular search engines and hijacking them to lesser-known search sites.

A clear eye for fraud will help you avoid this mess. You can usually spot phony e-mails by their titles. Kaspersky found the following: Paris Hilton Tosses Dwarf On The Street; Examiners Caught Downloading Grades From The Internet; You must see it!!! LOL. My friend catched you on hidden cam; Is it really celebrity? Funny Moments. My own "Koobface" attack came in an e-mail entitled, lool, yoour blushingg afce is so funny! Checkk out. Obviously, Paris Hilton never threw dwarves, and in all likelihood, my 26-year-old friend knows how to spell more than two words. These are clear indicators you're being attacked.

Facebook has posted instructions about how to remove the "Koobface" virus: give your computer an antivirus scrub-down and change your Facebook password.

This attack on the world's most popular social networking site and its 120 million users comes just weeks after Facebook won an $873 million lawsuit against several people accused of hacking user accounts and spreading spam.

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Adobe Admits New PDF Password Protection Is Weaker

Adobe made a critical change to the algorithm used to password-protect PDF documents in Acrobat 9, making it much easier to recover a password and raising concern over the safety of documents, according to Russian security firm Elcomsoft.


Elcomsoft specializes in making software that can recover the passwords for Adobe documents. The software is used by companies to open documents after employees have forgotten their passwords, and by law enforcement services in their investigations.

For its Reader 9 and Acrobat 9 products, Adobe implemented 256-bit AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) encryption, up from the 128-bit AES encryption used in previous Acrobat products.

The original 128-bit encryption is strong, and in some cases it would take years to test all possible keys to uncover a password, said Dmitry Sklyarov, information security analyst with Elcomsoft.

But Elcomsoft said the change in the underlying algorithm for Acrobat 9 makes cracking a weak password -- especially a short one with only upper and lower case letters -- up to 100 times faster than in Acrobat 8, Sklyarov said. Despite using 256-bit encryption, the change to the algorithm still undermines a document's security.

Adobe acknowledged the encryption algorithm change on its security blog. The company said brute-force attempts -- where tens of millions of password combinations are tried in hopes of unlocking the document -- could end up figuring out passwords more rapidly using fewer processor cycles.

The changes were made to increase performance, Adobe said. But Sklyarov said that even with the 128-bit encryption algorithm used in Acrobat 8, the application responds quickly to both correct and incorrect password entries.

"There is no rational reason why they did that," Sklyarov said.

Despite the change, there is a way to keep documents secure: When setting a password, people should use a combination of upper and lower case letters and other special characters, such as quotations marks, Sklyarov said. If special characters are used, the password should be no less than eight characters. If only letters are used, it should be at least 10 to 12 characters, he said.

Adobe imparted the same advice. "With a longer phrase and more diversity of characters, there are many more permutations to guess," according to the blog. The company also recommended that the security of documents can also be enhanced by additional access controls such as smart cards and biometric tools.

source:pcworld.com

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PC Sales Expected to Drop

The faltering economy is now projected to claim another victim - the global PC market.

Industry analyst firm IDC Wednesday said it is projecting that worldwide PC sales will quickly drop off because the sagging economy is causing people to hold onto their savings while credit is unavailable. IDC noted that it expects PC shipments to inch upward by 3.8% in all of 2009, but added that the valus of those shipments will drop by 5.3%.


Analysts at IDC, though, are expecting the worldwide market to rebound in the second quarter next year, projecting that PC shipments will increase by 13.7% over the sale period this year.

Here in the United States, expectations are a bit bleaker. IDC predicts that U.S. shipments are expected to decline by almost 3% in 2009 with low single-digit increases in the next few years.

"Declining shipment growth in the consumer market, along with the relatively stagnant commercial market will lead to fewer opportunities and more intense competition in the U.S. PC market," said Richard Shim , personal computing research manager at IDC, in a written statement. "Consolidation is expected as PC makers tough out the competitive climate amid lower than expected volumes and thinner margins."

Just a few weeks ago, analyst firm iSuppli Corp. slashed its 2009 growth forecast for worldwide PC shipments by nearly two-thirds because of the deteriorating economy. The firm is now projecting that worldwide PC shipments will rise by 4.3% in 2009, down from its previous forecast of 11.9% growth. The firm also adjusted its expectations for 2010, dropping its initial prediction of 9.4% growth to 7.1%.

ISuppli's adjustment to its PC forecast came just one day after the firm downgraded its estimates for global semiconductor revenue for this year. The researcher projected that 2008 semiconductor sales will decline by 2% to $266.6 billion, from about $272 billion in 2007. In October, iSuppli had predicted that 2008 semiconductor sales would grow by 3.5% over last year's. Analysts also predicted that the negative momentum will continue into the fourth quarter of this year, with the overall market expected to drop by 10.9% compared with the same quarter last year.

Not every market has dropped, though. Early in November, IDC reported that the worldwide microprocessor market hit a new shipment record in the third quarter, largely boosted by Intel Corp.'s new Atom processor. The chips, designed for the increasingly popular netbook computers, boosted the market despite the turbulent economic times, growing by 8.3% from the second quarter to the third.

source:pcworld.com


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Gmail Gadget for Windows

Google has unveiled a new gadget that allows Google Desktop for Windows users to check their Gmail accounts without having to leave leaving the vendor's desktop search application.

The new gadget will allow users to read, search and send Gmail messages while in Google Desktop, Google noted. Users can also star messages and use keyboard shortcuts.


"It doesn't take up much space in your sidebar or desktop, and you can also resize it to show as few or as many messages as you'd like," noted James Yum, developer programs engineer for Google Desktop, in a blog post Monday. "When I'm at work, I keep two instances of the gadget open: one logged into my personal Gmail account and the other set to my Google Apps account for work related stuff. Instead of getting lost in a sea of tabs or browser windows, I can bring up the gadgets in an instant."


Google released Google Desktop in 2004. The application promises to make searching a PC as easy as searching the Web. It provides full-text search over email, files, music, photos, chats, Gmail and Web pages viewed, according to Google. The application includes other gadgets that allows users to be shown new email, weather updates, photos and personalized news.


Yum noted that Google's gadgets team has received countless requests for a Gmail gadget for Google Desktop, and users posting comments to the page for downloading the new gadget had mostly positive comments.


A user posting as "Brett" said that he liked the gadget a lot but would like to have it play a sound when he receives new mail.


"I am still forced to use GMail icon due to the fact of it not playing a sound when I receive new mail," he added. "I have an MP3 file that I have the other gadget play whenever it detects new mail. If this did that I would be able to get rid of the other gadget."

Another user, "Ashok," said that the gadget has a "nice and intuitive interface" but still is missing the ability to apply labels, support for downloading attachments directly, support for uploading attachments in new mail and the ability to browse through labels.


"Once I've got these, I'm going to replace my Thunderbird client," Ashok added.

soirce:pcworld.com

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Firefox 3.0 Update Coming This Week

Mozilla will take another stab this week at convincing users running older versions of its Firefox browser to update to version 3.0, the company said Tuesday.


On Thursday, Mozilla plans to offer Firefox 3.0.5, the most-up-to-date edition, to users of Firefox 2.0.0.18, the latest version of the company's 2006 browser. The offer will be the second so-called "Major Update" presented to users since Mozilla launched Firefox 3.0 in June.


The first offer was triggered in late August, and was accepted by more than 50% of the people using the older Firefox 2.0 at the time, Mozilla said.


Currently, three-fourths of Mozilla's users are running Firefox 3.0, according to data released Monday by Web metrics firm Net Applications Inc. During November, Firefox 2.0 accounted for 4.8% of all browsers used, while the newer Firefox 3.0 held a 15.6% market share.


Mozilla will repeat the original offer, which let users choose between accepting the update, postponing it 24 hours or declining it. In August, declining the offer meant that Mozilla might repeat it at some later date, something still possible after Thursday's offer.


"Right now, we're planning on doing one additional Major Update offer in early 2009, with slightly modified text that explains to users that (at that time) Firefox 2 will no longer be supported," said Mike Beltzner, director of Firefox, in an e-mail Tuesday.


As Beltzner noted, Mozilla plans to drop support for Firefox 2.0 after it releases a final set of security patches for the older browser; that update, Firefox 2.0.0.19, is now slated to appear two weeks from today, on Dec. 16. The last two security updates -- Firefox 2.0.0.17 and 2.0.0.18 -- patched a total of 26 vulnerabilities in October and November, respectively.

Some users reported problems with several Symantec Corp. consumer security products, including Norton 360, after updating to Firefox 3.0 in August. At the time, Symantec urged users to update their Norton-branded software on Windows PCs before trying to upgrade to Firefox 3.0.


Users who decide Thursday that they would rather return to the older version will still be able to download Firefox 2.0 from Mozilla's Web site and reinstall it.

source:pcworld.com

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