Web

Opera Free: Browser Give Away Permanent
Following their free-for-24-hour offer at the end of August, Opera Software has permanently removed the ad banner and licensing fee from its award-winning Web browser.
In an attempt to shake up the browser market – and regain ground lost to Firefox – the Norwegian software house has made the ad-free, full-featured Opera browser available for download – completely free of charge – at opera.com.
“Today we invite the entire Internet community to use Opera and experience Web browsing as it should be,” said Jon S. von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software.
“Removing the ad banner and licensing fee will encourage many new users to discover the speed, security and unmatched usability of the Opera browser.”
Previously, Opera was only available free if users were prepared to put up with a distracting ad banner stuck on the top of the browser interface, with the option to shell out for a $39 (£21.60, €32) licensing fee to remove the thing and receive premium support.
Not surprisingly, punters fed up with Internet Explorer’s well publicised security problems were far keener to try out the free Firefox browser than put up with Opera’s adverts. The Mozilla product now enjoys an 8 per cent market share.
Opera, however, can only muster 1 to 2 percent of the world’s Internet users, so they are hoping that by adopting Firefox’s freebie tactics they can substantially increase their user base.
“Our goal is to become on the desktop the number-two browser,” air-punched von Tetzchner.
The company expects to recoup lost sales revenue after striking deals with Google and other online search companies.
The deals will give Opera a cut of advertising revenues when, for example, a search typed into the browser’s built in search engine window is directed to Google advertising.
Von Tetzchner is confident that this advertising revenue will generate more than enough income to compensate for giving away Opera – if the company can persuade enough people to switch to their browser, of course.
As dry ice billowed around his feet and dramatic music filled the air, von Tetzchner bellowed out his pledge to the world: “As we grow our userbase, our mission and our promise remain steadfast: we will always offer the best Internet experience to our users – on any device. Today this mission gains new ground.”
It seems a bit of a gamble to us – both IE and Firefox are also available free of charge and without a huge marketing campaign we can’t see how they’re going to get enough users to switch from their far better known rival products.
Although we’re sticking with Firefox for now, there’s no denying that Opera is an excellent product and definitely worth downloading – especially now that it’s free!
The Opera browser is available in 20 languages and with the complete download weighing in at a bandwidth-unbothering 4MB, we recommend you give it a go!
20 September, 2005
UK Is Top Of The Bots
Once again, the UK has grabbed the number one slot on Top Of The Bots, possessing the world’s highest proportion of known bot-infected computers.
The figures from Symantec’s Global Internet Threat Report covers the first half of 2005 and reveals that almost a third (32 per cent) of virus-infected, zombie PCs- were located in the UK – substantially up on last year’s 26 per cent ranking.
Bots (short for ‘robots’) are software programs that sneakily install themselves on hapless users’ computers, allowing dastardly hackers to do beastly things remotely.
Infected computers can be used for malicious purposes such as phishing, spam, denial of service (DoS) attacks and other security risks such as spyware and adware.
Bot network activity is increasing faster than Wayne Rooney’s Yellow Card collection, with activity doubling from under 5,000 bots per day in December 2004 to an average of 10,352 in the report period.
Symantec puts this down to the huge rise in broadband subscriptions coupled with the delays in software patches for operating systems and software being made available.
Phishing continues to be a growth industry, with the daily average of phishing messages leaping from an average of 2.99 million messages a day to 5.70 million over the six month period covered by the report.
One out of every 125 e-mail messages scanned by Symantec Brightmail AntiSpam was a dodgy phishing attempt, up a thumping great 100 percent from the last half of 2004.
Dean Turner, senior manager of the Symantec Security Response team, commented: “Bot networks are valuable for a couple of reasons: One, because they allow for extremely rapid propagation, and two, because they provide a relatively high level of anonymity for providing attacks.”
Symantec’s biennial Internet Security Threat report revealed that London and Winsford (where?!), England, were the big cheeses of the bot-infected world, registering a shameful 8 percent and 5 percent of the world’s infected computers, respectively.
Seoul came in at third place with 4 percent, with the U.S. and China being the second and third largest providers of bot-infected systems, notching up 19 percent and 7 percent, respectively.
Symantec
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19 September, 2005
AP asap Says “Word Up!” To The Kids
Yo! Yo! Yo! Word! The Associated Press are getting hip and launching a news service for da yoot. Wicked, innit?!
On Monday, the near-ancient (well, 157 years old) newswire is launching its “younger audience service,” offering articles and “experiences” in multimedia formats, with audio, video, blogs and audience-participation features aimed at capturing the easily-distracted attention spans of a younger audience.
The hope is that all these interactive baubles will help entice the 70 million 18-to-34-year-olds in the US into becoming the next generation of news consumers by drawing them to AP’s member sites.
Naturally, farms of flapping flipcharts and masses of mood boards were employed as creative types toiled over their double mochas to come up with a suitably street name for the service, eventually christening it “asap”.
Apparently, the deal is that you pronounce the name letter by letter to “evoke the wire service’s legendary speed”. So don’t go upsetting those delicate designers by calling it “A Sap”
AP are claiming that the service will be “provocative, smart, relevant and immediate”, delivering the latest in news, entertainment, lifestyles, money and gadgets, and sports on a daily basis.
So far, more than 100 newspapers have signed up for asap, with the option to use the content for their online editions, print editions or both.
According to Ruth Gersh, project development manager for asap, none of the papers would be charging readers for asap’s content.
Although no specific charges have been publicly released, pricing for the service will depend on the circulation of the newspaper buying it.
Ted Anthony, the comparatively ancient 37-year-old editor of asap, said that original material will be included in the service, penned by a new staff of twenty mainly New York based journalists.
Giving an example of the sort of content that might be used, Anthony said that an AP reporter in Kazakhstan might file a news article for the wire but recount his journey in an audio clip for asap.
“We want to bring people closer to the news and closer to their world, and we do that by recognising that there are real people who are gathering the news; they aren’t simply automatic fact-gatherers,” commented Mr Anthony.
Learning from focus groups and prototypes that their target audience demands a sophisticated view of the world with a need to be engaged, the answer is, apparently, to use the word “you” more in their articles.
“We’re doing things the AP has never done, and we’re using the incredible global scope of this organisation to bring the most interesting stories in the world to people in entirely new ways,” said Anthony, spectacularly failing to fit in a single engaging “you” in his comment.
Associated Press
16 September, 2005
Firefox 1.5 Beta 1 Released
Mozilla have made their first preview of Firefox 1.5 Beta 1 – code named “Deer Park” – available to early adopters, Web developers and Extension writers.
The highly-rated open source browser already boasts over 80 million users, with its tabbed browsing, built in pop-up blocker and increased security making sizeable inroads into the market dominance of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.
Firefox 1.5 was originally scheduled for release in March 2005, but a second beta is now expected in the next month, followed by one or two release candidates before a full release “sometime before the end of the year”.
Chris Beard, products and marketing manager for Mozilla Corp, explained that the delay was due to the unexpected number of new features added to the browser.
“This ended up being a much bigger release than we originally planned,” he added.
The beta serves up several new features and improvements of existing tools, but Firefox are describing the new automatic updating as the “premier addition to 1.5”.
Much like Microsoft’s Automatic Update, Firefox 1.5 will automatically fetch program and security updates in the background and install them without user intervention. Naturally, this feature can be disabled, or users can specify that they are notified before installing patches.
Mike Schroepfer, Mozilla’s director of engineering said that automatic updating will reduce the size of patches by 10 to 20 times, explaining that the feature will remove the current requirement for users to download the entire browser to obtain fixes.
Firefox also promises faster browser navigation with improvements to back and forward button performance, the ability to re-arrange browser icons by drag-and-drop and more pop-up blocking options.
There’s improved security too, with a Clear Private Data feature making it easier for surreptitious surfers to quickly remove personal data through a menu item or keyboard shortcut.
Engineers at Firefox have ensured that the latest version of the browser is open-standard friendly, offering support for SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) 2 and 3, DHTML (Dynamic HTML) and JavaScript 1.6.
We were impressed with the improvements in the latest version, but it’s worth bearing in mind that as an early beta release there’s bound to be a few rough edges on display.
Anyone with a lot of Extensions installed, for example, may want to hold back for a while as many are currently incompatible with 1.5.
Mozilla has said that it will be providing up-to-date listing of developer extensions as they become compatible with Firefox 1.5 beta 1 at addons.mozilla.org . Mozilla were also forced to release a critical Firefox patch after a security vulnerability affecting all versions of Mozilla Firefox and the Mozilla Suite were publicly disclosed.
Firefox beta
You can download the patch from here
12 September, 2005
NSF GENI Project Looks To The Next-Generation Internet
The boffins at the US National Science Foundation (NSF) have proposed “re-engineering” the Internet to create a whizz-bang updated version that connects all kinds of devices with built in security and robustness.
With the government agency challenging researchers to look at the Internet as a “clean slate”, the NSF’s Global Environment for Networking Investigations (GENI) initiative proposes a research grant program and an experimental facility to test new Internet technologies.
NSF officials trumpeted the GENI project at a conference for the Special Interest Group on Data Communications in Philadelphia last week.
But before you get too excited about this new super-improved Internet being piped into your devices (ooo-er), NSF spokesman Richard “Randy” Vines has some news for you: it’s not yet funded and it’s only “an idea under consideration.”
With the Internet continuing to grow exponentially and with researchers predicting an explosion of data in the next decade from mobile and wireless devices as well as sensors, the GENI project intends to anticipate and envision the Internet society’s needs 15 years or more from now.
The goals of the GENI Initiative include a new core functionality for the Internet, with new naming, addressing, and identity architectures; enhanced capabilities, including additional security architecture and a design for high availability; and new Internet services and applications.
According to the NSF’s GENI Web page, the GENI project intends to “explore new networking capabilities that will advance science and stimulate innovation and economic growth,” adding, “The GENI Initiative responds to an urgent and important challenge of the 21st Century to advance significantly the capabilities provided by networking and distributed system architectures
The site also urges the enabling of “new classes of societal-level services and applications”. We’ve no idea what that means, but it sure sounds good to us.
Faster transmission speeds aren’t on the agenda of the GENI Project, however, with David Clark, a senior research scientist at the Laboratory for Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology sagely commenting, “Making a network faster has never made it more secure or easier to use.”
National Science Foundation
NSF Global Environment for Networking Investigations
2 September, 2005
Blokes More Stupid Online
Straight out of the text book of Thinly Veiled Product Placement Exercises comes this featherlight-fluff from StreamShield, who commissioned a survey asking the vital question: “Are women more sensible surfers?”
Somehow finding 1,005 adults across Britain prepared to answer the questions, the MORI survey discovered that female PC and Internet users are less likely to succumb to threats such as viruses and receive junk in their inboxes than male users.
The survey revealed that 46% of men reported that their PC had been infected with a virus compared with 38% of women, and 50% of men moaned about receiving excessive spam versus 38% of women.
In a statistic barely worth repeating, StreamShield’s report also tells us that men suffered more unwanted pop up ads than women (74% to 69% of women).
A total of 29% of blokes reported receiving a dodgy email from a bogus financial institution asking for their banking details, compared to 16% of female users.
When it comes to experiencing online fraud, it seems that the geezers were more gullible with 8% reporting that they’d been stung compared to just 4% of the ladies.
But it’s not all bad news for thicko blokes, with the survey claiming that the manly sex have a better overall awareness of Internet threats, with nearly all of them (97%) knowing what a computer virus was versus 92% of female users.
The same applies to other terms like Spyware (66% of men are aware of the term compared with 47% of women), Adware (51% men, 29% women), Phishing (37% men, 18% women) and Key loggers (27% men, 10% women).
Geoff Bennett, Director of Product Marketing at StreamShield insisted that the research proves that there is a clear difference between the male and female experience when online, suggesting that this may be due to the “two sexes may be using the Internet differently.”
(We think he means that many blokes tend to get their machines stuffed full of online nasties because of their undying attraction to Websites containing “artistic nudes.”)
Bennett wraps up his product-pushing survey by claiming that there’s “an education job that needs to be done across both genders as awareness of these threats overall is far too low and at the moment this is one battle of the sexes which men are evidently losing!”
Oh, and in case you missed it, StreamShield Networks provide Internet-based protection for email and the Web applications.
StreamShield
26 August, 2005
Shuffle Art Archives – Decorate Your iPod Shuffle, Free
Shortly after the launch of the Apple iPod shuffle, if not simultaneously, manufacturers were quick to jump on the bandwagon by producing and offering thin cases or skins.
I didn’t ever understand the point of this. I found the shuffle to be made of pretty tough stuff, quite happy knocking around in a pocket of change, with smudges wiping off easily.
Not only that, but it attacked one of the very things that I found desirable about the shuffle. Being a male of a certain age, I liked the way I could wear it under my tops and it didn’t add to the girth of my waist. Adding a case around the shuffle would extend my wait by a few additional millimeters.
Many of you will also have seen the devoted souls who have been arranging a packet of chewing gum around their shuffle, aping the comparison that Apple used at its launch, when the Apple product evangelists held the shuffle up with the packet of gum.
NB. At the UK press launch the US Appleittes brought US gum packets over with them, noted with some amusement by some of the assembled hacks.
Well, I’ve just come across an alternative to buying a cover.
Design your own shuffle cover Shuffle Art Archives is an enterprising Japanese Web site which has assembled collections of designs for decorative stickers that you can apply to your little white pride and joy.
It brings together all of the aspects of shuffle decoration – make your own; share your designs; and photo galleries of others designs.
Once you have downloaded your blank shuffle-sized templates as Photoshop file or GIF, you are then free to decorate, upload and share with your fellow shuffle customisers.
User Generated Content doesn’t just have to be digital.
Designs to Download The libraries of designs cover a really impressive range of designs and styles. These are easy to preview and download for you to print out to sticky-backed printer paper for your use.
Most of the designs for download leave the round controls uncovered, as I would assume that the print would wear out with use and it is possible that not seeing the functions of the keys could confuse the owner.
Rather than ignoring this large circle, a couple designs make use of the circular gap left in the print. One of particular note is Crow’s who uses an open mouth to surround the controls.
Another treats the shuffle as a phone, displaying the numbered keys in the lower section, with the controls taking the position of the ear piece
While some people take the simple approach and cover only one face of the player, others are more devoted and produce stickers for each of the exposed surfaces.
Once created or downloaded, they can be printed out on to sticky paper and applied to your virginal-white shuffle.
The quality of some of them is extraordinarily high. Two by Thomas Hui, could almost be sponsored version of the shuffle for the Basketball league.
Gallery The final part in the jigsaw is a photo gallery showing how enthusiastic people have been in customising their pride and joys.
As with the other sections, the range and quality is highly impressive with quite a few playfully mocking trade names such as a Sony battery, and a packet of Viagra.
As you might tell, I’m pretty enthused about the site – providing the tools to make your own covers and providing the inspiration to do it.
Shufflesome – has turned this idea into a business, even using RSS to alter you when new designed (or Outfits as they call them) becoming available.
Again, an impressive site with good designs – but of course you have to pay them for it!
Shuffle Art Archives
Shufflesome
19 August, 2005
AOL Gives Away Spammer’s Bounty
AOL is giving away hundreds of thousands of dollars of gold, cash and goods seized from a spammer as a warning to anyone thinking of “making a living sending spam to AOL members”.
In a story sure to win the hearts of anyone who faces a daily deluge of spam, AOL will be dishing out nearly US$100,000 (£56,000, €80,550) worth of gold bars and cash along with a fully loaded Hummer H2 – all the former property of an email marketer.
The US internet giants scooped the bounty as part of a settlement against a New Hampshire resident in a lawsuit filed under the Can-Spam Act.
AOL sued the (then) 20 year old spammer in March 2004 after several months of investigation, accusing the spammer of making a career of mass mailing millions of messages offering “ephedra, male enhancement pills and other dubious products”.
The company said it managed to close down the dastardly spammer’s 40-computer enterprise thanks to help from its members, who enthusiastically clicked a “report spam button” to register their complaints.
The controversial Can-Spam Act provides Internet service providers with enough legal resources to get medieval on the outboxes of unsolicited e-mailers.
Under the Act, courts have the power to seize any property that a convicted spammer has obtained using money made through the offence, as well as grabbing computer equipment, software and technology used for illicit purposes.
AOL members and non-members living in the mainland US can sign up online for a chance at winning the goods until the 19 August, with the lucky winner announced shortly after.
“But this isn’t just a ‘thank you’ to members,” the company said in a statement. “It also serves as a message to anyone thinking of making a living sending spam to AOL members: AOL will find you and sue you.”
Thanks to its aggressive mo’fo’ antispam filters, AOL has claimed that spam on their servers has fallen by more than 85 percent since its peak in late 2003.
AOL hasn’t finished with the New Hampshire mob yet though, with one of the spammer’s co-conspirators – believed to have a cool US$500,000 (£277,450, €404,750) stashed away – declared the “next stop on our spammer treasure map,” according to company spokesman, Nicholas Graham.
The US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Alexandria has also issued a US$13m (£7.21m, €10.46m) judgment against other members of the New Hampshire resident’s gang.
AOL plans to donate the “high-end” computer equipment seized from the New Hampshire spammer to public schools near its headquarters in Northern Virginia.
It’s been a bad time for spammers recently, with Microsoft reaching a US$7m (£3.88m, €5.64m) settlement with former “spam king” Scott Richter, with the US$1m (£0.55m, €0.80m) of the payout being earmarked for community centres in New York and US$5m (£2.77m, €4.03m) being invested in efforts to fight Internet crime.
AOL Spam FAQ
AOL Spam Decisions and Litigation
11 August, 2005
Opera Releases Opera Mini Browser For Phones
Norwegian browser brewers, Opera Software, have announced Opera Mini, a J2ME (Java 2 Mobile Edition) Web browser for “virtually all mobile phones”.
Their new Opera Mini enables Web access on more than 700 million low to mid-tier Java-capable phones around the world, with the company trumpeting that it will “finally bring mobile Internet into the mainstream”.
Opera Mini is being marketed as a fast and easy alternative to Opera’s Mobile browser, allowing users to access the Web on mobiles that would normally be unable to run a Web browser.
Weighing in at a slimline 60K the Mini is a mere slip of a thing compared to its big brother Mobile browser which hogs anything between 1MB and 4MB of precious phone memory.
The browser makes up for the feeble firepower of low end phones by using a remote server to pre-process Web pages before sending them to the phone, rather than trying to get the phone to process the pages.
The ‘mini-me’ pages will offer standard browsing capabilities like bookmarks and browsing history, but won’t provide full access to some complex Web pages with advanced security features and other such gizmos.
“Mobile Web surfing has until now been limited to more advanced phones that are capable of running a browser,” says Jon S. von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software.
“With Opera Mini, the phone only has to run a small Java-client and the rest is taken care of by the remotely located Opera Mini server. With Opera Mini you don’t have to have an advanced phone to surf the Web, which means that most people can use it with their existing phones.”
Installing Opera Mini seems simple enough, with users blasting off an SMS message or clicking on a link through their WAP browser to receive the application.
With the Opera Mini making the Web available to low to mid-tier phones, there’s huge potential for operators to scoop up revenue by offering compelling mobile Web services to entice subscribers.
With this in mind, the browser can be customised for operators, broadcasters, mobile content providers and the Internet industry.
Patriotically, Norway’s leading commercial television station, TV2, have already bundled Opera Mini with its mobile services in Norway to offer its viewers a complete mobile content package with a branded Web browser.
“Finally we see how we can generate revenue from real mobile browsing,” says Morten Holst, VP Strategy, TV2 Interactive. “By introducing TV2’s portal through Opera Mini (TM) we have combined the best of mobile services with mobile Web access.”
Opera Mini will be available to consumers through operators and companies who elect to include it in their offerings.
It’s currently part of a pilot project in Norway, with wider availability yet to be announced.
Opera Mini
11 August, 2005
Sony’s Japanese Artists Rebel Over iTunes
It used to be that artists rebelled against the system, the government, the breadheads and The Man, but artists signed to Sony in Japan are fighting their label’s decision not to make their songs available through the iTunes Music Store.
Bravely battling for his rights to, err, ensure maximum return on his product, Sony-signed rock musician Motoharu Sano has made a brave stance and made some of his songs available on Apple’s service, saying, “It is an individual’s freedom where that person chooses to listen to music. I want to deliver my music wherever my listeners are.”
Sony Music spokesman Yasushi Ide was unimpressed, saying that Sano is no longer considered “a Sony artist,” with future negotiations deciding whether his recordings under the Sony label will be offered at iTunes or not.
The outcome will depend on each contract, and talks are continuing, Sano added.
iTunes has proved an enormous hit in Japan, with customers clamoring to download over a million songs in just four days.
With several Japanese labels, notably Sony, failing to reach a deal with Apple, artists signed to those labels look set to miss out on the lucrative download market.
Talks between the two electronic giants Sony and Apple are believed to be continuing to resolve the problem.
Apple’s closed DRM system is believed to be a bone of contention, with Sony thought to have asked iTunes to provide downloads in its own ATRAC format, compatible with its Network Walkman range of portable players.
For the time being however, Sony’s failure to provide a credible alternative to the iTunes service looks set to continue to cause friction between their record company and artists.
Musicians Work to Join iTunes in Japan [AP]
10 August, 2005