Category: Web

Company Websites Spreading Spyware

Symantec are warning web surfers of a new trend in spyware and adware infections – visitors to a number of corporate websites are getting a bit more than they bargained for.

It’s claimed that organised crime groups in Eastern Europe are hacking corporate sites and installing code that takes advantage of two flaws in Internet Explorer to install spyware and other unwanted applications on visitors’ PCs without their knowledge. Spyware can be used to harvest personal details about a computer owner such as bank details, whilst adware can be used to hijack browsers and display unwanted advertising to users.

Microsoft has not yet released a patch for the flaws, leaving millions of PCs open to infection. Although the browser flaw is well publicised, there is still some confusion surrounding how hackers are installing the script on web servers running Microsoft’s IIS service in the first place.

The ISC incidents site reports: “We still do not know how the IIS servers are originally infected with the JavaScript or the modification to the configuration files… The visitor’s browser is re-directed to the Russian URL listed below [Ed: Clearly we’re not showing this] where a known Trojan program (msits.exe) is downloaded, along with some additional malware. Again, if the user’s machine is updated with current AV software, this malware is detected and blocked.”

Without listing the companies responsible for spreading the infection, they state surprise that the unwitting culprits “include businesses that we presume would normally be keeping their sites fully patched.”

Free anti-spyware and anti-virus software:

Ad-aware

AVG anti-virus software

A browser with less security holes in it:

Mozilla 1.7

Hotmail Enters the Storage Wars

Hotmail is the latest contender to offer large amounts of storage to its subscribers – up to 2 gigabytes if you pay a US$19.95 (€16.46) subscription. Users of the free Hotmail service will get 250mb, as a response to GMail’s 1 gig, advertising-funded, service.

By GMail’s standards, 250mb seems almost mean, but then Hotmail aren’t going after the “never delete anything” crowd. The new 2 gig incarnation of Hotmail will be called Hotmail Plus, and will allow users to send attachments of up to 20mb – and will have no graphical adverts on the web frontend.

As a bonus, all 170 million subscribers will get email anti-virus checking and MSN Calendar. It’s about time that the anti-virus product was integrated as that’ll cut down on much of the infected spam that is flooding mailboxes worldwide. A frightening release from BT yesterday stated “46% of all email traffic in Europe will be spam in 2004 and by 2008 this will rise to 71%.”

Interestingly, a Neilsen report in May had the number of Hotmail subscribers down at around 34 million.

Hotmail Plus

European iTunes Stores Sell 800,000 Tracks in One Week

There was a distinct lack of surprised faces yesterday at Apple’s announcement that their European iTunes stores sold a total of 800,000 tracks in their first week of operation.

The most popular store was the UK version, accounting for 450,000 tracks out of the total. In the week that OD2 was acquired by Loudeye, iTunes sold 16 times more tracks than its closest competitor. Best cash that cheque as fast as you can, Peter. No figures are available from Napster.

One ploy for attracting sales was to release the first new track for 13 years from the Pixies exclusively on iTunes, though I’d like to see how much direct impact this had as there can’t be that many Pixies fans left still alive.

iTunes

Loudeye Acquires OD2

Loudeye, a business to business digital media company has acquired Peter Gabriel and Charles Grimsdale’s On Demand Distribution (OD2) business.

The move will effectively double Loudeye’s revenue, and has created the world’s largest digital media company.

OD2 provide outsourced digital distribution for companies like Coca Cola when they want to launch an online music store. Customers include HMV, MyCokeMusic and Wannadoo, but combined Loudeye and OD2 will have more than 200 customers across the world.

Jeff Cavins, Loudeye’s president and chief executive officer said in a statement: “By combining with OD2, the leading digital music service provider in Europe, we become the largest business-to-business digital media provider in the world with the largest licensed digital music catalogue in the industry,” “This significantly strengthens our solutions for our customers globally and immediately expands our customer relationships and partner opportunities. Together OD2 and Loudeye deliver a powerful, next-generation digital media platform to enable companies to launch complete digital music offerings around the world. In addition, this will globalize Loudeye’s content management, piracy protection and promotion services and will enable us to leverage OD2’s broad reach and strong customer relationships to expand our business into new markets.”

“OD2 and Loudeye share virtually identical goals, vision and passion for the future of digital music and I see tremendous opportunities for our combined company to drive digital media deployments worldwide,” said Charles Grimsdale, co-founder and chief executive officer of OD2. “Our proven success managing the specific challenges of pan-European digital media deployments will be a strong asset for Loudeye and significantly raises the barriers to entry for other service providers looking to enter the European market. Furthermore, Loudeye will enable us to offer a much broader range of new services to our current customers and extend our capabilities into such fast growing areas as the wireless arena.”

With online music sales across Europe predicted to reach €1.3 billion by 2007, there is a lot at stake in the industry – expect more mergers and disappearances over the next 18 months.

On Demand Distribtion

Loudeye

Happy Birthday, DNS

The domain name service, DNS, is 21. If the service hadn’t been invented by Dr Paul Mockapetris, you’d be looking up internet protocol numbers manually, almost like using a phone directory.

“The idea was to devise a way for Internet users to communicate freely with each other through an easy to operate system. Having to remember a long numerical code was not feasible as more users joined the Internet community,” said Dr Paul Mockapetris. “One of our goals was to develop a system that would allow global networking and information exchange. One of the ultimate successes of the domain name is that it is a universal every day language for Internet users across all continents.”

Dr Mockapteris (now I’ve told you his name, you’re not going to forget it, are you?) worked on the system with the late Dr Postel as part of ARPANET, and is now chief scientist and chairman of Nominum, an internet address management provider.

He predicts even greater things are yet to come for his offspring: “This year alone more than a billion users will interact with DNS to do everything from send emails, to browse web pages, or track inventory through RFID. In the next five years, I expect to see a dramatic increase in the number of ways in which the DNS is used, reaching far beyond what we have seen in the past twenty-one.”

Nominum

Nokia Invests in Mozilla Mobile Browser Project

Nokia has funded a new mobile phone browser project at Mozilla, giving a boost to the browser company and launching a new front in the battle for the mobile internet.

Minimo is already at pre-alpha stage, and looks like it will be available by Autumn.

Mozilla have had a stormy time in their six years or so of existence, including three mergers and a dwindling market share. However, their new product Firefox has been generating a lot of interest, though nine out of ten surfers still use Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

This new browser is a big opportunity for Mozilla: the battle for the most popular mobile phone web browser is still to be won, particularly in the USA where cellphone internet browsing is nascent. Phone browsers have unique technical difficulties to surmount to make them useful – small displays, low bandwidth, less memory, less processing power. Yet despite these hurdles Microsoft, Opera, Fusion, NetClue and many others are fighting to make their own particular browser the market winner.

Up until Firefox, Mozilla browsers were not known for their compact size and speed – their first effort drew howls of derision and claims of bloated code, and so everyone just went back to using IE or Safari.

Hurt by all the shouts of “tubby” and “porker”, the 9mb Mozilla suite hid itself for a few months before appearing back on the scene after a makeover – and as the Firefox browser, it wowed critics with its svelt responsiveness and dedication to web standards, all in less than 5mb.

To be in with a chance at winning the phone web browser beauty contest, Mozilla will have to get the chainsaw out and start slashing away at its codebase.

Mozilla

Nokia

Neilsen Report: Game Websites Provide Stickiest Content

Websites offering online games like Solitaire and Bingo are the stickiest places on the internet, according to a new report from Neilsen//NetRatings (whatever committee thought up that cheesy // gets a slap from me).

46 million (that’s 1 in 3) Americans visited sites like Slingo to buy and download mini-games like Crazy 7s and Amazing Snail. Slingo is now one of the stickiest sites on the internet with surfers spending an average of four hours a month playing cards and throwing turtles. Even jigzone.com, offering free online jigsaw puzzles manages to trap people for an hour and a half of picture-rearranging fun per month.

But it’s not just playing the games, people like to read about them too – which explains why EA Online and MSN Games are so popular.

“The diversity of online game offerings showcases the popularity of games in the U.S.,” said Kaizad Gotla, an internet analyst at Nielsen//NetRatings. “Ranging from sites that offer original games to content sites that offer the latest information on popular console and PC games, the gaming industry’s presence online is indisputable.”

And who is it that’s playing cards, being amazed by snails and lobbing these turtles around? Middle aged American women: 15% of visitors to mini-games sites are American women between the ages of 35 and 49.

“Contrary to popular belief, the online games category is not dominated by males or by teens,” says Gotla. “Rather, the popularity of online games appeals to a broad demographic online, especially among middle-aged women.”

So look out for some exciting new games coming from Digital Lifestyles: first up Cat Food Challenge and Polyester Panic.

Jigzone – strangely relaxing

Slingo

Neilsen NetRatings

Microsoft Planning Paid Anti-virus Service

In a move that is sure to be unpopular with many, Microsoft quietly let slip that it is working on an anti-virus subscription service. MS recently acquired anti-virus company GeCAD in June 2003, and this is the first sign that it is working to release a product based on its acquisition.

Mike Nash, corporate VP for security at Microsoft said at a dinner with journalists in Seattle “I want to make sure customers have another choice. Some people will continue to use Symantic, and some will use ours.” Symantic’s share price then slid down 5% almost immediately.

Many people are furious that Microsoft is looking to make money out of a problem that is related to the many security flaws in its products, and considered to be perpetuated by poor coding in MS software such as Outlook and Internet Explorer.

Microsoft will have to tread carefully with this one – even if they make their product free and bundle it with Windows, thus providing maximum protection, they will probably be accused of anti-competitive practices and end up in court.

Oh, the irony.

Microsoft’s security site

AVG – free anti-virus software

Euro iTunes – The Next Day

There are, I’m told, 700,000 tracks available in iTunes. That certainly does sound like a lot. What are they, though? I must confess, my first few searches came up blank. There I was, yesterday, having just subscribed, thinking “I’m 35. Technologically savvy. iPod owner. Credit card. I AM the physically embodiment of the demographic that iTunes is aimed at.”

But I couldn’t find any of my favourite artists. Later on in the day, my friend Neil happily told me what the problem was: I listen to weird stuff that no-one is going to put in a music store launch.

That’ll be it then. No Autechre. No God Speed You Black Emperor. Certainly no Plaid. Oh well.

But plenty of the Darkness and the Corrs. But where’s The The? Only four tracks from Brian Eno?

Anyway, on with the shopping. I adjusted my expectations that iTunes would offer me every track I’d ever wanted and started to treat it like a mid-sized branch of Fopp.

And suddenly it became a lot better.

Signing up was a little random – I entered my details on no less than three separate occasions during the day, seemingly without a hitch. But after the service was finally happy that it really did have my credit card details, I was off to hit Mastercard for lots of multiples of 79p.

Perhaps Apple would care to explain why British subscribers pay 79p (€1.19) for a track and our European neighbours pay €0.99? Is it a reward because they’re better at football, or is it because British music execs have more expensive lunches to pay for?

Navigating through the iTunes store is incredibly easy – and a handy breadcrumb trail will lead you back down each level, from track to artist to genre to home. You can’t get lost, and this has to be the easiest music store navigation out there. Compare it to MyCokeMusic, which had me punching my TFT before I gave up and wrote the rest of my £10 off.

Celebrity play lists are a great idea – featured artists list a CD’s worth of tracks and they’re right there to buy – though there are only five playlists at the moment, and one of those is from Moby.

And that’s it, really – that’s all you can say about it: it works fantastically well and it’s easy. Click on the track you want and it’s downloaded. Then it’s on your iPod and you’re listening to it on the bus.

I suppose it’s expected with a catalogue this size, but there are a few howlers in the track information – weren’t they given the info directly from the labels, or did some work experience person at Apple US shuffle 70,000 CDs into a PC? Even the most casual scout through the store throws up listing errors frequently – my personal favourite being the David Sylvian track “Taking the Evil”. It is, in fact, called “Taking the Veil”, and is about a completely different thing altogether. Freudian slip?

In short, if your music tastes are similar to 95% of the nation then you’ll get along just fine here – iTunes really is an amazing achievement. If you normally buy your music in a petrol station, then you’ll be laughing. You know who you are, Dido fans.

If you’d had an iPod since day one, then suddenly it all makes sense.

Definitely the best and cheapest (but not by enough) music store out there.

Apple iTunes

European iTunes Launches – UK79p or €0.99

Apple’s much-awaited iTunes store has launched in Europe, and is setting a new price for music.

Offering 700,000 songs for UK79p and €0.99, the price point is considerably less than Napster UK, who last month claimed to us that wholesale prices where the cause behind their UK£1.09 (€1.62) basic price. Most iTunes albums will cost UK£7.99 (€12). However, iTunes UK is rather more than its US equivalent, famous for its US99c price for single tracks.

Also, note that UK79p is actually €1.19 by today’s exchange rate, so UK music buyers are getting fleeced yet again.

iTunes has one of the best set of consumer rights behind any music site, allowing users to play a track on up to five different devices along with unlimited CD burning.

Due to massive interest, the iTunes store is being a little unresponsive at the moment – we’ll be logging in later and taking it for a proper test spin.

AOL chose today to announce that they have formed a partnership with Apple to integrate iTunes into their product. The main advantage for AOL will be single-click registration, with free downloads promotions and iPod competitions.

Apple Launches iTunes