You may have heard of the new trend towards Smart TVs, which are also known as Internet connected televisions. But why would you want a SmartTV? Should you ditch your old television set and run out and buy a Smart TV? Will you be missing out if you don't have an Internet connected TV? Here's what you need to know about Smart TVs, and the alternatives, such as a Smart DVD player or a set top streaming Internet media player.
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You may have heard of the new trend towards Smart TVs, which are also known as Internet connected televisions. But why would you want a SmartTV? Should you ditch your old television set and run out and buy a Smart TV? Will you be missing out if you don't have an Internet connected TV? Here's what you need to know about Smart TVs, and the alternatives, such as a Smart DVD player or a set top streaming Internet media player. If you are using a Gmail calendar (actually a Google calendar), but are used to creating your calendar events on your computer rather than directly in the Google calendar interface, you may have gotten used to being able to create a "custom" repeating interval for your events (such as every X days or every other week, instead of every week or every month). Then, when you need to create an event with a custom repeat interval in the Google calendar interface, you may be perplexed at the seeming lack of the ability to create a custom interval. It's actually easy to do, but like so many other things designed by Google's engineers - and there's the problem, they think like engineers, not like mere mortals - it isn't obvious. Here's how to do it. Is Facebook not loading for you properly? If your problem isn't that Facebook is down, or that you can't get to the site, but that the page isn't loading everything (and especially if several Facebook pages aren't loading everything), the problem may not be on Facebook's end (exactly) but with your computer. Or, put more properly, Facebook may have tweaked something on its end that has caused software on your computer to need to be updated in order to play nicely with Facebook again. Does your effort to load Facebook result in something that looks like this?: Myspace (yes, they are still around, believe it or not) has settle charges with the Federal Trade Commission over Myspace's alleged misleading of their users as to how Myspace was handling user personal information. Put plainly, Myspace was sharing the personal information of their users with advertisers, but misleading users about how they were using their personal information. The Lieberman Collins "Cybersecurity and Internet Freedom Act" (CIFA) - so designated because the proposed law is being sponsored by Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, and co-sponsored by Senator Susan Collins of Maine and also Senator Tom Carper of Delaware (and perhaps, more strategically important, supported by the Obama administration), is intended to help tighten up cyber security and thwart cyber attacks. Ironically, however, say opponents, this 'Internet freedom act' means exactly the opposite for businesses, particularly businesses that are designated as "critical infrastructure" companies. That is because CIFA would mandate - require - businesses to meet a Federal standard of network security, and out of their own pocket. (The full text of the proposed legislation is below.) At last, Facebook is leveraging their massive influence on the population for a good cause. Facebook is trying to boost organ donation by including a new status: organ donor. In addition, they are pushing the initiative, to encourage people to sign up to be organ donors. And it's working. Unfortunately, you can only update your status if you have caved to the new "Timeline" feature (which many of us have not - but that's ok for us, as we have been organ donors for decades). If you have a Starbucks card, and aren't already using the Starbucks app for iPhone or the Starbucks app or Android, well, you really should give it a try. And it isn't just because Starbucks cards add to the bulk in your wallet - and it isn't just because the Starbucks app allows you to find the closest Starbucks store when you are jonesing for some Starbucks coffe (although the Starbucks location finder is pretty sweet), lets you check open jobs at Starbucks, lets you store your best Starbucks drink in the app, or lets you send Starbucks gifts (even reloading someone else's Starbucks card!). No, in our opinion you want the "my Starbucks card" app, because not only does it let you do a Starbucks card reload right on the spot (including using Paypal!), but it let's you consolidate all of your Starbucks card balances onto one card - even from Starbucks cards you may have lost and not seen for years! Microsoft announced today that it has taken an interest in the Kindle competitor, Barnes & Noble's Nook e-reader. That is, a $300 million interest. That is how much Microsoft has announced that they are investing in the Barnes & Noble device. They have also announced Windows 8 will come pre-loaded with a Nook app. A new iPhone and Android app, FlyRights (not FlyRight, which is confusingly another iPhone application which allows you to use social media to provide feedback to the airlines) allows users who feel that they have been the the victim of racial profiling by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to immediately - on the spot - file a complaint (via the FlyRights app - hence "Fly Rights") with both the TSA and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). A recent report from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), following a 17-month investigation, reveals that, contrary to what Google's position had been all this time, Google actually knew that their Street View drive-bys were sucking down people's personal data through any open wifi routers that the Street View van encountered. And not just a little bit - but for nearly three years, between 2007 and 2010. Private data that was harvested from individuals includes email (the full text of!), passwords, sites visited, and other sensitive information. Until now Google had always maintained that they didn't realize it was happening, and that it was an accident wraught by a single engineer at Google. Turns out that supervisors knew all along that it was going on. While the FCC concludes that Google did not break any laws, there was a heck of a lot of invasion of privacy going on, and, in addition, Google was slapped with a $25,000 fine for obstructing the investigation. A UK-based company, Masabi, that provisions ticketless ticketing via smartphones and other mobile phones for trains in the UK, will be bringing its service to the U.S. this summer. Boston's train system, run by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) will be giving the Masabi system a trial run this summer and, assuming all goes as expected, the Masabi service will be deployed system-wide in the fall. Google announced Google Drive yesterday. No, this isn't about Google's Self-Driving car, it is essentially a way to store your files in the cloud (Google's cloud) and to share them with others. There are a few things to keep in mind, however, before diving into this cloud. As we mentioned last week, Facebook's IPO (initial public offering) was expected mid May. However, reports are surfacing that it may now be at least June before Facebook has their IPO. Here's why. People going directly to Google to perform a search (who does that any more?..but we digress) were curious to find a big Google zipper going from the top of their screen to the bottom of the screen. More interesting was the fact that they could grab the pull tab on the zipper and unzip the screen, which then revealed a Google search for Gideon Sundback (more properly "Gideon Sundbäck") who, while not the father of the zipper - as he didn't invent it - was the one who made the zipper an everyday item; thus we dub him the Uncle of the Zipper. At some point you may have a reason to want to do a factory reset and restore on an Android T-Mobile MyTouch 4G - maybe you are selling the phone and want to erase all personal data from the phone, or maybe you are gifting the phone to someone and want to wipe everything off it. Whatever the reason, unlike many other devices, there is no easy setting that allows you to perform a factory reset on a MyTouch 4G. Here are instructions, along with one key screenshot, for how to restore your MyTouch 4G to factory settings. If you have been searching for cloud-based online backup solutions, and in particular if you are looking for safe, free online backup services or cloud storage, then your best bet may be to create your very own free online backup solution, creating your own backup and storage solution in your own cloud. (This is particularly true given the recent court decision that says that agencies don't need a warrant to access your personal data if it is stored in a cloud storage service.) You can even create your own DropBox style folders to share your files with others! You will need to make a small investment up front, but we show you how to do it, and you can do it for under $175 total - less than you would pay many online backup services in just the first year. A Federal court in San Jose has rejected Apple's request for a dismissal of the class action lawsuit against Apple initiated by an angry parent whose child was able to purchase $200 worth of in-app purchases through a free app. Garen Meguerian, the lead plaintiff in the case, says that his daughter was able to purchase the $200 worth of "zombie toxin" and "gems" without his knowledge or permission. We've been hearing reports of the LTE 4G iPad going to sleep connected to 4G, but not finding it again upon waking up. In fact, we often experience it ourselves - we will be working on the 4G iPad, and then either 'sleep it' with the button or simply let it go to sleep on its own - and when we wake it up again, it will have full bars of service, but no 4G. It's annoying, but not fatal, and here are the easiest ways to deal with it. Now you can own a little piece - no, scratch that - a big piece of computer history, for your own, for less than $10.00! This compilation of more than 120 articles, from the Best of Creative Computing, circa 1978, is sure to appeal to and fascinate geeks of all persuasions: science fiction buffs, science fact buffs, technology history buffs, educators, and just average Joes who find this sort of thing interesting. It is at once a fabulous overview and review of both computing history, and computer predictions of the future. Now you can look back from that future, boggle at how far we have come, and marvel at who got it right, and who got it oh-so-wrong. All for just $9.99! If you have been searching for a way to add an attachment - such as to attach an image - to an email in an iPhone, and think that you must be crazy because you can't figure it out, well, you're not crazy. While there is a way to email an image from the iPhone by first selecting the image, then hitting "email it", there is in fact no obvious way on an iPhone or iPad to attach an image or other file to an already-existing email. And that, we think, is the crazy thing. In any other email application, and on any other smartphone (particularly Android) there is usually an "attach" button right in the email window! But not on the iPhone. But, there is a way to attach an image or other attachment in an iPhone, it's just not obvious. Here it is. While it's often fine to leave all of the apps running on your iPhone or iPad, sometimes, for various reasons, you want to completely shut down an app , i.e. kill it, stop it from running, or close it. It's actually really easy to completely close an iPhone app (or an iPad app), but this is another one of those things that, while easy, is not obvious. So here is a step-by-step tutorial (only 3 steps!) to completely shut down and stop an app from running. Up until now Mac owners have been relatively safe (and smug) when it came to the infectability of their computers. Worms, trojans, viruses, and other malware were considered to be primarily the domain of Windows. That may have changed last week, however, when the Russian security company, Dr. Web, reported that as many as a half a million Macs are already infected with what is being called the "Flashback Trojan". Here's how to know if you have Flashback Trojan, and how to get rid of Flashback Trojan. Yahoo's newest CEO, Scott Thompson, announced today the laying off of 2000 employees. According to Thompson, the layoffs will save Yahoo $375 million a year. Hrmmm, we think we see part of the reason that Yahoo is losing so much money. If you have wanted to add OCR (optical character recognition) to your iPhone or iPad, well have we got a treat for you! This free app will let you take a picture of the text you want to OCR recognize, and then it will email you the OCRed text (along with a copy of the image), within mere moments! Examples and link to this free iPhone app are below! If you are getting a lot of email from Amazon, besides order confirmations, and wondering why, this may be the reason (and here's what to do about all that email you are getting from Amazon). Many of us take free wifi at coffee shops for granted. Many, if not most - or even all - coffee shops now offer free wifi, and lots of people don't give it a second thought before connecting to and using the free wifi. Some people even make a point of going to a coffee shop and using their wifi rather than using their own home wifi, particulary if they are going to do something of questionable legality. But even if you are not planning on doing anything illegal, certain actions on your part while logged onto the coffee shop's wireless Internet could cause that coffee shop to have their Internet services suspended! Betcha never thought of that before, did you? The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has fined game developer RockYou.com $250,000 for, among other things, failing to adequately secure their customers' user data. While the FTC slammed Rock You for COPPA (the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act rule) violations, in part because RockYou collected information from children under the age of 13 without parental consent, the Feds made a point of noting that "the company's security failures put users' including children's personal information at risk" while at the same time claiming that they had adequate security measures in place. Adequate security measures our foot! They stored their user data in plain - i.e. unencrypted - text! The FTC settlement and fine follows a 2 year investigation into the hacking of RockYou servers in 2009 which exposed the date of 32 million users. If you get frustrated when your iPhone screen switches from the upright position (known as "portrait" view) to the horizontal orientation (known as "landscape" view) at the slightest change swivel of your wrist, you may have gone searching for a way to lock the orientation so that doesn't happen. On the iPad, there is an external button to lock the orientation of the screen, but on the iPhone that same button serves the mute function. Here's how to lock your iPhone screen so that it is locked in the portrait orientation. Ever wondered how many emails you have sent from Gmail or received at or through Gmail? Curious about what percentage of the time you are online with your laptop versus your phone or tablet? Perhaps more importantly, how about monitoring from what geographic locations your Google account has been accessed? Or maybe you are just curious about how much Google is keeping tabs on you. Now all of this, and more, is possible, with the new Google Account Activity Reports. As part of our iPad series, we would like to introduce you to what we believe, hands-down, is the best iPad drawing game app out there. It also happens to be a fabulous iPhone and Android drawing game. The game is called "Draw Something", and it is a cross between Pictionary and Boggle (mostly Pictionary, with a little Boggle thrown in). Warning: Draw Something is very addictive! But it's also a game where you are interacting with others, and using your brain. And there is even a free version! Direct link included below. If you have an iPad 2 or iPad 3 you may be wondering just where the heck the mute button is. On the iPad, original flavor, it used to be that little slider button next to the volume up and down rocker button. But now that button has been changed to the "lock/don't lock" screen orientation button (while on the iPhone that button is the mute button and you'll be looking for how to lock your screen orientation). But fear not, there is a mute button, it's just, well, hidden. Here is how to mute your iPad 2 or iPad 3: For those of you who are thinking "Hrmm...Sunday is April 1st - Google Self-Driving Car, April 1 - uh huh", well, it's no joke. No fooling. In fact, we saw the Google self-driving car ourselves this week; it drove right past us! More and more, people are performing web searches on their smart phones. It's great to be able to do that, but it also can be frustrating to try to find what you're looking for on that tiny screen, or without the full tools available to you with a keyboard or mouse. For example, how can you easily search for and jump to a particular word or term that's down towards the bottom of a web page, and not visible at the top of the page? One of the biggest (and indeed only) frustrations for people who use the iPad (be it iPad 2, iPad 3, or originally flavor iPad) for business, or even for personal email use if you don't use a Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL or other webmail address) is that the native mail app on the iPad will only use your webmail address as your "From" address, even if you have a different default email address set within your webmail app. For example, your Gmail address may be example@gmail.com, but you may have example@yourdomain.com set as your default "From:" address in Gmail, and Gmail will honor that, but the mail app on your iPad will insist on sending your email 'from' your example@gmail.com address instead of your default example@yourdomain.com address. There is no way to change that default "from" address on your iPad. But it turns out that there is a way to beat your iPad into submission, and to set your default "from" address to whatever you would prefer it to be. Here's how. With the rash of deadly tornados recently, not to mention thunderstorms, blizzards, and wind storms, there are plenty of reasons to want to be able to get an urgent or emergency local weather alert - or even a national weather alert - wherever you are. Sure, you could carry a portable weather radio, but it turns out that the best sever weather alarm radio is... your phone! Weather apps turn your iPhone or Android phone into an emergency alert weather radio, and provide you with mobile weather alerts. Instead of an actual weather radio, your 'weather smartphone' will be your best weather alert radio; it fits in your pocket, will send you a weather alert text message, and provide you with weather radar and a weather map (unlike a radio). And even if you don't get a severe weather text alert for weeks or months (and who wouldn't like that?), it will gives you weather forecasts, weather conditions, and those great weather maps. So, what is the best weather app for the iPhone? Or the best weather application for the Android? Happily, the best iPhone weather app and the best weather phone app for Android are, in our opinion, the same one! Nearly ever everyone knows about the big bust in January when the Feds took down MegaUpload.com and had MegaUpload founder, Kim Dotcom (get it? Kim .com) arrested. MegaUpload was a file sharing site, where one could upload and download movies, television shows, and other files, and they were busted for piracy. The German-born Kim.com, the thirty-something year old who was born Kim Schmitz, was arrested in his adopted home of New Zealand, on Federal criminal charges. But some very interesting things about Kim Dotcom (who also has allegedly gone by Kimble and "Kim Tim Jim Vestor") have come to light as of late. Kim, by the way, has a wife, Mona, and yes, her name is Mona Dotcom. Internet security firm Symantec (proprietors of, among other things, Norton Anti-Virus) have released the results of research that they have dubbed the "Honey Stick Project". In Project HoneyStick, researchers "lost" a total of 50 cell phones in various cities around North America, including NYC, Washington D.C., LA, San Francisco, and Ottawa, Canada. The aim was to see what the average citizen would do with a found cell phone: would they try to reunite it with its owner, or would they do something more sinister with it? It turns out that the answer is "both". How many times have you thought "Damn, if only I could get on the Internet right now! Where is the nearest public access wireless hotspot?" And how many times have you seen a homeless person standing on a street corner trying to raise some cash? Well, BBH Labs (the Bs stand for Bartle and Bogle and the H stands for Hegarty) have what they believe to be the answer: combine the two by turning the homeless into on-demand portable wifi hotspots. BBH debuted the so-called "Homeless Hotspots" at South by SouthWest (SXSW) this week, in Austin. Many people don't fully explore each and every option available on their mobile phone (and even fewer fully read the user's manual). So unless you have made a point of looking at each and every feature listed in your "Keyboard" setting on your iPhone or iPad (and who among us has?), you may have missed this fantastic goodie: Keyboard macros! Meaning custom keyboard shortcuts that you can create, allowing you to type a short set of letters that will magically expand to full phrases! For example, you can set up a keyboard short so that when you type "ty" it types "thank you"! You can create any shortcut that you want to... create custom signatures, frequently typed phrases, you name it! Here's how to do it! Frustrated about the amount of spam you receive in foreign languages? Be it Russian, Japanese or other Asian language; or Kanji, Hanzi, Hanja, logograms, pictograms, Cyrillic or other characters, foreign language spam is frustrating. And it's all the more frustrating because if all foreign language email that you receive is usually spam, as is the case for many people, then your spam filter should have a way to tell it "All email not in English (or whichever your native language is) is spam." Now, if you use Gmail, there is a way to do it (and even if you don't use Gmail as your primary email program, you can use Gmail as a spam filter). Here it is. By now you may already know that the iPad 3 is out, but what you probably really want to know is how it's different from the iPad 2. Is it really worth spending the money to buy an iPad 3 when you have a perfectly good (and still relatively new) iPad 2, or even iPad 3G or original iPad? Well, that depends on what you use your iPad for - for example, the dictation software is incredible, but that may not be that important to you. So, to learn the major differences, read on. Do you use Google Calendar? If you answered "no", well, are you sure that you don't use Google Calendar? Because even if you don't use Google Calendar directly, if you use a calendar on the iPhone, or on an Android phone, you may well be using Google Calendar on the back end without even thinking about it. The same is true if you "share" your calendar from your Mac. And here's the thing, your calendar on Google may be set to "public" view by default. Meaning that anyone can read your calendar. And it will turn up in public Google search results. As our readers know, we have always been a fully Android shop when it came to our phones. Now, recently, we had the opportunity to put the iPhone 4S to the test and, in fact, have been using the iPhone 4S ever since. Because I (Anne) do a lot of work while on the road, on my phone, this means that I do a lot of voice dictation, which in turn means that I have had the opportunity to put both versions of the software for dictation (the Android phone dictation software, and the iPhone speech dictation program) to the test. To be clear, we are talking about the free dictation apps that come native as software dictation services on each phone, not a separate dictation app. Andrew Breitbart, the conservative blogger whom Fox News called "one of the nation's most influential commentators," died this morning, "unexpectedly from natural causes". But already there is a whisper campaign: was it really natural causes? Or was he killed for what he was about to reveal? You may already be aware that Google has a new privacy policy going into effect tomorrow, March 1st, 2012 (don't worry if you are reading this after March 1, 2012, this article will still help you to understand and deal with Google's new privacy policies). But what does it really mean for you? And perhaps more importantly, how can you opt-out of Google's having their finger in every part of your online life, and even remove data that Google has already collected? Here are the answers to those questions about Google's new unified privacy policy. Facebook is hotly denying the allegations that it reads text messages sent through the Facebook app available on Android phones, which includes text messaging. Oh, they readily admit that they can read them, they just deny that they are reading them. If you are reading this, it's probably because Hotmail has gone down - yet again - as countless Hotmail.com customers find themselves unable to access their email. It's interesting to note that as we update this article yet again, that we are just two days shy of the seventh anniversary of this article! Read on! If you have an iPhone 4S, you are probably already (mostly) loving iPhone 4S Siri. Oh, not in the way that Raj from The Big Bang Theory  was loving Siri (a great episode, by the way!) but in that "How did I ever get along without Siri?" kind of way. But you may have found it maddeningly frustrating to try to get Siri to remind you of something by popping up a reminder when you gave arrived at a particular location. Oh sure, it works pretty well if that location is "home" or "work", but what about when you arrive at other locations? Here's how to get Siri to remind you upon arriving at a custom location.
Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Firefox's Mozilla, have at last formally agreed to include a "Do Not Track" button (DNT button) in every browser. {Let's take this opportunity to explain that the way this works is that using the "Do Not Track" option inserts a special "Do Not Track" header into your browser. In fact, as we shall see, there may not even be a DNT button involved - you may need to be a super-user type to even find the "Do Not Track" option.} Their capitulation comes just before the Obama administration's appeal to Congress to pass a "privacy bill of rights", but don't expect it to mean that they won't still be mining your data. (P.S. See below for how to enable Do Not Track in Safari.) Ok, first, yes, I admit it. In the form of the newish iPhone 4S, the iPhone finally had enough chops to lure me to try one out, to even consider abandoning my beloved Android. The voice control and dictation features blow Android's away, for both accuracy and usability. And Siri's ability to create location-based reminders, and generally how powerful it is, were pretty compelling. But, now there was a new dilemma: which is better? The ATT iPhone or the Verizon iPhone? Which has the better iPhone service - ATT or Verizon? Fewer dropped calls? Faster network? In a lawsuit that may have repercussions around the world, Twitter has been sued for defamation, based on its publication of alleged defamatory Tweets made by one of its users. The libelous Tweet was Tweeted by Australian personality Marieke Hardy, when she erroneously identified Joshua Meggitt as the author behind the 'hate blog' mariekehardy.blogspot.com, which was dedicated to, well, hating Hardy. [Note: The general difference between slander and libel is that slander is spoken, libel is written - so Hardy's was a libelous Tweet, not a slanderous Tweet. Both slander and libel are defamation.] Many people thought that the Kindle Fire would be the iPad killer, and while the Kindle Fire has dipped into the iPad market, it turns out that the iPad's biggest competitor is its own cousin, the iPhone 4S. As many of our readers know, the Internet Patrol is part of ISIPP Publishing, a division of ISIPP (the Institute for Social and Internet Public Policy). What some readers may not know is that ISIPP Publishing publishes many websites, on topics as diverse as worms, legal Q&A, gluten-free vegan recipes, cruises, flowers, and more. We even have a site with thousands of "how to" videos! Each of our sites was created to fill a void - to provide credible and useful information where an information vacuum had previously existed. If you know of anyone who may enjoy some of these sites, or find them useful, please let them know! Frustrated trying to view your free Amazon Instant Videos with Prime on an iPad, or other flash videos on your iPad? Or, don't have a Prime membership but you just want to view the occassional Amazon Video on your iPad? Of course, the reason that you can't view Amazon videos on your iPad is because the iPad's native browser, Safari, doesn't support flash (in fact, the iPad doesn't support flash at all). BUT! There is an easy way around this, that will allow you to view all Amazon Instant Videos  , and it doesn't require jailbreaking your iPad, or anything devious or underhanded! Read on!
With the recent decision in the Fricosu case, ruling that one can be forced to provide the password to your encrypted hard drive, you may be thinking it is better to store things "in the cloud". In fact, it can be worse, as cloud storage currently requires no warrant for law enforcement to access any of your data which has been stored in the cloud for at least 180 days. If you are an administrator or moderator of a Mailman mailing list that is on emergency moderation, it may be that you will want to allow certain list members to post without being moderated. You may already know the general way to do this (while approving one of their posts, add them to the 'Accepts' sender filter), but what if you forget to do that, or accidentally check "ban" or add them to the 'Rejects' or 'Discards' sender filter? Here is how to make it so that they can post unmoderated to your Mailman list that is on emergency moderation (which simply means that all posts accept for moderator and administrator posts are held for approval). The FBI, in conjunction with the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) has released their list of "Potential Indicators of Terrorist Activities Related to Internet Cafe" (sic). It may surprise you that your own Internet cafe activities render you suspicious. For example, if you attempt to shield your screen (like when, you know, you are entering a password?) you may be a terrorist. Or, if you travel an "illogical distance" to use an Internet cafe, you may be a terrorist. (We can't help but hear Jeff Foxworthy's voice as we read this list.) The list also includes suspicious computer activities and uses, as well as advice on what to do if you suspect that the guy next to you sipping his double light-foam mochaccino latte is a terrorist. A Federal court ruling this week by Judge Robert Blackburn, of Peyton, Colorado, says that you can be ordered by the court to provide the password to decrypt encrypted data, or face contempt of court, and that being forced to reveal your passphrase does not violate the Fifth Amendment (the 5th Amendent includes, among other things, the right against self-incrimination). In the ruling, Judge Blackburn ordered Ramona Fricosu, whose laptop hard drive is encrypted with PGP, and who is charged with taking part in a mortgage scam, including charges of wire fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering, to decrypt her hard drive or face, among other sanctions, contempt of court. If you have a Wordpress site, you may want to provide links to all articles written by a certain author. Generally, this is easy to do - but what if you started your site out as "admin", and have lots of articles written while you are logged in as the administrator? How to link to all of admin's articles? The posts will show as being written by whatever you have set as your "Display name publicly as" name, but there is no obvious way to link to all of those posts written by admin. Unless you know this simple secret. Akamai Technologies released its current "State of the Internet" report this week and, according to Akamai, there has been a 2000% increase in DDOS attacks over the past 3 years, with nearly half of all attacks coming from Asia. According to Akamai's State of the Net report, Indonesia has leapfrogged over China and Taiwan to take its place as the top source of these attacks, with Taiwan and China coming in second and third. Akamai also rated, among other things, the fastest cities in the world, meaning which cities have the fastest average Internet connection speed. Oh, how the Internet, and society in general, do love a scandal. Especially if it involves one of the big Internet or tech companies, like Google (witness this week's scandal over Google's "new" privacy policy) or Microsoft. This week everybody is mad at Microsoft for being, allegedly, racist, by updating their GPS software offerings to include a purported "avoid ghettos" feature. Some are even calling it "the avoid ghetto app". Lots of people are talking about the "new" Google privacy policy that was announced by Google yesterday (Tuesday, January 24th). But really, it's not so much a new privacy policy as it is a restatement and consolidation of the privacy policies that they have had in place all along, and a statement of their intention to start doing more with the personal data to which use you have already agreed. If you get an unexpected and unexplained charge on your credit card for $79.00 from Amazon, it is almost certainly the renewal for your Amazon Prime membership. Or, should we say, the automatic renewal for your Amazon Prime, which is why you didn't get any sort of warning or explaination - apparently Amazon does not send invoices or other reminders of the autorenewal for your Prime service. The Internet protests to the proposed anti-piracy bills SOPA and PIPA, including the 'blackouts' by sites like Wikipedia, and protest-filled homepages of sites like Craigslist, have had a real impact. So real, in fact, that the status of SOPA and PIPA is that they are now effectively dead. If you are wondering whether Wikipedia is down - and you find yourself wondering this on January 18, 2012, then Wikipedia may indeed be down, but it is a planned Wikipedia blackout, to protest SOPA (even though it has been killed) and PIPA (which will hopefully suffer the same fate). Italian media has just released the full text of a transcipt of the emergency distress call between the Italian Coast Guard, and Captain Francesco Schettino. While Schettino, who is under arrest, will likely have a fair trial in the court of law, the world will likely have a hard time being as fair after reading the transcript (below) which clearly shows a man abandoning his ship and passengers, even refusing direct orders from the Coast Guard commander to get back on the ship to help save passengers. A massive data breach at Amazon subsidiary Zappos.com has led to the personal information of as many as 24 million customers being exposed. Below is all of the information, as well as the statement from Zappos CEO, Tony Hsieh. A new Facebook program, called "If I Die" (shouldn't that be "When I Die" or "If I'm Dead"?) allows a last farewell message to be posted to the user's wall after they pass away. No, they don't actually post after they are dead from beyond the grave (that would be a Oujia Board app), but the "If I Die" app is said to be the next best thing. Slashdot, that ubertech, ubergeek site that we all know and love, has inserted "Ads by Google" Adsense ads into the Slash dot RSS feed for a while. Nothing wrong with that. But lately some of the ads have been really racy. Take, for example, this ad (see screen capture below) for the online dating site Anastasia Dates, at AnastasiaDates.com Check it out! You can get a free Nook (basic model) or a Nook Color for half price ($99 instead of $199) if you subscribe to the digital version of the New York Times (NYT) for a year. If you have the new iPhone 4S, you may find that Siri has her hand in your pocket. According to new research, using Siri can as much as double how much data your iPhone uses, which can be costly indeed. Sure, Siri is fun - but is she worth it? What's a person to do when their hard drive crashes, and they lose all of the songs that they purchased from iTunes? There is no option to redownload all of your iTunes purchases offered through either iTunes or the Apple website. However, while you may get chastised for not backing up your iTunes library (which you will do from now on, right?), it is possible to redownload iTunes songs again, and restore your iTunes library to its pre-crash state. We often are asked whether it matters whether you use upper case or lower case letters when typing doman names (which some people mistakenly calls "IP names") such as in a URL. Do you need to exact match domain upper case or lower case, so long as you are typing the name properly? Read on... Paypal's Terms of Service (TOS) regarding disputes for "significantly not as described" (SNAD) section lead to a heartbreaking situation in which an eBay buyer who requested a refund when he decided that an antique violin for which he'd paid $2500 was a fake, was ordered by Paypal to first destroy the violin (why the buyer didn't just arrange with the seller to return it for a refund is beyond us). This is a fine example of why it's such a bad idea to do business with a company that controls both halves of the transaction (Paypal and eBay are now two sides of the same company.) Florida Marine Lt. Col. Karl Trenker and his fiancee will probably think twice before posting jewelry for sale on Craigslist again. (Actually, they will probably never use Craigslist again to post a sale - at least, we wouldn't.) It all started when his fiancee posted a gold chain for sale on Craigslist. And ended with Trenker being shot three times, and plugging the bullet holes with his fingers while waiting for help to arrive. More than 2,000 people from 58 countries around the world participated in the 2011 "Virtual Choir 2.0" singing Eric Whitacre's "Sleep" (the first Virtual Choir, Virtual Choir 1.0, "Lux Aurumque", happened last year). The brain child of composer Eric Whitacre - who also produced and conducted both virtual choirs, the virtual chorale concept is a brilliant leveraging of YouTube, and the finished recording of the virtual chorus (see links below) is absolutely incredible - it sounds like you are in a vast concert hall filled with an incredible choir! And best of all, nearly anybody who can carry a tune can participate! If you have a Verizon mobile phone, and want to use a credit card or debit card to pay your Verizon phone bill over the phone with Verizon wireless customer service, or online through their online Verizon customer care portal, Verizon is going to charge you a $2.00 "convenience fee" for the privilege. The only way to pay your Verizon wireless bill with a credit or debit card and not get charged the $2.00 convenience fee is if you do it in person, such as at a Verizon store. (Note: This does not apply to autopayments, only to one-time payments. Autopayments do not incur the $2.00 convenience fee.) In what is being called an "epic PR failure", and "the biggest PR fail in history" (well, we're not so sure about that - but still) Paul Christoforo, the man behind Ocean Marketing, and a representative - make that a former represenative - for N-Control's The Avenger XBox 360 Adapter basically turned a customer support request into a big "F-ck you" fest between himself (Ocean Marketing), a customer named only "Dave" and, eventually, Penny Arcade, Pax East, and Kotaku, to name a few. What Christophoro forgot was that the "real Internet", to which he sarcastically welcomed Dave during the exchange, has a far reach, and a long memory. When is your Twitter account (or Facebook or other social media account) not your Twitter account? At what point does your work-related use of your social media account convert that account to your employer's intellectual or other property? Noah Kravitz is being sued by his former employer, PhoneDog, over what is now, in theory, Kravitz's personal Twitter account. An account which he says he converted to his own use with PhoneDog's blessings, only to have them turn around and bite him in the back. Kravitz used Twitter while he worked for Phone Dog - using the Twitter handle @PhoneDog-Noah - and when he stopped working for PhoneDog he changed his Twitter ID to @noahkravitz - but it was the same account, with the same followers - 17,000 followers - and PhoneDog now claims that Kravitz's Twitter account is actually their intellectual property, and that a Twitter account by any other name is still theirs. But there is way more to this story. You knew that Facebook uses you in their advertising, right? Those sidebar advertisements (so called "sponsored stories") where you often see your friends featured - "So and so likes this advertiser" - they do that with your likeness too. We have often ranted about it - now someone is doing something about it: In the case of Fraley v. Facebook plaintiff Fraley and others are suing Facebook in a class action suit, and the Federal court has approved Fraley versus Facebook moving forward. U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh agreed that there was a chance that the plaintiffs could win their case based on claims that Facebook has committed fraud, and violated California law with unauthorized use of their image and name, in using Facebook friends' images and names in advertising displayed in the Facebook sidebar. Sprint and ATT have provided their official responses to Senator Al Franken's inquiry about Carrier IQ, (also known as CIQ) the commercial customer tracking software included on the sly on their customers' cell phones, and their response is, essentially, "our customers agreed to it." ATT admits that they have CIQ installed on "900,000 devices, with 575,000 of those collecting and reporting wireless and service performance information to ATT." They also admit that they were capturing the content of SMS text messages sent and received while a voice call was in progress. This they blame on a "programming error", and that may be, but it illustrates the capabilities and danger of Carrier IQ. But one of the biggest bombshells may be that through Carrier IQ, they can - and do - remotely turn on your wifi! Think about that for a minute. Federal House Bill HR 3261 is pending Federal legislation that would create the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). SOPA is generating a lot of buzz because those for it and those against it are so radically opposed. As one might expect, those pushing for the adoption of SOPA include the biggies in the entertainment industry, such as the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). But those who oppose it include people and organizations with a deep understanding of how the Internet works - and of how the Internet could be broken - and innocent sites shut down - by SOPA as it currently is written. Can't make that meeting on the other coast? Don't feel like going into the office today? Send one of the new breed of personal and corporate robots - a telepresence robot - instead. Meet Anybot, AVA, Luna and VGo - described by some as remote-control avatars, these telepresence robots can assist you - or even be you - in many work and other settings. From sitting in on a meeting for you (teleconferencing you in with audio and video) to following you around on medical rounds, there is a telepresence robot for you (if you can afford the price tag). The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) this week called for a complete, total ban on both talking on cell phones (even hands-free), and texting, by drivers. The recommendation, intended to reduce accidents resulting from "distracted driving" followed the Federal agency's review of accidents resulting from a distracted driver - a problem so serious that the NTSB says that at any moment during any day, approximately 13.5 million drivers are using a cellphone. Last year alone, nearly 3100 fatal accidents were known to be the result of distracted drivers, and the number of accidents attributable to talking or texting drivers is undoubtedly far higher when you include non-fatal accidents, and consider that few drivers will admit that they were texting or on the phone behind the wheel. Audio giant Behringer has unveiled the iNuke Boom - an iPod dock sound system that cranks out 10,000 watts, and weighs 700 pounds. The iNukeBoom (not the iNook Boom, that would be from Barnes and Noble) will be officially introduced at next month's Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Netflix has just had a big legislative win with the Feds. The legislation, HR 2471, removes a decades-old federal restriction (part of the Video Privacy Protection Act) banning public disclosure of video rental records. This means that Netflix could share what movies and television shows you've viewed with your friends on Facebook, followers on Twitter, etc.. HR 2471 just passed in the House, and is up for vote with the Senate. How many times have you wanted to smack the cell phone out of your texting teen or twenty-something's hand while you are talking to them? Or while they are eating dinner with you? Is your irritation at your date's texting his buddies during your first date reasonable? Is it ok to break up with someone by email or text message? Do you have to accept the Facebook friend request from your co-worker? The answer to these, and more - oh so many more - pressing digital manners questions are in a new book - just in time for the holidays - from New York Times Social Q's columnist Philip Galanes - Social Q's: How to Survive the Quirks, Quandaries and Quagmires of Today. If you were one of an untold number of people who received a particular iTunes update, it will likely have planted a Trojan backdoor on your computer or smartphone (primarily iPhone or Blackberry) which allows government and law enforcement agencies access to your personal data. Let us be quick to add that this is a fake iTunes update. The malware (or "commercial software" depending on which side of this you are on) is sold primarily by three companies: Gamma FinFisher, Vupen Security, and HackingTeam. Gamma's FinFisher product is from the UK, Vupen Security is out of France, and HackingTeam is in Italy, however all of the companies sell their software around the world. In the past few days the charge has been levelled that Apple's voice-command entity, Siri, is anti-abortion. This after it was noted that when people ask Siri for guidance to abortion services, 'she' is "unable" to find such services, or in some instances instead directs them to pro-life organizations. Cell phone companies are scrambling amid growing concerns over the Carrier IQ (or "CIQ") software that has shipped preinstalled (and undisclosed) on many, many smartphones across several carriers, as demands for full disclosure and accountability increase, Federal representatives demand answers, and some suggest that the use of the software, which is alleged to log keystrokes, websites visited, and location, violates Federal wiretapping law. Trevor Eckhart, who first discovered and outed what Carrier IQ was doing, went so far as to call it a "rootkit". In a lovely "we told you so" moment, we can report that two key Federal agencies - both the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) - are opposing the planned merger of AT and T and T-Mobile. We predicted Federal opposition to the merge when AT and T first announced their plans to takeover T-Mobile, and the Feds are opposing the merging for much the same reasons that we said that they would. Two U.S. malls were all set to use a new technology from U.K.-based FootPath Technology over the Black Friday weekend which would have allowed them to track each shopper's movement throughout the mall, from store to store, using a unique mobile phone signal from each shopper's cell phone - without their knowledge or consent! JC Penny and Home Depot are also said to be looking at adopting the FootPath technology. iPhones are hot. Everybody knows that. But the crew and passengers of an Australian plane belonging to Australia's Regional Express airline learned just how hot they are first-hand today, when a passenger's iPhone began emitting clouds of smoke, and glowing red-hot. When it comes to buying holiday gifts for those on our list, we always turn to things that we ourselves truly use and appreciate. And that's why our holiday gifts ideas come from our heart. What good is a holiday gift idea if the recipient won't actually enjoy it? It can be fun to give unique holiday gifts, but the best holiday gifts are those that the recipient will appreciate, use, even treasure. That's why our top holiday gifts are those that we know from our own experience will be appreciated. So here is our holiday gift guide, with something for everyone on your list - man, woman, teen, and child. These are items we use ourselves - or have given as gifts with an enthusiatic reception. Whether you are looking to give books, movies, electronic, gadgets, or even appliances - holiday gift food, a holiday gift basket (holiday gift baskets can contain almost anything, not just holiday food gifts!) or even a holiday gift card - you'll find our tried and tested holiday gift ideas below. Why bother combing through countless Black Friday oads and braving the madding throngs at the stores when you can take advantage of numerous online Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales from the comfort of your computer? These Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals - the day after Thanksgiving and the Monday after Thanksgiving sales - are available at all of your favourite Internet stores. Our Black Friday/Cyber Monday list includes several top online retailers. Here is Black Friday and Cyber Monday info for Walmart, Amazon, and Best Buy sales, to name just a few of the sales available at the day after Thanksgiving, and the Monday after Thanksgiving, sales at your favourite Internet stores. VIPSafeToday.com is an outfit that claims to want to give you a loan - or even a payday loan - and they are letting people know by spamming their cell phones with a text message that reads "You qualify to get up to 1200 DOLLARS instantly at WWW.VIPSAFETODAY.COM - It takes only mins for approval. 'NO' to unsubscribe" This message is dastardly for several reasons - read on for the full information, and don't text them "no" (or anything else) to 'unsubscribe'! Louis vs. Rick - "The story of a man who taught his cat to use instant messaging" - is a very funny - and very clever - online ..publication? Offering? We aren't really sure what to call Luis v. Rick - it's almost like a web comic strip - only it doesn't have any pictures. That Groupon voucher is great for the customer, but it can be a near-death knell for the business on the other side of the transaction. (What is Groupon? Groupon is an online service through which businesses offer deep-discount deals to Groupon's users. The customer purchases the deal up front - say $5 for a $10 cake - and then they take the coupon Groupon sends them to the bakery to redeem it.) Customers who use Groupon like the great discounts - but merchants tell another story. You may not have heard of the Internet Water Army before, but you've probably seen their handiwork. The Internet Water Army is the monicker given to a group of underground people in China who are paid to post comments on blogs and other Internet forums, often either recommending - or dissing - a product or service, or posting links. Because they are an 'army' of people who are paid to 'flood' the Internet with their spam comments, they have earned the name The Internet Water Army. If you get an email asking you to "certify" with SafetyAlliance.net or Craigsguard.org, don't fall for it! This is a site that is trying to collect your cell phone number. Ok, first, a disclaimer: we are 98% sure that this is a scam, but it is so new that we haven't been able to fully prove it yet. But read on and you'll understand why you too should be wary of it. "TWITTER: Someone has a crush on you!" the subject of the email says as it announces that someone has a Tweetcrush on you. "You have been sent a Twitter Crush," it goes on to say. Bologna. It's a phishing scam, pure and simple. But, it's a pretty compelling one, given how 'authentic' the site, which is hosted at ktwitteri.com, looks, where they steal your Twitter username and password. Google has just announced a companion to Google Music, which graduated out of beta today, with the new Google Music Store, available through the Android Market. With this move, Google officially takes iTunes on head-to-head. And as Google Music is a cloud-based service, allowing you to store all of your music (including Google Music purchases) in the cloud and listen to it from any Android device, this seamless integration also has them matching iTunes stride for stride. In fact, because you can buy music directly from your Android phone or tablet, they have leap-frogged iTunes in that department, as you still cannot buy music from the iTunes store from your iPhone or iPad. You know those annoying automated calls that result in a robotic voice saying "Please hold for an important message"? Well, new legislation, if passed, would allow them to your cell phone! A concerted effort by several legislators and large businesses has resulted in Federal bill HR3035, which would allow businesses to initiate automated calls (so called "robo calls") to cell phones whose owners have 'given permission' for the robocalls. "Permission" for robodialing is defined as providing your cell number to the business at any time (even years ago), and in just about any context - just having provided your cell number at any time past or present is enough, you don't have to say "and please robo dial me." It's kind of the "they asked for it" theory of automated dialing phone spam. (Note: This article includes links to make it very easy for you to write to your representative to register your displeasure with this assault on your privacy.) Amazon started shipping their new tablet based Kindle, the Kindle Fire today. Here is what Amazon sent today to those eager customers who had pre-ordered the Kindle Fire. "Take This Lollipop", the creepy Facebook tour through your personal information, is an excellent example of something we have been trying to pound into your heads all along: putting personal information on the Internet (such as location based check ins) can be dangerous. More to the point: most people have no idea how much personal information they really have revealed online, and how easy it is to track them down, stalking them, and worse. "Take this Lollipop" is technically a Facebook app, which is how (and why) it asks for you to log in using Facebook Connect, something that we also advise against. The United States Postal Service (USPS) is in deep financial trouble, in large part due to the advent of email, and online bill paying and other services. Now, in what can only be described as the Post Office taking a page from election year partisan smear campaigns, the USPS is attacking the Internet as dangerous and unreliable, and touting postal mail as safe and good for business. "A refrigerator has never been hacked," starts the television advertisement, which is primarily aimed at businesses. We seem to most often find ourselves complaining about Facebook, so when we heard about their parental leave policy for employees, we just had to give them a pat on the back. Two thumbs up, even, for being a forward-thinking employer that gives any new parent - female or male, birth or adoption - four months of paid parental leave. If you get an email telling you that "your Facebook account has been disabled by an administrator", don't fall for it! It's a scam, and the link in the email goes not to Facebook, but to yet another Canadian pharmacy site selling male enhancement drugs. Amazon has rolled out a new free feature for Kindle users who are also Amazon Prime customers: the Kindle Owner's Lending Library. Really it should be called the "Kindle Owner's Borrowing Library", so as not to confuse it with the feature where you can loan a Kindle book to a friend. In any event, with the Kindle Owner's Lending Library you can borrow books to read on your Kindle - but a word to the wise: it only works on actual Kindles, not with any of the Kindle apps. If you find that you have to change your Gmail password, you would think that it would be really easy to update your Gmail password on your Android phone. And you would be right. The problem is, it is not at all obvious how to update your Gmail password in Android, and there is no way to reset your Gmail password in, say, the Gmail account settings on Android. So how do you change your Gmail password on your Android phone? Here's how. A whole lot of people are getting the latest spam scam that supposedly is sent from the "AOL Administration Center" (there is no such thing, folks). Coming from the spoofed email address "AOLCenter@message.aol.com", the email tells you that "you have 1 notification", and includes a link to click to see the "notification". In fact, this is a classic example of Canadian pharmacy spam. Earlier this year we wrote and warned you about the ConsumerWarningsReport360.com scam, which is run, among other places, on Craigslist. This is a "make money fast" type scam, and they lure victims in with fake Craigslist 'for sale' postings, then tell you the item is already sold, and they feel so badly, they are going to share this great "make money" scheme with you. Since we exposed the scam, someone has caused people to post comments to the article extolling the virtues of ConsumerWarningsReport360.com - clearly these people are paid, and it is part of the scam. Just this afternoon a rash of fake Paypal emails was let loose on the internet, coming "from" notice@ppal.com, and claiming that "You have changed your PayPal email address", and going on to say that you have added some random email address (most seem to list andrew1987@btconnect.com as the supposedly-added address). The email advised you to send back the attached form, "Personal Profile Form - PayPal-.htm", if you did not authorize the change. You may think that you are being oh-so-careful with your Google profile, Match.com profile, Facebook profile, or other social media or dating site (or other) profile. You never use your full real name publicly, you don't share your address or where you work. But if you have an image in your profile that has ever been published anywhere else on the Internet, it can be very easy to use Google's image matching search engine to quickly discover any information associated with that image anywhere online. Google Maps is perhaps one of the most useful services which Google has rolled out; people have used Google Maps as the basis for all sorts of cool and interesting things. One such use is History Pin, a service through which people can upload photos from days of yore and 'pin' them onto a Google map of the region, indexed by the represented date. But the really cool thing about HistoryPin is that you can see the photo in context, inserted into the moden day street view. Wondering where to recycle electronics, or how to recycle electronics? Electronics recycling has never been easier than with the Amazon Electronics Trade In service! It's the perfect place to dispose of electronics and other gadgets you no longer use! Cell phone disposal (well, cell phone recycling), calculators, digital cameras, iPods and other MP3 players, Amazon takes recycling electronics seriously! That's because disposal of electronics is a serious issue, particularly in today's disposable electronics culture, so being able to not only dispose of your gadgets, but to get Amazon credit for them - and to have Amazon pick up the shipping tab, to boot - is awesome! The worm that infected an Iranian nuclear site, Stuxnet, or something very much like it, may be getting ready to strike again, say researchers. A recently discovered malware dubbed Duqu (for the prefix of its files, ~DQ, is designed to steal information needed to mount another such attack, and provide remote access to industrial installations such as, well, nuclear plants. Facebook is being sued over its using its ability to track Facebook users' Internet browsing history even while they are logged out of Facebook. The Facebook lawsuit, filed in Federal court in Mississippi on October 12th against Facebook, Brooke Rutledge claims that, among other things Facebook is in direct violation of U.S. Wiretapping laws. But perhaps more to the point, it is in violation of treating its users with common decency, following them with Facebook super cookies and the like. The complaint also seeks to turn the lawsuit into a class action, so others can join the law suit. This interesting little tidbit landed in our inbox just moments ago: Borders sold all of their customer data to Barnes and Noble, including information about your DVD and other video purchases! And, clearly, your associated email address! Or, another way to look at it is that Barnes and Noble purchased your customer data from Borders. And promptly added you to a mailing list without your consent to use your personal data from Borders, which they *also* obtained without your consent. Either way you look at it, neither of them come up smelling like roses. As people lined up today to buy the brand new iPhone 4S, some people are wondering "Why?" Is it just for Siri, the "Personal Assistant" software (which Android users have had for ages with the "Genius Button")? What is different about the iPhone 4S as compared to the iPhone 4 - after all, the number is the same. Is the iPhone 4S better than the iPhone 4? Should I upgrade to an iPhone 4S (or, if I don't already have an iPhone, should I get an iPhone 4S?) Here's what's different, and what's new. Blackberry users around the world found that their Blackberrys were simply not working as they should. Both messaging and web-browsing were impacted, leaving many users high and dry in a day when millions depend on their Blackberries for business use. Europe, Africa, and the Middle East were hit with the Blackberry outage at the beginning of the week, with the U.S. joining the misery mid-week. In one of the fastest corporate about faces in history, Netflix has just announced that they will not make customers subscribe to two separate services - streaming and DVD - and they are dumping Qwikster. While many will breath a financial sigh of relief, this also leads many to wonder: "Does Netflix have any idea what the fnck it's doing?" As much of the world in general, and those of us in the tech industry in particular, mourn the passing of Steve Jobs, we turn to consider that the mortal man may be gone, but his legacy will live on forever. And how truly amazing this is for someone who is not a Nobel winner, not a head of state, but CEO of a tech company. If you are trying to reach Facebook today, and finding Facebook gone, it may be that Facebook is down. Or it may be that part of their Internet backbone is not routing traffic to them. As we write this, it seems to be a bit of both: Facebook is down for us, because part of their Internet infrastructure is hosed. Here's a detailed explanation of how your computer gets to the Facebook website and, at the end, a work-around if you are currently unable to reach Facebook. Amazon has announced the opening and launch of MyHabit.com, a "private fashion sale" website, through which you can buy designer clothing at, claims Amazon, up to a 60% savings. Of course it's not all that private, as anyone can sign up for it. The deal is (no pun intended) that each exclusive super-deep discount deal starts at 9:00 a.m. Pacific time, and lasts just 72 hours. That's right, it's like Woot for designer clothing. So, if you got that email saying "We're excited to introduce our valued Amazon.com customers to our new private-sale website, MYHABIT," it's really from Amazon. And, oh goody, they are encouraging people to invite their friends with friend-spam saying "Hi, MYHABIT features daily events from a hand-picked selection of designer and boutique brands up to 60% off with fast, free shipping and free returns. Membership is instant, easy and free." Amazon has reinstated their California affiliates - for now. But how long until they pull the plug again? Below is the email that they sent to all previous California associates - note how they complain that California "forced them to terminate their California Associates." Those scrolls of the Dead Sea, the Dead Sea Scrolls, once approachable by only a very select few, are now available for viewing by anyone with an internet connection, thanks to a collaboration between Google and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Most people have two questions about Dead Sea Scrolls: 1. What are the Dead Sea Scrolls? And 2. Where are the DeadSea Scrolls? Now the answer to the second question is easy: they are online (see link below). As to the first question, put simply, the Dead Sea Scrolls are the earliest known biblical documents from around the time of Christ (thought to be from 125 years before the birth of Christ through about 70 years after), and include the earliest known versions of the Hebrew bible, and other relevant documents. And now they are online! The Nym Wars (nym for "pseudoNYM" and wars for, well, "wars", and pronounced 'nim wars') don't appear to be going away any time soon. The issue at the heart of the NymWars is whether or not people should be allowed to mask their true identity when posting on the Internet by using, well, a psuedonym. Google says "no", and has taken a firm stance with their Google Plus service, leading to a lot of gnashing of teeth, and pundit pontificating. You may start hearing this week about "Flaming Pole", and "Magic Brownies" and a Magic Brownie Adventure Movie starring Cheech and Chong. It probably won't surprise you to know that Cheech (Richard 'Cheech' Marin) and Chong (Tommy Chong) are in a movie about magic brownies, or that they are going to a "Flaming Pole" festival in the desert where people party and 'get naked' (clearly a nod to "Burning Man") with a van full of magic brownies. But it may surprise you to learn what puts the "magic" in the magic brownies, and that the Magic Brownie Adventure Movie is actually a commerical. With the release of the new book, Worm: The First Digital World War  , the Conficker worm (also known, depending on which variant you have, as Conficker A, Conficker B, Conficker C, Conficker D, Conficker E, and the Conficker Virus) is back in the news. This is a good thing, as it is very much still one of the biggest threats on the Internet, but as it has been around since 2008, it's been "out of sight, out of mind" for many users, who no longer think about detection and Conficker removal. Here's a quick refresher on how to tell if you have Conficker (the handy Conficker eyechart) and having been infected with Conficker, how to find a Conficker removal tool so that you can delete Conficker.
Facebook to charge its users? Rumours are swirling that users are going to have to pay for Facebook. So is Facebook going to charge people to use it? Is Facebook charging its users as we speak? No. The rumours are false. And a Facebook pay to play scheme is very unlikely; in order for Facebook to start charging their users, they would have to come up with a premium service that offered a great deal of additional value, like maybe easy-to-understand privacy settings, not defaulting new apps to 'permitted', and not playing fast and loose with user privacy. Amazon has announced their new Kindle tablet - the Amazon Kindle Fire (Get it? Kindle...Fire...), and while it may not be an iPad killer, the Amazon tablet very well may be some serious competition for the iPad. In addition to being able to access all of Amazon's catalogues - books, music, movies, and more - on the tablet, you can access Amazon's Android app store (the Kindle Fire runs a modified Android under the hood), you can subscribe to magazines, you can check email, and you can browse the web using Amazon's snappy new web browser, Amazon Silk (not sure what silk has to do with fire), and, you can run Flash with the Kindle Silk browser - which the iPad can't (or rather won't) do. All this for only $199! Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has unveiled a key part of the Facebook master plan for their Facebook profile redesign: the Facebook Timeline. The Facebook Timeline is your timeline - your profile's Timeline, from as far back as you want. In fact, there will be a "way back" section for things you can add (photos, etc.) that have to do with your past (from baby pictures on up). Facebook seems to fear commitment even more than George Clooney. They have changed their look again, this time shunting all the rest of your friends' status updates over to the right-hand margin, and featuring front and center "top stories" (status updates). Perhaps what is 'newest' is the "blue corners". Facebook explains that the blue corner "marks a story we think will be interesting to you." But more interesting is that you can, apparently, train the Facebook blue corners. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has announced this week, through a direct email of a Netflix letter to all Netflix customers, that Netflix is spinning out their Netflix DVD by mail service into a separate service, labeled "Qwikster" (pronounced 'Quickster'), while the Netflix streaming video service remains "Netflix". So now if you want streaming Netflix and the Netflix DVD service, you have to subscribe to two different services - Netflix.com, which is the Netflix instant streaming service, and Qwikster.com, which is what the Netflix DVD service has become. The service will be essentially the same - still with the red envelope and all - but now called Qwikster, and with the Qwikster logo. Google Wallet has been sent to Sprint customers this week, with more carriers to follow. With the Google Wallet mobile wallet app on your phone, you can pay with Google Wallet at any place that has a MasterCard Pay Pass system. The Pay Pass wireless point-of-sale terminal, which many merchants now use, can accept various forms of wireless payment transactions, including a Google Wallet payment. First it was in a 7-Eleven in the Pacific North-West, then a Rite Aid store in New York City. Yes, the Amazon delivery lockers are coming. The concept is pretty interesting: you can have your Amazon order delivered to an Amazon locker at your local convenience store or other convenient nearby location that has an Amazon locker installed. A flood of bogus emails supposedly "from" Western Union hit this week, telling their intended victims first that a "Western Union transfer is available for withdrawl" (sic), and then that the transfer was rejected. The 'from' addresses are mostly manager@westernunion.com, transfers@westernunion.com, and funds@westernunion.com. Most odd is that some of them contain info about the Federal Reserve Board with a link to the federalreserve.gov site (remember that the recent Oracle and Crazy Eddie scam came "from" noreply@federalreserve.gov). Welcome to the friendly skies of Google Airlines - Google airlines flight booking service, that is. Google has rolled out one of their new services, and this time it's Google Flights, which allows you to book airline reservations through Google's flight engine instead of one of the more established competitors, like Expedia or Travelocity. Did you get a phone call from 760-705-8888, and you are wondering who was calling? Or maybe you answered a call from 760-705-8888, only to hear heavy breathing on the other end, or, worse, some scam artist trying to scam you. The reason that your caller I.D. is showing this number is because they are using Google Chat to call you, and 760-705-8888 is the outbound number that Google Chat uses. If you recently received a "payment request" out of the blue from Oracle Corporation, or Crazy Eddie, or any other place, and it left you scratching your head and wondering just why Crazy Eddie or whomever is asking you for money, well, you're not alone. Perhaps even more bizarre is the email addresses from which these requests for payment are allegedly coming - email addresses like "admin@treasury.gov" and "noreply@federalreserve.gov". You may be familiar Meetup.com, in fact you may even belong to a Meetup group or even a few Meetup groups, or participate in a Meetup meetup or two. The Meetup concept is simple: join a Meetup group (or found your own new Meetup group), which is hosted on the Meetup.com system, but with the express purpose of the Meetup group meeting in person. And that, says Meetup.com founder Scott Heiferman, is the whole purpose of the Meetup group concept which, says Heiferman, he founded in direct response to 9/11: to use the Internet to get off the Internet. WARNING: The following article contains profanity. Using social engineering, this scam spam tries to trick you into thinking that someone is very upset with you for leaving a rude message on their wall, and demanding that you "Delete your comments from my wall." Of course, the link to "their wall" is really a disguised link to a fake Facebook login page, designed to steal your Facebook password. That fake Facebook page is hosted at la-criniere-napierville.com/ACCEUIL-HOME/facebook.html "Your account protection status: low" screams the alert on Facebook. "Increase protection" it offers. Is it a scam? A virus? Or is it really Facebook giving you a warning? It turns out that the warning really is from Facebook, but it's not nearly as urgent as they would lead you to believe. Did you get spam from Jerry Miller of First Working Capital Group? The spam may have come from "JM.FWC@ymail.com" or "JMillerFWC@email.com", or maybe even another email address, and with a subject of "Please Review" or "Proposal Attached", but the rest of the content is the same. It starts out "If your company finds itself short of cash and unable to secure working capital from traditional lenders, we can help," and goes on from there. Interestingly, Mr. Miller (if he indeed exists) is not the only one responsible for this spam - under CAN-SPAM, First Working Capital Group is as responsible for spam sent out on their behalf. So register your displeasure by contacting them at their whois contact address (it's only fair, after all), at jeff@internetsalesresults.com. Google has gobbled up restaurant review outfit Zagat, in their latest Pacman-like gobbling juggernaut. Since June 1st of this year, Google has acquired no fewer than PostRank, Admeld, SageTV, Punchd, Fridge, PittPatt, Dealmap, Motorola Mobility (if approved), Zave Networks, and, now, Zagat. In fact, Zagat will be Google's 20th acquisition this year, and they still have three and a half months to go. And Zagat is the 102nd company acquired by Google in the past 8 years, with half of those acquisitions occuring in just the past two years! Two of the original big 4 ISPs (AOL, Yahoo, MSN, and Earthlink) have now gone up for sale in as many weeks. First, last week, we told you about AOL being for sale. Now, this week, the Yahoo Board of Directors has summarily fired Yahoo CEO, Carol Bartz, and have made clear that they would accept the right offer for the sale of Yahoo. If the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) has its way, the proposed merger between AT and T and T-Mobile will be vetoed, because it will create a monopoly in violation of antitrust law. According to papers filed by the DOJ in Federal court, "AT and T's elimination of T-Mobile as an independent, low-priced rival would remove a significant competitive force from the market." This particular Craigslist housing scam offers a house for a rent that is so low that it is too good to be true - you just have to first fill out a request for a "free credit report" at cbireport.com. The response to inquiries is canned and, in fact, has been around for a while - in our region the scam was listed under the heading "$850 / 3br - Beautiful 3 Bed, 2 Bath House". Our sample came from "gipepazalih@hotmail.com", but it has come from other email addresses too. Rumors are flying about AOL being put up for sale, with some people wondering whether AOL is to close. While an AOL shutdown seems unlikely in the near term, it does seem to be the case that AOL is going to go up on the block. According to industry sources, AOL has been meeting with both legal and investment types about selling themselves off to the highest bidder. A new batch of scam emails purporting to confirm your order with Yes Asia (YesAsia.com) and Play.com went out this week. The scam relies on your freaking out when you see confirmation for an order you did not place, so that you will click the link to see "the order", but of course, the link really goes somewhere else - in this case to some bad stuff being hosted on the iafrica.com website (in the case of our sample, it goes to "http://newsletters.iafrica.com/servlet/link/33/1082/140693/41003"). Google Offers, Google's competitor to Groupon, rolled out in Portland in June, hitting the New York and San Francisco areas last month. This month Google Offers is available in Denver, Seattle, Boston, Austin, and Washington, D.C.., with Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, and Philadelphia to follow shortly, to name just a few. Not to be outdone, Amazon has rolled out Amazon Local, in many of the same cities. The United States Justice Department has announced today a settlement in which Google will forfeit $500 million for leading users to Canadian pharmacies which illegally sell and send prescription drugs to consumers in the United States, without requiring proof of a prescription. Steve Jobs has resigned today as the CEO of Apple. In Jobs' letter of resignation, addressed both to the Board of Directors of Apple, and the "Apple Community", Jobs mentions an already-existing succession plan, which includes naming Tim Cook as his successor as CEO of Apple, and requests to remain on as Chairman of the Board of Apple, a director, and an Apple employee. Arab spring, flash mobs, and last week's riots in England. What two things do these have in common? Well, first, they have a people ready to be incited to action - be it for the cause of democracy, for a flash mob, or for chaos, mayhem, and lining their own pockets with ill-gotten goods. And second, social media has contributed to the lightning speed with which each of the groups coordinated and coalesced. Countless people have opened their email this week to be told that "The person described above is charged as follows" in what claims to be a traffic ticket with the "violation" of "Speed Over 55 Zone" Examples we've seen have supposedly come from the New York State Polic (such as from automailer.-093@nyc.gov), but it doesn't matter where it comes from, it's not real, and the included file is not your ticket - it's a virus. Don't open it! The Hacktivist group 'Anonymous', most recently best known for its role in attacking sites that withdrew services from Wikileaks after the infamous Wikileaks leak of the U.S. State Department documents, has announced that they intend to hack Facebook and take Facebook down - apparently permanently - on November 5th. (November 5th is Guy Fawkes Night (or Guy Fawkes Day, depending on your bent) in the U.K., honoring the day that, back in 1605, Guy Fawkes was caught beneath the House of Lords, guarding a cache of explosives intended to be used to assassinate King James I.) If you suddenly have random stripes going up and down or across on your Android camera (the camera on your Android phone), you are not alone. The colored stripes (in our case green and pink stripes) across the camera are a known issue that occurs suddenly on the camera of some Android phones - most particularly HTC phones, such as the Sensation and the MyTouch 4G Slide. Here's what these stripes on the Android camera look like - again, in our case they were green and pink stripes on our Android camera, and on the pictures taken with the camera - and what to do about it. If you have a new Android phone, such as the MyTouch 4G Slide, which has the newest version of Android on it (say, Gingerbread or newer), you may be frustrated trying to figure out how to email or otherwise share multiple pictures at a time. In older versions, you could just long-press an image in the thumbnail gallery, and it would let you select as many images as you wanted. But no more. It's actually very easy to select and share multiple images in the newer versions of Android, you just have to know how to do it. Years ago we had this awesome ringtone - it actually came with our phone. It went like this: Someone's calling you, You've got a phone call baby,So you'd better pick it up, You've got a phone call baby.... You know the one we mean, right? It sort of sounds like a gospel choir singing it. A random, non-scientific survey of Internet Patrol staff members has found that people believe that Internet news sites that were taken in by the recent AptiQuant "study" finding that Internet Explorer (IE) users have a lower IQ than other browsers users, themselves have a lower IQ than other Internet news sites. "Internet Explorer Users Are Kinda Stupid, Study Suggests" exclaimed the PC World article. "Internet Explorer users 'have below-average IQ' " blared The Telegraph. Business Insider and many other sites picked up the story as well. It can be a pretty scary thing to log into your Gmail account and be met with a blazing red banner that says "Warning: We believe your account was recently accessed from:" followed by a geographic location that you decidedly aren't, often a place such as Russia, Poland or China, and that followed by the options "Show details and preferences" and "Ignore". Usually you can be certain that at that moment, the first thing you need to do is change your password, because your account was almost certainly hacked or otherwise compromised. However, that's not always true if you get a warning of a remote access in the U.S., such as "We believe your account was recently accessed from: United States (CA)." Score one for the good guys: the Justice Department has said that they have taken down a huge, international child pornography ring that 'met' on an online bulletin board known as DreamBoard, where the members in the exclusive, members-only Dream Board child porn ring would trade images and videos of children involved in sex acts, all under the age of 12, and including children as young as infants. Heartbreaking! Spotify is an online streaming music service that has been available in certain countries in Europe since 2008, but Spotify in the USA has only been available since July 15th. Spotify differs from some other online music services in that 1) you don't have to own the music to listen to it - Spotify music is streamed directly from Spotify's own enormous online music library, and 2) the music Spotify offers is a vast collection of commercial music from well-known artists, any of which you can add to your Spotify playlists. Users can get Spotify for free by signing up at spotify.com, then you download from Spotify the correct Spotify app for your computer. And speaking of your computer - Spotify also lets you listen to your own music as well as that in their library - the best of both worlds! There are also Spotify apps for most mobile platforms, so you can use Spotify on Android phones, iPhones, and Windows Mobile phones. And, of course, it took just two weeks for the official Spotify United States welcome: a lawsuit for patent infringement by PacketVideo. Welcome to the U.S., Spotify. If you have suddenly started receiving odd, unexplained text messages that start with the term "BREW" in them, it's not an advertisement for beer gone awry. They may come from 47205, from 9114, or from some other number you don't recognize, but believe it for not, they aren't spam. They usually start with strings of characters such as //BREW:01095caa or similar. BREW stands for "Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless", and is a 3rd-party application development system for mobile phones that is used by some apps and other programs. The United States Postal Service (USPS) has said that they will be closing up to 3700 regional post offices in an effort to stem a financial hemorrhage that will see them as much as $8.3 billion in the hole this year alone. The post office closing list includes possible post office closures in nearly every state, although most of the locations on the post office closure list are considered to be poorly performing branches. Fox Network has announced that next month it will start requiring people to prove that they have a cable or satellite subscription in order to have timely access to online Fox Network content on the Fox website and on Hulu. Those who can authenticate that they have a paid subscription will be able to get past the so-called 'paywall' and will be able to access contemporary content the day after it is aired on Fox, just as they can now. However those without a cable or dish account will be stopped at the pay wall, and will have to wait a week and a day (8 days) before they can see the latest episode of their favorite shows. Forget the two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame seed bun. What's hot these days at McDonald's is mommy bloggers. That's right. While multi-million dollar television advertising campaigns are certainly no thing of the past, the new marketing frontier which McDonald's is openly mining is mommy bloggers. Mommy bloggers are just what they sound like - moms who blog. And they can mean big business, as some of these mom bloggers have a substantial following. Retail giant Walmart is now offering streaming video rentals right from its website. Having acquired the VUDU streaming video service last year, Wal-mart is now mainstreaming (pun intended) its streaming service by making it available front and center on the Walmart.com site. Today was the first day that the MyTouch 4G Slide was available to the public from T-Mobile, and so we picked one up so that we could give you our first impressions. The My Touch 4G Slide phone is known primarily for two major features (well, three if you count that it comes with Android Gingerbread 2.3 installed), and those are the incredible 8 megapixel camera, and the blazing fast 1.2 GHz dual-core processors. But it's the little things that make or break a phone experience, so read on... More and more it's becoming commonplace to see a QR code - or "QR barcode" - in all sorts of places. In part that's because there is a free app for nearly every smart phone that includes a QR code reader (most bar code scanner apps also include a QR code scanner). Also, it's pretty easy to make a QR code; you just go to a QR code generator website, plug in your info, and voila, you have your very own QR code. Google provides you with 7 GB of Gmail storage, which sounds like a lot, but if you get a lot of email, or are using Gmail as an archive system, at some point you can still find that your Gmail account is nearly full. So, how to reduce the amount of space being used in your Gmail account? Here's how. You may not think that answering the question "What is a heat dome" has anything to do with the Internet, but here's why it does: With this incredible, massive, near-national heat wave, news outlets across the country are throwing out the term 'heat dome', and people are taking to the Internet to find out just what the heck a 'heat dome' is, and it's nearly impossible to find a site that will tell you what is a heat dome! So, here we are, filling that void on the Internet, and telling you what a heat dome is. Aaron Swartz, a co-creator of RSS , open access advocate, and author of the Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto, and now a researcher at Harvard, has been arrested for hacking into the JSTOR system. JSTOR, which stands for "Journal Storage", is a system that archives academic journals, and makes them available to institutions and, in a more limited version, to the public. Amazon has decided to tackle states that are adopting Internet sales taxes head on, by underwriting and spearheading a referendum to have the newest Internet sales tax, that in California, repealed. Digital marketing analysis firm comScore has released a report showing that in terms of marketshare, there are now more (vastly more) Android phones in use than iPhones. With nearly 40% of all smart phones in the U.S. being Android phones, compared to the Apple iPhone having just a little over 25% of the market, Android seems to be eating Apples for lunch. Just how many people are using Android phones as to compared to the number of people using iPhones? Read on... With all the hoopla over Google+ - what with some calling it the Facebook killer, and all - it is interesting to us to note that nobody has yet stopped to question what sort of advantage Google has over Facebook by being able to data-mine all of that email that flows from Facebook to its users, via...Gmail. The only way that you could have missed the "1 trick of a tiny belly" or "One tip to a tiny belly" ads that have been everywhere - absolutely everywhere - on the Internet would be if you hadn't been on the Internet yourself. Well it turns out that those "1 tip" ads, some of which tout "Cut down a bit of your belly everyday by following this 1 weird old tip", are part of a massive network of scams which the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has uncovered. Twitter has been the vector for a flood of work-from-home scam spams this week, as followers of hacked accounts found dozens of copies of the "I snagged $217 in just a few hours online. learned how to do it from {link to scam}" type of spam coming at them via direct message. The link goes to a faked NBC article that touts "How did this stay at home mom make $13900+/Month.. We Investigate.." and that cleverly makes note of the geographic location (geolocation) of your IP address and customizes the article to make it seem as if the single mom is from your own town. Last month Social Intelligence Corp. received official approval from the Feds to monitor and search your social network status updates and other information that is publicly searchable online. So just what is Social Intelligence doing with the results of their social network search? They are providing them to the people who pay Social Intelligence Corp. for those results: prospective employers. Anything you say or post online in a public forum can and will be used against you, including remarks that can be construed as racist, photos that can be considered explicit, or anything that can be taken as evidence of illegal activity such as drug use, to name a few. Suddenly the drunk posting of a status update on Facebook from years ago can come back to haunt you and cost you that job that you really want. Netflix has announced that they are raising their rates, effective for new customers immediately, while the new fees for existing customers will be effective September 1st. The rate hike is said to be necessary to reflect the increased cost of doing business, particularly with respect to postage rates for mailing DVDs. While the new prices apply to everyone, the new pricing plans will most affect those who had the unlimited streaming plus unlimited DVD plan, as Netflix is now separating the two plans, and you must pay a fee for each separately. Facebook announced today that it has integrated Skype into the Facebook framework, to allow users to make video calls right from Facebook. The announcement took place days after Google soft-launched the new Google social network, Google+, which also includes a video chat feature in the form of G+ Hangouts. We're betting that some in the Google inner circle are ruing the day that someone at Google HQ first uttered "Don't be evil." Like Bush's "Read my lips, no new taxes", it has become the iconic soundbite with which they are most associated. How that gels with the news that Google is now forcing anyone with a Google Profile to make that profile public or lose it, well, we're sure we don't know. But there it is: where users used to be able to keep their Google Profile private, Google has made clear that private profiles will no longer be permitted. Either take your Google Profile public, or lose it when they do a mass deletion of all private Google profiles on July 31st. U.S. President Barack Obama will go down in social media history as the first president to hold a virtual Town Hall meeting, when today he took questions via Twitter, and sent out the first presidential Tweet ever. Using the hashtag #AskObama on Twitter, President Obama's Whitehouse team has been collecting questions for the President, through Twitter, since last Thursday. By the day of the meeting, more than 60,000 messages (Tweets) on Twitter had referenced the #AskObama hashtag. The first official presidential Tweet was a question for the President's Twitter followers: "In order to reduce the deficit, what costs would you cut and what investments would you keep? BO" Twitter is aflame with calls for boycotts of Rupert Murdoch, his 'News of the World', 'News of the World's' parent company, 'News International', and other Murdoch holdings, as the investigation of News of the World's using a private detective, Glenn Mulcaire, to hack into the telephone voicemail of several young girls who had been murdered in the U.K. in 2002, and that of their families, moves into Parliament. The families of Milly Dowler, Holly Wells, and Jessica Chapman have all been informed by police that each of their telephone voicemail accounts may have been hacked, each within days of each girl's disappearance, and each by Mulcaire, trying to get a scoop for News of the World. Among other things, Mulcaire is alleged to have hacked into Milly Dowler's voicemail on her mobile phone, and deleted some messages, which caused Milly's family to continue to hope that she might be found alive when she had already been murdered, and which interfered with the police investigation. Calls for Rebekah Brooks, head of News International, and a personal friend of British Prime Minister David Cameron, to step down are escalating, putting the Prime Minister in an awkward position, particularly as his Communications Director, Andy Coulson, also formerly of News of the World, has already been forced to resign his position with the Prime Minister. California is the newest state to pass a law taxing sales at companies like Amazon when those sales are generated by a local (in this case California-based) affiliate or associate. And, not unexpectedly, about five minutes after California Governor Jerry Brown signed the legislation, California becames the newest state to have their affiliates dumped by Amazon. As we've pondered before, is it arrogance or simple ignorance that is leading these state legislatures to pass laws that, instead of bringing in new taxes, are depriving their state economic engines of taxable spending fuel? Instead of bringing more income into the state, by chasing away the affiliate programs, they are depriving their own residents of income - income which would come back to the local economy. As we mentioned in our overview of Google+, adding people to your social circle there is a little different than doing so on Facebook. And it isn't always straightforward how to add someone in Google Plus, or how to follow people in Google+. So here are instructions for how to add people in Google +. Google + or, as it is known more fully, the Google+ Project, is Google's foray into creating a true social network. So what is Google+? As the awesome comic XKCD puts it, it's like Facebook, but it's not Facebook, making it a win-win, according to some. Face recognition on Facebook - there has been a lot written about the privacy invasion that is the facial recognition Facebook recently unleashed on its users, which pops up uninvited, urging tagging Facebook photos that you upload, tagging all of the Facebook users that it recognizes in your images. The photo facial recognition software that Facebook has foisted on you allows Facebook face recognition of anybody who has not opted out of it (and let's face it, few people know how to opt out of it - in fact few people even know that the Facebook recognition photo tagger exists - until they run smack into it). It's kind of fun to see a friend's smiling face as their email address picture when you open an email from them. But there is a little-known danger to having a contact picture associated with someone who sends you email. That's because those contact images are displayed even if the email is from someone who has hijacked your friend's email address, which happens all the time with phishing, scamming and spamming. It's called "spoofing", and any scammer or spammer can put your friend's email address as their own "from" address. What this means is that any scammer can send you email "from" your friend's email address, and your email program will display the address book picture you have set as the contact image. And many, if not most, people, seeing their friend's email address image in that email, will have a false sense of security that the email really is from their friend. It's as if the address book image being present in the email somehow proves it's really from their friend. Well, it doesn't. And here are real-life examples to prove it. This article is going to be controversial. Whether or not you should follow everyone who follows you on Twitter is a topic which engenders strong emotions and heated debate. In fact, just last week I was accused of "game playing" because I have 1600+ people who follow me on Twitter, while I 'follow' fewer than 50. Reviewers around the world are lauding the new Harry Potter website, Pottermore, that was recently launched by Harry Potter author J.K. Rowlings. The interactive site includes activities sure to enchant Harry Potter fans, including letting them sign up for Hogwarts, and helping them choose the right wand. And, the entire Harry Potter collection will be available in ebook format from the Pottermore site. If you have ever suffered a forgotten passcode on your iPod iTouch, iPad, or iPhone, then you know how frustrating it can be when you are sure you could remember it if only you had enough tries, but your iPhone (or iPad or iTouch) has other ideas. "Forgot passcode? Bzzt..too many tries," and then you get the dreaded "iPod iTouch is disabled try again in 1 minute" or "iPad is disabled try again in 5 minutes" or "iPhone is disabled try again in 15 minutes." The "try again" timeout intervals increase with each wrong guess (the first 5 guesses are 'free', then each additional wrong guess imposes another time out penalty). Well, here is how to end run those disabled timeouts, so that you don't have to wait, and can keep on guessing as many times as you need to until you finally remember that forgotten passcode. Amina Arraf, the lesbian Syrian blogger and purported authoress of the blog 'A Gay Girl in Damascus', has been unmasked and discovered to be a decidedly straight 40-year-old man named Tom MacMaster, who lives with his wife in Georgia. The U.S. is knee-deep in a project with world-wide implications: developing an easy-to-deploy, difficult-to-shut-down wireless Internet system that can be deployed just about anywhere, providing Internet access to anybody - including those whose governments have otherwise shut down their people's Internet access. Dubbed the "Internet in a Suitcase", the technology has been financed by the U.S. state department, and is already in development. The Internet in a Suit case consists of several components, including a laptop, wireless antennas, cables, and thumb drives preloaded with software which can be used to bring additional devices online (as well as CDs with the same software). A Magistrate has recommended to the Federal court in Maine that a bank (in this case Ocean Bank of Maine) has no liability, even though it allowed hackers to remove more than $500,000 from one of the bank's customers accounts. The customer, Patco Construction, had been the victim of the Zeus trojan, which steals passwords once surreptitiously installed on a victim's computer. Earlier this month, the NATO Rapporteur (and we explain what that is) released a draft report addressing, among other things, the scope and impact of the leaking of the Wikileaks documents by Private Bradley Manning, the threats and actions by "hacktivists" (activist hackers engaging in "hacktivism"), including the hacker collective known as "Anonymous", and what counter-measures NATO and other such bodies might take. Earlier this year we mentioned that Google was rolling out face recognition technology that would allow someone to pull up your personal information just by taking your picture. Now Facebook has launched their own facial recognition privacy nightmare, which "uses a comparison of photos you're tagged in to suggest that friends tag you in new photos." In other words, when one of your Facebook friends uploads a photo, and Facebook's software recognizes you in that image, Facebook automatically suggests that your friend tag you in the photograph. The "feature" goes by "Suggest photos of me to friends", and is also known as "Photos: Suggest Tags". And the kicker is, Facebook has quietly enabled this for you - it is running now! So here's how to turn it off! You'd think (and hope) that someone like an elected official would know better than to play the nasty with women, online. You'd think (and hope), but you'd be wrong. Again. This time it is New York Representative Anthony D. Weiner, who, for at least a week, claimed that the raunchy and inappropriate communications sent by him to women online were the work of hackers, and who earlier this week finally admitted that he was the one who sent them. The photo that brought it all tumbling down was a picture of his own plumped weiner (encased in his jockey shorts), which he allegedly sent to Washington State college student Gennette Cordova. The picture was in the Yfrog.com account associated with Weiner's verified Twitter account; his Yfrog account is now devoid of any pictures. The netosphere is a'buzz with the announcement of Apple's new cloud-based streaming music service. The Apple music service is actually part of a cloudy storage service called iCloud (what else?). iCloud is an online storage and "syncing" service which allows you to "sync" calendars, contacts, email, photos, documents, ebooks, and yes, your music, across multiple devices. The music part of it basically allows you to store your iTunes library in 'the cloud' and access it from any capable device. (We put "sync" in quotes because technically it's not really syncing, it's having your data "pushed" and downloaded to each of your devices, on demand, but many users still think of it as syncing.) Copyright infringement is wrong, and it's darned easy to do on the Internet. But lots of website proprietors publish images for which they have purchased the right to display the images, often from a stock photo site. So you can imagine their surprise when they get a demand letter from Getty Images, stating that they are guilty of copyright infringement under U.S. Title 17 (the Copyright Act) and that they must provide "payment for the attached demand amount" if they cannot produce a valid license. Is the Getty Images demand letter a scam? Well, not exactly. Recently a scam spam has surfaced that claims that your YouTube inbox is full, and that you have to go clear it out (another version of the same scam says that "You have 2 unread personal message"). The email, claiming to be from "service@youtube.com", has a subject of "Warning: Your inbox is full, message not accepted" (or, again, the "You have X unread personal message"), and advises you that "You can reply to this message by visiting your inbox." The link to your "inbox" of course, which looks like "http://www.youtube.com/inbox?feature=mhsn", actually goes to a malicious site - so far we've seen it go to http://lliamamor.com/breakfaster.html, http://motolover.50webs.com/sykes.html, http://mizban-ins.com/calculative.html, and http://217.172.226.2/~mmaja180/groundwork.html. Here's a scam going around Craigslist that is fooling people because it seems so darned believable at first. You reply to a "for sale" or "for free" ad, so far they seem to be for couches and entertainment centers, and the person writes back saying something like " I already had promised this to the first person who emailed me but she didn't get back to my email. Are you still interested?" Then when you say you are, they reply saying "the other person replied back again, and it seems her first reply went to my spam folder and I missed it. I feel terrible :(" In fact, they feel so badly that they tell you a way to make $1600 from home, at http://www.consumerwarningsreport360.com/. Don't fall for it! If you heard that President Obama signed the bill extending the Patriot Act using an autopen while he was sitting in France and the bill for the extension of the Patriot Act was in Washington, D.C., you may be wondering "Just what is an autopen?" An auto pen is, quite literally, an auto pen - an automated pen (versus an automatic pen) that automatically replicates, in a remote location, the signature or other writing of the person who is holding it. Other versions can store the user's signature, and so replicate it on demand (sort of a compromise between using a rubber stamp, and the person personally signing it); it was of the use of one of these signature-storing machine which President Obama authorized, as he was stuck in Europe at the G8 Summit, and the bill was set to expire last night. Mark Twains autobiography was published for the first time this past November, in keeping with his wishes that the Mark Twain auto biography not be published until 100 years after his death (Mark Twain's date of death was April 21, 1910; Mark Twain's date of birth was November 30, 1835). In the autobiography Mark Twain clearly indicates that he is speaking freely (and often shockingly) about friends, acquaintances, enemies, and other contemporaries, because he has fixed it so that the Mark Twain autobiography cannot be published during their lifetime or, indeed, the lifetime of their children. And so it is that the Mark Twain autobio is only just now coming to light, and well worth the wait: Mark Twains life was very interesting. Straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak, it only makes sense that of all the Mark Twain biographies one might read, at the top of the list should be Mark Twains biography of himself. But how to read it, when the font is so tiny that it almost necessitates a magnifying glass, and weighs in at hefty 743 pages of tiny print? Here's how. Google today announced its new mobile wallet technology, the Google Wallet, which allows users to store, carry and pay with their credit cards using their Android phones. The Google eWallet uses NFC (near-field communications) technology by including an NFC chip on those phones that are enabled with Google Wallet. MasterCard, Citibank, Macy's, American Eagle and Subway have already signed on, to name a few. Earlier this month the White House released what it is calling its "Cybersecurity Legislative Proposal". It makes for an interesting read, and so we thought we would share it with you. Let us know what you think. One of the more helpful computer items for the blind is the current generation of text to speech software. Making use of voice synthesizer technology, a "talking computer" which runs software for the vision impaired, such as screen readers, is an incredible help for the blind and the vision impaired. A text to voice converter for Windows, the JAWS screen reading software for the visually impaired aids the sight impaired as well as completely blind people with many popular Windows programs. And the native text to audio speech synthesizer that is included with all new Macs is equally helpful to those with impaired vision and those who are completely blind. (Those who are legally blind may also qualify for assistance in acquiring either computer or software.) If a link to "activate dislike button" shows up on your Facebook page - do not, Do Not, DO NOT click that link! The scam link, spreading like wildfire, appears as a post on your wall that says "Facebook just added the dislike button! Click on 'Activate Dislike Button' below to enable it on your account!" Of course, the FB dislike button is another Facebook scam, carrying with it a Facebook virus and a bonus of malware that it downloads to your computer in the background. If you've been hearing about "Sparah" and wondering who the heck she is, or they are, well, you're not the only one. Sparah is a faux "celebrity couple" being pushed into the limelight as part of an advertising campaign by VirginMobile . The concept is that VirginMobile has taken two relatively unknown actors - Spencer Falls and Sarah Carroll - and is attempting to turn them into a celebrity couple, while folks watch along and "Keep up with Sparah" via commercials and YouTube videos. "Sparah" is a contraction of their first names, Spencer and Sarah, in the same vein as "Brangelina" and "Bennifer". If the concept seems familiar, it may be because you remember when Taster's Choice coffee did essentially the same thing back in the 90s, with British actors Anthony Head and Sharon Maughan (whose characters, Matthew Prescott and Alexandra Maitland meet and fall in love over the course of several serialized commercials). Three researchers in Germany at the University of Ulm have discovered a massive security hole in Android - so big, in fact, that it affects at least 97%, and as many as 99%, of all Android users. The researchers, Bastian Könings, Jens Nickels, and Florian Schaub, have discovered that the security flaw allows anyone who is sniffing around your connection on an unsecured wireless network to acquire your Google authorization credentials from a specific token (the authToken), giving them access to your contacts, your calendar and, well - really any application that authenticates you by using your Google authorization credentials contained within that authToken. Every once in a while someone will try to use their Paypal debit card, and the transaction will be declined with this interesting message: "Tender has not been approved." It's incredibly frustrating, and not a little embarrassing, to have your transaction declined, and not be authorized, especially when you know that you have enough money in your Paypal account to cover the charge you were trying to put through when your Paypal debit card was declined. You log into your Paypal account, and you see nothing wrong! No messages, no holds, nothing. Here's what's going on, and what you need to do to fix it. Many of you received an email from Amazon this week which invited you to enter the "Win an Kindle 3G from Amazon.com" contest in honor of Amazon Prime, and, of course, and as you should, you were suspicious and are wondering whether it's a scam. in fact, the "Win a Free Kindle 3G Sweepstakes" is legitimate! No purchase necessary, and here is how to enter (even if you didn't get that email). You'll need a Facebook account, as it involves the Amazon Facebook page, and that's where the catch comes in. A brand new scam, trying to get you to download malware, has just hit the Internet. "The ACH transaction recently sent from your checking account (by you or any other person), was canceled by the Electronic Payments Association" says the spam in which it is contained. There is a link to a file that you are supposed to download to "see the details of the report". Don't download that file! The file name format is "report_FakeTransaction#.pdf.exe" so, for example, report_33047451352379.pdf.exe. So far the scam mail has pretended to come from NACHA.org, although they are actually coming through an ISP in the Ukraine (ukrtel.net). ACH, by the way, stands for Automated Clearing House, which is a system that processes electronic banking transactions. Have you ever been reading a PDF file, or a website, on your Mac, and been frustrated at the lack of a "Page down" or "Page up" key? In fact, it's very easy to page up or page down on a Mac, but it's not obvious how to do it. Here is how to page down on a Mac (or page up on a Mac). "OMG! Its unbeliveable now you can get to know who views your facebook.". Did someone post that on your Facebook wall? If so, whatever you do, don't click the link that says "CLICK 2 SEE YOUR STALKERS"!! Yes, it's just another in a round of Facebook virus spams. You may have noticed that the Internet is all a-Twitter (pun intended) over super-injunctions (a/k/a superinjunctions), but despite that, it may well be that you have no idea just what a super injuntion is, nor why you should care. If you are from the U.S. you're even less likely to know, and so if you are asking yourself "What is a super-injunction?", well, we'll explain. Android is an awesome mobile operating system - so awesome, in fact, that many report that Android sales are overtaking those of the iPhone. The Android market - where you can find and download Android applications for your Android phone, is extensive, and the majority of apps are free. It's easy to load your phone up with apps, but at some point you will need to know how to uninstall apps on an Android phone, because you will want to delete apps from Android to make more space on your phone, or you will want to remove an application simply because you don't use that application any more. It's very easy to remove an Android application - in fact easier than with an iPhone. To remove an app from Android, just follow these simple steps. With the rash of Facebook spam and viruses going around (such as the "Vote for Nicole Santos" spam, and the "Please do your part in PREVENTING SPAM by VERIFYING YOUR ACCOUNT. Click VERIFY MY ACCOUNT right next to comment below to begin the verification process..." spam), it's important that you know how to remove something that has been posted to your wall (never click on the "Remove this app" or "==VERIFY MY ACCOUNT==" links, those are links intended to trick you into infecting your machine!) Removing a post or comment from your wall is actually very easy. Here's how to do it: Nicole Santos is getting quite a name for herself, and deservedly so. Her name has been spammed all across Facebook, in wall posts that are full of profanities, and also almost always exhort the spammed to "Vote for Nicole Santos". The trick, of course, is that at the bottom of the post, next to the "Comment" and "See Friendship" links, is a link to "Remove this app". Because the language in the wall posts is so foul, one's first instinct is to hit that link as quickly as possible - but don't click that link because that is how the virus infects your machine. (There is also a similar virus spam going around Facebook right now that exhorts you to "Please do your part in PREVENTING SPAM by VERIFYING YOUR ACCOUNT. Click VERIFY MY ACCOUNT right next to comment below to begin the verification process".) It's so easy to end up with a big collection of apps, isn't it? There are so many free applications, so many interesting looking apps, that you can eat 'em like candy. But eventually they start taking up too much space on your iPhone, iPod or iTouch, or on your hard drive in iTunes. Here is how to remove an app from your device, from iTunes, and from your hard drive. Lots of you are asking lots of questions about the Sony PlayStation Network ("How was the Sony Play Station Network taken down?", "Who hacked the the Sony PlayStation Network?", "Is it true that it was done with rooted Sony PSP handhelds?", and, perhaps most importantly, "Is the Sony PSN secure now?" To bring you up-to-date, if you are scratching your head right now, first, the Sony PlayStation Network (referred to in shorthand as the "PSN") was taken down last month in a concerted cyber attack which, at first Sony claimed was down due to "maintenance" but, eventually, they admitted that a hacking attack had taken them down. The hacker or hackers also caused Sony's Qriocity services to go down. Oh, and wait - it also extended to the Sony Online Entertainment network. In short, if you have ever completed any transaction online with Sony, you need to treat your identity and credit card information as compromised. The "Security Alert" trojan, sometimes known as a 'rogue antivirus' attack, is making the rounds again. First spotted a few years ago, until recently the "web security" antivirus alert trojan targeted mainly PCs, tricking Windows users into downloading the evil 'BestAntivirus2011.exe' file by telling them that "To help protect your computer Windows web security have detected trojans and ready to remove them." (Note the poor language usage.) Now this same tactic is being used to attack Mac users - all that has changed is the "Windows" to "Apple" and the file name ('MacProtector.mpkg for Macs') - even the poor language remains the same! "To help protect your computer Apple web security have detected trojans and ready to remove them." says the pop-up. Don't fall for it, and whatever you do, don't click on "Remove all", which will cause the malware to be downloaded to your computer. Here are two things that you should never do to your Facebook friends: create a Facebook group and add them to it without asking, or tag them in one of your photos unless you have a really good reason to. Why should you never do these two things? Because it can cause your Facebook friends to have their inboxes overridden with completely irrelevant Facebook notifications that they don't want. What sort of friend would do that to their friends? One of the least attractive qualities of the new Facebook Groups is that anyone can create a group, and then they can add anyone to the group, so suddenly you are a member of a group for which you never asked to be signed up. This is a form of spam, pure and simple, and it is evil for someone to do it to you, just as it is evil for Facebook to set it up that way. Here is how to delete yourself from that group, and also how to report it as spam for signing you up in the first place. One of the more useful features of Paypal is that you can set up an automatic subscription payment - i.e. a regularly recurring payment - so that if you have a monthly payment to a business that is the same each month, you can set it up once and forget about it, safe in the knowledge that your automatic payment will be made on time each month. (The merchant with whom you are setting up the Paypal subscription will give you a link to create the subscription's recurring transaction.) These Paypal recurring subscription payments are very convenient, but what about if you want to stop them? How do you cancel a Paypal subscription payment? Here's how: State Farm, the insurance company, has just released an iPhone app that evaluates how you drive. Called the State Farm Driver Feedback app, the iPhone application uses your iPhone's accelerometer and GPS to track your acceleration, cornering, and braking, and then gives you a grade. But is that all it gives you? What about increased insurance rates, or even being declined insurance, based on how you drive, as recorded by the State Farm Driver Feedback app? The response to our tutorial on how to password protect and disable the wifi on an iPod Touch or iPad (or iPhone, for that matter) has been amazing. So many people want to be able to completely disable Internet access on these smart devices so that they can let their children use them without worry that they will get into something online that they shouldn't. So here is our tutorial on how to disable wifi (with password protection) on an Android phone or tablet. Spam is one of those "I know it when I see it" sorts of things. Most of us can agree on things that are definitely spam (such as "herbal enhancement" and "make money fast" email), and things that definitely are not spam (an email from mom saying she's sending cookies, or from your boss giving you a bonus). But it's that big grey area in the middle where people don't necessarily agree: one man's spam is another man's "Hey, that's useful." Please answer the following quick questions to help us determine how *you* view spam, and what is spam, and what isn't. In response to the howls of outrage over the news that iOS4 is tracking and storing every location you visit with an iPhone or iPad, Apple has finally, more than week later, issued a statement on the matter,. In essence, they say that a bug made them do it, and they are going to fix it. Sort of. Have you ever tried to report spam, or report a spammer, only to be asked to copy and paste and send them your full email headers? Have you experienced frustration trying to figure out what it is that you are supposed to send, and where to find that email header? Well, the Internet Patrol to the rescue! Here is a simple, plain English, straight-forward tutorial to find your email headers, for nearly any email program! As promised, here are our impressions of the new Android Sidekick, the first Sidekick with a touch screen, out this week from T-Mobile. The first thing to know is that this is one sweet phone, with the always-superlative Sidekick keyboard, which blows all other slider QWERTY keyboards out of the water, and blazing-fast 4G. There are already a few standard reviews out there - this review is the 'other' review, with missing tidbits and tips not found in those other reviews, like why is Gmail not syncing on the Sidekick 4G? And where is the flash on the 4G Sidekick? And does this version of the Sidekick still have those auto text macros (automatic word replacement) built in? While we are talking about how to lock down the Internet access on an iPod Touch, iPhone or iPad so that you can safely let a child use it without having to worry about what they may access on the Internet, you may find yourself having forgotten the parental restrictions passcode (that allows you to reset parental controls to disable Safari, email, etc.), and wanting to reset it. If you haven't jailbroken your iPod Touch or iPhone or iPad, then the standard advice - to do a factory reset through iTunes - may still be your best bet. But if you have jailbroken your iPhone or iPad or iPod Touch, then you can actually remove and reset the parental restrictions passcode without having to reset your device! (Oh happy days!) Here's how you do it: If you are a conscientious parent who wants to let their child use an iPod Touch (or "iTouch") or iPad, but who wants the iPod Touch wifi disabled before you give it to them, you may be frustrated at the lack of any way to disable wifi so as to lock down the iPad or iPod Touch internet access. You can't password protect the internet access on an iPod Touch or iPad, as there are no passwords for iPod iTouch wifi. In fact, natively, there is no way to disable or password protect the iPod Touch internet access (how stupid, Apple, get on the ball here! Give us some iPod Touch wifi apps to disable wifi!) Oh sure, you can put parental control restrictions on individual applications (Safari, Email), but your child can still turn the iPod Touch wireless internet on, and for some parents, that's still too much of a risk (and we say "Bravo!" to them for 'getting' it). There is, however, an iPod Touch hack that will allow you to disable wifi on your iPod Touch or iPad, by password protecting the iPod Touch wifi on/off switch, and here it is. Researchers have discovered that Apple's newest operating system, iOS4, is literally spying on iPhone and iPad 3G and iPad 2 3G users' movements, using geolocation to create a file that records every place that the user carrying the device passes through. At least as bad, the file, called "consolidated.db", not only is on your iPhone or iPad, but is unencrypted, meaning that anybody who can access the file can read your every move. The Huffington Post (which variously also goes by HuffPost, Huff Post, HuffPo, or Huff Po), is being sued in a class action law suit by its own bloggers. The lawsuit, which names Ariana Huffington and Kenneth Lerer, the two co-founders of the Huffington Post, as defendants, alleges deceptive business practices and unjust enrichment. AOL, which recently acquired the Huffington Post for $315 million (which is what triggered the lawsuit) is also a named defendant. Amazon has announced a new, cheaper, reduced-price Amazon Kindle. The new ad-supported Kindle with Special Offers, as it is known, is identical in hardware to the wifi Kindle - in fact it is a wi-fi Kindle, only it displays advertising along the bottom of the home screen, along with "sponsored screensavers" (which users get to help pick using Amazon's 'Hot or Not' style Admash. In exchange for letting Amazon have your eyeballs in this distinctly Google-esque manner, you get your wireless Kindle with ads for $25.00 less - $114.00 instead of $139.00. Worth it? We were as excited as anyone (and probably more excited than many!) to learn about the new Tmobile Sidekick 4G, and to get going on a Sidekick 4G review! So we rushed down to the T-Mobile store and got an inside preview of the new T Mobile Sidekick 4G, the first touchscreen Sidekick ever. The new Android Sidekick 4G from T-Mobile promises to be everything great in the Sidekick line, enhanced with the great Android OS, the touch screen, and front and rear-facing cameras!. So read on about the all new for 2011 Sidekick 4G! Barely two years ago, networking giant Cisco purchased the Flip video camera (by buying Pure Digital, the makers of the Flip camera) and folded the Flip USB video camera business into the Cisco brand. This week Cisco has announced that they are killing the division, and killing the Flip camera, and a lot of people are pretty unhappy about it. Fortunately, the Flip camera is still available for purchase (links below); unfortunately, it won't be supported. On the other hand, the Flip camera is so darned simple and straight-forward, it doesn't need a whole lot of support. Over the course of the past week, we have received four - count 'em - 4 online greeting cards. We've been cautioning against the evils of the online greeting card industry industry for years, but apparently it's time to do it again. By now it's pretty well known that ATT iPhones drop as many as a third of all calls, and that even Apple themselves admits that. But how do the Verizon iPhones do in the dropped call department? Does they drop as many calls as their ATT counterparts? According to a new study, the Verizon iPhone does substantially better in the dropped calls department. One of the things that people want to know about the Beatles remastered stereo box set (or, if contemplating downloading the Beatles iTunes collection) is just how much space will the Beatles complete collection take up on their hard drive, iPod, iPad, or other MP3 player? No Beatles Remastered review seems to mention either how much space all the Beatles songs takes up in digital form, or total play time for all Beatles songs from all Beatles albums. So, we took the Beatles boxed set - the Beatles remasters, with all of the Beatles albums (with gorgeous CD-sized versions of all of the Beatles album covers, and containing all of the Beatles songs), and we determined both how long it would take if you wanted to listen to the entire Beatles anthology - all the Beatles albums in order, from first Beatles album to last (or heck, the entire Beatles catalog in whatever order you like), as well as how much space it would take up if you wanted to either rip that Beatles collection, or download all the Beatles music from iTunes. The answers may surprise you! We also include a list of all of the Beatles songs included in the Beatles Box Set, as well as all of the albums. If you received a notice from one or another company with whom you do business or have done business in the past, saying that your email address has been compromised due to a data security breach at email service provider (ESP) Epsilon (due to their customers' email lists being hacked and stolen), you're not alone. Oh, you are so not alone. Banks, large merchants, and others, have all had their entire list of customers' email addresses swiped and leaked due to the Epsilon data breach. Chase Bank, Citi Bank, Best Buy, Krogers - even Disney, have all been affected - as have their customers. Of course, lots of people receiving these notices will assume that they are phishing attempts (and there will undoubtedly be phishing attempts riding on the coat tails of this fiasco). Here is the complete list as we know it today - if you have received a notice saying that your email address has been compromised, please add the name of the company involved to the list here. Usually it's the feminists who are outraged by the actions of GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons, but this time he's raised the ire of the animal rights activists, including (but by no means limited to) PETA (which stands for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). It's not hard to understand - in this day and age people are more likely than not to be upset by the killing of an elephant, let alone by the braggadocio posting of a video of the deed. And despite the timing, the GoDaddy elephant video is no April Fool's joke - it's all too real. Google has announced a controversial face recognition software to run on mobile phones. The Google face detection application will access your personal information - including your personal contact information - when someone takes your picture using the Google face recognition app. Don't you just hate it when you get included in a mass Facebook email message from someone on Facebook, and then lots of other people start replying, and you get all of those replies? When you find yourself swimming in Facebook message replies to a Facebook message thread that you never even requested, do you find yourself wondering how to unsubscribe to the message thread - how to stop Facebook messages - how to stop receiving all those replies? How to leave the conversation? Well, here's how. Believe it or not, nearly two weeks after the iPad 2 launch (release date was March 11), many Apple stores are still out of the iPad 2! Or, more correctly, they are getting them in in dribs and drabs, with long lines queueing starting at 6:00 a.m. (!), and any new supply of iPad 2s selling out within minutes of the Apple store opening 3 hours later. Here is our experience being in the Apple line, and getting our iPad 2, and our first thoughts and observations on the iPad 2, the "Smart Cover" (hate it!), and the iPad 2 case that we love. A few months ago we wrote about the Federal Trade Commission's proposed "Do Not Track" list and legislation. One of the biggest invaders of your privacy is cookies that track you, and that respawn after you (think you) have deleted them, or, as they are known, "Zombie Cookies" (so-called because they come back from the dead). As defined in Wikipedia, "a zombie cookie is any HTTP cookie that is recreated after deletion from backups stored outside the web browser's dedicated cookie storage." Variations on this theme include the Adobe Local Shared Object (LSO) cookie, and the Evercookie. There was a Zombie cookie law suit last summer, levelled against such industry giants as ABC, NBC, MTV, ESPN, MySpace, and Hulu, alleging that they were using Zombie cookies that respawned after being deleted because their backups were being stored in Flash. That technology was provided by Quantcast, who was the lead defendant in the Zombie cookie lawsuit. Not long after, the FTC announced their "Do Not Track" legislation proposal, and now Consumer Reports is asking their members to contact their Congressmen in support of the proposal. As any jilted lover would, Sprint has rebounded, and has gotten into bed with Google voice. And, frankly, we think they make a better couple anyways. The sweet sound made by a direct connection between your Google Voice account and your cel phone is music to the ears. As mentioned earlier today, Sprint and T-Mobile USA's courting didn't stand a chance once AT&T cut in and swept T-Mobile off the dance floor. But Sprint had a friend with benefits up their sleeve, and it was announced today that Sprint has integrated Google Voice into their offerings. Why yes, we did, not two weeks ago, tell you of a possible T-Mobile merger with Sprint Nextel. However, it seems that AT&T had other ideas, and has made a flat-out aquisition bid for T-Mobile USA, to the tune of $39 billion. You just know that the resulting love child - IF the deal is allowed to go through, as it creates one hell of a monopoly - will have to be called, even if not officially, AT&T&T-Mobile, or, just, AT&T&T. It's been a long time in coming, but the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) which is responsible for creation, approval, and overseeing of Internet domains (primarily the TLD space) has set in motion the final approval of the .XXX domain (also being referred to, at least in email, as the "dot-ex-ex-ex" domain, so as to avoid spam filters). Only adult entertainment industry sites, with adult-themed content, may use .XXX domains. But not everybody loves it - in fact that free speech foundation, The Free Speech Coalition, lead by Executive Director Diane Duke, is boycotting the .XXX domain, even though, as Dianne Duke seems to overlook, there is no suggestion that anybody will be required to use the .XXX domain. As the crisis in Japan continues to unfold, seemingly without end, more and more people are moved to donate to relief efforts to provide help and aid to the Japanese people, but aren't sure which relief efforts are legitimate, or how to avoid the scams. Here are three legitimate, worthy organizations, all of which are involved in relief efforts to help the victims of the Japanese earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear power plant reactor crisis. Each has a different focus, and all are legitimate, and will use your donations well. There are reports of a huge increase in the amount of Japanese spam following the massive 9.0 earthquake, the aftershocks, and the tsunamis that battered Japan over the past weekend. There are several theories as to why the marked increase in spam from Japanese addresses and servers, ranging from "all hell breaking out" to "spammers, like cockroaches, can survive anything." With the concern over meltdown and containment (or lack thereof) of the nuclear reactors at the power plants in Japan, following the horrific 9.0 earthquake that Japan suffered this week, a lot of people are searching for information about Potassium Iodide (not "Potassium Iodine"), also known as KI (K for potassium's elemental symbol, and I for iodide), which is the prescribed prophylactic measure to protect your thyroid from radiation poisoning from radioactive fallout from a nuclear disaster - military or otherwise. Here is the information you need about why to take pottasium iodide, dosage, and where to get it. If you are wanting to buy an Apple iPad2, and want to get your new iPad2 from an authorized dealer of the 2nd generation iPad (and avoid paying the extortionist prices that some individuals are charging for a new Apple iPad 2 - we saw one person on Craigslist selling a white iPad 2 for $1800!), then you may be frusted that every single iPad next generation authorized dealer is out of the new iPad 2, and that nobody can tell you when they will get their next shipment (and if you want to order your new iPad 2 from Apple, online, they are quoting a 2-3 week wait). What's more, nobody will hold one for you. Or, will they? Here's a nifty little secret to secure yourself a new iPad 2, whether you want a black iPad 2, a white iPad 2, a wifi-only iPad 2, or a 3G AT and T or Verizon iPad 2. News of a possible merger between T-Mobile and Sprint / Nextel has been met with reactions ranging from apathetic to negative. Talks between Sprint and Nextel, and T Mobile, have been going on for the past few months, and are now at the point of determining the appropriate valuation for the respective companies. While "valuation" may sound more like a purchase than a merging of the two companies, the actual transaction would have only shares of the merged company, not cash, exchanging hands, with T-Mobile assuming a majority stake-holder position (in other words, essentially acquiring Sprint Nextel). In yet one more bid to ensure that Facebook users never leave Facebook's site (and, of course, if they do, Facebook will be following them), Facebook has announced the launch of their Facebook Movies service. The Facebook movie service, which is a movie rental service, allows users to trade Facebook credits to rent and stream a movie for up to 48 hours. First up: the Batman movie, The Dark Knight. That said, the Facebook movie rental service isn't actually being offered by Facebook itself, so much as being permitted by Facebook, for a cut of the action. One of the most frustrating things about the Tmobile G2 - an otherwise fantastic smartphone - is the lack of any settings to control the keyboard backlight: you can't have your keyboard backlight always on, even if you want to. The light sensor that controls the keyboard back light on the G2 is crazy-sensitive to ambient light, and so one often finds oneself trying to type blind, because the keys are not lit up, and it's too dark to easily see the keyboard. If you want to keep your keyboard backlight on permanently, well, there is no setting to do that. But there is a way to do it, and we tell you how (with pictures!) First you need to know exactly where is the G2 light sensor. If you saw The Social Network (the movie), then you know who Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss are. In The Social Network cast, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss are played primarily by Armie Hammer, with Josh Pence providing a second body for whichever of the Winklevoss brothers wasn't the primary twin in a given scene. Now Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, who maintain that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg stole Facebook from them, tell the rest of the Winkelvoss side of the story. Facebook has teamed up with the Samaritans confidential emotional health service to allow Facebook users to report, through Facebook, if they are concerned that one of their Facebook friends is exhibiting suicidal tendancies, or threatening suicide. If a Facebook user reports (at the link included below) that they are concerned about a Facebook friend's suicidal thoughts or talk of suicide, the Samaritans will reach out to that friend. Rodney Knight Jr. is clearly no criminal mastermind. In fact, some news outlets are giving him their "Most stupid criminal ever" award, although we think we have a few candidates for that as well. He's right up there, though. Knight broke into a house. The house of a major journalist for a major paper. And stole the journalist's son's laptop. Then he used the stolen laptop's browser to post a picture of himself to the son's Facebook account! From our "Why online scams work" department, a woman (if she is indeed a woman) who was in an online relationship with an Illinois man for over two years has managed to scam at least $200,000 from the man. The scam came to light when the 48-year-old man from Naperville, Illinois contacted police because his 'girlfriend' had disappeared right after he wired her the last of the $200,000, and he feared she had been kidnapped. As if it isn't bad enough that Facebook is sharing your private phone number with all of your Facebook friends, there has been quite a stir this week over the news that Facebook is moving forward with their plans to allow third parties to access your contact information, including your address and telephone number. While Facebook denies this in the press, Facebook themselves confirmed it in a formal letter to the U.S. legislature, signed by Facebook's VP of Global Public Policy, Marne Levine. Perhaps you've already heard of the new online service, SocialEyes (SocialEyes.com). What you may have heard is that it's like the Russian Chatroulette, only clean, and with your Facebook friends. Which isn't really accurate, because Russia Chatroulette connects you serially with random people, while SocialEyes allows you and several of your friends (whom you know, they are not random people) to chat all at once with each other. However, it has severe limitations, and several quality issues. For example, you cannot invite friends on SocialEyes directly, they have to be on Facebook and you can only invite Facebook friends. And nowhere do they tell you how to cancel SocialEyes (we tell you how to remove SocialEyes below). The U.S. and U.K. both seem poised on the brink of allowing people to send text messages to emergency services, instead of dialing 911 (999 in the UK). The iPhone 4 was unleashed on the Verizon network earlier this month, and despite some nice extras unavailable on the AT and T iPhone 4, including the ability to use your Verizon iPhone to create and share a wireless mobile hotspot, the sales of the Verizon iPhone have been, by most accounts, underwhelming at best. At this point in your Internet life, it should hopefully come as no great shock that Google watches just about everything you do on the Internet, and one way that they do that is with the cookies that they've planted in your browser (in fact if you use both Google and Facebook, it's a good bet that very little that you do online isn't being tracked by one or the other, if not both). This includes a tracking cookie that Google has 'helpfully' given you for Google ads (that advertising by Google that is known as Adsense to website visitors and publishers, and Adwords to the advertisers who advertise in those ads by Google). based on what they perceive to be your preferences. Interestingly, Google also gives you a way to modify the information in that cookie, so that Google can show you more advertising that you 'want' (for some value of want). If you've noticed that your email seems to be acting funky lately, such as that replies from people to whom you have sent email aren't showing up where they should, or that people aren't getting email that you send from your Android phone, the culprit could well be that your Android phone is no longer using your default "From" address (your "send mail as" address) that you have set in Gmail. Thanks to an issue with the latest Android update, Android phones are not longer honoring your selection of default From address, and are instead defaulting to using your Gmail account email address. We have often taken flack for saying that children have no business being on Facebook (or the Internet in general), and that parents really don't understand the dangers of letting your child on the Internet without adequate supervision and precautions. Now a group of police officers is saying the same thing, going so far as to say that you need to have your child's Facebook password, and monitor their activity on Facebook - even if it means stealing their Facebook password to do it. We'll bet that you thought that the posting of Yelp reviews on Yelp was an open system, allowing legitimate users to post a Yelp review - whether good or bad - without being censored. Well, if you thought that, you were wrong, as we ourselves learned, all too frustratingly, this week. It turns out that while Yelp claims to only filter out reviews "to protect consumers and business owners from fake, shill or malicious reviews", in fact they filter Yelp reviews with no apparent rhyme or reason, based on a criteria which they coyly demur to explain, saying "It's a bit of a Catch-22, but the more we describe how the system works, the easier it is for people to game the system and write fake reviews." Moreover, this is exactly the sort of shenanigans that got them in hot water just a year ago, resulting in a class action Yelp lawsuit last year. The Yelp lawsuits last year claimed that Yelp would only remove a bad (and demonstrably fake, shill or malicious) review if the place that received the bad review paid for advertising on Yelp. In otherwords, Yelp was accused of extortion. Wow, it must really suck to be a student in Pennsylvania (at least the south-eastern part of it). First Montgomery county's Merion school district spies on its students, now we find out that right next door, in neighboring Bucks county, they hire teachers who hate their students, and blog about it! Witness the tale, and blog, of one Natalie Munroe. Natalie Monroe is a high school teacher who clearly has even less respect for her students than they have for her. It seems that meeting women on Craigslist is a lot like Lays Potato Chips - betcha can't meet just one. Meeting women for casual sex on Craigslist is so easy - so addicting - that it seems to cause all reason and logic (not to mention fidelity, honor and decency) to fly out of men's heads. In fact, we fully expect to see Craiglist Rehab Clinics dotting the nation within the next few years. The most recent public downfall related to Craigslist cheating through Craigslist personals is that of New York Republican Representative Christopher Lee, who resigned this week after it was reported that the married Lee was trying to meet women through Craigslist. The Tree Octopus has been given a new lease on life, thanks to a study in which 25 Connecticut 7th-graders participated. If you are wanting a tablet, but not an iPad - and in particular if you specifically want an Android tablet - you may think that you have only one choice: the new Samsung Galaxy Android Tablet. But you'd be wrong, because the Barnes and Noble Nook Color eBook Reader actually runs on Android, and it's not that difficult to hack it ("root" the Nook) to run the more full version of Android, giving you an honest-to-goodness Android tablet! For those of you who follow email deliverability, whitelisting, etc., you may be surprised to learn that Goodmail is closing up shop. This means that there are just two main email deliverability services out there now - Return Path, and SuretyMail email accreditation and deliverability services (the latter of which is provided by our parent company, ISIPP). Have you ever wondered what it would be like to join the Peace Corps? What sort of Peace Corps jobs are there? What do Peace Corps volunteers actually do and do they find it as fulfilling as they might have imagined while they were applying to the Peace Corps? This week's guest expert, Travis Hellstrom, is the author of the Unofficial Peace Corps Volunteer Handbook, and he's answered these questions and more in a written interview for Monday Night Radio. Has Microsoft been spying on the Google searches of Internet Explorer users in order to use the data to enhance their own Microsoft Bing search engine, to make it more competitive with Google? According to Google, who claims to have caught MS watching their own IE users, tapping their Google searches and using the information gleaned from those searches to make their Bing searches more accurate. When Countries Such as Egypt and China Try to Keep Citizens Offline There are Ways Around Such Internet Blocking - The Internet is the ultimate free speech conduit, says creator of Internet block circumvention service, and must not be limited. How would you like to be able to download everything you have ever posted to Facebook - all your photos, all your videos, all your status updates - along with all the posts to your wall, and even your list of friends - all at one fell swoop, in one file, that you can store on your computer? Well now you can! Here's how. (Amusingly, the domain from which you will download your big zip file is, wait for it, "bigzipfiles.facebook.com".) A rumour has been circulating that people should not use the URL shortening service Bit.ly because, the rumour goes, Bit.ly somehow benefits the Libyan government. Other than the fact that the government of Libya gets the registration fee for the domain ($75.00 a year), Bit.ly does not benefit the regime of Moammar Gadhafi. As Amazon takes on more and more of a competitive stance against the likes of Google and Microsoft, Amazon has added to its cloud offerings an email sending service which effectively makes Amazon an email service provider. The Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES) joins other Amazon cloud offerings, including storage, video and other file hosting, and Amazon's flagship EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) service which allows you to create virtual servers on the fly (and in the cloud). Online dating giant Match.com has been sued, again, this time in Federal court in Texas. The lawsuit alleges that fewer than half of all singles profiles listed on Match .com are legitimate, with more than half of the profiles being either those of previous Match customers who had cancelled their accounts or, even, scam profiles. Amazon has just announced their "Elastic Beanstalk", which they describe as "an even easier way for developers to quickly deploy and manage applications in the AWS cloud." "AWS" stands for Amazon Web Services. The "Elastic", first coined for Amazon's "Elastic Compute Cloud" (Amazon EC2), refers to the ability to increase or decrease your viritual server capacity on the fly. The service, which is essentially an interface for all of the underlying Amazon AWS offerings, such as Amazon S3, Amazon EC2, Amazon Simple Notification Service, and Elastic Load Balancing and Auto-Scaling, is available at no additional charge. Hugh Hefner announced yesterday that Playboy is coming to the iPad. It may just be a coincidence, but Steve Jobs has always insisted that the the app store and iTunes be squeaky clean, and family friendly, with nothing over what seemed the equivalent of a PG rating, and now the Playboy announcement comes quite literally on the heels of Steve Jobs announcing this week that he will be taking a medical leave of absence. Here at the Internet Patrol we are asking for your input. We have over 11,000 readers who receive our weekly newsletter each week. Traditionally, our newsletter goes out on Friday mornings, but recent research suggests that people prefer to receive newsletter mailings earlier in the week, while still other research suggests that the weekends are the best time for email newsletters. Well, we figure that when it comes to research about the best day to send out the Internet Patrol Newsletter, who better to ask than the actual readers of The Internet Patrol! There's been a lot of talk this week about the announcement of President Obama's planned "Internet ID", but very little of it actually contains any substance about how such an Internet identity plan would actually work. That's because nobody really knows. There really is no plan yet; as far as anybody can tell at this point it's all just a proposal to plan to have a plan to create a national Cyber ID, although that proposed plan does have a name, the "National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace", and is said to be being drafted as we speak. Really, the most important part of the announcement of the national cyber identity plan is that it names the U.S. Commerce Department as having authority over any such plan, rather than Homeland Security or the NSA. The Google Goggles application, available for both Android and iPhone, now solves Sudoku puzzles! All you have to do is snap a picture of the Sudoku puzzle with your phone, and Google Goggles will solve it! (Although we are forced to ask, where's the fun in that?) Here are screen shots of it in action. The wait is over - at least, the wait to learn how long the wait is is over. As we mentioned earlier, today was the big day for Verizon's announcement of the Verizon iPhone. And Verizon did not disappoint: this morning they announced the Verizon iPhone's release date, along with a couple of interesting features, some of which that other iPhone doesn't even have, including, most notably, wireless hotspot capability, allowing you to not only to connect your laptop wirelessly to the Internet through your iPhone, but to share that connection, wirelessly, with four additional people. The 2011 Verizon iPhone is to be announced tomorrow (Tuesday, January 10th), with a Verizon iPhone release date at the end of the month. At least that is what the overly-pumped up rumour mills are saying, and, it seems, with good reason. Verizon themselves sent out invitations to a special announcement event scheduled to be held in New York City tomorrow morning, at 11:00 a.m. EST. According to sources, Verizon will announce the CDMA iPhone tomorrow, and will start selling it during the last week of the month. If you are wanting or needing to give your child a cell phone, but want to be able to apply parental controls to restrict access, or even to make their access fully restricted access with them being able to call just a few numbers that you designate, then here is how to do it with T-Mobile. It is important that you understand these steps, and that you both a) don't let Tmobile tell you that it can't be done, and (equally important), b) don't believe T-Mobile when they tell you that it has been done. You will need to do it - or at least check that T-Mobile has really done it - yourself. Here is how to lock down your child's cell phone account and access, and apply full parental controls, so that they have no Internet access, and can only call and text to pre-approved numbers. You may have read our article about the Chumby, and about how much we like it. Well, now you don't even need a Chumby to enjoy the Chumby experience! If you have an Android phone, you can get Andorid Chumby application on your phone! Some people are finding that the Chumby app for Android doesn't work, but that's because there is a trick to getting the Chumby. It is an easy trick to getting the Chumby android app to work, and here it is! iPhone users around the world are finding (some the hard way) that the change from 2010 to 2011 has caused the alarms on their iPhones to stop working. This primarily is affecting one-time alarms, not repeating alarms, but that doesn't make it any the less frustrating, especially for those who relied on their alarms to get them up this morning for work, only to find that their iPhone alarm didn't go off. Fortunately there is a workaround for your broken iPhone alarm. While the new Kindle Lending program may be good news to a lot of people, not everybody loves it. In particular, if you are an author or publisher whose book is carried on Amazon in Kindle format, you may not want people sharing your copyrighted material freely with others. If that describes you, here's how to opt out of Kindle lending of your book. Ever wish you could share your Kindle books with your friends and family, Kindle to Kindle, or Kindle to Kindle reader app? The latest Kindle news is that now you can! With Amazon's new Kindle Lending service, you can share books on Kindle which you have purchased with your friends and family, even if they don't have a Kindle book reader of their own! They can read the books for Kindle that you loan them using the Kindle for Android application, the Kindle for Blackberry app, the Kindle for iPad and iPhone apps, or the Kindle for Mac or Kindle for PC software, all of which are free! If they have an email address, you can loan them your lendable Kindle books free! At this time of year, thoughts often turn to buying a new computer (by which we mean buying a new new computer, not one that is used but "new to you" or one that is already in your grasp but you are making "new" by buying new computer components for it). The first question to ask yourself should be "Should I buy a new computer system?", or even "Do I really need to buy a new computer?" But assuming the answer to a new computer buy is "yes" (or even if you don't really need a new computer, but just want in on all the new computer technology), this leads to several more questions people should ask themselves before they buy new computers: "A Microsoft new computer or a new Mac computer?" And if you are going to go Microsoft, then "A new computer with Windows 7, or Vista or, heck, maybe even a new computer with XP?" (Yes, they can still be had.) "Do I really need all the new computer technologies or should I consider some of the cheap new computers?" Ultimately, when purchasing a new computer, the best new computer for you is the one that will gives you the most use, with the least hassle, and the most satisfaction. You can buy and download games for your click-wheel iPod through the iTunes store - but you have to find them first. Finding iPod games seems nearly impossible; you search and all that comes up is games for the iPhone and iPad, but nothing for your iPod Nano, iPod Video, or iPod Classic clickwheel iPod. That is, unless you know how and where to look in the iTunes store. Here's what you need to do: Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been arrested for rape in Sweden, and his lawyers are ticked off that somebody leaked the confidential police files stemming from the rape allegation. Huh??? Phillip Ray Greaves II, the man who wrote and self-published on Amazon a book called The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: A Child-Lover's Code of Conduct, was arrested this week on a warrant for obscenity charges issued by Polk County, Florida. Although Greaves was arrested in his Pueblo, Colorado home, the charges stem from his selling his book to a Polk County sheriff, and mailing the book from Colorado to the sheriff in Florida. Amazon removed the Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure from the site last month. Listen to this week's show with America's most beloved emergency vet, Dr. Kevin Fitzgerald, star of Animal Planet's Emergency Vets and E Vets, as he talks with us about how to keep your pet safe during the holidays, and answers listeners questions! Poisonous Christmas plants, hypothermia and frostbite, food poisoning, new household poisons introduced for the holidays, holiday-related behavior problems... while, as the song famously says, there's no place like home for the holidays, that holiday home has dangers lurking for your pet at nearly every turn. Dr. Fitzgerald was on Monday Night Radio on Monday, December 20th. If you are trying to reach Facebook right now, and all you are getting is a blank white page, or a page with just a little code, you're not alone. In fact, it's country-wide, if not world-wide. People around the globe are asking "Is Facebook Down?" "Was Facebook hacked?" "Is it the Wikileaks hackers?" "Was Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg getting named Time "Man of the Year" too much for some extremist faction and they are retaliating?" As you travel over the holidays, ask yourself "What does what I put in my luggage, and how I pack it, say about me?" Is there more baggage in your baggage than you may realize? Just in time for the holiday travel season, listen to our interview with Dr. Williams, which covers everything from the psychology of luggage packing to tips for travel, as well as includes a behind-the-scenes look at baggage handling. We've talked in the past about Jigsaw.com, the site that encourages people to sell them your personal contact information (you give someone your business card, they log into www.jigsaw.com and literally get paid to rat you out by selling Jigsaw your contact info). Now it turns out that they will not remove your contact information, even if you request that they do so. If you have ever had an account - even just to leave comments to articles and posts - on Gizmodo, Lifehacker, Gawker, Jezebel, io9, Kotaku, Deadspin, Fleshbot or Jalopnik, then you are in for a nasty surprise. Odds are good that your account has been compromised, and your user name and password posted on the Internet, as the result of security breach of Gawker Media's servers that happened over the weekend. Gawker media does get points for alerting all of their users as soon as they discovered the breach (about 10 minutes ago as of the time of this posting on 6:20 p.m. PST on Monday, December 13th, 2010). A new version of the years-old 'attempted abduction and rape in Target parking lot' scam is making the rounds. "NEW RAPE SCAM! PLEASE READ!" the headline screams, going on to exhort the readers to "Please pass on to all your girlfriends, wives, etc. Just to be on the safe side. Please be aware and pass it on to anyone you think this will help.". This newest version even says that the info checks out on mythbusting website Snopes where, in fact, it absolutely doesn't check out. Got the dreaded "Time machine has completed a verification of your backups. To improve reliability, Time Machine must create a new backup for you" error message? Frustrating as all get out, isn't it? (Especially if you have gigs and gigs of data to (re)backup.) Here's why it's happening. The growing backlash against the arrest of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, and the suspension of Internet hosting and financial funding services such as MasterCard, Visa and Paypal (through which Wikileaks was receiving donations) have led to retaliation by so-called 'hacktavists' in the form of DOS and other cyber-attacks against the websites of MasterCard, Visa, Paypal, and those Internet hosting and DNS services which have disconnected Wikileaks, in some cases bringing the services to their knees. Paypal was brought down yesterday, as were MasterCard and Visa. The holiday blues. Families sweep it under the rug, doctors medicate it, and movies make fun of it. Just what is it about the holidays that can transform smiles into frowns, and bring even the most otherwise chipper of people down? Dr. Ken Unger is just the person to help us understand holiday depression, and to answer YOUR questions! In this interview, Dr. Unger not only addresses some of the emotional problems people confront during the holidays, but also offers his thoughts on the ultimate source of these feelings of depression, anxiety, and sadness. The Google Book Store or, perhaps more accurately, the Google eBook Store, was officially launched today. The store, stocked with at least 3 million books, allows you to download Google books from the Google eBookstore to your iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Android phone or device, the Sony Reader, and even the Barnes and Noble Nook, as well as to read Google eBooks with your browser. Have Amazon and Wikipedia struck a deal? It sure seems that way, with the roll-out of Amazon's new "Shopping-Enabled Wikipedia pages" being displayed right on Amazon. While both Amazon and Wikipedia are being unusually tight-lipped about it (read as: nobody is admitting to anything), it appears that there is either a formal or informal deal between Wikipedia and Amazon, or else Wikipedia is foolish enough to be losing out on a huge source of potential revenue. Remarketing is a term you are likely to start hearing more of, with the buzz about the possiblity of a Do Not Track registry. This is both because remarketing is one of the leading uses for online tracking of consumers' movements on the Internet and across the web, and because remarketing is one of the big reasons that Internet advertisers, Internet marketers, and their lobbying organizations oppose a Do Not Track list. Remarketing, you see, is online advertising that follows you around the web or, as we call it, stalkvertising. Yesterday the Feds, through the Federal Trade Commission, came out in support of a request by several NGOs to create a "Do Not Track" registry, similar to the current "Do Not Call" and "Do Not Send Junk Mail" registries, only in this case the tracking referred to in "Do Not Track" is the online tracking of Internet users across the web, tracking the websites they visit with cookies and other tracking technologies, in much the way that Facebook and their partners are currently tracking people. Among other things, this tracking allows them to have their ads follow you around the web in a practice known as 'remarketing' or 're-marketing'. Work sucks, or so a lot of people say. With 92 percent of the American workforce unsatisfied with their jobs, this much is obvious. But what isn't so obvious is that adjustments can be made in the workplace that greatly increase employee morale, according to Lynda Barbaccia. In this interview, Ms. Barbaccia talks with us about workplace issues and how to address them. Today saw a new spam run - a bizarre spam run with a single line, and a non-working link to "Career Trends". Every version has just one line, explaining how the sender has earned some amount of money - usually a few hundred dollars - using "Career Trends". The link to Career Trends is always a non-working link to targets like "x-msg://513/" If you thought that Wikileaks publishing of classified documents from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq would be a tough act to follow, think again. Wikileaks has now Wikileaked over a quarter of a million classifed documents, in the form of confidential cables from U.S. embassies all around the world. (Thought to have been given to them by someone with access to SIPRNet, the government's confidential, "secure" network.) Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who has released a video statement from "a secret location" is now facing the possibility of being indicted under the U.S. Espionage Act, and PFC Bradley Manning is already being implicated as the leaker, while Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tries to repair the damage done by the subjects of those catty cables learning what we were saying about them. Somehow, the whole thing has a feeling of our having passed notes about someone behind their back in class, and them finding out what we were saying about them. Monday Night Radio is honoured to present this very special guest expert, Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mohandas "Mahatma" Gandhi. In this interview, Mr. Gandhi talks about how we can carry on his grandfather's counsel to "Be the Change", and about how we, as individuals, make a difference in tipping the balance from violence to nonviolence. In a clear sign of the times, Netflix has just unveiled a new monthly plan in which you don't get any DVDs at all. While this may sound like a page out of The Onion or other satire rag, we promise you that it's true. The new Netflix "Watch Instantly Unlimited" (only) plan is a nod to the many Netflix customers who now only watch Netflix via real-time streaming, such as to an iPad or a Netflix set-top device, and don't check out DVDs at all. With the new "Do you owe over $10,000 to the IRS?" SMS text message spam making the rounds (ours came from 857-205-2199) we thought it would be a good time to remind you that cell phone spam (including SMS spam) is illegal, and there is a way to report it. If you have suddenly found yourself receiving oodles of spam as a "member" of a Google group for which you never signed up, well, you're not alone. This tactic, while not new, seems to be experiencing a resurgence, as newly minted spammers discover that you can force-subscribe someone to a Google group, and all posts to any Google groups to which they have been subscribed will end up in their email inbox. A perfect example of this Google Groups abuse is the Google group "All About Ads", which appears to have been created by spammer Jyotish Khanna, and which can be found at http://groups.google.com/group/all-about-ads and, of course, in the inbox of unsuspecting targets. In case you have been missing having to tear your hair out over Facebook's privacy settings and policies, fear not, because with Facebook's new "Instant Personalization" setting, you can tear away. Six months ago we reported on Facebook's then-new 'open graph' with "social plugins", or 'social graph', that followed you around to sites like Pandora and Yelp. This appears to have evolved into, or spawned, Facebook's "Instant Personalization" where, explains Facebook, the goal is "to give you a great social and personalized experience with every application and website you use." When we saw a Google Adsense ad on our own Internet Patrol for the "Dead people search engine" we had to investigate. Our first thought was "What company or site would pay good Adsense money to advertise a "dead people search engine"??" (Well, actually our very first thought was "WTF is that??") At first we figured it must have been poor marketing terminology, but it turns out that the site, Sysoon is, in fact, a 'dead people search engine'. Splick-It is a mobile phone application that lets you place an order with your favorite coffee shop or restaurant, and have your drinks or food ready and waiting for you to pick up, already paid for. In theory, it lets you pull up, walk in, and go right to the head of the line, picking up your triple creme mochaccino without having to even pull out your wallet. A recently released study has discovered that teenagers who do an excessive amount of texting are more likely to also be involved in riskier behaviors, including drinking alcohol, experimenting (or worse) with other drugs, and being active sexually, even to the point of promiscuity. This excessive texting is being dubbed "hypertexting". Yesterday's announcement by Apple that the music of the Beatles was finally available on iTunes brought cheers around the world (along with a few "So what?"s, it has to be said). And, it isn't just a smattering of Beatles tunes - it is all of the Beatles music - every last bit of it. You can buy the albums individually, or in a compilation Box Set. Plus there is an exclusive "iTunes only" video of the Beatles' very first U.S. concert, Live at the Washington Coliseum, 1964, (which you can watch for free through the end of the year)! Maybe now, at least, we will get that Beatles iPod, which has been rumoured for nearly 4 years. Death is an uncomfortable subject, but the events that surround it - most notably, funerals - still require diligent planning. Fortunately, there are experts like Gail Rubin who can help with this difficult process. In this interview, Rubin covers the basics of funeral planning, as well as responds to our listeners' funeral stories and questions. If you think that you may have a sexually transmitted disease ("STD", which used to be known as "VD", or venereal disease or - as it's known in the UK - sexually transmitted infection or "STI"), such as syphilis, herpes, chlamydia or gonorrhea, or even HIV, and want to get yourself tested without having to leave your house, well, now there's an app for that. Or, there will be, once the eSTI project goes from prototype to drug store. Amid a scandalized outcry, Amazon this week stopped selling a book entitled The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: a Child-lover's Code of Conduct, although they continue to sell an apologist treatise on the same subject. The former, self-published by Phillip Greaves, and the latter, written by David Riegel and published through the interestingly-named Safehaven Press, are at the center of the current tension between freedom of speech, protection of children, and Amazon's duty, if any, in both. Google has flat out denied the existence of a "traditional social network platform" like the "Google Me" social network rumoured to be in the works to compete with Facebook, meaning that the beta of 'Google Me' can't be far off. We all receive them. Gifts that we really appreciate, but that we'll never use. Did Great Aunt Martha send you a Snuggie? Uncle George sent you a Flowbee? What if you could exchange them before they ever arrive at your doorstep? What if you had a built in "unwanted gift detection and gift swapping system" that would deploy before the gift left the warehouse? That is exactly what Amazon's new patented "System and method for converting gifts" does for you. Let's face it: staying organized is hard. Organizing is about more than just finding a place for everything. As professional organizer Linda Samuels explains in this interview, true order is about finding a level of organization that’s comfortable for you, discovering places and people that renew your energy, and being organized enough to feel balanced. In addition to explaining her organizing philosophy, Samuels also addresses questions from listeners who have specific problems with organization, like keeping the chords of electronics straight and managing a large collection of memorabilia. Two massive spam runs were unleashed on the Internet today, and odds are very good that you will receive at least one of the two. Either you will be offered the opportunity to "Buy Cheap Watches (Rado,Rolex) and other products!", or you will be told that you have received an "Electronic Federal Tax Payment System Notification number" (with some number appended at the end). Or, perhaps you'll be extra-popular and receive both spams. Have you ever looked in your Facebook photos and realized that there are pictures in there that aren't yours - in fact you may have no idea how those photos got into your Facebook photos? It says that they are photos of you, but there may be pictures in there that have no relation to you whatsoever, other than that you were tagged in the photo by whomever actually posted the photo. So how do you get those tagged photos out of your albums? How do you delete a tagged photo on Facebook or, put another way, how do you remove your name from photos in which you have been tagged? How do you untag yourself from someone else's picture? It turns out that it is easy to remove yourself and your name from tagged photos. What is hard is figuring out where that option is hidden (hint, it's actually hidden in plain sight). Earlier this year, Google was sued over its Google Buzz service. The Google Buzz lawsuit alleged that, among other things, with the rollout of Google Buzz, Google was in violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Part of the issue was that when Google flipped the switch on Google Buzz, they had automatically created a social network for each of their Gmail users, assigning 'followers' to their Gmail users. The followers could see the users' activities in other Google properties such as Picasa and Google Reader. In at least one known instance, that had the effect of suddenly allowing a woman's abusive ex-husband to follow her Google Reader conversations with her new boyfriend. In an interesting turn of events - especially considering all of the antitrust hot water in which Microsoft has found itself in the past with the Federal government - Google is suing the Federal government for requiring that any vendor proposals in response to a Request for Quotation (RFQ - similar to an RFP, or Request for Proposal) by the Feds to create a new, unified online messaging system, must include the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite. A few weeks ago Internet security outfit McAfee analyzed data published by several sources, and put together a list of the ten most dangerous places for you to give out your social security number. By which we mean, the top 10 places that legitimately ask for your social security number, and to which you would be inclined to provide your SSN. These include banks, hospitals, and your own local government. Andrea Raynor has seen her share of suffering. She served as chaplain to the morgue at Ground Zero in the aftermath of September 11th, and she is currently a hospice chaplain. The challenges that Raynor has faced uniquely qualify her to discuss and advise on the similarities and differences of losing a loved one unexpectedly through unanticipated tragedy, versus the (relatively) long goodbye of an illness, and, most importantly, how to support those left behind in each case. In this interview, Andrea addresses precisely these topics, among others, as well as shares some of the stories of her incredible life. GPS. It can be invaluable in helping you to get from Point A to Point B (of course, GPS can also lead you to a near death experience). However, it turns out that GPS can now be surreptitiously attached to the outside of your car, and used to track you - without a warrant - by the FBI (and who knows to what other law enforcement agencies this may extend). Have you or your child been diagnosed with ADD or ADHD? Are you concerned that this seems to be a diagnosis d'jour (especially for our boys these day)? Is it really ADHD? Or do you have a nagging suspicion that it could be something else? Find out in this week's interview with Dr. Frank Barnhill, a board-certified family physician who has practiced ADHD-behavioral and family medicine for 27 years. Over the course of the interview, Dr. Barnhill discusses a range of issues related to ADHD, including medical conditions with symptoms that mimic ADHD, the risks of misdiagnosis, the motivations to over prescribe drugs to hard-to-manage children, and much more! This summer Amazon reported that Kindle books were outselling regular books 2:1. Now Amazon is saying that the top 10 books selling on Kindle are outselling their paper book counterparts by that same 2:1 margin. If you tried to watch a movie or television show on Netflix towards the end of last week, and found Netflix down, or otherwise unusable, you weren't alone. In fact, the problem was not only on Netflix' end, but it was an impactful enough Netflix problem that Netflix has spontaneously offered to give Netflix customers a credit on their account. This Netflix rebate is equal to a 3% Netflix credit. With the advent of the newly-revamped Facebook Groups (which is now oh-so-much more like Yahoo Groups), lots of people have created lots of groups and invited (read as "force subscribed") lots of Facebook friends to those groups. But lots of those groups created in the initial honeymoon blush are just empty shells - tests and experiments - that now should be deleted. Or, maybe you have an older group that is disused, and you want to remove the Facebook Group from Facebook. But how do you remove a Facebook Group from Facebook? Put another way, how do you delete a Facebook group? Here's how. Ever wonder how to make picture videos? How about how to make picture videos with music? You can make videos for free online with Animoto! Animoto is a program to make videos from pictures, or combining picture and videos into one movie, and in three easy steps you go from a virtual pile of pictures and videos on your hard drive to a finished video, complete with music and cool transitions! It's so easy to make videos with pictures that you supply - just upload them, pick your theme and music, and voila! You not only get to make videos online for free, but it's easy as pie, and you can share them with your friends, post them on YouTube, or embed them in your website, all for free! We've had quite a few people contact us asking us whether AT&T online is down. And the answer is, yes it is - at least some portion of it is. People trying to log in to review their AT&T wireless accounts are being greeted with a message that says "Online access for Wireless and U-verse accounts is temporarily unavailable." Join us as breast cancer survivors Jennifer J. and Jamie Hyslope share the nitty gritty details of what it's *really* like to have breast cancer. Nipple origami? Areola tattoos? These are routine in the lives of breast cancer patients, and you ain't heard nothing yet! These two brave women are baring all - and sharing all - to give you a real view into the breast cancer journey. It isn't all pink ribbons and races, and they are letting you into the inner circle. Ask them anything, and be prepared to be shocked, amazed, and, above all, deeply moved. Did you know that Facebook is keeping you from seeing some of your Facebook friends Facebook updates and Facebook status messages? Even though you are seeing regular Facebook notifications on your Facebook news page, you are not seeing everything from all of your friends. In fact, you are only seeing the Facebook stuff from your Facebook friends that Facebook thinks you'll want to see. Facebook is making that choice for you. ("We're Facebook .com, we know your mind better than you do.") This gives rise to some Facebook problems, most notably that you are missing a large portion of your friends' Facebook updates, not to mention that their Facebook status ideas as to what you want to see from your Facebook friends - and from which Facebook friends, at that - may be wildly different from what you really want to see. Fortunately, there is a way to override Facebooks selections, and to see the Facebook status updates from all of your friends. In 1995, Dr. Andrew Wakefield came to a fork in the road when he was presented with a professional challenge and was confronted with a moral choice. Previously normal children were, according to their parents, regressing into autism and developing intestinal problems. Many parents blamed the MMR vaccine. Trusting in his medical training, the parental narrative, and above all, the instinct of mothers for their children's well-being, he chose what would be come a very difficult road. In this interview, Dr. Wakefield tells his story, describing the challenges he's faced and his plans for the future. We just love our new T-Mobile G2 phone, but figuring out how to remove or replace the micro SD card is darn near impossible. The little diagram sticker label on the SD card holder makes it look as though you just need to flip the holder up to remove the SD card from the G-2, but it's not quite that simple. In fact, trying to simply flip up the SD storage card holder on the G2 doesn't work, and the more you try to pry it up, the more it seems as if perhaps you might break it - it clearly doesn't simply pop up. Here is the secret... Once considered two of the top ISPs, AOL and Yahoo have both been somewhat stagnant for years. While Yahoo's new CEO, Carol Bartz, has managed to stabalize Yahoo's profits by cutting costs, they are far from out of the woods. Despite AOL's market value - at just $2.7 billion - being only 13 percent of Yahoo's, AOL is said to be exploring various arrangements that could see it buying Yahoo or, at least, merging with Yahoo. According to government officials and insiders, the Federal government is seeking broad authority and discretion to monitor all Internet communications, including communications on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, instant messaging systems, and even (or hey, perhaps especially) encrypted emails. Many people think that to unlock cell phones you have to be sneaky. That you need special unlock software, or need to stealthily find unlock codes, or, at very minimum, will have to pay someone in a back-alley cell phone unlock deal, or, if they're lucky, find a mobile phone unlock service to which they must pay good money, just to unlock their phone. In fact, if you have a Tmobile phone, they will happily provide you with the phone unlock code so that you can unlock your T-mobile cell phone for free! Below we show you exactly how you unlock a T-mobile cell phone, for free. In our example we are going to unlock our Samsung Galaxy 5 (T-mobile Vibrant), using the unlock code for the Samsung provided by T-mobile. But they don’t just do this with unlock codes for Samsung - you can get the Tmobile unlock code for any T-mobile phone. Cookbook author and gluten-free dairy-free refined-sugar-free recipe expert Kelly Brozyna has been healing her two children, along with herself and her husband, from not only multiple food sensitivities, but from serious health issues which challenged their whole family. In this interview, Brozyna explains some of the familial circumstances that gave rise to her culinary expertise, as well as shares some of the great recipes she has developed. Did you know that Facebook is taking your telephone number, and publishing your phone number to all of your friends in a handy dandy online Facebook phonebook? And, we don't mean that they are 'going to' do this - we mean that they are doing it right now. That's right, as we speak, Facebook is publishing your telephone number in a Facebook online phone directory for all of your Facebook friends, in a Facebook phone book available in their account (with your phone number). Why do smart, well-educated, even independent women fall under the spells of cult leaders? Join us as guest cult relationship expert Barbara Fifield, explains it to us. And she should know. Fifield herself, a journalist and social worker, became mesmerized by a charismatic, narcissistic cult leader after the sudden, unexpected death of her husband of 20 years. Chelsea Sexton is one of the most passionate and knowledgeable advocates for electric cars anywhere. The star of "Who Killed the Electric Car", Sexton has been involved in the trenches, and possesses a depth of knowledge about electric vehicles, and the issues surrounding them, that is unparalleled in the industry. Anti-aging is all over the news and the Internet. Admit it - you're curious. Whether you're already of an age at which you'd like to seem, appear, and, most importantly, feel younger, or whether you're just thinking ahead, most people wonder what this anti-aging stuff is all about. Can you really reverse aging? This week's guest says "Yes!" Brace yourself for another enlightening show! Whether for yourself, your child, or another loved one, you've probably had questions about braces (orthodontics) at one time or another. Now get them answered by Dr. Robert Rudman, the premier orthodontist in the Denver, Colorado area! Anne P. Mitchell, Esq., is not only the host of Monday Night Radio (and the author of The Internet Patrol) but she is also one of the premier (and the few!) fathers' rights lawyers in the country. Rather than trying to schedule an outside guest expert over the Labor Day holiday, Anne has agreed to be the guest, with Bryan as host. Chef Daniel Asher has been enchanting taste buds from coast-to-coast with an undeniable passion for creating exceptional food, for more than 18 years. There are so many mixed message around nutrition. While most nutrition experts, dietitians and wellness counsellors dwell on calories, carbs, fats, proteins, restrictions and lists of good and bad foods, Betsy Sheffield works to create a happy, healthy life in a way that is flexible, fun and *free of denial and discipline*! Betsy Sheffield, Certified Health Counselor and owner of Fork in the Road Wellness will guide you to find the food and lifestyle choices that best support you on your journey to optimum health! Animal rights advocate Jessica Stout has been in the animal rescue, care, and advocacy profession for over 12 years. She is currently working on books both about her experiences, and her methods for animal rescue volunteer management. In this interview, she answers listeners' questions. Hot off the email scam presses comes this newest scam, which claims that "Your Federal Tax Payment ID: 010373 has been rejected." The "ID number" in the subject line may change, but other than that the variationis will be very similar. This sample comes 'from' "CandiceOdell15573@gmail.com", with a reply-to address of "abrown@mediaeng.com", but these addresses also may change. In our sample, the link they are trying to get you to click claims to be "http://eftps.gov/R21", but it really goes to http://eftpsID3422.com/contacts/s3. {Ed. note: The scammers are now following up the initial mailings with follow-up mailings that say "SECOND NOTICE: Your Federal Tax Payment has been failed." They're an organized bunch!} There is a horrific scam going around that uses just about every trick in the book - and effectively at that - to get you to send the scammers some money. It uses social engineering, urgency, Facebook hacking, and email hacking, and looks so genuine that we have no doubt that many have fallen for it. It comes from your friend's actual account, and starts out by saying "This message may be coming to you as a surprise.." It then goes on to say that "we were mugged" and that the muggers stole "all our cash, credit cards and cellphone but thank God we still have our lives", and then begs "I need you to help me out with a loan to settle our bills here..." It sounds so real - and after all it comes right from your friend's account - how can you refuse? But refuse you must, because it is a scam. If you are on Facebook (and according to the most recent stats, over 500 million of you are), then you may have noticed that many of your Facebook friends (mainly women) have posted a status update that reads "I like it on the floor", or "I like it on the kitchen table" or "I like it on the couch"... you get the idea. You may be disappointed to learn that these ladies aren't talking about where they like to get frisky. Rather, they are talking about... A new study released by the Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI) suggests that laws which are aimed at curbing texting while driving not only don't serve to reduce texting-related accidents, but, counter-intuitively, if anything such laws seem to lead to an increase in, if not accidents, at least the filing of accident-related insurance claims. There are several reports that Facebook and Skype are about to enter into digital matrimony or, at very least, are becoming friends with benefits. According to the reports, while rumours that Facebook and Skype may merge are not true, it is true that a partnership is apparently in the offing, and that Facebook users are going to be able to talk to each other over Facebook, using technology that is, under the hood, decidedly Skypeish. If you think that because your Facebook or Twitter profile is set to "private" that it means that you can control who will see what you post, think again. In fact, even if you delete what you have posted - in your private account - you can still be forced to let others see it, even after you've deleted it. That's the Court ruling in a recent case involving plaintiff Kathleen Romano, who may have deleted postings, made to her private Facebook and MySpace accounts, which would be beneficial to the defendant, the Steelcase chair company. Nigerian scammers have taken Internet scams to a new high (or low): selling your house, without your knowledge, and having the proceeds go to them. All done remotely, primarily via the Internet, with a little fax and phone thrown in. Of course, now that Nigerian scammers have pulled this off successfully (yes, successfully - just ask Roger Mildenhall about the Perth, Australia house that used to be his), we're sure that other scammers around the world will be trying it. Always remember, and never forget, that the protections of the United States constitution extend only to U.S. citizens, and not to those hoping to visit the US. That is something that British teenager Luke Angel found out the hard way, when an email he sent to U.S. President Barack Obama landed him on the "banned forever from and never allowed entry to the United States" list. No freedom of speech for Luke! More information is coming to light about the situation with Google and David Barksdale, a Google engineer who used his access to the massive stores of data that Google has gathered about its own users to spy on the private lives (and data) of several Google users, who also happened to be minors. That's right - Google employee David Barksdale was spying on children, even cyberbullying them, using the access that his position with Google afforded him to look at the private information of children. What's more, it was going on for months. Most people are familiar, at least in name, if not content, with the Hague and Geneva conventions, even if only from hearing the terms on Hogan's Heros. Along with outlining how enemy prisoners can and can't be treated, they are intended, in part, to help protect civilians during times of war, by outlining rules of war - rules for the etiquette of war, if you will - despite that seeming a blatant oxymoron. Some of these rules rise to the level of law, and violations of these laws are considered "war crimes", and the leaders of countries who don't follow the rules can be tried in an International War Crimes Tribunal. The big question right now is whether cyberwar, and related cybercrimes, fall under the governance of these rules, and whether they should. If you got a confirmation of resetting your password from Facebook today, but you don't remember asking to reset your password, there's a reason. It's a scam. And it's a particularly tricky scam, because it plays on your fear that someone else is scamming you by trying to guess your password. But the reality is that whomever sent you your version of the scam is the one trying to scam you. The versions we've seen claim to come from either Chasity Stahr, letnesa@facebook.com, or Mara Krafft jwaterhouse@facebook.com. There is a meme going around this week, concerning Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and how he supposedly said that concerns over Facebook privacy were "overblown". In fact, nearly 1,000 sites, including the Telegraph, the Latest Business Report, and SFGate, are reporting that, and we quote, "Facebook privacy concerns overblown, suggests Mark Zuckerberg." However, in the actual interview on which these sites are reporting - an interview that Zuckerberg did with the New Yorker's Jose Antonio Vargas - Zuckerberg never actually says that the concerns are overblown - in fact he doesn't use the term "overblown" at all. Good thing too, because we just discovered that with a single click, Facebook is now revealing all of the applications that you use to your friends, and vice versa. (See screen shot below.) With Craigslist shutting down its Adult Services section, people who frequented Craigslist for the ads for erotic services are worried about finding other sites like Craiglist, specifically sites similar to Craigslist in terms of that adult section. But they need not fear the loss of Craigslist similar sites are already rushing to fill the void. There are even Twitter prostitutes. Craigslist has apparently decided that the adult version of Craigslist personals - i.e. the ads in the "Adults services" (formerly known as "erotic services") section of Craigslist, just weren't worth the hassle. Craigslist has officially shut down the adult erotic services section of the various Craigslists - but only in the United States. The adult services section of the Craigslist sites has certainly seen its share of problems, including the pre-trial suicide of the so-called Craiglist Killer, Philip Markoff, who was charged with killing a prostitute that he'd picked up through her Craigslist ad. Now that Craigslist no longer has "adult services" listings, people can get back to the business of using Craigslist for things like buying stuff, selling stuff, and finding rentals. This is all well and good, but Craigslist separates all of their listings by geographic location, in fact often by very localized location. What if you want to expand your search? What if you want to search all of Craigslist at once? Fortunately for us all, there are three different ways that allow you to quickly and easily search all of Craigslist, so that you can search all Craigslist listings at once. So here's how to search all of Craigslist at once. Apple is fixing to announce a new iPad news service through which newspaper publishers can publish their newspapers on the iPad as iPad newspapers. The newspapers will charge a subscription fee, of which Apple will take a cut. While currently iPad owners can read some newspapers on their iPad by going directly to the newspaper's web portal or website, the new iPad news service will presumably allow your daily newspaper to be delivered directly to your iPad. We anticipate that this will look like a cross between the newspaper's web offering, and an RSS feed. It's one of the big frustrations of using Google - and Gmail in particular. Even though you can sign up for as many Gmail accounts as you want, you cannot actually be logged into two different Gmail accounts with the same browser. For example, logging in to one Gmail account automatically logs you out of the other. Until now you couldn't be logged into multiple Gmail accounts or other Google accounts using one browser. But now that's all changed. Here's how to remain logged into one Gmail account while logging in to another, and to be logged into more than one Gmail account using the same browser. It all started as a lark - or, rather - a bear. Pedobear ("Pedo Bear" as in "Pedophile Bear") first appeared as a caricature of a bear on the 4Chan Internet website. 4Chan is what is known as an 'imageboard', a site dedicated the posting of images, and discussions about the images (perhaps the most well-known imageboard in the U.S. is the wildly popular LOL Cats imageboard, ICanHasCheezBurger.com). Pedobear was posted to 4Chan, and for years lived in relative obscurity. However, through a series of bizarre events, Pedobear seems to have taken on a life of his own, and has been featured in police warnings and television news broadcasts. Pedobear has a way of showing up in places online when people are talking about children in an inappropriate way, much like my colleague Mike Godwin's name is involved on the Internet when people compare others to Hitler. If you get a call from Mary with Financial Freedom (or anybody else with Financial Freedom), telling you to call her at 888-489-2305 because you've been approved to consolidate your credit card debt at the amazing low rate of just 1%, and if you're thinking that it's too good to be true, well, you're right. It's a scam. "Mary" calls from a telephone number in the San Francisco Bay area: (415) 363-5608, but the call could come from anywhere. Once upon a time, kids didn't carry cell phones and smart phones. Texting didn't exist, and telephone calls were made on analog phones which teens would tie up for hours on end. That has all changed with the advent of the electronic society, and with it, the methods of punishing children and teens have also changed. Now kids who misbehave have such activities as "screen time" and "texting privileges" removed. That's right, we are living in an age of digital grounding - where instead of being literally grounded from going places, kids are having their electronic gadgets removed or their use of them restricted. Bed bugs have been in the news a lot lately. It turns out that bedbugs are having a population resurgence, at least in part, say bed bug extermination experts, due to the ban on the pesticide DDT. In particular, travelers who stay in hotels are being advised to sterilize their luggage and belongings upon returning home, in an effort to get rid of bed bugs which may have hitched a ride. Bed bug exterminators advise that when it comes to how to kill bed bugs, heat can be your best friend. But how to avoid bed bugs in the first place? That's where the Bed Bug Registry website comes in. Offering bed bug information on hotels and other locations throughout the United States - and you can register your own bed bug hotel finds too - the registery also offers resources and links to all sorts of bedbug information. Wondering "what do bed bugs look like" or even "what do bed bug bites look like"? It's all there, with links to bed bug pictures and bed bug bite pictures, and information about bed bug symptoms, bed bug treatment, and bed bug control, among other things. If you think that politics makes for strange bedfellows, take a look at the effort to raise public awareness about cybercrime. Because we've seen no stranger pairing than the partnership between rapper Snoop Dogg (of Snoop Doggy Dogg fame) and Internet security outfit Symantec, of Norton Antivirus fame. In their "Hack is Wack" ("wack" as in "wacky", even though we think it should be "Hack is Whack" as in "we're going to whack those hackers" - but what do you expect from someone who spells it "Dogg" instead of "Snoop Dog"?) contest, average Joes and Janes can submit a rap-like anti-cybercrime message of any length under two minutes, in the hopes of winning a prize that includes a tricked-out laptop, a trip for two to LA to meet with Snoop's management, and two tickets to a Snoop Dogg concert. Woof. Some Gmail users are finding a new link in their Gmail interface, for a new beta Gmail service, in which Gmail sorts your email for you, prioritizing it based on which email it thinks you will consider important and "everything else". The service, called Gmail Priority Inbox, determines which email messages you are likely to find most important, as determined by your previous handling of such messages (based on things like who the email is from, whether you usually open email that's from them, and if you typically reply to it after opening it), and puts them into an "Important inbox". Here is more information, as well as the information to undo Priority Inbox (i.e. remove Priority Inbox or deactivate Priority Inbox) if you decide that you don't like it. Two years ago, almost to the day, a Spanish airliner belonging to Spanair crashed just after takeoff. Of the 172 people on board, 154 were killed. New information now reveals that one of the airplane's central computer systems was infected with malware, and that the crash was likely directly attributable to this malware infection. We have Google mail, , Google chat, Google phone, and even Google TV - and now...Google films? Yes, it's true - in a direct head-to-head, Google is taking on giants Netflix, Hulu, and iTunes, with its new Google video rental service. Technically, it's actually YouTube movie rentals (also known as YouTube Pay Content), as the new Google 'pay per view' video rental service through which you stream the movies 'on demand' is through their YouTube property. In fact, it's already up and running. If you use Gmail, you may have noticed something new in the past day or so. When you logged into Gmail yesterday or today, you may have seen a little notice that said "Make Phone Calls from Gmail". This is a new feature that Google has added to their 'Google Voice' service: making telephone calls, over the Internet, directly from Gmail. So I got this telephone call today - maybe it's like one that you got too. It came from the phone number 917-793-5694, and it purported to be from Southeast Trust, phone number 800-706-6208, and they claimed to be responding to my online inquiry to consolidate my credit card debt. Only problem is, I don't have any credit card debt, let alone did I make an inquiry online. But you can be sure that someone who does have credit card debt, and who got this call, might be hooked and reeled in. The city of Philadelphia has taken that age-old pastime - trying to get blood out of a stone - to a new high tech high: trying to get money out of a hobby blogger. Philadelphia may be the 'city of brotherly love', but it's certainly not the city of bloggerly love, especially not with Philadelphia charging bloggers what amounts to a $300 blogging tax. Oh sure, Philadelphia officials call it a "business privilege license", but when you require it of someone who hasn't monetized their blog at all, well, that's not much of a business model, is it? Of course, it's a dandy business model for Philadelphia, right up there with states charging an affiliate sales tax. Being in the Internet reputation space ourselves, we recently signed up for a test of RatePoint, where, they tell us, "Reputation is Everything". RatePoint bills itself as being all about helping you build your Internet reputation. We actually had thought that if their service was as good as we'd imagined it could be, we might like to partner with them. How ironic that the company that is aware that your Internet reputation is everything is building themselves a bad Internet reputation by giving you no way to opt out of their mailings and by making you jump through ridiculous hoops to cancel even a free account. Let's face it, one of the things that the Internet is great for is research. We decided to showcase this today by writing a definitive article on how to load a dishwasher. This is for all those men and women who find themselves rearranging the dishes in the dishwasher after their spouse, or children, or significant other, has already loaded it. (Oh c'mon, you know you do it.) Now, it's easy enough to type "how to load a dishwasher" into Google, and come up with over a million results. You've heard of the neighborhood crime watch? That's where the citizens of a neighborhood keep their eyes open for crimes in progress and report them to the police. Well, the police department in the town of Evesham, New Jersey, has turned this idea on its head. They are instead informing the local citizenry of people who have been accused of crimes. They are doing it by posting names and mugshots and other photos of suspects on Facebook! And these aren't just suspects who have been booked - they are even posting pictures taken before a suspect has even been arrested (let alone charged). The announcement is imminent: Facebook is about to launch its new Facebook Places service. Positioned as a competitor to the increasingly popular FourSquare, and the slightly less popular Loopt and others, Facebook Places is another of the location based social media services, also known as geosocial networking. Put briefly, it is a service that allows you to "check in" when you arrive somewhere, letting everyone who follows you know where you are (and, often, what you think of where you are). Other services that offer some variation of geosocial networking include BrightKite, Google Latitude, Gowalla, Socialight, Hotlist, Scvngr, Fire Eagle, and Gbanga. A study conducted earlier this year has found that children between the ages of 8 and 18 are staring at an electronic screen, and using electronic media and electronic devices, a stunning 8 to 10 hours a day! That's the equivalent of a full-time job or better, just using iPods, computers, cell phones, televisions, and other electronic devices! Tech news and forums this week have been overrun by chatter about the legislative proposal for net neutrality that Verizon and Google jointly released on Monday. The proposal, which both Google and Verizon posted to their blogs at 1:38 p.m. EST and 1:47 p.m. EST, respectively, was, they say, intended to spark discussion, and spark discussion it did. If your head is spinning with this week's discussions of network neutrality, wireline, wireless, a private Internet, and "differentiated online services", read on. Have you ever wished that you had a way to ask real experts questions about their area of expertise, without having to pay them? With no strings attached? That's what ISIPP Publishing's new Now You Know call-in talk radio show is all about! Featuring a different expert each week, the audience (that's YOU!) can call in and ask them anything they want! Ask a chef the secret to making that dish you've always wanted to make. Ask an animal rescue and shelter expert what really goes on behind the doors of an animal shelter. Ask an orthodontist your burning orthodontia questions. Want to know the secret to buying bras that actually fit? Ask a bra fitting expert (really!) If you spent even a few hours this week on the Internet, you probably couldn't help hearing about "Jenny", the girl who quit her job by whiteboard, meaning that she took a series of 33 pictures, each of herself holding up a dry erase board with a different message written on the whiteboard in each picture, which she then emailed to all of her co-workers. The gist of the messages on the whiteboard was that she was quitting after hearing her insufferable boss call her a HPOA (for "hot piece of *ss", although he was so lame he said "HOPA"). She also outed him for spending far too many work hours each week playing Farmville on Facebook. Instantly, Jenny became the hero, and lust object, of people around the world. What guts! What creativity! What bollucks!...because it turns out that "Girl quits her job on dry erase board, emails entire office" was a big fat hoax. In fact her name isn't even Jenny, it's Elyse Porterfield, and she's an actress from LA. (Some are looking for Elise Porterfield or even Else Porterfield, but it's Elyse Porterfield, we promise.) In case you aren't familiar with the sarcastic service, "Let Me Google That For You", let us tell you about it. Let Me Google That For You (or LMGTFY, for short) is your way to respond to every dumb question that others ask you where your first thought is (and your immediate response would be, if you were less polite) "Why are you asking me? Why don't you just Google it for yourself?" Here's how it works. Does it seem to you as if Google spies on where you've been on the web, showing you Google ads (you know, those "Ads by Google") that are based on where you've just been, instead of where you are now? Are you starting to feel as if Google is evil, despite their "do no evil" mantra, using some sort of special Google spyware to show you Google advertising based on your travels across the Internet? Do you feel as if Google is following you around the web? Well, you're not far off. Google is following you around, in the form of a cookie that they have trailing you. A cookie that tells Google where you've been, and Google then chooses which Google ads to show you based on that information. Most commonly, you will see ads advertising something in which you showed an interest previously, on another site, in an effort to rekindle your interest and induce you to buy. This is known as "retargeting". You can opt out of this Google privacy invasion, which Google calls "interest-based advertising", but you have to know how. You win some, you lose some. Put Google Wave in the latter category. Today Google announced that it was officially pulling the plug on Google Wave, its wiki-like service that was created to offer "real time communication and collaboration" to the masses. More and more audio files are showing up on the Internet in WMD format, which means that you need to convert those WMD files to listen to them on your Mac or MP3 player. This is particularly true for audio books, which frequently are downloaded as a WMD file. WMD is a format used by Microsoft's media software, and unless you want to install the Microsoft software on your Mac in order to play your WMD file on a Mac, you are going to have to convert that WMD file in order to listen to it on your Mac. Fortunately, it's actually really easy to convert a WMD file to listen it on a Mac, and to create MP3s of the file so that you can listen on your iPod, iPad, or other MP3 player. Whether your digital audio book audio device is an iPod or iPad running an audio book app, or another of the audio book devices, you can take advantage of free audio books online. Why buy audio books when you can get not just cheap audio books, but free audio books online? An online audio book usually is in the form of an audio book mp3, or other audio book format, that you download to your digital audio books audio book player (again, such as your iPad or iPod, or even your cell phone). Whether you are looking for a business audio book such as the 4 Hour Work Week audio book, a classic audio book such as the To Kill a Mockingbird audio book, some other fiction audio book, audio books for kids, unabridged audio books or an abridged audio book, you can find them in free audio book versions online. Many of the audio book clubs online offer free audio books during their trial membership period, but the average price for purchasing an audio book through an online audio book clubs is in the $20s and $30s of dollars. Which is why we prefer completely free, no strings attached free audio book downloads. Ok, now this is really cool. You can now get notices of new articles which show up at your favorite websites sent to your cell phone via SMS text message, as part of Yahoo's free "RSS by SMS" alert service. While you may be familiar with the term "blood diamonds", diamonds are not the only thing which are mined in the violent, war-torn mining regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo ("DRC"). Many minerals used in the manufacturing of electronics such as cell phones and computers are also mined in the DRC. These minerals, which include gold, columbite-tantalite, cassiterite, and wolframite (from which tungsten is derived), when mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo, have come to be known as "conflict minerals" or "blood minerals", and their use in manufacturing electronics by companies based in the United States is now the subject of Federal regulation by the U.S. government. Part of the recently enacted "Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act", which, through enforcement by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), is primarily aimed at controlling financial institutions following the 2009 financial meltdown in the U.S., the "Conflict Minerals" clause, which is Section 1502 of the Dodd Frank act, requires U.S. companies to declare whether they have used any minerals from the DRC and, if they can prove that they have not, allows them to label their products as "Conflict Free". Here at TIP we are a broadly Mac shop, and we do love our Apple computers. But that doesn't mean that they never fail, and recently we learned the hard way that there are some known issues with certain repairs - Mac gotchas, if you will - that will get you every time. Such is the case with having your logic board replaced, which will cause problems for you with Time Machine and iTunes, because it changes your computer's MAC address, on which Time Machine and iTunes rely to authenticate your computer. The biggest issue we see is that Apple knows about this, and doesn't warn the customer before swapping out the logic board. A simple warning from Apple before replacing a logic board could save Apple customers hours - days even - of stress, heartache, and futile searching and effort; but Apple doesn't give their customers that warning. So, we are giving you that warning - here's our word to the wise. Professor Aydogan Ozcan, currently of the UCLA Electrical Engineering Department, has invented an attachment that, with just $10.00 worth of parts, can turn your cell phone into a microscope. Dr. Ozcan, who did both his PhD and post-doc work in Electrical Engineering at Stanford, has, along with his team, won 3 awards for his design, but the real prize is that with the award monies he can (and is going to) take the cell phone microscope, dubbed the LUCAS microscope, out into the field, in Africa, to put it to practical use. ('LUCAS' microscope stands for "Lensless Ultrawide field Cell monitoring Array platform based on Shadow Imaging microscope" - yeah, it's a stretch, but we didn't name it!) The whistle-blowing, secret-revealing, classified document-exposing website, WikiLeaks.org, has posted tens of thousands of classified documents - many of them field reports, all of them related to the war in Afghanistan - which taken together paint a picture of exactly how the U.S. war in Afghanistan and Pakistan is going, and has been going. The WikiLeak documents, spanning the period from 2004 up through last year, and estimated at between 75,000 and 90,000 in number, and labeled by WikiLeaks "The Afghan War Diary", represent one of the single biggest leaks in United States history. These Afghan War Diaries have the White House and the rest of the U.S. administration in a tizzy, revealing, as they do, unreported civilian casualties, an allegation that Pakistan is backing the Taliban in Afghanistan, and information about the elusive "Task Force 373" (being misreported in some coverage as "Task Force 273"), which is purported to be the unit used to target and take out high ranking enemy persons of interest. This is the first of our T-Mobile Samsung Vibrant reviews. While there are the inevitable Samsung Vibrant vs. iPhone questions, where we really want to focus in this first Samsung Vibrant review is on the vibrant performance of the Vibrant's screen, as well as sharing with you some of its cooler features. And we answer the burning question: Does it really come with the movie "Avatar" included on it? We also tell you how to take a screenshot with your Vibrant. You may be surprised to learn that the standard iPad onscreen keyboard has dozens of alternative letters and symbols from several different languages hiding behind its exterior. Wondering how to create an upside-down question mark such as used in Spanish? Put accents over a letter? Create a pound or degree sign? They're all there, just a long key press away! The Handy Light iPhone app was an iPhone flashlight app with a difference: it enabled iPhone tethering. Tethering - using your cell phone as a modem to connect your laptop to the Internet - is one of the most demanded features on cellphones and, being not allowed on iPhones, has long been the Holy Grail among iPhone owners. In fact the desire to tether with an iPhone is one of the main reasons that users Jailbreak (root) their iPhones. Hold onto your hats - and your books - because this just may shock you. Amazon this week released a report that says that sales of the Amazon Kindle versions of books are outselling hardcover books nearly 2:1! Ok, this is one sweet deal on Amazon Prime. Even at the regular $79.00 per year for Amazon Prime, it's well worth it for those of us who do a lot of shopping on Amazon (free shipping, no taxes, such a deal!) Of course, it only works if the "free shipping" more than covers the cost of the $79.00 for the annual Amazon Prime membership (in our case it way more than covers it). But now, with the Amazon Student deal, college students can get a free Amazon Prime membership! As in, free for the whole year! As we discussed earlier, Consumer Reports has issued a "can't recommend" warning for the iPhone 4, based on the reception problems. However, in the process of testing the iPhone 4.0 issues, they did find a quick, cheap fix for the problem. It's not pretty, but apparently it does work. While Apple has been trying to pass the buck on the iPhone 4 reception problems, no less a venerable institution than Consumer Reports itself has said that it has tested the iPhone 4.0 hardware and found it to blame for the iPhone 4.0 reception issues that have been widely reported. In a blog post entitled "Why Consumer Reports can't recommend the iPhone 4", and subtitled "Apple iPhone 4 design defect confirmed", on the ConsumerReports.org website, Consumer Reports says "It's official." Facebook has added a Facebook Panic button application, following an agreement with (read as capitulation to, but we don't mean that pejoratively) UK's Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP). The way that it works, at least in theory, is that it provides an easy way for young people on Facebook (and their parents) to report suspicious activity - by which we mean activity that may be aimed at luring, stalking, or bullying minors - to both Facebook and CEOP. The Verizon Mifi 2200 (also known as the "Mifi wireless internet hub") is a personal access point, or PWAP, and is a wonderful thing - a wifi hotspot in your pocket, wherever you are. And you can let up to 5 people connect to it wirelessly - unless you are charging it via your computer's USB connection, in which case you can only use it as a USB modem for 1. Until now - here are directions for how to use USB to charge and connect with your Mifi, and still have up to 5 computers (including yours) connect to it wirelessly. In a letter posted on the Apple website on Friday, just as everyone was leaving for the long weekend (we're sure the timing is just coincidence), Apple admits that there is a bonafide Apple iPhone 4 reception problem. Well, sort of. What they really say is that the problem isn't with the reception, or even with a faulty antenna - it's with saying you have more bars of reception than you really do. Hrrm... way to shift the blame over to AT and T! We've had a lot of visitors recently looking for information about the purported Coca Cola International Mobile Draw 2010, sometimes touted as being "in conjunction with the British American Tobacco Worldwide Promotion". These people have received either the text message shown below, or the full email below, and are wondering if there is any chance that it is legitimate. It isn't. Some of the sending addresses include cocacolalotteryhouse@yahoo.co.uk, and numerous live.com addresses, such as cokeclaim09@live.com and cocaa31@live.com. Regardless of who the sender is, if you receive any version of the below, ignore it, it's a scam. Recently some people have begun to question whether SMS is corrupting our language - have the confines of 140 characters forced people to rethink how they speak such that they use the shortcuts borne of texting even in non-SMS - even face-to-face - conversation? The advent of Twitter has surely pushed us ever more towards that linguistic evolution, and anyone over the age of 30 who has ever had someone, of any age, say to their face "OMG" (pronounced "oh em gee") may well have asked themselves "Is SMS corrupting our language?" (or may have on the spot concluded that SMS is corrupting our language!) But not everyone - including some experts - sees it that way. There are any number of reasons that you might want to watch fireworks online (not to be confused with online fireworks, like what happens when spouses spy on each other online and catch each other cheating). Perhaps you are housebound, and so would like to view some fireworks webcams. Or maybe you have to work the late shift, or have a dog who is fearful of fireworks with whom you want to stay home, and so are hoping to watch streaming fireworks online. Unfortunately, most searches for online fireworks viewing lead to junk sites with nothing but ads and spyware. But here, for your online fireworks viewing pleasure, are a few sites where you can sit and watch streaming fireworks video from the comfort of your..er..computer screen. In each instance, some kind soul has set up their own fireworks webcam, so be sure to thank them if you get the chance! One of the newest online rages is "cyber begging" or "cyberbegging" (or heck, even "cyber-begging", for those who are sticklers for proper hyphenation). Whatever you call it, it boils down to cyber panhandling - Internet begging. The way it works is that, instead of standing on a street corner, down and out people do their panhandling online, through a site such as CyberBeg.com. Unfortunately, for those who really are in need, Internet panhandling is more likely to lead them to lose what little they have, and to be scammed for their trouble. Forget spam, phishing, or selling your kidney on eBay (none of which you can legally do anyways). The newest way to make money on the Internet is, apparently, to take advantage of your child's intoxicated state while he's recovering from anesthesia after dental surgery. As "David After Dentist" shows us, the way that you do this is to video your child while he's still loopy from the anesthesia, post the video on YouTube, and wait for the money to roll in. And, in the real life case of "David After Dentist", that money has rolled in to the tune of about $150,00, and is still coming. As the race for governor of California goes into overdrive, auction giant eBay's former CEO, Meg Whitman, has found that an incident from her days at eBay is raising its ugly head to give her more than campaign plate dinners on which to chew. In an incident to which she admits, but calls an "anomaly", Whitman had an altercation with an employee at eBay, while she was still the CEO, during which she "physically guided" the employee, Young Mi Kim, from the room in which they were both working. I'm very excited to tell you all about the newest site to join our family of websites. And I'm not just excited because it's a new site for us - but because of what it's about. It's about my getting Invisalign braces. And I'm very excited about getting Invisaligns! In this new site, I document, from the very first consultations to the very finish, the process of getting Invisalign braces. I'm doing this because when I was looking for information about Invisaligns online, I couldn't find any Invisalign reviews online! So I hope to be able to provide that Invisalign review for others who may be considering Invisalign plastic braces, but want to read about the patient experience from someone who has been there. It was only a matter of time before the legal world and the iPhone app world merged. There are now several iPhone applications that purport to help you to get divorced, by providing information, calculations and, at least by inference, advice (although of course they can't call it legal advice without risking being hit for unauthorized practice of law - or, as we in the biz call it, UPL). Sometimes I get a spam (in this case a chain letter email) that just makes me say "WTF?" So it was with this chain email that I received not once, but twice from the same sender, with the intriguing subject of "a way we can help the Gulf -- please please please read!!". The basic idea is that if we all focus our energy on envisioning the Gulf being healed, we can make it happen. Now, I've read The Secret, and I believe in the power of positive thinking and the law of attraction as much as the next guy (make of that what you will). But the whole "focusing your human sexual response mechanism" on the problem propels this into a whole new realm. By the way, the email also spams the URL http://tinyurl.com/come2gether, which resolves to http://letsdoandsaywedid.blogspot.com, and which features "A Call to Sacrificial Duty". Interesting. Did you get an email from Amazon telling you about an order that you don't remember ordering? That's probably because you didn't - it's a phishing scam! Don't fall for it! The "Your Amazon.com Order" email, which purportedly comes from "digital-no-reply@amazon.com" actually is an effort to get you to point your web browser to BookSalon.kr (the actual phishing URL is http://booksalon.kr/index2.html). Very few apps (applications) on the iPad run in the background, meaning that most of them simply stop when you hit the home button and exit the application. But with the iPod app on your iPad, you can have music in the background, and use any other application while listening to that iPod background music. And you can pop up a pop-up iPod controller (like a little iPod remote control) while you are using any other application, without ever leaving that app.! If you've been trying to figure out how to shuffle your music on your iPad, well, you're not alone. Apple could hardly have made it more confusing. First, you can't shuffle your music on your iPad in iTunes, because iTunes isn't even where your music is on the iPad! Your music is in the iPod app on your iPad, and you can shuffle your music on the iPod on the iPad, but you have to know the secret. So, here's the secret. According to reports on the BBC and in the Register and other international news sources, a complainant in Pakistan has initiated a process against Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg which could invoke the death penalty or, at least, life in prison, over the "Draw Muhammad" contest that was being hosted on Facebook. In a unanimous decision today, the United States Supreme Court has held that a government worker had no right to an expectation of privacy when it came to whether or not his employer might review the content of his text messages that were sent and received on employer-provided equipment, even those messages sent while he was off-duty. In the case of City of Ontario v. Quon, the Ontario California Police Department reviewed text messages sent and received by their employee, Officer Jeff Quon, on the text pager which was provided to Quon by the Ontario PD, including messages sent while Officer Quon was off-duty. Quon objected, but the Supreme Court held that Quon had no legitimate expectation of privacy. People are asking "why are people who I don't follow showing up in my Twitter stream?" If you are noticing that the tweets of people whom you don't follow are showing up in your Twitter timeline, here's why. In an irony that was almost assuredly lost on them, AT and T today apologized by mass email to all of their iPad 3G customers for the security leak (i.e. the hackers which had hacked into the system) which exposed their iPad 3G customers' email addresses, exposing them to the risk of being spammed. Here is the email which AT and T just sent out - note the fact that they sent it from a non-repliable email address, which is considered a no-no in email sending best practices. In addition to the new iPhone 4 being announced this week, Apple released a new free update to its web browser, Safari. The new Safari 5, for both Mac and Windows, offers a few new features, but none as interesting - or as controversial - as the new Safari "Reader" view or, if you will, Reader function. The new Safari 5 Reader button instantly strips out nearly everything on the page that isn't part of the article you are reading - ads, external links, pop-ups - everything - and gives you a view of whatever you are reading that has only the content text, and any attendant images or videos. This past week fourteen people staged an escape from the Huai'an Internet Addiction Treatment Centre in China. Last August a Chinese teen who was sent to the Nanning Qihang treatment center for his Internet addiction died under the hands of his "instructors". So, just what is going on in these Chinese "treatment centers" - or so called 'Internet boot camps' - that are designed to "cure" people of their web addiction? Apple has released a promotional video of the new iPhone 4 (or iPhone IV, for those into Roman numerals), and it looks pretty incredible. The new iPhone 4.0 has front and rear facing cameras (with a built-in flash), takes HD video, and has iMovie onboard! But that's not all! It also has true video calling And video chat - during which you can switch between the front and rear cameras - and multitasking switching between apps! A new phishing scam going around sends you email claiming that you have deactivated your Facebook account. Don't fall for it. The links in it don't really go to Facebook at all, although they look as though they do. They actually go to http://kilinclar.nl/discussions.html, http://madmu.50webs.com/subsequent.html, and http://alphabasicz.com. The last thing that film researchers must have expected to find when they opened the film cannister they'd found in an archive of 1921 through 1933 films, was a film of two women using what is unquestionably a wireless, mobile (for some value of the word "mobile") telephone. Yes, you read that right - a working wireless, mobile (although barely portable) telephone, in 1922. In a much-hoped for move, Skype and Skype Out now work with 3G, at least on the iPhone and iPad. The bad news is that Skype-to-Skype calls on 3G will cost you money (after a free period that lasts through at least August, and maybe through the end of the year). Say goodbye to our little friend, the unlimited 3G data plan for the iPad 3G + Wifi. Yes, it's true, less than a month after rolling it out, AT and T has announced that they will be replacing the unlimited 3G data plan for iPad with a new, limited 3G data plan, known as the AT and T DataPro plan, effective Monday, June 7th. And the current $15.00 for 250MB per month plan has been reduced to 200MB per month under the new AT and T DataPlus plan. This means that if you are thinking of buying an iPad 3G, now is the time to do it, so that you can sign up for the unlimited data plan by Sunday. As the iPad 3G celebrates its one month birthday, the automatic renewal of the AT and T 3G data plan is kicking in for those who subscribed to one of the two data plans. Here's what that auto-renew looks like. (Learn how to cancel your AT and T iPad 3G data plan here.) Not to be outdone by Verizon, who raised their fee for early termination of a cellphone agreement to $350 last fall, AT and T has announced that, effective next week, on June 1, the early termination fee (ETF) for AT and T smartphones and AT and T provisioned netbooks will be $325.00. When I was a child growing up in New England, we had a saying: If you don't like the weather, wait a minute. The same, it seems, can be said for Facebook's privacy policies. Barely 4 weeks ago, Facebook announced their new open graph platform that follows you across the web - a privacy policy that seems based on the less (privacy) is more (revenue) principle. A mere 4 months earlier, Facebook announced sweeping privacy policy changes that users found beyond confusing. And a few months before that Facebook announced privacy policy changes that allowed developers to mine your Facebook inbox for data! And now, just today, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced yet another change to Facebook's privacy policies and Facebook privacy settings system, this one, he promises, "making control simple." We have in the past told of our friend, Amal Graafstra, who has an RFID chip implanted in his hand. Now a British scientist has done Amal one 'better' - Dr. Mark Gasson has given the RFID chip that he has implanted in his hand a virus, and he has passed the virus from his flesh-embedded RFID chip to external systems For most of the last seven years, Google Adsense Publishers (i.e. people with websites which have "Ads by Google" on them) have been in the dark as to what the revenue share between Google and them has been. Oh sure, we all know we can make money with Adsense clicks (read here to learn how to make money with Google Adsense) but Google was famously secretive about what the actual Adsense revenues split was. Was the Adsense earning split 50/50? 60/40? 80/20? 95/5? Nobody knew what the Adsense profits formula was, except some folks on the Google end of the equation. Now Google has revealed the big Adsense secret. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has just released the results of research which indicate that your browser creates a unique "browser fingerprint" which can be uniquely linked to you, thus creating a record of your browsing habits and where you've been on the Internet with your browser, even if you have cookies turned off in your browser. In fact, says the report, this non-cookie method for identifying users using their browser fingerprint with such browsers as IE and Firefox is effective as much as 94% of the time. A new Facebook malware notice making the rounds is tricking users into installing malicious adware which then causes countless ads to popup on your PC. The malicious Facebook post, which is made to look as if it was posted by one of your Facebook friends, shows a small image (usually of a woman in a mini skirt on an exercise bike), with a link to click, saying "This is without doubt the sexiest video ever!" Don't be taken in by it! Yes, Twitter really is coming to television. But unlike the Twitter reality television show that was touted last year, but that never came to pass, this Twitter tv show is really set to happen. Starring William Shatner, the Twitter television show is based on the real-life Twitter account and Twitter feed of Twitter user Justin Halpern, who publishes stuff that his father says under the Twitter name "Shit My Dad Says" (really). Halpern also just published the book, "St*ff My Dad Says", based on his Twitter feed. While Halpern is the Twitter helmsman, it is really his father, 73-year old Sam Halpern, played in the show by William Shatner, who is the star of the feed, the book, and the show, which, according to reports, is to be called either "Stuff My Dad Says" or "Bleep My Dad Says". The court in the case of the Lower Merion School District in Pennyslvania that was spying on its students - in their homes - via webcams and software installed in the students' school-provided laptops - has been ordered to let the students see the photos that the school surreptitiously took of them. As it turns out, the photo of Blake Robbins was just the tip of the iceberg; according to reports, there are nearly 58,000 photos taken by the school district, all by remotely accessing the webcam in the students' laptops while spying on their students in the students homes and in other places off the school premises. A few months ago a gentleman by the name of David Mathews created a Facebook page suggesting, and requesting, that actress Betty White host an episode of Saturday Night Live ("SNL"). Explained Mathews, on the Facebook page, "Betty White has been doing television since before I Love Lucy! What a way to honor her career, her comedic timing, and her life than by inviting her to host Saturday Night Live!!!" Well, Betty White got the SNL gig, and David Mathews got to meet Betty White. All because of Facebook (and Mathews' efforts). But read on to learn what Betty White had to say about Facebook! (Or just watch and listen - there's a video.) If you find the term "PTHC" anywhere in a computer message, text message, web search, or any other Internet communication, you may have cause for concern. PTHC typically stands for one of two things: either "Percutaneous Transhepatic Cholangiography" or (and more likely), "preteen hardcore". Last month, with little fanfare, an Arkansas woman lost custody of her infant son due, at least in part, to photos that she posted to her MySpace page. The tale of Robert Lipps, Kathleen Lipps (a/k/a Kathy Lipps), and Baby Lipps all began when Robert Lipps was on deployment, and his pregnant wife Kathy allegedly had an affair with one Troy Whittington. This sordid chapter of their tale ended when Kathy Lipps lost custody of the infant Lipps due to, among other things, her posting pictures of herself, laying in bed with and kissing Troy Whittington, to her MySpace account. At last, someone has come up with a viable alternative to Facebook. Diaspora, the love brainchild of four self-described nerds, promises to be Facebook without the privacy issues. The four NYU students, Dan Grippi, Max Salzberg, Raphael Sofaer, and Ilya Zhitomirskiy, were as upset as anyone about the privacy pillaging juggernaut that Facebook has become and, in the time-honored tradition of student nerds, have said 'Hell no, we're not going to take it," and, taking keyboards in hand, are doing something about it. Personal wireless access points (known by some as PWAP), also known as personal wireless hotspots, are becoming increasingly popular, as people are less and less willing to go without their Internet fix one minute longer than necessary. Hotmail has once again been down for days, with countless Hotmail, MSN, and Live users shut out of their accounts. The outage, referred to as a "cloud outage" by some souces, saw users unable to access their Hotmail accounts, as well as the Windows Live Solutions Center; indeed some users are still unable to access their Hotmail accounts. Even though the 3G iPad has only been out for a few days, much to our surprise we are getting as many questions about how to cancel the automatic iPad AT&T renewal for the 3G data plan - in other words, how do you cancel the 3G data plan auto renewal on the iPad wifi + 3G - as we are about how to set up and connect to the iPad 3G automatic billing plan for 3G data. As we discuss elsewhere, signing up for the AT&T 3G data plan for the iPad 3G is easy and painless, so we are guessing that people are asking about how to stop automatic payment for the iPad 3G data plan because they want to be sure that it is as easy to cancel the auto renewal for the iPad data plan as it is to sign up for it. One of the perks of getting the iPad 3G is that, in addition to the 3G, says AT and T and Apple, "you’ll have access to over 20,000 Wi-Fi hotspots, including Starbucks, Barnes and Noble, and more." In other words, you can connect your 3G iPad, via wifi, to more than 20,000 AT and T wifi hotspots (usually named "attwifi"), at no additional charge. But how do you connect at these 20,000+ AT&T hotspots at no additional charge? How do you connect to a Starbucks AT&T wifi hotspot, for example, with your iPad 3G? Users eager to test whether Skype would work over the AT and T 3G network on their 3G iPads came up disappointed, and empty-handed. "You need wifi to call over Skype" reads the message displayed to those who try to use Skype with the 3G network on their iPads. "Skype calls over 3G networks are currently not allowed due to contractual restrictions." Yes, we now have a 3G iPad, and yes, we will post our reviews of it, and about transferring data from one iPad to another, and about the differences between the iPad original and iPad wifi + 3G. But for now, we wanted to quickly answer the question burning on everyone's mind: just what is it like to sign up for AT&T's no contract 3G data plan, and is it really as easy as they claim, and does it work! We've included lots of screen shots. The issue of Flash - or rather lack thereof - on the iPhone and iPods (and now the iPad), has long been a source of frustration and consternation for Apple devotees. More and more discontent has spilled into public discussion, with Apple openly taking what some perceive as potshots at Adobe, the makers of Flash, and Adobe, in turn, responding. Now it has erupted into open discussion (ok, attacks), with none less than Steve Jobs openly publishing on the Apple web site his "Thoughts on Flash", and Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen responding in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. With the iPad 3G + Wifi release date being tomorrow to get the 3G iPad in stores (if you're having your iPad 3G ship from Apple, and you got in on the early iPad 3G ship date, your 3G iPad should arrive tomorrow too), questions are heating up about two things: the battery life for the iPad 3G (being called by some the AT&T iPad), and how does the AT&T service for the iPad 3G really work. Here, straight from the horse's mouth, is how the AT&T service will work with the 3G iPad. iPhones will join any old hotspot so long as it claims to be an attwifi hotspot, says a researcher who discovered the security hole this week. This security hole can lead unsuspecting iPhone users to give up all sorts of personal information to anyone who knows how to change the name of their wireless access point. From our "We told you so" department, San Mateo County sheriffs have executed a warrant, seizing computers and other items from Gizmodo editor Jason Chen's residence, following the appearance of a lost secret iPhone 4G prototype both in Gizmodo's possession, and on their blog, where they fully disclosed Apple's proprietary prototype. Jason Chen was not arrested, although he was patted down. There is a series of SMS text message spams going around right now, from TM-GODSGIFT, that has people wondering. The messages from TM GodsGift say that you have won money - usually in the Coca Cola lottery or the Exxon Mobile draw. It's all spam - it's all a scam. You can ignore it - or you can report it. But whatever you do, don't respond to a message from TM GodsGift. With as unprivacy oriented as Facebook is, you would think that it would be obvious how to link directly to one of your Facebook status updates. But, even though the way to do it is staring you right in the face whenever you look at any profile in Facebook, it isn't obvious at all. Although, once you know the secret, it's dead easy to link directly to any status update on Facebook. (Under the hood, it's identified as the "story_fbid", but you don't actually need to know that.) We take Facebook safety seriously. A few days ago in one of our articles on Facebook we told you about Facebook's new open social graph and Facebook apps that allow Facebook to follow you around from site to site, sharing what you are doing, and how to opt out of it doing so - that is just one of the many Facebook risks you can read about here. (On an interesting sidenote, in researching this article we found that many people search for Facebook info and never find it because they misspell "Facebook" in a number of ways, including Facebok, Faceboo, Acebook, Fcebook, Fcebook, Faebook, Fasebook, Faccebook, Facebbook, Faacebook, Faecbook, Faceebook, Fcaebook, Facebookk, Facebooks, Ffacebook, Facebood, Facerbook, Faceboock, and our personal favorite, Fecebook.) There is one of those 'a friend of a friend' forwarded emails going around right now that talks about how you can and should dial *47 ('star 47') if you are on the road, anywhere in the country, and have a dangerous situation or emergency, and it will connect you to the local highway patrol - and how it supposedly saved the life of a woman named Lauren who was being followed and flagged down by a convicted rapist pretending to be a police officer. (47 = HP, as in Highway Patrol.) There is, in fact, a kernal of truth to this, as in a handful of states you can dial *47 and reach highway patrol, however it is not true that you can do so in all 50 states. Read on to learn in which states you can dial * 47, and also what other emergency highway patrol shortcut numbers you can dial in other states. Toshio Yamamoto is a man who knows his ramen, and we're not just talking that cheap American Oodles of Noodles stuff. And everyone else's ramen too. The 49 year old engineer eats ramen 5 days a week, and records his reviews of each one for ramen posterity's sake on his website The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was busy fiddling around online while the financial sector burned. Those are the allegations being leveled against the SEC as a new memo by the Federal Inspector General is released, revealing 31 separate probes of SEC employees porn surfing during the past two years, more than half of whom were senior-level staff, including SEC attorneys. We're not sure what Miss Manners would have to say about the correct way to apologize to someone whom you've just shot, but we're pretty sure that she would not say that it's ok to apologize by text message. Then again, given that the victim might not want to see your mug - except on a 'wanted' posted with "apprehended" stamped over it - maybe she would. While this may sound like an "only in the movies" scenario, it actually played out in real life in Orange County, California. While trafficking in body parts is not allowed on eBay, apparently there is no such restriction on Facebook. And fortunate that is for Carlos Sanchez and April Capone Almon, of East Haven, Connecticut. This is the story of a desparate Facebook status update, a kind-hearted mayor, and a new lease on life. Facebook - the site that changes its interface, services, and values almost as often as we change our underwear (hint: daily), has once again announced a major change that affects all Facebook users - and users of other services - in a major way. This week's announcement is that Facebook is now sharing it's new "like" system with partners like Microsoft Fuse Docs, Pandora, and Yelp - and any other site that wants to feature the new Facebook social plugins - creating what Facebook calls a "social graph" or "open graph". This means that when you "like" something on Facebook, that "like" will follow you around to Pandora, Yelp, and Microsoft Fuse Docs - and vice versa. The good news is that you can opt out of it (and we tell you how). If you've been enjoying watching Netflix on your iPad, and your Netflix app has suddently stopped working, read on. The excellent - and free - Netflix app for the iPad allows you to instantly stream and watch both movies and television shows to your iPad, for nothing more than the cost of an $8.99/month Netflix membership. But some users are finding that after enjoying the Netflix iPad 'Watch Instantly' experience for a while, suddenly the 'watch instantly' option stops working. After selecting a show to watch, the Netflix application just hangs and hangs. After a great deal of testing, we have determined that a problem with Netflix 'watch instantly' is almost always caused by the same thing. Here's how to fix it. (Bonus: We also explain what the Netflix "six digit phone service code" is.) Stories are swirling over a girl named Emma who allegedly committed suicide on Christmas eve, 2008, as the result of some Facebook status update messages aimed at her. The status update messages directed at "Emma" are indeed horrible (see image below), however, there is doubt that a girl named Emma actually committed suicide on Christmas eve, or at all, even though a Facebook fan page entitled "Teenager committed SUICIDE because of THIS status update - Leaked from 2008" would have you think otherwise. However, the story does match quite closely the suicide of Phoebe Prince, which occurred this January. By now everyone knows the story: Last week a person who was supposedly Apple engineer Gray Powell supposedly lost what was supposedly an iPhone 4G prototype, in a bar in Redwood City, California (a mere stone's throw from Apple's Cupertino headquarters). Then a third-party supposedly found the alleged iPhone 4G test model, and then somehow it got to Gizmodo, where they tested it, disassembled it, pronounced it the real deal, and blogged about it, complete with pictures. Now Apple has sent a demand letter, demanding the unit back. This proves that the story, and the phone, are real. Or does it? Ever wonder just how identity theft and financial fraud happens? CallService.biz was a site that served as a front for thousands of bad guys to take advantage of identity theft, and use stolen financial information such as bank account and credit card numbers. Run by Dmitry Naskovets, from the Czech Republic, and Sergey Semashko, from Belarus, CallService.biz was open about what it did - providing identity theft and financial information theft criminals with service representatives who would call the financial institutions at which the compromised financial accounts were based, and pretend to be the account holders - in your choice of English or German - and would confirm the financial transactions being made by the crooks. Even though Twitter added location-based information services ("Twitter with Location") to Twitter a few months ago, Twitter is only just now advising Twitter users that they can opt in to the new Twitter Location feature (it's turned off by default, so you don't have to opt out of Twitter with Location). Here's how to use - and why you should, or shouldn't use - Twitter's Location based Tweet information. As more and more people are adopting the Apple iPad tablet, it's inevitable that people will be making comparisons: Kindle vs iPad - iPad vs Kindle - which one is better? We feel that there is a clear winner in the iPad versus Kindle contest, and here's why (and you can see for yourself with these Kindle versus iPad screen shots.) Technology is dangerous. At least that's the message of two claims this week (one that's heading to a lawsuit). A 24 year old womanr has claimed that tumbling off her Wii fit has created an insatiable urge to tumble into bed as it made her a nymphomaniac. And a teen girl has claimed through her attorneys that having a handheld barcode scanner flashed at her face has given her Tourettes Syndrome. Twitter has finally openly released their first Twitter ads product, called "Promoted Tweets". So what are Twitter Promoted Tweets? Twitter Promoted Tweets are Tweet ads that are sent out by businesses as regular Tweets, but which the businesses have paid to have show up at the top of search results on Twitter (think Adwords for Twitter). The one thing that people have really been missing on the iPad (well, besides a camera) has been handwriting recognition for the iPad. Well, the good people at PhatWare, who really know handwriting recognition (they are the authors of, among others, the awesome Calligrapher software) have just released their handwriting recognition app for the iPad. Bloggers considering the Apple iPad tablet will be thrilled by the Wordpress for iPad app. The Wordpress app for the iPad makes posting to your Wordpress site (or your Wordpress blog on the Wordpress.com site) a snap Do you use Twitter? If so, every single message you send out publicly - every single Tweet - is being archived by the United States Library of Congress. Observers say that this is a move by the Library of Congress to preserve for posterity the current culture as it is being expressed through voices on Twitter, both famous and unknown An Arkadelphia, Arkansas teen is suing his mother for accessing his Facebook account, posting what he claims are slanderous comments, and then changing his Facebook password, effectively locking him out of his own account. In her defense, Denise New claims that as a mother she has the right to monitor what her son is doing. It was almost 5 years ago that we first reported that Yahoo uses web beacons to track their users' movements across the Internet. So Yahoo's use of web beacons is nothing new. But recently people who subscribe to Yahoo groups have started receiving Yahoo "Updates in Your Groups" email (sent from groupsupdates@yahoogroups.com), which has this little notice at the bottom: "To learn more about Yahoo!'s use of personal information, including the use of web beacons in HTML-based email, please read our Privacy Policy." Every so often we come across a website so well done - so interesting - so darned compelling, that we have to tell you about it. Such is the case with the subject of today's article, a history blog where every single day, without fail, we learn something new... something that makes us say "Hey! I didn't know that!" Many Apple iPad reviews gloss over or entirely neglect the iPad microphone, but this is a mistake for what is iPad if not a first real entry into the fully-convergent device arena? In fact, as this iPad review will show you the iPad is one screaming dictation machine Many people have told us that they are eagerly awaiting our Apple iPad reviews. This is the first Apple iPad review... We wanted to show you that it is not only possible to work on the iPad, but it is even possible to write an article, and post to a website in Wordpress, all using the native iPad applications. This will be the first of several hands-on iPad reviews we will write to answer the question what is iPad. If you are just setting up a brand new iPad, you may find that when you first try to sync it with iTunes, you get this stranger error message: "You backtracked too far. The application backtracking limit of 5 has been exceeded." It may also have what looks like a link to "MZFinance". A group of U.S.-based Internet service providers (ISPs) have announced that they are going to start charging their email users for processing the spam that is addressed to them. As the deluge of spam continues unabated, ISPs are seeking new ways to help offset the cost of processing the trillions of pieces of junk email that they are keeping out of their customers' inboxes (or, in some cases, still delivering to their customers' inbox or junk folder). There's been a lot in the news this week about the National Broadband Plan, and while it was first inserted into public awareness nearly a year ago, many were not aware of even the possibility of a National Broad band Plan, let alone the reality of it, until recently. At its broadest, the American Broadband Plan is about making sure that the U.S. has a robust, and wicked-fast, broadband infrastructure, to not only keep up with - but to keep ahead of - the rapidly changing Internet landscape and demands. It looks at allocation and reallocation of parts of the wireless spectrum, it considers redefining Federal funds currently earmarked to ensure that everybody has access to basic telephone service to include broadband access as well, and it looks at who ought to be paying for all of this broadband development and access. But it also has aspects that are much more personal, and hit much closer to home for the average American. If you are finding that Yahoo Groups is down, don't panic. Yahoo Groups has a planned outage scheduled for Thursday, April 1st. While it is April Fools day, the notice actually went out on Wednesday, March 31st. This year Apple is releasing the iPad on a very special day - Anne's birthday (April 3rd, which is this Saturday). Several people have suggested that Apple should give Anne and the Internet Patrol an iPad for her birthday. It doesn't look like that's likely to happen, but several other people have suggested that we take up a collection to buy Anne an iPad for her birthday (and let's face it, it will be used primarily to publish the Internet Patrol). A new website, sponsored by yours truly here at the Internet Patrol, is dedicated to people who have lost their cell phones. Help I Lost My Cell Phone is a site with a mission - and one mission only: to help people find their lost cell phones. The newest phishing scam is a fake order confirmation from Apple, exhorting you "To view the most up-to-date status and make changes to your Apple Online Store order, visit online your Order Status." The "visit online your order status" link actually goes to http://www.parksidepta.com/ounces.html. And while it says that it's from up-to-date @store.apple.com, it's not really (our version came from dj @accountingsevices.co.nz) Now, there's something you might think you'd never hear: that the President of the United States has a Twitter account, let alone that it got hacked. But it's true. Well, it's nearly true, as in reality Barack Obama does not, himself, man a Twitter account (so far as anyone knows). But there is a "BarackObama" Twitter account that is manned on behalf of the President of the United States by the organization known as Organizing for America, that calls itself "the grassroots organization for President Obama's agenda for change", and that account was hacked. Last week we told you both how to stop SMS spam, and how to report SMS spam. But now we want to talk about a particularly nasty form of SMS spam: smishing, which is the act of phishing by SMS for private information, often to be used for identity theft. These smishing attempts take the form of text messages which come to your phone saying things like "We’re confirming you've signed up for our dating service," "Your account has been suspended," or "(Random) bank is confirming your purchase." Hard though it may seem to grok the connection at first, Facebook has been positively linked to venereal disease. In particular, syphilis has reared its ugly head, with an increase in incidence of the dreaded VD in some areas as high as four times previously quiescent numbers, most of which is being attributed to link-ups for casual sex across multiple partners that are occurring on Facebook. If you get an email supposedly from Facebook (top addresses have been change@facebook.com and support@facebook.com) , asking for a "Facebook Password Reset Confirmation", don't panic thinking that someone has reset your Facebook password (that's exactly what the bad guys want you to do), and whatever you do don't download or open the attachment that is in the email! The attachment, named either facebook_password_139.zip or facebook_password_239.zip, is actually a Windows malware file, facebook_password_139.exe or facebook_password_239.exe. Imagine speed dating, but by video chat. That's the basic premise behind ChatRoulette.com - or, at least that's what its creator would have you think. Sign in to Chat Roulette and be presented with all kinds of new friends via video chat, a few minutes with one, and then off you go to the next one. But in reality, what ChatRoulette .com is (or at least what it's devolved into) is do-it-yourself porn TV. Because just about every second or third video connection is a naked, or semi-naked man, letting it all hang out and, more often than not, doing unspeakable things to himself, with the occasional naked or nearly-naked girl thrown in (either with the man, or on a video feed of her own). [Warning! Graphic Chatroulette screenshots are included in this article.] If you have a Mac, you are in for a treat! Amazon just released their new free "Amazon Kindle for Mac" application, and it's awesome. It allows you to not only purchase Kindle books and Kindle newspaper and magazine subscriptions directly from your desktop for delivery to your Kindle, but it allows you to download and read your Kindle books right on your Mac! In an effort to clean up after a phishing attack on Twitter, Twitter is targeting some Twitter accounts as "possibly compromised", and proactively disabling the current password for the account, and sending a "Please change your twitter password" email, which asks you to "please create a new password by opening this link". While we give them a great deal of credit for being so proactive, the irony is that the email Twitter is sending looks just like the phishing efforts that lead to this problem in the first place! So, if you get a "Please change your twitter password" email, what should you do? Read on. This is very interesting - an advance fee fraud scam aimed specifically at lawyers. In this twist on the classic Nigerian 419 advanced free scam, instead of the scammer being the "widow of a deposed dictator", the supposed damsel in distress is a woman whose "divorce was finalized here in Japan", and she "wants to retain your professional service." There is a new Western Union money transfer scam spam making the rounds. It thanks you for "using Western Union Money Transfer", and gives you a fake confirmation receipt transaction number ("control number") - in our case the Mone Transfer Control number used was 1629752260. The spam includes an attachment that is an HTML file named something like "WU account.html" - don't open it! If you're being plagued by cell text message spam (cell txt msg spam) like this one we received from 702-541-4047 - "Do you have $20,000+ in CREDIT CARD DEBT? Our national program REDUCES it by HALF! Reply "DEBT" to see if you qualify! (cuturdebts.com-optout,reply:out)" - you're not alone. (What is SMS? Short Message Service SMS service is a way to send short text messages directly to a cell phone). The problem is that those unwanted SMS messages that you see as cell phone spam, the sender sees as an SMS campaign. Those rude SMS text messages - often anonymous SMS text messages - are bulk SMS messages sent by the SMS sender as a text message advertising campaign (often facilitated by free SMS text message services). Sending SMS text messaging spam is illegal in most states, but figuring out how to go about reporting spam received on your cell phone can be tough. Here's how to submit your spam that you receive via SMS message to the right authorities, as well as how to stop it. (Bonus: The elusive Verizon customer service phone number!) You can do a local job search just by searching for "jobs in my area", or search for jobs such as for all USA jobs or even international job opportunities by using one of the job search engines such as "Monster Jobs", or by frequenting job websites or job posting boards. You can use a country-specific job finder, such as Canada's HRDC Job Bank (it should really be HRSDC, as it stand for "Human Resources and Skills Development Canada"), or a system-specific job site, such as www.usajobs.gov, which lists all U.S. Federal jobs. You can even just search "I need a job" followed by your location, and come up with a job listing of job openings, complete with job descriptions, in your area. The problem is that job search websites and job listings that list jobs online can't always distinguish a great job opportunity from a scam. There are many job scams on Internet job boards, such as the Yahoo job scam and the Craigslist job scam, and specific job scams such as the home job placement scam (while it's possible to find a legitimate no fee work at home job, and other paid internet jobs, it's very hard to tell the legitimate work at home jobs from the scams). Then there are the not-quite-scam jobs, such as the so-called "Primerica job scams". So, how to tell if a job is a scam? Here's how. You've probably already heard of the .xxx domain that has been proposed, rejected, re-rejected, and reconsidered, but did you know that there are also a .god domain and a .gay domain being considered? The .xxx domain was first proposed - and provisionally approved - back in 2005, and then was rejected in 2006 and 2007, primarily as a result of lobbying by conservative and religious groups; now it's being reconsidered. Interestingly, the .god domain, which has had considerably less press, was first proposed as far back as 1995, and has been in the public awareness since at least 2000. The .gay domain is among the newest of proposed TLD (Top Level Domain) offerings (actually "gTLD", which stands for generic Top Level Domain), although not the only new one (consider New York City's request for a .nyc domain) - all of which are being considered this week as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) meets in Nairobi. Microsoft has issued a security advisory (#981374) for a vulnerability in Internet Explorer 6 (IE 6) and Internet Explorer 7 (IE 7) that could allow someone to remotely execute code on your PC - that is, to remotely operate your computer. LifeLock, the company that offers identity theft insurance, has settled a lawsuit with the FTC after the Federal Trade Commission sued LifeLock for deceptive advertising claims. Life Lock says that they were happy to settle the suit because the suit was based on facts that are two years old, and no longer applicable. What is the truth about cell phones and radiation? While many will tell you that the jury is out - and others will tell you that there is no (conclusive) evidence - many feel that cellphone use presents a health risk in electromagnetic (ionizing) radiation, particularly for children. The reality is that short term studies have found no correlation between cell phone radiation and health problems such as cancer, however the other reality is that there are no long term studies (say, of greater than 10 years) yet, as it is only relatively recently that cellphones have been so commonplace. Of course, the cell phone industry says there is no risk - but that's what the tobacco industry said too. Now the state of Maine is contemplating requiring cell phones to carry a warning label. Not content with sending fake Amazon confirmation emails, the outfit sending out the Canadian pharmacy spam is now sending out fake Amazon.com order cancellation emails, too, claiming that your Amazon order has been cancelled. "Amazon.com - Your Cancellation (0046-68878-96071)" says the email's subject (although the "order number" may change) - but of course the link to check "ORDER INFORMATION" really takes you to a Canadian pharmacy spam site, hawking Viagra, Cialis and the like. In the example below, the fake cancellation contains links to http://www.dinnerinperu.com/quadratical, which redirects to http://weightbreezy.com, which is a Canadian pharmacy spam site. Colorado Amazon affiliates got the news this morning - Amazon has cancelled all Amazon associate (affiliate) accounts for all affilliates who are based in Colorado. The move came after the passage of Colorado law HB 10-1193, even though - as we read it - the affilliate language was removed from HB 10-1193 before it was passed! The planned funeral for Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) is not a hoax - it really is happening, tonight, in Denver, Colorado. Oh sure, it's a spoof, but an elegant and well-planned one, to be sure, complete with prizes "for the best IE6 memory & the best dressed!" In fact, the IE 6 Funeral has gotten not just national, but even international attention, being featured in such overseas news sources as Britain's The Register. If you've always wished that your cell phone could be used as a Skype wifi phone, well, your wish for a Skype phone just came true - at least if your phone is a Nokia phone running the Symbian operating system. Now instead of having to have two phones (both a Skype wireless phone and a cell phone) in order to effectively use a Skype internet phone plus have cell service, you can have it all on one phone - your regular cellular service plus free Skype to Skype calling, free Skype text messaging, and all the other Skype goodies. Unlike those Skype cordless VoIP phones, Skype for your Nokia mobile phone works both on wifi and on your 3G network, turning your cell phone into a wireless Skype phone wherever you are! And, your nifty new Skype mobile wireless phone works for global Skype to Skype calls, too! Remember - this isn't cellular provider dependent - "Will Skype work on a Nextel cell phone," or "Will Skype work on a Verizon or AT and T cell phone" is no longer the question to ask (although there is also a Verizon-specific Skype available) - all you need to ask yourself is "Is there a Skype application for my brand of cell phone," and if your phone is one of the Nokia phones with which this Skype for Nokia works, the answer is "Yes," regardless of who your cell phone provider is! A spate of fake "Amazon.com - Your Confirmation" emails is making the rounds - they are phishing emails, with the supposed 'Amazon' links actually being hidden links going to such interesting places as http://drevmash.alfaspace.net/admiral.html, http://gofiberzone.com/upper.html, and meeknew.com. The subject (which so far appears to use the same "confirmation" number for everyone), is "Amazon.com - Your Confirmation (0113-567494-3518071)" and supposedly comes from the email address order-update@amazon.com. In reality, they are coming from IP address 124.217.216.112, and the emails are sent from (almost certainly spoofed) email addresses such as claude.simpson@ameritrade.com and lwjtvbwrqksz@young-world.com. While Netflix has in the past been notorious for hiding the ball when it comes to the Netflix phone number (which we do provide below), we have Netflix's phone number in another sense - the iPhone sense. Net flix appears to be the newest major online presence looking at creating an iPhone app - in this case a Netflix i Phone application that will allow you to stream Netflix movies to your iPhone right from your Netflix account. Judging by the searches we get for iPod Phone and Zune Phone (and even "I Phone"), it's clear that what people really want more than anything is a truly convergent device - one device that does it all. It's an iPod, it's a phone, it's a video player, it's a radio, it's an email device - it's Wonder Phone! While the iPhone (I Phone) is essentially an iPod Phone, people are still wanting something more - will the much-awaited Zune Phone (and rumoured Zune store) really statisfy their cravings? Read on... Last month we told you about how Wintek, a main supplier for Apple and Nokia, among others, was poisoning its workers with n-hexane - a toxic chemical used in the screen manufacturing process that is actually banned (meaning that Wintek was using it in violation of the ban - they have since claimed to have ceased all use of n-hexane). Now in an annual report from Apple entitled "Supplier Responsibility: 2010 Progress Report", Apple admits that not only have workers been poisoned by banned substances in the plants they use, but they have been using child labor, as well. Google news has started mining Twitter to flesh out their latest news headline results, including displaying your tweets as "latest news" mixed in with the news headlines, in a rolling marquee that does an auto-refresh much like a Facebook page does. A perfect, albeit sad, example is today's news that actor Andrew Koenig - son of Walter Koenig, who played Checkov in the original Star Trek - was found dead of an apparent suicide, in a park in Vancouver. As thousands tweeted about the sad event, their tweets started showing up in Google News along with news headlines about Koenig. In an Internet law ruling that is not only the first of its kind, but that may have wide implications - indeed worldwide implications - for Internet law, privacy law, and Google and any other sites that host images, three Google executives have been sentenced to 6 months in prison by an Italian court, over the public posting of a video of a disabled boy with Downs syndrome being subjected to bullying by four bullies, in Turin, Italy. The three convicted Google executives are Google Privacy Director Peter Fleischer, Senior VP David Carl Drummond (formerly director of Google Italy), and George De Los Reyes, a retired Google financial executive. Imagine our surprise today when, while checking out Slashdot's RSS feeds (or, as those in the biz like to call it, /. ) we noted a full-colour advertisement exhorting us to check our credit score, and another for Tek Systems. In fact, there is now an advertisement along with every story summary in the Slashdot RSS feed - ads for penny stocks, even ads for Google Chrome. One of the burning questions of the entire "school spying on a student in his own home through the webcam in the school-provided laptop" fiasco - which was followed closely by the "school accuses student Blake Robbins of improper behavior in his own home based on photos taken through the webcam" debacle - is just what was the improper behavior with which they confronted Blake? Read on... (Hint: It has to do with his friends, Mike and Ikes. Yes, it's true.) P.S. Folks in the area are already calling this "WebCamGate". As Google threatens to pull completely out of China, following allegations that the hack attacks against Google, code named "Operation Aurora" and first disclosed by Google last month, originated at two Chinese universities with strong governmental ties, the Chinese government is trying their own brand of shaping the Internet - by encouraging its citizens to send "red text messages", also being referred to as "red snippets" and even "red jokes" (although they are not jokes). The Chinese term actually translates as "Red Duan" - 'duan' relating to measurement, such as a piece or stretch of time - in other words, a red era. According to authorities in China, the red text message - or red snippet - is intended to facilitate "the spirit of Chinese culture for an Internet age" and to combat the invasion of American culture. In the meantime, Google contemplates pulling out of China altogether after their discoveries in the wake of the Operation Aurora hacks, unless China agrees to allowing uncensored search. The Lower Merion School District in Pennsylvania is being sued by Holly and Michael Robbins, along with their son Blake Robbins, over the discovery that the school district was spying on their son via the webcam in the school-issued laptop which their son received from the school district. The Robbins and others discovered that school administrators were remotely accessing the webcams in the students' laptops when a student was disciplined by the school for "improper behaviour in this home", with the school's assistant principal producing as evidence a photo taken with the webcam, of a scene in the student's home! With recent changes to Facebook, it turns out that Facebook is now choosing which friends' news feeds to show you in the live feed view, and, essentially, blocking all the rest! Meaning that all of your other friends are blocked from being shown in your live feed update! Here's how to undo that and get all of your Facebook friends' live feed news back. Google, Apple and Yahoo (as well as Oracle and Applied Materials) this week prevailed against a Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) request that was seeking to require them to share their workforce data as it relates to race and gender. Under the Freedom of Information Act request, the San Jose Mercury News newspaper wanted to know what percentage of Apple's, Google's, and Yahoo's workforce was African American, what percentage was Hispanic, Asian, caucasion, etc., and what percentage were women. Apple, Google and Yahoo, and Oracle and Applied Materials, claimed that these details were trade secrets, and that their businesses would be negatively impacted if they were forced to reveal this information. "This Apple ID has been disabled for security reasons", the ominous error message reads. What does it mean? Well, it's no secret that Apple hates it when people jailbreak their iPhones (of course if Apple would give them what they want, they wouldn't feel compelled to have jailbroken iPhones - jailbreaking iPhones happens when iPhone owners can't get at the things that they want, that they know the phone can do, but which Apple has crippled). Now people with jailbroken iPhones are starting to receive the "This Apple ID has been disabled for security reasons" error message, and have confirmed that their Apple ID (which, among other things, gives you access to the iPhone app store) has been disabled. So, what it means is that Apple has started denying access to iPhones which have been jailbroken. If you have reason to send money by Paypal to anyone in India - or if you are someone in India needing to receive money via Paypal - well, you may be out of luck, unless you can legitimately claim that the funds sent by Paypal are not for personal use, but, rather, are a business transaction for the purchase of goods. That is because Paypal has suspended all personal payments to India, and has even taken the radical step of reversing some personal Paypal payments to people in India that were already paid (leaving the hapless recipient with a negative balance), all at the demand of the Indian government, over concern that funds earmarked as 'personal' may actually be money being sent home by Indian citizens working overseas (known as a "remittance"). If you haven't visited your Gmail settings in your Gmail account for a while, then you may have missed the fact that you can now apply Gmail themes to your Google gmail email account! Instead of that plain old default theme, you can have zen stones, a sunset on the beach, or glorious mountain views - and many, many more themes, all available at the touch of a mouse-click! With Valentine's Day approaching, this seems a good time to review our newest site for you! The Right Flowers.com is a site dedicated to helping you know which are the right flowers - and which are the wrong flowers - to give or send. Whether the occasion is a birthday, anniversary, host or hostess flowers, memorial, just because or - yes - Valentine's Day, TheRightFlowers.com will help you determine which are the best flowers to send. And because the site is not affiliated with any florist or other flower distributor, you can really trust the information and recommendations you find on the site - there is no hidden agenda. Google Buzz hit the world this week, but just what the heck is Google Buzz, how do you use Google Buzz, and why should you care? Google Buzz is yet one more social networking service plus social network aggregator. Imagine Facebook if Facebook also republished all of your public Google stuff - your Google Chat stream, your Picasa Links, etc.. Now imagine that you can also add your Twitter feed to that stream, and even add the RSS feeds for some websites that are under your control. That's Google Buzz. It's true - Google is developing the Google Translation Phone. In fact, even though it is, by all accounts, two years off, the world is abuzz (we can no longer say aTwitter without risking a copyright complaint, can we?) with news of the Google Translator Phone. Is this the Star Trek Universal Translator, or the Babel Fish from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, come true? If you were hit by the recent Wordpress hack which redirects your visitors to paymoneysystem.info and paymoneysystem.info/in.cgi?michaeleknowlton, you may be wondering just who exactly Michael Knowlton is, and why (and how) he hacked your website. Here's the run-down. There is a brand new Wordpress hack attack making the rounds, that redirects all traffic to your site through itsallbreaksoft.net and paymoneysystem.info, and then on to any number of junk sites full of advertisements. The intermediate redirect to paymoneysystem.info actually goes through the URL paymoneysystem.info/in.cgi?michaeleknowlton, suggesting that someone using the name Michael Knowlton is going to be benefiting from any monies earned by the ads. Here's how it was done, and how to fix it. Fortunately, the immediate fix is very easy. A woman in Germany has saved the life of a man who was a complete stranger to her, using only her webcam and a telephone. According to authorities, the man, who was admiring the sunset near St. Peter-Ording off the German - Danish border, and who had wandered out onto the ice of the frozen North Sea, would surely have died had the woman not just happened to be watching the same sunset - only from 350 miles away, via webcam. Last week we reported that the Amazon Kindle was getting an app store and lots of new applications, and we asked the question, "but why?" Among other things, we pointed out that with the lack of a touch screen, any applications for the Kindle would be severely limited in terms of functionality, usefulness, and just plain fun. (You can read our discussion of Amazon announcing Applications for the Kindle here.) Well, guess what. It seems that the Kindle is getting a touch screen. We'd like to take this opportunity to tell you about what we think is the best website that provides both advice for unmarried fathers and divorce advice for men. Whether you are looking for information about a fathers rights to child custody (and if you are unmarried child custody issues can still go either way - custody of children is not dependent on your marital status - an unmarried fathers rights of access to children is the same as if he'd been married to the mother), information about the best way to resolve custody issues (is shared custody best? Should you try to win custody? Go for 50 50 custody of a child?), or information regarding children and divorce, such as the effects of divorce on children (how does divorce affect children?), this should be your go-to website. Fathers, get answers to your separation and divorce questions, information about how to cope with divorce with children, and how to deal with custody of child if never married, all in one place! Now here's a blast from the past. I was trolling Usenet recently (many of you may know it better as Google groups since Google borged Usenet), and I came across the letter to the editor that I wrote in reponse to a letter that the American Bar Association Journal had published, written by Martha Siegel (she of the Cantor and Siegal Green Card Lottery Spam infamy). In the letter, Ms. Siegel attempted to justify the mass-spamming of Usenet that she and her associate had done in the name of trying to drum up business for their law firm. It was, if not the first mega-spam, certainly the most high-profile of those among the first. It may be the biggest celebrity breakup of the 2009-2010 season. No, it's not Brad and Angelina, or Jon and Kate Gosselin. It's Apple and Google. In a meeting at Apple's Cupertino headquarters last week, Steve Jobs let loose a no-holds-barred rant against Google and their pretence (at least) of do no evil, culminating in his saying that their "don't be evil" motto is "a load of crap." Some observers even claim that what Jobs actually said was that Google's 'don't be evil' is "bullshit". As more and more people go mobile - and more and more people join Facebook - it's only natural that more and more people want to combine the two, and have Facebook and m login (shorthand these days for "mobile login"). Happily, there is a mobile Facebook login page, and there is also a Facebook mobile application for just about every smartphone out there, so you can m login to your heart's content. So if you're wondering "how do I access Facebook on my phone?", read on to learn about the ways to mobile login to Facebook, and about some of the Facebook mobile applications that are available. Terri Carlson is willing to exchange marriage for health insurance. In fact, she is so serious about it, that she has put up a website entitled "Will Marry for Health Insurance" - and she really means it! But what would drive someone to be so desparate that they would barter marriage to be covered by health insurance, on the Internet? To put up a website saying that they will marry for health care coverage? And, is it wrong - or creative? Or both? More than four years ago, we wrote an article about the Nigerian 419 scam and what the scammers think of their victims, in which we concluded that "just in case you weren’t sure about the seriousness of 419 scams …just in case you think that it’s just a few people, and they are going to go away, think again. These scammers are here to stay, they are serious, and their target is…you." Well, it sure hasn't gotten any better since then. And here to prove it, from his own lips, a former Nigerian 419 scammer tells all. In case you haven't heard yet, Amazon has announced that the Amazon Kindle is about to be opened up to 3rd-party developers, and to have its own Kindle app store, so as to create a whole new generation of Kindle applications. Which means that, yay, you'll be able to play Sudoku on your Kindle - but without a touch screen what's the point? - while you still can't perform such basic no-brainers such as making a gift of a book to someone else on their Kindle. Now you can listen to free music online without downloading it, thanks to Google's new music-playing search result feature! Goodbye music download, hello instant music gratification! Instead of searching for downloadable music, now you can just search for the music you love, and play it! Being called by some the Google Music Service or the Google Music Player, here's how it works: when you search for music online through Google, the search results offer you the ability to play that music - for free - directly from the search results, with a little 'play' box. This is all the result of a partnership between Google and music streaming sites such as Pandora, Lala, MySpace Music, and Real Player's Rhapsody service. With the recent Facebook poking arrest, a lot of people want to know what it means to "poke" someone on Facebook. A Facebook poke is basically a way of waving at someone from across Facebook. A poke on Facebook is a shorthand way of saying "Yo, I'm thinking of you." In addition to wondering "what is a poke on Facebook", a lot of people wonder "When you poke someone on Facebook does anyone else see it?" Keep reading for the answer to that, and all the information about poking on Facebook, including how to do it, and how to know if you've been poked on Facebook. It's no secret that Facebook has an.. interesting ... view of user privacy. In fact, Facebook CEO Mark Zucker recently suggested that Facebook users (should) have no expectation of privacy. Now to add insult to the complete-lack-of-privacy injury, starting a few days ago, Facebook applications now have permission to grab your email address - that is to require that you divulge your email address before you can use their application. Dan Woolley, an American who was trapped and buried for nearly 3 days (65 hours, to be exact) when the hotel that he was staying at in Haiti collapsed on top of him, says that he owes his very life and limb to the emergency first aid application that he had on his iPhone, to setting his iPhone to sound an alarm every 20 minutes, and to the flash on his camera. Microsoft has just announced an emergency patch for both Internet Explorer (IE) and Office Products, and it is recommended that everyone install this patch ASAP (link to patch included below). This affects Internet Explorer 6 (IE6), Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) and Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) as well as any Microsoft Office Product with ActiveX, including Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Microsoft Access. Wal-Mart, Gap, Nike - when you think of companies known to use labor where the work enviroment is dangerous to the workers, these are names that come to mind. But Apple? Nokia?? It's true - the odds are good that the screen on one or more of your computers or cell phones was manufactured in a plant where workers are routinely exposed to toxic chemicals - where, in fact, workers have died due to exposure to chemicals like n-hexane. This week Chinese workers employed by Taiwanese screen manufacturer Wintek, in Wintek's east China factory in Jiangsu province, staged a protest over, in part, their allegations that several workers have become paralyzed - and died - due to exposure to n-hexane, a toxic chemical that has been banned, but which Wintek is still using. If you've been wondering how to take a screenshot on an Android phone, wonder no more! You can do it, and you don't have to root your phone to do it! Here's how to capture a screenshot on an Android phone. If you have been contacted by either of London McFee Investments or Equity Transfer Management and are wondering whether it's too good to be true, or even a scam, well, read on. It may be that they were offering you a 'deal' to sell shares of stock such as General Components, or it may be that they were interested in a stock that you hold other than General Components. But in all cases, in the end, they tell you that you will need to put cash up front - usually called an "equity transfer charge" or "equity transfer fee" owing to U.S. or other stock regulations. Other players in this scam space include Asia Pacific Group and Falcon Group. Want to know how to capture screenshots with your iPhone or iPod Touch? With the newest versions of the iPhone and the iPod Touch you can easily take a screenshot! Here's how to take a screenshot with your iPod Touch or iPhone. One of the most frustrating things about the iPod Touch and iPhone is that they have a wonderful, and even beautiful, Notes program, but you can't sync or even directly transfer your notes from your iPod Touch or iPhone to your computer unless you jailbreak your device or transfer them to a third-party service and then download them again. What's up with that? SocialToo offers various Twitter-based services, such as automatically sending a message to someone who follows you, emailing you daily with a list of key terms mentioned on Twitter and, until today, automatically unfollowing someone if they unfollow you. We say "until today" because, according to SocialToo CEO Jesse Stay, Twitter has asked them to disable the automatic unfollow service. But why? The new 'PDF My URL' (PDFmyURL) service from OpenTracker will take any web page, whatever it finds at any URL, and instantly turn it into a PDF file on your desktop - for free! Text to donate? We've had a lot of questions about the messages flying around the Internet that you can text "Haiti" to 90999 and it will create a $10.00 donation to the relief efforts in Haiti following the horrible Hatian earthquake that has left hundreds of thousands dead, and many more injured and homeless. It's important to understand that the $10.00 will be charged to your cell phone bill. Facebook quietly implemented a brand new feature this week - and it's a feature that many of us are very happy to see! While there was no official announcement, yesterday people started seeing this in the email notifications of comments to their Facebook status: "New Feature: Reply to this email to comment on this status." The so-called Web 2.0 Suicide Machine - a service provided by Moddr that lets you delete all of your social media accounts at once (or as they put it, "delete all your energy sucking social-networking profiles, kill your fake virtual friends, and completely do away with your Web2.0 alterego") - has certainly gotten the attention of Facebook. It started with Facebook blocking the IP addresses of the social networking suicide machine and similar services, however now Facebook has taken the much more aggressive action of sending the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine a Cease and Desist letter. Which means that Facebook is prepared to sue someone for helping people who don't want to be on Facebook close their Facebook accounts. The ultimate female robot has just hit the scenes. The Roxxxy robot - (not Roxxy robot or Roxy robot because, you see, "Roxxxy" is triple-X) - is one sexy robot girl. In fact, Roxxxy is a sex robot - which means that as girl robots go she is, well, the ultimate fantasy robot. And, indeed, for some the ultimate fantasy girlfriend. Not only does Roxxxy talk sports, respond to touch, and come with three ... er ... serviceable ports ... but she also sports five distinct personalities, ranging from 'Frigid Farrah' to 'Wild Wendy' (bad robot!) and everything in between - including a 'Mature Martha' and 'S&M Susan' (we kid you not). Want a topless robot? A bottomless robot? Roxxxy can be anything you want her to be! It's no secret that Facebook regularly has its share of privacy issues, many of which are their own doing. Now Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has given a talk in which he says, in effect, "Our users don't want privacy." As those who've joined the Sync My Ride generation already know, Ford SYNC may be the ultimate in convergence technology, marrying Internet, voice recognition and voice commands, and, of course, your cell phone, as an integral part of your car. With MyFord Touch - an LCD dashboard screen - coming this year, and with Ford SYNC available in dozens of models of Fords, working with most modern cell phones - the Ford SYNC system is now all grown up. (Want to know the best phone for Fords SYNC system? See below!) When Ford SYNC first launched, the system 'recognized' about 100 voice commands; this week Ford announced that SYNC in Fords now recognizes more than 10,000 commands - and that's just 'first level' commands, meaning those commands can be combined with other words and phrases. Using your cell phone as a modem is perhaps the most overlooked of all Internet connection options. But a mobile phone Internet connection, whether as a tethered modem or, using bluetooth, a wireless cell phone Internet connection, is easy to set up, and with a laptop and cellphone you can check email and surf the web from anywhere, any time! Sick and tired of Facebook's new and "improved" News Feed on your home page? Even their "Live Feed" not cutting it for you? Want the old-style 'status updates' back? Here's how to give that "News Feed" and "Live Feed" the boot, and get those good old status updates back. Do you know what you should do if you find a cell phone in the street, at the mall, in a store? If you've found a cellphone lying around (or, perhaps, in a taxi or on the bus), it may be that you found a lost cellphone that somebody dropped or that fell out of their pocket or purse, or it may be that you've found a stolen cellphone that the thief has now dispensed with. In any case, if you're wondering "I found a cell phone, what should I do with it?", here is what you should do if you find a cell phone. If you get an email that supposedly comes from Facebook com, directing you to follow a link to your Facebook login page (for example, to use the "new login system"), ask yourself "Does this link really go to my Facebook login page?" Then check by hovering over the link, to see where it really goes. Odds are good that it will go to a fake Facebook log in URL, not to the real Facebook sign in link. This is an effort to steal your Facebook log in password, and as more people hack Facebook, create a Facebook virus, or perpetrate a Facebook imposter scam or other Facebook scams, you will find more and more of these in your inbox. Many Facebook problems and Facebook risks can be avoided if you are careful about clicking on links in email; for example, if Facebook used email to try to get you to do something with your Facebook profile, then you will see that same message waiting for you if you simply type "facebook .com" in your browser, and login to your Facebook profile directly instead of clicking on the link. If that message isn't waiting for you in your Facebook inbox, then you know you just dodged a Facebook hack that was trying to steal your login Facebook credentials. (For more Facebook help and information go here.) Google Maps has now mapped the Ruins of Pompeii - complete with street view! Now, without leaving your chair, you can experience (ok, nearly) what it's like to walk around the Ruins of Pompeii! Craig Lynch, also known as Craig Lazie Lynch (not sure why it's "Lazie" instead of Craig Lazy Lynch) escaped from Britain's Hollesley Bay Prison more than 3 months ago, on September 23rd. Still on the lam, he hasn't gone underground - in fact, far from it. In fact, Craig Lazie Lynch has been driving British law enforcement mad by regularly updating his Facebook profile, taunting authorities and building a huge following of fans in the process. Online scams are nothing new, and Craigslist (named after founder Craig Newmark, hence Craig's list) has always had its fair share. Perhaps the most insidious of the Craigslist scams are those which appear to be legitimate replies to Craigs list postings - after all, while many consumers are wary of what they read online, most can't imagine that a scammer would take the time to personally reply to them! In this particular scam, the email comes from twanachausse16@aim.com on behalf of TLP Research. Is Amazon down? Can it be? Is it possible? Yes, it is - and the day before Christmas eve, too! What a blow for Amazon - all of Amazon is down, with Christmas just 36 hours away, and with only a few shopping hours left! There is a lot of chatter on the Internet today about the search term "Exercise Bike Clearance" and how Target has been gaming Google search results so that no matter what you search for (such as, for instance, "Exercise Bike Clearance") you will find a link to a Target page in the top of the search results, even though Target doesn't have the item for which you are searching. In fact, that's even more the rub - because these Google listings pointing and linking to Target.com are a result from Target telling you that "We could not find matches for {your search term}. Please try your search again." The other day someone ran across an .itml page (as opposed to an .html page), and they asked us what it was. "Is ITML some new web language that is going to take the place of HTML?" they asked us. No, ITML was not intended to replace HTML. Rather, it was a 'language' (in the same sense that HTML is a language) aimed at providing easier integration in the ASP (Application Service Provider) arena. Here it is! Our definitive list of last minute gift ideas! Whether you are looking for some holiday gifts for guys, or an unusual gift for a woman, these unique gifts won't be found in most holiday gift guides, or that list of the top 10 Christmas gifts that's circulating around the Internet, so these unique gifts are sure to please! And they are all tried and tested by us, and so we can personally recommend them! We are often asked what are the hot Christmas gifts this year, and in our list of top ten Christmas gifts, Chumby is right at the top. In fact, the only reason that we can imagine that Chumby didn't catch on like wildfire when it was first introduced is due to anemic marketing. Because Chumby just may be the mother of all Christmas present ideas. In fact, if you are wondering what are some good Christmas presents, or are looking for some last minute Christmas gifts, you can't go wrong with a Chumby. Chumby offers something for everybody, from 5 to 95. And because if you give it to a child, the parent can control the content, it's very child-safe! Wondering what to get that person who has everything - that person you want to surprise with the newest gadget - or that digital-age child with a thirst for knowledge and quest for the coolest electronic device? Look no further than the WikiReader - the device that promises (and delivers) the Wikipedia in your pocket! And the WikiReader is parent-approved as one of the few devices that lets your child be cool in that way that only the cachet of an "Internet device" can do, without actually giving them unsupervised access to the Internet! What's more, it's the quintessential educational device! This is a classic example of the problem when one entity with too much control owns the entire sales stream - from start to end - from offer to sale to payment: Paypal has started withholding payments that buyers have already paid until the seller not only ships the item, but "as long as the buyer doesn't report a problem or leaves positive feedback"! "Your funds are pending - please process this order" demands the notice from Paypal "...This money is being temporarily held in your pending balance... It will be held for up to 21 days... It may be available sooner if we can confirm that the item was delivered or, if this is an eBay item, your buyer leaves positive feedback." Are you looking for a way to stream Christmas music, so that you can have an endless stream of holiday music to get you in the holiday mood? One of the best options for streaming Christmas music is to stream it from the Internet, and you can do that easily by going to one of the online sites (such as Internet radio stations) that are offering free Christmas music 24/7! Voila! All streaming Christmas music, all the time, for free! Some of you will remember that a few years ago, we featured the massive outside Christmas lights display created by Alek Komarnitsky that you could control over the Internet. It included Christmas lighted outdoor decorations, Christmas inflatables, Christmas yard decorations, and all other fashion of outside Christmas decorations and Christmas yard decor - and even a few not-so Christmas outdoor decorations, such as the Incredible Hulk. Then, it turned out that all of this Christmas yard art was a fake - that is, the outdoor Christmas decorations did exist, but it was a hoax that you could turn this outside Christmas lights display on and off with your computer from across the Internet. This time, however, it's real! ATandT has responded to the Fake Steve Jobs' Operation Chokehold which exhorts AT and T users to protest ATandT's lousy data network service by clogging the service with solid data usage for an hour this Friday (tomorrow) from noon to 1:00 p.m. PST. ATandT's response reveals that decent 3G network coverage isn't the only thing lacking from ATandT's lineup - they also have no sense of humor. In response to AT and T begging their iPhone customers to stop using so much data as it brings down their substandard network, the Fake Steve Jobs has suggested that everyone participate in "Operation Chokehold", a national hour of using as much AT and T bandwidth as possible, to force AT and T to say "Uncle" and do something about their network. Although the Fake Steve Jobs says it was all in jest, the joke may be on AT and T if enough people participate in Operation Choke Hold, spoof or not. Operation Chokehold is scheduled (or not) for this Friday, December 18th, from 12:00 noon to 1:00 p.m., PST. Two watchdog groups - Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and the National Security Archive - have announced that the Obama administration has uncovered 22 million pieces of email that were sent under the Bush administration, and that had gone 'missing'. The discovery was made pursuant to - and has lead to the settling of - lawsuits filed by both groups against the Executive Office of the President over the Bush administration's alleged failure to install an adequate record-keeping system for electronic records, including email, as required by Federal law. Google hasn't moved to Greenland, even though the TLD (Top Level Domain) of its new URL shorten service "Goo.gl" is the domain for Greenland. With the announcement of Goog.gl, Google takes on other URL shortening services such as Tiny URL and Bit.ly. And in case you are wondering what does URL stand for or "what is a url", here is the URL definition: The term "URL" refers to the web address of a page on the world wide web. URL stands for 'Uniform Resource Locator" - "uniform" because the addressing is standardized, "resource" refers to the content (or 'resource') on the web that you want to see, and "locator" referring to the fact that it points to that resources location on the web. The Goo.gle service allows you to take a long URL and shorten it to something that is much shorter but still takes you to the original page. Project Honey Pot has just announced over one billion served - one billion pieces of spam served to Project Honey Pot that is - and with that milestone they have released their analysis of global spam trends and patterns, and it's very interesting. We've received rafts of concerns about the newest Facebook Privacy Announcement and the new Facebook privacy policies - and even about Facebook's privacy policies policies (like the policy of forcing you to revisit their privacy policies repeatedly, and requiring you to confirm what appear to be new settings or keep your "old settings" without giving you a chance to see or understand what your "old settings" were to start with). We've seen some idiotic mailing practices in our time, but of all of the dunderheaded bulk mailing "policies" we've seen, this one may take the idiot-cake: "You are receiving this message about Frappr because your name and email address were submitted to a Frappr Guest Map at some point in the past 5 years." ("Frappr" because, presumably, frapper .com is owned by a domain squatter.) The New York State Emergency Management Office (EMO) has begun trials of broadcasting disaster alerts and emergency alerts to people through their Xbox 360 game consoles. AT and T has taken the unusual step of publicly admitting that they can't handle the amount of data that their smartphone (mostly iPhone) using customers are using, and have indicated that they are going to try to "educate customers about what represents a megabyte of data." And then they are going to start penalizing "heavy users." With so many Apple iPhone complaints about lost calls, dropped calls, and poor coverage and other iPhone problems, it's about time that they did something, although we're not sure that cajoling, educating, and threatening users is the right 'something'. We've covered our share of people doing stupid things with cell phones, but this one deserves a special entry all of its own. Take one part paranoia, one part zeal, two parts conspiracy theory, and someone with too much time on their hands, and what do you get? No, it's not the sequel to Minority Report. It's the allegation that Yahoo and other ISPs are spying on their users and selling their users' information, with publication of the so-called "Yahoo Spying Guide", and other ISP "Spying Guides" as "proof" that Yahoo and other ISPs have put a price on their own users' heads. Google has just launched their own public DNS service, and appears to have focussed (now) competitor OpenDNS firmly in its crosshairs. We'll get into that in a moment, but first, for those of you with a glazed look who are wondering "just what is DNS, and why should I care?", a little tutorial on what DNS is, and why you should care. Back in 2000, Thomas L. DiStefano, III, of Boca Raton, Florida, filed a patent for a "Method For Managing Bulk E-Mail Distribution", in which the 'invention' was described as a method in which if not all email in an email run was delivered the first time, the sender would repeatedly send the email to the undelivered addresses, again and again, until all of the email was eventually delivered. In 2007, DiStefano's company, Perfect Web Technologies, sued InfoUSA, for patent infringement. InfoUSA is the parent company to such email entities as YesMail, who famously sued anti-spam blacklist MAPS for calling them a spammer, and who in 2006 paid a $50,000 fine to the Feds for violations of the CAN-SPAM Federal anti-spam law. As text messaging grows ever more popular, you may be wondering how to send text messages to cell phones via the Internet or, put another way, how to send a text message to a cell phone by email. It's actually very easy to email a text message to a cell phone - in fact it's as easy as sending any other email - you just need to know the email address of the cell phone. In response to Verizon's "There's a map for that" ad campaign, which riffed on the iPhones "There's an app for that" campaign, iPhone mothership AT and T sued Verizon. The primary legal basis for AT and T's claims was that the Verizon "There's a map for that" map showed Verizon's 3G coverage compared to AT and T's 3G coverage in the same area - AT and T's 3G coverage in those areas was much more limited (naturally, otherwise Verizon wouldn't be using it in an ad campaign), and AT and T was complaining that they still have voice and data services in those areas (just not 3G) and so viewers could be mislead into thinking that AT and T didn't have any coverage (not just 3G coverage) in the regions depicted. A new Colorado "texting while driving" and "yakking on the phone while driving" law goes into effect at midnight. Starting on the 1st of December, under the new law, it is a criminal offense to text or otherwise enter data into a mobile device, from behind the wheel, while the vehicle is in motion. The new law also prohibits drivers under the age of 18 from using a cell phone at all while behind the wheel, hands-free or not. Now this is new! If you have a Facebook account, searching for your name in Google will turn up not only a link to your Facebook page, but includes a list of your friends, as well! And that's even if your privacy settings on Facebook are set to disallow public access, such as the "only My Networks and Friends can see my profile and personal info" settings. Last Friday, if you were on eBay and quick, you could have bid on what was claimed to be blood and brain samples from none other than Il Duce - Benito Mussolini himself. The blood and brain tissue was posted for sale by an as yet undisclosed source, although Mussolini's grandaughter, Alessandra Mussolini, has suggested that the blood and brain samples could have been lifted during the autopsy performed in 1945 on Mussolini at the Policlinico hospital in Milan. Nathalie Blanchard had been out for a year-and-a-half on paid long-term sick (disability) leave following a diagnosis of severe depression. That is, until her insurance company, Manulife, got a gander at the pictures she'd posted to Facebook, which showed a smiling Natalie Blanchard at a Chippendales (male strip) bar, at a birthday party, and on vacation at the beach. Amazon Associates rejoice (or not) - Amazon just added a "Share on Twitter" link to the Amazon affiliate toolbar that appears at the top of every Amazon product page, with the Amazon associate's Amazon affiliate tag (i.d.) already embedded in the link, so that when you hit the "Share on Twitter" link, the Amazon link to whatever product it is goes out to all of your Twitter followers with your Amazon associate i.d. already embedded within the link. We're just surprised that it took Amazon so long to jump on this bandwagon! (Ah, the downside of the inertia of an enormous, publicly held company.) In case you hadn't heard of the Facebook poking arrest that happened last month, Shannon D. Jackson was arrested for 'poking' Dana Hannah on Facebook - meaning that Jackson used the Facebook "poke" function to "poke" Hannah which, while perhaps rude, childish, and annoying, doesn't usually rise to the level of an arrestable offense. However in this case, it is alleged that the poke violated the terms of a protection order (think "restraining order") which Hannah had in place against Jackson. Now the whole thing has been referred to a grand jury. Facebook has been in the news quite a bit lately (stay tuned for our upcoming story on the woman who was arrested for poking someone on Facebook!), and there is increasing awareness over just how intrusive and invading of their users' privacy many of their money-making practices are, such as using their users (you and your Facebook friends) in their Facebook advertising. Here's a real-life example of someone being used in Facebook ads, and information on how to opt out and stop Facebook from doing it to you. Twitter down? Hey, it happens, and sometimes it's even planned! Twitter may be down for planned maintenance tonight - Tuesday, November 17th - sometime between the hours of 11:00 p.m. and 1:00 a.m. Pacific time (2:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. Eastern). That said, Twitter isn't actually planning to be down that entire time - it's more that they are planning maintenance, and so Twitter could be down at some point during those hours. Amazon's Kindle reader has the ability to do text-to-speech, meaning that it can read books outloud to you. Perfect for those who are sight-impaired or blind, right? Well, it would be, except accessing the text-to-speech function requires navigating menus that only a sighted-person can easily navigate. That is not only the finding of schools participating in an Amazon Kindle trial program, but the complaint of a lawsuit which has now been filed against at least one of the schools participating in the trial. Google is gracing nearly 50 airports in the U.S. with free airport wi-fi for the holidays. Two of the airports - Seattle and Burbank - will keep their free airport Internet access, and offer free airport wi-fi permanently. (The full list of airports offering free Google wi-fi is below.) For those Twitter users who are still using Twitter through a web browser (do people really still do that?), Twitter is beta testing a new through-the-browser retweet function. Not everyone yet has access to this new retweet function, so we thought that we'd show it to you. A 19-year-old New York man has been released from New York's notorious Rikers Island jail after a court agreed with his Facebook alibi that he couldn't have been robbing two people at gunpoint while at the same time posting a status update to Facebook from his father's house, twelve miles away from the scene of the crime. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has managed to shut down the public Internet system for the entire town of Coschocton, Ohio, over a single downloading incident. In a move sure to have Microsoft's legal eagles tearing their hair out, Microsoft Partner Group Manager Simon Aldous, during an interview with Britain's Intent Media's PCR publication, acknowledged that Microsoft has been aiming to "create a Mac look and feel." Just this past week we told you about a vulnerability that all jailbreaked iPhones are at risk for, due to there being a default root password for SSH that most people who jailbreak their iPhones don't (know to) change. Now, taking advantage of that same 'default root password' issue, countless jailbroke iPhone owners are finding Rick Astley's mug on their iPhone, as jailbroken iPhones get "rickrolled" by the Ikee worm. (A "rickroll" ("rick roll") is a fad that started a couple of years ago when, inexplicably, the video of Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" became the visual punchline to tricks played across the Internet, with links to supposedly topical content actually taking the user to the Astley video. To get so tricked is to get "rick rolled".) Verizon Wireless is upping its early termination fee - particularly for "advanced devices" - to as much as $350.00 for cancelling early in the contract. In addition, access that comes standard on many Internet capable devices can cost you more than $100 a month extra on a Verizon advanced device. The City of Los Angeles will be paying Google $7 million to allow the city to move email hosting for all 30,000 of Los Angeles city workers to Gmail. That's right - what tens of millions get for free, Los Angeles will be paying a cool seven million for. Of course presumably by paying for Gmail premium, they will be getting a few other services, like the ability to call in for tech support during normail business hours. Believe it or not, it's extremely easy to create custom notifications, alarms, and ringtones on the T-Mobile G1 Google phone! And doing it this way will allow your own custom sound files to show up in the same list as the pre-installed sounds! A Dutch hacker has demonstrated that jailbreaking your iPhone opens it up to a hack that allows your jailbroken iPhone to be easily accessed and remotely controlled. This doesn't necessarily mean that you shouldn't jail break your iPhone (or that you should, we pass no judgement on the act of jailbreaking an iPhone), but it does mean that if you are going to jailbreak your iPhone, you need to know how to close the security hole you will create (or already have created) by jailbreaking your iPhone. Is TMobile down? It sure is! Countless T-Mobile customers were left without either cell phone or data network services today, as the T Mobile network went down around the United States. Last month Twitter announced that it was rolling out a new feature, called Twitter Lists. This week Twitter started rolling out Twitter Lists across their entire user base. Here's an explanation of what Twitter Lists are, and how to use them. If you're a Twitter user whose native tongue is not English, Twitter has some great news for you! Twitter Translate is Twitter's initiative to translate Twitter into other languages. Under the Twitter Translator program, Twitter is "calling on the help of real Twitterers to translate our site into their own language." You may have noticed recently that Google has started offering an "auto unsubscribe" option for some of the email that you report as spam to Google. First announced earlier this summer, Google says of their autounsubscribe from spam option, "With an easy way to unsubscribe, everybody wins. Your spam folder is smaller, and senders don't waste time sending you email that you no longer want." Facebook has announced a policy of allowing the profiles of deceased users to remain up, as a sort of "memorialization" or tribute to the user. One of our most often-read articles is What to Do if you've Lost Your Cell Phone or Your Cell Phone is Stolen, which tells us that this is an issue for a lot of people. Among other things, the article advises that you be sure to have your cell phone provider turn your cell phone off if you believe it to be stolen. This is still good advice, but there is one situation in which you may not want to have it turned off right away, and that is the situation where the thief is using your cell phone to make and receive calls, and/or to send and receive text messages. PhoneSnoop is software developed for the Blackberry which allows you to turn any Blackberry into a snooping device. Much like Flexispy at least claims to do, you just load PhoneSnoop on any Blackberry, activate it, and then you can listen in on whatever is happening in the room in which the Blackberry is placed. A Federal court has dismissed the prostitution lawsuit brought against Craigslist by Chicago's Cook County Sheriff's Department and Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart. Sheriff Dart had argued that because the Craigslist erotic services section helps to arrange meetings between hookers and johns, and steers people to places where they can pay for erotic services, Craigslist is in violation of laws against prostitution, and that it should be shut down. Dart added that "the sheer number of daily postings has made it impossible to stymie Craigslist generated prostitution." People who first sign on to Twitter have in the past been directed to a suggested list of users to follow on Twitter. Similarly, at some points in time, brand new users found that their new Twitter account was created with a pre-populated list of suggested users that they were already following, right out of the box. And of course you can always find the "suggested users" list under the "Find People" option on Twitter. But that all may change. Google has announced that they have partnered with Twitter to allow your Twitter messages - known as "tweets" - to be searchable in real-time on Google. This means that as soon as you say something publicly on Twitter, it will instantly be available to millions and millions of people who don't know you - or who do - in their Google search results. Amber Duick was minding her own business when she suddenly started receiving a series of scary emails from a Sebastian Bowler - a stranger who seemed not only to know who Duick is, but to know how to find her. Indeed, he knew her previous address, and generally where she lives now, and, he said, he was coming to her house to hide from the police. Amber was terrified - even sleeping with a machete by her bed and insisting that her boyfriend keep mace and a club by his side. Terrified, that is, until she learned that it was all an elaborate marketing stunt being carried out on behalf of Toyota. Toyota's response? She asked for it, they say, by opting in to their marketing emails. Twitter is fed up, and their not going to take it any more. The thing with which they are apparently fed up is spammers polluting people's Twitter streams with everything from "make money fast" scheme sites to porn. And so Twitter has added a "this is spam" button (well, actually a "report for spam" link) to everybody's profile, so that now you can report them to Twitter HQ with a single click. Move over, Match.com, eHarmony and PlentyOfFish.com - the Federal government is getting into the online dating and relationship space, with their very own online dating site called TwoOfUs.org. The Two of Us.org site includes advice on dating, relationships, and marriage. Perhaps once the Feds are able to bring their own relationships with the opposite sects more into harmony, and stop the acrimony and one-night stands in their own house (and senate), then we will be able to take a Federal dating advice site more seriously. Call us crazy, but here's our theory about the week-long Sidekick data outage experienced by Sidekick users as their Sidekick network (really the Danger network) went down. Amazon has closed a chapter of its history that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has called "stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles." Bezos was, of course, referring to Amazon's removing, without warning, copies of Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm from the Kindles of nearly 2000 customers. The Vitality GlowCap is an Internet-connected pill bottle cap that reminds you when it's time to take your medicine, calls you if you wait too long, and even emails a weekly summary of your prescription compliance to a designated friend or family member. The Vitality GlowCap can also re-order your medication when you run out, and send a monthly printed report to your physician. Fix a wet cell phone? Not possible. Everyone knows that there is no wet cell phone fix. Or is there? A new product is claiming to help users to not only fix wet cell phones that have been dropped in water, but also to fix that wet iPod or other electronic device. Called the Bheestie Bag, it's a zip bag filled with tiny beads that draw moisture out of whatever you put into it, leaving your previously water-logged mobile phone, iPod, or other electronic device bone dry and, at least as often as not, functioning again. The High Court in the UK took the unusual step last week of allowing service of a court order on Twitter and, perhaps even more unusually, it worked! The order required that an anonymous defendant cease posing on Twitter as Donal Blaney, the blogger behind Blaney’s Blarney, and abandon the imposter account. The imposter account, using the monicker "Blaneysblarney", looked identical to the Twitter account under which Donal Blaney actually posts, at "Donal_Blaney". The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) today published its updated rules governing the publication of endorsements and testimonials by "consumers, experts, organizations, and celebrities" (in other words, everybody). The updated rules governing online testimonials and endorsements arguably now cover bloggers, Internet marketers, affiliates, and others who promote (including through endorsing or testimonial) products or services on the Internet. The bottom line is, if you talk about a product or service, and if you put it out on or via the Internet, and if you stand to gain on it, you'd better disclose that relationship. Users of the T-Mobile Sidekick have been without network coverage for as long as two days, with no relief in sight. Complaints started pouring into the Internet Patrol, as users found that the network was down, and they have no access to any data services (although they can still make telephone calls and some can send text messages - the Sidekick uses a data network provided by Danger, while phone calls and SMS still go out on T-Mobile's own network). Red Bull, the makers of Red Bull Energy Drink, are branching out - a lot. They are bringing online a line of Red Bull mobile phones - that's right, the Red Bull cell phone. Red Bull says that the Red Bull Mobile phone service will bring you "the latest handsets, competitive tariffs and a complete package of mobile communication features. Even more, it gives unlimited access to the world of Red Bull. Welcome to our playground." A new service called Micello is touting itself as the equivalent of Google maps only for indoors, such as when you get to your destination, and can't find that store inside the mall, or that office where you're already 10 minutes late for a meeting. If you are thinking that your iPhone seems to be dropping an awful lot of calls, it's not all in your head. Or your calling area. iPhone users around the country have the same feeling, and now Apple has (perhaps unwittingly) confirmed it: in some areas the iPhone drops as much as 30% of all calls! It all started when Manoj Gupta brought his iPhone into the Apple store in the Soho area of New York City... Sometime in the past week somebody created and posted a poll on Facebook asking whether President Obama should be assassinated. The poll asked "Should Obama be killed?" The answer choices were "yes", "no", "maybe", and "if he cuts my health care." The much-awaited Garmin Nuviphone G60 - a combination Garmin GPS Nuvi + cell phone with touchscreen - is going on sale this Monday (October 4th). The combination Nuvi GPS cell phone has been in the buzz stages for nearly two years. Unlike the almost after-thought GPS features of some smart cell phones, or even the somewhat more robust GPS features of some contemporary smartphones, the Garmin Nuvi phone is truly a full-featured Nuvi GPS and a full-featured touch screen cellphone. Ever wonder why there is so much spam for Viagra? Ever wonder "Who would ever buy this stuff?" Well, while the specific details of the "who" aren't available, there are enough of them buying it to make spamming about Viagra and other similar meds very financially rewarding. Only Internet-years behind the rest of the cell phone toting, SMS messaging texting world, iPhone users are finally able to send MMS messages. MMS messages are "Multimedia Messaging Service" messages, meaning that instead of just text, you can send multimedia items such as pictures and videos. It's one of the newest spam tactics - spam vacation messages. Here's how it works: spammers sign up for mailing lists, never intending to read them. Instead they put themselves on permanent vacation status, create one of those infernal "I'm on vacation" messages full of their spam message, and let the vacation program do their spamming for them. If they're lucky, the mailing list is one where the vacation message goes back to the entire mailing list. So far we've seen spam vacation messages hawking mydosell.com, wholesaler-electronic.com, qigefa.com, and easevshop.com. Microsoft isn't the only company to be stealing things from rivals this week. And it appears that the data from your Facebook inbox isn't the only thing that Facebook is mining. This week we discovered that Facebook has apparently cribbed Twitter's famous @username protocol for getting someone's attention. Recently an employee of Rocky Mountain Bank of Wyoming followed up on a request by a customer to email loan documents to a Gmail address. Unfortunately, after doing so, the employee realized that they had emailed the documents to the wrong Gmail address. Oops. Not only that, but they had accidentally included a file containing the identities, addresses, loan information, and tax identification information of more than 1300 Rocky Mountain Bank customers - 1325 to be exact. OOPS. All to a Gmail address belong to nobody-knows-who (presumably the error occurred when the Rocky Mountain Bank employee typoed the Gmail address). Now here's an interesting idea. Officials in several cities in Mexico have outfitted the cities' taxi drivers with government-provided pre-paid Grupo Iusacell cell phones, to be used to provide on-the-spot reporting of incidents such as accidents, fights, and crimes, as well as public hazards such as public lights being out, and water leaks. Dubbed the "Taxista Vigilante" program, by all accounts it is working exceedingly well. While this was announced last month, nobody really noticed it until this week. Facebook has created new features that allow developers to mine your Facebook inbox for data. In addition to the content of your email, it allows applications to make note of who are the recipients of a mail thread, and the time and date of the emails. Clothier Thomas Pink has developed a new iPod accessory: the Commuter Tie. That's right, a necktie that sports a hidden pocket in the back to carry your iPod Nano, along with a tab through which to thread the headphones. Microsoft announced some time ago that it was going to set up Microsoft stores, similar to Apple's highly successful Apple store. But it seems that Microsoft doesn't think that imitation is the only form of flattery. Apparently actually poaching Apple's employees to run the new Microsoft stores is right up there too. Linden Labs, creator of the popular virtual reality portal SecondLife, has been sued in first life (in other words, real life) for "allowing" Second Life players to counterfeit the SexGen brand of virtual sex toys sold in Second Life by Storker Serpentine (a/k/a in real life as Kevin Alderman). Alderman is joined in his suit by Second Lifer Munchflower Zaius (known in real life as Shannon Grei), who sells virtual clothing in Second Life. Apparently nowhere has it been suggested that any of these players Getta Life. "Now Available - the Worlds First GPS Locator that Locates Your Child... Not Just the Device" touts the ad copy. The device being referred to is the Num8 children's wristwatch, by Lok8u (get it? "Locate You"), and it is a GPS watch that allows you to track your child wherever they are. As is so often the case, what appears to be an evil mastermind plot really turns out to be a petty criminal looking to support their drug habit. This is as true of phishers as it is of the armed muggers of yore. Interestingly, GE Capital helped to make the identity and financial account theft easy enough for even the most strung-out druggie to accomplish. Facebook announced earlier this week that they had passed the 300million user mark, and that they are making money or, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg put it this week, they are cash flow positive. Put another way, Facebook is raking in the revenue. Ah, the cell phone. That ubiquitous little device that so many drivers now take for granted - that kids tote to school (little Johnny may not be able to read, but boy can he text) - that everybody, absolutely everybody has. Including prisoners and inmates. And cell phones in jail and prison have become a huge problem. While much of the world yesterday heard or read about the results of the U.N. probe into the conflict in Gaza, and how the U.N. has proclaimed that both Israel and Hamas are guilty of war crimes, an interesting technological fact was offered by Israel in defense of the allegations: in response to the claim that Israel bombed suspected Palestinian strongholds without regard for civilian life, an Israeli spokesperson pointed out that Israel had warned residents of Gaza by sending them MMS messages warning of the impending attacks. Recently we wrote about the fact that Twitter has just updated their Terms of Service, effective immediately (you can read our article about Twitter's new Terms of Service here). One interesting new development is the aspect of the new Twitter ToS ... As we recently wrote, Twitter has just posted a new Terms of Service. And, intentionally or otherwise, Twitter has banned anyone under 18 years old from using Twitter. Twitter has updated and posted new Terms of Service (ToS), which are effective immediately. The new Terms of Service more directly address the issues of spam, and make clear that what happens on Twitter can be used by Twitter, but still belongs to the user. Dr. James Heilman felt that it was time to demystify the psychiatric profession, and so, in his own effort to do so, he published the 10 ink blots which make up the Rorscach test, on Wikipedia. The good doctor's action in making the Rorschach ink blots so publicly available on the Internet has lead to his being investigated, and facing charges of, well, making public that which psychiatrists wish to hold secret. Today marked the launch of the Online Monopoly game, Monopoly City Streets (MonopolyCityStreets.com). The holy lovechild of a partnership between Hasbro (owners of the original Monopoly) and Google (owners of the rest of the world), the Online Monopoly site has proven very popular in its short, 12-hour life. Too popular, perhaps, as, with much pomp and fanfare, the site rolled open this morning, and within hours was brought down as the crush of people signing up brought the online Monopoly City Streets server to its knees. Almost a year ago, Amazon introduce its frustration free packaging. Now Amazon wants you to let them know how they're doing, with the Amazon Packaging Feedback program, through which you can let Amazon know whether your order arrived in packaging that was too big, too small, or just right. Countless thousands across the country are without service this Labor Day Weekend as the Tmobile 3G and Edge data network which services the G1 Android phone went down, and remains down as of the time of this writing. One of the coolest gadgets that we got this year was from an organization that we sponsored, Colorado Public Radio. It's called a "Radio Bookmark", and the particular one that we got was the "NPR Radio Bookmark." What is a Radio Book Mark? Where can you get one? Read on! No matter how snazzy a cell phone is, it's only as good as the carrier that is servicing it. And in the case of the iPhone, it turns out that it is straining Ma Bell's system to the point that AT and T's 9 million iPhone users are disproportionately dragging down AT and T's network infrastructure. Are you getting the message "Unable to locate New York 18 font" when running a Mac application or game such as Oregon Trail 5? Are you looking for a way to download the New York 18 font? The problem is that the New York 18 font went the way of the Mac Classic OS environment, ending with OS 9, and which stopped being included with any Mac OS install after OS X 10.4. This can be very frustrating if you are trying to run an application which require that darned New York 18 font! But fear not, because the fix is pretty easy. In fact, the good news is that the New York 18 font may be as close as your Mac hard drive; and if it's not, we'll tell you where to download the New York 18 font. Even Bill Gates has been driven beyond frustration with the Windows website. The below email, from Bill Gates himself, takes several Microsoft managers to task for, what Gates himself calls "crap" and the "absolute mess" that is the Windows website (lack of) usability, particularly with respect to downloads. If you've seen and been wondering about the newest roadside sign, touting DontActStupidly.net, well, so were we. So we did a little digging, and here's what we found about Don'tActStupidly .net. As many are now aware, a woman who was kidnapped as a child 18 years ago was found alive at the home of her captor, Phillip Craig Garrido, in Antioch, California this week; this morning it was confirmed that she is Jaycee Lee Dugard who, at the age of 11, was kidnapped back in 1991. Philip Garrido, who had kept Jaycee Dugard, and the two children whom he fathered with her, captive in his back yard all this time, (and who also used the alias Phillip Craig Knight) kept a blog. And oh what a blog it is. Oh, and his email address? GodsDesire@rocketmail.com (And also phillipcknight@yahoo.com.) It's important to choose your battles wisely, and to know what's important when it comes to whether or not to argue over something. Which do you consider the more important issue? Ginger or Maryann? Emacs or Vi? It's official: Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, has announced that Twitter is gearing up to start charging businesses for business use of Twitter through a premium Twitter service. A court in France - which does not have no-fault divorce, so absent an agreement to divorce you must prove that one of the spouses did something bad - has ruled that text messages can now be used as evidence of adultery. A plague of rogue Facebook applications that are stealing user credentials - such as usernames and passwords - has been sweeping Facebook in the past week. The phishing Facebook apps work the same way that many other applications do - including sending an email to your Facebook friends, with links to click on, and when you type in your username and password, BAM! Your login credentials have been stolen. By now you may have read about how Tracy Turkish Brooks and her "other pussy" had an embarrassing Facebook moment when she - supposedly - posted a very steamy note to "Michael", and accidentally published it for the world to see instead of sending it via private Facebook email. The post, which was real enough, read "Thank you too, Micheal, I had a great time as well.I'm glad you enjoyed my OTHER pussy ;). I must admit, I haven't had sex in a while, so getting mounted by such a strong and powerful man was a pleasant surprise after so many long months of ...abstinence. I hope this message doesn't scare you off, I just wanted you to know what a wonderful time I had with you.You are permanently invited to "the love cave between my legs"" However, while the post was real, by all accounts, the person who posted it was not Tracy Turkish Brooks - rather, her Facebook account was hacked. People often jokingly claim to be an Internet addict - addicted to Internet games or even just addicted to being on the Internet - but for those whose job, families, and lives are negatively impacted by how much time they spend online, Internet addiction is no laughing matter. The first Internet addiction disorder rehab clinic opened three years ago, in Amsterdam. Now the United States has its own Internet addiction disorder rehab clinic, offering Internet addition treatment for Internet addicts and Internet addictions of all types. But are they qualified? One would think that after the Megan Meier suicide and the case and cyberbullying law that flowed therefrom, that no right-thinking adult would be horrid - or foolish - fake posts on a public forum targetted at harrassing a teenager. But that's just what Elizabeth Thrasher did, and to add to the unbelievable nature of her actions, she is from the same area of Missouri as Megan Meier's tormentor! Blockbuster Video has announced that users will be able to watch thousands of movies from the Block buster catalog on their cell phones in the near future. Part of Blockbuster's On Demand service, Blockbuster says that compatible mobile phones will have "on-the-go download access to Block buster's digital library of thousands of current BLOCKBUSTER OnDemand movies." A group of Facebook users has sued Facebook for violation of their privacy, and privacy law in general. The group, which includes two children under the age of thirteen, an actress, and a professional photographer, have sued Facebook in California Superior Court, alleging that Facebook's practices violate California online privacy laws which make it illegal to reveal users' private data for commercial gain. It has all the makings of a classic western: trouble brewing between two factions in Arizona over disputed territory, the law unable to head the confrontation off, people taking matters into their own hands, and it all culiminating in the inevitable showdown. Only in this case, the dispute is over computer territory, one of the factions is the law, and the other side is the county itself! The next time someone asks you about social networking, and what it is, or to describe a social networking website, you need look no further than the laws of the state of Illinois. Because Illinois has taken the unusal step of defining just what makes a social networking site, in the context of their new law banning sex offenders from using any social networking site. Not content with tricking victims into giving up private identity information via email, phishers are increasingly turning to text messaging to scam account numbers, credit card numbers, social security numbers, and more from their targets. Holy privacy and security issue! A Palm Pre user who is also a securitygeekstud has discovered that Palm Pres (or should that be Palm Pri? Palm Prie? What is the plural of "Pre"?) are spying on Palm Pre users and on how they are using their Palm Pre, and reporting back to Palm! AT&T has amended the language of its Terms of Service (TOS) to prohibit AT&T's customers from participating in any class action lawsuits or class arbitrations against AT&T. Anyone who uses Gmail with a "From" address that is different than their actual Gmail address is familiar with Gmail's inserting an "On behalf of" in the sending information. For example, if your Gmail address is "JaneDoe@gmail.com", but you have Gmail using your work address of "jdoe@example.com" as your "From" address instead, when you send email through Gmail, instead of your recipients seeing "From: jdoe@example.com", your recipients may see "From: JaneDoe@gmail.com on behalf of jdoe@example.com." Google has officially confirmed the new search engine juju on which they've been working, previously in secret, for the past several months, now code-named "Caffeine". Google Caffiene provides a new search infrastructure and algorithms that are intended to provide enhanced indexing speed, accuracy, and "comprehensiveness", among other things, according to Google. Now Google is inviting folks to test Google Caffeine and rate it against old-formula Google, which we hereby dub Google Decaf. But will it give web publishers a Caffeine headache? While the Internet is all abuzz about how Facebook and Friendfeed have just announced that Facebook is acquiring FriendFeed, the bigger coup may be in that in the doing, Facebook has effectively acquired FriendFeed founders Bret Taylor and Paul Buchheit, and Jim Norris and Sanjeev Singh. The world's first Internet enabled online pacemaker has been brought online from deep within the chest of New York woman Carol Kasyjanski. Using a radio transmitter embedded within the "Internet pacemaker", which transmits through equipment stationed in Carol Kasyjanski's home, the Internet pacemaker reports any problems, wirelessly, to Kasynjanski's doctor. The newest Twitter porn scam - where the Twitter users' messages are primarily links to their x-rated website - entails the porn-pushing (or pron, if you prefer) Twitter user sending out a message thanking you for sending a "Follow Friday" their way. Only, of course, you did no such thing. In a scene that seems straight out of, well, 1984, Amazon reached out across its WhisperNet network and removed all copies of Animal Farm and 1984 itself from every Kindle and Kindle 2 which had purchased and downloaded the books from Amazon. So high school student Justin Gawronski has sued them, claiming in his lawsuit that the loss of his copy of 1984 has cost him far more than the cost of the book, and includes the loss of all of the notes he'd taken and attached to the book on his Kindle, and the value of the effort in creating them. Geocities is shutting down. Love it or hate it - use it or villify it for all the spammers that at various times infested it - when Geocities closes its doors, it will mark the passing of a long-time resident of the Internet web scene. In case you aren't aware of this, every time you visit a site that has Google Adsense on it, and every time you visit a site that uses the DoubleClick ad management system, you have the potential for being tracked via a cookie that is injected to your computer. The cookie is known as the DoubleClick DART cookie, and, in fact, there is a very good chance that you are being tracked by one of these cookies. This is so that Google and DoubleClick can better serve you, providing better ads which, in theory, you will find more interesting and enticing. Amanda Bonnen - the woman formerly known as @abonnen on Twitter - was apparently unhappy with the mold growing in the apartment which she rented from property management company Horizon Group Management LLC. Earlier this year she said as much on Twitter, tweeting a Tweet (a Twitter message) in which she said "Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it's okay." Whether or not Horizon thinks that a moldy apartment is ok, they clearly think that talking about their moldy apartments isn't - this week Horizon slapped Amanda Bonnen with a lawsuit in which they ask for $50,000 in damages for that single Tweet. The Geek Atlas: 128 Places Where Science and Technology Come Alive, by John Graham-Cumming, is by no means your typical travel guide. And, it is by no means intended only for geeks. In fact, many of the places listed in The Geek Atlas are "must visit" places for any parent hoping to give their child even the semblence of a well-rounded education about science or technology, where each have come from, and where they are headed. Hey, it happens. There are any number of reasons why you may want to "unfriend" someone from Facebook - that is, remove them from your friends list. It isn't necessarily personal, in fact it usually isn't. Perhaps you don't really know the person that well; perhaps you or they use Facebook primarily for business and your uses of Facebook don't jive. Or perhaps they overuse the Facebook invitation process or the sending-you-cute-non-existent-items-via-Facebook process. Whatever the reason, it's perfectly acceptable to remove somebody from your Facebook friends. But how do you unfriend someone on Facebook? It's actually pretty simple, once you know how. A rash of seemingly pointless spam (no links, no payload, no effort to get private information) is making the rounds, each one inquiring about the cost to get some form of music download, and each coming from a fake Gmail address, such as d12treskey@gmail.com, petersons.production@gmail.com, winstonfinancial@gmail.com and petrov.gazprom@gmail.com. David Molnar over at Ephermata had a great idea. His girlfriend was moving from Chicago to California, and he thought "Hey, let's track her stuff as the movers take it cross-country." He did it using a $99 iPhone and the "Find My iPhone" service included with Apple's Mobile Me, and it worked really well. So well, in fact, that he discovered that it's possible to track anyone using their own iPhone, and doing so is pretty trivial. If you use Gmail, and also use Facebook, it can be very easy for someone to password crack and access your Gmail account using Gmail's recover password retrieval feature. This is because Gmail's access password recovery feature allows anybody to guess the answer to your "forgot password" reset security question. And if the answer to your forgotten password reset security question happens to be information easily gleaned from your Facebook account (or some other social network information), then password hacking your Gmail account is as easy as typing in that password protection answer. (And we use the term "password protection" loosely.) From our "Now I've heard it all" department, Gregory McKenna (misreported in many articles as "George McKenna") is suing, among others, the St. Louis County Police Department, the FBI, and Apple Computers for allegedly allowing the Mafia to bug his iPods (along with his house, his cars, and more) and allowing them to play sinister songs with hidden messages to him on his iPods. iTunes won't sync with your Palm Pre or other smart phone, when previously it would? Your Palm Pre isn't broken - Apple has intentionally disabled the ability for non-iPod or iPhone phones to synch with iTunes in it's newest version of iTunes, iTunes 8.2.1. A class action lawsuit has been filed against Facebook, alleging that Facebook is charging advertisers for more clicks than their ads actually receive, and also that Facebook is not doing enough to curtail click fraud which is resulting, the lawsuit says, from competitors clicking on an advertiser's Facebook advertisment in order to use up their allotted clicks and run up the advertiser's Facebook advertising bill. Tom O'Halloran seems to be taking over Twitter - he has by his own admission 30 Twitter accounts - many of from which he is following people and then messaging them when their account auto-follows him back (others are being held in reserve until he pulls the trigger on them). Hand_Gunner, ShortBusTweets, Director_of_IT, IT_Mgr_Resume, VegasPartners, TPO_Praise, TPO_Hisself, TPO_Humor, CzarOfCzarcasm, and more - they are all Tom O'Halloran. Who is, yes, a real person. If you are using FireFox and the No Script add-on, you may find that you have trouble accessing Twitter. In fact, it may seem as if Twitter is down, because you will be unable to access Twitter while your browser just waits and waits. Power buyers on eBay have long known - or at least suspected - that some eBay sellers create fake accounts, with the shill accounts doing "shill bidding", that is bidding up the price on their own items, artifically inflating the bidding price so that the winning bid (never their own, of course) earns them more money. But now eBay has been forced to admit that shill bidding, by unscrupulous eBay sellers, does indeed occur. It was a seemingly watershed moment in iTunes history. Earlier this year, Apple finally broke down and did away with their previously iron-clad pricing structure of .99 for any song in the iTunes catalog. Instead, they introduced their "iTunes Variable Pricing", meaning that you might pay any of .66, .99, or $1.29 for a tune. But what makes this really interesting is that, in addition, now the entirety of Apple's iTunes music catalog has lost the Apple-proprietary digital rights management (DRM) and is DRM-free, which is the + in "iTunes Plus". Spammers and malware pushers have turned in increasing numbers to the URL shortening services such as TinyURL, SNURL, bit.ly and is.gd as a way of getting by spam filters that recognize the actual URLs to spam and malware sites. Employment attorneys are warning of a new trend: the use of positive recommendations on Linked-In as evidence in lawsuits against the recommender. Here's how it works: an employer gives a positive recommendation on Linked In for an employee. The employee is later let go. The positive recommendation on LinkedIn now becomes ammunition and evidence in a lawsuit against the employer for discrimination, harrassment, or other improper firing practices. As online society becomes ever more social, and cares ever less about personal security, the phrase "social security" seems more than ever an oxymoron. Perhaps nowhere is this more clearly brought home than in this week's announcement by researchers at Carnegie Mellon that they have cracked the social security code, and were able to predict with frightening accuracy many social sercurity numbers (SSN). In many cases, their hack was aided by information gleaned from such social networking sites as Facebook. If you thought that the bluetooth watch that works with your cell phone was cool, wait until you get a load of this! The LG GD910 Touchscreen Watch Phone is an actual cell phone watchphone! Yes, the Dick Tracy watch has become reality with this watch that has an integrated touchscreen cell phone! Yes, it's true. Starbucks is giving away free pints of ice cream, via Facebook. How it works is that, through the Star bucks Facebook application, you can send a certificate for one free pint of Starbuck's icecream to a Facebook friend. To send a free Starbucks free ice cream, just follow the following easy steps. (Sorry, you can’t get the free pint for yourself - you’ll have to have a friend send it to you!) If you were among those who were upset by the criminal conviction of Lori Drew - the mother behind the MySpace incident that lead to the suicide of thirteen-year-old Megan Meier - you are either about to be relieved, or outraged, depending on where you stood on the case. Lori Drew, who had been facing felony charges due to her involvement in the case, received, instead, three misdemeanor convictions. Now a Federal court is overturning those convictions. For at least a few people - and for at least a few moments - Amazon seems to be down today, as people are finding that they are unable to connect to Amazon. Efforts to reach the site have been met by moments of hanging while browsers were "connecting to Amazon," followed by error messages. Thousands of AuthorizeNet customers have started their long 4th of July weekend learning that Authorize.net has gone down - and gone down hard - due to a fire at one of their main data centers in Seattle, Washington. Authorize.net is one of ... It seems like only yesterday we were reporting that, due to California's legislature (among others) being poised to pass a tax on affiliate programs (which some were also calling an "advertising tax") such as those run by Amazon and Overstock, these and other companies were resorting to dumping the affiliates in those states and that, in fact, Overstock had just dumped all of their California affiliates for that very reason. In fact, it was yesterday. And in response, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the tax increase which the California legislators had passed, including the problematic affiliate tax provision. Well, look what the spam cat just dragged in - address book importing spam from Bebo.com. Why is it that these various social networking and other sites seem to simply consider the incidental spam attendant to address book importing (if they think about it at all) to be the cost of doing business - and, mind you, a cost sent COD to the people receiving the spam - when in fact it's really an occupational hazard? This is just about the coolest thing that we've seen in a long time! This device consists of two bluetooth handsets, which you connect to your cell phone - just as you would any other bluetooth device - and you instantly have extension handsets for your mobile phone! The technology, known as "cell fusion" phones, can ensure that you never miss a cell phone call in your house again! With ever more states either passing or contemplating passing an Internet affiliate program sales tax, the two edges of that particular sword are being felt from coast-to-coast, as associates are being slashed from the lucrative affiliate programs of some of the largest Internet companies. The news of Michael Jackson's cardiac arrest, and subsequent death, caused such a tsunami of searches on Google that the search giant's system believed that it was under attack, and triggered Google's attack defense mode, including requiring searchers to solve a CAPTCHA. Searchers searching for information on Michael Jackson were met with an intermediate page which said "Your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application," and apologetically asks them to solve the CAPTCHA. If you are used to getting payments sent to your Paypal account, you may have noticed in the past couple of weeks that you are suddenly being charged a fee even for Paypal to Paypal payments! In other words, where it used to be free to send and receive payments between Paypal accounts, suddenly (and seemingly without warning), Paypal users are getting hit with fees for inter-Paypal transfers! It has to do with their new, amended Paypal terms of service, which we include below. Millions of Paypal users around the world found Paypal down, and were told that it was a Paypal internal server error, and to contact webmaster@paypal.com. "Internal Server Error The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request. Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@paypal.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error," said the error. As Paypal went down yet again - and this time in what appears to have been an outage lasting several hours and affecting people on several continents - people are looking for Paypal alternatives. But are there Paypal alternatives? The answer is a resounding yes - there are alternatives to Paypal, and they are looking better all the time. In an interesting move that may or may not be tied to the economic times, Paypal has introduced a new service in which it exhorts you to proposition people and offer to pay them to do stuff. Or, as they say in one of their online ads, "Get stuff done for money". "Get stuff done for money," says the ad. "Use PayPal's "Do Stuff for Money" to get your friends to do stuff for money. Because sometimes just asking isn't enough." Many, many people find themselves a bit lost when they first start using Twitter. They don't really get how to use Twitter. They don't really understand what Twitter is. Here is a clear, plain English, real-world explanation that answers the questions "What is Twitter?" and "How to use Twitter?" and that explains the various messaging functions of Twitter such as @, DM, D, Retweet, RT, and #, and including Anne's famous "Party Analogy" for Twitter. A Dutch boy who was mugged and robbed last year by a pair of 24-year-old twin robbers just happened to find an image of the moment before the mugging occurred, in the Google Street View on Google Earth. Montana, once known as "Big Sky" state, just became the "Big Spy" state, with the revelation that those applying for jobs with Monatana's City of Bozeman are required to provide their username and password for any social networking site to which they belong, including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Google, Yahoo, and others. It had to happen sooner or later. The heydey of the wild frontier Internet, where ISPs had unfettered artistic license to create the landscape they wanted, is over. Like Adam and Eve in the proverbial garden of Eden, it was theirs to lose, and lose it they are about to, it seems. Now, as some Internet providers are moving to restrict bandwidth usage and charge outrageous amounts for “over usage” - much like the phone company once did, legislation has been introduced to regulate ISPs, and even to have a Federal agency oversee them - much like the telephone companies now do. Following in New York's footsteps, North Carolina is set to enact a similar Amazon Affiliate Tax, by which we mean that sales generated by someone in North Carolina via an affiliate program will be taxed (New York enacted an affiliate sales tax last year, over which New York was promptly sued). Germany will be voting tomorrow on their proposed Internet censorship law, which would create a list of verboten websites (primarily dealing with the underaged in inappropriate situations) that will be targeted for official German governmental censoring. It was only a few months ago that Australia's plan to censor websites that it deemed inappropriate or illegal blew up in its face, with the list of censored website being leaked to and widely published on the Internet. It has come to light that none other than the Obama administration itself asked Twitter to please delay planned routine maintenance this week, so that the juggernaut of Twittering and Twitter coverage of the Iran elections and ensuing demonstrations and riots could continue without interruption. You may be surprised - and you will certainly be relieved - to hear that the criminals behind the scam warranty phone calls - or so-called "robocalls" or "robodialing" - have actually been caught, and are being prosecuted by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). It turns out that a huge number of the calls were made by Christopher Cowart and his Transcontinental Warranty company, calling names and numbers supplied by a company called Voice Touch that is owned by James Dunne and Maureen Geisen Dunne, and using Caller I.D. spoofing technology developed by Damian Kohlfeld. We've been telling people for years not to put pictures of your children up online on the Internet. Nobody ever believes us that perfect strangers will not only find those pictures, but do inappropriate things with them. Now here's a real-life example of this happening. In the instant case, Danielle and Jeff Smith are lucky that "all" that was done with the picture of their children is that it was blown up bigger than lifesize and used in an advertisement half-way around the world. How many times have you received email that purports to be from a friend, or from someone with whom you do business, only to find out that you nearly got taken in by a fake? We here at the Internet Patrol, and our parent company, the Institute for Social Internet Public Policy, are offering readers of the Internet Patrol an exciting opportunity to take part in the testing of a new browser add-on that will help to protect you against such spoofing. Some of you may have already seen the new option which Google offers when you do a Google search - it's called the Google WonderWheel. The Google Wonder Wheel offers you a graphical representation of related searches - that is, searches related to your initial search. It is similar to "mind mapping", which seems to be the newest info-fad. Isreal Hyman and his wife were no doubt looking forward to their vacation a few weeks ago. Hyman, the proprietor of IzzyVideo.com in Mesa, Arizona, shared his plans with his 2,000+ followers on Twitter. So when he became the victim of a home burglery (which differs from robbery in that the victim is not present), he had to wonder if the burgler had seen his Tweets. Twitter co-founder Biz Stone has confirmed that Twitter will begin the beta roll-out of a new Twitter service - the Twitter verified account service - designed to confirm and verify that the Twitter accounts of celebrities, public personalities, and other famous people are actually the accounts of the people they say they are, and not imposters and pretenders. Orthopedic surgeon Dr. Leon Benson has a warning about your mobile phone use, and it's not about radiation going into your brain via your ear canal. Rather, it's about "cubital tunnel syndrome", otherwise known as "mobile elbow" or "cell phone elbow". The legislators in the state of Louisiana have approved an across-the-board Internet tax on all users. Any Louisiana resident who has an Internet account will be charged the tax, and ISPs will be required to collect it from them. A website in Holland - Miljoenhuizen.nl - has been held liable for the summary that Google search turned up for its site. Yes, you read that right - they were held responsible for the fact that Google excerpted and concatenated text from their webpage in a way that suggested that the plaintiff, the BMW dealership Zwartepoorte, had gone bankrupt. With just two days until the 20-year anniversary of the horrific massacre at Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government has censored and blocked Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Live.com and Hotmail.com, and even the new Microsoft Bing.com It would seem that Phil Spector is Twittering from prison. While it seems unlikely, even unbelievable - and speculation about whether it's really Phil Spector Twittering from jail, or an imposter, abounds - in reading the actual Twitter messages, if it's not Phil Spector (whose full name is actually Harvey Phillip Spector, or "Harvey P. Spector"), then it's a darned good facsimile Tweeting in Phil Spector's name. Microsoft has announced the new HD Zune ("Zune HD"), which features HD video (along the lines of high definition TV (HDTV)), as well as HD radio. In the portable MP3 player wars, this leapfrogs the Zune ahead of the iPod Touch, with the Microsoft Zune being the first to market with HD video and the first to market with one of the first portable HD radio receivers anywhere. The European Commission has sued the country of Sweden for failing to implement the European Union (EU) Data Retention Directive - a mandate of having in place data retention legislation aimed at codifying how and for how long an ISP must retain user data. AOL is going to be going it alone from now, following a decision by the Time-Warner board of directors to cut America Online loose and to have AOL go it alone. Sources have revealed that there is a Twitter reality television show in the works, which would feature real time Twitter messages ("tweets") from the show's contestants, who will be pitted against one another in an effort to track down celebrities. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is getting ready to issue new guidelines which state that bloggers who review a product or service are under an obligation to disclose to their readers if the product or service being reviewed is a sponsor of the blog, or if the blogger otherwise is getting compensation (sometimes known as "Blogola", as a play on the word "payola) for the review. Apple has just publicly copped to the fact that you can get a "small and quick electrical (static) shock from your ear buds while listening to iPod or iPhone." The problem is not specific to the Apple ear bud type of head phones (those headsets that fit into the opening of your ear canal), but rather is specific to iPod and iPhone, and other sorts of MP3 players, and can happen with any brand of earbud. A large number of people wind up here at the Internet Patrol site every week looking for ways to track their lost or stolen cell phone. Unfortunately, those phones are rarely recovered. Now, a new application for the Google phone changes all that! Cell phone tracking via GPS and location privacy is starting to emerge as a big issue, especially with more GPS enabled cell phones on the market. e911 rules require that your cell phone transmit your location data when you make a 911 call. But some people are finding that their GPS cell phones are transmitting their location all the time. Facebook has found itself in the rather unusual (some would say "indefensible") position of booting from Facebook people with odd or unusual names, while refusing to boot pro-Nazi groups who deny that the Holocaust ever happened (so-called "Holocaust deniers"). Twitter has boldly gone where no social media has gone before: space. More specifically, one of the current crew members of the space shuttle Atlantis, Mike Massimino, is Twittering from space. Amazon has rolled out a new service that lets you read your books online as soon as you purchase them. Not only does Amazon's new service let you read newly purchased books online, but you can also highlight, tag, and bookmark pages - and you can even print pages, and copy and paste text from the pages of your new book! All before you ever receive the actual hardcopy of the book - in fact, you can start reading it online instantly, as soon as you purchase it, using the Amazon Online Reader (which is really just an interface for your web browser). If you have found yourself wondering "Where are my image files stored in iPhoto?" or "How can I find the actual pictures in my iPhoto library?", well, you're not alone. Judging by the number of people searching to find out where iPhoto stores their picture files, it's a pretty common question. Fortunately, it's very easy to find your image files; your Mac and iPhoto actually hide them in plain sight! A new study has determined that baby monitors, microwaves and wireless television transmitters have the effect of jamming and slowing down wireless Internet access. In fact the study, conducted by Mass Consulting, found that baby monitors, wireless audio and video transmitters, and microwaves are the primary cause of wireless interference and access issues, not people using excessive amounts of bandwidth as previously thought. An Irish college student has proven that journalists are using Wikipedia as a primary - and indeed only - source for their stories, without doing any fact checking whatsoever. By inserting and then tracking a fake quote in the Wikipedia entry for French composer Maurice Jarre, who died in March, 22-year old Shane Fitzgerald determined that even such august media outlets as the BBC are susceptible to the "it's on Wikipedia, it must be true" fallacy. As the Apple iPhone app store and T-Mobile G1 phone application market show signs of becoming more open, Microsoft has gone in the opposite direction, issuing a flat-out Mobile Market ban from their Mobile 2 Market applications market on several genre of applications, including alternate browsers or search clients. In otherwords, you and your Windows Mobile phone will remain captive and chained to only Microsoft applications. Proving that it really wants to be the hip Internet administration, the WhiteHouse now has a Twitter account, a Facebook page, and a MySpace Page. Check out the Whitehouse Twitter account, Whitehouse Facebook account, and Whitehouse MySpace account here. The Espresso Book Machine ("EBM") is a new variation of "print on demand" - an Internet-connected book vending machine which, by tapping into a vast online book catalog, can print - on the spot - your choice of a mind-boggling selection of two million titles, including currently in-copyright titles as well as those in the public domain, and out of print books! The Expresso Book Vending Machine is available from On Demand Books (ODB), and below we include a list of current Espresso Book Machine locations, so that you can see it in action. That darling grapevine of the 21st century, Twitter, is being socially indicted and implicated in the increasing panic over the currently-anticipated swine flu epidemic. According to Evgeny Morozov, a fellow at the Open Society Institute, in an article published on the website of the Foreign Policy magazine, "having millions of people wrap up all their fears into 140 characters and blurt them out in the public might have some dangerous consequences." Rumours of an Apple Media Pad - a cellular-enabled touch-screen device larger than an iPhone but smaller than a traditional laptop or tablet - are swirling. And it would seem that rumours of the Mac Media Pad are more than just rumours, as industry insiders confirm the imminant announcement of the Apple Media Pad (which may be or be the precursor to the much-awaited Apple Tablet), as well as that they are to be offered through Verizon, along with a Verizon iPhone light version. (Although it won't be called "iPhone Lite", it is rumoured to be a stripped-down version of the iPhone, modified to work on the Verizon CDMA network.) It's one of Facebook's dirty little secrets, even though it's been publicly available information for more than a year. Facebook takes information that you post, and sells it to advertisers who can use it in ads that are displayed to your friends. For example, if I posted "Eating Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia ice cream", Ben & Jerry's could then show an ad to all of my Facebook friends saying "Anne is eating Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia ice cream - shouldn't you too?" The service is part of Facebook's "Facebook beacons" service for advertisers, and the ads in which your Facebook info is displayed are called "Facebook Social Ads". And if you don't explicitly opt out of them, then you are fair game. Perhaps you've heard about Microsoft's WIndows Live new "Family Safety" software, which you can install on your Windows computer, so that your children can safely surf the web without fear of exposure to material that is not family friendly - or 'family safe'. Apparently in Microsoft's view this includes competitor Google, although oddly it does not include their own similar search engine, Live.com. If you believe that Apple really manually reviews and approves (or disapproves) every iPhone application before it can be sold through iTunes, then you have to believe that Apple inexplicably approved an application that simulates a crying baby which can only be quieted by shaking it to death (demonstrated by the cessation of the crying, and red Xs over its eyes). The United Nations Educational Cultural and Scientific Organization (UNESCO) has unveiled the World Digital Library - a website onto which they are scanning ancient writings, pictures, and other media. And by ancient, we are talking antiquities - even now, in the UN WDL's early stages, some of the earliest scanned images date from 8000 BC. Last week dozens of thousands of books quietly disappeared from Amazon's listings and ranking system. What they all had in common was that they had either gay or 'adult' themes. The British Office of Security and Counter-Terrorism (OSCT), has announced plans to provide pro-West Islamic groups with search engine optimization (SEO) training, to help them to acheive higher search engine rankings in Google search than their more radical and terror-focused counterparts. A massive Internet outage, loss of telephone service, and even 911 emergency service communications were the result of an intentional act of sabotage against five different fiber optic cables in the Silicon Valley Bay area of California today, according to authorities. Countless Microsoft Windows Live Instant Messenger users recieved a message yesterday - a legitimate, genuine message from "messenger@microsoft.com" - telling them that they needed to change their email address in order to continue using the Windows Live service. The problem was, while it was a real message from Microsoft, it was sent accidentally, and was not true. Turn your cell phone into a wifi router with WM WIfi Router! No more trying to figure out how to tether your laptop with your mobile phone; now your phone can be a wireless access point for any wifi-enabled device, be it laptop, another phone, or even a desktop computer! With WM Wifi Router you can turn your cell phone into a wifi hotspot effortlessly, and it works on dozens of different mobile phones! With April 1st come and gone, many people are wondering "How do I know if I have the Conficker worm?" How do you know if you have the Conficker virus? (Also known asDownadup.) Here's how to tell if you have the Conficker virus. With the Conficker Eye Chart. Now the answer to how to know if you have the Conficker worm is just a link-click away! A new website and service called "Slightly Morbid" allows you to store a list of email addresses to be notified in case of your death, serious illness, disappearance, or other situation warranting notifying all of your closests friends whom you've never met. While getting a death notice by email may seem, well, slightly morbid and impersonal, it's better than not knowing at all. It was a Federal judge - Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart - who famously said of pornography, "I know it when I see it," and this week, forty-five years later, another Federal judge has said of naked pictures of teens being sent by cell phone (also known as sexting), "this ain't it." One of the very interesting things about Twitter is that there are real celebrities on there, who really interact with their fans. However, there are also celebrity impersonators - unauthorized imposters - and they have the potential to wreak real havoc. Police say that a hoax in the form of a text message warning women to stay away from Walmart because of a gang initiation requiring women to be gunned down in the Walmart parking lot is a hoax that has been around since at least 2005. Following closely on the heels of the defendant who was acquited because the arresting officer revealed too much on MySpace and Facebook, two different trials are being appealed due to jurors Twittering and Facebooking about the trial, including in one extremely high-profile case. It's time again for March Madness. For those of you who don't follow sports, March Madness refers to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Men's Division One basketball tournament, which occurs during three weeks in March. During which sixty-five universities duke it out in 64 games. So popular is March Madness that The NCAA now streams it live on the Internet with a service called March Madness on Demand (MODD); and so ardent are March Madness fans that Comcast has sponsored a button on the viewer called "The Boss Button" which, when pressed, throws up a fakespread sheet, so that fans can watch while at work without getting busted. The Conficker worm or Conficker virus (also known as Downadup or W32/Downadup), which has been in the news a lot lately, is currently estimated to have infected more than 9 million Windows computers the world over, and continues to spread at an alarming rate. With a $250,000 bounty on its head offered by Microsoft, and set to activate on April 1st, nobody yet knows what the millions of PCs infected by the Conficker worm will be ordered to do, but it's a sure bet that if and when it happens, it will be nasty. Fortunately there are ways to combat it and even a free Conficker removal tool. A massive list of nearly 2400 websites around the world that was compiled and targeted for country-wide censorship by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) of the government of Australia has been leaked. The list, which includes not only pornography sites, but anti-abortion sites, poker sites, and even Google group links and Wikipedia pages, is to be sent to every ISP in Australia for use, in order to protect its citizens from viewing...well, apparently, lots of stuff. (Just take a look!) A new study has found that a mind-boggling 20% of teens - one in every five - are engaging in 'sexting' - the act of sending nude pictures of themselves to others via cell phone. Gary McKinnon, the self-confessed pot-smoking, Asperger's-diagnosed British hacker who went by the nickname "Solo", and who hacked into several U.S. military computer systems (including at the Pentagon and NASA) and now faces extradition to the U.S. to stand trial, has none other than former hostage and Anglican envoy Terry Waite pulling for him. Forget terrorists using Google maps to find targets; criminals are already way ahead in that game, using Google Earth maps to find their next victims - even stealing the very roofs off buildings that they have found using Google maps! The BBC is under fire today for a stunt that it pulled a few days ago, in which it rented a Russian bot net (also sometimes called a spam bot), and then sent millions of pieces of spam, and DOSed a corporate server. Stupid users are the worst problem on the Internet, according to this survey of more than 600 Internet users. The Internet can be used for all kind of great things, and certainly one of those great things has been the development of the microlending sites - where users contribute a small amount of funds, and then the microlending site extends a small business loan (typically up to a few hundred dollars) to individuals to allow the recipient to get on their feet by starting or furthering a small business. However, one site is funding cock fighting, which is not only a horrible blood sport, but is illegal here in the United States. Perhaps more astonishingly, the CEO of the site, Kiva.org, is justifying the practice! Gary Waters is one lucky perp. Already on parole for a burglery rap, he was arrested for gun possession, and went to trial. And then, he was acquitted because of comments that the arresting officer Vaughan Ettienne had made on Facebook and MySpace. Malware pushers have been quick to exploit confusion over a patch that was released yesterday by Norton Security for users of older versions of Norton. The patch was accidentally unsigned, which caused Norton to throw an error referencing the "pifts.exe" file. As a result, hords of Norton users have been searching Google for pifts.exe (or searching in their other favourite search engine for pifs.exe). Craiglist has been slapped with a lawsuit by the Cook County Sheriff's Department (Chicago) for being, in essence, the world's biggest pimp. The lawsuit contends that Craigslist is "the single largest source of prostitution in the nation." Wondering just what is "lorem ipso dolor" and why you see it all over the web? What does "lorum ipsum dolor" actually mean? Think that it's Latin? A secret code? Here's the actual secret to lorem ipsom dolor! Legislators in California - that state of the eternal budget crisis - have decided that it's a good idea to spend money trying to force Google to blur Google Maps images of what are known as "soft targets" for terrorists, such as schools, churches, hospitals, and government buildings, to protect them against terrorist attacks. Because you know, terrorists can't find an address without Google Maps. If Sebastian Boucher thought that encryping the data on his hard drive would protect him from prying eyes, he may have been right. But if the Derry, New Hampshire resident, who is originally from Canada, thought that it would protect his 5th Amendment right against self incrimination, he may have another think coming. In its ongoing march towards transparency - at least as it relates to the previous administration - the Obama whitehouse has just released 9 previously secret Bush documents regarding just how far the administration could go in the fight on terrorism. It's no secret that Google is scanning entire books and putting them on the Internet. In fact, we reported their first wholesale scanning project - scanning books from five major libraries - more than four years ago. That lead to outcries and debates over whether Google's scanning of books was copyright infringement, and sure enough, in what seemed like a New York minute, the Author's Guild sued Google over that scanning. The Internet can do lots of different things for you - connect you with old friends and classmates, deliver long distance correspondence courses, and pay parking tickets online. But getting you out of a parking violation ticket? Yes! Whether it's that annoying parking ticket Los Angeles issued to you, or NYC parking tickets that are piling up, or parking violation tickets from anywhere in between, this online service vows to not only help you fight parking tickets, but guarantees results! We are very proud to announce that The Internet Patrol is listed as #8 in the Forensic Science Technician's list of the 50 Best Safety and Security sites! I recently posted on Twitter that I had the secret to knowing if somebody is following you or not on Twitter. I had so many people ask me about it that I'm going to reveal the secret now. If you were unable to access your Gmail account yesterday morning, you weren't the only one. It turns out that Gmail had a massive outage that affected Gmail users all around the world. People are looking all over online for it - so here it is: the full text of President Obama's address (it's not a "State of the Union Address" as that officially happens after his first year in office, although for all intents and purposes it was a State of the Union - or, rather, a State of the Economy or State of the Economic Recovery address) that he gave on Tuesday, February 24th, 2009 Oh goody. The anti-privacy folks at Flexi Spy, who brought you cell phone tapping software for Nokia 60, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile phones back in 2007, have just announced a new iPhone cellphone spying software version of FlexiSpy. Whee! Even though we've heard hardly a peep about email tracking software service Did They Read It since they first burst on the scene more than four years ago, another email read tracking service has bellied up to the email tracking trough in the form of SpyPig. The Google Streetview lawsuit filed by Aaron and Christine Boring, claiming invasion of privacy because the Google Street View van snapped pictures after going down their posted, private road, has been dismissed by the Court. Yes, it's true - we couldn't make up a story like this. A 14 year old Wauwatosa, Wisconsin girl has been arrested for disorderly conduct after refusing to stop texting during math class, and then hiding her cell phone among her buttocks and claiming she had no cell phone on her. The girl, whose name is being withheld, but whose parents are named Brian and Lynn, is a student at Wauwatosa East High School. Less than a week after Facebook announced its new Terms of Service (TOS), Facebook has announced that they are going back to the TOS drawing board, and have reinstated their old Terms of Service in the meantime. They are also requesting user input via the Facebook group called "The Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities". Facebook has responded to the concern engendered by the new Facebook TOS with a post by none other than Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg himself. In his comments, Zuckerberg tries to allay the fears of Facebook users by saying that even though the new Facebook TOS says that Facebook can use all user-generated content however they want, and forever, they wouldn't really do so. Unfortunately, that doesn't cut it. Facebook (FB) has recently updated their Terms of Service (TOS), and among the new changes is this dandy: once you post something to Facebook you can't take it back. Meaning that even if you close your account, by using Face book you have granted them a perpetual, eternal license to do whatever they want with your content. Who doesn't love to receive a Valentines gift basket? Valentines gift baskets are a wonderful way to say "thinking of you" for anybody to send to anybody! You can give or send Valentine gift baskets not only to your spouse or mate, but to children, parents, friends, bosses, clients, customers and more! There are St Valentines day gift baskets out there to suit every person, and every need! Here are a few of our favorite great Valentines gift baskets - all of which can be delivered overnight - or sometimes even the same day - making them great last minute Valentines gifts, too! You can order all of these Valentines gifts right from your computer, and even pay for them with Paypal! Click jacking is a malicious practice in which the bad guys essentially lay an invisible web page on top of the page that the user sees, so that when the user clicks a button or link, they are really performing the action of the invisible link that is overlayed on top of the button or link they believe that they are clicking (hence the term "click jack"). Often that invisible link is structured to grab their confidential information, such as a username and password. Two giant communications satellites crashed over Siberia, Russia, earlier this week, sending debris flying. In addition to the physical fall-out from the sattelite crash, communications for the Iridium portable satellite phone - or "sat phone" - system which was serviced by one of the crashed satellites were disrupted. A devious new method of getting unsuspecting users to download Trojan malware to their computers takes the form of a fake parking ticket placed on their car's windshield. The ticket, reading "PARKING VIOLATION This vehicle is in violation of standard parking regulations," contains a web address to download a "toolbar" to view images of the car that is the subject of the "ticket". Of course, the 'toolbar' isn't really a toolbar at all - it's the Trojan. An 18-year-old boy has been charged with blackmailing as many as 31 teen boys into having sex with him. Anthony Stancl - who calls himself Tony Stancil - of New Berlin, Wisconsin, tricked his victims by posing as a girl on Facebook, and having his victims send nude pictures and videos of themselves to "her". Then Anthony Stancil told them that if they didn't have sex with him, or let him perform a sex act on them, that he would post the pictures and videos to the Internet. MySpace has admitted that it has found (and purged) as many as 90,000 registered sex offenders using its service over the course of the past two years. That's more than 40,000 more sexual predators than the number to which MySpace had previously admitted. You may have noticed that your old free pop up stopper is no longer working as well. That's because the companies that provide and use popups have worked hard to get around the current pop-up blockers. What you need is a new free pop up ad blocker. In fact, what you need is a free pop up killer. You may have heard a lot of talk about "the triple bottom line" lately, and you may be wondering just what the triple bottom line is. The triple bottom line (also expressed as TBL, 3BL, or "people, planet, profit") is a way of measuring an organization's social and enviromental impacts as well as its financial health. But what about a triple bottom line analysis of the Internet? Exploding cellphones are not an urban legend. In fact, another exploding mobile phone battery has killed another man (yes really). The incident, which happened over the weekend in China, is the second time in a bit over a year that a cell phone battery has exploded and killed someone. The last time that a cell phone battery exploded and killed someone, the force of the blast broke their ribs. "The site you are about to visit may harm your computer" warns a by-now familiar refrain from Google. And usually they have their reasons. But over the weekend, Google said that about the entire Internet. Oops. The Postmaster General has said that the United States Postal Service may have to cut out one day's delivery a week as more and more people turn to the email inbox, instead of the post office, to deliver their correspondence. Google has announced today that a new feature is available in the Google Labs: Offline Gmail. With Offline Gmail you can access your Gmail email right on your own desktop or laptop computer, even when you are not connected to the Internet. A new proposed Federal camera phone law would require all cell phone cameras to make a "click" sound when snapping a picture (to emulate the sound of a shutter snap), and would further require that there be no means of disabling the click sound. The proposed "Camera Phone Predator Alert Act", introduced by Republican Congressman Peter King, from New York, is presumably aimed at reducing the instances of upskirting, and of people surreptitiously using their cell phone to snap pictures of credit cards and other identity-stealing activity. The Obama administration has launched a new website at Recovery .gov to provide the American people with greater transparency when it comes to how the government is spending tax revenues. Created under the House American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (HARRA), the website will help to provide insight into how the funds being made available by the Federal government for economic recovery are actually being spent. Google's controversial Street View feature - often accused of invading privacy - is back in the news again. The Google Street Views are created primarily by compiling thousands of images taken by a team of roving Google StreetView vans equipped ... The more 'traditional' - for lack of a better word - porn industry is looking for its own financial bailout from Congress, because, they say, it has been severely impacted by the online adult industry. The Waledec botnet is using spam that claims that "Obama Quits", explaining that "Barack Obama abandoned sinking ship" and that Obama doesn't want any more to be president, in order to lure unsuspecting users to add their PCs to its group of zombied computers that it uses to do its dirty work. Other subject lines include "Who Will Be Our President Now?", "End time for the USA", and "Haven't you heard latest news about our president-elect?" In stark contrast to the United States, where mobile phones for kids seem routine, and cell phones designed for children are seeing increasing marketshare, the government of France has decided to ban cell phones for children. A new computer worm called Downadup - also known as the Conficker worm - is spreading like wildfire across personal computers, even though it has only been on the scene for a relatively short time. First spotted just weeks ago, in November, the Downadup worm is estimated to already be resident on at least 3 1/2 million PCs. Here's something that we just learned the hard way - from direct personal experience. If you file a dispute with Paypal - and then escalate it to a claim, as Paypal encourages you to do - there is only one situation in which Paypal won't then immediately dismiss your claim, making it a win for a non-compliant, non-responsive, or just plain sleazy seller. A New York court has upheld New York's affiliate sales tax law, dubbed "The Amazon Tax", which requires that sales tax be collected for all sales originating in New York pursuant to a commission agreement (such as an affiliate program), regardless of the fact that the merchant is not actually in New York - such as Amazon. If your computer is suddenly doing strange things such as running very slowly, or you are suddenly getting pop ups advertising various products such as the notorious Winfixer, along with others such as Storage Protector, Sysprotect, and AntiSpywareMaster (that are really spyware, not anti-spyware), your computer may be infected with the Vundo virus. Known also as the Vundo Trojan, Virtumonde, or Virtumondo and sometimes even as MS Juan (which Vundo leaves in your registry), the Vundo virus was first discovered back in 2004, but has recently made a reappearance, infecting countless PCs. And it's darn hard to eradicate. Craig Hughes, who originally worked with the Spam Assassin team, and then went on to found GumStix, has discovered something interesting: much more spam is received during the nighttime hours than during the day. It's a dramatic enough difference that Hughes says that he is convinced that 'time of day received' is a useful test to help determine whether something is spam. It's still winter break in Boulder, and so most of the independent coffee shops in Boulder are closing early until school is back in session. As a result, I found myself all dressed up and with nowhere to go to sit and work over a cup of joe last night. In desperation, I turned to the local Starbucks - even they were closing early, but not as early as the other coffee shops. And besides, I was curious to try Starbuck's free wifi. A new study about teens who talk about teen sex on MySpace, and other risky behaviours in their MySpace profiles and pages, has found that if someone in a position of authority, such as a doctor, who is also on MySpace, contacts them about the risky behaviour being discussed, they may stop talking about it on MySpace. No kidding? A Federal court has ruled that an adult user of an adults-only website (in this case Sex Search.com) has no recourse against the site after having been tricked by an underaged user into believing that she was an adult when they had sex. The case against SexSearch .com by "John Doe" was brought after Doe learned the hard way that the woman with whom he was having sex was not 18, as she had claimed, but only 14. Here's a great way to save printer toner ink, and you don't even have to cut back on your printing to do it! Save toner, save money, and help save the environment! This eco-friendly green* font also puts green back in your wallet! (*And we don't mean green the color, we mean environmentally friendly!) Every day, dozens of people realize "Oh no, I've lost my cellphone!" A lost cellphone or a missing or stolen cellphone can be more than just an inconvience. Particularly these days, with email, text messages, and more on one's cell phone, losing a cell phone can be a big security issue. As early as 2007, Facebook began quietly censoring pictures of breastfeeding babies which members had posted to their Facebook profiles. They did this by simply removing the pictures of the nursing babies after they were posted. In some cases, users were warned if they continued posting such "obscene" content, they stood to lose their Facebook accounts. Now the issue is heating up, and Facebook is not backing down. Facebook - you win the booby prize. Starting tomorrow, January 1, 2009, sex offenders in Georgia will be required by law to provide the state with all of their Internet usernames, email addresses, screen names, and passwords. Georgia joins Utah in this requirement. The government of Vietnam is getting ready to clamp down on the thriving Vietnamese blogging culture. In fact, the Vietnamese government is putting in place new regulations aimed at curbing just about any form of free speech in Vietnamese blogs. The new regulations, approved this month, include rules that ban all posts that the government feels undermine the national security of Vietnam or that disclose Vietnamese state secrets. The rules, written by the Vietnamese Ministry of Information and Communications, also ban any posts that contain “inaccurate information” that could potentially damage the reputation of individuals and organizations. More than 2.5 trillion SMS text messages have been sent from cell phones worldwide this year. This means that text messaging brings in billions of dollars in revenue for the world’s four major cell phone carriers. In fact, it's estimated that SMS text messaging revenues could even top $165 billion by 2011. (SMS stands for "Short Message Service".) So, if the text messaging business is so lucrative, why have AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless doubled the pay-per-use-price for messages from 10 cents to 20 cents? In what seems like a good idea, the Peoples Email Network (Us Alone.com), claims that it "facilitates the process of sending email messages to Washington. In one place on our site you can send a message that is automatically submitted to the members of congress for where you live." But the price you may pay is not worth it. For those of you who are easily offended, stop reading right now. Otherwise, well, you have to know where to draw the line, and Apple apparently does. Flatulence is in - jiggling breasts are out. That is the message behind Apple's banning the newly minted iPhone iBoobs application, while iFart has rocketed to become the #1 in the iPhone appstore (the applications store). It's been a year and a half, almost to the day, that the Virginia Tech Massacre happened. On April 16th, 2007, VA Tech student Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 innocent students and faculty over the course of two hours. Now emails released from Cho's email account at VA Tech - both emails to Cho, and his own email responses - have been released and are available to read. These emails show cries for help, and an insight into a troubled students. Could the VA Tech massacre have been avoided with the right intervention? If you are having trouble with Internet connections between Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), India, Lebanon, Malaysia, the Maldives, Pakistan, Qatar, Syria, Taiwan, Yemen, or Zambia, you're not alone. Three undersea cables were cut this morning, leading to a global disruption of Internet connectivity. And this is the second time this year this has happened. It’s no surprise that today’s teens are more advanced than ever. Not only are today’s teens more advanced on an academic level and a technological level, but they are more advanced on a sexual level as well. Everything from the Internet to cell phones offer teens a perfect outlet to express themselves sexually. Unfortunately, these same outlets allow teens to exploit one another sexually, leading to what amounts to criminal activity without the teen ever realizing he or she has committed a crime. Key 2 Safe Driving (KTSD) is a new technology built on Bluetooth, which will disable a teen's cell phone when they start up the car. An Australian court has allowed someone to be served with notice of a lawsuit - by message on Facebook! The Detroit News and Detroit Free press have conceded defeat to the Internet, and are cutting home delivery of the print version of their newspapers to just three days a week, and supplementing them by emailing a digital version to subscribers instead. "The dynamics of delivering information to audiences has changed forever due to technology," said David Hunke, publisher of the Detroit Free Press. "We're fighting for our survival." By now just about everyone has heard the story of the "Bush shoe thrower" - the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at President Bush, and called him a "dog", while Bush was talking at a press conference in Baghdad. Muntadhar al-Zaidi threw both his shoes and the epithet at Bush before denouncing him as having brought death and sorrow to Iraq as a result of six years of war. What is amazing about this story - among other things - is how quickly that incident made it around the world. And that is because of the Internet. For those who are constantly checking both Twitter, and Gmail, now you can have your cake and eat it too! Twitter Gadget is a Gmail gadget that allows you to both read and post to Twitter right from your Gmail interface! While a Microsoft Zune Phone has been rumoured for months, no less a reliable source than Barrons says that a Zune Phone will be out by the first week of January. The Zune Phone, rumoured to be the industry-whispered "Project Pink", will be unveiled at CES, say industry insiders. Inq Mobile has released the INQ1, which is being touted as "The Facebook Phone". That is because the Facebook Phone's functionality is actually built around Facebook, and other social networking. In essence, it's a social network device first while, oh yeah, it's also a mobile phone. Esther Dyson has gone on record as comparing the choice to remain anonymous on the Internet to abortion. A new study conducted by the unlikely pair of Cosmo Girl and the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy has found that teens are "going sex crazy in cyberspace." Teens and cybersex are, apparently, a natural combination. So, why not encourage it as an alternative to in-person sex, which is so much riskier? A neurological study of what triggers people to buy, using FMRI (Functional MRI), has found that people who are devout Apple fans manifest exactly the same neurological responses to exposure to their "god" as do devout Christians. As if president elect Obama doesn't have enough to worry about with all the buzz over his Blackberry - and will he or won't he get to take it to the White House with him - now folks all across the Internet are screaming because Obama was seen with - gasp - a Microsoft Zune MP3 player, instead of an iPod. Welcome to Zunegate. A British doctor working in the Congo has saved the life of a teen by amputating his arm following instructions that were texted to him by a colleague back in the UK. Amazon Remembers is a new iPhone application that lets you send a picture of anything to Amazon, and if it is at all available for sale within Amazon's huge network of products, they will send you a link to purchase it within 24 hours. The government of China has had developed its own version of Linux - dubbed "Red Flag Linux" - and is requiring Chinese Internet cafe owners to replace their current Internet cafe operating systems with the Chinese Red Flag Linux. A bizarre spam making the rounds in the form of a chain email claims that MSN Hotmail is running out of account names "because too many inconsiderate people are taking up all the names". The email starts out by saying "Hey it is tara and john the directors of MSN, sorry for the interruption but msn is closing down." (It isn't.) You've probably heard of "Black Friday", which is the day after Thanksgiving, when all of the shops have their sales, and it's chaos and bedlam and pandemonium, oh my! But that ain't nothing compared to Black Monday - or Cyber Monday - when all of the online shoppers take to the net. The case against Lori Drew, the woman who was involved in the creation of a fake MySpace character that eventually lead to the suicide of troubled teen Megan Meier, who was the target of Drew's charade, has concluded, and the Internet is in an uproar over the verdict. Abraham K. Biggs, known as Candy Junkie on the BodyBuilding .com forums that he frequented, had threatened to commit suicide many times. However, last week, he really meant it. And so it was that Abraham Biggs downed an overdose of anti-depressent medications, and hundreds of people watched his webcam while he died. Just a couple of months ago the deadly MetroLink train crash, which killed at least 25 people in California, was held to be due to the engineer texting on his cell phone while driving the train. Now a high ranking British official is being charged with the death of another motorist, when the car he was driving - while texting - collided with another, killing the other driver. A woman whose husband sent a picture of himself, in a compromising position, to another woman, has turned to the online Apple community for help in confirming that her husband is cheating on her. Online dating giant eHarmony is required to create a new online dating site for same sex couples under the terms of a settlement with the State of New Jersey's Civil Rights Division. The new service will be called Compatible Partners (not "Compatable Partners", as some sites are reporting, which is a mis-spelling. Pirates have been in the news a lot lately. Not the pirates of yore, but modern-day pirates who are boarding and hijacking ships right now. In fact, there have been dozens and dozens of pirate attacks on ships off the coast of Africa alone this year, several of them just in the past week. Now you can follow these events with this online interactive map of current and recent acts of piracy. Free Christmas music onilne is always nice. And free online Christmas music is just what you need to get yourself into that holiday spirit - or at least to make work go by more quickly! So if you've been asking yourself "where can I listen to Christmas music on the Internet?", here is a list of some great places offering streaming Christmas music so that you can listen to Christmas music online! Just jingle while you work! A new scam going around the internet, originating from "security@paypalfraudcheck.com", tells Paypal users that their account has been limited, and to remove the limit, they must scan and email a copy of their passport or driver's license, a copy of their Paypal credit or debit card, and a copy of a recent utility bill. How many of us have gotten the same email from Classmates.com? "6 Classmates are Looking for You!" - "See Who has Visited your Profile!" Well, according to a lawsuit brought by Anthony Michaels against Classmates, the online reunion giant is lying. A German court has ruled that an IP address is not afforded the same privacy protections that Internet users enjoy for their names and other personally identifying information, even though a user may have a static IP address which is directly linked to the user alone. Internet classifieds giant Craigslist is cracking down on advertisers who use the Craiglist "erotic services" section to pimp themselves or others. While we often tout Amazon on these pages, today we'd like to direct your attention to a fabulous - but little known - Internet-based service provided by another bookstore: Barnes & Noble. Want to know the flu picture in your area? Don't wait for the Center for Disease Control to tell you - use the Google flu tracker! According to Google, their new Google Flu Trends service can tell you as much as two weeks earlier than can the CDC! One of the great things about the Internet is that it brings to your fingertips - and to your door - things that you would never otherwise know about. Take the awesome organic skin care products that I found this week. With Christmas just around the corner, it's time to start thinking about Christmas presents for those on your list. There is a Christmas gift idea here for just about anyone on your list - these Christmas present ideas are timeless - and you can buy them all online! (One of my personal favourites is the Christmas pictures idea.) And so as to not impact your budget for Christmas inexpensive gifts are included! (Speaking of which, you can find free printable christmas labels here!) Amazon wants to brighten your holiday season by introducing "Frustration Free Packaging" to help reduce wrap rage - that frustration that consumers feel when trying to get at toys, electronics, and other products that are more secured in their plastic and wire confines than the gold at Ft. Knox. Frustration free packages will feature frustration free packing that is more consumer friendly, with more plain cardboard and fewer twist ties and plastic packages on which to cut yourself. Looking for last minute Christmas ideas? Theses timeless gifts - ones that I have enjoyed myself - are sure to please! They are all available locally in book and department stores, and also available from Amazon, where they can be shipped directly to the recipient if need be, and even overnighted. These are all personal favourites of mine, by which I mean that I have personally read or used these, and can personally vouch for them, and for their being great gift items! As millions head to the polls today, people are wondering "where can I watch the presidential election results on the Internet?" Many want to sneak a peak at the election returns online from work or school. In fact, in one of the most anxiously watched elections for U.S. president in recent memory, it is predicted that a record number of people will be monitoring the election returns in realtime, and many of them will want to monitor the election results on the Internet. So we've scoured the Internet for you to determine where you can most reliably tune in online to watch the presidential election results. Read on below! Many accounts of what we're about to tell you are saying that it illustrates the dangers of email and autoresponders - but we think that it's really about the danger of not using your brain. It all started in Wales, when the Swansea council needed an English phrase translated into Welsch for a new road sign. Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have all signed on to the Global Initiative Network, pledging to protect the privacy of their users around the world, including - perhaps particularly - users in countries such as China, where demands that ISPs rat out their users are routinely made. As you might imagine, Harry Potter costumes - of many of the Harry Potter characters - are big this year. Well, you need look no further for your own Harry Potter costume this year, as Legendary Toys carries some of the finest Harry Potter theme clothing we've seen. They even have a mini Harry Potter sorting hat that is perfect for dressing up your favourite Harry Potter pet! (See pics below.) inSpot.org is a website which lets you anonymously notify someone by email that they have been exposed to a sexually transmitted disease (STD) such as a venereal disease (VD) or even HIV / AIDS. Even if they haven't. Microsoft has gone outside their usual patch release schedule and has released an emergency patch which everyone running affected versions of Windows is urged to get and install immediately. If you have ever thought "Gee, I wish that we could vote by Internet," well, your wish has just come true. This year, Internet voting has become a reality, as the very first voting by Internet system for a U.S. general election goes online. Unlike other electronic voting machines, the electronic voting machines used for Internet voting are basically just stripped-down, secured, laptops. Assuming it works as planned, it will be perfect for, for example, absentee voting. The FBI has announced that they have taken down a group of cyber criminals known as "Dark Market". The bust was the culmination of a two-year undercover operation, with an FBI agent who called himself "Master Splyntr" infiltrating the Dark Market. MySpace is gearing up to debut a "People You May Know" feature, it has recently been leaked to the Internet Patrol. The Internet Patrol has in its possession an apparently early-released invitation to the MySpace People You May Know feature. Over the weekend, Yahoo quietly "upgraded" their profile system, resulting, intentionally, in a great deal of user data - specifically profile and alias data - being removed. If you get an email, supposedly from Microsoft, which says "Security Update for OS Microsoft Windows", ignore it, delete it, and whatever you do, don't install the "patch" which comes with it, which is, of course, really a trojan program just waiting to wreak havoc on your computer. We often have debates here at the Internet Patrol about which people prefer: to watch an online video, or to read the same material as text. The conventional wisdom is that Internet video is the future of the Internet. But we know lots of people who, given a choice, would rather read about something than watch a video about it. Now someone is actually researching this! So please take this short survey! Following the presidential debates this week, with the introduction of "Joe the Plumber" as a sort of everyman (or straw man, depending on to whom you listen), the Internet is abuzz with people searching to find information about Joe the Plumber - to understand just who is Joe the Plummer. Unfortunately (or fortunately, again depending on how you look at it), those searches are leading to several Joe the Plumbers who have real websites for their real plumbing companies, but who are not the Joe the Plumber for whom everyone is looking. That Joe the Plumber is Joe Wurzelbacher from Toledo, Ohio. Authorities in the U.S. and New Zealand have coordinated to take down big time male enhancement and supplement spammers Lance Atkinson and Jody Smith, and their Target Pharmacy, Canadian Healthcare, Inet Ventures, Tango Pay, Click Fusion, and TwoBucks Trading spam operations. Lance Atkinson and Jody Smith were the muscle behind what Spamhaus has called "the biggest spam gang in the world," and they recruited countless affiliates to send their spam through a spam affiliate program called Affking. The next time somebody tells you that they don't understand what the big deal is about spam, you can tell them this story. Thousands and thousands of Virgin Media customers went without email service for two full days after a spam run took down the email servers of their email service provider, Tucows. It's so easy to create a pop-up for your website that is non-offensive, and that doesn't alienate or upset your visitors! In about 4 seconds you will see a pink post-it note pop-up right here. We created that pop-up in less than five minutes using this fantastic, easy-to-use pop-up creator, which we now endorse. In fact, we are offering it through the Internet Patrol, and we stand behind it 110% - if you don't love it, we'll refund your full purchase price! Google has just released Mail Goggles (do you have any idea how hard it is to not typo that as "Mail Googles"?), a new enhancement for Gmail designed to keep you from sending that 3 a.m. email while under the influence that you know you'll regret in the morning, but send anyways. The Google Goggles work by requiring you to solve several math problems within sixty seconds before allowing you to effectively hit "send". A teenaged girl is facing felony child pornography charges after sending nude cell phone pix (a practice now known as "sexting") of herself to classmates. The teen, from (really, we couldn't make this up) Licking Valley High, was charged with, among other things, illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material (the cell phone pics), as well as possession of criminal tools. A new hotel network security study by Cornell University entitled "Hotel Network Security: A Study of Computer Networks in U.S. Hotels" has proven that using the wireless Internet - and even cabled Internet - at your hotel is almost always inherently insecure and unsafe. A new email scam floating around the Internet includes a picture of what appears to be a genuine passport in the name of the sender. The sample we have appears to be a real Algerian passport in the name of Morsli Boubakeur, which is who our email - coming from mauvai98@yahoo.fr - is allegedly from. But it's still a scam - don't be taken in. Canadian activist group Citizen Lab, with the help of an article in the New York Times, has blown the lid off the newest Chinese censorship scandal: the government of China is eavesdropping on, and in some cases intercepting, text messages sent via the Skype network. Looking for the Boy Scout popcorn order form, to order Boy Scouts popcorn? Here it is! While everybody knows that Girl Scouts sell cookies, far fewer people realize that Boy Scouts fund raise by selling gourmet popcorn gift tins - popcorn tins full of both regular and flavored popcorn - all different kinds of popcorn, and we at the Internet Patrol are helping! Carmel popcorn, cheese popcorn, chocolate popcorn, even microwave kettle corn! (That's the sweet popcorn you get at farmers markets and movie theatres.) You can even get unpopped gourment popcorn, if you like! But never before has it been so easy to order these gift tins of popcorn - gourmet popcorn gifts that anybody would love - because now you can do it online! And they will ship right to your door, or the door of anyone to whom you want to send popcorn gifts! Guess what! The Internet Patrol is now available on the Amazon Kindle ebook reader! How cool is that?! Of course, you probably know that there are Kindle books (a Kindle book is a book which has been made available on the Kindle reader in ebook format), but did you know that there were Kindle blogs and other publications? If you love LOLCats - and hey, who doesn't - you'll be thrilled to hear the LOLCat book (not the LOLCat Bible, the other LOL Cat book!) is here! Yes, those lovable LOL Cats now grace the pages of the I Can Has Cheezburger book! The "I Can Has Cheezburger" site - sometimes mangled as "I Can Haz Cheeseburger" (understandable) or "I Can Has a Cheezburger" (also somewhat understandable), or even "Can I Has Cheezburger" (aw, c'mon now!) - is one of the most popular destinations on the web, and they have literally millions of funny pictures of cats ("LOL" stands for Laugh - or Laughing - Out Loud) with even funnier captions. Interestingly, cheezburgers rarely factor in the pictures these days, although cheeseburger cats abound. Ok, this is totally cool! Right now you can get a FREE trial of Amazon prime! And it isn't just some chintzy "try it with one order" or "try it for a week"! This offer gives you a full month of free Amazon prime membership! This means that you can have a free membership to Amazon prime shipping items for free to your heart's content for a full month, even if you have no intention of becoming a paid member of Amazon prime! I don't often use this venue to talk myself up - and in fact, I'm not going to talk myself up! BUT, three - count them, THREE - online outlets all featured me in the past 12 hours! I was featured in HARO (Help a Reporter Out), Meet the Innovators, and Inspire Me Today! Firefox and IE both have site blocking (or at least, site warning) built into their current iterations. Google also does site blocking now. All do site blocking based on some metric, known only to them, that tells them that a site is more likely than not to be a malicious site, such as a phishing site, or a site loaded with spyware. The problem with site blocking browsers and site blocking search engines such as Google is that sometimes they get it wrong. Under a law which takes effect next week, Nevada businesses must start encrypting their email, or face a penalty. Just two weeks ago, Comcast announced their updated terms of service, limiting bandwidth usage to 250G per customer per month. This week, Comcast cut off their users from Usenet newsgroups, that granddaddy of all Internet forums. (Usenet newsgroups are the foundation of Google's Google Groups.) We get questions like "Where can i find free ringtones online?", "Where are the free mp3 ringtones?", and "How do I download free ringtones for my phone?" all the time. But those questions really should be "How can I safely download free cell phone ringtones?" or "Where are the safe free ringtone downloads?" What you need is free no catch ringtones! Where you get totally free ringtones, and there is no catch. Like, getting unauthorized charges on your cell phone ("free mobile ringtones" should mean free mobile ringtones)! Or getting spammed at your cell phone (you want cell phone ringtones, not cell phone spam)! If you have an Apple iPhone 3G, then you are affected by the just-announced recall of all Apple iPhone 3G power adaptors! Apple announced over the weekend that they are recalling all of their Ultracompact USB Power Adaptors which were packaged with the new 3G iPhone, because the prongs can snap off while inside an electrical outlet, creating a hazard of shock. This week sees a lawsuit between the City of Chicago and the owner of the Chicago2016.com domain, between the RIAA and anti-RIAA blogger Ray Beckerman over his blog "Recording Industry v. The People", and between the EFF and Bush and dog in Jewel v NSA. And for good measure, while not Internet-related, a lawsuit to keep both Obama and McCain off the Texas ballot. Last year Jennifer Reisinger of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, was ordered to remove a link from her website to the Sheboygen police department. Reisinger, who runs Brat City Web Design, had linked to the Sheyboygen PD from her community spirit site, Sheboygen Spirit. Despite the fact that the link to the Sheboygan police department was among several other links to various Sheboygan public service sites, the Sheboygan city attorney demanded that the link to the police department be removed - and, the demand was made via a Cease and Desist letter. Then the Sheboygan police department started a criminal investigation into the link! All because, Jennifer Reisinger alleges, she supported an effort to recall Sheboygan Mayor Juan Perez. The Los Angeles Metrolink train crash tragedy at Chatsworth which killed 25 and injured another 130 is being blamed on the engineer's text messaging SMS messages with a couple of teenage train enthusiasts, causing him to miss a critical red light. The engineer, Robert Sanchez, was among the 25 killed in the crash. Did you know that your iPhone is capturing and storing screen shots of everything you do? And while we can assume (and hope) that it deletes it as soon as it not longer needs the information, it could be relatively easy for forensics experts to uncover - essentially "undelete" - that information. Internet provider Comcast has issued a statement in which they limit and define "excessive use" as, essentially, anything over 250GB (i.e. 250 gigabytes). Starting on October 1, users will be bound by the Comcast AUP (Acceptable Use Policy) and TOS (Terms of Service) to keep their Internet traffic below the 250 gig threshhold. The philosoper George Santayana is widely credited with famously uttering the advice that "Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it." This video is dedicated to those whose past - and passing - we must remember, that we may not ourselves repeat it. Facebook the Movie? Can it be? Yes, it can, and it is. It's true. Aaron Sorkin, creator of the awesome television series "The West Wing" and the movie "A Few Good Men", is creating the Facebook Movie for Sony. Elsevier Publishing, the noted - and acclaimed - publisher of science and health books, has resorted to comment spamming on blogs, pushing their Elsevier Direct and Syngress divisions at ElsevierDirect.com. "You have received a postcard from a family member!", says the subject of one of the latest spam scams. If you receive a death threat email, you're in good company. The so-called "Hitman email" scam has made a comeback. Around since at least 2006, the content of the death threat email has evolved some, but the general gist of it remainds the same: the Hitman email claims that someone wants you dead, that the Hitman email sender has been hired to kill you, and that if you come up with a sufficient amount of money, they will spare your life. Whenever somebody starts ranting about "the damn lawyers", of which I'm one, mind you, I'm fond of saying "you know, 95% of the lawyers out there... make the other 5% of us look really bad." It's tongue-in-cheek, of course, because people expect the message following the "..." to be that 95% of the lawyers are good, and it's the small 5% that are the bad apples. And, of course, in reality usually the numbers do flow in that direction. But unfortunately, sometimes, it's all to true. But even I, jaded though I am, was stunned when this little gem - this blog comment spam - advertising the firm of Gersowitz, Libo & Korek - landed on the Internet Patrol today. Wonder why you get so much spam? Wonder how spammers can possibly make money sending spam? Wonder who on earth would ever actually buy stuff from spam? Well, wonder no more. Because here's the answer. Did you know that you can get free Kindle books for your Amazon Kindle reader? This is in addition to the Kindle books, newspapers and magazines that you can download to your Kindle from Amazon. (If you don't already have an Amazon Kindle reader you can order an Amazon Kindle reader here). Regardless of one's politics, or political party affiliation, one can't deny that Barack Obama has done a pretty good job of using the Internet. Barack Obama's website and other Internet fund raising efforts have raised him more than $200 million - again, that's just Internet-raised donations! Now, amid heightening speculation that threatens to reach fever pitch, Obama is signing people up in droves to be able to receive a text message announcing his choice for his vice-presidential running mate, with his "First to Know" Internet campaign. Spamza.com is a website that recently went live, where you can enter someone's - anyone's - email address, and they will start getting instantly spammed by dozens of newsletters for which they did not sign up. If you've had a sudden increase in spam or suddenly found yourself signed up for a lot of mailing lists and newsletters that you didn't request, Spamza may be why. You see, the Spamza site runs a script that takes their email address and then Spamza signs them up for those newsletters, without their permission. We try to use the Internet to do good. We hope that offsets some of the bad that people do on the Internet. For example, many of you are familiar with (and indeed contributed to) our efforts to raise funds to buy food for the people of Dushanbe, Tajikistan when they experienced such a severe winter last year. Today we're going to talk about something much closer to home - something on a much smaller scale. In fact, such a small scale that it will take only one of you to make a difference. But somebody has to - so if you can, don't assume that somebody else will. According to Linked-In, "frolleagues" - people who are business colleagues that beg a friend-style social networking connection from you, are increasingly becoming a threat to one's professional standing. The Condom ring tone has to be the ultimate in socially responsible ringtones. In a novel effort to make condoms and condom use more socially acceptable in India, the BBC World Service Trust has created the Condom ringtone free for anyone - anywhere in the world - to download. Researchers in Germany have come out with a very interesting study about what your choice of email address says about you. We've already talked about what the domain of your email address says about you (such as do you send from aol.com, hotmail.com, yourowndomain.com, etc.), but this new study looks specifically at the username side of your email address. Such as, are you "onehottie@", "buttoneddown@", or "uptight@"? In fact, the title subject is honey.bunny77@hotmail.de (that is the German arm of Hotmail). An untold number of users attempted to log into their Gmail account recently only to be confronted with the chilling message, "We’re sorry, but your Gmail account is currently experiencing errors. You won’t be able to use your account while these errors last, but don’t worry, your account data and messages are safe. Our engineers are working to resolve this issue. While the world watched in fascination and horror as Russia and Georgia fought over the region of South Ossetia this week, it is alleged that Russia was also waging its war on another, less carefully-watched front: the Internet. If true, this marks the first time that a nation has publicly added to its arsenal of war strategies the taking out of an enemy's national computer infrastructure. A new worm is raising havoc for Facebook and MySpace users. Called Koobface (and alternatively the Facebook Worm, MySpace Worm, Facebook Virus, or MySpace Virus), the MySpace and Facebook worm posts messages on Facebook and MySpace with links to what it claims to be a video. When the users follow the Koobface MySpace or Facebook worm link, they are told that they need to update their video player, and to "click here". Of course, what they download isn't really a video player update, it's a trojan called "codecsetup.exe" which allows their computer to be taken over and controlled remotely. Did you know that if you lose some of your email from your mail client, and you pop your mail from Gmail, that you can actually re-download your email from Gmail again? Not only that, but with this trick you can redownload email from specific dates - meaning you can re-download from Gmail just the email received on the dates that you want! Are you "waiting for Time Capsule to restart" while you are trying to set up Time Capsule to add itself to your existing wireless network, only to find that Time Capsule never does restart? And then, when you hit "rescan" it can't find the Apple Time Capsule at all, even though it had just found it moments before? Here's what to do. The papers which underpinned the investigation into the anthrax scare and incidents of 2001 which included the death of five people, and which ultimately lead to the suicide of lead suspect Bruce Ivins last week, have not only been unsealed, but in record time they have been put on the Internet and made available to the public on the Department of Justice (DOJ) website. In what is being called the "largest hacking and identity theft case" ever, eleven men have been indicted for allegedly stealing the numbers of more than 40 million U.S. credit cards and debit cards. Let me repeat that: 40 million. The entire population of the United States is only 301 million! That means that for every seven or eight people you see, the odds are good that one of them had their credit card number stolen, and their account drained. If you retrieve your email via POP from Gmail, you may on occasion find that Gmail completely rejects your password. Now, having Gmail rejecting your POP password can be very disconcerting, not to mention frustrating! Your mail client keeps prompting you for your Gmail password, you keep entering the password that you know is the right password, and Gmail keeps rejecting it. It's enough to drive you crazy. Is your ISP interfering with your downloading and your bandwidth? If you are legitimately using a torrent service, is your ISP interfering with your connections by doing some peer-to-peer busting? Or, maybe, is your ISP is limiting or even disconnecting your VoIP calls, such as if you use Vonage, or even Skype? How would you know? By using Switzerland, the new Net Neutrality-sniffing program from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). If you're looking for new Sidekick reviews of the Sidekick 08 which do a Sidekick comparison between previous Sidekicks and the new Sidekick 2008, you've come to the right place! Video, stereo Bluetooth, and shells, shells, shells (you can even create your own custom shell)! The new Sidekick 08 has a lot going for it - but also a few things you need to know about that you may not appreciate so much. You may have noticed that there was no new article on The Internet Patrol yesterday. That's because my hard drive crashed, which meant that a) I had no way to write and post an article, and b) I spent all day dealing with a dead computer. Long-time readers will remember that the same thing happened to me last year, and may wonder if I'd learned my lesson. You bet I did. And now I'm going to talk to you about why you need a redundant backup system, with a portable backup device as well as an online backup solution. The Internet is all abuzz today with a line from Google's response in the invasion of privacy lawsuit filed against Google by Aaron Boring and Christine Boring of Pennsylvania. That line is "Complete privacy does not exist." There's only one problem - Google didn't actually say it. Amazon has just launched a new Amazon payments checkout program called Checkout by Amazon. A direct competitor to Paypal and Google Checkout, Checkout by Amazon is Amazon's latest attempt to position itself as oh-so-much-more than just a place for you to buy books, and just about everything else. But Checkout by Amazon offers something else that nobody else has - the famous Amazon 1-Click payment button! AT&T has announced the roll-out of their AT&T Navigator Global Edition. This truly global cell phone GPS system allows AT&T customers to use their GPS-enabled AT&T phones to navigate with GPS all around the world. A recently released study conducted at the University of Michigan has found that as many as 75% of all bank websites have security flaws which pose a security risk to customers who visit the website. Starting some time early this morning, it appears that all images hosted by Craigslist are unavailable. Moreover, it seems that the problem is not localized, but happening all over the United States. The problem is that the server which Craigslist uses to host its images - images.craigslist.org - is unreachable. Prolific spammer Eddie Davidson was arrested last year, and, in April was sentenced to twenty-one months at the Federal prison in Florence, Colorado - about 3 hours north of Denver. This past Sunday, Davidson escaped from Florence Prison, and is at large. You know what I can't stand? When I click on a link on a website - to go to another page - and it ends up being a PDF download instead. Now, I have nothing against PDF downloads, but I do have something against finding myself downloading and opening PDF files without warning. C'mon people, put a "download PDF file" or "read PDF file" link there, or at least a warning that says "clicking this link will download a pdf file." (In case you are wondering "What is a PDF file?" or "What does PDF stand for?", 'PDF' stands for "Portable Document Format", and it is a format that was developed by the Adobe corporation.) A new free service has the answer to avoiding talking to people you really have to call, but would rather not actually talk to. It's called Slydial, and it deposits you directly into their voicemail, without their phone ever ringing. The rise in social media sites such as Facebook and Myspace has been a boon for prosecutors, who are finding incriminating pictures on such sites - pictures which have been admitted as evidence in court, and used to increase penalties, sentences, and prison time! Word has leaked out about Amazon Video on Demand - which allows you to stream videos from Amazon rather than having to download videos from Amazon - and which will replace Amazon Unbox. In fact the streaming is the main difference - Amazon Unbox allowed you to download television shows and movies from Amazon. With Amazon Video on Demand - because it's streaming - you can start watching the television show or movie instantly, because you don't have to wait for anything to download. For any number of reasons, you may want to know how to delete Internet history from your computer. Whatever the reason, here is how to delete the Internet history from your computer if you are using Internet Explorer, Safari, IE7, or Firefox, and also how to clear your search history from Google Toolbar and even Google itself. In a move that can only be described as, at best, disingenuous, Microsoft testified this week before the U.S. Congress that if Yahoo were allowed to partner with Google in a search advertising deal, it would, they implied, be an illegal monopoly. Oh, right, but if Microsoft buys Yahoo for the very same reason, that's ok?? Back in 2005, we created the original Starbucks Name Generator. This was to help people asking that burning question, "What is your Starbucks name?" Apparently a lot of people are looking for it, so here it is. You can say one thing for Carl Ichan - he doesn't give up. Icahn, currently embroiled in his own takeover bid for Yahoo's board, is also fomenting Microsoft's efforts to acquire Yahoo - or at least part of Yahoo - again. More ISPs are jumping on the bandwagon, banning Usenet access to all alt. Usenet newsgroups, in an effort to keep users from Usenet access to Usenet groups which are known to traffic in illegal content, such as Usenet binaries depicting children in illegal acts. So far the ISP-banned newsgroups list includes Verizon newsgroups, AOL newsgroups, and Sprint newsgroups (and some have said Comcast newsgroups, although we can't confirm that) with more on the way. (If you are asking yourself "What is a newsgroup?" or "What is Usenet?", Usenet newsgroups (sometimes mistakenly called "Usenet usegroups") were the precursor to today's web-based forums; many people now know them as "Google groups", but they can also be accessed through any number of other servers and programs.) Is anyone else as surprised as am I that people were waiting in lines again - all night - to be the first to get an iPhone when the new 3G iPhone went on sale this morning? It happened, all over the United States. What the heck? This is a phone, after all - there are people in other countries who are waiting in line just to get some soup and bread! And people who just wanted to update their "old" iPhone to iPhone firmware version 2.0 got the white screen of death! Employees who read and send work email after hours - particularly using an employer-provided mobile device such as a Blackberry - may end up suing their employer for overtime hours incurred while performing work-related email tasks on the devices, outside of the course of the normal business day. Several industry giants and Internet security firms have been quietly collaborating to roll out an Internet-wide system of patches to block a hole in the Internet's DNS system, which allows for DNS cache poisoning. DNS, which stands for Domain Name System, translates domain names to the actual number-based address on the Internet at which the computer for that domain resides, allowing computers to find each other, such as to visit a website. Now this is a really cool concept - a website which features "how to play this song" tutorial videos where the how-to is done by the actual artist! Starting this week, instead of sending you a little note each day with a link to the newest article, we will be sending you a digest on Friday, with links to all five articles for the week. Auction giant eBay was recently fined more than 74million dollars for allowing the sale of knock-off designer purses to go unabated. As a good percentage of the United States grinds to a halt for a day of 4th of July festivities, to celebrate our Independence Day, I'd like to make this observation: At this moment in time, many people are not terribly happy with the state of the United States. Indeed, I'd dare say that very few Americans are currently happy with the state of their home country. But I'd like everyone to take a moment to think about how absolutely extraordinary it is that we are here at all. A breaking news report (why is it breaking in England, not here in the U.S.?) reveals that millions of Citibank customers' accounts are at risk as a result of what the London Times is calling the "biggest and most effective remote PIN code theft scam in US banking history." There has been a new rash of "Receipt for your payment to" eBay Paypal phishing spam which is intended to elicit a shock response causing the target to rush to log into their Paypal account to figure out why they are being charged hundreds to thousands of dollars for an eBay purchase which they know that they didn't actually make. Wow, this is an incredible day for us here at the Internet Patrol. Our own Anne P. Mitchell has been featured as an inspirational luminary on the fabulous new website, InspireMeToday.com. There has been a big stir created by the announcement that Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane has signed on with Google to create exclusive video cartoon content for their Adsense ad network. But we think that the big stir is no more than a tempest in a teapot. Alcohol breathalyzer self testing has been around for a while - in fact there are now tiny portable breathalizers like this personal breathalyzer keychain fob from Amazon! But a breathalizer test for your iPod? You betcha, with the iBreath personal breathalyzer test and FM transmitter (we kid you not)! Automobile maker Chrysler is said to be ready to announce its mobile broadband wifi service known as the Chrysler UConnect Web System, which is slated to be included with certain models of Chrysler car for the upcoming model year. With the Crysler UConnect Web Service your car is, in essence, a portable wifi hotspot. The social networking generation gap technology has created is smaller than you may think. Online social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook used by adults? You bet! Facebook and Twitter are increasingly being used by Internet business people and entrepreneurs to reach both customers and peers. Taking a moment to update your Facebook status, or send the occasional message ("tweet") on Twitter can pay big dividends! It's the digital age and social networking online is a big part of online business! No longer are adults asking "What is Facebook?" - instead it's the teens complaining that "Facebook is recently becoming very overpopulated with grownups!" We'll bet that when you are looking for discount travel - especially discount air travel, and cheap air fares and cheap flights - that you turn to discount travel sites, such as Expedia .com, right? But while the Expedia travel site purports to offer cheap air flights - and sucks people in with the promise of cheap air plane tickets - Expedia airfare isn't always the cheapest - people just assume that Expedia flights are less expensive! Worse, Expedia flights are sometimes not authorized at all, meaning that Expedia com does not have a relationship with - let alone permission from - the airline to offer those cheap airfare tickets! Your effort to get cheap air fare could backfire, and you'll have paid more than if you'd just gone directly to the airline! Bottom line? For cheap airline flights, instead of relying solely on discount travel sites (cheap plane flights are one of the primary things for which people use sites such as Expedia travel), go directly to the airlines and ask them about their cheap flights! Ian Usher, a British man living down under, has put his entire life up for sale on eBay. The winning bidder - and there are bidders - gets Usher's house, the contents of his house, his car, even his job. Says Ian Usher, "On the day it is all sold and settled I intend to walk out of my front door with my wallet in one pocket and my passport in the other." But would you really want his life? We've done some digging, and we think not. Google had its Gmail tail handed to it on a platter when a German court held - not once, but twice (in preliminary and final orders) - that it could not use the name "Gmail" in Germany, as it infringed on a prior user of that name. As a result, Google is banned from using the Gmail name in Germany, and German Gmail users and others in Germany who wish to access the Google email service are banned from accessing the service via the Gmail name. Paypal has introduced a new feature which allows you to use your Paypal account to shop online even at websites that don't accept Paypal. The way it works is that Paypal generates for you a virtual credit card number - that is a credit card number which works (and appears) like a MasterCard number, but which really ties back to and is paid by the funds in your Paypal account. These virtual credit cards are known as Paypal Secure Cards. You can use a Paypal Secure Card just as you would a regular credit card when shopping online. It was almost exactly a year ago that a Connecticut jury convicted substitute teacher Julie Amero because the computer in the classroom in which she was substitute teaching started displaying pornographic pop-ups during the the class; nevermind that it was the fault of school for not providing adequate security protection on the computer. Now the same thing has happened to Michael Fiola, of Massachusetts. Michael Fiola lost his job and was arrested because the laptop his employer gave him had inadequate security and was compromised by a child-porn downloading trojan. Pool crashing is the newest in thing with teenagers in Britain, and could well catch on quickly in other countries. The teens are using Google Earth to locate swimming pools in their area; then setting up the pool crash party by announcing it on Facebook. If you are striving for green living, Amazon Green is ready to help you go green! Amazon Green  is the new green living section on Amazon devoted to ways to go green - where they have collected more than 1000 green products, recommended and voted on by customers just like you. Whether it's green computing, green paper products, green gifts, or green baby diapers, Amazon Green has got it for you.
Lori Drew, the woman who pretended to be a teenaged boy named Josh Evans on MySpace, for the sole purpose of harrassing teen Megan Meier - which lead to Megan Meier's suicide - and who was arraigned and charged in Federal court in May, has pleaded "not guilty". Have you ever been hit (or even just threatened) with a cell phone service provider's early termination fee - that is a fee for early cancellation of your cellphone service? Held hostage by your cellular service provider because of exorbitant (spelled "extortionist") early termination fees and clauses? Check out these new proposed laws and lawsuits against AT&T (Cingular), Sprint / Nextel, Verizon, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular, Alltel, Qwest and others! Ever wonder what percentage of the Post Office's revenue comes from Amazon or eBay shipping? We wondered, and here is what we found out. What we discovered was fascinating, and makes one wonder just why postage rates continue to go up, up, up. You may not think of the FBI as a hip, Web 2.0 entity, but the FBI has announced that they are now offering three podcasts. To be more specific, they are offering three of their weekly radio shows in podcast format, covering closed FBI files, the history of the FBI, and more. The FBI shows are available both through iTunes, and the official FBI website. (What does FBI stand for? It stands for the "Federal Bureau of Investigation"). Amazon recently announced the latest in a series of offerings for mobile customers - the Amazon TextBuyIt service - giving you the ability to find an item, compare its price, and if you choose, to purchase it; all from whatever location you happen to be when the urge strikes. The Amazon TextBuyIt service (get it? Amazon Text Buy It) works with almost all mobile devices, and you can shop Amazon using either text messaging or the browser on your mobile phone. Hot on the heels of a US Air Force Colonel advocating building a bigger, badder and bolder bot-net (reported here on the Internet Patrol) comes news that seven of the twenty-six current members of NATO, the military alliance of democratic European and North American states, are to establish the Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre Of Excellence, in Tallinn, Estonia, taking further the work of NATO's existing internal computer network defense team. As promised, the state of New York has been sued over its new "affiliate tax", by which it is looking to boost state revenues by collecting as much as 50 million dollars in sales tax from companies that have affiliates in New York who are earning affiliate income in New York. That means that if your company has a super affiliate guru in New York - someone who can really make money with your affiliate program - you are going to get hit with a super affilliate tax on all the sales that they generate for you. At their I/O developer event held in San Francisco's Moscone Center this month, Google unveiled two exciting enhancements to Google Earth. The first is a Google Earth plug-in enabling you to fly anywhere on Earth, viewing content in your browser. This mirrors the functionality that used to require downloading and installing a desktop application. An intriguing and novel eavesdropping technique has been disclosed by a group of German scientists, who describe and demonstrate in their paper "Compromising Reflections, or How to Read LCD Monitors Around the Corner" how your monitor screen can be read from a distance, by pointing a telescope at its content reflected in nearby objects. Teapots, spoons, plastic bottles, glasses and even the surface of the user's eye offer sufficient quality for text on the screen to be intelligible, even at long distance. Andrew Kellett, known on YouTube as MrChimp2007, has been served with a restraining order that prevents him from adding to his extensive YouTube collection of 80 videos showing off his unlawful behaviour, including dangerous, reckless and high-speed driving; drug use; and theft. His parents must be so proud. Four new rules have been issued by the Federal Trade Commission which augment and amend the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. These four new rules amending the CAN SPAM Act take effect this month (June, 2008), and affect all senders of commercial email who have an email list of any size. Here's what the new CANSPAM Act rules are. For a full explanation of what you must do in order to comply with the new rules (including the complicated "Designated Sender" rule), you can download a recording of ISIPP's teleseminar, describing the rules and how to comply in detail, for just $39.97. [Download the recording of the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 new rules teleseminar here! $39.97, 49 minutes long] The Internet has opened to many of us opportunities to communicate, to share information, and to learn about the rest of the world. We take this almost for granted in the United States. Many countries, though, run scared from the free flow of information and ideas, believing that by repressing the Internet they can continue to repress their population. The Global Online Freedom Act of 2007, also known by its rather more prosaic name, HR 275, is a bill that would outlaw US companies from dealing with countries that censor the internet, and in particular from "disclosing personally-identifiable information about a user, except for legitimate foreign law enforcement purposes." Google has a new favicon. It may seem like small news, but when you consider that it's a complete rebranding, even if only in a microspace - it's a space seen by millions of people a day - heck, millions of people an hour. Have you ever wanted to be able to play a computer game by just thinking what you wanted the computer to do next, without having to lift a finger - ala Star Trek, or Neuromancer? Well, now you can, with the release for sale of the OCZ Nueral Impulse Actuator, or, as some are referring to it, the Brain Mouse. (Can't wait? You can order the OCZ Nueral Impulse Actuator here.) The social networking site FaceParty has deleted and banned all users over the age of 36, saying that a new law requires them to ban all sex offenders, and that people over the age of 36 are most likely to be sex offenders. Yeesh! We've been getting complaints of "Classmates.com email trying to take over my computer" and "I clicked a link in a Classmates .com email and my computer froze"... or "..and my computer told me I had a virus." This is because Classmates.com has fallen prey to spyware called XPOnlineScanner (XP Online Scanner). XPOnlineScanner claims to be an XP antivirus software, but is really spyware, and Classmates.com currently has some advertising banners are acting as a conduit for XPOnlineScanner to download itself on to your Windows PC. Security researchers have discovered another Windows Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability in Internet Explorer 7 (IE7). Thankfully, though the severity of this vulnerability is high, the chance of a successful exploitation is rather low. It is, however, glaringly simple for the hackers to attempt an exploit. Do you want to go boldly where noone has gone before? Would you like to make the journey without leaving your computer? Microsoft has just launched World Wide Telescope, a free online space telescope which, to quote Bill Gates, "is a powerful tool for science and education that makes it possible for everyone to explore the universe." DVD rental service Netflix has released the first in a planned family of direct-to-TV streaming devices. Made by Roku, the Netflix Player set-top box connects wired or wirelessly between your home broadband internet connection and a TV, instantly streaming one of the 10,000 available movies and TV shows you've added to your Netflix "Instant Queue". A Federal court today has slammed the door on the family who was trying to sue MySpace because 19-year-old Pete Solis had met their underaged daughter through MySpace, and had, they claim, sexually assaulted her. Nevermind that the girl had lied about her age when creating her profile, which is why Peter Solis thought she was 18 (and why he was able to find her on MySpace at all). The court had some choice words for the family. Shocking news came to us this week, with the results of a Samsung Mobile survey showing that more than 6 out of 10 people asked for a preference stated that they'd text in their vote for the Presidential election this fall if the option were available to them. In a decision that could have far-reaching ramifications for thousands of Internet advertisers and businesses, the Supreme Court of the United States this week affirmed a law which criminalizes advertising pornography as involving children even if the children don't actually exist (such as are CGI), are not actually minors (such as very young looking adults playing the part of underaged children) or, in fact, even if there are no children in the images at all! Have you bought anything using PayPal in the last week? Keep an eye open for delivery, as the merchant may be unable to promptly process the order due to a bug in PayPal's Instant Payment Notification (IPN) system. The problem all began when PayPal made an update to the Paypal IPN system some time early Thursday morning Pacific Standard Time. Later that morning PayPal's ecommerce customers began reporting problems. Here's what happened. A group calling itself "Friends of Yahoo" has initiated an online petition to stop a small group of hostile stockholders from forcing Yahoo to sell itself to Microsoft, and to "Let Yahoo Be Yahoo". (Sign the 'Let Yahoo Be Yahoo" Petition here.) Lori Drew, the Missouri mother who posed on MySpace as 'Josh', a 16-year-old boy, drawing 13-year-old Megan Meier into a fraudulent and faux relationship that ended tragically with Megan Meier taking her own life, has been named in a federal indictment and summoned to appear in US District Court in Los Angeles in June. Google has responded to privacy concerns about people being recognized from Google StreetView map images, and begun deploying new face blurring technology to mask their identity. So those blurred faces you see aren't an accident, or the result of the subjects having drunk too much the night before. Google has released a Preview Version of Friends Connect, a new service that lets website owners easily add social networking features. For website owners the benefits of Google Friends Connect are clear; adding social networking features to an already popular site encourages visitors to stay longer, engaging with other users and with new and updated content, as well as providing content of their own in the form of comments, reviews and message board entries. A top U.S. Air Force brass has recommended that the U.S. military create their own super bot-net to attack other bot-nets that are attacking U.S. military computer networks. One of the main problems with this idea, among others, is that it will fry thousands of computers belonging to innocent end-users around the world - users who have no idea that their home computer has been controlled remotely as part of a bot-net ring. Here's your chance to tell a super delegate how to vote! Super delegates Lauren Wolfe and Awais Khaleel have posted a video on YouTube, asking for opinions on how they should vote. Once you've joined the almost 15,000 people who have watched the video you can leave them text or video feedback on YouTube, or you can find them on MySpace and Facebook, and leave your comment there. The rise in social networking has created an information management and overload problem for many users known as the "Data Portability" problem. The problem starts with authentication, includes having data (profile data, media or otherwise) in several different sites and in different versions, and is compounded by the fortress mentality of many social networking sites. These factors make it difficult for users to manage their online identity and control who sees, at what level of granularity, their personal data. The data portability movement is meant to make this easier. On the other hand, it may also make it easier for social networking sites to buy, sell, and use your data. So how come nobody is talking about the privacy concerns inherent with data portability? It's almost Mother's Day! Be sure to do something special to either honor your own mother, or a special mother in your life! Uh oh, did you forget? If so, it's not too late, and the Internet can help! Here are some great last minute Mother's Day gift ideas that you can order online, and they'll still get there on time! This is a review of the Verizon Glyde - the newest of Verizon Wireless cellphones - which some are calling the Verizon iPhone (and technically it's the Samsung u940, and conflated by some as the "Samsung Glyde"). The Glyde is perhaps one of the most eagerly anticipated new Verizon phones ever, and definitely the sexiest of Verizon cell phone models (and one of the sexiest Samsung cell phones as well). As a bonus, this Verizon Glyde review also includes a comparison of the Glyde and the Verizon Voyager, and we talk about tethering your laptop with the Verizon Glyde. Bottom line: You'll want to do the Verizon glide on over to your local Verizon Wireless store to get the Verizon Wireless Glyde! (Or for our friends who can't spell, that'd be the Verizon Wirless or the Verizon Wireles Glyde!) If you install Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 3 (XP SP3) and either already have, or upgrade to, Internet Explorer 7 (IE7), you will never again be able to use IE6. That is the word on Microsoft Developer Network's Internet Explorer blog, where Microsoft have just published an article on IE and XP Service Pack 3 that may cause you to think again before upgrading your version of Internet Explorer. Prematurely installing Service Pack 3 will block your ability to downgrade IE7/8 back to IE6, and as we've told you here, while IE6 is pretty stable, IE7 is fraught with peril. Imagine our shock to discover that VoIP provider Vonage has turned to comment spamming. Oh, they will probably deny it, but what else can you call it when their Online Marketing Manager, Costas Kariolis, shows up at an article about Skype on the Internet Patrol, and posts a comment about the Vonage offerings, with an SEO-formatted link back to the Vonage site? and also posts the exact same comment to articles about Skype on other sites? Service by email of a subpena does not constitute legal service, yet thousands of CEOs and upper-level executives across the United States have recently been taken in by an unwelcome email in their inbox. The email, claiming to be a Federal subpoena (or, if you're from California, "subpena") from "subpoena@uscourts.com," bears the seal of the U.S. District Court, and demands the recipient present themselves at a grand jury hearing in San Diego on May 7th. In addition the email contains a link and the instruction that the linked document should be downloaded and printed. Starbucks recently rolled out the next phase in their ongoing plan for world coffee domination, over at My Starbucks Idea. The Starbucks My Idea is like a Starbucks blog, hopped up on both Web 2.0 and caffeine, and fuelled by customer suggestions of how to improve Starbucks, on which the community at large can comment and vote. Currently we are testing the Verizon Voyager (the LG VX10000), and specifically we have been testing the Mobile Email program. And that's where the trouble started. Try as we might, we could not get the Mobile Email program to actually download email. It would always end up timing out, telling us "Communication error. Please try again later." This even though every other email program we tried had no problem downloading the email. Here's why.
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A Division of ISIPP Publishing Anne P. Mitchell, Esq. - Editor
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