U.S. Intends To Intervene Indirectly Against Authoritarian Regimes Via Through The Internet

US To Fund Internet Activism In Authoritarian Countries -- Jerusalem Post

Move seeks to empower activists to create change in their home countries; State Dept. notes Internet's presence in Arab uprisings.

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration is set to disburse more than $25 million to facilitate Internet use for activists whose governments prevent such access.

The aid comes as opposition protesters in countries such as Syria and Iran try to use such technology to communicate – despite heavy government reprisals and disruption of their online organizing.

Read more ....

My Comment: The U.S. has effectively "pissed-off" every authoritarian regime on the planet .... whether from allies and/or foes. But is this the right strategy .... hmmmm .... personally I have doubts that it will be be effective as it was in Tunisia and Egypt.

U.S. Actively Supporting Activists In Other Countries Via Through The Internet

US Government Developing Activist Technology -- BBC

The United States government is spending millions of dollars developing technology to help pro-democracy activists in the Middle East and China.

Washington has begun to open-up about the projects which include a "panic button" that lets protesters wipe their mobile phones if they are arrested.

State department official Michael Posner said that the US was investing money "like venture capitalists".

He also revealed that it was providing campaigners with technology training.

The US has budgeted $50m (£30m) since 2008 for its activist projects, which include developing systems to get round internet-blocking firewalls.

Read more ....

More News On The Internet's Role In Government Activism

US Warns of Gov'ts Trying to Control the Internet -- ABC News
US trains activists to evade security forces -- AFP
U.S. Eyes Global Internet Freedoms -- NPR
US to spend millions on pro-democracy technology -- The Inquirer
“Panic Button” in Dev for Cell Phones -- Citizens Report
Obama Admin Training Thousands of Arab “Activists” to Evade Security Forces… -- Weasel Zippers

My Comment: One more reason for governments in countries like Saudi Arabia to be "pissed-off" with this White House.

Apple search engineers to redesign the Apple Online Store

Apple search engineers to redesign the Apple Online Store...

Although we have had a recent facelift on the official website of Apple, it is possible that in a while we see another redesign important: the company is seeking software engineers senior specialized software to create "the Apple Store Online for new generation" according to a job offer that has been published officially.


The person chosen for the job would be hired full time to be at Apple in Cupertino, California headquarters. Least experience of eight years with software and four years in the world of web development, high experience with Java, high capacities to resolve bugs… going, not seeking precisely to an engineer newly entitled.

The truth is that the Apple Store website is very good, but has elements quite old mixed with other more modern interfaces sometimes are confusing (is noticeable especially when we buy a product and appears on the order summary screen). Would not go wrong a complete redesign of this store, and it seems that sooner or later we will see that dream fulfilled. Her they redesign so that you do not need to close it for each change or renewal of product? Dreaming is free.

Hacker attack on Blogger platform wordpress.com

Hacker attack on Blogger platform wordpress.com ...

The blogger platform wordpress.com has been target of a massive hacker attack, which had possibly political motives. The DDoS attack (distributed denial of service) resulted in significant damage on Thursday (local time).


Occasionally individual blogs were not to reach. The head of wordpress.com, Matt Mullenweg, explained in the specialist service of «The next Web», all three data centers in Chicago, San Antonio and Dallas had been flooded with data masses would have achieved several gigabits per second. Target a DDoS attack is, in this way, shut down the Web server. Mullenweg spoke of the most serious attack in the six-year history of wordpress.com. It will be believed that the attack have turned is on a single blog, which is hosted on wordpress.com.

WordPress is an open-source software for the design of blogs and other Web services. WordPress.com provides not only the software but also the space that is required on a Web server. 18 Million blogs run on the platform.

Flickr app for mobile devices equipped with Windows 7, officially launched

Flickr app for mobile devices equipped with Windows 7, officially launched...

We had our friend Yira Albornoz in early January that Flickr was preparing an application for phones equipped with Windows Phone 7 and tablets running Windows 7. Well, the launch is now official, Flickr just announced on his blog.

If you're using Windows Phone 7 know that the program has been available for several weeks in the Marketplace . In fact, there have been various updates and you can download version is 1.1. If you update frequently may already have one.

Among the new features that Flickr announced for the two applications include:

• View all recent activities and past work uploaded to your contacts.
• Optimized for viewing new high resolution screen, zoomable.
• " Context View , a completely new way to access the history of the image and its author.
• Geolocation capability in a full-screen interactive map.
• Easy to share pictures with your friends from your mobile device directly from Flickr and Facebook, Twitter or email.

In short, a careful design tool and very useful for users of social network acquired by Yahoo, which has recently experienced a reversal by the emergence of other ways to share images by using Facebook mainly.

500,000 Gmail accounts have been "reset" by accident (updated: are 150,000 accounts)

500,000 Gmail accounts have been "reset" by accident (Updated: are 150,000 accounts)...

Imagine one day and try to get a Gmail account you come across a completely empty with no email, chat, attachment, etc. It is certainly a scary situation, especially for those who are set to run in circles with just a few hours to drop the Gmail service.

However, that same "scary situation" I just happened to over half a million users of Gmail, who first had trouble logging into your account, and when they finally were able to enter, they have realized that all emails and files that are no longer kept. Worse, these accounts show message "welcome", as if they were created recently, which shows that they have been reset by accident.

To put it in context, the problem of resetting Hotmail accounts that he suffered a few weeks ago hit 17,000 users. As Gmail now affects 500,000 people, nearly 30 times more.

But even though there are more people affected, Google still he can "face" to handle the situation better than Microsoft. Remember that users with Hotmail accounts "erased" had to wait 3-4 days on average for Redmond solve the problem, or up to 7 days in some cases. If Google takes less to restore the accounts, would be proving to have a better reaction than that of Microsoft at the time.

The Google have said they are working to restore as soon as the missing information (email, chat, attachments). As soon as they update news about the post. Still, if you're one of those affected is recommended that you look at the Google help forum, or Gmail Status Dashboard.

Update: Google says that the accounts of some users are back to normal, and that will solve the problem of all accounts in a "near future" (whatever they mean by that.)

Update 2: Google has corrected the number of accounts affected, now say they are "only" 150,000. With this the number of users affected would be 9 times more than in the case of Hotmail, not 30.

gNotifier, notifications for Gmail between Sparrow and Google Notifier

gNotifier, notifications for Gmail between Sparrow and Google Notifier...

gNotifier is an application that focuses on giving us a quick and easy access to our email accounts, also facilitating the delivery of notifications and customize with a high level of detail this aspect.




As you can see in the video that accompanies this post, the application is halfway through a desktop client Sparrow and powerful as a simple application like Google Notifier notifications. Besides being multiaccounting, supports Google Docs and Google Calendar thing that really raises the claims of the application well above the rest. His management inbox reminds me Mailplane.

The price of the license is $ 5 and has been developed by Agile Route, company that owns Roberto Ignacio Verano. Deserves you to take a look.

Beta 5 Firefox 4 of Mobile for Android and Maemo available

The Mozilla development team has released a new Firefox 4 Beta for Android, Maemo, which are available now for download. This review is focused on improving stability and application performance.

It brings new features to the already known as FirefoxSync, Awesome Screen (home page that displays the latest smart tabs, views and favorites), tabbed browsing and Firefox Addons. The work is focusing at this stage to optimize the response to pan and zoom, faster startup time and improve the performance of JavaScript.

Another short-term goal is to develop mobile-specific additions that do not require close and open the application. Support for the latest Web technologies (HTML 5, CSS and Javascript) allow developers to create powerful mobile applications to a positive user experience for simplicity and speed.

Federal government presents Cyber-Security Strategy

A Cyber-Security Strategy on the protection of citizens, businesses and government from attacks from the Internet has now decided the federal cabinet. With the proposed protection measures to ensure that the Web does not fail. For the "availability of cyber-space and the integrity, authenticity and confidentiality of data is available have become an existential question of the 21st century," says the release. Should be coordinated efforts for the safety of a new cyber-defense center, which is the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) belong. The security strategy is a PDF file under www.bmi.bund.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/DE/Themen/OED_Verwaltung/Informationsgesellschaft/cyber.pdf?__blob=publicationFile available free of charge.

Stronger drugs purchase on the Internet

Over the Internet is now even more user drugs. Three out of five people in the past year at least once ordered online medicines. The proportion of those who order more drugs on the Internet is, according to a Nielsen survey, even at a quarter. The shopping on the Web has several advantages: A positive assessment 89 percent of respondents convenient way of ordering, the low prices appreciated 67 percent. About the reliable and fast delivery happy 71 percent of survey participants.

Also informed about health issues is now more than one in four regular users on the Internet. Most frequently searched for information about disease conditions and classical methods of treatment, followed by the prices of medicines and health products. Here now using nearly two-thirds of those surveyed online encyclopedias and half of forums to gather information on health related topics.

E-mail subject lines to vote on the issue

The subject lines of e-mails should convey to the recipient, ideally at a glance what to expect when reading. It facilitates the communication if the author is aware of this and writing a little trouble there.

Anyone planning such a vacation and the internet a travelogue about the desired goal finds, may have a question for the author. The email should then take the best "requested information on the Italy trip report" a subject like "question about your Italy trip report" or. Thus the recipient is better served than with a subject like "question ..." or "Hello. "

Totally it is frowned upon, even to write thread. Apart from the fact that the receiver in such a case, do not know what he has to expect in the message to treat some spam filters e-mails without a subject as junk. Therefore, these messages end up in spam folders or even in the trash.

Love makes the Web often blind

Proverbial blind love is often on the Internet. Because on news of alleged secret admirers, many users fall occasion of Valentine's Day (February 14) start. Behind the messages often put online criminals and spammers who want to entice unsuspecting users into divulging personal user data.


Here, the messages are no longer sent only by e-mail, as has previously been the case. With the help of targeted, emotionally appealing wall posts on Facebook or other social networks are the Cyber-criminals sent to the user. The experts now warn of the IT security firm BitDefender. It is advisable to meet the online communications with suspicion and caution, and to protect their computer with security tools from possible attacks by malicious software.

International Day for the Internet Segura

Today is International Day for the Internet Segura. The onomastic usually accompanied by reflections, publications and anniversaries are remembered. A good excuse to revisit issues that are always there but with the constant evolution of events are parked and sometimes forget.

Reviewing what is said by the Safety Network, we find an article by our fellow SMB technology, security and privacy Guide on Web 2.0 INTECO (National Institute of Communication Technologies), an organization that today invites Internet to participate in a competition on Internet security

EUROSTAT, an agency of the European Commission, published yesterday on the occasion of this celebration, in 2010 that statistics show to what extent the Spanish are victims of viruses and other malware: one in three have had one in Spanish that year. Concern.

Recently also the warning of cyber-National Advisory Council (CNCCS), about the dangers of mobile terminals, target gangs and online fraud. 53% of young Internet users access the Net with your mobile.

In late January McAfee noted in a study of social networks as a target for cyber crime in the decade just begun and Sophos, another security firm, highlighted the rise of 'malware, phishing and spam in social networks. New times, new problems. The theme of this event is: The publications on the Web affect real life.

Internet: A quarter of the traffic violates copyright

Pirated products are traded on the Internet through special pages in a big way - in such a large scale that a quarter of all traffic on the Internet violates copyright. This is the result of a recent study by the company Envisional on behalf of NBC Universal. Been analyzed, the data traffic that is caused for example by sharing and similar websites.

   In so-called Bittorent networks are each about 35 percent of the popular copyrighted content from movies and porn. Television content such series make a share of around 14 percent and the PC or console games a little less than seven percent. With about four per cent following software that is still ahead of music (about three percent)

TAN award for online banking is safer - and more expensive

Many people in Germany to conduct their banking transactions via the Internet, online banking is perceived as comfortable. The customer takes on a large part of the process into their own hands, so save the banks costs. So that the various orders can be done, are so-called transaction numbers, short TAN needed.....more

Disposable addresses in e-mail service Hotmail

At a special protection against spam, users of the e-mail service Hotmail to draw from now: In addition to the actual address can create up to five additional email addresses.....more

Proof The BBC Has Been Using Time Travelers As Fact Checkers For Their Documentaries About The Future

A production sketch for a BBC doco made in 1967 :



A fantastic piece by Nigell Calder on how the age of the internet was foreseen, dramatically accurately so, way back in the 1960s :

(the) “a total information system” alias World Box.

“The work of commercial and professional organisations will be transformed. There may be no very clear distinction between authors, scholars, publishers, librarians, television producers or anyone else who can be called an information mediator – but it will be their task to save mankind from drowning in its own information.” Included also was a warning about the use of the system for pornography, and even a speculation that we might one day carry the World Box in our pockets.

Apparently the British government could have put together the internet and its architecture, but just wasn't interested in a worldwide information network they could have owned and licensed. Whoops.

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