Logging The Cyber World

Tags: 5GB Free, cloud, dropbox, gdrive, Google, storage solution

Cloud storage tools have grown to become a huge selling point for anybody trying to choose between Apple’s iOS and Android. With Google’s upcoming Google Drive the balance will lean in favor of Android’s daddy. With everybody pumped about the free 5GB available on Google Drive, reports claim that the new cloud storage tool will launch next week.

It goes without saying: it pays to have access to your data regardless of the gadget you’re using or the location you’re in. Dropbox has been a viable solution but once Google Drive will launch, this cloud storage tool is going to go down fast. And the launch date for Google Drive might be closer than imagined.

The news that Google Drive will launch next week comes from thenextweb.com that writes it got a draft release from one of Google’s partners on the cloud storage solution. Apparently Google Drive launches next week on Tuesday and it is going to burry Dropbox with some 5GB of storage for free.

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Tags: anti-spam, lawsuits, spam, tools provider, twitter

Twitter has filed a lawsuit against “five of the most aggressive tool providers and spammers” in a federal court in San Francisco, opening a new front in its battle against spam, it said Thursday.

“With this suit, we’re going straight to the source,” Twitter said in a blog post. It hopes the civil suit will act as a deterrent to spammers. By shutting down tool providers, it expects to prevent other spammers from having the services at their disposal, the company said.

Twitter is the latest among Internet companies to use legal action against alleged spammers. In January, Facebook and the Washington state attorney general announced dual lawsuits against the co-owners of Adscend Media, an ad network that is alleged to develop and encourage others to spread spam, including through so-called “clickjacking.” Adscend denied the allegations, and instead said it would investigate for the malpractices the affiliates it hires to drive traffic to advertisers’ sites.

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Tags: Google, google plus, search engine land, search results, social network

The long-standing and persistent accusation that Google unfairly uses its search engine to promote its other online services is once again in the spotlight, triggered by new social search functionality the company is rolling out this week that more tightly links its search engine with its Google+ social networking site.

The complaints have come from different quarters, including competitors and industry experts, and have focused on various arguments, but at bottom all charge Google with using its dominant search engine to deliberately boost Google+’s popularity, by giving Google+ pages and profiles an artificially prominent position in result pages.

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Tags: add-ons, browser, firefox, rapid release, twitter on firefox

Mozilla released Firefox 8 today, a version that weeds out some add-ons and that will shoulder more responsibility for the organization’s new fast-development process.

Giving the user control over the Web experience has been a longstanding Mozilla priority, and Firefox 8 takes a new step here. With earlier versions, third-party software could extend Firefox with new features–Skype’s tool for highlighting phone numbers for easy online calling, for example. With Firefox 8, though, third-party add-ons will be disabled by default.

“These add-ons installed by third parties present a number of problems: they can slow down Firefox start-up and page loading time, they clutter the interface with toolbars that often go unused, they lag behind on compatibility and security updates, and most importantly, they take the user out of control of their add-ons,” said Mozilla programmer Justin “Fligtar” Scott in a blog post about the feature.

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In an effort to continue their reign of hacking news supremacy, both LulzSec and Anonymous have claimed responsibility for a 10 gigabyte file containing social security numbers, credit card details, and vast amounts of police files including emails and confidentially sent tips on crimes. This information comes from more than 70 so-called “small-down” law enforcement agencies. Both hacking groups say they want to show solidarity with with Topiary and the Anonymous PayPal LOIC defendants as well as others – Topiary being the supposed name of one Jake Davis, a teen suspected of working with LulzSec to illegally hack several institutions.

This team of hackers, Anonymous and LulzSec, working under the name AntiSec, aka Anti-Security, released this file containing aproximately 100,000 emails from officers in states such as Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Kansas amongst other files. Inside these emails was at least one appearing to contain dozens of tip-offs about local seemingly illegal incidents from members of the public, including names and addresses of the supposed offenders and/or tipsters.

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Tags: internet, Microsoft, skype, video calls, voip

U.S. software group Microsoft Corp. is in talks about buying Internet phone company Skype Technologies SA in a deal that could be valued at around $8.5 billion, according to published reports.

The possible deal, which was reported by the Wall Street Journal, may be unveiled as early as Tuesday and would be one of Microsoft’s biggest acquisitions in years.

The transaction is expected to value Skype at $8.5 billion including debt, according to several reports.

Representatives for Skype and Microsoft MSFT -0.15% couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

The U.S. firm’s last significant deal was the 2007 purchase of online advertising group aQuantive Inc. for around $6 billion.

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Tags: browser, ie web standard, internet explorer 9, microsoft browser, modern browser

Microsoft has officially launched Internet Explorer 9. The browser, which is being touted by many reviewers already as the best version of the software the company has ever released, follows a long line of predecessors that at times won customers over and at other times failed miserably. But it’s a new day for Microsoft and Internet Explorer. The time has finally come for the company to face Google’s Chrome browser head-on.

But perhaps now Windows users are wondering if they should use Internet Explorer 9. Some of those folks are using previous versions of the browser and might be pleased with it. Others might be using Chrome, Firefox or Opera, and couldn’t fathom the thought of moving to Microsoft’s latest browser.

More on eWeek.com

Tags: Dick Costolo, facebook, Google, twitter, Zynga

Twitter’s chief executive, Dick Costolo, says talk of a $10bn (£6.2bn) acquisition of the messaging company by Google is “just a rumour” and that the site is already making money.

Speaking at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Costolo asked whether Google could afford a $10bn acquisition – following rumours that this was the price being considered by the search engine firm for the messaging startup. “People write that stuff all the time … I don’t know where these things come from, it’s just a rumour.” He fell short of an outright denial, however.

Costolo also suggested that Twitter, which started operations in February 2006, will this year introduce a new method of making money, to add to its existing roster of promoted tweets, accounts and trends. However, he did not specify what that would be.

More on Guardian.co.uk

Tags: botnet, botnet masters, mariposa network, ring network, virus infected computers

SAN FRANCISCO – Authorities have smashed one of the world’s biggest networks of virus-infected computers, a data vacuum that stole credit cards and online banking credentials from as many as 12.7 million poisoned PCs.

The “botnet” of infected computers included PCs inside more than half of the Fortune 1,000 companies and more than 40 major banks, according to investigators.

Spanish investigators, working with private computer-security firms, have arrested the three alleged ringleaders of the so-called Mariposa botnet, which appeared in December 2008 and grew into one of the biggest weapons of cybercrime. More arrests are expected soon in other countries.

Spanish authorities have planned a news conference for Wednesday in Madrid.

Read more at Yahoo News

Tags: 50 million tweets, daily tweets, total tweets a day, tweets a day, twitter

Twitter, a popular microblogging site, is continuing its phenomenal growth trajectory. The site, which was launched back in 2007, has seen rapid growth in the past months. Unlike other places where you need other metrics to measure growth, on Twitter, this is quite easy. The easiest way to check its growth is to track the number of tweets sent per day!

Twitter, which was launched in 2007, has enjoyed rapid growth in recent months. In 2007, around 5,000 tweets were sent per day. That increased to 300,000 messages per day in 2008 and now in 2010, it has reached a staggering 50 million tweets per day!

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