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**** NewsBytes **** NewsBytes **** NewsBytes ****
Word is out
A new breed of 'Zero-Day' exploit has been discovered in Microsoft Word. So called because the vulnerability is already the subject of highly-targeted attacks via Word 2003 and which will bypass existing anti-virus and anti-spam systems because a fix is not likely to arrive until Microsoft's next Patch Tuesday on 13th June. Details of the attachment payloads such as Trojan Backdoor.Ginwui are currently sketchy. In the meantime, recipients of any Word documents should be extra cautious. Alternatives are to save outgoing documents with the old stalwart Rich Text Format (.rtf), universally understood by word processors or - more crudely - to 'test' for the new exploit by opening with Word 2000, which crashes as a result! Full story by John McCormick at TechRepublic. Acknowledgements: Adrian Hallett.
Slick Turpin
A new threat, generically labelled 'ransomware', injects a new twist into the problems of security faced by computer owners. In this case, Troj/Ransom-A threatens to delete one file from an infected computer every 30 minutes until the $10.99 ransom is paid. In exchange for the Western Union money transfer victims are told they will get a CIDN number to make visible and remove the Trojan. Anti-virus vendor Sophos has the Troj/Ransom-A analysis and fix.
Flat-rate WiFi
A new flat-rate WiFi service could empower a new generation of wireless users, opening up thousands of WiFi hotspots to them at nearly half the rate of mobile phone service providers. The Cloud's single £11.99 a month subscription called "UltraWiFi" starts from 1st July undercutting competitors like T-Mobile and Vodafone who also charge for the costs of a data access card. City centre zones will be the first to get UltraWiFi in Birmingham, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Nottingham and Oxford, as well as London boroughs Kensington, Chelsea, Camden and Islington. An weekly 'pay-as-you-go' will also be available for those shy of annual contracts. The move follows hot on the heels of BT's May announcement that it will 'wire up' 6 UK cities with wireless broadband access starting with Cardiff and Westminster. www.thecloud.net
SMS text your members
Lamplight is an online database for community and voluntary organisations that now allows one to send SMS texts to a group of members or even mail-merge them. Even the online demo login enables this feature - though it doesn't actually send a text to the celebs like Kelly Holmes and Tom Jones reputedly on its member list. www.lamplightdb.co.uk
Computers for 10m African students
African schools could get 400,000 computers if the aims of Project Digital 10 20 10 come to fruition. The plan is to collect, wipe and refurbish obsolete computers in the UK, after which they will be used to teach IT skills to students in African schools. The project aims to complete by 2010 and hopes to get a push when the EU directive on Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) comes into being.
Die Hard 4.0
Internet terrorism will be the subject of what will be the fourth in the burgeoning series of "Die Hard" action movies, likely out next summer. Rumours that the project was underway and would again star Bruce Willis, 51, were confirmed at the Cannes Film Festival. The "4.0" Monika won't make it from the screenplay to the final title but the plot is likely break less new ground than it does hardware, based on previous incarnations.
Charity security: 90% talk, 30% action
While charities have certainly grasped the importance of the issues regarding IT security, the result is still all talk and little action with 90% feeling security is under control but only 30% undertaking regular audits, according to new research from the Charity Finance Voluntary Sector IT survey 2006. The concern is reinforced by the fact that 38% of respondents suffered a virus attack in the last year and 35% identified external hackers as a problem, up on 10% in 2004. Read the Voluntary Sector IT Survey 2006 report in full: www.charityfinance.co.uk/it
Idle PCs guzzle energy
This month the Electronic Waste directives (WEEE) come into force and yet a disturbing new report shows that "companies are wasting in excess of £61 million annually by using power-hungry desktop computers." Research from Computacenter and Fujitsu Siemens Computers indicates annual savings of around £305,000 could be made by each of the top 200 companies simply by adopting 'green' IT equipment and switching off current desktops when not in use, a practice ignored by more than a third of workers leaving the office. Report: Careless Computing Costs UK PLCs Millions On Energy Bills
**** end of NewsBytes ****
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1. Sharing Calendars: the new dating
The latest form of Internet dating has nothing to do with tense encounters between nervous, excited strangers. On the contrary, it's all about hooking up with people we already know. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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New kid on the blockGoogle has recently set the cat amongst the pigeons with its launch of Google Calendar beta, a free online calendar that permits combined multiple schedules by 'layering in' additional calendars, perhaps from friends and associates, as well as permitting a degree of access restriction in allowing who sees what. Dating circles: meet new people in your areaSince some sort of authentication to enforce privacy is inherently a pre-requisite for this type of application, you need an account to get access. Like every other online calendar in this category, the logical step is to tie the sign-in to the provider's email account, in this case a Google or Gmail one. Various other online calendars have existed for some while even ones that synchronise to handheld devices have been tried, and of course one of the most popular calendars in use anywhere is the one buried in Microsoft's office Outlook calendar sharing, indeed some pundits have gone as far as to say the calendar the only reason to use Outlook. However that isn't directly online, and needs a beefy Exchange Server to make it public via OWA. Finding Mr. or Ms. Right
The diversity in the offerings underlines the problem: everyone wants to do different things with diaries and calendars. While your needs may be closer to event logging than 'flirtblogging', there is enough deviation in people's requirements that current providers have gone their separate ways, each chasing the perceived needs of their own memberships. In a typical week, a customer might belong to any or all of these categories, for example:
Where Google really scores is that not only do you decide who sees your calendar but also which details they can view. At the moment this only extends to two levels public and private. However, Google has sensibly tried to expand what is effectively a limited administration system by allowing us to create multiple calendars for different functions, say Home, Kids, Work, Social. Then we can layer in any or all or of these calendars (a tick box instantly brings them in or out of view) and choose whether each should have private or public permissions and who gets to share them by assigning view/edit/manage privileges. Short break or ad-break?Views like day, week, or month or event list-only, (the latter missing out empty days) are now taken for granted in any self-respecting calendar, whether on- or off-line. So too are automatic repeats in any combinations of days and dates and the ability to receive notifications ahead of time so that, for example, you could set yourself a reminder to tot up the cash box every first Monday of the month; the notification emails or texts you 2 hours in advance of home time, but finally ceases its pestering at the end of the calendar year. However, nowadays you're equally likely to find 'clutter' among online calendars with holidays, weather and horoscopes all fighting for screen space. Some are currently ad-free but Google will want to make use of its prized Google-Ads revenue-generator technology to poke relevant product placements close to your bookings. Blocking off a long weekend? Up come those short-break splashes! Online calendar providers
Verdict: how promiscuous do you need to be?Google's is real step forward in online calendaring especially in the area controlling the permissions of the calendar sharers. While this is ideal for office-bound workers with desktops and reliable Internet connectivity, Google Calendar won't lure handheld users until it at least has synchronisation, and then preferably with Outlook, because an expensive and/or unreliable wireless browsing connection will simply drive a mobile worker back to the built-in Pocket PC (or whatever) calendaring functions they have with them all the time. 'No phone on the tube' would become 'No calendar either'! After all, if there is little requirement for people outside the office to access the organisation's schedules, why put it all online? Contacts
-IB- Paul Craig |
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Cupid 
Stupid
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2. RSS: Feed-less in Seattle
What do you do when you have a good software idea based on a decent standard, but a large company is poised to take it all away. Answer: Wait for the steamroller. | ||
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The world's media have an insatiable appetite to satisfy and one category is changing faster than any other: that of news delivery. Now we can do receive all the time: with newspapers, on TV and radio, via satellite, over the web. But while most of those sources have easily identifiable channels, the last of these has spawned so many sites that it's difficult to keep up and especially to track (and track down) what you need to read about. Over the 5 years, many sites have started to develop 'feeds', effectively a stream of news data hooked up to your browser or a special feed reader application, with the 'tap' controlled at your end. Open up your browser and the latest feed headlines appear, perhaps from a vast variety of sites you have linked to, only minus the need to go and visit each one; all the news comes to you.
Feeding stops
News feeds available where you see this sign. Subscribe to this RSS feed in several ways:
Live bookmark Simply drag into your browser toolbar or bookmark list. The standard that made this possible was Really Simple Syndication (RSS) - variously known as Rich Site Summary and RDF Site Summary. Recent history has seen numerous start-ups and individuals attempting to create miniature media empires by collating and providing vast amounts of such news feeds, presumably in the hope that, one day, advertising moguls and software enterprises would come and thrust large wads of cash at them in return for such innovative insight. The problems with this blissful path to empire nirvana for RSS aggregators are a lack of any clear business model, the fact that RSS is an open standard and neither is it hard to implement, and - the most blindingly obvious impediment - that the software industry is dominated by a steamrolling mega-giant. All of which has lead some commentators to compare such business sense to "playing in the sandpit close to a big beast".
What does Outlook RSS do for us?
At the end of last year the inevitable happened: Microsoft announced its intention to produce the next version of Outlook with an RSS reader integrated into it. Keen technocrats are proposing that this will revolutionise behaviour inside the office as well as promoting the propensity of its staff to look outside. "Consider tasks from MS Project being available as RSS feeds" they say. And what about departments producing their blogs and feeds instead of sending disruptive emails or having to go through the process of publishing on the intranet or, heaven forefend, disturbing The Intranet Manager. A pleasant aspect of feeds is that they combine the speed of single-click accessibility without the in-your-face intrusion of email. You decide, as opposed to the publisher deciding, whether to go and read what's on offer while not having to remember long complicated web site addresses or sift through heaps of bookmarks. The good thing is that because so much of the world's computing population is hooked up to Microsoft Office (a large installed base, as the industry calls it), the integration of RSS will suddenly bring the discovery of news feed subscriptions and blogs to wide audience of Outlook users. Better-informed readers at grass-roots level can only mean less news 'spin' - whether it's global politics or gardening pests - and therefore stimulate flourishing debates for a fresh generation of newbie news-feed participants. For a large number of companies pinning their hopes on the RSS aggregation business however, it might seem as if this latest headline came from the grim reaper himself. Contacts
-IB- Acknowledgements: Nik Cubrilovic, Michael Affronti Microsoft Outlook program manager |
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3. Confused by Internet tariffs? You're not alone
You're probably not getting the best rate from your ISP. But they're in no rush to tell you. | ||
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Confusion Pricing
Here at Co-Operative Systems we’ve often been worried on behalf clients that we are not getting the best deal for them from Internet Service providers (ISPs) or phone companies. Given the huge range of tariffs and options available it can seem impossible to choose to the best option from a single supplier let alone compare suppliers. Fortunately a recent article in the FT has addressed this very topic. To sum up: Complex tariffs or ‘Confusion Pricing’, as economists call it, makes it very difficult for the buyer to get the best deal from their phone provider or to compare suppliers. The practice seems to be endemic among mobile phone companies, cable operators, and ISPs alike. The solution is to ask your provider directly if you are on the most appropriate tariff. This should get you placed on the best deal, at least in the short term, but it's worth a re-check every so often. Of course, although they could easily do this anyway, suppliers generally won't automatically adjust your tariff to the optimum rate each month. Confusion-pricing essentially stings consumers who can't be bothered to check up and ask, so that they end up paying over the odds. Or, as they used to say, it takes advantage of those with more money than sense. Contacts-IB- Phil Anthony |
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4. Are we being outwitted by slicker spam?
Spammers may start to use your computer to send emails not only in your name, but in your writing style too. | ||
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1m new spam outbreaks per day
The Spam Detection Center for Commtouch analyzes 1.5 billion messages each month. Last June it announced recording over 28 million new spam outbreaks during the month of June, around a million per day. Lately you may have seen bursts of spam creeping through the spam filters on your Exchange server. Though this may be merely an outburst typified by holiday season spammers, researchers fear we may be witnessing the tip of an iceberg syndrome where new spam zombies are pre-programmed to do the spammers' work for them. Open seasonSo just how would a seasoned spammer go about crafting new 'improved' spam? "How about employing a spell-checker?" we hear the sarcastic reply, but the real possibilities of the future appear much more sinister. A new generation of spam and phishing e-mails would combine the techniques of Trojans (dormant programs injected into owners' computers) and mass-mailing viruses. The paper, by Canadian researchers at the University of Calgary, outlines how such new super junk mailers would not only inspect the host's address books for plausible "To" and "From" addresses as they do today, but would also examine a user's saved emails for writing patterns (line length, capitalisation or lack thereof, common typos and grammar errors, use of humour) in order to emulate a style in outgoing messages that associates and recipients find familiar. After all, genuine email senders forward web addresses, picture links, clips and huge amounts of other ephemera to their email circles every day. Solution: copy that. Vast armies of such 'spam zombies' embedded on the computers of innocent users would circumvent service provider tactics to block spammers signing up to their accounts since instead the spam would emanate from genuine accounts. The resulting floods of unsolicited mail would outwit today's spam filters and even the most vigilant recipients; in short, they will appear like a recommendation written by your best friend. Holiday seasonThe bad news is that there is no simple technical solution to preventing 100% of spam and that everybody suffers equally. The good news is that these outbursts are often sporadic and tracking the peaks shows that the lead up to holiday times are particular periods of high activity. It appears that during such times, presumably when potentially gullible consumers turn to their email accounts to look for holiday breaks and other forms of distraction, spammers make a determined effort to change the format of their promotions, what with their previous deluges having been filtered out by spam traps. Slicker solutionsStatic spam filters require some intervention by PC and network owners to block new arrivals, however those organisations that have installed server-based, collaborative anti-spam software like that CloudMark will find that outbreaks are short-lived. We have been monitoring Cloudmark Server Edition (CSE) installations and found that manufacturer's claims of 98% spam prevention rates are being met. Because the system is collaborative the more reports of new spam that come into 'SpamNet' - the central automated register of spams - the faster that Cloudmark-installed servers are protected. It means that the newest and most prolific spam emails effectively defeat themselves. Various 'ultimate solutions' have been put forward in recent years like Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and, more lately, a laudable trend by some ISPs to limit outgoing email bandwidth on their client accounts as an automatic trap for potential spammers who sign up. Another initiative is for global legislation against spammers, but this is currently bogged down in a stalemate position, contradicting as it does the free speech amendments of the USA, from which country the majority of spam originates. However, such moves demand everyone's (perhaps altruistic) participation to achieve significant spam reduction. The problem of course is a human one, at both ends of the message. As long as there are recipients naive enough to respond to spam, wiley spammers will rise up to fill the vacuum with billions of emails using cheap broadband and unscrupulous ISPs. The bottom line is that only a fraction of a percent of respondents is needed to keep these mass marketers in business. Contacts
-IB-
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5. Think PCs and Windows are rubbish?
Here's how futurologists thought they’d look ... | ||
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Another article that has been dug up and doing the rounds on the Internet is a 1954 model of a "home computer" created by scientists from RAND Corporation projecting ahead to the year 2004. 
The first reaction is a collective "Wow" to this 1954 Popular Mechanics magazine forecast, as we marvel at the leap forward in imagination, are intrigued by the notion that today's computer uses might have driven a steering wheel instead of clicking a mouse, gasp at the sheer size of the device, and cringe at the Bakelite dials and boom-box black and white TV. Anyone thinking that this image conjures up "Star Trek meets Doctor Who" and contemplating whether it doesn't just look like a heavy make-over of the image of a submarine console would in fact be spot on. Which leads us to the conclusion that although new technologies come and go, the nature of a good hoax remains just as beguiling as it always did. Contacts
-IB- Acknowledgements: snopes |
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6. Philanthropy on the side
Somebody out there may be dying to get their paws on your ideas. But you might be pleasantly surprised at their motives. | ||
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According to a recent interview Director magazine, eBay was just a 'side project', an experiment formulated by one Pierre Omidyar. Its huge success was a surprise and was partly about a lot of separate strands coming together at the right time. As well as having good management on board and enthusiastic venture capitalists, eBay crucially involved its community - those who were to become coined by the phrase 'eBayers'. What is interesting here and applicable to all sorts of organisations, not just those in the commercial sphere, is that it was a grass roots project. So "bottom-up", to paraphrase M. Omidyar rather crudely, is the new "top-down". Projects are less and less commonly initiated by big ideas and a standardised business analysis approach; we have the Google's and the Skypes of this IT world as more than ample illustration. Key to the approach of Omidyar's current but more business-focussed work is the realisation that "a business itself cannot be successful unless it has a social impact". Thus it's as well to be aware of small beginnings in your own organisations. Stay alert to the possibility of electing a 'technology champion' to push ideas forward, because you might be on the edge of creating a tool, an Internet service or communication network that suddenly changes the way everyone thinks. Here are some recent examples in the area of fundraising:
There are still philanthropists out there too, with big names in the IT field continuing their initiatives of old. Microsoft's 3-a-piece free software grant scheme still stands as does Google's own Google Foundation. As far Omidyar is concerned, he has moved on from conventional, grant-giving, foundation-based philanthropic activities to backing profit-makers too with the Omidyar Network. Contacts
-IB-
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Clicks of the Trade - slash your click count
--- Quick tips for happier clicks! --- | |||
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-IB-
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