2010 March | Sindiket

31 March 2010 0 Comments

Asus To Take On iPad With Google OS

Google and Apple have clashed a number of times in recent months, and a Taiwanese hardware manufacturer is poised to ensure that the two companies butt heads yet again.  Asus has indicated that it will challenge the iPad with a tablet PC powered by either Android or Chrome OS.

Google Android Elizabeth Woyke talked to Asus chairman Jonney Shih and reported afterward, "Shih said one Asus tablet will likely run Google software, such as the upcoming open-source operating system, Chrome, or the mobile operating system, Android."

"There will be an Apple camp, but Asus always tries to address the open camps of Google and Microsoft," Shih explained.  He also stated, "Content will play a very important role on tablets.  The Google tablet will have a lot of media."

Considering that Android is doing rather well against the iPhone (the most recent AdMob report puts their U.S. market shares at 42 percent and 44 percent, respectively), this could be a smart move for Asus.  For Google, too.  It just seems certain that Google’s relationship with Apple will suffer as a result.

We’ll see what happens.  The new tablet PCs from Asus should debut sometime this year, and probably sooner rather than later.

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31 March 2010 0 Comments

Twilight Author To Release Short Story Online

Popular Twilight author Stephenie Meyer said on her website her next book "The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner" will be available as both a physical book and online.

The book will be available for purchase in bookstores on Saturday, June 5 in hardcover for $13.99 and free online starting at noon on June 7 until July 5 at www.breetanner.com.

"I’m as surprised as anyone about this novella," said Meyer. "When I began working on it in 2005, it was simply an exercise to help me examine the other side of Eclipse, which I was editing at the time."

Bree-Tanner

"I thought it might end up as a short story that I could include on my website. Then, when work started on The Twilight Saga: The Official Guide, I thought the Guide would be a good fit for my Bree story. However, the story grew longer than I anticipated, until it was too long to fit into the Guide."

Meyer said she wanted to give the book away for free online as a special gift to her fans. "I’d always considered The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner as something for the fans," said Meyer. "They have been so supportive of all things Twilight."

One dollar for each book sold in the U.S. will be donated to the American Red Cross. Those who access the book online will be asked to a make a donation to the charity.

"I have been moved by the generous outpouring of support for the recent crises in Haiti and Chile," said Meyer. "I am glad that sales of this book will support the American Red Cross with their amazing efforts abroad."

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31 March 2010 0 Comments

Could Forums Be More Valuable to Your Brand Than Facebook/Twitter?

Social media marketing is largely about engaging with your audience, and a big part of that is knowing where your audience is. A lot of brands may find that their audience is easiest to reach through forums, which are kind of the old school social networks.

Do you use forums to engage with your audience? Tell us about it.

There’s no question that there is a lot of value to the big networks like Facebook and Twitter, but forums have always been and still are a way to jump into a topical conversation within a specific niche and engage with an audience that is heavily invested in that niche. As Li Evans of Serengeti Communications talked about with WebProNews at Search Engine Strategies last week, forums can sometimes provide more value than the big social networks, depending on your audience.

"A lot of people think forums and message boards are dead, but they’re not," she says. "They’re very powerful because they have a lot of influencers, it can reach a lot of people, and these forums rank in the search results as well."

The very nature of forums makes them good for search, because users will continue to update them with fresh posts in many cases, and add information and value, and often answer the questions users are seeking with their search queries.

Last fall Google introduced a new feature to search results, making it easier to find forum posts related to topics users search for. When forum sites have more than one relevant discussion going, Google will link to them under the main result.

As Evans pointed out, it’s a great idea to listen before you talk in a forum. Communities often have certain ways members will talk to one another, and just have things established that may not be so apparent to the "newb." She likens it to petting a shark. "It can bite you," she says. Just pay attention and get a sense of the atmosphere in a community before jumping in and embarrassing yourself. If there’s one thing most active forum participants have in common, it is that they’re vocal, and you don’t want any negative reputation issues to arise.

While forum participation may be like petting a shark, that doesn’t mean you should be afraid of it. Just get to know the shark, and become its friend. The forum sharks just may potentially be some of your best and most loyal customers.

Do you find forums to be of significant value to your brand? Discuss here.

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31 March 2010 0 Comments

Google Detects Malware Targeting Vietnam Dissidents

Google said it has detected malware targeting Vietnamese-language users opposed to bauxite mining in the Communist country.

The malware infected the computers of "potentially tens of thousands of users" who downloaded Vietnamese keyboard language software, Google Security Team member Neel Mehta wrote on the company’s security blog. The attacks targeted opposition to the mining of bauxite, an ore used to make aluminum.

Google-Vietnam "While the malware itself was not especially sophisticated, it has nonetheless been used for damaging purposes," Mehta wrote.

"These infected machines have been used both to spy on their owners as well as participate in distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against blogs containing messages of political dissent. Specifically, these attacks have tried to squelch opposition to bauxite mining efforts in Vietnam, an important and emotionally charged issue in the country."

Google recommends users who believe they may have been exposed to malware to run regular anti-virus and anti-spyware scans from trusted vendors.
 

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31 March 2010 0 Comments

Gmail Opens Up To Apps With OAuth Support

Sharing one’s password is considered a huge security sin; a recent Symantec survey made clear that telling it to even a boss or spouse is verboten.  Gmail users may be glad to hear, then, that Google has figured out a way to encourage the creation of Gmail-related apps without asking everyone to compromise on the password issue.

A post on the Google Code Blog explained, "[I]t is more secure for the app developer to use the industry standard protocol called OAuth which enables the user to give their consent for specific access without sharing their password.  Most Google APIs support this OAuth standard, and starting today it is also available for the IMAP/SMTP feature of Gmail."

An outfit called Syphir has already taken advantage of this feature to improve its SmartPush app for the iPhone, and you can view the result below.

A company known as Kwaga has upgraded its desktop "smart notifier," too.

So it looks like we’ll see a great many third-party developers make an attempt at improving Gmail thanks to this development.  And Gmail users won’t have to worry about losing their privacy every time they give something new a try.

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31 March 2010 0 Comments

Google Takes Limit Off AdSense Category Filtering

Google has eliminated the limit to how many categories AdSense publishers can filter from their sites. There are 11 categories, and users can filter as many of them as they want.

"The category filtering feature allows you to prevent ads that fall into specific categories like ‘religion’ and ‘dating’ from appearing on your pages," says Arlene Lee of Google’s Inside AdSense team. "You can filter categories by visiting your Ad Review Center, located under the AdSense Setup tab. Click the ‘change’ link to view available categories to filter. Your selections will be applied to ads in English, French, German, and Spanish, no matter how they’ve been targeted to your site."

"We also recommend taking a look at the columns showing how much of your recent revenue and ad impressions are generated by each of the categories," says Lee. "This will give you an idea how applying these filters may affect your account."

Previously, users could only filter up to 8 of the 11 categories, which include cosmetic procedures and surgery, dating, drugs and supplements, get rich quick, politics, religion, ringtones and downloadables, sexual and reproductive health, sexually suggestive, video games, and weight loss.

Google’s doesn’t guarantee that every related ad will be filtered, and recommends that users who see undesired ads block  the individual ad or advertiser using the competitive ad filter or the blocking features in the Ad Review Center.

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31 March 2010 0 Comments

Yale’s Deployment Of Google Apps Delayed

When we first reported that Yale was poised to adopt Google Apps, the development seemed like a big win for Google.  The situation’s now looking a bit different, though, as the prestigious university has postponed its school-wide switch to Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, and other products from Mountain View.

David Tidmarsh of the Yale Daily News reported today, "After a series of meetings with faculty and administrators in February, ITS officials decided to put the move on hold, Deputy Provost for Science and Technology Steven Girvin said."

Apparently there were some concerns about how easy implementation would (or wouldn’t) be, which is one perception problem Google would like to overcome.

Then here’s a rather more serious issue Google has to address: Tidmarsh wrote, "Deputy Provost Charles Long said last Wednesday that he did not know about the committee’s decision but noted that several faculty members had concerns about communications security under the proposed Google system."

So this situation is becoming a public relations headache, rather than a PR win, for the search giant.  Yale’s reputation is good enough that many other organizations could follow its lead.

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31 March 2010 0 Comments

Social Network Users Improve Privacy Habits

As the amount of activity on social networks continues to increase, more users are taking steps to protect their privacy but security risks remain, according to a new report released by Webroot.

The survey included more than 1,100 members of Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter and other social networks. The survey found an increasing awareness among social network user of how to keep personal information private. At the same time, it indicated how social network users still put their identities and information at risk.

More users are practicing certain safe behaviors, including blocking their profiles from being visible in search engines, a 37 percent increase over last year. Yet more than a quarter have never changed their default privacy settings and more than three quarters have no restrictions on who can see their recent activity.

"A perfect storm is developing between the number of people flocking to social networks and the new, increasingly sophisticated malware attacks cybercriminals are launching to prey on the personal data they’re sharing," said Jeff Horne, director of Threat Research at Webroot.

"For example, our team has noted over 100 different variations of Koobface, a worm known to trick people into clicking links they shouldn’t in order to infect their PC’s and often convince them to provide credit card numbers to buy phony antivirus products, among other fraudulent activities."

Social network users are sharing information that could help hackers breach their profiles:

*Sixty-one percent include their birthday

*Fifty-two percent include their hometown

*Seventeen percent make their cell phone available

Eighty-one percent don’t place any restrictions on who can see their recent activity, including updates generated by geo-location tools that reveal where users are visiting

*Younger users (age 18-29) are the least likely to take steps to protect their information:

*Forty-three percent of young users have the same password for multiple sites

*Forty percent of younger users say they accept friend requests from strangers

"Consumers need to better protect themselves by guarding their profiles and setting stricter privacy policies – especially given the growing popularity in location-based social media tools that broadcast where you are. It’s also important to make sure your computer has an added layer of security to stop attacks before they happen," said Horne.

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31 March 2010 0 Comments

Analyst Bets Apple Search Engine Might Be On The Way

An investment firm that was founded in 1895 and earned almost $470 million in net revenue last year thinks it’s likely that Apple will build its own search engine.  Specifically, Piper Jaffray assigned this outcome a 70 percent chance of taking place sometime within the next five years.

Jay Yarow obtained a research note written by Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, and in it, Munster stated, "We believe Apple could utilize data unavailable to Google, data generated by the company’s App Store, to create a mobile centric search engine, which would be a unique offering to Google’s search engine."

Munster then explained that this probably wouldn’t occur as a result of Mac, iPhone, and iPad engineers starting something from scratch.  He wrote, "[W]e feel Apple could make a minor acquisition of a search company that has built a web index, like a Cuil, and utilize the index as the base for building its own engine."

This is an interesting idea, at the very least, and if Google’s and Apple’s relationship continues to worsen (see Google’s new partnership with Adobe as one example of things heading downhill), the odds of it becoming a reality will increase.

Of course, five years is a long time in this industry – Google’s market share hadn’t even crested the 50 percent mark in March of 2005 – so all manner of things may change before 2015 rolls around.

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31 March 2010 0 Comments

Twitter Tests New Home Page

Twitter is testing a new home page, aimed at showing more of the information that "flows through Twitter."

"This builds on a series of changes starting last year when we redesigned the homepage to make search and trending topics more visible and easily accessible to everyone," says Twitter Designer Doug Bowman. "With that version, we brought the power of search.twitter.com to the homepage and let people explore the value of Twitter without an account."

Include on the new home page are:

- A set of algorithmically selected "top tweets" that automatically appear every few seconds

- A random sampling of suggested sources (profile summaries can be seen if you hover over them)

- Scrolling trending topics (hover over them to see descriptions about why it’s popular)

"All of our recent changes embrace the notion that Twitter is not just for status updates anymore," says Bowman. "It’s a network where information is exchanged and consumed at a rapid clip every second of the day. With so much being shared, we know that there’s something of value for everyone. People who internalize the value of Twitter understand the power of this simple medium. But it hasn’t been easy to make that value transparent or obvious for curious folks coming to Twitter for the first time."

That has indeed been an issue Twitter has faced in the entire time of its existence. People are embracing it more than ever, but this could help the newcomers get more out of the service.

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Archive | March, 2010

Asus To Take On iPad With Google OS

Twilight Author To Release Short Story Online

Could Forums Be More Valuable to Your Brand Than Facebook/Twitter?

Google Detects Malware Targeting Vietnam Dissidents

Gmail Opens Up To Apps With OAuth Support

Google Takes Limit Off AdSense Category Filtering

Yale’s Deployment Of Google Apps Delayed

Social Network Users Improve Privacy Habits

Analyst Bets Apple Search Engine Might Be On The Way

Twitter Tests New Home Page

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