Clipmarks | wildcat's internet collection

Firefox Users Most Secure on Internet, Study Reveals

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 10:43:11 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Mozilla Firefox fans might rest a little easier these days after a study released Tuesday revealed that its users are most secure on the Internet.

The study "Understanding the Web browser threat: Examination of vulnerable online Web browser populations and the "insecurity iceberg," was a collaborative effort conducted by researchers at The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Google and IBM (NYSE:IBM) Internet Security Services. The research offers a comprehensive analysis of Web browsers, particularly in the area of security. The study's aim was to analyze Web browser preference and behavior for people using the Internet.

Altogether, the study found that less than 60 percent (59.1) of people use up-to-date, fully patched Web browsers. Failure update browsers exponentially increases the chance for remote attacks executed by hackers, the study found.

Tags: browsers, firefox, net

The Web Knows How

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 11:29:35 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: and again where is clipversity?

Clip Source: www.technewsworld.com

Just about any practical task -- from changing a motorcycle's oil filter to the proper care and feeding of a pet monkey -- can be found on the Web on sites like WikiHow and Howcast. The sites vary widely in their approaches. Some limit their offerings to in-house video clips, while others employ a wiki model and make themselves completely open to revisions from anyone.

Terri Rossman considers herself a visual learner. So when the 52-year-old marketing professional wanted to learn a new knitting stitch, she turned to the Web.

"I searched for 'knit bobble stitch' on Google and I found a video of someone doing it," said Rossman, who lives in the Detroit area. "It was perfect for me."

The Web has become the place where people go to learn new tricks. Traffic to sites like eHow.com and WikiHow.com have doubled over the past year, according to figures from ComScore Networks, while start-ups such as Howcast.com and Findhow.com, a search engine to find "how-to" content, are entering the field.

Tags: web, net, knowledge, learning

What’s So Bad About Information Overload?

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 11:03:35 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: Is today’s onslaught of information a bane or a boon?

Clip Source: discussionleader.hbsp.com

It’s a topic of particular interest at Xerox, which feels partly responsible for the problem. After all, the company created one of the earliest sources of information overload: the photocopy machine, which permitted limitless reproduction of printed information and resulted in towering piles of interoffice memoranda in people's (physical, in that bygone era, rather than digital) in-boxes .

Possibly to help assuage corporate guilt for this near-original sin, the company has developed an array of products and services that help organizations and individuals more effectively manage, filter, and share information. One of the more unusual ones in development is self-erasing paper, to be used for “transient” documents with a prescribed period of utility

When the information on the document is at the end of its useful life, the ink disappears and the paper can be reused -- saving trees but also eliminating a clutter of unnecessary information.

Tags: information overload

New Quantum Strategy Keeps Web Searches Private

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 10:59:19 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.physorg.com

When an Internet user types a word or phrase into a search engine, the Web server has the ability to find out that inquiry. As more people and businesses are becoming concerned about privacy, researchers are developing new ways to make online activity more secure for both users and servers.

Recently, physicists have created a cheat-sensitive protocol called quantum private queries (QPQ). The quantum-based system allows a user to search for and retrieve an item from a database without revealing that item to the server. If the server tries to find out the item, the user can tell, and modify their use accordingly.

The server is also protected because the user can only retrieve a limited amount of information in a single query, so the server doesn’t have to reveal its entire database. Compared with other strategies, the QPQ can provide a much simpler private information retrieval tool in terms of both communication and computation.

Tags: science, quantum private queries, privacy

Quarter of the planet to be online by 2012

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 03:00:10 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.itnews.com.au

Researchers are predicting that one quarter of the world's population will be connected to the internet within the next four years..

According to the report by Jupiter Research, the total number of people online will climb to 1.8 billion by 2012, encompassing roughly 25 percent of the planet.

The company sees the highest growth rates in areas such as China, Russia, India and Brazil. Overall, the number of users online is predicted to grow by 44 percent in the time period between 2007 and 2012.

"Even though the emerging economies will have lower online penetration rates compared to the developed countries, Jupiter Research believes that they will ramp up the learning curve in adopting sophisticated online activities compared to the developing countries," said research director Vikram Sehgal.

The analyst firm sees Asia as an especially critical market, due to the high rate at which both its physical population and technological markets are growing.

Tags: net, grid, online

The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 12:12:11 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: "Speaking at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference this past March, Peter Norvig, Google's research director, offered an update to George Box's maxim: "All models are wrong, and increasingly you can succeed without them."

Clip Source: www.wired.com

"All models are wrong, but some are useful."

So proclaimed statistician George Box 30 years ago, and he was right. But what choice did we have? Only models, from cosmological equations to theories of human behavior, seemed to be able to consistently, if imperfectly, explain the world around us. Until now. Today companies like Google, which have grown up in an era of massively abundant data, don't have to settle for wrong models. Indeed, they don't have to settle for models at all.

Sixty years ago, digital computers made information readable. Twenty years ago, the Internet made it reachable. Ten years ago, the first search engine crawlers made it a single database. Now Google and like-minded companies are sifting through the most measured age in history, treating this massive corpus as a laboratory of the human condition. They are the children of the Petabyte Age.

Tags: theory, data, scientific model, computation cloud, google

The Petabyte Age: Because More Isn't Just More — More Is Different

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 12:05:03 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.wired.com

Sensors everywhere. Infinite storage. Clouds of processors. Our ability to capture, warehouse, and understand massive amounts of data is changing science, medicine, business, and technology. As our collection of facts and figures grows, so will the opportunity to find answers to fundamental questions. Because in the era of big data, more isn't just more. More is different.

Feeding the Masses:
Data In, Crop Predictions Out

Chasing the Quark:
Sometimes You Need to Throw Information Away

Watching the Skies:
Space Is Big — But Not Too Big to Map

Scanning Our Skeletons:
Bone Images Show Wear and Tear

Spotting the Hot Zones:
Now We Can Monitor Epidemics Hour by Hour

Sorting the World:
Google Invents New Way to Manage Data

Visualizing Big Data:
Bar Charts for Words

Tags: petabyte, data

Men More Than Women Share Creative Work Online

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 11:30:39 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: “So while creative output, on the aggregate, is equally distributed among men and women, the sharing of such content is not,” Hargittai says.

Clip Source: www.physorg.com

A Northwestern University study finds that men are more likely to share their creative work online than women despite the fact that women and men engage in creative activities at essentially equal rates.

“Because sharing information on the Internet today is a form of participating in public culture and contributing to public discourse, that tells us men’s voices are being disproportionately heard,” says Eszter Hargittai, assistant professor of communication studies at Northwestern University. Hargittai co-authored the study with Northwestern researcher Gina Walejko.

“This suggests that the Internet is not an equal playing field for men and women since those with more online abilities -- whether perceived or actual -- are more likely to contribute online content,” says Hargittai.

Tags: sharing, gender, online, information, net

The One Machine

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 10:44:18 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: Tap Into the 12-Million-Teraflop Handheld Megacomputer

Clip Source: www.wired.com

Never mind Web 3.0: The next stage in technological evolution is a single worldwide computer. Collectively, we are already assembling this megacomputer from our billions of Net-connected PCs, cell phones, PDAs, and the like. As an increasing number and variety of devices are lashed to one another via the Internet and other communication systems, they form the components of what we might call the One Machine.

Its circuit board encompasses the million copper wires and radio connections linking all the chips contained in the gadgets in your pocket, office, and car. Instead of being powered by a mere billion tiny transistors, as your typical personal desktop is, it runs on a billion PC chips, each with its own billion transistors. Its memory is the collective hard disks and flash drives of the world. Its RAM is the sum of all memory chips online. Every second, a Library of Congress worth of data flows through it. The program it runs — its initial OS — is the World Wide Web.

Tags: tech evolution, megacomputer, connectivity

More than 1 billion PCs served

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 10:32:49 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: news.cnet.com

The number of personal computers in use around the world has exceeded 1 billion and will double by 2014, with most growth coming from developing markets, according to Gartner research released Monday.

A 12 percent annual increase would amount to more than 2 billion PCs in use by 2014, according to a report that counted installed machines rather than laptops and desktops sold.

Emerging markets will account for 70 percent of the next billion PCs to come online, Gartner analysts suggested. They named dropping prices and improved Internet access as factors driving that trend.

Fifty-eight percent of today's PCs are owned by U.S., European, and Japanese users, Gartner found.

This year, some 180 million computers, or 16 percent of those currently in use globally, will be retired.

Tags: pc, billion, emerging markets

How Global Should the Internet Be?

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 10:23:57 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.businessweek.com

Domain names are a sore point with nations who use alphabets other than Roman. Now, the group that oversees domain names is trying to translate

Lest you think a U.N. meeting to discuss the future of the Internet would be a ponderous, low-key affair, consider this remarkable tale. Back in 2003, when the U.N. held just such an event in Geneva, the delegates unexpectedly decided to close the meeting to nongovernmental officials and to eject a handful of attendees. One of them was Paul Twomey—president of the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names & Numbers (ICANN), a private, nonprofit company that oversees technical aspects of the Internet's address system—who was escorted by guards to the exit.

The surprising turn of events underscored the simmering resentment felt by many nations, especially in the developing world, over the governance of the Internet.

Limitless Domain Names?

Tags: the net, global, domain names

'Shake-up' for internet proposed

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 15:15:13 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

The net could see its biggest transformation in decades if plans to open up the address system are passed.

The net's regulators will vote on Thursday to decide if the strict rules on so-called top level domain names, such as .com or .uk, can be relaxed.

If approved, it could allow companies to turn their brands into domain names while individuals could also carve out their own corner of the net.

The move could also see the launch of .xxx, after years of wrangling.

Top level domains are currently limited to individual countries, such as .uk (UK) or .it (Italy), as well as to commerce, .com, and to institutional organisations, such as .net, or .org.

To get around the restrictions, some companies have used the current system to their own ends.

For example, the Polynesia island nation Tuvalu, has leased the use of the .tv address to many television firms.

It's a massive increase in the geography of the real estate of the internet

Tags: net, web, addresses, domain names

Memes on the net

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 11:17:19 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: whence do they come from? click internet memes

Clip Source: www.therawfeed.com

"Leave Britney Alone!" "The Dramatic Chipmunk." "Don't Tase me, Bro!" "All Your Base Are Belong to Us." "Rick Rolling." "The Star Wars Kid." "Pwned!" You've heard about these "memes" (bits of cultural information that spread like viruses), but where do they come from and when did they first emerge? A new Web 2.0 site called INTERNET MEMES tracks and chronicles them from 1996 through the present. Here's the condensed version with comments, etc. Here's the full screen version.

Tags: memes, internet

How the Web is Changing Work

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 11:11:07 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.blogherald.com

Have you ever stopped to think how the world of work has changed in the last 10 years? Or even 5?

Last night I had a Skype video conference with one of my flagship content clients on the west coast of USA, it was 7 am for Stuart but early evening for me. Chris Brogan just started doing webinars mixed with Twitter. Liz is organizing business masterminds with people who might never meet in person. Darren and I co-authored a book together and we still haven’t met.

When I look back to my early career, if I wanted answers I had to buy many telephone directory sized books, tons of magazines, and rack up huge phone bills on support lines. Nobody around me could provide answers, so it was trial and error, experimentation, or rely on vendors most of the time. Now, just hit up Google.

Bloggers can reach an audience we couldn’t imagine at the start of the 1990’s. It’s not just the size of the audience, but the variety of people you are put in touch with.

Tags: web, work, change

Virtual Unreality

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 10:37:31 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: virtual worlds are created by us – so why limit ourselves to reality?

Clip Source: superconcepts.blogspot.com

In the future, we may decide that a virtual existence, a life inside a fully immersive computer game where our every desire is fulfilled, is a more appealing option than the real world we currently inhabit. Many people have presented the idea that we are already in such a virtual reality, but I don’t believe this is possible. This is because virtual worlds provide us with many possibilities that the real world does not, so why have they not been “programmed” into the real world we know?

Despite the virtual platform giving occupants the ability to fly and teleport, they still prefer to meticulously create staircases to walk their avatar up and down. At discos, people require the coolest dance animations and best looking clothes. In meetings, virtual characters sit down to rest their virtual legs. It seems the confines of reality provide a comfortable and familiar environment.

But virtual worlds are created by us – so why limit ourselves to reality?

Tags: virtual, worlds, reality