Wikipedia founder abandons search

January 16th, 2010
Screen grab of Wikia Search

Wikia Search, a project created by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales with the aim of creating a community-led search engine, has been ditched.

He announced the decision to “close the doors” on the project in a blog post.

Wikia Search “has not been enjoying the kind of success that we hoped for,” said Mr Wales.

He blamed the recession for his decision to withdraw funding but promised to continue as a “cheerleader” for alternatives to Google.

“I personally believe in the opportunity for free software to make serious inroads into the search space. In a different economy we would continue to fund Wikia Search indefinitely,” he said.

No profit

Instead he will refocus efforts on social network Wikia, which, in common with all Wiki projects, has a community-driven content approach.

According to internet measurement firm Nieslen, Wikia is now the fifth faster growing online community in the US.

Wikia Search was first announced in 2006 and went live last year.

As with the Wikipedia encyclopaedia which brought Mr Wales to prominence, the emphasis for Wikia Search was on user-contributed content. It let anyone rate and filter its search results.

In an interview with the BBC when the site went live Mr Wales promised it would be “completely controlled by the community of users”.

Unlike Wikipedia, Wikia Search was always intended to be a profit making business, with money coming from advertising.

In his interview with the BBC Mr Wales played up the role of users as editors but said there were no plans to allow them to claim a share in the revenue.

New thermometer line ready to see action

January 16th, 2010

kidz-med-thermometer

American Scientific Resources, better known as ASR for short, has just announced that they will be rolling out a new range of affordable yet revolutionary, 5-in-1 non-contact thermometers that were specially designed to meet the needs of consumers and healthcare workers globally. Instead of the usual glass-and-mercury combination, these new non-contact thermometers are a snap to use, where it is able to provide instant temperature reading that is accurate as well, while making kids (and some adults) more comfortable since they no longer need to have something probing their orifice – whether it is from the top or at the bottom. Too bad for the little ones, as I clearly remember be paedatrician offering me lollipops after taking my temperature as a form of goodwill.

Jobs in Baton Rouge

January 15th, 2010

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Hound.com is a good source of  Jobs Online because it shows you jobs from employer career pages. This site also does not accept any advertising like other jobs sites which charge employers to post ads on their site. In contrast, this site is a research site that investigates jobs posted on employer websites and shows us the research.

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Microsoft’s Mehdi on financial impact of Yahoo deal

December 3rd, 2009

Although Microsoft and Yahoo have only just inked their final search deal and still need regulatory approval, Microsoft’s Yusuf Mehdi talked on Tuesday about the economics that the deal will bring.

Speaking at a Credit Suisse technology investor conference in Arizona, Mehdi said that both Microsoft and Yahoo should see a double-digit increase in revenue per search, once the two companies have a single paid search system.

Putting their two separate paid search systems together will take longer than just setting up Yahoo to use Bing’s algorithmic search.

“That is going to take some time,” Mehdi said in the speech, which was Webcast on Microsoft’s investor site. Just closing the deal has taken quite awhile. There was the months of , then the eventual search deal , and then several more months spent ironing out the final details.

Now Microsoft is waiting on regulatory approval on the deal, but Mehdi said he remains optimistic that it will get the nods it needs in time to close the deal early next calendar year.

The integration is also going to be expensive Mehdi acknowledged, reiterating a past estimate that Microsoft will spend $100 million to $200 million in transition costs during the first year. Mehdi said the company has not said how much it expects to spend in the second year, but said that after that, the deal should be a boon to Microsoft’s financial results.

As for Bing, Mehdi said executives are pleased with the results for its first six months, citing  that show Microsoft growing from 8.4 percent to 9.9 percent over that period. That said, Mehdi acknowledged that “we have a very long ways to go against a tough competitor.”

Several Microsoft executives will be in San Francisco on Wednesday to talk about some new moves in search, including some developments in mobile and mapping. Google, meanwhile, is planning a search event of its own on Monday.

Malware suspected of ‘Black Screen’ issue

December 3rd, 2009
Thumbnail view of open windows

Microsoft says that a problem with its Windows operating system, dubbed the ‘Black Screen of Death’ is not due to its latest security update.

Some Windows users are confronted by a totally black screen after they log on to their system.

It was thought that a security update on 10 November had been the cause, although this has now been discounted.

Reports suggest the problem also affects Windows Vista and XP, which experts are putting down to malware.

In a blog posting on its security site, Microsoft said that it had investigated the claims and “found that our November Security Updates are not making changes to the system that these reports say are responsible for these issues”.

The firm said that the behaviour was associated with malware, such as Daonol, and that this was probably the root cause.

Software firm Prevx, who had said the November update may have been to blame, have since retracted their statement, saying it had been a “challenging issue” to identify the cause.

“Having narrowed down a specific trigger for this condition we’ve done quite a bit of testing and re-testing on the recent Windows patches including KB976098 and KB915597 as referred to in our previous blog,” the firm wrote on its website.

“Since more specifically narrowing down the cause we have been able to exonerate these patches from being a contributory factor.”

Prevx apologised to Microsoft for “for any inconvenience” its earlier claims may have caused.

The firm has issued a fix for the problem, which is says could affect “millions” of computers.

“Users have resorted to reloading Windows as a last ditch effort to fix the problem,” the firm’s David Kennerley wrote in a blog post.

“We hope we can help a good many of you avoid the need to reload.”

Unknown problem

The firm said its fix did not work in all cases.

“There can be many causes,” said Mr Kennerley.

“But if your black screen woes began in the last two weeks… or after running any security program (including Prevx) to remove malware during this time, then this fix will have a high probability of working.”

Mr Kennerly said the firm had identified “at least 10 different scenarios which will trigger the same black screen conditions”.

“These appear to have been around for years now,” he said.

The firm reports that the problem affects editions of Windows 7, Vista, XP, NT, and Windows 2000.

Microsoft said that people who are affected by the problem should contact its customer service line.

The “black screen of death” moniker is a play on the “blue screen of death”, which appears when Microsoft operating systems crash.

Google to limit free news access

December 3rd, 2009
Google

Newspaper publishers will now be able to set a limit on the number of free news articles people can read through Google, the company has announced.

The concession follows claims from some media companies that the search engine is profiting from online news pages.

Under the First Click Free programme, publishers can now prevent unrestricted access to subscription websites.

Users who click on more than five articles in a day may be routed to payment or registration pages.

‘Gaining’ revenue

“Previously, each click from a user would be treated as free,” Google senior business product manager Josh Cohen said in a blog post.

“Now, we’ve updated the programme so that publishers can limit users to no more than five pages per day without registering or subscribing.”

Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch had earlier accused firms such as Google of profiting from journalism by generating advertising revenue by linking readers to newspaper articles.

Some readers have discovered they can avoid paying subscription fees to newspaper websites by calling up their pages via Google.

BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones said the concession was relatively minor but Mr Murdoch might see it as vindication of his decision to take on Google.

Google users may start seeing registration pages appear when they click for a sixth time on any given day at websites of publishers using the program, according to Mr Cohen.

‘Spam gang’ leader faces $15m fine

December 3rd, 2009
Generic spam message

The mastermind of a “vast international spam network” has been ordered to pay a fine of $15m (£10m) by US courts.

New Zealander Lance Atkinson and his US accomplice Jody Smith sent billions of illegal e-mails marketing prescription drugs and and weight-loss pills.

US authorities claimed the gang – known as HerbalKing – “deceptively marketed” the drugs on the internet.

Three companies affiliated with Mr Smith are liable for a further $4m, following the case.

The fines follow a lengthy investigation by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) into the gang, which used a global network of hijacked computers – known as a Botnet – to send out the junk messages.

The e-mails marketed various pills which the gang claimed were generic versions of US-branded and licensed medications.

However, they were actually imported from India, unapproved and “potentially unsafe” according to authorities.

‘Worst gang’

The FTC also said that Mr Atkinson and Mr Smith failed to protect the security of customer payments by claiming that they were using SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encryption technology to process payments even though they were not.

Following the ruling, all the assets of Jody Smith have been frozen and he faces a jail sentence up to five years after pleading guilty to “conspiracy to traffic counterfeit goods”. He will be sentenced in the US in December.

Mr Atkinson will only have to pay his part of the $15.15m fine if he enters the US. He is yet to pay a fine of $2.2 million he was given in 2005 for similar offences.

Richard Cox of anti-spam body Spamhaus said that he hoped the latest ruling would “get the message across that spam won’t be tolerated”.

However, he expressed frustration that the FTC had had to prosecute the gang under rules designed to tackle fake-pharmaceuticals.

“They would have got same judgement if they had been selling on the streets of New York,” he told BBC News.

Many countries still have inadequate laws to deal with spammers and the misuse of computers, he said.

Australia and New Zealand had recently tightened up their rules, he added.

This had led to a separate ruling against Mr Atkinson’s brother, Shane, who was earlier fined by a New Zealand court for sending spam. He has been ordered to pay $112,000 (£67,500).

The HerbalKing gang were named the “number one worst spam gang on the internet” for 2007 and 2008 by Spamhaus.

They are thought to have been active since at least 2005 and at their peak may have accounted for one third of the world’s junk e-mail.

Spamhaus estimates that up to 94% of all e-mail is spam.

Town appoints resident ‘tweeter’

December 3rd, 2009
Twitter website screen shot

A teacher has been appointed as the “tweeter in residence” for a County Durham town.

Mike McTimoney will use the networking website Twitter – updates on which are called tweets – to keep people abreast of news and events in Darlington.

The Darlington Partnership, which is behind the scheme, said the teacher’s messages would also be displayed on its Dx2 website.

He is being paid £140-a-year to tweet under the name TheDarloBard.

Mr McTimoney, of the town’s Queen Elizabeth sixth form college, said: “I am really into social media and all the fantastic opportunities the internet offers, so I thought this would be an interesting thing to do.”

Tories attack leaked five-year IT plan as ‘unambitious’

December 3rd, 2009
Man uses computer

A leaked document setting out the government’s IT strategy for the next five years is “complacent” and lacks ambition, the Conservatives say.

The paper details plans to save billions through greater use of social media and innovations such as an online “apps store” for civil servants.

It also predicts that by 2020 new software will allow computers to do tasks currently carried out by humans.

The government said it did not comment on leaked documents.

The Conservatives, who obtained the document, have set up a website, makeitbetter.org.uk, where it is published in full, with a facility for people to comment on it.

The document, entitled Government ICT Strategy: New World, New Challenges, sets out how the government plans to harness computer technology to save cash and improve public services up to 2015.

‘Cloud infrastructure’

It includes plans for an online government applications store – to enable civil servants to share and re-use computer programmes.

At the moment, there are more than 10,000 unique applications – computer programmes designed to carry out specific tasks – being used by public sector organisations, the report says.

The new applications store will be launched early next year. The report says it will save an estimated £500m a year by 2020.

But the bulk of the planned savings – £1.6bn – will come from the development of a government “cloud infrastructure” – a way of pooling computer systems which is meant to cut costs and energy consumption.

The government plans to launch a prototype of what it calls the “G cloud” early next year, with a standard model to be introduced by the end of 2010.

The document also outlines plans to develop 10 to 12 strategic data centres, which it says will bring together “existing public data centres into highly secure and resilient facilities”, which it claims will save £300m a year and cut power consumption by 75%.

‘Systemic failures’

It also proposes a common desktop strategy, which will involve 80% of government PCs using a shared utility service by 2015.

Looking further ahead, the report predicts the use of semantic technologies, which potentially allow computers to handle tasks that currently require human intervention.

It also highlights the development of human/computer interaction in hospitals – removing the need to use a keyboard or pointing device.

Government sources told the Financial Times the leaked document was an “early draft” which had not been signed off by ministers.

Ministers are expected to publish details of their IT strategy ahead of next week’s pre-Budget report.

The Cabinet Office said it did not comment on leaked documents, but a spokesman said: “As part of our commitment to making government more efficient and effective we’re looking at ways of reducing our ICT spend without affecting the excellent digital services we now offer.

“We will shortly be publishing a new public sector ICT strategy that, as called for by the Operational Efficiency Programme, will deliver savings of more than £3bn a year.”

The Conservatives say the government plans lack ambition, compared with their own plans to break up large IT projects into smaller components and encourage more use of “open source” software, ending the government’s reliance on a handful of suppliers.

On the makeitbetter site, the party claims the government has spent £100bn on IT since 1997, but it quotes a recent study which says 70% of recent projects have failed.

It says the report fails in its aim of showing how the government can get to grips with the “systemic failures in public sector IT procurement over the past decade,” such as the “calamitous” NHS database.

It adds: “Not only is it possible to develop a more ambitious, cost-effective and transformative vision for government IT, but we believe that it’s also possible to pursue a completely different approach to making policy.

“Rather than the traditional closed approach to policy making that this report typifies, we want to throw open the process and allow people to contribute their ideas on how policy should be designed.

“In the post-bureaucratic age, we believe that crowdsourcing and collaborative design can help us to make better policies – and we think this approach should begin now.”

India blocks millions of mobiles for security reasons

December 3rd, 2009
India mobile user

Millions of Indian mobile phones with no valid unique identification code have been blocked for security reasons.

The International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number is a 15-digit code which appears on the operator’s network whenever a call is made.

The absence of this number makes it impossible to trace either the caller or the phone or to access call details.

Indian intelligence agencies say phones without the code have been used in attacks by militant groups.

Mobile phones without the code were blocked at midnight – operators were asked to bar calls to them “in the wake of increased threat perception from militants”.

Cheap

It is estimated that India has more than 25 million phones without codes.

Phones with no codes or invalid numbers are mostly cheap, unbranded phones.

Millions are manufactured in India or imported, mostly from China.

Correspondents say these phones are popular because they are usually much cheaper than the branded ones.

Many phone subscribers said they were being wrongly penalised because they were not aware that every handset had to have a code.

The Cellular Operators’ Association of India has asked the government to extend the deadline for blocking the numbers so that it can install identity numbers on unbranded devices.

According to estimates by the Indian Cellular Association, unbranded phones account for nearly 30% of all sales in India.

India has the fastest growing mobile phone market in the world, with more than 488 million subscribers.

Every month millions of new subscribers are added to the list.