Facebook Looks beyond IPO to Global Vision
Author: John Duckgeischel
on February 2, 2012 - 11:47 PM
Facebook recent filing for its
IPO provides insights into where the company sees itself going in the future. “There are more than 2 billion global
Internet users, according to an industry source, and we aim to connect all of
them," the company stated in its SEC S-1 filing with the SEC. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg expects Facebook
to bring historical value to governments, the Global economy as well as
everyone connected to the Internet. "At
Facebook, we're inspired by technologies that have revolutionized how people
spread and consume information," Zuckerberg wrote in a letter in the
company IPO filing. "We often talk about inventions like the printing
press and the television -- by simply making communication more efficient, they
led to a complete transformation of many important parts of society.... Today,
our society has reached another tipping point."
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New Legislation: Disclosure of American Firms Offshore Hiring
Author: John Duckgeischel
on February 2, 2012 - 12:03 AM
Newly introduced legislation
in the U.S. House of representatives would require that American public
companies share information on the number of workers they employee both overseas
and in the United States. U.S. Rep Gary
Peters (D-Mich.) sponsored the bill as a way to discourage offshore hiring. "We need to do
everything in our power to fight the outsourcing of American jobs and this bill
gives consumers and investors the information they need to make an informed
choice," wrote Peters in a statement.
The bill has bi-partisan support and in addition to Peters, it is
co-sponsored by Rep. Jerry McNerney (R-Calif.) and Tim Bishop (D-NY). Up
until last year IBM, reported breakouts on U.S. and overseas employment
numbers, however it now only reports total worldwide numbers. In the Microsoft’s last annual report filed
on June 30, 2011, it stated that it had 54,000 employees in the U.S. and 36,000
overseas. For the year covered in the
report, Microsoft domestic employment was flat, while overseas employment grew
by about 1000 workers.
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Google Explains New Privacy Policies
Author: John Duckgeischel
on January 31, 2012 - 9:58 PM
In response to Congressional
concerns about its March 1st privacy policy consolidation plans,
Google sent a 13 page letter addressed to eight members of the House of Representatives. A blog posted by Pablo Chavez, Google’s
director of public policy, describes the letter as a clarification of the
objectives of consolidating 60 separate policies into a singular policy. Although gather user supplier information for
one service in conjunction with another service may seem somewhat benign,
concerns are being expressed loudly as Google is currently under plenty of
government scrutiny. Government
officials in both Europe and the U.S. are examining the possibility that Google
search is being run as an anti-competitive business.
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Email and Financial Companies Take on Phishing Threat
Author: John Duckgeischel
on January 31, 2012 - 8:19 AM
The threat of phishing emails,
designed to trick recipients into disclosing their ID and passwords, is being
tackled by some of the industry’s
largest email service providers along with leading financial companies. Yahoo, AOL, Google and Microsoft have joined
together to put new levels of protection against phishing emails. The phishing scheme typically involves
counterfeit emails which impersonate legitimate well known companies such as a
banks or email providers to entice users to provide sensitive information or to
click on malicious links. After a two
year testing period, DMARC ((Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting
& Conformance) initiative is being put forth to set arbitrary policy guidelines
that helps companies distinguish between real and counterfeit emails. Joining the effort are eBay’s PayPal,
Fidelity Investments and Bank of America to help provide a more secure email
environment for their companies.
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Twitter To Censor Content in Select Countries
Author: John Duckgeischel
on January 26, 2012 - 8:03 PM
On Thursday Twitter announced
plans to begin putting restrictions on Tweets in certain countries. Previously if the company removed a Tweet, it
had to be removed on a global basis unlike today where it can block a tweet in
one country and allow it to be seen elsewhere. The company mentioned “pro-Nazi content” in
Germany and France as an example of restrictions it may conform with. "As we continue to grow internationally,
we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom
of expression," Twitter wrote in a statement. "Starting today, we give ourselves the
ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country while
keeping it available in the rest of the world," the company blogged.
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Symantec: For now disable pcAnywhere
Author: John Duckgeischel
on January 26, 2012 - 8:02 AM
Symantec says that the pcAnywhere product is
vulnerable to the Anonymous hackers group and is taking the unprecedented step
of recommending that product owners unplug or disable the software
while security bug fixes are developed. The pcAnywhere software is popular
with users that want remote access to their desktop computer while they are on
the road. "This is the first time
I have seen a company of Symantec's scale tell their customers to stop using a
shipping product, especially one that many users depend on for remote
access," stated HD Moore, chief technology officer of Rapid7. It seems that source code leaks are a major
source of concern.
First there was a pcAnywhere source code leak in 2006 and then last week
Symantec admitted that its network experienced a breach in 2006 and that a
segment of its source code had been accessed.
"It's certainly a new precedent for a security breach,"
commented Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Security.
"Talk about dirty laundry getting aired."
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Google Explores Ways to a Faster Internet
Author: John Duckgeischel
on January 24, 2012 - 10:19 PM
Google’s
engineers and technicians believe that by transforming the Web TCP
(Transmission Control Protocol) transport layer as well trying new ways to
minimize latency there can be real gains in improving the speed of the
Internet. In fact Google has
established a “Make the Web Faster” team which following through on
recommendations to maximize TCP speed through various means including
optimizing the initial congestion window.
In a team blog, Yuchung Cheng called TCP "the workhorse of the
Internet," because it delivers Web
content and is designed to work of a wide range of network types. Currently Web browsers often open parallel
TCP connections prior to making their requests, which solves the TCP connection
limitation problem, but creates challenges because of high latency and its lack
of scalability. "Our research
shows that the key to reducing latency is saving round trips. We're
experimenting with several improvements to TCP", Cheng said.
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2012 Brings 1st Super Bowl Command Center
Author: John Duckgeischel
on January 24, 2012 - 5:21 AM
As this year’s host city to
the Super Bowl, Indianapolis has come up with a high tech solution to managing
the hectic high profile sporting event with the first-ever social media command
center. It will dedicate 2,800 square
feet of space downtown to an extensive team of analysts, strategists and tech
savvy assistants that monitor online conversations held on Facebook, Twitter
and other social media platforms. The
social media command center team is slated to open Monday January 30th
to tweet or post information related to parking, events and area attractions
and provide information should a disaster occur. The command center will operate 15 hours a
day through Super Bowl XLVI on February 5th and be manned by more
than 20 people who will use of 150 square feet of networked screen space to
keep a watchful eye. The Super Bowl’s host committee has selected the Raidious digital
marketing agency to manage communications at the command center.
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