Man arrested after Twitter joke about bombing airport under Terr. By Chris Brooke Updated: 01:01 GMT, 19 January 2010 A man was arrested and held in police cells for seven hours as a suspected terrorist after making a joke on Twitter about blowing his local airport sky high. Paul Chambers, 26, tapped out the comment to amuse friends because his planned trip to Ireland was under threat due to heavy snow at Robin Hood Airport in Doncaster.
‘C**p! Robin Hood Airport is closed,’ he tweeted. ‘You’ve got a week and a bit to get your s*** together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!’. Enlarge Paul Chambers made the comment on January 6 after snowfall threatened to delay his plans to travel to Ireland 'Bomb hoax': Paul had written he was going to blow the aiport 'sky-high' But a week later, police arrived at the finance superviser’s office to arrest him under the Terrorism Act – after an apparent anonymous tip-off. ‘My first thought upon hearing it was the police was that perhaps a member of my family had been in an accident,’ he said. Anxious Yahoo BOSS Developers To Speak With DOJ About Microsoft.
In July 2008, Yahoo announced a radical new product called BOSS, or “Build Your Own Search Service” that lets developers tap into Yahoo’s core search index with an unprecedented amount of flexibility. Now, in light of the Microsoft/Yahoo search deal that was announced last summer, the future of BOSS is uncertain. That’s bad news for the many developers who have built projects on the BOSS APIs, some of whom are building businesses off of the service. Now, after being met with months of silence and uncertainty, some BOSS developers are taking action: they’ve scheduled a conference call with the Department of Justice to discuss their concerns. Update:: A Yahoo team member has posted that BOSS will live on.
It’s understandable why the developers are agitated. A developer identifying himself as “Phil” on the BOSS Yahoo Group sent a letter to the DOJ outlining his concerns. We’ve reprinted Phil’s letter to the DOJ, which outlines the developers’ concerns, below: Google Applies to Become Power Marketer - Bits Blog - NYTimes.co. Google is stepping up its forays into the energy world. The Internet search company, which consumes vast amounts of electricity to run the computers in its data centers, created a subsidiary last month called Google Energy. It then applied for approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to be allowed to buy and sell power much like utilities do. Google said it did not have specific plans to become an energy trader and that its primary goal was to gain flexibility for buying more renewable energy for its power-hungry data centers.
“We want to have the ability to procure renewable energy to offset power usage of our operations,” said Niki Fenwick, a Google spokeswoman. Ms. Fenwick said that having access to more renewable energy could help the company fulfill its goal to become “carbon neutral.” This is hardly Google’s first foray into the energy world. Let’s Just Skip To The Super-Duper-Phone. Google introduced the term “superphone” to the world yesterday when they unveiled the Nexus One Google phone. Right from the beginning of the hour+ presentation, Google execs were referring to the Nexus One as the first “superphone,” a term not previously widely used (of note – GigaOm has a reference to the term last summer).
So what’s a superphone? It’s a marketing term and nothing else. Google VP and Android founder Andy Rubin talked about the term at length in the Q&A session, and we’ve grabbed the relevant parts of the video from the ustream archive and embed it below. Here’s part of the transcript (bolding added): But what Google is really doing is making a not-so-subtle jab at the iPhone and other competitors. The Nexus One, he implies, is as powerful as laptops were four years ago. It all makes my head spin. Mozilla Guy to Users: Leave Google, Switch to Bing. With Nexus One And Quattro, The Knives Are Out Between Apple And. Two days ago, the knives came out in full view between Apple and Google. On the same day that Google launched its latest Nexus One Android phone, Apple announced the $275 million acquisition of Quattro Wireless, a mobile advertising platform.
It was as if Steve Jobs was sending Eric Schmidt a very public message: You mess with my business, and I’ll mess with yours. With the Nexus One, Google basically designed its own phone and is selling it directly to consumers through a new Google online phone store. It is getting into Apple’s territory: making devices and merchandising them. Apple and Google have been warily circling each other since last summer when Eric Schmidt left Apple’s board of directors because Google was becoming too much of a direct competitor. Asked to choose between furthering Apple’s mobile agenda or Google’s, Schmidt must choose Google’s.
This week that conflict came to a head. But Apple is also afraid of Google’s blade coming dangerously close to its own heart. Digital music startup Jamendo runs out of steam, mulls sale. [Luxembourg] Jamendo, a community of free, legal music published with Creative Commons licenses, is actively looking to sell to or merge with another company, TechCrunch Europe has learned. Jamendo CEO Laurent Kratz has confirmed rumors that had made their way to Twitter earlier this week. The reason is fairly simple: Jamendo is running out of money after failing to raise a follow-up round of venture capital. The startup was looking to raise 1.5 million euros (roughly $2.15 million) after securing a ‘significant amount’ in Series A funding back in June 2007. The company failed to come to an agreement with Mangrove Capital Partners, its original backer, and a potential new investor.
In March 2009, the startup debuted an online shop where music licenses for multimedia projects (think film, tv shows, documentary, DVD, promotional video, websites, etc.) and background music for shops, restaurants, hotels and so on could be purchased. Are any of these the Web's next big thing? Microsoft China rips off Asia’s No. 1 Microblogging Service « Pl. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but blatant theft of code, design, and UI elements is just not cool, especially when the infringing party is the biggest software company in the world. Yes, we’re talking about Microsoft. Blerg. Here’s the short of what we think has happened: Microsoft China officially launched its own microblogging service, MSN Juku/Hompy/Mclub, some time in November, 2009.The service’s design and UI is by and large an EXACT copy of Plurk’s innovative left-right timeline scrolling navigation system.
(see screen captures below)Some 80% of the client and product codebase appears to be stolen directly from Plurk! (see evidence below).Plurk was never approached nor collaborated in any capacity with MS on this service.As a young startup, we’re stunned, shocked, and unsure what to do next and need your support and suggestions. A little overly inspired, wouldn’t you agree? Let me explain. So what next? Bold new e-readers grab attention at CES. The Skiff Reader has a flexible sheet of steel foil that makes it durable. A host of pioneering electronic readers are being introduced this week at CESThe Plastic Logic Que and Skiff Reader are skinny, with lightweight plastic screensEnTourage's eDGe device is an e-reader and a netbook in oneFree software called Blio turns almost any laptop or netbook into an image-rich e-reader Las Vegas, Nevada (CNN) -- The first generation of electronic readers had little more than black-and-white text.
The second generation had black-and-white text, simple graphics and Web connectivity. Glimpses of the third generation are on display this week at the International Consumer Electronics Show, where manufacturers are previewing e-readers with color screens, interactive graphics and magazine-style layouts. You won't be able to get your hands on them for a month or two, at least. "We're not really designed to save the newspaper industry. How will you be reading your portable content a year from now?
Blio. Google In Discussions To Acquire Yelp For A Half Billion Dollars. Jive Software Acquires Social Media Monitoring Startup Filtrbox. Businesses and brands have already caught onto the immense power of the social stream that runs through Twitter and Facebook to track the pulse of conversations around consumers. Both tech giants and startups are competing to provide enterprise-friendly, social platforms to businesses that combine both collaboration and social media monitoring. Socialtext and CubeTree offer compelling social collaboration offerings to the enterprise. And Salesforce.com recently entered the market with a new, more social version of its Service Cloud, and also debuted its take on a social platform for the enterprise, Chatter.
Now Jive Software, a Sequoia-backed company that develops an all-in-one social enterprise software is acquiring Filtrbox, a startup that provides tools for social media monitoring, to boost its offering. You may remember Filtrbox as a Class of 2007 alum of incubator TechStars. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Scott Baio Receives Death Threats Over Michelle Obama 'Joke'
Google Chrome OS Is Here! Well, Kinda. Later today at CES, Glide will be debuting its extension for the Google Chrome browser, which it claims turns the software program into a full operating system. The extension, which is also available for Internet Explorer 7+ and Firefox 3.0+, can already be downloaded here. What Glide does is extend the most popular Internet browsers with a suite of applications that can interact with multiple remote Windows, Mac and Linux desktops and mobile platforms.
These tools include a rights-based file management system, a word processor, presentation app, photo editor, e-mail client, drawing tool, contact manager, calendar and more. When the extension is installed, you’ll see a bunch of new options upon clicking the new Glide icon in the toolbar, but you’ll need to register first. The Glide extension for Google Chrome also equips the browser with needed file synchronization and automated file format translation features.
BREAKING: Twitter Buys Mixer Labs to Boost Location Features. Twitter co-founder and CEO Evan Williams has just announced on the company's blog that they have acquired Mixer Labs, creator of the GeoAPI. Mixer Labs is primarily a service for helping developers build geolocation apps. According to the announcement, Twitter has made the Mixer Labs team part of the company and is moving them to Twitter's headquarters in San Francisco. The team will work on Twitter's recently added geolocation features and APIs.Mixer Labs has a variety of location-based products that are likely attractive to Twitter. They include Reverse Geodecoder (find a city or location with latitudes and longitudes), Places Finder (complex, local geo-queries) and Media Layers (players other media, like Twitter, into a geo-specific context). A lot of the reasons for this acquisition have to do with the emergence of geolocation apps such as Foursquare and Gowalla, which have recently started to gain significant traction.
The details are just emerging. Twitter Hacked, Defaced By “Iranian Cyber Army” We’ve received multiple tips right around 10 pm that Twitter was hacked and defaced with the message below. The site was offline for a while. We’re looking into this and awaiting on a response from Twitter. The message read: Iranian Cyber Army iRANiAN.CYBER.ARMY@GMAIL.COM U.S.A. Think They Controlling And Managing Internet By Their Access, But THey Don’t, We Control And Manage Internet By Our Power, So Do Not Try To Stimulation Iranian Peoples To….
NOW WHICH COUNTRY IN EMBARGO LIST? Update: – We have just found out that the same defacement is appearing at at least one other site, mawjcamp.org. Twitter does not have the best record with security issues. We do not know a lot about the group claiming responsibility for the attack as we haven’t heard their name before and they do not show up in any defacement mirrors or security sites. Update 2.: Twitter.com is down, status.twitter.com is down. Update 4.: There is a history between Iran and Twitter. Update 6.: Twitter.com is back. As will we. The Anatomy of The Twitter Attack: Part II. During and after Twittergate, when a hacker broke into a few hosted email accounts and obtained a number of internal documents, I had an opportunity to spend hours speaking to the actual attacker and document how he carried out the attack.
The article was called The Anatomy of The Twitter Attack, and today we unfortunately find ourselves with a sequel to that post as the Twitter DNS servers were compromised last night and the site was redirected to a defacement page. Unlike last time, on this occasion I have not had the benefit of speaking directly to the attackers, but have spoken to a number of people within the underground security scene familiar with matters and have constructed other parts of the story from public sources.
The incident last night was perpetrated by a group called the Iranian Cyber Army – and we have been told that this group is working with the Iranian government. The DNS records for Twitter are hosted at Dyn. Amazon called me today to discuss my $2.9billion purchase : redd. Happy Birthday, Chris Messina, And Enjoy Advocating The Open Web. It’s no secret that Google is a big proponent of open source technology and the open web (to a degree), and it’s no secret that Chris Messina is too, either.
It’s thus not terribly surprising that the man is joining the Mountain View Internet giant as its new Open Web Advocate. Messina announced the news on his blog, and referred to his move as a very happy birthday present (he’s turning 29 today). Although involved in a slew of projects (Diso, Citizen Agency, Activity Streams, and others) and his capacities as board member of the OpenID and Open Web Foundations (which he’ll continue to be), Messina previously worked part-time for Vidoop, but was laid off around May 2009.
In the past, he’s also worked for (other) browser software makers such as Mozilla and Flock. In his blog post, Messina says he’s been mulling over such a move for some time, and that multiple options were on the table. Happy birthday, Chris. (Original image via Flickr / Lithfin) YouTube Suspends Kid's Account, Gets Porn Fest In Protest - All. Breaking: Google And On2 Technologies Revise Merger Agreement. In August 2009, Google announced that it had agreed to acquire On2 Technologies for – then – roughly $106 million. At the end of last year, On2 – not for the first time – postponed a meeting at which it had hoped to get shareholder approval for its purchase by Google.
A new shareholder meeting is scheduled for February 2010, but this morning Google and On2 released a joint press release announcing a deal to amend the merger agreement. Under the revised terms, each outstanding share of On2 common stock will receive 0.0010 of a share of Google Class A Common Stock for each share of On2 common stock, as previously announced, plus an additional $0.15 per share in cash. This would increase the deal size to roughly $133 million, or about $26.5 million on top of the previous offer. Google and On2 had initially said they expected the merger to be completed by the fourth quarter of 2009.
If the deal is not completed by March 31 2010, either party can terminate it. Google says this offer is final. Jive Software Acquires Social Media Monitoring Startup Filtrbox. The Hacker Fair: Where Job-Hunting Developers Get A Chance Show. Yahoo BOSS To Survive Microsoft Deal In Some Form; Details Still. A new approach to China. Googles Threat Ricocheted Around World, but Skipped Over China. Gathering Clouds. Everything You Want To Know About The Most Secretive Startup In. First YouTube, Now Vimeo: How HTML5 Could Finally Kill Flash Vid. Massive Footprint that Can Kill All Your Backlinks | Free Traffi. Internet companies voice alarm over Italian law. 18 most anticipated tech products of 2010 | Fully Equipped - CNE. Killer way to slay the Google beast!