The Zombie Network: Beware 'Free Public WiFi' hide captionFree Public WiFi — too good to be true. iStockphoto.com It's in your airports, your coffee shops and your libraries: "Free Public WiFi." Despite its enticing name, the network, available in thousands of locations across the United States, does not actually provide access to the Internet. But like a virus, it has spread — and may even be lurking on your computer right now. Wireless security expert Joshua Wright first noticed it about four years ago at an airport. "I went to connect to an available wireless network and I saw this option, Free Public WiFi," he remembers. Free Public WiFi isn't set up like most wireless networks people use to get to the Internet. Though it doesn't actually provide Internet access, the network has spread across the country thanks to an old Windows XP bug. How It Works Not a lot of people, judging from the spread of Free Public WiFi. Microsoft is aware of the issue and says it has eliminated the network in more recent versions of Windows.
CarWoo Promises Car Buyers Hassle-Free Quotes Online, Raises $4.2 Million Wade Roush10/13/10 The Internet was supposed to make car shopping easier, Tommy McClung is explaining. Back in the 1990s, sites like Vehix.com, Cars.com, and Autotrader.com promised a future where you wouldn’t have to haggle with a salesman, and where you didn’t have to drive from dealer to dealer just to see who could offer the best price or who had the model and color you wanted in stock. Well, it didn’t quite work out that way. Naturally, McClung has a solution. McClung says CarWoo is great for consumers because it finally makes buying a car online faster, easier, and cheaper than doing it in person (the average CarWoo user ends up paying $3,000 below the sticker price, the company claims). “What the $19 plan and the $49 plan do for the dealer is eliminate the tire-kickers, the people who aren’t ready to buy yet,” says McClung, who’s CEO of CarWoo. The prospect of free bidding opportunities has attracted 3,200 dealers nationwide to the Burlingame, CA-based startup’s network.
Web Upgrade HTML 5 May Weaken Privacy “That wouldn’t have been difficult,” he said. Instead, he has made the code open to anyone who wants to examine it and says the cookie should be used “as a litmus test for preventing tracking.” A recent spate of class-action lawsuits have accused large media companies like the Fox Entertainment Group and , and technology companies like Clearspring Technologies and Quantcast, of violating users’ privacy by tracking their online activities even after they took steps to prevent that. Most people control their online privacy by adjusting settings in today’s most common Web browsers, which include Internet Explorer by , Firefox by , Safari by and Opera, which is used mostly in Europe and Asia and on mobile devices. Each browser has different privacy settings, but not all of them have obvious settings for removing data created by the new Web language. “Now there are so many sources of data storage, it’s very hard for browser manufacturers to handle that,” Mr. Mr. Mr.
Bert P. Krages Attorney at Law Photographer's Rights Page The Photographer’s Right The Photographer’s Right is a PDF document that is loosely based on the ACLU Bust Card. You may make copies and carry them in your wallet, pocket, or camera bag to give you quick access to information about your rights and obligations concerning confrontations over photography. You may distribute the guide to others, provided that such distribution is not done for commercial gain and credit is given to the author. Photographers are stopped, harassed, and even intimidated into handing over their personal property simply because they are taking photographs of subjects that make other people uncomfortable. Ironically, unrestricted photography by private citizens has played an integral role in protecting the freedom, security, and wellbeing of all Americans. As the document states, there are not very many legal restrictions on what can be photographed when in public view. Photography Law in Other Countries
More Facebook Privacy Woes: Gay Users Outed To Advertisers | Epicenter Facebook’s privacy problems continue this week after researchers discovered that Facebook may inadvertently be outing gay users to its advertisers. Saikat Guha from Microsoft and Bin Cheng and Paul Francis from the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems set out to study the challenges in targeted advertising systems (PDF) online, but found that advertisers can ferret out gay users from straight users just by looking at who’s clicking — even when that sexual preference is hidden. The team set up profiles for straight men, straight women, a gay man, and a lesbian to see how the ads differed between the different types of users. This in itself isn’t a huge cause for concern, but the researchers were disturbed by the fact that the text for the ads were sexual-preference-neutral, even though they were measurably different. Further reading: via Christopher Soghoian (paranoia.dubfire.net)
What Social Media Can Teach Us About SEO Mark Jackson | October 13, 2010 | 2 Comments inShare50 Developing compelling, unique, and resourceful content will help you build a base to a successful website that might just "naturally" earn you some links. If you participate in social media activities, I'm sure that I can get you to agree to one thing…the idea here is to "give" before you can expect to "get." What I mean by that is that to be successful with social media marketing, and building up your following (or whatever your end goal may be), you must provide great content to achieve anything. So many companies and individuals still haven't seemed to grasp that basic concept. To gain a following, you would either have to commit yourself to pushing out great content, or otherwise hire (pay for) someone to do this for you. A similar issue exists with many websites which are trying to earn "authority" in the search engines. Case in Point I currently work with a very large website that probably has six million. Blogging Summary
Flash Cookies and Privacy II: Now with HTML5 and ETag Respawning In 2009, my team at Berkeley showed that many top websites were tracking users through Flash cookies, and that some advertising networks were "respawning" or reinstantiating HTTP cookies that the user deleted. Over the past two years, a chorus of advocates, regulators, and businesses condemned the practice of using Flash for unique user tracking. This chorus was heard by many. However, we found two sites respawning HTTP cookies with Flash. Hulu is also worth mentioning because it was using a different, more persistent tracking technique to respawn user ids as well. Since the method sets first-party cookies, other sites that use the KISSmetrics service could match up their customers id numbers and share information. This is why all those "trust" arguments about privacy fall apart--even if you choose to not trust a given site and only provide minimal or even fake information, that site could go elsewhere and buy the information you were unwilling to share.
Unzipping genomes ruminations on science, data and computing by Deepak Singh Information, designers, creators and programmers » I’ve been meaning to write about all the good writing at Genomes Unzipped for a long long time, but never got around to it. Probably a good thing, cause today the project announced that all the bloggers on the site are literally unzipping their genomes . and all the code will go up into a github repo (I wonder if this was the reason for some of the questions Jan and Luke had been asking me a while ago) Perhaps some will dismiss this as a bunch of geeks being geeks, but it’s something far more. As always, Daniel and co have given this a lot of thought and list their reasons for bringing this project to life. My 2011 goal is to get my own 23andme data (it’s about time I pulled the trigger) available via Genomes Unzipped. Personal genetics as a vehicle for increased awarenes All opinions on this blog are my own and do not reflect those of my employers, past or present
Luini’s Famous Panzerotto in Milan: A Quick, Cheap & Amazing Lunch by Jessica | April 28th, 2008 This article was written and submitted for publication on the Italy Logue by Chris Bright. When visiting the historic center of Milan, grabbing a quick lunch can be a challenge since the options are limited to fast-food chain restaurants [editor's note: which you should stay away from!] or more pricey sit-down places. However, the perfect antidote for these uninspiring choices is to make your way to Panificio Luini near Milan’s Duomo. A panzerotto is a unique and fulfilling treat – it is the golden lovechild that would result from the loving union of an old-fashioned raised doughnut and a traditional Neapolitan pizza. Although it has been embraced by locals, the panzerotto is an immigrant to Milan from the southern Italian region of Puglia. The warm, sweet dough with a few simple ingredients is a deal, as well as a meal. On the other hand, you may want to save room for some of the sweet variants, called panzerotto dolce. View Larger Map
Replies and Retweets on Twitter, a Report by Sysomos When a tweet generates a reply (aka @) or a retweet (aka RT), it suggests the tweet has resonated enough with someone that it sparks a conversation or encourages someone to share it with their followers. Given the power of the reply and the RT, we thought it would be interesting to explore how many tweets actually generate a reaction. We also wanted to collect more insight into the characteristics of these reactions. For example, what is the timeframe for a retweet to happen? To carry out the research, Sysomos examined 1.2 billion tweets posted in the last two months. 29% of Tweets Generate a Reaction We found that 29% of all tweets produced a reaction - a reply or a retweet. Most Retweets Happen in the First Hour We discovered that 92.4% of all retweets happen within the first hour of the original tweet being published, while an additional 1.63% of retweets happen in the second hour, and 0.94% take place in the third hour. Most Replies Also Happen in the First Hour Appendix: Additional Data
How to Buy a Round-the-World Plane Ticket (That Kicks Ass) (Photo: Norman B. Leventhal Map Center) Chris Guillebeau travels the world and writes for a small army of remarkable people at The Art of Non-Conformity blog. Enter Chris… To outsiders, buying a Round-the-World plane ticket is a mysterious process. Over the past three years I’ve spent at least 60 hours, probably more by now, learning the ins and outs of Round-the-World travel. The Time Investment Planning and shopping for a Round-the-World (RTW) ticket is a labor-intensive process. Also, before you can actually buy a Round-the-World ticket, you need to be willing to do all these things: Those are the minimum “time costs” for getting a Round-the-World trip set up well. Good Reasons to Use Round-the-World Tickets If you’re willing and able to invest your time, the benefits you’ll receive from using these kinds of tickets are significant. – Tremendous Value. What to Do First Star Alliance Mileage CalculatorOneWorld Timetable and Itinerary Planner Star Alliance versus OneWorld Geographic Advantage
How to Take Better Pictures with Your Smartphone's Camera Bah. My iPhone 4 takes noticeably better pictures than my Nikon Coolpix L15 (or whatever it was) point and shoot - or at least it would, if my girlfriend hadn't dropped and broken the latter while using it in Madrid a couple weeks back. But seriously, even WITH masking tape over the flash - MASKING TAPE! - the flash would still COMPLETELY over saturate any picture with it left on. It was the worst flash on any camera I've ever seen - was it meant for trying to photograph the inside of a black hole, or what? For all the problems with the iPhone 4 (and by God, does it ever have problems - why can you turn shuffle on via voice commands when you can't turn it off again without unlocking the damn phone?!) @ryoshi: Yeah, I didn't have an iPhone 4 to test out for this (just my friend's 3GS), but I had a feeling none of this would really apply to the 4 because the camera is so freakin good. SExpand @ryoshi: Seriously and the focus is amazing... @Norbs: Holy mother of crap.
ImmunoGen's TDM-1 Looks Strong at ESMO Updates with recent stock price. BOSTON (TheStreet) -- The "armed antibody" drug TDM-1 under development by Roche and ImmunoGen (IMGN_) posted a higher response rate and lower toxicity than the blockbuster breast cancer drug Herceptin, according to results from the first head-to-head study of the two drugs to be presented at a European cancer meeting Monday. The data from the TDM-1 phase II study in front-line breast cancer patients are early and very preliminary, but also encouraging because they suggest TDM-1 may be the next-generation successor to Herceptin that Roche has been looking for. ImmunoGen, as Roche's partner on TDM-1, stands to profit as well if the drug is approved and successful. In the phase II study, 137 women with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer with no prior chemotherapy were randomly assigned to treatment with TDM-1 or Herceptin plus the chemotherapy drug Taxotere. More striking was the difference in the rate of adverse events between the two drugs.