Has Microsoft bet on wrong horse again?….. Again!
While companies like Google and Mozilla (Firefox) pays rewards of up to $ 2000 for the discovery of critical security holes in its browser, Microsoft has gone a different way.
In a blog post on their MSRC (Microsoft Security Response Center) can you read that they have considered this but feel it is better to reward the security industry, and this is done by sponsoring security conference Black Hat.
The question is whether this is the right decision, given that Internet Explorer is not at all have the same security as Firefox and Chrome, according to all kind of different tests.
Bing is growing
After several months of stagnation, the Microsoft search-engine Bing has grown marginally at the expense of Google. Microsoft Bing is still well behind Google in terms of market share and is currently the third biggest search engine after Google and Yahoo. In June, however, Bing grew more than Google in the U.S. market.
Microsoft Bing, who celebrated the first anniversary of the end of May this year saw an increase from May to June from 12.1 percent to 12.7 percent market share. During the same period, Google lost its foothold slightly from 63.7 percent to 62.6 percent of the market. Like Microsoft Bing, was Yahoo also increased slightly in June and went from 18.3 percent to 18.9 percent of the market compared with May. According to research firm ComScore U.S. Internet users did 16.4 billion Internet searches in June, an increase of three percent the previous month.
Microsoft Bing was launched in late May last year and is a revised version of Microsoft’s previous search engine, Live Search. Microsoft increased its market share slightly after the launch of Bing, but has since not been a major threat to Google or Yahoo. According to industry analysts, so most users choose Google as a result of habit, and it takes a lot for them to change the search service.
Facebook is the most popular site
Despite the recent reports about safety on Facebook, which I think is a joke, and therefore refused to comment before.
Facebook is an open comunity, and all those that are stupid enough to posting private things may simply blame them self.
According to the new measurement data from Google, Facebook received 540 million visitors in April, which is equal to 35.2 percent of all people who surf the net in the same period. These users clicked together at 570 billion Facebook pages.
Facebook is thru this the most popular site in the world.
Hotmail vs. Gmail
I personally have never understood people who have not left hotmail in favor of Gmail.
Hotmail launched this week their “new” e-mail client …… And, now they beginning to reach the same standard like Gmail, they proudly announces “news” that already exists in Gmail for a long time back.
I have always recommended people to move to Gmail but keep their Hotmail account and check it periodically, and to use Messenger, which, although must admit is much better than Google’s Gtalk, even if I dont use any of them.
But the Gmails Email, Calendar and Office are much better, and Gmail’s spam filters, which probably should be seen today as the best spam filter of all email clients.
I should perhaps be added that this is my personal views
ThePirateBay closed …. Again
And once again, these guys at ThePirateBay have open up again.
After lot of pressure from movie-companys and a German court, internet service provider Cyberpunker was shuting down The Piratebay. PirateBay responded was simple “the site would soon be up and running again. and they were right, this time it took not even 24 h and also with a greeting and a picture of a cat giggling, the message is simple, no one should control the Internet.
Click image for original size
Google is increasing its profits
Google has increased its turnover and profit in the first quarter, and surpassed Wall Street’s already high expectations. Google increased turnover by 23 percent in comparison to the first quarter last year.
Google’s own services account for 66 percent of sales, while 34% are from different collaborations.
Google has just announced that they now have 26.5 billion dollars in cash, that will be used to invest in various new acquisitions.
Google is challenging China
Google has since January threatened China (About this you can read one of my earlier post) with that they want/are going to stop censorship of its search engine in the country.
On Monday, Google has now made seriousness of their threat and left to censor search results in China.
With the text “Welcome to Google China’s new home.” greeted visitors who are trying to reach Google.cn then they are sent to Hong Kong-based Google.com.hk. With that, Google has now closed their Chinese search engine,
On Google.com.hk the censors is not that hard as it is on the Chinese search engine. One example is that on Google.com.hk can you find the famous image from Tiananmen Square, this is an example of material that Google has agreed to keep away from its users in China before.
It now remains to be seen whether users in China can reach google.com.hk or if this address will be blocked in the system that the government uses to control Internet access in the country.
The Chinese authorities have been in intense negotiations with representatives from Google and 12 January, Google announced that it no longer intends to put up on the Chinese regime’s requirements to filter search results, although if this would mean that the local search engine will be closed , or that Google must leave the country. It is believed that this decision is alleged to have been preceded by extensive intrusion attempts against Google and its users.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt has said that they always has insisted that the goal is to stay in China, but that it will not back from the requirement to remove the censorship from the search engine.
Facebook has more traffic than Google.
Last week, Facebook have the most traffic of Internet in the United States. Figures from Experian Hitwise showed that they had 7.07 percent of Internet traffic. That meens Facebook had more traffic then Google.
Facebook accounted for 7.07 percent of the traffic which is 0.4 percentage points more than Google, which had 7.03 per cent. Quite scary, what are people doing on the internet these days? Playing farmaville?
Happy birthday “dot-com”
Today celebrating .Com address 25 years
The first ever registration took place on 15 March 1985 and the name was symbolics.com. Symbolic was then a successful IT company, a spin-offs from traditional universities, MIT in Boston.
The second registered BBN.com, come 6 weeks later. This should be compares with today. It is estimated that about 6000 names registered every day, over a period of 6 weeks, this will be 252,000 names
Below are the 6 names that will celebrates 25 this year, Remarkably that companies like IBM, Sun, Intel and HP. Which existed at this time did not register their name until the year after
1985 15 mar Symbolics.com
1985 24 apr BBN.com
1985 24 maj Think.com
1985 11 jul MCC.com
1985 30 sep DEC.com
1985 7 nov Northrop.com
Google buys up everything. Good or bad?
Of these 8 companies, the price of three escaped, and it is a sum of 805 million U.S. dollars, the price of the other 5 companies are not yet known.
So in just five months, Google has now bought eight companies, and people have started talking about the takeover mania that hit the company during the golden year 2007, which ended the takeover of 16 companies purchased, and seven purchases were made in two months.
Fields characterizing the purchase of companies are particularly mobility and collaboration.
Here are all of Google’s company that recent have been bought, which began in November last year, For more information about the companies, click on the links.
Gizmo5 - Gizmo5 delivers programs and services of IP telephony for both mobile phones and computers in a Skype-model, which allows users to make free calls over the Internet.
Tera Cent – is yet another ad company. The company offers the possibility of using algorithms to tailor ads and find just the right combination of color, image and text that makes the recipient clicks hungry.
Appjet - Appjet is a provider of co-grazing tool Etherpad, and was started by a few of Google x-employes for only two years ago. The service offers similar functionality as Google’s own newly launched tool, Google Wave.
Aardvark - Is an alternative to the question-answer-service competitor, Yahoo Answers, and also to some extent an alternative to search engines.
Remail - E-mail reader Remail originally developed for Apple iPhone and was praised by users for its superior search functionality.
Picnik - Image Processing Tool Picnic lets users move their image processing to the cloud. The acquisition can be seen as an attack on Adobe, which in addition to its dominant software Photoshop also offers image enhancement on the net in simplified form.
Docverse - The purchase of Docverse is a frontal assault on Microsoft and discarded akon Office. Docverse offers namely Office users the ability to easily work together in the cloud.
sex.com
Now can you buy sex.com again. It has been said that this is the world’s most valuable domain names.
When sex.com was sold, it gave the former owner, Gary Kremer 14 million U.S. dollars, this is the highest sum ever paid for a domain name, this took place in 2006.
But now it’s for sale again, its states that the loan provider that was a backing-store for the company ESCOM, have not received their money, and now they put the domain name once again for sale.
Bidding will start on one million U.S. dollars and will start on 18 March.
Sex.com was registered in 1994 by Gary Kremer, it’s the same person that was starting the online dating site Match.com. It was also he that sold it for four years ago, and made himself a hefty profit.
Should we censored internet??
Among the points raised and discussed how children’s privacy should be protected on the Internet. Furthermore, also deals with things as cyber security, copyright protection and regulation of the content on the Internet.
Discussions on Internet Policy 3.0 is said to be flexible, but can result in new laws are written.
USA have before not interfear with internet, but according to Lawrence E. Strickling who is secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce and Department of Transport, it´s now time for authorities to adapt to the social changes the Internet has meant.
In the UK, a similar discussion with the name Digital Economy Bill to be approved in the British Parliament. Digital Economy Bill has been criticized as making too great a claim on the users’ privacy in the hunt for violation of copyright protected material.
Windows WebChoice-Update… Success for Opera
The downloads of the Norwegian browser Opera has tripled since Microsoft started the browser election.
Norwegian Opera Software says that the number of downloads of its browser has tripled since Microsoft’s Web-choise was introduced a week ago.
It differs from country to country, where the largest increase, mainly are in Belgium, France, Spain, Poland and the United Kingdom, says Opera’s leadership.
Opera also indicate that the number of downloads from the browser election far exceeds the increase as a result, Opera 10.5 was released in sharp version on Thursday last week.
Opera has compared the number of downloads from previous launches of the Opera and the large increase, is larger than what is normally done when the new version of the browser, is released.
Browser choice is an update from Microsoft sent to European users of Windows. This feature offers users to download any browser from any of the major competitors in the market. If this is you can read in one of my previous post.
Google has the patent on your location.
Google has finally won the right to a patent for advertising based on your location.
Google’s patent was registered in September 2003 but was not approved until last week. The patent is a technology to display ads based on where a certain person is present
Google bought at the end of last year, up Admob company specializing in localized advertising. Even Apple jumped on the train and purchased in January this year, the ad firm Quattro Wireless, which spent the same.
Localized advertising makes it possible to customize ads based on where a person is. Above all, it is thought that the ads should be served on a mobile device like a smartphone or PDA.
600 messages per second on twitter
Three years ago there was around 5000 post published on Twitter every day, but in the last survey this figure has now risen to 50 million post daily. It is unimaginable 600 messages per second. In this figure they havent include all posts that containing spam messages, which would increase the sum even more.
Twitter has today between 10 and 15 million active users, and is one of the largest sites in the world that are classed as a social-media category in which we also find such as Facebook and MySpace.
Microsoft, lost the Web-war against the EU
Are you using Windows and Internet Explorer as the default browser? Then you are probably eligible to vote in the upcoming browser elections kicks off shortly.
In March begin Microsoft sent out an update that allows the user to select the browser again. The update is now being tested internally at Microsoft.
The so-called browser choice is a result of negotiations between Microsoft and the European Commission.
They led to a legally binding agreement which, among other things, alleges that Microsoft will allow all European users of Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7, with IE as default browser, choose the browser again. The company will also make it possible to turn off and on IE.
According to the Commission affected over 100 million users in Europe.
This update contains a new browser window in which the 12 most popular web browsers – including Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Apple Safari and Opera – are presented in random order, with information on programs from the respective developers. The user can choose to install one or more browsers.
The contents of the browser election and will be updated every six months. Even now you can see how it looks on www.browserchoice.eu.
The update is automatically installed via Windows Update or the user is encouraged to download and install it, depending on what operating system you use. Microsoft said that those who do not have automatic updates enabled browser can get through the election to check for new updates on Windows Update. Companies can make their IT department to take care of the election.
Background:
The commission said that Microsoft, for many years are automatically tied the Internet Explorer browser to Windows. The Commission believes that Microsoft’s dominance is likely to restrict the user’s choice of browser and also hit the company’s competitors and lead to fewer innovative products on the market.
In October 2009 Microsoft promises to implement a number of measures to eliminate the EU Commission believes impede competition. A few months later, those promises are made legally binding for a period of five years.
Only 135 billion spam-messages daily
McAfee has now released its hotrapport for the fourth quarter of 2009.
And it shows that the amount of spam actually went down by 24 percent when compared with the previous quarter. But still…. 135.5 billion spam messages sends daily for the year 2009, junk mail was utilized more famous events such as Michael Jackson’s death, flu and Air France-flyplanskraschen, and a series of other accidents, and other unpleasantness.
Google buying Aardvark
Google has now verified that they are buying Aardvark for approximately 50 million U.S. dollars.
Aardvark is an Internet service, you can ask a question about anything and get the matter sent to another member who is an expert in that particular area. And they often get responses within minutes.
Communication takes place over instant messaging, which indicates the client prefers, Google Talk or Live for example.
Aardvark was started by former employees of Google have now around 90000 users. People with different skills and specializations that will be used to answer the sometimes most bizarre questions.
It feels completely logical that Google just buy this smart service in its ambition to gather all the information and knowledge. Aardvark ‘s with their human knowledge pulp a perfect complement to all your information Google already collects.
10 billion downloads in iTunes
Last year Apple announced that one billion downloads of programs in the App Store was reached. Now it’s time for another milestone, soon have iTunes store sold 10 billion songs.
Apple managed to revolutionize the music industry when the iTunes Music Store was launched in 2003. It offered better prices and you could quickly and easily download album after album. The purchase of digital music increased exponentially and the success continued with television shows and movies (which unfortunately still only available in a few countries).
2006 iTunes reached one billion downloaded songs from the iTunes Music Store. And now they will soon reach 10 billion songs. iTunes celebrate this with organizing a contest where one person can win an iTunes gift card worth $ 10 000.
897 million DVDs sending over the mobile network
Cisco predicts that mobile network will increase 39 times over the next 5 years.
Report Visual Networking Index is Cisco’s annual summary of traffic development in different networks.
This shows that the global growth of data traffic in mobile networks has increased with 169% over the past year.
For the moment, its a traffic every month around 90 petabyte data over the mobile networks. It’s around 23 million DVDs, according to a press release from Cisco. This means that it will be a traffic, monthly if Cisco is right, around 897 million DVDs sending over the mobile network.
This trend will put great pressure on telecom companies to develop new technologies that can handle data traffic more effectively than it does today.
