Now Twitter to be available on mobile without Internet

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGrfqDs0HROu9NSzDJEuK46qe7ODPezO7sb4Kitccf1TQHQ4SWoub158U2l8wPwthNV5MeedKkaOv13xmKDGAn4PmVVGUmXVLqTbuFrFY6jjM4s6H6BGlerotXlkd-zY7OzNkA1NUrjmSb/s1600/twitter-on-feature-phones.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGrfqDs0HROu9NSzDJEuK46qe7ODPezO7sb4Kitccf1TQHQ4SWoub158U2l8wPwthNV5MeedKkaOv13xmKDGAn4PmVVGUmXVLqTbuFrFY6jjM4s6H6BGlerotXlkd-zY7OzNkA1NUrjmSb/s1600/twitter-on-feature-phones.png" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 13px; text-align: start;"><i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">People holding mobile phones are silhouetted against a backdrop projected with the Twitter logo </span></i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="line-height: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px;"><span class="articleLocatio</span>n"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px;"><span class="articleLocatio</span>n"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Twitter Inc is tying up with a Singapore-based startup to make its 140-character messaging service available to users in emerging <span class="mandelbrot_refrag"><a class="mandelbrot_refrag" data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.reuters.com/finance/markets?lc=int_mb_1001" style="cursor: pointer; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">markets</a></span> who have entry-level mobile phones which cannot access the Internet.</span></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; orphans: auto; padding: 0px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">U2opia Mobile, which has a similar tie-up with <span class="mandelbrot_refrag"><a class="mandelbrot_refrag" data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.reuters.com/subjects/facebook?lc=int_mb_1001" style="cursor: pointer; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">Facebook</a></span> Inc, will launch its Twitter service in the first quarter of next year, Chief Executive and Co-founder Sumesh Menon told Reuters.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; orphans: auto; padding: 0px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Users will need to dial a simple code to get a feed of the popular trending topics on Twitter, he said.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; orphans: auto; padding: 0px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">More than 11 million people use U2opia's Fonetwish service, which helps access <span class="mandelbrot_refrag"><a class="mandelbrot_refrag" data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.reuters.com/subjects/facebook?lc=int_mb_1001" style="cursor: pointer; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">Facebook</a></span>and <span class="mandelbrot_refrag"><a class="mandelbrot_refrag" data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=GOOG.O&lc=int_mb_1001" style="cursor: pointer; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">Google</a></span> Talk on mobile without a data connection.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; orphans: auto; padding: 0px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Twitter, which boasts of about 230 million users, held a successful initial public offering last month that valued the company at around $25 billion.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; orphans: auto; padding: 0px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">U2opia uses a telecom protocol named USSD, or Unstructured Supplementary Service Data, which does not allow viewing of pictures, videos or other graphics.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; orphans: auto; padding: 0px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"USSD as a vehicle for Twitter is almost hand in glove because Twitter has by design a character limit, it's a very text-driven social network," Menon said.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; orphans: auto; padding: 0px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Eight out of 10 people in emerging <span class="mandelbrot_refrag"><a class="mandelbrot_refrag" data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.reuters.com/finance/markets?lc=int_mb_1001" style="cursor: pointer; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">markets</a></span> are still not accessing data on their phone, he said.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; orphans: auto; padding: 0px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">U2opia, which is present in 30 countries in seven international languages, will localize the Twitter feed according to the location of the user.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; orphans: auto; padding: 0px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"So somebody in Paraguay would definitely get content that would be very very localized to that market vis a vis somebody sitting in Mumbai or Bangalore," he said.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; orphans: auto; padding: 0px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The company, whose biggest markets are Africa and South America, partners with telecom carriers such as Telenor, Vodafone and Bharti Airtel Ltd. U2opia usually gets 30 to 40 percent of what users pay its telecom partners to access Fonetwish.</span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="focusParagraph" style="background-color: white;"></span><span id="midArticle_1" style="background-color: white;"></span><span id="midArticle_2" style="background-color: white;"></span><span id="midArticle_3" style="background-color: white;"></span><span id="midArticle_4" style="background-color: white;"></span><span id="midArticle_5" style="background-color: white;"></span><span id="midArticle_6" style="background-color: white;"></span><span id="midArticle_7" style="background-color: white;"></span><span id="midArticle_8" style="background-color: white;"></span><span id="midArticle_9" style="background-color: white;"></span><span id="midArticle_10" style="background-color: white;"></span><span id="midArticle_11" style="background-color: white;"></span></span><br /><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 23px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"For a lot of end users in the emerging markets, it's going to be their first Twitter experience," Menon said.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 23px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Source : <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/05/us-twitter-partnership-u2opia-idUSBRE9B413M20131205">Reuters</a></span></i></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 23px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Image Credit : <span style="line-height: 13px; text-transform: uppercase;">REUTERS/KACPER PEMPEL</span></i></span></div><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 19.1875px;"><br /></span>

Now Twitter to be available on mobile without Internet

People holding mobile phones are silhouetted against a backdrop projected with the Twitter logo   Twitter Inc is tying up with a Singapore-b...

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Hackers claim they used zero-day vulnerability to breach vBulletin support forum

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS_jgCdWeFrdj6RZGXbLqQvBGw4yKPbzKVPSg7O2LBdvL0KCvgULzglPI85IosnUmPf0SmxCmU009n_CxHsEOehBcmvgILsa6b1N-ehQZAAqEbmvKJs9ZiIvFq__wpqASykQbT2G5tzaw/s1600/internet_lock_security-100065707-large.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS_jgCdWeFrdj6RZGXbLqQvBGw4yKPbzKVPSg7O2LBdvL0KCvgULzglPI85IosnUmPf0SmxCmU009n_CxHsEOehBcmvgILsa6b1N-ehQZAAqEbmvKJs9ZiIvFq__wpqASykQbT2G5tzaw/s320/internet_lock_security-100065707-large.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 0.7em;">A group of hackers claim to have exploited an undocumented vulnerability in the vBulletin Internet forum software in order to break into the MacRumors.com and vBulletin.com forums.</div><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 0.7em;">On Friday, vBulletin Solutions, the company behind the vBulletin software, reset the passwords for all accounts on the vBulletin.com support forums after confirming that hackers broke into its systems and stole customer log-in credentials.</div><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 0.7em;">"Very recently, our security team discovered sophisticated attacks on our network, involving the illegal access of forum user information, possibly including your password," Wayne Luke, the technical support lead at vBulletin Solutions, said in a message posted on the forum. "Our investigation currently indicates that the attackers accessed customer IDs and encrypted passwords on our systems."</div><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 0.7em;">Luke advised users to choose a new password that they're not using on any other websites.</div><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 0.7em;">The announcement came a day after a group of hackers calling themselves the Inj3ct0r Team announced in a post on Facebook that they compromised the vBulletin.com and MacRumors.com forums.</div><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 0.7em;"><span style="line-height: 1.7em;"><br />VBulletin Solutions did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the claims of a zero-day vulnerability existing in vBulletin.</span>Inj3ct0r Team claims to have found and exploited a previously unknown—zero-day—remote code execution vulnerability affecting all versions of vBulletin 4 and 5 and which allowed them to upload a Web shell on the vBulletin.com server, gain root access to it and download the site's database.</div><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 0.7em;">The hackers said they exploited the same vulnerability to obtain the password of a moderator on the MacRumors.com forum, which uses the vBulletin software, allowing them to obtain the log-in credentials for that forum's 860,000 users.</div><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 0.7em;">The MacRumors.com administrators announced Tuesday that the site had been compromised and warned their users that "while the passwords are 'hashed' (which is a one-way conversion from your actual password to a scrambled version), given computing power these days, if your password isn't very complex, they could brute force figure it out by trying lots of combinations."</div><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 0.7em;">Inj3ct0r Team put the new vBulletin exploit up for sale on its website for the equivalent of $7,000 payable through WebMoney or Bitcoin. Ironically, the hackers say on their website that "we don't want you to use our site as a tool for hacking purposes, so any kind of action that could affect illegally other users or websites that you don't have right to access will be banned and your account including your data will be destroyed."</div><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 0.7em;">Some website administrators have already reacted to the news. The community forums for the DefCon hacking conference have been temporarily shut down, with administrators informing users that "we have disabled the forums until there is resolution on a possible vulnerability."</div><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 0.7em;">According to vBulletin Solutions, over 100,000 community websites are running on vBulletin, including some operated by Zynga, Electronic Arts, Sony Pictures, NASA, Valve Corporation and other well known companies.</div><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 0.7em;">UbuntuForums.org, a community website for the Ubuntu Linux distribution with over 1.8 million registered accounts, is also using vBulletin and was hacked back in July. The MacRumors administrators described the recent compromise of their forum as similar to the UbuntuForums.org hack.</div><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 0.7em;"><i>Via: <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/article/2064440/hackers-claim-they-used-zeroday-vulnerability-to-breach-vbulletin-support-forum.html">PCWorld</a></i></div>

Hackers claim they used zero-day vulnerability to breach vBulletin support forum

A group of hackers claim to have exploited an undocumented vulnerability in the vBulletin Internet forum software in order to break into the...

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ICANN 'coalition' created to tackle concerns about the future of the Internet

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjain7x-r_gU-tGvJ2Tpb5KCr-pjGcHmm0HbjTPcV2aCUq0ynr8uLWr0g_IP_Cy602Cq_X9GqFbyjJ2JjkGcOrxkMWECX_JLQsWBS-LsB35EK_-kDQKHxxek9lor90p2FqxUaEPc66KYAo/s1600/generic_internet_browser-100049066-gallery.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjain7x-r_gU-tGvJ2Tpb5KCr-pjGcHmm0HbjTPcV2aCUq0ynr8uLWr0g_IP_Cy602Cq_X9GqFbyjJ2JjkGcOrxkMWECX_JLQsWBS-LsB35EK_-kDQKHxxek9lor90p2FqxUaEPc66KYAo/s320/generic_internet_browser-100049066-gallery.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 0.7em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 0.7em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">ICANN has set up a panel, consisting of people in government, civil society, the private sector, the technical community and international organizations, to address concerns about the governance of the Internet.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 0.7em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The "Panel on the Future of Global Internet Cooperation," which will have its first meeting in December in London, will release for public comment a report early next year on Internet governance, principles and proposed frameworks for global Internet cooperation, and a roadmap for future Internet governance challenges, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers said Sunday.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 0.7em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The move by ICANN may be linked to increasing demands for restoring trust in the Internet after reports of surveillance by the U.S., and also demands from countries like Russia and China for greater participation in the governance of the Internet. ICANN was not immediately available for comment.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 0.7em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Internet's numbering and naming system is currently regulated by ICANN under contract with the U.S. government.</span></div><br /><figure class=" large" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; max-width: 100%; overflow: hidden;"><figcaption style="box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; color: #999999; font-size: 12px; margin-top: 5px; text-align: center;"></figcaption></figure><br /><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 0.7em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The formation of the panel follows a confidential ICANN board resolution in August that said that in the wake of global concerns about governance of the Internet, the increasing pressures cannot be addressed by ICANN alone, but only by a coalition of similarly concerned organizations and entities.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 0.7em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The action by the board was described as step towards how ICANN can assist the global community in addressing Internet governance issues through global multi-stakeholder cooperation "without compromising or increasing ICANN's mandate."</span></div><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 0.7em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The formation of the panel follows rising concerns about U.S. spying worldwide, including allegedly through real-time access to content on servers of Internet companies, and through direct access to communications links connecting the data centers of Google and Yahoo. The Internet companies have denied participation in these programs after they were disclosed through newspapers by former National Security Agency contractor, Edward Snowden.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 0.7em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Montevideo "Statement on the Future of Internet Cooperation" in October expressed strong concern over the "undermining of the trust and confidence of Internet users globally" in the wake of the revelations about NSA surveillance.</span></div><br /><figure class=" large" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; max-width: 100%; overflow: hidden;"><figcaption style="box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; color: #999999; font-size: 12px; margin-top: 5px; text-align: center;"></figcaption></figure><br /><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 0.7em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The meeting in Montevideo in Uruguay was held by organizations responsible for coordination of the Internet technical infrastructure like ICANN, Internet Engineering Task Force and World Wide Web Consortium, and also called for accelerating the globalization of ICANN and IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) functions, so that all stakeholders, including all governments, participate on an equal footing, though it also warned against Internet fragmentation at a national level.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 0.7em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Besides Iran, which has talked about a walled national Internet, Brazil's legislature is considering a bill that will require in-country data storage, in response to reports that the U.S. spied on Dilma Rousseff, the country's president. Google has warned of a "splinternet" of smaller, national and regional pieces with barriers around them.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 0.7em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Demands for regulation of the Internet are also on the increase, Google said. The issue of the control and regulation of the Internet divided the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in December, hosted by the International Telecommunication Union in Dubai. Some countries like the United Arab Emirates and Russia proposed greater control for countries in the running of the Internet, which was opposed by the U.S.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 0.7em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The final treaty of the WCIT, which comes into effect in 2015, did not refer to the management of the Internet, but a non-binding proposal in the appendix stated that all governments should have an equal role and responsibility for international Internet governance, the security and stability of the Internet, and its future development.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 0.7em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The new ICANN panel will have 19 members, acting independently of their organizations. Among them are Fadi Chehade, CEO and president of ICANN, Vint Cerf, vice president and chief Internet evangelist for Google, Mitchell Baker, chair of the Mozilla Foundation, Jimmy Wales, cofounder of Wikipedia and Mohamed al Ghanem, founder and director general of the UAE Telecommunications Regulatory Authority. More people will be added to the panel which is currently chaired by Toomas Ilves, president of Estonia and has Cerf as vice-chairman.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 0.7em;"><i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Via: <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/article/2064380/icann-sets-up-coalition-to-address-new-internet-governance-challenges.html">PCWold</a></span></i></div>

ICANN 'coalition' created to tackle concerns about the future of the Internet

ICANN has set up a panel, consisting of people in government, civil society, the private sector, the technical community and international o...

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Save your Internet bacon with two-factor authentication

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx2oAfmnKliE02U3EIA8Cz8PV20I2aNzPLiTv93btR1D5_N7hdbruBY-UKS8wHTeTYK2HZAw2Dryo0NP86NRkQhQMk0LS-O17vOd-ePUthyphenhyphenekhJ0WY5A4DCwjzztl9rkNgUMODaNgvtD-W/s1600/2factorauthentication_primary-100066767-large.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx2oAfmnKliE02U3EIA8Cz8PV20I2aNzPLiTv93btR1D5_N7hdbruBY-UKS8wHTeTYK2HZAw2Dryo0NP86NRkQhQMk0LS-O17vOd-ePUthyphenhyphenekhJ0WY5A4DCwjzztl9rkNgUMODaNgvtD-W/s640/2factorauthentication_primary-100066767-large.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><h2 style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-top: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">What is two-factor authentication, anyway?</span></h2><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 0.7em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Two-factor authentication adds another step to the login process when you sign in to a website or app. You enter your username and password as you normally would, but instead of being logged in, you will then be asked to enter in a security code that expires after a single use. In a sense, it's a password for your password.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 0.7em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There are multiple ways to get these security codes: The most common is via a simple text message to your phone, and most services that offer two-factor authentication default to this option. Depending on the service, you can also get codes through specialized smartphone apps, via email, or through specialized "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_token" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #25a7d7; text-decoration: none;">security token</a>" devices—dedicated pocket-sized devices that can generate and provide security codes for you.</span></div><h2 style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-top: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">How to set it up</span></h2><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 0.7em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Here's how to turn it on for six popular online services.</span></div><ul style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; line-height: 22px; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 40px;"><li style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.45em;"><a href="http://www.techhive.com/article/2055321/protect-your-dropbox-account-with-two-factor-authentication.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #25a7d7; text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Dropbox</span></a></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.45em;"><a href="http://www.techhive.com/article/2056298/protect-your-facebook-account-from-hackers-with-two-factor-authentication.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #25a7d7; text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Facebook</span></a></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.45em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.techhive.com/article/2057228/protect-your-google-account-with-two-factor-authentication.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #25a7d7; text-decoration: none;">Google</a> (Google+, Gmail, and so on)</span></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.45em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.techhive.com/article/2057237/keep-your-microsoft-account-safer-with-two-factor-authentication.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #25a7d7; text-decoration: none;">Microsoft</a> (Outlook, SkyDrive, Xbox Live, others)</span></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.45em;"><a href="http://www.techhive.com/article/2058327/keep-your-paypal-account-safer-with-two-factor-authentication.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #25a7d7; text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">PayPal</span></a></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.45em;"><a href="http://www.techhive.com/article/2055592/use-two-factor-authentication-for-your-twitter-account.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #25a7d7; text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Twitter</span></a></li></ul><div><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 23.200000762939453px;"><a href="http://www.techhive.com/article/2059062/save-your-internet-bacon-with-two-factor-authentication.html" target="_blank"><i>Read Full </i></a></span></span></div><br />

Save your Internet bacon with two-factor authentication

What is two-factor authentication, anyway? Two-factor authentication adds another step to the login process when you sign in to a website or...

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IBM to Announce More Powerful Watson via the Internet

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4wpvDgpte11j94vDIM-J0JmQ7Y3QLS_cm0e2RRe3EHYdM9Gp1f-sH1XjCCLhebwZYBwhk8WT22NCU3wq1lWX3l7RPB46FMxsJ0i5EUgpV5qTQ2Ek1D8NDlBi76OlPQkjxSUEdgEAkObs/s1600/WATSON-articleLarge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4wpvDgpte11j94vDIM-J0JmQ7Y3QLS_cm0e2RRe3EHYdM9Gp1f-sH1XjCCLhebwZYBwhk8WT22NCU3wq1lWX3l7RPB46FMxsJ0i5EUgpV5qTQ2Ek1D8NDlBi76OlPQkjxSUEdgEAkObs/s320/WATSON-articleLarge.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">On Thursday IBM will announce that Watson, the computing system that beat all the humans on “Jeopardy!” two years ago, will be available in a form more than twice as powerful via the Internet.</span></div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Companies, academics and individual software developers will be able to use it at a small fraction of the previous cost, drawing on IBM’s specialists in fields like computational linguistics to build machines that can interpret complex data and better interact with humans.</span></div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">IBM’s move to make its marquee technology more widely available is the latest effort among big technology companies to make the world’s most powerful computers as accessible as the Angry Birds video game.</span></div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It is also an indication of how quickly the technology industry is changing, from complex systems that cost millions to install to pay-as-you-go deals that provide small companies and even individuals access to technology that just a few years ago only the largest companies could afford.</span></div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“The next generation will look back and see 2013 as a year of monumental change,” said Stephen Gold, vice president of the Watson project at IBM.</span></div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“This is the start of a shift in the way people interact with computers.”</span></div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">IBM is wielding Watson in a fight to control the world of cloud computing — huge collections of computer servers connected over the Internet — with other big technology companies like Amazon.com, Google and Microsoft. It is no coincidence that IBM discussed its Watson news the same week Amazon was hosting clients at a conference here to pitch its own computing cloud, called Amazon Web Services or A.W.S.</span></div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The competition is still young, but its impact will be significant.</span></div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Companies, governments and people will struggle to figure out what to do with all this,” said Jamie Popkin, an analyst with the research company Gartner. “It means there is going to be a new pace and velocity, making people rethink when humans make decisions, while machines make other decisions.”</span></div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Watson, a project on which IBM spent 14 years, is an artificial learning system that digests large volumes of information to find hidden meanings. Initial uses — besides <a class="nytmm_mediahover" href="http://www.nytimes.com/video/magazine/1247468055784/how-does-watson-work.html#media/watsonibm" style="background-color: #eaeae3; border-bottom-left-radius: 4px; border-bottom-right-radius: 4px; border-top-left-radius: 4px; border-top-right-radius: 4px; color: #004276; padding: 1px 3px; text-decoration: none;"><span class="nytmm_mediahover_nobreak" style="white-space: nowrap;"><span class="nytmm_mediahover_icon nytmm_mediahover_icon_video" style="background-image: url(http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/icons/multimedia/video_icon.gif); background-position: 2px 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; display: inline-block; width: 18px;"> </span>besting</span> humans on game shows</a> — include <a class="nytmm_mediahover" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lGJ0h_jAp8#media/watsonmedical" style="background-color: #eaeae3; border-bottom-left-radius: 4px; border-bottom-right-radius: 4px; border-top-left-radius: 4px; border-top-right-radius: 4px; color: #004276; padding: 1px 3px; text-decoration: none;"><span class="nytmm_mediahover_nobreak" style="white-space: nowrap;"><span class="nytmm_mediahover_icon nytmm_mediahover_icon_video" style="background-image: url(http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/icons/multimedia/video_icon.gif); background-position: 2px 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; display: inline-block; width: 18px;"> </span>examining</span> medical patients</a> and records to find an unexpected diagnosis, a bit like the genius portrayed in the television show “House.” Other uses include an online personal shopper and a virtual health aide that tailors exercises by asking questions.</span></div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">IBM is opening Watson to more people in part to see what additional businesses might be created.</span></div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Watson is prominent, but similar projects are being run by other companies. On Tuesday, a company appearing at the Amazon conference said it had run in 18 hours a project on Amazon’s cloud of computer servers that would have taken 264 years on a single server.</span></div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The project, related to finding better materials for solar panels, cost $33,000, compared with an estimated $68 million to build and run a similar computer just a few years ago. Akin more to conventional supercomputing than Watson’s question-and-answer cognitive computing, the project was the first of several announced at the Amazon conference.</span></div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“It’s now $90 an hour to rent 10,000 computers,” the equivalent of a giant machine that would cost $4.4 million, said Jason Stowe, the chief executive of Cycle Computing, the company that did the Amazon supercomputing exercise, and whose clients include The Hartford, Novartis, and Johnson & Johnson. “Soon smart people will be renting a conference room to do some supercomputing.”</span></div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">While revenues of Amazon’s cloud business are still small enough that the company does not have to disclose them, Amazon officials say Jeff Bezos, the company’s chief executive, believes A.W.S. could eventually dwarf Amazon’s businesses in books and merchandise, enterprises with $51 billion in revenue. This year, Gartner calculated that A.W.S. had five times the computing power of 14 other cloud computing companies, including IBM, combined.</span></div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Since then, IBM has spent an estimated $2 billion to acquire a cloud company called SoftLayer and has reconfigured Watson as a cloud product. It also hired buses that drove around the A.W.S. conference in Las Vegas, sporting ads that said they showed its superiority in cloud computing.</span></div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Besides gaining bragging rights and a much bigger customer base, IBM may be accelerating the growth of Watson’s power by putting it in the cloud. Mr. Gold said that Watson would retain learning from each customer interaction, gaining the ability to do things like interacting in different languages or identifying human preferences. IBM has taken steps to keep these improvements for its own benefit, by retaining rights in user agreements that customers are required to sign.</span></div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">What is not yet clear is IBM’s plan to make money from taking Watson to the computing cloud. The company is experimenting with charging for data storage, or selling computing on a metered basis, like water or electricity. “There is no question the model will change,” Mr. Gold said. “You have to have flexibility to handle the breadth of cases we expect to see.”</span></div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It is likely that the competition among advanced computing systems will increase, lowering prices and delivering more capabilities to whatever use companies make of them.</span></div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This year, Google and a corporation associated with NASA acquired for study an experimental computer that appears to make use of quantum properties to deliver results sometimes 3,600 times faster than traditional supercomputers. The maker of the quantum computer, D-Wave Systems of Burnaby, British Columbia, counts Mr. Bezos as an investor.</span></div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Via: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/14/technology/ibm-to-announce-more-powerful-watson-via-the-internet.html?_r=0">NYTime</a></i></span></div>

IBM to Announce More Powerful Watson via the Internet

On Thursday IBM will announce that Watson, the computing system that beat all the humans on “Jeopardy!” two years ago, will be available in ...

Read more »