0 Comments | Add Comment You can't help but love this, Apple passes Microsoft as Worlds most valuable tech company
By MIGUEL HELFT and ASHLEE VANCE
Published: May 26, 2010
SAN FRANCISCO — Wall Street has called the end of an era and the beginning of the next one: The most important technology product no longer sits on your desk but rather fits in your hand.
The moment came Wednesday when Apple, the maker of iPods, iPhones and iPads, shot past Microsoft, the computer software giant, to become the world’s most valuable technology company.
This changing of the guard caps one of the most stunning turnarounds in business history for Apple, which had been given up for dead only a decade earlier, and its co-founder and visionary chief executive, Steven P. Jobs. The rapidly rising value attached to Apple by investors also heralds an important cultural shift: Consumer tastes have overtaken the needs of business as the leading force shaping technology.
Microsoft, with its Windows and Office software franchises, has dominated the relationship most people had with their computers for almost two decades, and that was reflected in its stock market capitalization. But the click-clack of the keyboard has ceded ground to the swipe of a finger across a smartphone’s touch screenRead the full article...
0 Comments | Add Comment Why The Baker Should Not Be Running The Bakery — And Other Tips For Entrepreneurs
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By Jim Hopkinson
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September 14, 2009
Daniel Odio is co-founder and COO of PointAbout.com,
but beyond that, he’s an entrepreneur and gadget geek with more gear in
his “social media travel bag” than Carrot Top. Daniel sat down for an
interview on The Hopkinson Report Marketing podcast. An excerpt of this
interview is below, or see the full transcript or listen via iTunes.
Jim Hopkinson: First and foremost, you’re an entrepreneur. You live it. You breathe it. You have a bag full of gadgets. So, what’s it like being an entrepreneur?
Daniel Odio: Being an entrepreneur is often romanticized. People say, “Wow, you’re an entrepreneur,” but the reality is… it’s a huge sacrifice. I don’t think people realize how big a sacrifice it is, but it’s also very rewarding. Paul Graham, who is kind of like a hero of mine, says, “Being an entrepreneur is like being punched in the face every day, but working at a company is like being waterboarded.”
JH: So do you think that anyone can be an entrepreneur?
DO: Yes I do, but there’s a big “but.” And the “but” is that they have to get over their fears. Those fears are what keep most people from being able to take the leap. It’s hard to find those around you that will be understanding enough of your crazy sacrifices.
JH: What are some tips for people that are just starting out?
DO: So if you want to become an entrepreneur, there’s a theory from the book “The E-Myth” which basically says, the baker should not be running the bakery. What they mean by that is, people think, for example, ‘Oh, I love to bake, I should open a bakery!’ But running a bakery is a completely different skill set than baking. They think if I start a bakery, I’m going to be able to do what I love. And that’s not true. Yes, maybe you’ll be able to do it some of the time, but guess what? You have to be sweeping the floors and doing the accounting and finding the customers and doing the marketing and firing people, and it’s just so much more than what you love.
0 Comments | Add Comment Bouncing spam rises by 2000 percent
By Davey Winder in Editorial
When you send an email to an address that doesn’t exist or to a server that is having trouble delivering it, you get a Non-Delivery Report back. Spammers have been exploiting these bounce messages for a while now, as a way to get around spam-filtering measures. However, last month saw NDR spam hit an all time high with 20% of all spam messages using the trick. That’s a rise, according to security specialists PandaLabs, of no less than 2000% when compared to the number of different NDR spam samples seen between January and June this year.
It is a clever technique, and obviously one that works or the spammers would waste their time and money exploiting it. The point being that the bounce messages themselves are more often than not genuine, with the server function being exploited to distribute the spam (sent as an attachment to the bounce notice) using the sender’s real name.
Now I know I have upset readers in the past by calling them morons for clicking on spam links in email, but this time I will let you off as it’s a rather different kind of spam trickery being employed. Go on, admit it, curiosity often gets the better of you when you get a bounce message and you open the thing to see who it was you sent mail to that has not arrived. Right? Even if you have not sent that mail in the first place, and don’t recognise the email address. Indeed, the fact that you don’t recognise the address plays in the spammer’s favour making the recipient even more likely to take a sneaky peek.
According to Luis Corrons, technical director of PandaLabs, “there is presently no consensus on whether NDRs are a technique to evade anti-spam filters or a collateral effect of dictionary attacks; either way, this technique is now among the most widely used. These waves of spam are usually generated through botnets (infected PCs controlled by attackers to launch spam, etc.). Since most NDRs are legitimate emails and, part of the mail server functionality, many traditional anti-spam techniques did not detect or block them up until now”.
By Asavin Wattanajantra,
More than 1.7 million Brits are at risk of online fraud as they use the same password for every site they use.
Nearly half (46 per cent) of Brits use the same password for places they need to login to, such as online banking and shopping websites, as well as social networks, according to the research conducted by card insurer CPP.
This is a similar finding to research released earlier in the week by PC Tools, which said that nearly half of men and around of quarter of women used the same password for all their sites.
A fraudster finding out a user’s password would have access to an average of 23 sites because of this one password approach, according to the research.
Nearly 40 per cent of adults admitted that at least one other person knew their passwords, such as colleagues and friends, with over a third of these people believing that they may have logged in using their details.
Most of the Brits surveyed (68 per cent) claimed that it was too difficult to remember logins, while 17 per cent said they were worried about forgetting a password and being logged out.
“No sensible person should use the same key for their house, car and garage,” said CPP identity theft expert Sarah Blaney in a statement. “In the same way, we shouldn’t use the same password for everything.”
“If possible, people should use multiple passwords with a combination of letters and numbers, which should be difficult to crack.”
One in 10 people already had web accounts accessed, with 57 per cent of attacks happening in the last year. One in 20 reported having their ID stolen.
Around one fifth of the hacked Brits had goods illegally bought in their name, with one in eight having money stolen, the average lost being over £1,000.
0 Comments | Add Comment Twitter, serious for business?
Posted on ZDNet News: Aug 26, 2009 6:24:13 AM
Microblogging medium, Twitter, may be making waves as a new communication platform, but it is not "serious" enough for businesses yet, say experts.
This is despite Twitter recently posting a Twitter 101 page targeted at encouraging businesses to get onboard.
According to Joe Nguyen, comScore vice president, Southeast Asia, Twitter hits from the Asia-Pacific region have grown nearly tenfold since December 2008.
Businesses, however, are "still trying to understand the
platform and are testing the waters", he said, citing an early example
being Dell and Intel's Dell Swarm marketing campaign in Singapore, which included a Twitter account to post updates to users.
Tue Aug 25, 2009 12:34pm EDT
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Actress Jessica Biel has overtaken Brad Pitt as the most dangerous celebrity to search in cyberspace, according to Internet security company McAfee Inc.
For the third consecutive year, McAfee surveyed which A-list celebrity was the riskiest to track on the Internet after Pitt topped the list last year and Paris Hilton came in first in 2007.
Biel, 27, who shot to fame in the TV show "7th Heaven" and most recently starred in "Easy Virtue," was deemed the most dangerous, with fans having a one-in-five chance of landing at a website that has tested positive for online threats, such as spyware, adware, spam, phishing, and viruses.
"Cybercriminals are star watchers too - they latch onto popular celebrities to encourage the download of malicious software in disguise," McAfee's Jeff Green said in a statement.
"Consumers' obsession with celebrity news and culture is harmless in theory, but one bad download can cause a lot of damage to a computer."
"Every day, cybercriminals use celebrities' names and images, like Kim Kardashian and Rihanna, to lure surfers searching for the latest stories, screen savers and ringtones to sites offering free downloads laden with malware," the statement added.
Coming second in the list for the second year running was pop star Beyonce, with McAfee finding that putting "Beyonce ringtones" into a search engine yielded a dangerous website linking to a distributor of adware and spyware.
Actress Jennifer Aniston was third, with more than 40 percent of the Google search results for "Jennifer Aniston screensavers" containing nasty viruses.
Young Hollywood stars Miley Cyrus, Ashley Tisdale and Lindsay Lohan all edged out Heidi Montag and Jessica Alba who appeared on last year's list.
They also ranked higher than other young personalities including "Twilight" stars Robert Pattinson who came 30th and Kristen Stewart who was 20th, the Jonas Brothers, Taylor Swift, Lauren Conrad, Vanessa Hudgens and Zac Efron.
Megan Fox and Angelina Jolie tied as the eighth most dangerous celebrities on the Web while newlyweds Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen came in fourth and sixth respectively.
However, U.S. President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, who have featured on most celebrities list this year, were not at the top of risky public figures to search.
The Obamas ranked in the bottom-third of this year's results, at No. 34 and No. 39 respectively.
Brad Pitt came 10th in the list this year.
(Writing by Belinda Goldsmith, Editing by Miral Fahmy)
