Roger Thompson at Exploit Prevention Labs has discovered multiple hacked MySpace pages, including MySpace's #4 most popular major music artist Alicia Keys. Other bands hit include Greements of Fortune (a French funk band) and Dykeenies (a rock band from Glasgow).
Roger noted that "attacks on MySpace seem to be on the rise." He says that the current hack, affecting Alicia Keys' MySpace page and others, is an image-background link which, when clicked, entices users to install a fake codec - which then infects the user's computer. He calls it a "FakeCodec trick" and here's how it works: if a user clicks on a MySpace page and slightly misses a control or link on that page, they have clicked the image-bg link and are then taken instead to the exploit site. Roger explains more in this video:
Blogcosm is a new company aiming to build a directory of the blogosphere. From the mundane to the esoteric, the company wants to provide users with a rich data set about any particular blog of interest or the vertical market it is in.
I met founder Scott Lawton, an old time geek from Massachusetts, last night at the first annual Blog World Expo in Las Vegas. Blogcosm built a blog directory of all the speakers at Blog World Expo and the blogs they write for, as a case study. Lawton is a data quality algorithm expert who says his involvement in the web 2.0 scene predates Dave Winer's creation of Radio Weblogs. He started writing scripting utilities professionally for the Mac in 1993. He is nerdy and charming, if you like nerdy innovative types.
At the Dow Jones and Nielsen Media and Money conference in New York today, Viacom and CBS chairman Sumner Redstone pulled out all the stops in defending the sanctity of copyright. "If content is king, copyright is its castle," he reportedly said. "Copyright compels creativity, it furnishes the incentive to innovate. If you limit the protection of copyright, you stifle the expression of self."
The 84-year-old Redstone, whose company is in the midst of a lawsuit against Google's YouTube seeking $1 billion in damages for what it terms "massive intentional copyright infringement," was coy about the video sharing site, but did make some pointed remarks about what he thinks of YouTube's current business model. "Think about it: You cannot pay the rent posting videos on YouTube," he said. "And most aspiring novelists do not aspire to self-publish. You cannot make it as a musician, you can't make it as a filmmaker or a writer without ... effective and enforced copyright legislation."
Redstone, though, does see a future for monetization of online content via advertisements. "Advertising will pay the way," he told the crowd.
Remember when Flickr used to be the elite hang out of the visual digerati? By initially embracing talented photographers, Flickr developed a reputation as the place to go to check out amazing amateur and professional photography on the web. But then Yahoo! came along and encouraged users of its Photos service to migrate to Flickr, opening the site up to anyone and their vacation pictures. Has Flickr become boring and mundane? Where should we turn to now to find all the cool photos?
Flickr is still a great photo hosting platform used by a large number of amazing photographers, but cutting through the increased noise can be a chore. The six sites below will help you locate the more artistic photos out there on the web without having to wade through any photos of Aunt Millie at the beach. (NSFW warning: Some of the sites mentioned below do not censor out artistic nude photos -- as such, there may be unsafe for work content displayed on the main page.)
FreshBooks is a billing web application that allows people to send, track and collect online payments. I don't use FreshBooks (I generally have no one to invoice) and I don't know much about the Ontario, Canada-based company, but judging from their web site, which features no less than 15 testimonials on the front page from "happy users," it seems apparent that customer service is important to them.
Yesterday we were tipped off to an interesting blog post from a technology company in Fiji called Oceanic. A Freshbooks customer for nearly 2 years, Jonathan (whom we gather works at the company), lamented on the Oceanic blog about a day last April when the FreshBooks team was crooning over two new flavors of Triscuits: Rosemary and Olive Oil, and Cracked Pepper and Olive Oil. "I can’t believe how good these taste," wrote Mike McDerment, of FreshBooks.
This week the Defrag Conference was held in Denver, with the theme of 'The Implicit Web'. It was a great event and lots of big ideas were discussed. Therefore, I thought it would be interesting to share the five big themes I walked away thinking about after Defrag; and my current take on each of the five big themes.
Note that Charles Knight live blogged most of the Defrag conference at AltSearchEngines. So if you want the play-by-play, I'd encourage you to check out his posts.
FreeRice.com is a simple website that you'll enjoy spending a few minutes on. It's a word game, monetized by Cost Per Action affiliate ad links, with a social justice twist. Those are just the boring details, though, and it's probably a scam.
The site asks you to define a series of words, with multiple choice answers, and ranks your vocabulary profficiency over time. The gimick is that for every word you define correctly, FreeRice.com says it will donate the cost of 10 grains of rice to the UN World Food Program.
How does this happen? The big brand advertiser logos at the bottom of the page are paying for the rice, the site says. Those ads appear to be Cost Per Action ads from LinkShare. In other words, the ads only pay when the FreeRice visitor clicks through the ads and make a purchase. They pay quite well in those circumstances, though.
Both Facebook and Google gave 5 minute pitches last night at the New York Tech MeetUp event. Over 400 people came to IAC’s stunning Frank Gehry designed building, overlooking the river. It had a massive 100 foot long video wall for the demos.
New York can be a tough crowd for an “out of towner”, with an unsual mix of hardboiled Wall Street and Mad Ave biz types, plus wild (almost anarchic) creativity. The Google presenter was from the New York office. She knew she wasn't giving out any new information that everybody had not already seen in the Blogosphere. The Facebook presenter seemed more ill at ease. A fairly well-informed question got the response: “oh, it sounds like you have been reading Valleywag or Techcrunch”. Maybe the muttering of the crowd put her off.
Many people have pointed out that Facebook’s monetization could alienate its audience, unless handled extremely delicately. When you need to justify a $15 billion valuation, delicacy may not be a top priority. Silicon Alley asked the reasonable "show me the money" question - will you get paid to make a referral for a brand? If so, how fast does this become like an Amway scheme? If it is not about cash, what is the value? Facebook gave an example of Blockbuster as an advertising partner. If I am a Facebook user and I rent a movie from Blockbuster, I can opt to have this movie choice sent to all my friends. Why would I do that and why would my friends be interested?
Coca Cola wants to be my friend? Surely the Internet can be used for something more meaningful than this?
The New York Times reports that a study by security firm Barracuda Networks, which polled 2,400 of its customers, has found that more than half block access to social networking sites from employees on their work networks. Interestingly, though, MySpace was blocked far more often than Facebook.
43.9% of companies block access to MySpace, while just 25.6% of companies block access to Facebook. Just 6.3% of companies blocked only Facebook while allowing access to MySpace. Why is that? A snap analysis might lead one to think that companies are just more comfortable with the more orderly nature of Facebook -- and the fact that it is being used for legitimate business networking by some folks (myself included) -- whereas, the vanity-focused MySpace has no work value. But that's not what's going on here, according to Barracuda.
Continuing this year's major trend of online advertising consolidation, AOL has agreed to acquire content-targeted advertising firm Quigo. Reuters is reporting the price of the deal at around $340 million. AOL CEO Randy Falco told Reuters that this was likely the last big acquisition for AOL in terms of their advertising strategy.
"With Quigo, we are putting the final pieces of Platform-A in place. We will be able to offer advertisers and publishers the most advanced set of tools, including contextual and behavioral targeting, superior analytics, and access to the largest display network in the marketplace," said Falco in a press release.
Quigo is AOL's third major ad acquisition this year. In July, the company agreed to buy behavioral targeting firm Tacoda, for a reported $275 million in cash. Last May, AOL purchased a controlling stake in AdTech AG. This buying spree compliments Advertising.com, which AOL purchased in 2004. AOL also owns wireless ad company Third Screen Media (which it acquired this year, as well) and Lightningcast, which serves video ads.
