sites

Microsoft is trying to harness the power of social networking for its own connectivity tool, email program Outlook. But rather than start its own network, Microsoft is aiming for an easier way to manage existing accounts. The firm has announced a ... beta program to integrate LinkedIn directly with Outlook. It's also announced partnerships are in the works for both Facebook and Twitter. LinkedIn is a primarily business-oriented tool for tracking networks. As well as acting like an online resume, it's designed for people to be able to make new business contacts through shared contacts. The site ... (view more)

Here's a New Year's resolution for designers, writers, and generally anyone associated with skin-trade sites in China: get the heck out of your country. According to a recent report, over five thousand arrests were made by the Communist government ... during the past year in an effort to stamp out this kind of web content. The report itself is reliable. How do we know? It came straight from the horse's mouth -- in a statement last week, the Chinese government fully admitted that a sweeping attack against adult-themed content in the country during 2009 had led to the arrest of 5,394 persons and a ... (view more)

Australia's federal government has announced that it is proceeding with controversial plans to censor the Internet after government-commissioned trials found that using a blacklist of banned sites was accurate and would not slow down web use. ... Critics, including Google , Electronic Frontiers Australia and Greens communications argue that the censorship policy is fundamentally flawed and the trial results are not surprising. Stephen Conroy, Australia's Communications Minister, will introduce legislation just before next year's elections designed to force ISPs to block a blacklist of refused ... (view more)

The dust has settled after another Black Friday and Cyber Monday , and already statistics are suggesting they've both been very successful for retailers. However, it seems online sellers have benefitted the most this year, with Amazon.com and ... Wal-Mart leading the pack. As the first nation-wide holiday within striking distance of the Christmas season, Black Friday has become renowned for big sales and big lineups at malls and big box retail stores (making it more or less infamous with consumers more prone to frustration). However, over the last few years more and more shoppers have been ... (view more)

One of the Internet's most popular free web hosting services, GeoCities, is closing down for good. Yahoo, which has owned the service for the last decade, announced in April it planned on shutting off the pages remaining in operation, and yesterday ... the lights went down on GeoCities for the very last time. Started back in 1994 under the title "Beverly Hills Internet," GeoCities early on adopted an operating design that emulated its name. For example, a site about celebrities might fall under the city-themed title "Hollywood," while those constructed for the purposes of blogging about PC ... (view more)

While an increasing number of businesses are encouraging their employees to listen to music in the hopes of making them happier and thus increasing production, most U.S. bosses are taking an opposite approach to social networking sites like Twitter ... or Facebook, with more than half of all companies banning them from the workplace. The finding comes from a recent study by Robert Half Technology, an IT company -- appropriate, since most of the time it's a company's local IT rep who's responsible for setting out which sites are okay and which are not for employees to visit on company time. ... (view more)

The U.S. government is considering a plan that would prevent Internet Service Providers (ISPs) from banning actions online that 'hog' bandwidth. The government's proposal would change how Internet providers such as AT ... (view more)

In an effort to raise awareness, three professional hackers are attempting to prove that trusted web sites make you just as vulnerable to attack as known malicious web sites. At the recent Black Hat and Def Con security conventions, three presenters ... brought light to a new wave of Internet attacks that operate in a similar manner to that of a telephone tap in the shared communication between computers and trusted web sites. "Man-in-the-Middle" Attack This type of computer infiltration, known as "man-in-the-middle" attacks, occur when an online deviant steals the data that is intended to be ... (view more)

According to reports, the death of Michael Jackson, and the online whirlwind it created, helped crash some major news sources. In addition, there have been incidents where online wrongdoers have sought to take advantage in Jackson's death , with ... both hacking and spam related to the subject. Google News Unresponsive Google News was inaccessible for many users for 25 minutes on Thursday afternoon, replaced by a message stating: "We're sorry, but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can't process your request right ... (view more)

Spam is the abuse of electronic messaging systems (including most broadcast mediums, digital delivery systems) to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately. People who create electronic spam are called spammers. Geographical Origins of Spam As ... of this writing and according to experts from SophosLabs, 28.4% of global spam comes from the U.S. In second place is South Korea, bringing 5.2% of global spam. Following the list are China (including Hong Kong): 4.9%; Russia: 4.4%; Brazil: 3.7%; France: 3.6%; Germany: 3.4%; Turkey: 3.%; Poland: 2.7%; United Kingdom (specifically Great Britain): 2 ... (view more)