Twitter acquires antimalware company Dasient
Twitter has acquired Internet security firm Dasient, the Sunnyvale, California startup said on its blog on Monday.
Dasient, which describes itself as a cloud-based Web antimalware technology company, introduced in 2010 a service to protect advertisement networks and publishers from malicious ads.
"Over the last year, we have been very active in securing the ads and content of the some of the industry's largest ad networks and web sites," Neil Daswani, the company's co-founder and chief technology officer, said in a blog post.
Before that in 2009, the company launched its web antimalware platform, capable of scanning URLs (uniform resource locators) and websites for the presence of harmful content.
The acquisition fits with Twitter's plans to expand revenue from advertising including promoted Twitter messages and accounts. Read more...
Computer forensics – Why you’re not so hard to track down
I've lost count of how many TV shows centre on the forensics of crime but there seems to be an awful lot. Even during my youth, movies and TV programmes would feature fingerprinting and other techniques. Today DNA, bio samples, hair and clothing fibres often figure in the path to the truth.
It seems that people like a detective story, especially if it entails clever scientists weeding out the dark facts of a case. But, dare I say it, this analogue world has become somewhat tedious because of the limited number of scenarios.
However, there is a parallel in the digital world that involves a much wider and faster growing choice.
Today most computer crime goes unchallenged, or even unnoticed, as the web continues to expand. But the forces of good are waking up, taking notice, and increasingly having to take action. As a result digital forensics is on the up and is every bit as challenging as its analogue forebear.
Consider for a moment all the variables that identify you and your machine should you decide to join the dark side. Sure, you can operate in some secret mode and disguise your machine, your identity, and your location, but there is still a lot of data that relates only to you. Read more...
HP palms £316m in DWP desktop deal
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has awarded a significant desktop management contract to HP under the Desktop 21 framework agreement.
The five-year £316m Desktop 21 deal covers a range of desktop services including security, print, service desk and device provision and support, and will see the DWP move to HP's WorkPlace360 desktop management platform from 2013.
HP will begin work immediately to put in place the infrastructure needed to support Desktop 21, before moving on to virtualise DWP's desktop applications on a rolling programme, according to the DWP.
HP will then begin the roll-out of the new desktop hardware, including the deployment of thin client devices, which will be able to "support full or partial moves to cloud services at DWP's discretion", the department told Guardian Government Computing. Read more...
Facebook, MySpace, Twitter expose Google’s ‘evil’
A gang of engineers from Facebook, MySpace and Twitter has released a new bookmarklet designed to expose how Google’s People & Pages service favours the ad giant’s own Google+ results at the expense of the rest of the web.
The Focus On the User group posted a video explaining how the Don’t Be Evil tool works - a reference to Google's old motto.
Once dragged onto a user’s bookmarks bar, it functions as a kind of search bar for the social web, unlike People & Pages, which as part of Google’s Search Plus Your World service only returns results from Google+. Read more...
Sage ‘satisfied’ as squeezed small biz still puts out
Sage the British software juggernaut said that its trading results had held up since 1 October, despite the strain on its core customer base in small businesses.
In an interim manager's statement CEO Guy Berruyer described Sage's performance in the past three months as "satisfactory": Read more...
Gamification goes mainstream
Increased sales, increased participation, increased engagement. It doesn't sound like a game, but those are some of the goals, and reported achievements, of the new field of "gamification."
Gamification is the process of using game mechanics to engage audiences and solve problems, "taking the best ideas from games and applying them to fields where they are not usually used," explains Gabe Zichermann, a consultant in New York. "It produces a big bump in user engagement quickly and cheaply, relative to other methods. We are also making work more fun, which leads to more and better work done by happier employees," Zichermann adds.
The key phrase is game mechanics; no one is suggesting business software be turned into mythical quests where users slay colorful monsters with flaming swords. But even traditional companies may add some common gaming techniques to keep things interesting, sources agree. These include:
- Points: Users get points for various achievements. Points can often be spent for prizes, which may be actual merchandise or services, or forms of status.
- Leveling: Points become harder to get as the user accumulates them, or masters the system.
- Badges: As with Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts, badges become part of the identity of the user, and may appear on the user's "trophy page" or with any comments he or she may write.
- Leader boards: The user can see where he or she ranks (in terms of points or other achievements). The board may show the top scorers, the user and the ones immediately above and below the user, or the entire field.
- Community: This can involve collaboration tools, contests and posting comments or sharing content. Read more...
Google+ adds support for pseudonyms — sort of
Google has relaxed somewhat its strict real-names policy on Google+, by letting existing members attach an alternate moniker to their profile name and by letting new members sign up with just a pseudonym, provided it is an "established" identity online or offline.
Google is stopping short, however, of letting people use a brand-new pseudonym as their Google+ member name, although this real-names policy could be further revised in the future, the company said on Monday.
Until now, Google has required that Google+ members use their real, common name to identify themselves on the social networking site, a policy criticized by some who argue that users should have the option to use a pseudonym that masks their real identity for security reasons, as in the case of political dissidents or victims of spousal abuse.
Google will roll out the new feature over the next week, so that current Google+ members will be able to add a pseudonym or a maiden name to their account. If they choose to enter an alternate name, it will be added to their common, real name that's already registered with the account. Read more...
Microsoft reveals launch date for SQL Server 2012
Microsoft has announced a March 7 online event for the launch of SQL Server 2012, the next generation of its database product.
The event will feature keynote addresses from Microsoft corporate vice presidents Ted Kummert and Quentin Clark, who will respectively give attendees a look at Microsoft's "data evolution vision" and a general overview of SQL Server 2012's features.
It wasn't immediately clear whether March 7 is the actual general availability date for the release, but the event indicates that the release could be imminent.
"Let me throw out a dose of reality: if you are not on a [beta program] or otherwise going live with a private build or release candidate, you will not be installing and deploying SQL Server 2012 on March 7th. I promise," SQL Server expert Aaron Bertrand wrote in a blog post late Monday. "These launch events are marketing tools to get you excited about the product. Will you be able to download Express editions from the Microsoft web site, and other SKUs from MSDN or your volume licensing portal, shortly after that? Sure. The next day? Almost certainly not." Read more...
Samsung wins against Apple in the Netherlands on tablet design
The Court of Appeal in The Hague has ruled that the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 is sufficiently different from Apple's European design patent that the tablet can remain on sale in the Netherlands.
Samsung welcomed Tuesday's ruling, which affirmed an August 2011 ruling that the design of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is distinctive and does not infringe Apple's intellectual property rights, a spokesman said via email. The ruling again demonstrates that Apple's products simply do not warrant the intellectual property protections that it believes they should have, he added.
One of Apple's core legal claims against Samsung is that its rival copied the design of Apple's products. Apple has argued that it's no coincidence that Samsung's latest products look a lot like the iPhone and iPad, from the shape of the hardware to the user interface and even the packaging. Read more...