Almost Ready for a Comeback -
From CNN.com
Like the phoenix from the ashes, the once-wildly popular Napster song-swapping service is slated to be relaunched before the end of the year, its new corporate parent Roxio Inc. said.
Once the scourge of the music industry, Napster had at its peak in 2000 more than 60 million people using its software that allowed Internet users to copy and share music for free, until the five largest record companies successfully sued the company for copyright infringement.
The record industry has long blamed such services for the decline in record sales. After declaring bankruptcy last year, many of Napster's assets were bought by Roxio, which makes CD-burning software and plans to restart Napster as a legitimate pay service.
"We're expecting to launch the service before the end of the year," spokeswoman Kathryn Kelly said. "But we're not relaunching until we can establish it as a legal service."
Discussions with record labels - She added that the company was in discussions with the five largest record labels -- Vivendi Universal's Universal Music Group; Sony Music; AOL Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Music Group; Bertelsmann AG; and EMI Group Plc -- to license their music. (AOL Time Warner is CNN's parent company.)
Roxio plans to offer services that charge a fee for each individual song as well as subscription services that allow users to download songs for a monthly fee. Roxio is not the first company to try to make a legitimate business out of Napster. Bertelsmann shocked the industry in October 2000 when it said it would invest in Napster, aiming to launch a legitimate subscription version of the service. At the time, its BMG music arm was suing Napster.
But Napster ran out of money before it could figure out a way to charge customers for downloads. In September, the bankruptcy court blocked Bertelsmann's bid to buy the Napster assets. Roxio managed to buy most of Roxio's assets, but it did not assume any of the company's pending liabilities.
Suit filed - That did not stop music publishers from suing Bertelsmann for $17 billion last week, arguing that by throwing Napster a lifeline in 2002 it was responsible for the service continuing its illegal infringement.
In the void left by Napster, several other free song-swapping services have emerged such as Kazaa, which is battling the record labels in court. Meanwhile, commercial online music ventures like Pressplay and MusicNet, both of which are backed by the major labels, have had a difficult time finding their footing.
Virus Alert! W32/Lovgate@M
This is a mailing worm, that also spreads via network shares, and drops a remote-access trojan. The worm has similarities to W32/Plage.worm in that it drops the same files on the victim's machine and the message, which is sent out by the worm. Major difference is that W32/Lovgate family is compiled with MSVC while W32/Plage was created with BorlandC.
The worm is capable of sending a reply to all new messages found in the user's inbox (Outlook and Outlook Express) by using its own SMTP engine and the server smtp.163.com.
The worm has capabilities of propagating through network shares. It enumerates network shares and copies itself recursively.
The worm propagates via email (it contains its own SMTP engine) and over network shares. It copies itself to folders/subfolders on open shares, and replies to messages in the user inbox. Additionally, it drops a backdoor component (port 10168, and 1192 on NT based systems, is opened on victim machines).
The "TRICK" To Search Engine Optimization! -
Excerpts from
Everyone wants to know the "secrets" of the search engines. "Should I have 10% keyword density or 20%?" or "Should I use Link Popularity inflation techniques?" or "Should I resubmit every week or every month?". These are all questions that those searching out the "secrets" of the search engines ask. Let me first begin by trying to shed some light on the search engine itself.
There is no real secret to a search engine. Any search engine has basically 3 parts, First is the spider, otherwise called a robot. The spider visits a web page, reads it, and then follows links to other pages within the site. This is what it means when someone refers to a site being "spidered" or "crawled." The spider returns to the site on a regular basis, such as every month or two, to look for changes.
Everything the spider finds goes into the second part of a search engine, the index. The index, sometimes called the database, is like a giant library containing a copy of every web page that the spider finds. If a web page changes, then this book is updated with new information. Sometimes it can take a while for new pages or changes that the spider finds to be added to the index. Thus, a web page may have been "spidered" but not yet "indexed." Until it is indexed, it is not available to those searching with the search engine.
The third, and trickiest, part of a search engine is the ranking software. This is the program that sifts through the millions of pages recorded in the index to find matches to a search and rank them in order of what it believes is most relevant. All search engines have the basic parts described above, but there are differences in how these parts are tuned. That is why the same search on different search engines often produces different results.
Now that you can see there is nothing really magical about any given search engine, we'll discuss other "secrets" like keyword density and link popularity.
First, let me start with the ever popular "Keyword Density". All I can say about this issue is "Relevancy rules over ALL!". If you try to keep up with the ever changing algorithms of the search engines, you'll be forever changing your copy around to match that "holy grail percentage" for that month. Instead, create pages that have substantial and relevant content related your primary keywords for that page.
Link popularity is however very important among search engines now. Search engines feel if more websites link to yours that your website must be important. Also, if the importance of a website that is linking to you is ranked high in that search engine, your link popularity will be greater. You should definitely try to build your link popularity. There are several different programs available now to help you do just that.
In conclusion, the real secret of any quality search engine optimization company is a combination of all of these aspects. In order to succeed, you must incorporate submission scheduling, link popularity, keyword density and relevancy, etc. into a SEO campaign plan. The more relevant your keyword list to your website, the more targeted your visitors will be, and the search engines will stay less cluttered.
"How Secure is Your E-Mail???" -
From
Swiss crack e-mail code, but minimal impact seen - NEW YORK (Reuters) — Researchers at a Swiss university have cracked the technology used to keep people from eavesdropping on e-mail sent over the Web, but U.S. experts said Thursday that the impact would likely be minimal.
Professor Serge Vaudenay of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne found a way to unlock a message encrypted using Secure Socket Layer protocol technology, according to a posting on the research institute's Web site.
However, U.S. cryptography experts said it was not the version of security that most consumers use to shop online. Rather, it is a version that only affects e-mail, is limited in scope and not widely used, said Professor Avi Rubin, who is technical director of the Information Security Institute at Maryland's Johns Hopkins University.
In addition, an attacker would have to be in control of a network computer located in the middle of the two people communicating over which the messages were flowing, he said. "It's possible, but it has limited applicability," he said.
He said patches are already available to fix the hole, which affects one particular mode of OpenSSL. Like all so-called "open source" software, OpenSSL is free software created by developers who can modify it at any time.
"This is not something that anybody really needs to worry about," Rubin said.
Bruce Schneier, chief technical officer at network monitoring firm Counterpane Internet Security, agreed.
"As a cryptographer, I am impressed. That's really nice work," he said of the research. "As a guy who wants to protect my secrets tomorrow, I don't care."
Besides the mitigating circumstances which lessen the likelihood that attackers would be successful, Schneier said SSL is irrelevant to security because attackers can more easily get at secret information while it is stored on computers and servers at the sending and receiving ends.
"SSL protects the communications link between you and the Web" server, he said. "Nobody bothers eavesdropping on the communications while it is in transit."
"The 10 Parts of a Business Website" -
Excerpts from
Business owners who are ready to bring their brick 'n mortar businesses to the Internet experience headaches dealing with designers, while the latter too often end up wanting to rip their hair out because of add-ons, or things they learn about their clients after they've started the projects. Why? Web sites require planning and lots of communication. So before you decide to speak to a web designer or client... consider these 10 parts of a business website.
1. Planning - Just as a new building needs planning before construction begins, the creation of a web site is preceded by preparation. Preparing for a new site includes having a business vision, an ideal client profile and a clear picture of how your site will compliment your overall marketing strategy.
2. Trustworthiness and Integrity - Much is made of the virtual business relationship nowadays: doing business with people you've never met in person. The fundamentals of a virtual business are the same as those of brick and mortar business: you must prove that you can provide (and service!) what you're selling.
3. Text Copy - One of the most common embarrassments in the web design industry is the pervasive presence of text copy with misspellings, poor grammar or simply poorly written. I've personally seen this even on the sites of famous companies whose print publications are flawless.
4. Graphics - Where are you getting them from? Do you have legal permission to use them? Do you know that you have to format graphics differently for the Internet than for your printed literature? What are JPEG, GIF or PNG? Which format is best to use and when to use it?
5. Supporting Documents - Documents are often a special case issue, as they require the viewer to possess the proper helper applications (programs such as Adobe Reader) in order to open them. Special software is required for PDF (.pdf) documents, Word docs (.doc) or WordPerfect (.wpt) files.
6. Coding - Your web site is created through the use of one or more computer languages. The type and version of each language can affect who is able to see the pages (http://webctr.com/services/html-coding.htm), the cost to create the site, the difficulty of ongoing maintenance and the ease of upgrading or making major changes.
7. Multimedia - Depending on your ideal client profile, multimedia usage can make a good site great or it can make it completely unusable. Movies, audio files, Flash movie presentations: all are relatively large files requiring special applications ( programs called plugins) to work.
8. Implementation - Now that you have made all your decisions and collected all your materials, it's time to put the plan into effect. What is a realistic amount of time to get from this point to a finished site? Have you included extra time for unforeseen coding issues (bugs)? How long will the beta period (public testing time) be for your site and why is it necessary? Building a web site is so much more than sticking images and text on web pages.
9. Marketing - Did you hear the one about the company who built a web site and nobody came? Probably not, because neither the company nor the site exists anymore! The Internet is comprised of millions upon millions of web pages, with a tiny percentage of the web sites getting the majority of the traffic. How is your site going to pull in it's share of the pot?
10. Customer Service - Getting people to your web site is a beginning, but keeping their interest and patronage is an ongoing job. A great customer service policy includes a code of ethics, guarantees, and consistency. Your viewers want to be able to easily contact you without providing their life history!
Top Ten Web-Design Mistakes of 2002 -
Excerpts from
As the Web grows, websites continue to come up with ways to annoy users. Following are ten design mistakes that were particularly good at punishing users and costing site owners business in 2002. ...
1. No Prices - No B2C ecommerce site would make this mistake, but it's rife in B2B, where most "enterprise solutions" are presented so that you can't tell whether they are suited for 100 people or 100,000 people. Price is the most specific piece of info customers use to understand the nature of an offering, and not providing it makes people feel lost and reduces their understanding of a product line. ...
2. Inflexible Search Engines - Overly literal search engines reduce usability in that they're unable to handle typos, plurals, hyphens, and other variants of the query terms. Such search engines are particularly difficult for elderly users, but they hurt everybody. ...
3. Horizontal Scrolling - Users hate scrolling left to right. Vertical scrolling seems to be okay, maybe because it's much more common. Web pages that require horizontal scrolling in standard-sized windows, such as 800x600 pixels, are particularly annoying. ...
4. Fixed Font Size - Style sheets unfortunately give websites the power to disable a Web browser's "change font size" button and specify a fixed font size. About 95% of the time, this fixed size is tiny, reducing readability significantly for most people over the age of 40. ...
5. Blocks of Text - A wall of text is deadly for an interactive experience. Intimidating. Boring. Painful to read. Write for online, not print. To draw users into the text and support scannability, use well-documented tricks:
subheads - bulleted lists - highlighted keywords
6. JavaScript in Links - Links are the Web's basic building blocks, and users' ability to understand them and to use various browser features correctly is key to enhancing their online skills. Links that don't behave as expected undermine users' understanding of their own system. ...
7. Infrequently Asked Questions in FAQ - Too many websites have FAQs that list questions the company wished users would ask. No good. FAQs have a simplistic information design that does not scale well. They must be reserved for frequently asked questions. ...
8. Collecting Email Addresses Without a Privacy Policy - Users are getting very protective of their inboxes. Every time a website asks for an email address, users react negatively in user testing. Don't assume that people will sign up for a newsletter just because it's free. ...
9. URL > 75 Characters - Long URLs break the Web's social navigation because they make it virtually impossible to email a friend a recommendation to visit a Web page. ...
10. Mailto Links in Unexpected Locations - When you click a link on the Web, what do you expect? To get a new page that contains information about the anchor you just clicked. What don't you expect? To spawn an email program that demands that you write stuff rather than read it. ...
W32/Lovgate@M
As the Web grows, websites continue to come up with ways to annoy users. Following are ten design mistakes that were particularly good at punishing users and costing site owners business in 2002. ...