PayPal Releases API to Developers

PayPal has announced the PayPal X program, which will provide software developers access to APIs. This will allow PayPal functionality to be built directly into third party applications. Without this ability, users had to be redirected to PayPal to use the service. Built in PayPal functionality could prove extremely useful in apps for mobile phones, and could open up the possibilities of what could be purchased from them. This can be seen as a necessary move in the online payment processing market which PayPal doesn't dominate as it once did. With offerings coming from Google and Amazon, PayPal needs to adapt and get creative to stay ahead.

Google Begins International Campaign for Apps

Google will kick off an international campaign to broaden the adoption of its Apps software suite. Through Google Apps, users have access to e-mail, calendars, and productivity software among others. Google is taking these steps in an attempt to compete with Microsoft and IBM in the business world. All of the offerings from Google take advantage of cloud computing, and will allow businesses to cut down on server and energy costs. Google charges large companies $50 per year per user, but allows companies with less than 50 employees to use the service for free. The number of businesses that use the service is up to 2 million, with around 20 million users overall. The ad campaign is set to run for the remainder of the year.

Sparkly Vampires Turn To Social Networks To Promote Next Film

Depending on how to look at it, the release of the next sparkly vampire movie is still a month away or too darn close. For those of you eager to get your Twilight fix, you might be happy to know that there is now an official Twitter account for Twilight [@twilight] providing exclusive photos and other information. Additionally, you can now listen to the entire soundtrack for Twilight: New Moon on the official Twilight MySpace page.

Mashable, a tech blog covering all things related to social networking, reported that the Twilight Twitter account hit 22,000 followers in just 6 hours and expect the account to easily hit a million followers. That's pretty amazing to me after hearing that a majority of Twitter users are 24 or older and male, not the group I'd expect to care about Twilight.

Kindle International Actually Less International Than It Leads You to Believe

The recently announced Kindle International may not be as great of a device as it originally sounded. Wired's Gadget Lab uncovered a bit of detail that Amazon tucked away in the fine print. Outside of the US, the Kindle's experimental web browser used for blogs and internet access will be unavailable. That leaves the device only useful for downloading books from Amazon's Kindle Store.

Included in the high cost of the Kindle International is the connection to AT&T's wireless network. This is done so that the users will never see a monthly bill. It's likely that AT&T is passing along a high roaming cost to Amazon for the international wireless access, and Amazon's probably doing what they can to keep costs down. Here's a suggestion for Amazon, sell a Kindle with no access and let the user pick up the monthly bill.

Still like the idea of the Kindle International? The article goes on to state that the device is being shipped from the US, which of course will add additional shipping costs to anyone overseas. But the big kicker is the Kindle International only includes a US power adapter. Want to charge the International device while outside of the US? That'll cost you extra for an adapter. Not a big deal for US travelers who already have the adapters, but a kicker for those that live outside the US and don't already have one. Wired estimates that the $280 Kindle International could cost as much as $350 by the time it's all said and done.

Sounds like it should have been named Kindle Limited.

Twitter Looking Into Username and Password Issues

In a status update, Twitter announced that they are currently looking into reports by users who claim to be locked out of their account after having changed their username, email address, or resetting their password. If you use Twitter, hold off on making any changes to your account for the time being.

Bill and Melinda Gates Want to Give Everyone Fiber

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently made an interesting proposal to the FCC. The Foundation's plan is to run fiber to what it refers to as “anchor institutions.” Included in this category are 123,000 libraries, hospitals, community colleges, and public schools. In addition, the plan also includes running fiber to every community in order to aid in bringing fiber to the public. The Foundation believes that the entire plan can be completed for $5-$10 billion. The FCC definitely appears to be considering the plan, and has asked the public for its opinion on the matter.

One Billion Videos Per Day for YouTube

CEO of YouTube Chad Hurley announced today that the site services more than 1 billion videos per day. The announcement was made on the third anniversary of its acquisition by Google. YouTube has continually upped the ante, by offering longer videos with better quality. However, even the mighty Google has been unable to turn YouTube profitable. Google CEO Eric Schmidt has said “YouTube would become profitable at some point.” YouTube is a great way to kill some time, and these numbers provide a concrete measure of just how many are killing time.

Webmail Scam Continues to be a Concern

On Monday it became clear that a list of Hotmail account details had been leaked online, with the probability that the number of compromised accounts could be much larger than the 10,000 or so published. Since then a second list of account names and passwords has been posted, which showed that the scam extended to include other webmail services from Google (Gmail) and Yahoo. Security firm Websense has now reported an increase in spam emails being sent from Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail accounts. Compromised accounts have been sending out personalised e-mails to addresses found in user's contacts with links to fake websites.

That the number of accounts has now been highlighted as being relatively substantial has some suggesting that rather than being exclusively a phishing scam (which have quite a low success rate) it is possible that key-logging malware may have been involved. It is recommended that anyone who believes they may have been affected change their email passwords immediately, though it is probably best to conduct a thorough scan using up to date virus software before hand. The scam has also prompted discussion about how users handle managing multiple complex passwords. Many choose more easily memorised and therefore less robust passwords for this reason, or use the same password in a number of locations. Security Advisor Sean Sullivan of F-Secure has even gone as far as to go against conventional wisdom and suggest writing down web based passwords if it means the difference between picking a weak one or a strong one.

Facebook Introduces 'Gross National Happiness Index' App

Facebook's recently introduced "Gross National Happiness Index" application aims to represent the happiness levels of the user base in graph form. It currently only charts happiness for users based in the United States, but it does so by looking out for keywords in status updates, giving words such as "happy", "awesome" and "yay" a positive score, while those such as "tragic", "doubt" and "sad" earn a negative score. According to a survey carried out on some users, Facebook also found that those using more positive words in their updates tended to report being more satisfied with their lives.

Now, some of you may be thinking that analysing the status updates of users is going to throw up some privacy issues. According to Facebook the research doesn't even involve staff reading updates, with computers doing the work of counting keywords after any personally identifiable info has been removed. For convenience the app points out important dates when spikes of positivity occur, such as the 4th of July for example. The extremity of the spikes reduces as more users are sampled (which has something of a normalising effect). What should be intriguing to see, is some comparison between geographical regions if Facebook extends the app to cover other countries (I wonder if it would tally with the Happy Planet Index). You can find the United States Gross National Happiness Index application in the prototype app section on Facebook.

Thousands of Hotmail Passwords Posted Online

Though the information has now been removed, it has been confirmed that thousands of passwords for Hotmail accounts were posted online on October 1st by an anonymous user at pastebin.com. The list contained details for over 10,000 accounts beginning with the letters A and B, with the suggestion that there could be additional lists of comprimised accounts. Neowin were the first to report the leak, and claim that most of the accounts appear to be based in Europe and include those with @hotmail.com, @msn.com and @live.com endings. According to BBC news, Microsoft are aware of the problem and requested that the details be removed as soon as it learned of the leak. It has determined that it was not a breach of internal Microsoft data, with the details likely being acquired through a phishing scheme. If you use a Hotmail account (or anything else that requires your Windows Live details, say Messenger), then it is suggested that you change your password (and security question) as soon as possible.

Google Wave Invites Show Up On eBay

The ultra-exclusive Google Wave beta, only 100,000 invites were given out, is now underway. However, if you are an internet user who may have wanted to use it, odds are that you didn't receive an invite. Just as all other new technology releases, Google Wave invites started to appear on eBay. Some eBay users aren't quite as honest as others, as one tried to sell a phantom Wave invite. The highest bid before being taken down was reportedly $27,000. As with other new Google products, I'll be more than happy to wait until it is available for free.

British High Court Serves Injunction via Twitter

Twitter already provides support to individuals or organisations experiencing problems with impersonation accounts on the service (they break Twitter's ToS agreement). However if you wish to take out a legal writ over the issue but don't know the true identity of the account holder, what do you do? Right-wing blogger Donal Blaney found himself in this position, and through his solicitors firm Griffin Law sought an injunction against Twitter user @blaneysblarney. The UK High Court then decided that the best course of action was to issue the writ to the anonymous Tweeter via the service itself, with UK law allowing injunctions to be served through electronic means should more traditional methods be unavailable. Andre Walker at Griffin Law said "Whoever they are, they will be told to stop posting, to remove previous posts and to identify themselves to the High Court via a web link form." The decision sets a precedent that could give others pursuing litigation a path of action to follow.

ICANN Begins New Era of Independence

The governing body that oversses the domain name system (DNS) is embarking on a new chapter in its life as it moves out from under direct controll of the U.S. Department of Commerce for the first time in eleven years.

In an agreement dated yesterday, the DOC gave up some of its control over Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) that paves the way for more international participation in the decisions made that affect how the Internet is run. In an agreement dating from 2006 that expireed yesterday, the U.S. becomes a member of the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) and gives up primary control over ICANN.

That should ease some of the criticism directed toward ICANN and the U.S. claiming the U.S. had a stranghold on the Internet. As a member of the GAC, the U.S. joins over 100 other countries at the table with ICANN no longer reporting to the U.S. government. As the Internet has become more prevalent world wide over the past decade, U.S. control had become a sore point for many, with some countries such as China threatening to build their own version of the Net if some accomodation on the matter could not be reached.

"This reflects the globalization of the Internet," said Rod Beckstrom, chief executive of the body, called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or Icann. "By America relaxing some control and inviting other countries to have an active hand, that increases the possibility that the global Internet will remain unified," Mr. Beckstrom said in an interview.;

 

Jack Thompson is at it Again

Despite being permanently disbarred by the Florida Supreme Court last year due to "abusive and frivolous filings", Jack Thompson is back. This time, however, he isn't going after the video game industry, but rather social networking juggernaut, Facebook. Thompson filed a suit on Tuesday for US$40 million, claiming that some of the posts on the site have caused him "great harm and distress," such as the group "Jack Thompson should be smacked across the face with an Atari 2600."

Although Facebook removed a poll asking if Obama should be shot, cyber-law attorney Parry Aftab sees little chance of success for Thompson. Companies like Facebook have no liability for what people do with its services according to the U.S. Communications Decency Act. As Aftab points out, "They are no more liable than the phone company would be for anyone who is calling in a ransom demand."

So if I express my hatred toward Thompson here, is he going to sue OCC as well?

Google Wave Beta Testing Gets Underway

Can you remember when it was a big deal to have your own Gmail account? It seems a long time ago now, but Google Wave could attract similar attention, with its combination of functionalities and real-time interaction features. Google will be inviting over 100,000 to test Wave today, though unless you were very early to the punch or have been involved in the developer preview then that is unlikely to be you. If you do not know much about Google Wave, then you can take a look at the 80 minute long video of the preview presented at Google I/O 2009. If that is a bit too much for you then fortunately there is a much shorter video that highlights the important principles.

Of course, as with anything Google launches, there has been plenty of interest in Wave, with some seeing it as having the potential to evolve the way web users collaborate. Others are more sceptical and do not really see it offering much that other web services already provide. Engadget went hands-on with the developer preview back at the start of last month, which shows some of the ideas at work. Is any of that enough to get you excited about trying it out?

Gmail Suffers More Outages

When Google's Gmail service experiences problems or downtime, it doesn't take long for the word to get out. At the beginning of this month Gmail suffered wide spread outages to its web based service as engineers underestimated the affect of changes made during recent routine upgrades. Today, users have once again complained about not being able to access the service, though this problem has apparently only impacted a small number of users. You are more likely to have noticed Gmail not being able to access your contacts. Those problems have now been remedied according to Google, though it may be worth keeping an eye on the official Gmail blog to see if an explanation is posted with the details behind today's issues.

Google Sidewiki Brings Annotations to Websites

It's by no means a new idea, but the fact that Google is introducing the new "Sidewiki" feature to the Google Toolbar today means that it may gain widespread adoption. The basic premise, as outlined in a post on the Official Google Blog (with video demo) is that a lot of people visit the same pages on the web looking for information, and giving them a way of adding some helpful knowledge to these pages in the form of annotations means that more people will find what they are looking for. With Sidewiki, if there are notes available on a website you visit, they will appear in a browser sidebar for you to peruse. Or should you want to add useful information of your own, then you can do that too.

Of course, giving everyone free reign to add notes to websites could potentially lead to plenty of 'less desirable' information being added, which is why Google says it has spent a lot of time working on the ranking algorithms involved. Taking into account both user feedback and a number of other signals (naturally, they don't go into specifics), only the most useful or "high-quality" entries will be shown. Sidewiki will also take entries made on one page and display them on other pages that use the same snippet of text. If you want to try out Sidewiki it is currently available with Google Toolbar for Firefox and IE (Chrome and other browsers to come later).

Bing Takes 10% of U.S. Search Market in August

According to numbers from Nielsen, Microsoft's Bing search engine put on the most growth among the major players in August and managed to grab a 10.7% share of the total number of searches at just over 1.1 billion. The increase sees Bing making ground on Yahoo! (16% share) for the second place spot, though still trails by a massive margin to market leader Google, which racked up a 64.6% share. Microsoft has been promoting Bing since its launch in May, while looking to offer users new functionality that might draw them away from competitors. We have been conducting our own (considerably more limited in numbers) poll here at OCC that suggests that while Bing may be gaining ground, Google still remains a firm favourite among our members at least. What would it take to get you to switch?

Facebook Hits 300 million Users

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in a blog post today that the site had passed the 300 million users landmark. The site racked up 250 million users just two months ago and was sitting at 200 million three months before that. What may be more important for the future of the site is that Zuckerberg also reported that Facebook had made the important step of becoming cash flow positive (i.e. not losing money) in the last quarter. That was a milestone it had previously predicted to reach sometime in 2010, so it has come a little sooner than expected. The site is also hoping to increase its staff numbers (the company employs around 1,000 people in total), with the current situation being that "every engineer here is responsible for more than one million users" as Zuckerberg put it.

Pigeon Delivers Data Faster than South African ISP, Proves Very Little

A South African IT company chose to illustrate complaints about slow ADSL upload speeds by pitting the service of the country's biggest provider, Telkom against a more traditional form of transmission, the carrier pigeon. Loaded up with a 4GB memory stick at one of Unlimited IT's call centers, the pigeon (named Winston) delivered the data to the company's office in Durban 60 miles away, while the same data was also uploaded over an ADSL connection. In total it took Winston around two hours to get the data from one location to the other, just over an hour to fly the distance and then about another hour to upload the information onto computer systems at the destination. In that same amount of time, around 4% of the data was delivered over ADSL. Many South Africans followed progress of the race online through social networking sites.

While the race may have been fun stunt to pull off, how much does it actually say about ADSL upload speeds? Well let's start by working out how fast that data upload must have been to reach the 4% complete total. Four percent of 4GB is roughly 160MB, so the equates to about 1.3 Megabytes of data every minute or just over 22KB/s. As an ISPs standard measure is in bits rather than bytes you end up with something just about reaching 180Kbps. I think we can agree that even for an upload speed, that is relatively slow (or at least it would be to most of us). Now what about how fast your upload speed would need to be to transfer that 4GB in two hours? Then we are talking something a little north of 4.6Mbps, which is still outside the range of what most of our members are provided with (outisde of work and university campuses). Give a pigeon a bigger memory stick and that number just goes up.

So South African upload speeds may be slow (particularly considering this is essentially business use), but most of our connections would be beaten by a pigeon delivery service too. Of course, that wouldn't be practical for a number of reasons, though I'll let you make up your own jokes on that one (or just take a look at the comments section on the engadget coverage of this story). Now excuse me while I go and see if I can train my cat to intercept sensitive data in transit; maybe he can finally start earning his keep.

New Monopoly Game to Use Google Maps

Hasbro, the creators of the popular board game Monopoly, will be unleashing a whole new animal on the internet tomorrow. Using Google Maps as the game board, Monopoly City Streets will allow users to purchase real streets that can be found using the service. Players will start with $3 million in Monopoly money, and will be able to place property on their streets. Only one player may own each street, but players can trade them if they wish. Chance cards will allow users to place bonus buildings such as schools on their streets. Players will earn rent from properties and will then be able to expand their real estate empire. The game will run until January 2010.

Patent For Google's Home Page Approved By USPTO

There have been a lot of complaints about the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the way they approve patents and the patents they allow through the system. However, a patent granted to Google on September 1, 2009 may be the most asinine patent yet. 

While Google has become synonymous search, the website's design is very minimalistic and looks like something that might have been put together by a student during the first week of an HTML 101 class. If you thought it was that simple, you'd be wrong by the USPTO's standards which apparently think the web page is a innovative "graphical user interface for a display screen of a communications terminal."

This could mean trouble for Ask.com, Yahoo, Altavista, and anyone else that has a screen with a few links, a search box, and a couple of buttons. Bing may be ok, since they've taken a fancier approach to the search screen with links on the left and a image on the background.

It took more than five years for this patent to slide through the system; it was originally filed on July 14, 2004. Google also owns a patent for the display of search results which it was granted in 2006, that patent was submitted at the same time as the home page patent.

Qwest Getting 100Gbps Internet

Qwest announced today that it will be upgrading its internet backbone with some help from optical technology developed by Alcatel-Lucent. This new backbone will bring with it a 100Gbps rating, making it much faster than Roadrunner Turbo. However, the impressive bandwidth will only be available to enterprise and government users. These groups often have high bandwidth needs, and these needs will likely increase as new technologies are developed allowing businesses to connect with each other. Qwest will work on this upgrade through 2010, hopefully finishing by the end of the year. Verizon is also working on upgrading its backbone, and hopes to release on a similar time frame.

Underestimation Caused Gmail Outage

Users of Google's Gmail service will likely have noticed some issues yesterday, as the company experienced some down time of its email web interface. Google officially report that the outage lasted for around 100 minutes, though some of you may have noticed it taking a little more time to get fully back to normal. The problem was caused when engineers took down a small portion of Gmail servers for routine upgrades, but the affect this would have on the rest of the service was underestimated. Some other recent changes that were made meant that the request routers that process queries and direct them to appropriate servers became overloaded. That effectively saw the service grind to a halt until measures could be taken to remedy the situation. Notably, IMAP and POP access was not affected, as these requests don't use the same routers.

With Gmail now among the top three email services, further incidents such as this could hurt its reputation and potential suitability for critical applications. Google say they will be putting resources into place that ensure a similar event doesn't happen again.

eBay Sells Most of Skype

A deal was announced today that leaves eBay with 35% of Skype, with the rest going to a group of venture capitalists. The president of Skype, Josh Silverman, sees this as an opportunity to start over, with a group of owners that believe in the principles that Skype was founded on. eBay remained largely uninvolved since purchasing Skype in 2005, and the losses continued to pile up. In an interesting twist, the company that owns the technology Skype uses to communicate recently cut off eBay's license to use the technology.

Opera 10 Released

As expected, this morning Opera Software released a new version of its web browser, Opera 10, which includes a new UI, enhancements to the UI and built-in mail client, improved performance as well as support for new web standards. Web developers receive a new version of Opera Dragonfly, Opera's built in web development tools which allow developers to edit the DOM as well as inspect HTTP headers.

"At Opera, we have always worked hard to innovate new ways to improve everyone's browsing experience," said Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera. "Opera Turbo is our newest innovation, and one we think everyone should try, because we all will face a slow connection at some point. Now, there is a solution, and it is absolutely free. We are excited to offer Opera 10 to the world, and we hope even more people discover what the 40 million people who have already made the switch know: browsing with Opera makes the Web a safer, more enjoyable and more interesting place."

Opera has long had a loyal (if not fanatic) following, however Opera has seen a slight decline in market share over the last several quarters and is currently sitting in fifth place among the desktop web browsers. Apple Safari, Google Chrome, and Mozilla Firefox continue to nip away at Microsoft's dominant web browser, Internet Explorer, which currently holds about 62-percent of the browser market share.

While Opera's desktop client may not be getting the love some feel it deserves, Opera's mobile browser, Opera Mini, currently holds the number one position for mobile browsers. Opera Mini has a slight lead over the iPhone (mobile Safari) by less than 2%. Meanwhile, Nokia comes in a distant third.

Opera 10 is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux in over 60 languages and can be downloaded here. It may take a while, Opera's web site and FTP server appear to be getting hammered right now.

Facebook 3.0 Now Available In The Apple App Store

The much awaited update to the official Facebook iPhone app is now available in the Apple App Store [iTunes link]. New features and an updated UI makes Facebook 3.0 feel more like, well, Facebook. Here is what's new with 3.0:

• See your upcoming Events and RSVP
• See your friends' birthdays
• See Pages and post updates and photos to Pages you administer
• Write Notes and read your friends' Notes
• Upload videos from an iPhone 3GS
• Upload photos to any album
• Complete photo management (create albums, delete albums, delete photos, delete photo tags)
• Change your Profile Picture
• Zoom into photos
• Like posts and photos
• See the same News Feed as the Facebook website
• Visit links in a built-in web browser
• See all of your friends' friends and Pages
• See mutual friends
• Easily search for people and Pages
• Make friend requests
• Become a fan of Pages
• Quickly call or text your friends
• Create shortcuts to your favorite friends and Pages
• Friends sorted by first or last name according to your settings
• Chat friends sorted alphabeticaly [sic]

If you have problems installing the app, such as a blank page or white screen it may help to delete the app and then reinstall. Give the new Facebook app a whirl and let us know what you think. Don't forget, you can also find Overclockers Club on Facebook.

Pirate Bay Acquisition Approved

Global Gaming Foundry shareholders have approved the purchase of the Pirate Bay website. The majority of shares are owned by the CEO and his family, explaining why it was so easy to get this done. The revamped Pirate Bay intends to pay copyright owners for their works, but it is unclear if users will continue to visit the site. The company could face some obstacles in the acquisition, however, as the stock exchange it is listed on has suspended trading of the company until further notice. In addition, several investors have backed out of the deal, causing some to question if the deal will go through.

Opera 10 Release Candidate Available; Final Coming September 1

Opera 10 is coming September 1, 2009, but for those of you that cannot wait a "feature complete" release candidate is available for download from opera.com/browser/next/.

Keeping to its commitment to be the fastest web browser, Opera claims that v10 loads resource intensive sites like Facebook and Gmail more than 40% faster than Opera 9.6. Additionally, Opera 10 includes a new feature called Opera Turbo which is a compression technology designed to improve speeds over limited-bandwidth connections such as a crowded WiFi in a cafe. In addition to speed and performance, Opera's revamped Presto rendering engine includes support for web standards such as web fonts, SVG, and passes the Acid3 test at 100%.

Opera has also made significant improvements to the browser's web development tools, built-in email client, spell checking, and the UI and tabbed interface.

"The release candidate pushes us closer to the final launch of Opera 10," said Jan Standal, Vice President of Desktop Products, Opera. "We paid special attention to the mail client, which is one of our most enduring and popular features. Now, we are very close to releasing the best browser in Opera's long history. We hope everyone who has helped us test our browser thus far will put the release candidate through its paces. With everyone's help, Opera 10 will surprise a lot of people with its speed, stability and powerful features."

United States Doing Poorly in Broadband

A recent report shows that South Korea is much better than the United States in more than just Starcraft. South Korea, the world leader in average download speed, is 15 years ahead of the United States in broadband speed. The United States was placed in the 29th spot on the list of countries compiled by the Communications Workers of America. With an average download speed of 5.1mbps, the broadband infrastructure won't be able to handle tasks such as in-home medical monitoring. The report suggests that more is invested into broadband, and I certainly agree with that viewpoint.