Poor IT job market may fuel online crime

A mid-year security report released last month Cisco System indicates that the weakening IT job market could lead to an increase in online crime as laid-off workers, especially those with computer skills, turn to scams to support themselves.
Disgruntled emloyees may target their former employers, and Cisco warned that insiders "can be especially damaging for an organization because insiders know security weaknesses." A former IT analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York was arrested in April along with his brother on suspicions of taking out loans using false identities. FBI-investigators found a flash drive attached to the bank employee's computer with applications worth 73,000 dollars in loans under the names of stolen identities, the report said.
Cisco warned companies which use short-term IT consultants or who contract out the tasks to "be particularly vigilant about the level and term of their access to sensitive data." The report included snippets of a conversation with a botmaster, or someone who remotely takes over computers without users' knowledge and often sells the resulting access to spammers. The hacker declined to say how much he earned by phishing bank accounts.

Facebook driving mobile Net usage

A third of young people regularly access Facebook and Twitter via their mobile, a new report has found.
Facebook his more popular then Bebo, MySpace and Twitter combined, it found.
The study- into mobile usage among 16-to 35- year olds- also found that the service most youngsters wanted on their phones was the BBC iplayer. The 24- to 36- year-old age group are those most likely to buy content on their mobile phones, the report found.
The relevations will be good news to mobile operators, desperate to fill some of their revenue gaps with the money to be made on mobile internet usage. There appears to be a gender divide when it comes to mobile internet usage with twice as many men as women accessing the Web via their mobiles.
CCS insight predicts that by the end of 2009, some 44% of mobile users will access data via their handsets.

YouTube introduces automatic captions for hearing impaired

YouTube's parent company Google has announced on its blog that automatic captions are to begin to roll out across the site. The machine-generated captions will initially be generated in english. At first they will only be found on 13 channels. These include national Geographic, Columbia, as well as most Google and YouTube channels. The software engineer behind this technology, Ken Harrenstien, is deaf.
Currently, YouTube offers a manual captioning service but video makers tend not to use it. The current step aims to combining automatic speech recognition with the recent current caption system.
The translation is not always perfect, but Harrenstien says that the technology "will continue to improve with time."
Alternatively users can upload a transcript of their video and auto-timing algorithms will match the next to the words as they are spoken.

Global crisis affecting IT spending: Microsoft CEO

Companies worldwide are slashing spending on information technology because of the global downturn and will have to learn to do more with less, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said.
Ballmer, on a visit to south korea last month to promote the newly-released Windows 7 system, said IT spending represents about half of all capital expenditure in developed countries such as the United States and South Korea.
"With capital more scarce, we know IT budgets are more scarce," Ballmer told chief information officers (CIOs) from local businesses.
Ballmer said there would be pressure worldwide to cut IT spending but to increase its impact.
"We need strategy to help you, we say, 'do mmore with less'," he said, touting Windows 7 as part of the solution. The software giant last month said net profit fell 18% in the first quarter of its 4.37 billion dollars a year earlier. But its revenue of 12.92 billion dollars exceeded analysts' forecasts.

YouTube launched channel for citizen journalism

Youtube has launched Youtube Direct, a dedicated channel for citizen journalism, in an attempt to better connect news organizations with user generated content.
The channel went live last month and has been used by media companies such as The Hufflington Post and the The washington Post.
On the official youtube blog, the video site's news and politics editor, Steve Grove, said:"As youtube has become a global platform for sharing the news, media organizations have been looking for a good way to connect directly with citizen reporters on our site so they can broadcast this footage and bring it to a larger audience.
"That's why we created YouTube Direct, a new tool that allows media organizations to request, review and rebroadcast YouTube clips directly from YouTube users."
The channel is built from YouTube's APIs and is an Open source application which lets media organizations "enable customized versions of youtube's upload platform on their own websites".
Users can upload videos directly into this application, which also enables the hosting organization to easily review video submissions and select the best ones to broadcast on-air and on their websites.
Grove said that youtube Direct was also aimed at businesses to try and find promotional videos and not-for-profit organizations to ask for user-generated political adverts.

More than 30,000 e-mail accounts compromised

Tens of thousands of Web-based e-mail accounts were compromised earlier last month after their passwords were stolen. Initially, it was feared that 10,000 e-mail accounts were at risk but now that number has increased to at least 30,000 e-mail accounts.
Gmail, Hotmail, AOL and Yahoo! are among the providers that have been affected. Security experts at Ritz Security say that the problem arose not because the websites concerned had weak security, but because users responded to phishing e-mails. Phishing is when a fake e-mail is sent pretending to be from an official site, requesting details, such as a password and username.
Security experts believe that in some cases passwords may have been stolen, by using a technique called key-logging. This is when malware is installed on a computer and key strokes are recorded.
Infected accounts are being sent personalised e-mails from shopping sites that are fake and Web-based e-mail users are advised to change their passwords frequently, not to use the same password for various sites, and to choose a secure password.

Gaming console of the year; PlayStation 3 Slim

Although the Xbox has a great feature set and lineup of game titles, The playstation is still the Pakistani's preferred game console. This title would have gone to Xbox360, however, were it not for the fact that Microsoft went on a banning rampage last month and disconnected over a million X360s from the Xbox live communities on the premise of system modding; and modifying the console is how many gamers in pakistan get to play their games with live, which is half the appeal, Meanwhile the nintendo Wii had a great run internationally for the for the past year and a half, but failed to pickup steam in Pakistan. Now it's going stale and there is less of a reason for its adoption. On the flip side, Sony went ahead and re-introduced the Playstation 3 right before the holiday season, in a slimmer-some would say better-looking-design, including higher storage capacity and lower pricing. Now that's the spirit of the season.The PS3 slim is now available in the market for less than the price of the original for the same value. Granted, the listed price will make a dent in your wallet, but that's just a higher-end average.Gamers who shop around a bit and know there way around it can get great deals a little cheaper from retail.

Most innovative concept: True multi-GPU: Lucid HYDRA

Being a PC gamer or hardware enthusiast is a costly pursuit of happiness, and it is not uncommon to go through frequent upgrades of components. It is also not uncommon to get stuck with piles of old parts. Lucid's HYDRA technology changes that for graphics cards at the very least. Lucid has been working on a concept that allows computer users to combine two or more graphics cards to be used in tandem. What's impressive about that, you say? Well, for one, Lucid's solution combine's the processing power of any generations of graphics cards. Secondly, it is also vendor-neutral and will work across different brands as well. And most importantly, the concept and technology is already close to completion and has already been implemented by motherboard manufacturer MSI. So whether it is ATI and Nvidia, an eight-year-old GPU and this winter's model, the HYDRA will let users put all the available resources to work and with complete ease of use.

Hardware website of the year 2009, gdgt.com

There are many tech and hardware-centric websites, numerous forums and more than enough directories. What there wasn't, however, was a single one-stop destination for all your gadget information needs. That is until Engadget folks Peter Rojas and Ryan Block launched the mashup website "gdgt" this summer. This site is a combination of social networking , forum, wiki and news aggregation for all gadgets of the world - a veritable Swiss Army knife of a hardware site. Users can discuss new and old gadgets, devices they've owned, used or wanted. All content is catalogued by device and is contextually relevant to users and their devices.
Comparison and tracking features allow users (similar or otherwise) and these features can help users decide on their next hardware purchase. As the website states, gdgt is" a place for you to engage with your devices and hang out with people who are as passionate about their gear as you are.

Read my Blog, and write your own.

BLOGS are constantly gaining in popularity and it is because they are so simple to create. Blogs offer three distinct opportunities for marketeers.
The first is in the form of data collection. There is an unprecedented amount of material being uploaded by consumers and marketers are working on ways to sift through all this data to get potentially valuable information to increase sales. This trend is sure to continue as more effective search methods are created.
The second prospect for marketers is to execute highly tailored advertising through blogs. Whether it is about fixed gear bicycles or model airplanes, every blog's subject can give advertisers the opportunity to tailor ads for that very specific niche. For example; Google's AdSense network is capable of placing ads on relevant pages based on keywords in the blog's text.
The third way to take advantage of blogs is to write one. Internet users are increasingly exchanging views through blogs. Blogs promote a casual and non-aggressive style of advertising that the consumers seem to prefer these days. They allow customers to learn more about a company and perhaps even about specific employees who blog. This way, blogs can build and establish a company's identity,- an important step towards brand-building

Motherboard of the year, Asus P7P55D!

When Intel introduced the Nehalem line of chips, existing dual-core and quad-core owners groaned. Not only would upgrading the processor cost more, but Nehalem based chips would require the new X58 chipset, which was pricey to say the least. With the release of Core i5 and the P55 chipset, the Nehalem went mainstream, offering chip enthusiasts the best of both worlds. Unfortunately, not all motherboard manufacturers have taken well to the P55 chipset, but of those that did, Asus Corp stands out with its P7P55D motherboard. This P55 chipset mainboard is loaded to the brim with all sorts of goodies. In addition to quad-GPU CrossFireX support, the P7P55D supports 2200 MHz RAM, the Express Gate instant-on OS feature, and includes immense capacity for overclocking and overvolting safely.