By Ginny Mies
June 1, 2010

LAST FALL, Motorola introduced MotoBlur, a cloudbased interface for Android phones that seamlessly aggregates social networks. MotoBlur supports contact syncing across social networks, a unified inbox for multiple e-mail accounts, and live widgets for social networking. If you lose your phone, you can track it via assisted GPS. Motorola has now launched two Moto-Blur phones: the Cliq XT (with Android 1.5 OS and T-Mobile service) and the Devour (with Android 1.6 and Verizon service).

Cliq XT (T-Mobile)
The lightweight, gray-andchrome Cliq XT has a slim body, rounded corners, and a textured rubber back. At 2.3 by 4.6 by 0.5 inches and 4.6 ounces, this model is very portable, but it lacks a QWERTY keyboard. Like the Devour, the Cliq XT has a 3.1-inch display with 320-by-480-pixel resolution. It showed bright, accurate colors. The responsiveness was hit-or-miss: Tapping on an icon usually prompted instant action, but scrolling was a bit sticky. A large, centrally located touchpad lets you navigate through multiple homepages or within a homepage. _ e handset’s four standard Android hardware buttons (Menu, Search, Home, and Back) lie below the display. Keys on the Cliq XT’s keyboard are wide and well spaced for easier pressing. I did notice a slight delay a_ er I typed before text appeared. Like all Android phones, the Cliq XT gives you access to the many useful Google apps. You can set up and sync your Yahoo account with the device and get full Outlook sync support, too. Unique to the Cliq XT, the Connected Music Player combines popular apps like Last.fm, Shoutcast, Soundhound, and TuneWiki. Audio sounded good but a bit hollow through my own earbuds. Music piped through the external speakers was weaker but still listenable. The Cliq XT’s 5-megapixel camera includes a _ ash and took attractive pictures. It also captures video at 24 frames per second at a good enough level of quality for posting on YouTube.

Call quality over T-Mobile’s 3G network was a bit spotty at my end, but callers at the other end of the line had no complaints. The phone handled Web browsing easily. According to Motorola, the Cliq XT will cost less than $150; if so, you’ll get a lot of great features for the money.

Devour (Verizon)

The 5.9-ounce Devour ($150 with a two-year Verizon contract) is a bit clunky, but it feels solid and has some nice design elements such as black rubber panels on the top and bottom to keep the phone from feeling slippery. A sizable gap separates the bottom of the display from the touch controls. And the touch controls are laid out in two rows, leaving a lot of unused space on the smallish screen. The touch keys are quite responsive, however, and the optical mouse gives you a useful alternative to the touchscreen. The Devour’s recessed keyboard is easier to steady, making typing more comfortable. The keys are also large, and nicely raised and spaced out. The sliding mechanism is crisp and springy, yet solid. The Devour has the standard Android music player and comes with a USB cable for transferring music. The supplied earbuds delivered clean-sounding audio; the external speakers were a bit weak, though. Video playback over the included Verizon V Cast video app was smooth, but the 3-megapixel camera was mediocre. Call quality over Verizon’s 3G network was excellent. My contacts sounded loud and clear with no distortion or background static or hiss.

Callers on the other end of the line heard little background noise and said that my voice sounded natural. I didn’t run into any dropped calls or dead zones. Surfing the Web on the Android browser was great, as Verizon’s 3G EvDO connection loaded pages quickly. The Devour is a very versatile phone, but it could use an upgrade to Android 2.1 (and perhaps a price drop).

February 9, 2010

Social networking giant, Multiply, now makes upgrading accounts much easier for its over five million Filipino users.

To get a premium account, Multiply subscribers can opt for Globe GCASH, an internationally-acclaimed mobile commerce service, which is one of the preferred modes of payment for online shopping. The partnership between Globe GCASH and Multiply for secure and convenient online payment settlement is the first in the industry.

Globe GCASH mobile wallet is available to all Globe and TM subscribers nationwide. It allows subscribers to conveniently send and receive cash electronically, make payments, as well as buy good and services.

“Filipinos love content and combined with their desire to connect with family and friends, they often share personal documentation of their lives online.  That is why Globe GCASH and Multiply decided to work on this collaborative effort to give more value-added services to our subscribers,” said Rizza-Maniego Eala, President of G-Xchange Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Globe Telecom which operates GCASH.

Since Multiply’s unlimited photosharing facility is very attractive to Filipino Internet users, Multiply has introduced a permanent backup solution for all photos and videos uploaded to the site for just Php 799 a year or Php 99 per month.

By JR Raphael
December 22, 2009

Facebook is getting into the year-end spirit by releasing its list of the top words found in U.S. Facebook status updates during 2009. The social network calls its list “Memology: the study of how ‘memes,’ or new ideas and trends, are spreading on Facebook.” To determine the list, Facebook grabbed the most popular one-to-four word phrases found in status updates this year, and then compared each phrase to 2008 trends to determine the most popular phrases of 2009.

The result of all this data mining is the following list of 15 topics:

1. Facebook Applications (Farmville, Farm Town, Social Living)

2. FML (F*&$# My Life)

3. Swine Flu

4. Celebrity Deaths (Michael Jackson, Patrick Swayze, Billy Mays)

5. Family

6. Movies (New Moon, Transformers, Star Trek, The Hangover, Paranormal Activity and Harry Potter)

7. Sports (Steelers, Yankees)

8. Health Care

9. FB (aka Facebook)

10. Twitter

11. Years

12. Lady Gaga

13. Yard

14. Religion

15. I

The past year was the year of farms and aquariums on Facebook, but one thing the social network neglected to mention were the series of reports by TechCrunch alleging that popular applications like Farmville and others were scamming users. References to Michael Jackson and other celebrity deaths also proved popular fodder for Facebook chatters, as did the more popular movies of the year.

The term “I” might seem to be an odd one to make the list, but, as Facebook’s blog notes: “Until March of 2009, people updated their status in a box that appeared next to their name on the home page and, consequently, many updates started with the word ‘is.’ Once that box no longer was shown next to people’s name, the usage of “is” dropped off dramatically and usage of “I” doubled almost overnight.”

While the social network made its own memology list under the moniker FB, one notable exclusion from Facebook’s list is any mention of the privacy concerns that dogged the company during 2009.

First there was the flap over Facebook’s changes to its privacy policy earlier this year, which almost resulted in a formal complaint to the Federal Trade Commission by the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Then, earlier this month, Facebook finally shuttered its oft-maligned Beacon program, and shelled out $9.5 million to fund a new privacy advisory board. Finally, there were the latest changes to Facebook’s new privacy settings from just a few weeks ago.

While some of these privacy issues may have gone unnoticed by Facebook status updates, the latest changes to Facebook’s privacy settings did spark updates like this, “If you don’t know, as of today, Facebook will automatically index all your info on Google, which allows everyone to view it…Facebook kept this one quiet. Copy and paste onto your status for all your friends ASAP.” That information turned out to be wrong, but so many Facebook users promoted this misinformation using their status updates, the social network felt compelled to issue this pop-up notice to its users:

But in a nod to the problems it faced this year, Facebook did say in its memology blog post that all personally identifiable information was removed from status updates during the year-end data mining exercise. The company also said no one at Facebook ready actual status updates in compiling this list.

By PCWorld (US) Staff
December 19, 2009

The typical Twitter post has a life span of seconds; other tweets seem destined for greater glory, as diagrammed below by our friends at GDS Digital. (Click to enlarge the image.)

By Gregg Keizer
Computerworld
December 19, 2009

Hackers redirected Twitter.com’s traffic to a rogue Web site for more than an hour Friday by accessing its DNS records using an account assigned to Twitter, the company that manages Twitter’s DNS (Domain Name System) servers said.

Twitter initially blamed the early-Friday hour-long blackout of its site on changes made to the company’s DNS records, which act like a telephone directory to match the twitter.com domain name with the IP addresses used by its servers.

“Twitter’s DNS records were temporarily compromised, but have now been fixed,” the company said on its service status page at 2:30 a.m. ET. “We are looking into the underlying cause and will update with more information soon.” The status page has not been revised with more information since then.

Twitter uses a New Hampshire firm, Dyn Inc., to manage its DNS records, which match Twitter’s domain name (twitter.com, and numerous others) with the IP addresses of its servers.

Today, Dyn denied that its infrastructure had been hacked. Early Friday, Tom Daly, Dyn’s chief technology officer, told the Washington Post it appeared someone changed Twitter’s DNS records to point visitors to a different IP address using the proper account credentials assigned to Twitter.

“Someone logged in who purported to be a legitimate user of their [DNS] platform account and started making changes,” Daly told the Post ‘s Brian Krebs . “It was not a failing on our systems whatsoever.”

Kyle York, Dyn’s vice president of marketing, echoed that in an interview with Computerworld. “No unauthenticated e-mail address associated with the account accessed the [Twitter] account,” York maintained. “This was not an unauthorized breach of our system.”

When asked whether the Twitter account had been used by someone authorized to do so, or if those account credentials had been pilfered by hackers, York declined to answer directly. “You’ll have to read between the lines,” he said. However, he did point to a tweet on Dyn’s own Twitter feed as having the right explanation.

That tweet referenced a story on The Tech Herald , in which reporter Steve Ragan used the clues available, including Dyn’s public statements, to theorize that someone compromised a Twitter staffer’s e-mail account, presumably via malware that snuck onto the Twitter employee’s computer, or through a standard phishing-style identity theft attack.

Once in control of the e-mail account, the hackers then used it to request a password reset for Twitter’s account with Dyn, Ragan speculated. “The password reset process is completed, and at this point the person(s) posing as a Twitter staffer gets the reset password via e-mail,” Ragan wrote.

That approach makes the most sense, agreed Ray Dickenson, chief technology officer at security vendor Authentium. “That’s the most logical explanation,” said Dickenson. “If someone obtained administrator credentials for Twitter’s account with Dyn, or even if it was inside job, everything worked except the human element.”

Dickenson said Dyn’s claim that its servers had not been officially hacked is also likely true. “It’s very difficult to directly hack a top-tier DNS provider,” he said, noting that security at such firms is extremely tight. “You’ve got to believe that Twitter looked at the options, and made the right choice when it went with Dyn. Twitter’s a huge site, and a huge brand.”

Also in Dyn’s favor, said Dickenson, is the company’s contention that only Twitter’s DNS records were altered, a fact that York stressed. “The fact that virtually all of Twitter’s records were pointing to this defaced site, and that no other [Dyn] customers’ records had been altered, corroborates what Dyn’s saying.”

According to York, Twitter will post a more detailed explanation of the cause of the outage later Friday. “It will fully exonerate us, that’s one thing I can say,” York said.

Twitter has been on shaky security ground for some time. Last August, determined distributed denial-of-service attacks knocked it offline for several hours. Two months before that, a hack of a URL-shortening service redirected millions of Twitter users to an unintended destination.

By Sumner Lemon
IDG News Service
December 18, 2009

Microblogging site Twitter went offline for a while Friday after hackers calling themselves the Iranian Cyber Army apparently managed to change DNS records, redirecting traffic to another Web page.

Instead of the usual Twitter Web site design, visitors to the site instead saw a black screen with an image of a green flag and Arabic writing. The defaced site also included a message that said, “This site has been hacked by Iranian Cyber Army,” and an e-mail address.

Whether or not Iranian hackers are responsible for the attack wasn’t immediately clear. However, Twitter and other Internet sites have been used by Iranian opposition groups and protestors to share details of anti-government protests in that country.

Twitter blamed the outage on changes made to the company’s DNS (Domain Name System) records, which match the company’s domain name with the IP addresses of its servers.

“Twitter’s DNS records were temporarily compromised but have now been fixed. We are looking into the underlying cause and will update with more information soon,” Twitter said on its Twitter Status page.

Based on Twitter’s account of the attack, it’s possible that the company’s servers were never compromised. The actual attack may have instead targeted Dyn, the DNS service provider that manages Twitter’s DNS records, according to whois records.

While the outage left Twitter users cut off from the service for about an hour, the type of attack wasn’t serious, according to Dhillon Andrew Kannabhiran , founder and CEO of Hack In The Box, a Malaysian company that runs security conferences in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

“Yawn, is my comment. It was a simple defacement. So what?” Kannabhiran said.

By Dan Nystedt
IDG News Service
December 16, 2009

Microsoft may still face a lawsuit after apologizing for the theft of software code used in MSN China’s microblog service, Juku, from rival Plurk, a popular provider from Canada.

“We are definitely looking at all possibilities on how to move forward in response to Microsoft’s recent statement,” Plurk cofounder Alvin Woon said Wednesday. A “lawsuit is definitely one of the many options we have considered and will continue to look closely to,” he added.

Plurk fired off a blog posting early this week alleging as much as 80% of Juku’s code base was stolen from Plurk.

Microsoft apologized Tuesday, saying an outside company hired to develop Juku copied a portion of the code from Plurk. The statement from the world’s largest software vendor is at odds with one from MSN China early this month defending Juku as “a local innovation developed by MSN China … based on Windows Live Messenger networks.” The MSN China statement was a response to Chinese bloggers who early on called Juku a pirated version of Plurk.

The matter puts Microsoft in an unfamiliar position. The company has complained for years about the piracy of its software in China. In spite of its long experience with the issue, the software giant now finds itself apologizing for its failure to adequately safeguard the intellectual property of a rival code developer.

Microsoft could not immediately be reached for comment.

Dave Thompson, a spokesman for Plurk, said the company went ahead with its blog post accusing Microsoft of code theft only after determining willful intent was involved. “The client code and backend code on Plurk is still all proprietary and not easily accessible for anyone to just lift. Speaking technically, what makes our claim a little stronger is that Plurk’s client side code was obfuscated to begin with, so someone went in there and had to spend some real effort to unpack/reengineer the JS code and prettify it on their end,” he said.

(Owen Fletcher in Beijing and Nancy Gohring in Seattle contributed to this report.)

By Owen Fletcher
IDG News Service
December 15, 2009

Microsoft suspended a microblog-style site for Chinese users on Tuesday after the service was accused of copying programming code from Plurk, a Twitter rival popular in Asia.

Plurk this week alleged that MSN Juku, a service where users could share 140-character messages with friends on a scrolling timeline, appeared to have stolen up to 80 percent of its codebase from Plurk. In a blog post, Plurk showed screenshots and samples of similar JavaScript and CSS code pulled from both services.

Microsoft is looking into the allegations against MSN Juku, which a Microsoft joint venture in China hired a third-party vendor to develop, the company said in a statement. The service, still in beta and launched last month, could not be accessed on Tuesday. Microsoft promised to release further information as it learned more.

Plurk did not reply to e-mails or phone calls on Tuesday.

Online social networking is increasingly popular in China and Microsoft was just one of several big companies looking to tap the market, though Twitter and some of its local-language rivals have been blocked for months in the country on political grounds.

(Dan Nystedt in Taipei contributed to this report.)

By Eric Lai

ComputerWorld

December 15, 2009

Plurk, a micro-blogging service popular in parts of Asia, claimed today that its site design and underlying code were copied by a recently debuted service from Microsoft‘s China division.

MSN Juku made its beta debut in China earlier this month as a way for users to post 140-character messages on a scrolling timeline interface.

Screenshots. The Plurk page layout and user interface compared with MSN China’s new microblogging service, as posted on Plurk’s blog.

According to Microsoft, MSN Juku is a “local innovation developed by MSN China…based on Windows Live Messenger networks.”

At the time, local Chinese media were already commenting on the similarities in the look-and-feel between MSN Juku and Plurk, with one calling it a “bandit” version (Chinese slang for a knock-off).

That accusation was brought out into the open today by Plurk. In a blog post, the company said that while “imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but blatant theft of code, design, and UI elements is just not cool, especially when the infringing party is the biggest software company in the world.”

Plurk showed purported screenshots of MSN China’s new service, which it called “a little overly inspired” by Plurk’s 18-month-old service. It also showed snippets of JavaScript and CSS code from both services, and claimed that 80% of the codebase “appears to be stolen directly from Plurk.”

Plurk said the two services are so similar that some bloggers speculated that Microsoft’s service might have been based on a partnership with Plurk, a rumor it quickly dismissed.

“We were never contacted by any party at M$ to collaborate on such a venture nor did we give any prior written or verbal permission to anyone on their side to take our code, take our CSS, and copy the essence and ethos of our service,” wrote Plurk. “As a young startup, we’re stunned, shocked, and unsure what to do next and need your support and suggestions.”

Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to a separate interview with Plurk’s co-founder published on Monday, the nine-employee company is scattered across the world, though incorporated in Canada.

Plurk has largely failed to make a dent in the English-speaking Web, where Twitter dominates. It had 766,000 visitors last month, compared to 1.3 million for Friendfeed and 131 million for Twitter, according to statistics from Compete.com. Plurk is also banned in China, along with Twitter and some other social-networking services, by the government for political reasons.

However, Plurk reportedly tops the microblog market in Taiwan, ahead of Twitter. It is also popular in other Asian countries such as Indonesia and Singapore. One reason: Twitter, due to cost and time, only operates a fully localized service in Asia for Japanese users. Plurk, meanwhile, solicits help from volunteers in each country to help translate key commands and phrases, with the best chosen by a vote in that country. That allows Plurk to offer its service in 33 languages, including Chinese, Gaelic, Arabic and Japanese.

By Tony Bradley
December 15, 2009

The headlines recently have been dominated with news of online privacy. Facebook has implemented changes that affect the privacy of status updates, and Google made headlines for its apparent disregard for privacy.

The difference between how Facebook and Google have addressed privacy issues offers a stark contrast. While Facebook has quickly responded to criticism and backlash, and has implemented additional changes to try and accommodate concerns, Google CEO Eric Schmidt dismissed privacy concerns entirely.

Facebook has faced challenges with privacy and what sorts of controls it has in place to ensure that users can exert some control over who is able to view their status updates, photos, events, and other Facebook entries. The Canadian government pressed the issue and succeeded in pressuring Facebook into changing a handful of practices to address privacy concerns.

As Facebook implemented changes this week, which were previously announced and anticipated–a change of pace for Facebook changes, there was immediate backlash. Facebook is struggling to figure out how to capitalize on member status updates for real-time search to be more like Twitter, and it is going through some growing pains to establish the right mix of sharing and security.

Google is also faced with constant criticism and concern from privacy advocates. Google is the monolithic Big Brother of the Internet, crawling and indexing every last byte of data that exists and presenting it to the general public in a matter of milliseconds through its various search offerings.

The difference between Facebook and Google as it relates to privacy is that Facebook appears to listen to concerns and respond by implementing changes to try and address issues, while Google seems to be dismissive. The Google response is to just stress why you should trust it, or why you shouldn’t care about privacy.

In a CNBC interview, Google CEO Eric Schmidt explained his stance on online privacy “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines –including Google –do retain this information for some time and it’s important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities.”

The problem with that point of view is that it assumes you can only be concerned about privacy when you are doing something illegal or unethical. It doesn’t take into consideration the myriad ways that data can be inadvertently leaked or compromised by search engines like Google.

Just because executives and managers want information to be private, it doesn’t mean that they are trying to hide anything like shady accounting a’ la Enron, or illegal pyramid schemes a’ la Madoff. It simply means that some information is sensitive or confidential for a reason.

For businesses that rely on Google Docs or Gmail, there is a level of trust there that Google will respect the privacy of that data and protect it from unauthorized access. Comments like those made by Schmidt provide a reason to think twice about using Google for any sensitive or confidential communications.

As Google plants cookies on PC’s to expand the scope of personalized search, or becomes the focal point for Internet traffic with its public DNS, it is privy to a great deal of information which could be used to reach conclusions. It is important for Google to take privacy seriously.

Facebook and Google are facing many of the same challenges. Whether you like the changes introduced by Facebook or not, its hard not to appreciate its attempts to respond to concerns rather than taking the Google approach that unless you wear a tinfoil hat or have terrorist connections you have no right to be concerned about privacy.