Apple Offers $10K in Music for 10 Billionth iTunes Download
Apple has announced it will give one customer a $10,000 iTunes gift card, in a contest to commemorate its 10 billionth music download. Apple calls the event a "huge milestone for music" and "our way of saying thanks" to the boatloads of people who depend on iTunes for all of their music needs.
While Apple says downloading the 10 billionth song “could” lead you to the big-money prize, consumers can also enter to win without a purchase or download by filling out a form. The contest ends after the 10 billionth song is download. By July, the App Store had hit 1.5 billion downloads.
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Google Buzzes Social Networking Scene
Google is making a play for social media users with Buzz, a new tool that enables Gmail users to view media and status updates of friends.
Google Buzz will take advantage of the massive user base of the company's ubiquitous Gmail client. "It will leverage those captive eyeballs as people send emails and messages. Google's mission is to organize the world's information, that is why it exists.
Google Buzz is not going to have a tremendous impact unless Google starts aggregating status updates from Facebook and to a lesser degree, Twitter. If Google is planning to integrate and aggregate, then it will likely meet up with resistance from the social networks.
From a marketing Download Free eBook - The Edge of Success: 9 Building Blocks to Double Your Sales perspective, one factor to consider is that if there are any SEO benefits from Google Buzz, people will use it more, Havens said. "Likely, there will be [SEO benefits], since it's Google. Since tweets can raise your SEO -- using appropriate keywords -- likely Google's new social networking app will as well."
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Microsoft to patch 17 year old computer bug
The February update for Windows will close the loophole that dates from the time of the DOS operating system. First appearing in Windows NT 3.1, the vulnerability has been carried over into almost every version of Windows that has appeared since.
The ancient bug was discovered by Google security researcher Tavis Ormandy in January 2010 and involves a utility that allows newer versions of Windows to run very old programs.
Mr Ormandy has found a way to exploit this utility in Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and 2008 as well as Windows Vista and Windows 7.
The patch for this vulnerability will appear in the February security update. Five of the vulnerabilities being patched at the same time allow attackers to effectively hijack a Windows PC and run their own programs on it.
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Facebook Privacy, Security Fears Grow with Social Network Risks
According to a survey of 502 IT professionals by Sophos, businesses are seeing more malware and spam, and 60 percent of respondents put Facebook ahead of MySpace, Twitter and LinkedIn as the riskiest social networking site. The statistics, which were included in Sophos' "Security Threat Report: 2010", revealed that while 33 percent block Facebook for productivity reasons, businesses are also concerned with the prospect of spam, malware and data leakage on social networks.
“Furthermore, over 72 percent of firms believe that employees’ behavior on social networking sites could endanger their business’s security,” according to the report. When it comes to Facebook in particular, 45 percent of respondents said they do not control access to the site.
Users of social networks can also face a more indirect risk – attackers using the sites to conduct surveillance on potential victims and ultimately compromise them. “Undoubtedly a large part of the incentive of social networking attacks is to compromise the victim's machine and infect it with malware that turns it into part of a bot,” As such, compromised accounts can have real value on the black market. According to Dmitry Bestuzhev, senior regional researcher for Latin Americaat Kaspersky Lab, said recently a Twitter account was seen being offered for $1,000 on a hacker forum. In the hands of cyber-criminals, the accounts can be used to spam out malicious links that lead to malware infections, he said.
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