A Net Gain For Revenue » Technology

Spam King Arrested in Las Vegas

Anet Dunne — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 16:58:20 +0000

The FBI announced that after two years of working with Facebook to track down the hacker, Stanford “Spamford” Wallace was arrested. He is accused of sending “phishing” messages to Facebook users to get account information, then hacking those accounts. When he gained access, he would post misleading messages from the hacked account that would trick friends into clicks that would boost traffic to his clients’ websites.

Newspapers reported that Wallace, 43, claimed to have sent as many as 30 million junk Emails per day in the 1990s. He was arrested on the last day of the “black hat” convention in Las Vegas. Spam King Arrested Global Post.

Spam To Die Soon

Anet Dunne — Fri, 20 May 2011 22:01:22 +0000

Computer scientists at UC Berkeley and UC San Diego delivered great news at the IEEE Symposium in Oakland yesterday — they found a way to choke off about 95% of spam. According to the New York Times, nearly all orders for spamiceuticals are handled by just three financial companies; one each in Azerbaijan, Denmark and Nevis in the West Indies.

Stefan Savage of the University of California, San Diego worked with colleagues at San Diego and Berkeley and at the International Computer Science Institute to develop “spamalytics” to find a choke point where spam transactions could be cut off, ending the financial lifeblood of spammers. By blocking the transactions at the point at which the consumer uses a credit card, it is possible to shift the burden of cost to the spammer.

“The defenders can, in principle, identify which banks the scammers are using far faster than they can get new banks,” Dr. Savage said, “and for basically zero cost.”

An earlier study undertaken by the scientists showed that a single commercial spam e-mail campaign generated three messages for every person on the planet. That same study revealed that to sell $100 worth of Viagra, a spam provider needed to send 12.5 million messages. Would you be glad to see an end to spam?

Post from: aNetGain.com

Spam To Die Soon

Chrome Browser or Operating System?

Anet Dunne — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 23:55:06 +0000

Netbooks powered with the Atom processor have changed how Google thinks about the Android Operating System they spent millions developing. Android was designed from the beginning to work across a variety of devices from phones to set-top boxes to netbooks. I got an Android phone as soon as they hit the market because, after years of selling telecom software and SS7 protocol stacks, I wanted to see if they could really re-write telcom software in linux. They did. It is swell. Plus, their voice-over-IP (VOIP) Google Voice is the coolest thing since Blackberrys. I love getting my phone messages as e-mails with a mpeg attached. Google Voice even places long-distance calls from my desk phone. But enough about Android.

I really wanted a thin client for PowerPoint presentations on the road, but I don’t foresee building websites from a hotel room in Denver. I got an OLPC XO because it was the first one out, but the SUGAR operating system baffled me. Then I got an Asus, but their custom linux wouldn’t update and I sent it back with an RMA number. Then I got an Acer Aspire One (AA1) with Windows XP and an Atom processor and got into the Chrome game.

Google wrote a whole Chrome Book, well, comic-style book that explains the technology effectively. The term “chrome” refers to all the stuff displayed on the screen that ISN’T the web page. You know, like the buttons, the URL, the search box, etc. This is not a problem on the big honkin’ screens I use for web design, but on the teeny-weeny netbook screen, real estate is at a premium. And Google Chrome has the least “chrome,” giving me the most web page for the money. The Google Chrome browser is clearly designed for netbooks.

We all kinda hoped that Android would work great on netbooks but, well, netbooks are not Class 5 switches. As fabulous as Android is, trying to force a lightweight, efficient telecom stack to ALSO work as a personal computer is like… well, trying to make a Formula One racer carry cargo.

Google decided to create Chrome OS as a new project, separate from Android. The Chrome Operating System, running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel, is being created for people who spend most of their time on the web, and is being designed to power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size desktop systems. Both Google Chrome OS and Android are linux, and there are areas where they overlap, but Google funded the Chrome OS project separately because they believe it will drive innovation for the benefit of everyone, including Google.

Google is working with several netbook manufacturers using both x86 as well as ARM chips, with an eye to providing software for computers that will do their computing in “the cloud.” That is, use the lightweight netbooks to access programs that live on Google’s servers and using Google Docs and similar services to create business documents, spreadsheets and presentations.

A friend recently asked me which netbook to buy and I suggested that if she can wait a few months, she can get a dual-boot system that will offer EITHER Windows or Chrome OS in the same machine. That would give her maximum flexibility to create documents when she is on the road. Her work would live BOTH on her machine and in her Google Docs account or elsewhere on line, giving her an automatic backup system. I think this is the wave of the future. What do you think? Let me know your thoughts in a comment…

Post from: aNetGain.com

Chrome Browser or Operating System?

The End of Credit Cards?

Anet Dunne — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 22:06:45 +0000

Marc Andreessen, inventor of the web browser, was interviewed on PBS yesterday. He spoke about Obama’s innovative use of social networking to raise money, and predicted that insolvent banks would be replaced with new, online banks like BillMeLater.com, a PayPal and eBay company. Bill Me Later lets users pay without using a credit card. Each transaction is evaluated in real-time to determine the buyers ability to pay, avoiding losses by merchants and financial institutions. It is currently in use by more than a thousand online stores including Walmart.com and Zappos. The transaction takes place “in the cloud.”

Marc Andreessen spoke about how technology would help existing institutions evolve to be more responsive and more effective. Online newspapers with immediate updates vs. newspapers, and a new kind of online financial services that would erode expensive credit card companies by supplying more reliable transactions with fewer losses. The new banks would not need as much real estate or paper so costs could be lower.

Shoppers know that they pay the same price whether they pay by cash or credit card. Few shoppers understand that the merchant pays as much as 5% of the transaction to the bank to process the credit card. That cost is passed on the to customer. New forms of electronic banking could squeeze out the cost of credit for shoppers who have the money in their account. A new bank can verify that the funds are available for immediate transfer, BEFORE approving the purchse. No credit is extended, it’s more like using your ATM card everywhere. Transaction costs can be much lower, and risk is much lower. This adds up to savings for the customer. What do you think? Please post a comment.

Post from: aNetGain.com

The End of Credit Cards?

How Obama Overtook Hillary

Anet Dunne — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 17:45:36 +0000

During a presidential campaign in which he raised $650 million, Mr. Obama changed the rules of fund-raising, declining public financing and creating his own multimillion-member chain of donors. As a law professor, Mr. Obama’s job before the Senate, he was vitally aware of social networking among students. Through a friend, he got in touch with Marc Andreessen, a founder of Netscape and a board member of Facebook. Mr. Obama wondered if social networking, with its tremendous communication capabilities and aggressive database development, might help him beat the overwhelming odds facing him.

David Carr of the New York Times tells us, in The Media Equation, of how Obama tapped into social networks power. The Web innovators in the Obama campaign did not invent anything completely new, Mr. Carr observes. Instead, they mashed-up social networking applications and created a way to raise money that helped them topple the legendary Clinton fund-raising machine. Ultimately, they leveraged it to organize locally and fight Republican smear campaigns. Read more…

Post from: aNetGain.com

How Obama Overtook Hillary

Sun Heavyweight and Cisco Honcho join Arista

Anet Dunne — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 14:30:54 +0000

Andreas von Bechtolsheim is resigning as chief architect of Sun Microsystems to focus on Arista Systems, a start-up that is challenging Cisco. Arista’s new CEO is Jayshree Ulla who led Cisco’s $10 billion corporate switch business. They are going to make the world safe for cloud computing. Here’s what the NYTimes has to say.

Post from: aNetGain.com

Sun Heavyweight and Cisco Honcho join Arista