Monthly Archive:: November 2006

Dangers of Popularity

Earlier, AOL posted a list of 20 million search queries made by 650,000 of its users. In response to consumer outcry (Examples: 1,2,3,4,5) , AOL removed the posting — but not before identities were revealed, privacies compromised, and embarrassing revelations made. As if it couldn’t get any worse than AOL users’ loss of privacy, these

New IBM solution puts premium on insurance fraud

IBM is aiming advanced analytics at fraudulent claims in the property and casualty (P&C) insurance industry. According to the National Insurance Crime Bureau, at least 10 percent of all insurance claims are either inflated or outright fraudulent. Consequently, the industry pays out as much as $30 billion in fraudulent claims each year. Given the impact

Web Instant Messengers

If your office doesn’t let you install messengers and/or chat during work hours, then you probably shouldn’t do so, but if you still feel the insatiable urge to do so, these web-based messengers are here for your aid. Some of these are popular and may already be blocked in most of the firms. Meebo Meebo

MSN Radio Re-launched

MSN has re-launched its online radio service, backed by popular internet radio service, Pandora.com. MSN Radio now also has a music recommendation engine, which allows users to create custom radio stations and discover more artistes and songs, according to the users’ taste in music. Moreover, users who have already signed up with Pandora’s free internet

Disney Sells 500,000 Movies on iTunes

Disney continues to have success inselling movies through the iTunes Music Store, saying Thursday it hadnow sold about 500,000 films in just the first two months of operation.Consumers are downloading movies at rate of about 9,000 per day,generating about $4 million in revenue. At the current time, Disney’sstudios are the only films available through the

IBM headsTop500 supercomputer list

An IBM system holds the top rank in the TOP500 Supercomputer Sites List, and the company’s systems accounted for 237 of the 500 most powerful supercomputers in the world and almost half of the list’s total processing power. With a sustained performance of 280.6 teraflops, or trillions of floating point calculations per second, the IBM

Rootkit Revealer Absorbed by Microsoft

The little software utility that uncovered the presence of Sony’s stealth DRM hiding like a rootkit inside a security engineer’s computer, and that triggered the chain of events that eventually led to the annulment ruling of a multi-billion-dollar merger between Sony and BMG Music, is now a Microsoft product. Mark Russinovich’s Rootkit Revealer, along with

Yahoo to Merge IM with Webmail Client

Yahoo said Thursday that it plans to integrate a Web-based version of its instant messaging program into the next beta of its Yahoo Mail Web application. The new client, which uses AJAX technology, is expected to debut early next year. Google has already integrated Google Talk into Gmail, however they use separate interfaces. Yahoo’s implementation

Google Video Target of Copyright Suit

Although Google is not disclosing the origin of the suit, a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this week indicates that its Google Video service is the subject of a copyrightinfringement lawsuit. It also admitted the YouTube acquisition may lead to additional liabilities. “Certain entities have also filed copyright claims against us, alleging