HTC move to test ads on BlinkFeed app angers users

As HTC faces shrinking revenue, the smartphone vendor is testing ads over its BlinkFeed media aggregation app, and some users aren’t happy.On Tuesday, HTC said it had begun rolling out an update to its BlinkFeed app that would include advertisements for users in the U.S., the U.K., China and a few other markets.The ads, for now, will be in a limited number, and promote sponsored apps, in addition to HTC accessories and devices, the company said in a blog post.“Because these are native ads, they will appear like a typical BlinkFeed post rather than as a pop-up or banner ad,” HTC added. However, users will be given an option to opt out from seeing the ads.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How a bad keystroke can lead you to SpeedUpKit ‘scareware’

Dozens of misspelled domain names that spoof major brands are leading unsuspecting PC users to a questionable tune-up application called SpeedUpKit.Since people are unlikely to seek out the application, its promoters rely partly on people misspelling the domain name for prominent brands to lead them to it. If you try to access the obituary website legacy.com from a Windows PC in the U.S., for instance, but type “legady” by accident, you’re likely to end up on a page promoting SpeedUpKit.The practice, known as typosquatting, can sometimes violate consumer protection laws or constitute trademark infringement. Big brands police the web for such misspellings, and domain name registrars often try to stop the practice, but it still happens.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

HTIRW: That Big Number Database in the Sky

As we come close to ending this rather long running series on how the Internet really works (because I’m certain you’re about bored of this series, and ready for me to talk about something else!), I’d like to discuss three more topics I think are really important to the Internet’s operation on a day to […]

Author information

Russ White

Principal Engineer at Ericsson

Russ White has scribbled a basket of books, penned a plethora of patents, written a raft of RFCs, taught a trencher of classes, nibbled and noodled at a lot of networks, and done a lot of other stuff you either already know about — or don't really care about. You can find Russ at 'net Work, the Internet Protocol Journal, LinkedIn, and his author page on Amazon.
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The post HTIRW: That Big Number Database in the Sky appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Russ White.

AT&T looking at white boxes as CPE

SANTA CLARA -- AT&T is considering offering bare metal switches and servers to consumers as customer premises equipment for the carrier’s services. At the Open Network Summit conference here, Andre Fuetsch, AT&T senior vice president, Architecture & Design, said the economics of commodity bare metal switching, as well as the scale, performance and programmability, make it appealing for the carrier to sell into the customer premises. +MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: AT&T lays out 'radical' network changes with SDN+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Can GitHub really be worth $2 billion?

If youre looking to hire a developer, which is more important: her LinkedIn profile or samples of her code on GitHub?Many would argue the latter, which helps to explain why the online code repository is reportedly closing in on a valuation of $2 billion.“GitHub is an interesting company,” said analyst Frank Scavo, president of Computer Economics. “It is partly a hosting service for developers and partly a social media site.”The San Francisco startup, which offers a popular code-sharing platform for software developers, is seeking a whopping $200 million in an upcoming private funding round that values the company as high as $2 billion, according to a report Monday from Bloomberg, which cited people familiar with the matter.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Because dossiers

Here's the thing about computers -- even your laptop can support "big-data" applications. There are only 300-million people in the united states. At  1-kilobyte per person, that's still only 300-gigabytes -- which fits on my laptop hard-drive.

Building dossiers is becoming a thing in the hacking underground. Every time they break into a retail chain, hospital, insurance company, or government agency, they correlate everything back to the same dossier, based on such things as social security numbers, credit card numbers, email addresses, and even IP addresses. Beyond hacked secrets, public sources of information are likewise scanned in order to add to the dossier. Tools such as Maltego make it surprisingly easy to combine your own private information with public sources in order to build such dossiers.

When even the small hacking groups are focused on this effort, you can bet the big guys like China and Russia are even more interested in this.

This is one explanation behind the OPM hack. The hackers may have had something specific in mind, such as getting the personal information from SF86 forms where those seeking clearance are forced to disclose their various addictions and perversions. It may be used to blackmail people -- Continue reading

Etsy dips toes into crowdfunding

Etsy is trying out a Kickstarter-like crowdfunding service that, if successful, could help the company grow its business by expanding the number and type of items available for sale on its site.Fund on Etsy, announced Tuesday, comes as Etsy faces pressure to deliver returns to shareholders as a publicly traded company. Etsy’s stock began trading on the NASDAQ exchange in April, but the company has yet to report a profit.The company grew its revenue by 56 percent last year to US$196 million, but it lost more than $15 million. In this year’s first quarter, it grew its revenue 44 percent year-on-year to more than $58 million, but it had a net loss of nearly $37 million.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Wi-Fi and LTE join up for gigabit mobile service in Korea

What happens if you combine the best of Wi-Fi and cellular networks? In South Korea, consumers get gigabit-speed service to their phones.Samsung Electronics and mobile operator KT have developed a hybrid technology called GiGA LTE that can bring LTE and Wi-Fi signals together for download speeds as high as 1.17Gbps (bits per second), according to The Korea Herald. GiGA LTE is available now with a firmware upgrade to Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge handsets.Wi-Fi and LTE are becoming wary neighbors as cellular operators look for more spectrum and all types of wireless networks face growing user demands. Carriers are looking into LTE-Unlicensed, which can transmit LTE signals in the same band with Wi-Fi, and Qualcomm is now exploring a technology that would let more types of operators set up those networks. Some Wi-Fi backers say LTE-Unlicensed could squeeze out wireless LAN users.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Lawmakers worry US OPM breaches endanger national security

Two recently disclosed data breaches at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) could endanger national security and the lives of federal workers in intelligence or other sensitive jobs, according to some lawmakers.One of the attacks compromised a database containing files of U.S. government workers and job applicants who filled out applications for security clearances, and other governments could use those files to identify federal employees in sensitive positions, members of the U.S. House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee said during a hearing Tuesday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Dropbox for Business to get mobile management boost

Security remains a big concern for businesses considering cloud storage, but Dropbox hopes to further calm their fears by integrating its service with enterprise mobile management products.Dropbox for Business users will get the new EMM capability via upcoming applications from partners including AirWatch and MobileIron, resulting in safer mobile device access, Dropbox said Tuesday.EMM will be enabled through the Dropbox for Business API, launched late last year to help companies integrate the cloud storage service into their core IT processes. Dropbox has since expanded the API access with features such as tools for managing groups and shared folders.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Dropbox for Business to get mobile management boost

Security remains a big concern for businesses considering cloud storage, but Dropbox hopes to further calm their fears by integrating its service with enterprise mobile management products.Dropbox for Business users will get the new EMM capability via upcoming applications from partners including AirWatch and MobileIron, resulting in safer mobile device access, Dropbox said Tuesday.EMM will be enabled through the Dropbox for Business API, launched late last year to help companies integrate the cloud storage service into their core IT processes. Dropbox has since expanded the API access with features such as tools for managing groups and shared folders.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Twitter adds autoplaying videos

Twitter has moved well beyond its foundation of 140-character messages. The site will now host videos that play automatically in users’ feeds.Advertisers’ videos and those uploaded to Twitter natively, for example through its new video recording tool, will play automatically on the company’s desktop site and in its iOS app, with Android functionality coming soon, the company said Tuesday.The changes also apply to videos recorded with Twitter’s Vine app, and GIFs.Autoplaying videos, though possibly annoying, will help Twitter compete against Facebook, which started placing autoplaying videos, including those from advertisers, in users’ feeds in 2013. Twitter makes the bulk of its money through advertising, and more Internet companies are looking to siphon video advertising dollars away from traditional TV.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

FBI investigates St Louis Cardinals over Houston Astros hacking

Federal law enforcement officers are investigating whether the St. Louis Cardinals, one of the biggest teams in U.S. Major League Baseball, sought to gain advantage over rival Houston Astros by hacking into its computer network and accessing a key database.If the hacking is confirmed, would be the first known example of a major U.S. professional sports team hacking into the systems of a rival.The investigation centers on the baseball operations database which is said to contain statistics, video and other vital information about players.The federal investigation was confirmed by both Major League Baseball and the St. Louis Cardinals in brief statements.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

From doughnuts to Dressgate: How real-time marketing helps brands stay relevant

It would have been easy enough for Dunkin’ Donuts to dismiss the Internet phenomenon “Dressgate” as irrelevant to its brand. What, after all, could an online debate over optical illusions and the color of a dress possibly have to do with pastry and coffee?Turns out, plenty. In a shining example of real-time marketing done right, Dunkin’ Donuts quickly identified the viral trend and rapidly conceived and executed a relevant promotion to insert its brand into the conversation. On the morning of Feb. 27—just hours after the phenomenon erupted—the company tweeted an image of a black-and-blue frosted doughnut alongside a white-and-gold one. “Doesn’t matter if it’s blue/black or white/gold, they still taste delicious,” read the accompanying text.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

VMware’s Identity Manager offers authentication for Web, native apps

VMware is hoping to convince CIOs to centralize single sign-on access to all kinds of apps with Identity Manager, which can run in the cloud or on-site and also offers application provisioning and a self-service catalog.For better or worse, the switch to cloud-based services on a larger scale and the introduction of bring-your-own devices is forcing enterprises to rethink most aspects of how IT is run. Part of that change is how users are authenticated and given access to applications.The transformation from a client-server, perimeter-based infrastructure to a cloud-based model requires taking on systems outside of the firewall, according to VMware. To help tackle this, the company has launched Identity Manager. Enterprises can choose between an on-site version of the software or a cloud-based service hosted on vCloud Air. The initial launch uses U.S. data centers, but hosting in European and Asia Pacific regions will be offered from the third quarter.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

PQ Show 52 – Using Ostinato To Craft Your Own Packets

If software developers and network driver writers can make their own packets, can’t you? Ah, right...you’re not a developer. Your coding-fu is weak, as is mine. Still, there’s hope for us in an open source tool called Ostinato. Ostinato calls itself “Wireshark in reverse.” With Ostinato, you can make your own packets, custom crafting them any way you like. Today on the Packet Pushers Priority Queue, we’re talking with one of the Ostinato creators, Srivats P.

The post PQ Show 52 – Using Ostinato To Craft Your Own Packets appeared first on Packet Pushers.

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