Category: Internet
A letter to Obama will ask him to abandon McKinnon extradition
A letter to Barack Obama signed by MPs and Peers will call on the President not to extradite British hacker Gary McKinnon who faces up to 60 years in a maximum security prison if found guilty.
The 43-year-old UFO obessive who suffers from Asperges syndrome, a mild form of Austism, carried out the ‘largest military hack of all time’ in 2002 – hacking into the computer systems of NASA, The US Army, Department of Defence and US Air Force.
McKinnon, who was looking for proof of UFOs, was originally indicted in 2002 and in 2006 the UK agreed to extradite him for trial. Subsequent appeals to the House of Lords and European Court of Human Rights have failed.
Mr McKinnon’s local MP, David Burrowes, said: “We need to take it further and call upon Barack Obama himself to take action as the pleas have fallen on deaf ears so far.”
The letter from The National Autistic Society calls for Obama to allow McKinnon to face trial in the UK on the grounds that extradition might lead to a deterioration in his health.
Legal experts have said that if McKinnon were to face trial, it should be in the UK regardless, as any crimes he committed were committed in British territory.
The case highlights the unbalanced Bush era US – UK extradition treaty which was designed to facilitate the fast extradition of Islamic fundamentalist, not eccentric Scottish systems administrators.
(Via Guardian)
TweetDeck versus Seesmic: battle of the Twitter apps
TweetDeck and Seesmic are desktop clients designed to make communicating on Twitter and managing your accounts easier.
Here they go, head to head: TweetDeck version 0.26 versus Seesmic version 0.4.
Look & Feel
Both TweetDeck and Seesmic are built using the Adobe AIR platform, and have a similar look and feel.
Seemsic appears to have more subtleties designed to make it easier to decipher tweets from multiple accounts at once, yet neither application is hugely customisable when it comes to the overall look.
If you only run a single Twitter account then seeing how applications handle multiple accounts won’t matter to you, but if you’re a “power user” handling two or more active accounts, you’ll find Seesmic offers more options for handling them.
Both applications let you view columns for each account’s tweets, replies, direct messages and so on, but Seesmic also allows you to view a single stream of messages from all your accounts at once, ordered by the time tweets arrive.
Whether this works for you depends on how you like to view accounts, but at least you have the option. TweetDeck (currently) doesn’t offer this.
Six steps to recording the perfect podcast
Ever wanted to hear your dulcet tones on the Internet but didn’t know where to start? Read our handy guide to recording, editing and hosting your podcast and you’ll be there in no time.
We can’t guarantee you’ll be popular, but at least you won’t stay silent.
1. Get the right hardware
It’s fairly obvious that if you want to record yourself speaking you’ll need some way of getting audio on to your computer.
There are plenty of ways of doing this, but you’ll want to get the best quality piece of kit you can afford if you want to sound good and minimise the amount of tidying up you’ll have to do later.
Podcast Pick:
My absolute favourite mic for podcasting (and indeed many other uses) is the Blue Microphones Snowball USB mic. At around £85 it’s not the cheapest option but it’s used by professional broadcasters and podcasters alike. Simply plug it in to a spare USB port and you’ve got a quality audio recording device for vocals, instruments and ambient sounds…
Google Maps adds some new functionality
There’s been no big announcement but Google has added a couple of new features to the full-browser version of Maps.
Firstly, and most useful, is the layers function that allows users to do multiple searches and layer the results on top of one another in a colour-coded system. The example below shows a search for pubs and kebab shops around Upton Park, home of the mighty (yes, mighty) West Ham United:
For the record, if you’re planning on visiting Upton Park, I’d recommend a jar or two in The Duke of Edinburgh followed by a kebab from Kebabish.
The other new feature is the My Location button – which smartphone users will already be aware of. I can’t really see the point of it on a desktop version though. I suppose it may be useful if you’re out and about and lost with a netbook.
My Location will try work out your location based on Wi-Fi points nearby, or via your IP address. Neither is guaranteed to be accurate though. It didn’t work on my desktop here in TD Towers. I’m running Firefox 3.5 so I’m not sure why?
Does it work for you guys?
(via Search Engine Land)
Google Image Search now has license tagging
Google has added a feature to their image search whereby users can choose to only search for images that are available for reuse.
The advance search option gives users the option to only show images that have been tagged with licenses like Creative Commons or GNU Free Documentation making it easier to find images that, legally, they are free to use on their blogs or webpages.
Creative Commons licenses allow the rights holders to further define how their images can be used. It’s possible to license images for general reuse, or for non-commercial reuse only. They can also choose whether to grant the right to change their images.
Personally, I think that if someone publishes a picture on the web then they have given up any rights they may have had regarding its redistribution. The web is a huge sharing portal and once a picture is published it is bound to be reused over and over again. If people do want their images to remain exclusive they should add a watermark or block image saving on it.
The new Google search options should suit everyone though. People who aren’t fussed about image rights can continue to search for images the usual way and people who do have concerns can use the new functionality. Everyone’s a winner baby.
(via Google)
Bing gets more visitors than Twitter
Figures released show that Microsoft’s ‘knowledge engine’, Bing, got more unique visitors than Twitter, Digg and CNN in June. It also scored more visitors than Embroidery Online, Taxidermy.net and Non-League Daily but I suppose that’s not as significant.
The site was visited by nearly 50 million users – 49,571,922 to be precise. Twitter got 22,997,148 visitors in the same period, CNN got 28,645,202 and Digg got 38,961,981.
Microsoft reportedly spent £61million on the launch of Bing. So it’s money well spent then? Well, maybe, but Bing isn’t really designed to rival Twitter, Digg or CNN is it? It’s meant to rival Google. Google got 145,948,025 unique users in June, so it’s still got a way to go then.
It’s even still trailing Microsoft’s other search engine, Live, which got 79,405,701 visitors. This was a 21% drop from May though, indicating that users are ditching Live in favour of Bing.
Are you guys using Bing? If so, what do you think? I’ve only really had a quick look – I quite liked the video searching with playback available via the thumbnails. Although I’m told you could do this with Live anyway.
I’m just not getting the whole Bing name either. The Bing will always be Silv’s club in The Sopranos to me. Fuget about it.
(via Revolut!on & Compete)
The Microsoft rumour-mill goes into overdrive
Following Google’s Chrome OS announcement yesterday, there is much speculation on the web today that Microsoft is going to make a big announcement of their own at their conference on Monday.
The rumours began after notorious tech-blogger Robert Scoble claimed via FriendFeed to have some information regarding a possible announcement to his pal Diego. “Diego, no, it’s one of Microsoft’s primary businesses,” he wrote. “Did you know Microsoft has 14 billion dollar businesses?”
Reports are now suggesting the Microsoft may be announcing a new version of Office that not only syncs via the cloud, but will work in the cloud without the need for any actual software to be installed.
If true, this would be a major attack on Google Docs. It’s interesting to note that the domain office.com has recently been sold and is currently unoccupied. I wonder…..
Be sure to visit Tech Digest on Monday where we’ll be bringing you any important news from the Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans.
(via TechCrunch)
BT on course with its super-fast broadband project
BT has announced that an additional 69 towns will be receiving their super-fast fibre-based broadband by this time next year – meaning the service will be available to 1.5 million homes and businesses.
BT’s Steve Robertson said: “We had aimed to get fibre to half a million homes by next March but we’re now being far more ambitious. We’ve received a tremendous response to date and so we’re keen to get on with the job.”
Their overall goal of the project, which is costing the telecommunication giant £1.5billion, is to have 10 million homes covered by 2012 – 40% of the country.
BT will be offering access to ISPs on an open, wholesale basis thereby supporting a competitive market. The first areas to have access to the network went live earlier this week. Trials are taking place in Muswell Hill, London and Whitchurch, South Wales and involve 16 different ISPs.
The plan is great news for internet users and makes a bit of a mockery of the plan set out in the Digital Britain report to ensure that the country is covered by a broadband network capable of 2Mbps. The super-fast network being developed by BT should be capable of speeds of 40Mbps – 100Mbps. No wonder MPs are to open an inquiry into whether the 2Mbps plan is ambitious enough. Clearly it isn’t.
(via BT & Computing.co.uk)
Spammers using shortened URLs to spread their muck
Message Labs – part of internet security guru Symantec – is warning that shortened URLs are becoming an issue in terms of spam.
This graph shows how the inclusion of shortened URLs in spam email has increased from practically nothing a to almost 2% in just a few days:
Shortened URLs are perfect for spammers because not only do they mask dodgy sounding domain names that users would usually be wary of, they also help spam mail bypass anti-spam programmes. Services such as tinyurl are also free and require no registration.
Matt Sergeant from Message Labs, said: “The entire trust model of clicking on the URL is completely broken,” he said. He also said it was impossible to trust URLs on Twitter as many people retweet links, often without even clicking on them first themselves.
(via NYTimes)
Mobile marketing company want job applications via text
A Welsh mobile marketing company has advertised a job via Twitter for which it wants interested parties to apply via a single text message. That’s just 160 characters.
The job was advertised by Teimlo’s chief executive Phil Terrett like so:
Text JOB + y it should b u to 82088. 160 characters 2 make an impression! Cost 1 std rate txt, UK only. C teimlo.com
If you are comfortable with working for a company that advertises using text speak then you can reply with a standard text that should explain how you are “qualified, sassy, good with words, dynamite at events, Adobe compatible, have working knowledge of mobile and social media and are a determined multi-tasker and networker”
I’d personally go with: I’m qualified, sassy, brilliant at events, Adobe compatible, have working knowledge of mobile and social media and I am a determined multi-tasker and networker.
What I did was basically copy their requirements word for word. I changed “dynamite” for brilliant because I thought dynamite sounded a bit Alan Partridge-esque and I eliminated “good with words” because there wasn’t space. Plus, by changing “dynamite” I had already demonstrated that I was good with words.
Should applicants be successful, they will be invited to an interview where, hopefully, normal language will be used. If it isn’t, well, ROFLMAO.
(via ITPro)
