christo writes “In what appears to be a first, the US Home of Representatives now has a Congressman with coding skills. Democratic Representative Bill Foster won a special election this past Saturday in the 14th Congressional District of Illinois. Foster is a physicist who worked at Fermilab for 22 years designing data analysis software for the lab’s high energy particle collision detector. In an interview with CNET today, Foster’s campaign manager confirmed that the Congressman can write assembly, Fortran and Visual Basic. Will having a tech-savvy congressman change the game at all? Can we anticipate more rational tech-policy? Already on his first day, Foster provided a tie-breaking vote to pass a major ethics reform bill.”

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Stony Stevenson passed us an ITnews article about the newest scam in on the internet crime. Some 10,000 web pages have been rigged by IT-minded criminals, with the aim of hijacking unsuspecting Computers. The site reports that the users are redirected through a maze of malware, all with the goal of gaining access to personal user information. “The reprogrammed web pages are probably victims of an automated attack that included scanning the internet for unsecured servers and planting a piece of JavaScript code that redirects to a site in China to serve up the malware. The malware cocktail attempts to exploit vulnerabilities in Windows, RealPlayer and other applications to break into the Personal computer. A back door also allows the subsequent installation of additional malicious programs. McAfee Avert Labs first spotted the attack on 12 March. ‘Of the 10,000 pages that were compromised a number have already been cleaned up,’ the firm said.”

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bored-at-IETF-ntp-session writes “In an article at eWeek Larry Seltzer examines the supposed hacking war between the US and China. He surmises ‘Even if you can’t prove that the government was involved … it still bears some responsibility’. He quotes Gadi Evron who advised the Estonians during the Russian attacks. ‘I can confirm targeted attacks with sophisticated technologies have been launched against obvious enemies of China … Who is behind these attacks can’t be easily stated, but it can be an American cyber-criminal, a Nigerian spammer or the Chinese themselves.’ Seltzer concluded ‘It’s just another espionage tool, and no more or less moral than others we’ve used in the past.’” This a subject we’ve also previously discussed.

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Filed under: Features, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Productivity, Web services

Back in prehistory (or January, thereabouts) we talked a bit about webOSes, and the migration of Ewedrive to Desktop on Demand. This week we got a chance to play around with Desktop on Demand in more depth.

Desktop on Demand (DOD) is a true networked OS. It’s a Linux based system, with a clean, clear GNOME interface. There is online storage, and a good mix of open source apps. Our little issue about using a browser to access a webOS to surf the web in its browser has been addressed in an innovative way: launcher clients.

Yes, DOD offers clients to launch the service. Truthfully, we heard this and got a tiny annoyed. But trust us when we state that this is actually a freakin’ huge advantage over the old time webOS set ups. The clients are available for Windows, OS X, and Linux. They’re small, and can be installed on a flash drive. If you want to keep one on a hard drive on a given computer, it runs from the downloaded location. Very simple, very unoffensive — very personal, and very secure.

When the desktop opens, it doesn’t open in a browser. Maybe this shouldn’t sit superior with us, but for some strange reason, it just does. It feels much more natural. There is less clutter and we could forget that we were using a absolutely different operating system underneath it all.

Continue reading Desktop on Demand: Nice, but worth the cost?

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Filed under: Design, Fun, Utilities, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Web services, Freeware

If you’ve ever needed to quickly make an industrial safety sign of some sort, check out Sign Builder 2.0. Using this site, you can create safety signs, ANSI signs, dangerous materials signs, or lockout tags quickly.

Registration is required, but once you’ve a free account it’s a easy matter of choosing the type of sign you need to generate, and adding your text. The site will instantly generate a downloadable PDF file that you can then print out as needed. Obviously the possibilities for creating prank signs with this site are endless, but the practical uses are just as plentiful.

Sometimes you find the coolest things in the strangest of places. We found this site via Matt Cutts (the well-known Google blogger) in an old draft post from 2005 that he finally decided to publish this week. The post outlines how getting legitimate links coming to your site is the ideal and most effective form of search engine optimization. One of the examples Matt gives is to make sure that your website can do something of value, like creating safety signs.

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Filed under: Internet, Web services, Social Software, AOL, web 2.0

AOL has picked up social networking site Bebo for a large wad of cash. While we didn’t really see this coming, the move makes a lot of sense. AOL’s audiences tend to skew old (you know, except for the fine young folks who read AOL-owned blogs like Download Squad), while Bebo is big with the 13-24 set and has 40 million registered users.

While Bebo doesn’t have the name recognition of Facebook or MySpace in the US, it’s big in the UK, Ireland, and New Zealand. And it does have a considerable US audience as well. Perhaps most importantly, regular users click on an average of 78 pages per day, showing a high level of user engagement.

[via paidContent]

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tuxgeek writes “A suit was filed Wednesday against Apple over the possibility that the iTunes music store and iPod are ‘illegally using a patented method for distributing digital media over the World wide web.’ ZapMedia Services filed the suit, accusing the well-known OS and computer manufacturer of violating patents obtained just recently. ‘The patents in question cover a way of sending music and other digital content from servers to multiple media players, a broad description that could also apply to a wide swath of other companies selling digital media and the devices to play it. ZapMedia stated it met with Apple to discuss licensing, but Apple rebuffed the offer.’”

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robipilot writes “Video game publisher Activision Inc. has asked a federal court to declare that its popular “Guitar Hero” game does not violate a patent held by real-guitar maker Gibson Guitar Corp. Gibson’s 1999 patent covers a virtual-reality device that included a headset with speakers and that simulated participating in a concert, according to a complaint filed on Tuesday by Santa Monica, Calif.-based Activision in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.”

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Filed under: Launches, Consumer experience, Competitive strategy, Verizon Communications (VZ)

So far, huge satellite TV company DirecTV (NYSE: DTV) has been able to offer hundreds of channels and high definition, but it has not had “on demand” options. Cable and fiber-based telecom Television products do have the service and that gives them an edge with consumers.

DirecTV has set out to remedy that problem. According to The Wall Street Journal, “The No. 1 satellite-TV provider by subscribers is testing its own version of an on-demand movies and television service that it plans to launch in the second quarter.” The programming will be sent to consumers set-top boxes and be stored there for later selection. While the system is not ideal because disk space limits what the box can hold, it is better than no “on demand” at all. Movies not in storage can be streamed from DirecTV over the web to the box.

The news is certainly not good for telecom and cable companies. The market for “on demand” is getting very crowded. Cable “owned” the home Television system until companies, especially Verizon (NYSE: VZ) built fiber systems to carry programming into the home. That made two sets of competitors trying to get the consumer to use their products. Now there will be a third.

Three well-funded competitors trying to get market share usually leads to a price war. Getting “on demand” Television services is probably about to get much cheaper.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

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