NEWS IN BRIEF
Daily Digest 6 August
06-08-2009
by Emmet Cole
Twitter in site outage | Western Europe PC shipments drop
Twitter, the hugely popular micro-blogging site, was taken offline on Thursday in what the company believes was a denial-of-service attack. "On this otherwise happy Thursday morning, Twitter is the target of a denial of service attack," wrote co-founder Biz Stone in the firm's official blog. The scale of the outage is not yet known. Although at the time of writing the site was back up, Twitter says it is "continuing to defend against and recover from this attack". Denial-of-service attacks have become commonplace in recent times; just a few weeks ago Eircom was the subject of such an attack.
In more news of the micro-blogging firm, Twitter is being sued by a Texan company, TechRadium, on the grounds that three of its patents are being infringed. TechRadium's system, called Iris, provides notification technology that allows alerts to be sent to many users across a range of devices, including mobiles. Iris includes the US Army, municipal governments and several leading corporations amongst its clients and is claiming lost revenue since potential customers are choosing to use the free Twitter service instead. The federal lawsuit claims unspecified damages and seeks a permanent injunction against Twitter.
Apple has released an upgrade for its Mac OS X Leopard operating system. The upgrade is designed to bring better stability and security and improve compatibility with AirPort wireless networks and other Apple technology. It also fixes a flaw that could prevent the importing of large photo and movie files from digital cameras. Mac OS X 10.5.8 was made available on Wednesday from Apple's website. The upgrade includes Safari version 4.0.2, the latest release of Apple's web browser, which is designed to improve the accuracy of the browser's history search.
In a move to protect its networks from malicious code and prevent unintended release of sensitive military information, the US Marine Corps has banned social networking sites from its network. The ban on sites including Facebook and Twitter is effective immediately and is intended to last for at least a year. In July, US Strategic Command said it was considering banning social networking sites throughout the Defense Department.
Learned helplessness amongst consumers is set to reach new heights with news that Sony has launched a new 'Party-shot' camera that does everything automatically, including making the decision when it's the best time to take pictures. The camera's IPT-DS1 personal photographer camera dock adjusts composition and takes photos for you using face detection and smile shutter features. [What next? A gadget that scans social networking sites for your ideal mate and forces him/her into an arranged marriage? Hold on. We could be on to something there…]
The Conficker botnet -- which affects Windows users that have not used a widely-available security patch -- continues to grow in numbers and now infects more than 5.5 million machines worldwide, according to security specialists ESET Ireland. Since infection by Conficker is "completely preventable" using current security software its widespread growth is a "barometer of the current state of security and it leaves a lot to be desired", according to ESET. Conficker can spread through shared folders on networks, so ESET advises computer users to use strong passwords and protect network shares. Conficker also spreads through USB devices using the auto run feature. ESET recommends disabling auto run as a security precaution.
PC shipments in Western Europe totalled 13.3 million units in the second quarter of 2009, a 3.3 percent decline from the same period in 2008, according to market analysts Gartner. All three major markets -- the UK, France and Germany -- saw declines and that trend is set to continue for the rest of 2009. In the second quarter of 2009, Acer achieved growth through increased shipments of netbooks; Gartner estimates that nearly 50 percent of all netbooks shipped by Acer were sold. Meanwhile, Dell suffered as sales "collapsed" in the professional market.
DC Thomson, the Scottish publishing giant, is set to acquire UK-based social networking website Friends Reunited from ITV for STG25 million. ITV paid STG175 million for the site, which has seen visitor numbers drop due to the rising popularity of Facebook and other social networking sites. Brightsolid, a subsidiary of DC Thomson, will use Friends Reunited to improve the services it provides to genealogists.
Finally, IBM has published the results of its 'Smarter Planet University Jam,' which university students from 40 countries took part in. Launched in April 2009, the online project involved Irish students from University College Dublin and Trinity College Dublin who looked at "ways we can make our planet smarter". The project revealed that eight out of 10 students want universities to revamp traditional learning environments while over 90 percent want to join or start a Green Advocacy group at their campus. Sixty-four percent of students believe that the world has a chance to reverse carbon emissions by 2025, and 60 percent believe that education and efficient transportation offer the best hope for sustainability of our cities. The full report is available here.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 