NEWS IN BRIEF
Daily Digest 4 December
04-12-2009
by Sylvia Leatham
Three launches anti-bullying app | Microsoft apologises for Bing outage
Mobile operator Three Ireland has announced the nationwide launch of KidSafe, an application that allows parents to manage their child's mobile phone usage. The software, which is free to download, allows parents to create a list of numbers that their child's phone can interact with. The parent can approve up to 200 numbers which the handset can receive communications from or make calls to, including voice calls, SMS, picture and video messaging, Bluetooth and the internet. The application provides the parent with a report on all the blocked activity of the handset. The company says it developed the software in response to the prevalence of mobile phone bullying in Ireland.
The 2010 Student Enterprise Awards have been launched. The annual awards, sponsored jointly by Enterprise Ireland, Invest Northern Ireland and Cruickshanks, offer third-level students across Ireland the chance to compete for the title of College Entrepreneurs of the Year and win a share in a prize fund totalling EUR50,000. Business advice and mentor support is also part of the prize package. The competition is designed to encourage innovation, promote enterprise and foster a spirit of entrepreneurship among students. The deadline for entries is next April, and the award winners will be announced in June. For more details see Studententerpriseawards.com.
Software giant Microsoft has issued an apology for a short outage in its Bing search service this week. In the early hours of Thursday 3 December, the site went down for around 30 minutes. In a statement, Microsoft said the problem was caused by a "configuration change" made during a site testing that had "unfortunate and unintended consequences", including making the site unavailable. Microsoft said it was exploring how to stop such incidents occurring in future.
In more news of Microsoft, the company has said it plans to release six security patches next week in its monthly Patch Tuesday update. The patches, three of which are rated 'critical', cover 12 vulnerabilities in Windows, Office and Internet Explorer. Five of the patches address vulnerabilities that could allow an attacker to remotely execute code on a targeted system.
In other security news, an outbreak of new spam emails are using references to swine flu to trick unsuspecting users into downloading the Zbot or Zeus Trojan malware. The emails claim to be sent from the Centre for Disease Control (CDC) and contain subject lines such as 'Governmental registration program on the H1N1 virus' or 'Create your personal vaccination profile'. Users who click through are sent to a website that invites them to download a 'H1N1 Vaccine Profile Archive'. Accepting the download installs a key-logger on the user's system which can then access personal information.
McAfee has released a study called "Mapping the Mal". It is the third in a series of reports assessing the riskiest and safest web domains to "surf and search". According to the study Cameroon (.cm) is the riskiest place to surf with 36.7 percent of domains posing a security risk. Also high on the danger list comes Romania with 21pc (.ro) and China with 18.6pc (.cn). Of note in the report was the view that Ireland's domain (.ie) is considered one of the safest appearing in fourth place, with just 0.1pc of Irish domains considered to pose a risk. Ireland came behind Government (.gov), Japan (.jp) and Education (.edu). A summary report can be viewed as a PDF here.
In a sporting first, the 2010 World Cup in South Africa is to be filmed in 3D. As many as 25 of the games will be captured using 3D cameras developed by Sony, according to football's governing body FIFA. Whilst there are no current plans in place to broadcast the matches live using 3D technology, FIFA said it was possible and a decision would be taken in the run-up to the event. For now footage will be shown at public venues in seven cities around the world and packaged into a film. Sony technology will be used to film the matches, though the company has not given any details on the system it will use to do so.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 