Sixth Grader Wins Google Logo Contest

• the esteemed judging panel have spoken, and Texas sixth grader Christin Engelberth's "A New Beginning" ( pictured above ) is the big winner in the annual Doodle 4 Google contest, which challenges kids from around the country to redesign the Google logo according to a designated theme (this year's: What I wish for the world). (More...)
• One last little feel-good note: although none of the national finalists hailed from it, Clark County School District in Las Vegas, Nevada, will receive a $10,000 technology grant "for having the greatest quality participation." (More...)

UMich first to sign up under Google Books settlement terms

CONTENTS:

• Google and UM have been working together since 2004 on digitizing the university's library collection, but the Google Book Search settlement would allow Michigan to offer its books online as part of a subscription, or in some cases for free. (More...)
• Under the deal, Google will put the university's 8 million works online and allow users to see free previews and buy access to the school's collection online and through subscriptions from other schools. (More...)
• The Times piece cautions, however, that unless Google is shown to be engaging in anti-competitive conduct, just having an enormous scale advantage and market share in search will not necessarily support a case. (More...)
• Sabre and Apollo, owned respectively by American and United Airlines. (More...)

Google and UM have been working together since 2004 on digitizing the university's library collection, but the Google Book Search settlement would allow Michigan to offer its books online as part of a subscription, or in some cases for free. The settlement has drawn reported attention from the government as well as library groups worried over the costs associated with access to such a large digital library amassed by a single company. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. [1] The settlement makes Google a "digital bookstore," Mr. Kahle says, one with a stranglehold on digital access to books that libraries provide for free. "Google will be privatizing our libraries," he writes. "Giving control over such access to one company, no matter how clever or popular, is a danger to principles we hold dear: free speech, open access to knowledge and universal education." His main concern which has been echoed by librarians and Internet legal experts in recent months is Google's control over "orphan books." Those are copyrighted works that are out of print and have no author claiming ownership, making it impossible for Google to ask their permission to digitize them. The worry is that, in the absence of any digital collection other than Google's, it will hold a monopoly of sorts on these books, since it would be licensed to scan and sell access to them. Google defends the project, with product manager Adam Smith blogging that its aim is to expand access to hard-to-find works, and that readers can go to the library for free access to all of the books. They can purchase rare works that aren't otherwise available at the local library or at online retailers like Amazon.[2]

The revamped agreement "opens up the U-M library's extensive collections of 8 million works to readers and students throughout the United States with free previews, the ability to buy access to the university's collections online and through subscriptions at other institutions," according to the statement. It describes the new terms as a boost to Michigan's efforts to preserve and promote public access to its library holdings. The American Library Association alerted its membership that Google appears to be conducting a charm offensive designed to allay librarians' fears about the proposed settlement.[3] Courant noted, "The agreement gives any participating library the right to challenge pricing. There are over two dozen such libraries now (although we don't know how many will sign new agreements) and I would expect more. It's not just UM and a few other big ones." According to the 36-page Amendment to the Cooperative Agreement ( PDF ), 60 days after Google first makes an Institutional Subscription generally available to Higher Education Institutions and every two years after that, any partner institutions ("Initiating Libraries") may request a review of the pricing to make sure it's in accordance with the Settlement Agreement's objectives of "the realization of revenue at market rates for each Book and license on behalf of Rightsholders and the realization of broad access." Google will contribute $100,000 toward each of the first two possible Pricing Reviews; plus somewhere between $50,000 and $75,000 for future reviews, with the institutions responsible for fees and costs above those sums.[4] Google will make public domain works digitized from UM accessible to users with print disabilities in the same ways as in-copyright books covered under the settlement agreement. After 20 years, UM may provide public domain works to any entity as long as it's not directly competing with Google. Wilkin explained that, "beginning now and for the next 20 years, we may provide (in bulk) bodies of public domain works to non-profit initiatives, including libraries, and during that first 20-year period Google may not reasonably withhold their permission."[4]

A settlement agreement was reached in October of 2008 which would allow publishers and authors to share Google's profits from the sale of digital versions of copyrighted works.[2] The amended agreement, which strengthens library preservation efforts and increases the public's access to books, is possible because of Google's pending settlement with a broad class of authors and publishers.[1] "Google is reaching out to library leaders, likely in response to an increase in interest in the community and the press about the concerns libraries have raised in response to the proposed private settlement agreement," the ALA said. The group advised librarians who do meet with Google reps to ask about such hot topics as access and pricing and patron privacy.[3]

The agreement allows UM to use Google scans for projects like HathiTrust, which Wilkin heads. Specifically, it lets the university use its digital copy "as part of web services offered in cooperation with partner academic libraries and/or partner public research libraries." Those libraries must agree not to redistribute the digital copies and take reasonable efforts to prevent third parties from bulk downloading or automated access.[4] If that's not a Big Brother scenario waiting to happen, I don't know what is. I totally agree with the author that this could set a very dangerous precedent and runs totally counter to foundations of the Internet revolution. Most of us would agree that these principles are about openness, sharing and easy accessall of which serve to make information and knowledge available to anyone with an Internet connection. This is a very powerful concept for any discipline, especially education, where so much of the world has little or no access to books. To put this kind of control in private handswhether it be Google or a startupseems like a bad idea on so many levels. Sure, Google has made the investment in time and resources to scan these books and bring them into the digital fold. It's the same Net Neutrality argument that service providers make when they build broadband networks and then don't want to share them freely with OTT operators. There is definitely a fair economic case to support this tradeoff, but in both cases we're talking about things that are essentially public domainbooks and the Internet. No doubt the possibilities to enrich the knowledge that can be gleaned from these books are very exciting and compelling.[5]

A very good friend of mine is an archivist with the Ontario government, and we share similar views on how technology is impacting modern life. He passed a really interesting item along that ran in yesterday's Washington Post. Some of you may be following thisGoogle's Book Search Settlement. I can definitely see how this has a direct bearing on the archive space, but also how it touches on a few tangents of my worldemerging communications technologies. This story was new to me, and you should start here to get a basic grounding. The story was written by Brewster Kahle, and as the Director of the Internet Archive, he has a pretty good take on what this all means. Basically, the issue is about how Google is waiting on a court ruling that could essentially grant them a monopoly on "in copyright but out of print" bookswhich, according to the article represents "50% to 70% of all books published after 1923". Wowthat's a lot of books, and the article goes on to say this would effectively allow Google to "privatize our libraries".[5] Now it seems, as Sanford and Brown argue, that Google is becoming a news gatekeeper on a national and international scale. It makes no business sense for content providers (like those airlines) to boycott Google News and Google Search. They are left with no leverage if Google chooses to keep a disproportionate share of associated advertising revenues to itself. I'm not a lawyer but I try to think like one from time to time in this column.[6] Google Inc has come under the scrutiny''of U.S. regulators due to it'''s dominant position in the market. Up to 64% of U.S. search queries and 72% of the U.S. paid search market belongs to Google which makes them head and shoulders above the nearest competitor ''' Yahoo who has only''20% of the U.S. search market.'' These are the stats according to Hitwise. As Blair Levin, a member of President Obama'''s technology transition team said in a DowJones article : "It is not illegal to become dominant in a market.'' Google is defending its position by saying that rival search engines are only a click away but the argument has not manage to completely dispel the fears of media companies, advertising agencies and telecommunications firms who see the Internet giant expanding into various new markets like mobile advertising and cloud computing. There is no question that Google has provided the Internet community with a great search engine and a number of other very valuable services like Google Maps but it is also comforting to know that U.S. regulators are keeping a close eye on this dominant market player.[7]

The company has in recent weeks met with U.S. and European policymakers, journalists and ad agencies in an attempt to demonstrate it isn't a threat to online competition because rival search engines are a mere click away on the Internet. Google representatives could not be reached for comment for this story.[8]

Despite the uproar over Google's online book scanning program, the University of Michigan on Thursday said it would expand its book digitization agreement with the search engine.[9] After that, permission is not needed. He noted that, in 2050, all restrictions disappear. "We hope that most needs are met through online access to the copies in HathiTrust or Google Book Search," he said, but sometimes a networked service isn't best.[4] Is to create a new source of revenue. Where we would actually be able to sell access to those books that are out of print but yet in -- -- I'm and so that's kind of what's to come the reality is is that we have a legal process that we have to abide by right now. So it's clear that the part of the agreement that will be enabled. Once it's approved by the courts is not yet visible for users but we're hoping that. That will continue to progress on -- and that is the ultimate promise -- and actually the ultimate promise of a book search.[10] You'll see just a portion of the book but what the publisher has instructed us to show. The books that are in copyright but out of print which is really the crux of the settlement agreement between us and the authors guild and AAP. for those books we only show snippet views.[10] Regulators are currently looking at Google's book-search settlement with authors and publishers. Authorities are also examining whether overlapping directors at Google and Apple Inc. (AAPL) could reduce competition because both companies make phone operating systems and Web browsers.[8]

Google's book-scanning project drew outcry and a class-action lawsuit from the Authors Guild and the American Association of Publishers, who said the Internet company was violating copyright laws by scanning copyrighted works.[2] I've wondered too, in a previous post, whether beating the tom-toms about Google links could boomerang on publishers. If the company, as appears, is lawyering up to protect its core business franchise, it might view a separate agreement compensating newspapers as bad precedent for a broader range of Google fundamentals.[6]

The company backed away from a proposed search advertising agreement with Yahoo last year when the DoJ made it clear it would fight the deal on antitrust grounds.[8] Google has over the years diversified from being a just a search engine to a digital media products company.[11]

Google for 25 years will subsidize the cost of UM's subscription based on the number of books scanned from Michigan, which in practice means it will be free. That's not necessarily the case for all partners. The clause is contingent on the library making its content available to Google and that it has fewer than 60,000 FTE users.[4] Why a 25-year subscription? "Ten years isn't long enough and 100 is too long," Courant responded. "We wanted to make sure that the investments we have made in building these collections would bear fruit for our students and faculty for at least a generation." The amendment says that if Google provides a version that does not contain advertising, it reserves the right to price such Institutional Subscription differently from the Institutional Subscription that contains advertising. It is unclear how that would apply to all the library partners, but UM would apparently get the advertising-free subscription under the same subsidy provisions noted above.[4] To the pricing reviewer, Google will provide the number of postsecondary academic institutions that have Institutional Subscriptions, a histogram showing the percentage of institutions that pay each price within a Pricing Category; and Google's list price for each Pricing Category. The Pricing Reviewer may request in writing additional information and "Google will provide such requested information unless it reasonably determines that such information is not necessary for the Pricing Reviewer to render a determination." The Pricing Review Report would not contain actual pricing information unless "Google otherwise agrees or the information is otherwise publicly available… but may contain conclusions based on such information."[4]



Under the deal, Google will put the university's 8 million works online and allow users to see free previews and buy access to the school's collection online and through subscriptions from other schools. [9] The U-M library is the first in the nation to expand its partnership with Google. The contract amendment is an important step in ensuring that the university's vision of broad public access to its print collection becomes a reality. "Through this amendment we are establishing a solid foundation for future library work and providing the greatest public good for library users," said Paul N. Courant, U-M librarian and dean of libraries.[1]

Mr. Kahle argues, however, that publishers and libraries outside of Google should continue to scan digital books "and not be limited to one private library whose titles are available for a fee, controlled by a corporation that can dictate what we are allowed to read."[2]



The Times piece cautions, however, that unless Google is shown to be engaging in anti-competitive conduct, just having an enormous scale advantage and market share in search will not necessarily support a case. It dampens a potential case further that nearly all Google services are free to users. [6] Top of the list was a provocative essay by Wharton computer professor Eric Clemons, published March 1 on the TechCrunch blog. Clemons thinks a case might be built around the theory that Google effectively monopolizes key word search and overcharges those advertisers (especially in the travel industry) who then pass on the cost to consumers. He also suggests that Google makes so much money on search that it can run all the rest of its businesses at no profit, thus building market share while muscling out potential competitors.[6]

In short google would control your fate. Conclusion: Well those of you google lovers don't get me wrong Im not anti google and I certainly hope that google abides by its "do no evil" philosophy but I also believe is that the size of market share that google enjoys in most segments puts it in almost a dictating position. It also leaves many publishers at the mercy of google for their daily living. It also gives google the power to control the web in more ways that one and play the big daddy.[11]

To illustrate my point lets assume you had to go one day without any of google's service i.e. search, mail, blogger etc how many of you can still surf the web and complete your daily work? Well you have your answer. Is your life dependant on google? Well then be scared. very scared.[11] "May be a no google day is required - A day when no one uses any of google'''s services. It would also give one day to new services which might be good but havent been used/tested just because we are too lazy to change from google." Bang on Rajiv! This is exactly why we have our own little google free campaign, canyoulivewithoutgoogle.com.[11]

Over time as a company, news agency you would give and arm and a leg to be on the first few results for google news search as it would have a tremendous impact on your readership/branding.[11] In online reading an aggregator like google news plays a vital roles as it provides multiple sources that one can read from but which sources it projects up and which sources are buried that is completely based on google.[11]

If you are not a Legalbrief subscriber but would like to take out a free month trial subscription to our services, register online now for easy access.[12]

Google Analytics : Analytics the free traffic monitoring tool has almost become the standard metric for publishers and advertisers as far as measuring any sites traffic is concerned.[11] Google contributes more that 50% of your overall traffic then you could be in big trouble with a page rank drop. Google has information for webmasters here with regards to the do's and dont's for your site.[11] I get Google's viewpoint that as it invents better information tools for millions of customers, it gets to make up most of the rules. This development sent me looking (via Google Search, I must admit) for more on what kind of anti-trust case might fit Google's breakthrough business model.[6] Again you have little on no control over what pages come up with regards to your name. In this case your personal reputation is at stake and guess what its in google's hands. There have been several cases of companies spending dollars on seo companies because of a certain search result affecting their reputation.[11]

Over the years the importance of search and its use as a window to the world has increased incredibly. Much so that people instead of giving their business cards say "just google me!".[11]

Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said recently that increased regulatory scrutiny has not had a chilling effect on the company, but anti-trust experts said a company in Google's position would likely be more inclined to move cautiously as it pushes to expand into new businesses.[8] Who says business news doesn't happen on weekends? This past one brought some creative and specific thinking to the nebulous notion that Google may be exerting monopoly power in ways unique to the digital era.[6]

Most of our friends and work related contacts are also on Gtalk. This level of high dependency on Gmail means our work functioning almost entirely depends on google and its mail services.[11] Publishers have seen fluctuations in revenues many a times. Even google has address ed the same on their blog. Given the lack of any concrete alternative to google adsense several publishers are highly dependant on google for its bread and butter.[11] Google AdPlanner : Ad planner the tool for advertisers is similar in ways to analytics except that the tool is public. Currently adplanner does not enjoy a huge following for its statistics but with time it could become a prime lookup destination for statistics on various websites.[11]

Google Page Rank : Google page rank which is the fundamental way that google ranks pages on the web. It is a well known fact that google updates these rankings based on various factors.[11] Ironically google doesn't allow paid links (besides for google ads ofcourse) and you should be very careful of link based ads on your site unless you want to get penalised by google on your page rank.[11]



Sabre and Apollo, owned respectively by American and United Airlines. Four out of five flights back then were booked by travel agents and the two services together handled a significant 70 percent share of computerized bookings for all airlines, not just its owners. [6] Copyright laws should be modernized by a statute defining "the taking of entire Web pages by search engines" as infringement rather than fair use, the authors suggested. They also recommended federalizing the so-called "hot news" doctrine, a 90-year-old court ruling that protected content-originating wire services from having the gist of their stories lifted by someone else.[6] While amount of money for authors in the settlement is just $60 per title, there will be other fees in the form of sharing in e-commerce, search and advertising.[10]

We came to an agreement with AAP and authors guild to allow us, that it pending the approval of the court.[10]

Again pending approval from the court the idea is also to create a new revenue stream because if you're if if if you have a case where you have a book that's.[10]

REFERENCES

1. ResourceShelf » Blog Archive » University of Michigan first to sign new digitization agreement with Google
2. Internet Archive Founder Questions Google Books Settlement - Digits - WSJ
3. Wired Campus: U. of Michigan Expands Book-Search Agreement; Google Makes Its Case toLibrarians - Chronicle.com
4. In Amended Agreement, University of Michigan, Library Partners Can Challenge Google Book Search Pricing - 5/20/2009 - Library Journal
5. Google Book Search Settlement: Another Digital Pandora's Box
6. Poynter Online - The Biz Blog
7. Blogs about Broadband, Technology, Telecoms and the Internet » Blog Archive » Google'''s nuclear bomb
8. Google Under Scrutiny, But Anti-Trust Case Unlikely
9. Univ of Michigan Expands Google Book Deal - AppScout
10. Beet.TV: Google Wants All World's Books and Will Pay All the Authors
11. 7 Reasons Why You Should Fear Google | WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India
12. Legalbrief - Why newspapers must adapt

Google Street View Trike Captures the Roads Less Driven

CONTENTS:

• The idea is to capture not only the streets, but to offer virtual tours of our scenery and landmarks too. (More...)
• The idea is to photograph points of interest ''' castles, sports stadia, sites of outstanding natural beauty ''' and then stitch the images together to provide a 360-degree view on Google Maps. (More...)
• Google said it would make "locally appropriate modifications to ensure a better user experience". (More...)
• In April most of Germany's data protection concerns seemed to be appeased by Google's willingness to compromise and accept complaints after meetings with privacy advocates. (More...)
• Think footpaths, pedestrianised areas, coastal paths, historical monuments, castles and football stadiums as just a few examples. (More...)

The idea is to capture not only the streets, but to offer virtual tours of our scenery and landmarks too. If it's raining on a bank holiday, you can do the day trip from the comfort of your own home just by switching on your PC. According to a Google spokesperson: 'Users will be able to virtually tour castles or monuments before visiting, or check out which side of a football stadium they need to be on before leaving the house. The Google Trike itself is described as 'a mechanical masterpiece comprising 3 bicycle wheels, a mounted Street View camera and a very athletic cyclist in customised Google apparel' and should be a common site during the summer months in the UK. Where he or she goes is up to you, with Google running a vote in conjunction with Visit Britain to pick the places most in need of photographing in 3D. Before you ask, there isn't an option for 'not my village'. [1] Cars painted with the company's logo have taken hundreds of thousands of photographs of streets and houses over the last year. Google's new trike - which has the same capability as the Street View cars for collecting imagery - will tour Britain this summer. Their 18-stone pedal-powered machine will be ridden by specially-trained 'super-fit' employees.[2]

Google Maps and its Street View project have pulled out one of the most basic of all forms of transport to bring the most detailed mapping and filming of storefronts, houses, people and streets the tricycle. In order to get to those public places which cars cannot, like busy tourist areas and small alleyway style roads in Europe and Japan, Google has enlisted a fleet of tricycles, the Google Street View Trikes.[3] "The trike is designed to go down footpaths and tracks to get images of areas of natural beauty or tourist sites," a Google spokeswoman said. "The trike will be here in UK for just a short while in the summer so in order to pick the very best spots we're asking the public to get involved and tell us where they want us to go." The Trike will start out in Genoa, Italy before coming to the UK this summer. Google Street View hit two major glitches last week when it was barred from photographing in Greece and forced to re-shoot all its images in Japan.[4] The so-called Google Trike, which the company describes "a mechanical masterpiece comprising 3 bicycle wheels, a mounted Street View camera and a very athletic cyclist in customised Google apparel," will arrive in the UK to make some "special image collections". It's up to the public, however, to tell Google -- via a vote -- which locations should be photographed.[5]

Privacy advocates have been critical of the feature, saying that the cameras used to collect the images would also record details of residents' lives. Google's special Street View data collection cars, with mounted roof-top cameras, caused an uproar last summer as they trolled the streets of Berlin, Munich and Frankfurt to take pictures for the service.[6] "We think the new camera height allows us to get a high-quality image of the street while respecting the privacy of homeowners." Earlier this week, the BBC reported that Greece's data protection agency banned Google from expanding its Street View service in the country, pending "additional information" from the firm. n Greek authorities want to know how long the images will be kept on Google's database and what measures it will take to make people aware of privacy rights.[7] "We admit that there were concerns about the service. People said we might have neglected the privacy issue," 'he wrote.' "We took their opinions seriously and made careful considerations." It was unclear if Google was going to remove all images from Street View or replace them as the new ones were taken.[8]

Since it was launched in 2007, Street View has expanded to more than 100 cities worldwide. It has drawn complaints from individuals and institutions that have been photographed, including the Pentagon, which barred Google last year from photographing U.S. military bases for Street View. A privacy watchdog in Greece banned Google from gathering images in the country for its Street View service until it provides more privacy guarantees than the current proposal to blur faces and vehicle licence plates.[9]

Google say Street View, linked to the internet company's Google Maps and Google Earth, is popular with shoppers trying to find stores and with house-buyers. Critics say the site is a 'burglar's charter' - making it easier for intruders to check out their next target. Last month residents in Broughton, Bucks, formed a 'human-chain' to prevent the Google Street View car from entering their village. Arguing that they had been already hit by a spate of burglaries, the villagers succeeded in forcing the car to leave. Greece last week banned the internet service from its cities altogether - with officials saying: "We are not going to allow our country to become a Big Brother society."[2] Street View has not been banned in Greece. We have received a request for further information and we are happy to continue discussing these issues with them. We will discuss with them whether it is appropriate for us to continue driving in the meantime." Although that dialogue is ongoing, we believe that launching in Greece will offer enormous benefits to both Greek users and the people elsewhere who are interested in taking a virtual tour of some of its many tourist attractions." Last month Milton Keynes residents tried to prevent the driver of a Google Street Car taking pictures for its Street View service.[7] Google's gotta reshoot every Street View image it's taken in Japan from a height 16 inches lower than Godzilla's ankle after people complained the photos peeked over their fences. The current photos--which cover 12 cities--were taken by cameras mounted on sticks stuck on the roof of a car, placing them over the height of most people's fences (seriously), so Google Japan has agreed to lower them by exactly 16 inches, as well as to blur any license plate it comes across. Given that addresses are essentially useless in Tokyo, you'd think they'd complain less and just be happy Google is making their lives easier.[10] GOOGLE Street View mappers have built a special TRIKE to take their cameras down hard-to-reach tracks and photograph Britain's national treasures. The three-wheelers, designed to be used off-road, will allow the internet giant to get close-up images of places inaccessible by their normal cars.[2] Ridden by a cyclist wearing a Google helmet and clothing, the trike will collect street-level images just like Street View cars. It means that images can be taken from hard to reach places, such as coastal paths, historic buildings and even football stadiums.[11]

The Trike, similar to the Street View cars but on three wheels instead of four, is equipped with the same cameras Google used to photograph British cities. The Trikes will be used to get to locations not accessible by cars such as national parks, castles and cliffs.[4] The company's photography-based map imaging service has defeated several lawsuits in England and is now looking to expand its coverage--to footpaths. They're not exactly being secretive about it. Google describes their Trikes as, "a mechanical masterpiece comprising 3 bicycle wheels, a mounted Street View camera and a very athletic cyclist in customised Google apparel."[12] Google Street View heads off-road this month with the search giant employing tricycle riders to map Britain's countryside and urban footpaths.[13] There's a lot of old stuff in Britain that's beyond the scope of the all-seeing eye of Google's Street View cars. That won't do. In order to resolve this sorry state of affairs, Google has joined forces with the tourist organisation Visit Britain to invite members of the public to nominate which locations the specially adapted, 114kg Google tricycles should visit.[14] Bath was photographed recently and I can't wait to see the city on Google Street View but the Google cars just couldn't get to some of the more beautiful and interesting parts. The riverside and canalside walks, parks, the Abbey yard, etc. could all be accessed by the tricycles and this would provide a much richer/detailed view of the city for tourists and locals. This is a smokescreen. Labour are inside your house,,your bank account,, your computer,,,,even your dustbin. It is obvious to me that Google have taken over the world. It is official.[15] Concerns about Street View were raised by campaign group Privacy International, who said the site is a 'burglar's charter' that makes it easy for criminals to check out potential victims. Meanwhile angry villagers in Broughton in Cambridgeshire blocked a Google Car from taking pictures of their 'affluent' neighbourhood. Homeowners can request to have their house removed from Street View.[15]

Google Street View - which has come under fire for invasion of privacy - allows anyone to tap in a British postcode and see a 360 degree picture of the road. It uses millions of 3D video images stitched together to create a virtual replica of city streets.[2] The argument stemmed around the idea of invasion of privacy, specifically that the cameras could take pictures over the fences around private homes. Google agreed to re-shoot all of the photos taken for Google Street View of Japanese cities and will lower the height of its cameras to avoid taking photos at heights above private fences.[8]

Google takes privacy very seriously, and that's why we have put in place a number of features, including the blurring of faces and licence plates, to ensure that Street View will respect local norms when it launches in Greece," a statement read." We have already spoken with the Hellenic Data Protection Authority to ensure that they understand the importance we place on protecting user privacy."[7] Google has unveiled a fleet of manned tricycles as its latest secret weapon in a bid to capture pictures of landmarks and hot spots for its controversial Street View service. Tricycles have apparently been chosen because of their stability, ruggedness and because they can access places that are inaccessible to four-wheel vehicles.[16]

In a partnership with VisitBritain, Google is taking the seemingly unprecedented step of inviting the public to help decide what "special image collections" should be added to Street View. They've set up a public survey page where UK residents can choose what tourist destinations deserve the extra Street View attention. It's an interesting tactic to woo Brits to what Street View offers.[17] The aim is to giveusersa closer view ofthe UK's main tourist sites. "We have heard from people around the UK that they would like us to include even more images of our national tourist treasures in Street View and put Britain's famous landmarks on the map.[18] The latest expansion of Google Street Maps UK is being developed in association with agency VisitBritain, to map and photograph all of Britain's many points of interest including historic castles, sports stadia, sites of outstanding natural beauty and other stuff of interest to tourists and ramblers alike.[13] The images are captured by specially adapted Google StreetView cars that travel the UK taking photographs. These cars are unsuitable for use in rural and off-road areas, as well as heritage sites such as castles or areas of public interest including football grounds, so Google has created a three-wheeled trike suitable for off-road that can capture the images. The search-engine is also asking web users to suggest which of Britain's tourist attractions they want photographed.[19] "The off-road trike is designed to go down footpaths and tracks to get images of areas of natural beauty or tourist sites. "Users will be able to virtually tour castles or monuments before visiting - or check out which side of a football stadium they need to be on before leaving the house. "We want it to be a really fun new aspect of the website and hope the public will get involved and tell us where they want us to go."[2] The trike, which weighs a mighty 18 stone or two Theo Walcotts, will be hauled across Europe by ultra-fit Google cyclers. "Depending on what the public vote for, users will be able to virtually tour castles or monuments before visiting - or check out which side of a football stadium they need to be on before leaving the house," said a Google spokesman. As Google giddily oil their trikes' chains ready to send them out, whiffs of a backlash are beginning to percolate, as angry villagers in Broughton, Cambridgeshire blocked a Google car from entering their affluent village. The angry mob chased the car with pitch forks and torches - no they didn't really, but they probably wanted to.[20]

The nifty trikes will be used for public sites only - with internet users able to 'virtually tour' castles, our remote coastline or, if granted permission, even every available inch of stadiums like Stamford Bridge or Old Trafford. Google will poll the public to ask which of Britain's tourist wonders they would most like to see up close.[2]

"The new trike will enable us to showcase even more of Britain's wonderful destinations and we look forward to some great ideas from the public," VisitBritain spokesman Justin Reid said. Since many of these sites are privately owned, Google pledged that they'd "work closely with the relevant organizations to collect images of privately-owned locations." Just in case the Trike catches you doing something naughty on the grounds of a Medieval castle, Google promises to "apply our face-blurring and license plate blurring to all these images to protect people's privacy."[21]

Google has also teamed up with Visit Britain to get people involved by submitting their favourite landmarks to include in the trike's tour. Visit Britain has devised five categories under which people can submit their ideas: Castles, coastal paths, natural wonders, historic buildings & monuments and sports stadiums.[22]

The search giant's controversial mapping service is being extended to include coverage beyond the nation's streets in locations such as sports stadiums, monuments and remote beauty spots. The technology would allow tourists to view Britain's national treasures such as castles and heritage sites from their homes at the click of a mouse.[23]

TOKYO - Google says it will reshoot all photos in Japan for its Street View service after residents complained the 360-degree panoramic images provided a view over the fences around their homes.[9] Google is mapping the world one street at a time. Some of those locations are not conducive to cars, let alone the Google Street Views van or even a smal car. Well, for all of those hard-to-reach areas, Google'''s tactical strategy becomes obvious thanks to a handful of images that have surfaced today.[24] In Europe, not so much. (I have literally been able to cross a road in Ireland in four steps, and I'm barely 5-foot-9.) This is a problem for Google's Street View tool and its mission to map the world's roads even the smallest car is going to have trouble getting around in some parts of the world.[17] Here's what readers have had to say so far. Street view's been a godsend for me in previewing roads and junctions through unfamiliar bits of London - main roads on maps are often pretty humdrum in real life and it's easy to be unsure whether it's this junction or the next. Damn nuisance these Google wallahs. In my day we'd not have stood for this spying stuff.[22]

According to Google, the trike "weighs nearly 18 stone!" and requires a "specially trained super fit" rider decked out in Google-branded gear. For the riders' sakes, we hope they stay out of that ritzy British neighborhood that pitched a fit when the Street View Car drove through.[21] The campaign represents a clear attempt by Google to woo a public which has greeted the Streetview project with as much scepticism as enthusiasm thus far. This was demonstrated most vividly back in April, when angry villagers ran the Street View car out of their town in Buckinghamshire.[25]

To advance its Street View service this summer, Google is poised to unleash the unstoppable power of human legs.[5] Google Street View allows web users across the world to "walk" along streets, exploring 360 degree images recorded from eye level.[23] Meanwhile users can fill out an online request to have images blocked ' a system already available in countries like the United States where Street View is up and running.[6]

Simply put, you can find someone's house simply by knowing their phone number/address and see what it looks like. What their neighborhood looks like. Sure the pictures tend to be old ( a season old sometimes) but the truth is, some people don't want their property to be viewable by satellite and street image. If they ever get technology able to show LIVE views of our property then I'm certain people will consider this a breach of privacy.[26] Either way, I love Street View and the fact that I can look up a place I'm not very fond of and get a grasp of the buildings or homes that surround it. I mean, overall, it's better that we have this and GPS to guide us than having to bother people, right? Considering some people are so uptight as to even have people LOOKING at their house, I'm sure it'd please these people more to know they don't have to help someone out.[8]

The internet giant, in conjunction with VisitBritain, has designed a tricycle that has the same functionality as the Street View cars which have been driving around UK streets taking photos with 360-degree cameras.[18] The 18-stone tricycle has a mounted Street View 360 degree camera and a box behind the rider's seat that contains image software.[15]

Street View, Google's equivalent to an open circuit television system, does not constitute a threat to personal privacy according to the.[16] What does a search engine do about photographing the cobbled streets and side alleys of the world. That's the dilemma that Google faces when trying to add Street View to many city locations in Europe.[27]



The idea is to photograph points of interest ''' castles, sports stadia, sites of outstanding natural beauty ''' and then stitch the images together to provide a 360-degree view on Google Maps. [28] The Google Maps addition provides panorama online images visible from street level in cities around the world and will be available in Germany soon, Google announced in April.[6] Some entire German cities, like Molfsee in the state of Schleswig Holstein, are unwilling to be included in the map feature at all. In fall 2008, the city said it would forbid Google photographing its streets. Other cities have approached data protection agencies to do the same.[6]

Google has teamed up with tourist agency VisitBritain in an effort to solicit opinion from the public on places the trike should photograph when it hits the streets.[25] The Google spokeswoman added: "As we only collect images from public roads we'll work closely with the relevant organisations to collect images of privately-owned locations. "We've teamed up with VisitBritain to help with this and we will apply the usual face-blurring to protect tourists' identity."[2]

The photos currently on the website were taken by cameras mounted on a pole attached to a car roof. Google Japan said on Wednesday it would lower the cameras after many residents said they were high enough to look over fences around their homes, company product manager Keiichi Kawai said in a statement. Others have previously complained that images on the service recorded vehicle licence plates and laundry hanging in backyards.[9] We happen to love Google StreetView for the fun things that can be found using the free service. Ugly Buicks, Porsches testing in Colorado and even a rare split-window Corvette barn find are just a few of the many, many things uncovered by Google's free service, which snaps 360-degree images at eye level using specially equipped cars with roof-mounted cameras.[26] However the service has come in for much criticism after it was revealed a number of inappropriate images displaying police arrests and even a drunk man wearing antlers were available on the service. Google has had to promise to lower the cameras on its cars by 40cm.[7]



Google said it would make "locally appropriate modifications to ensure a better user experience". "We have lowered the height of the camera due to the unique characteristics of many Japanese roads; they tend to be narrow, without pavements and driveways, and houses are built close to the street," the statement said. [7] I could use my electric trike. I love this idea! Google is so innovative. The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline.[22] A Google spokeswoman said: 'The trike will be here in UK for just a short while in the summer so in order to pick the very best spots we're asking the public to get involved and tell us where they want us to go.[22] There are five categories - castles, coastal paths, natural wonders, historic buildings and monuments and stadiums. The trikes will be up and running in the UK this summer, but they're heading to Italy first. Italy's got its fair share of monuments too, after all. Oh, and is it us or does that cyclist look a little like Tony Blair? He's got to pay the bills I suppose.[29] History has shown that the human leg is an often untapped behemoth of energy, having in the past powered generators, submarines and, of course, deep space hair dryers aboard Red Dwarf. The Gtrike will hit Italy's inaccessible areas first, before hitting UK footpaths later this summer.[5]

The trike is designed to go down footpaths and tracks to get images of areas of natural beauty or tourist sites.[22] Images collected by the trike will be processed and carefully stitched together in a process that can take several months. They will be made available at a later date on Google Maps.[15] Once a shortlist of the most original ideas is decided the public will be able to vote for the top three locations the Google Trike will visit first.[22] We are giving people a sneak preview of our latest ground-breaking invention -the Google trike," said Google.[18] I can't wait until Google throws helmet cams on people and sends them into subway tunnels or where ever the trike can't go.[3]

Personally I couldn't care less about Google putting an image of my front door up but other people all over the world do.[8] The service, which already lets users take 360-degree virtual tours of huge swathes of the country, sparked controversy when it was launched in Britain in March. Fears were raised that it could be used by burglars or terrorists to research targets, while many people complained because their faces were not obscured in images. Photographs of naked children, and people emerging from sex shops were among those which provoked privacy concerns.[23] Not satisfied with photographing everything Britain has to offer from the road, Google is taking to the paths to gathermore detailed images.[18] Stricken no doubt by the new wave of smarter search engines such as WolframAlpha and Facility, and contemplating the demise of their business model and imminent unemployment, the good folk of Google have taken a leaf out of the Norman Tebbit book of job-hunting and come up with another way to annoy the village mobs of this country's green, unpleasant land. They're getting on their bikes. The problem with this pesky country, as Google has discovered, is that not all of the ancient builders of monuments, castles and follies had the foresight to position their creations next to a main road.[14] Google could even end up scanning every millimeter of famous football stadiums like Old Trafford or Anfield road if given the permission.[16]

The complaints center around the fact that the camera taking pictures is mounted high enough to see over fences and into yards, thereby violating certain expectations of privacy. Google has already shot 12 major Japanese cities, including Tokyo, but will be scrapping everything and starting over after modifications have been made to the camera mounts to lower their field of vision.[26] Kawai said Google's decision to lower the cameras is designed to address concerns in Japan, where many neighborhoods are crowded and privacy is tightly guarded.[9] My guess is Google used the same camera rigs as they did in the U.S. Fences must be shorter in Japan. Nah, fences and walls are generally higher in Japan because they're more likely to be designed for privacy, whereas fences in America are largely decorative or for pets/children.[8]

Google would probably regret not complying with a court decision. Almost definately a legal issue - privacy laws in Japan tend to be stricter than those in U.S. & Europe. Due to how crowded it is and consequently how hard privacy is to come by, Japanese people are pretty sensitive about protecting their privacy.[8]

Google StreetView was recently banned in Greece over privacy issues and other regions around the world have also not looked kindly on being invaded by the all-seeing swarm of Google cars.[26] Google's data protection expert Peter Fleischer told German weekly news magazine Focus the company would develop special "data protection tools" for the computer program, saying that faces and car licence plates photographed by chance will be blurred.[6] Ridden by a super-fit employee, the off-roader will reach areas inaccessible to Google cars. Both the bike and rider will feature the search engine's distinctive logo.[15] Camera cars have already done the same thing for 25 UK cities; the trikes will allow the internet search giant to go one step further and get to areas that are inaccessible by motor vehicles.[28]

Google's camera cars have been spotted in dozens of provincial towns in recent months. Residents of the affluent village of Broughton in Buckinghamshire formed a human chain to prevent one of the vehicles filming their homes without permission.[23] The camera-laden bikes are designed to access those parts of the undulating European expanses that the Google car can't.[20]

Britain's got a lot of dark alleys, pedestrianized areas and footpaths that Google's intent on getting down, but currently can't. Its solution? Tricycles.[29] Google will be partnering with http://www.visitbritain.co.uk/ Visit Britain, Britain's national tourism agency, responsible for marketing Britain worldwide. The public will also be able to vote on which landmarks they want to be photographed.[16] The ICO said that the regulator was content with Google's policy of blurring faces and number plates, and its pledge to remove individual images after complaints from members of the public.[23] If the current trials, which are being held in Genoa, Italy, prove to be successful, Google is likely to include all public sites including landmarks and paths in the UK.[16] Google have hit back, saying there is an easy process for removal of images - and have taken some off the site already, including pictures of a man leaving a sex store.[2] If Iran had a large tech company that wanted to take pictures of our streets to repost for civil uses it would be a problem for me. I think its fine that google does this in the U.S., but internationally I think it a bit of an invasion of sovereignty.[26]

If you have street view you can recognize landmarks so you know where you are even if the street sign is covered by a tree.[26] I know for a fact that there is no legal right to privacy on a public street in the UK.[8] Good thing that guy wasn't on a tricycle. It's somewhat reminiscent of the Australian flyover stunt that Google tried back in 2007, only there's probably more riding on the success of this bicycle-based outreach in the UK.[17] Googles map-makers turn to a custom Google Trike to reach those nooks and crannies around the globe.[24] Of course, a human-powered vehicle can't visit every historic site in one summer let alone a wet British summer '' so VisitBritain is holding an online contest where folks can vote for the places the trike will visit first.[21] Justin Reid from VisitBritain said: "The new trike will enable us to showcase even more of Britain's wonderful destinations and we look forward to some great ideas from the public."[20]



In April most of Germany's data protection concerns seemed to be appeased by Google's willingness to compromise and accept complaints after meetings with privacy advocates. [6] Caspar wants to insure that details like the faces of bypassers and personal data are made unrecognisable. 'There have still not been agreements with Google on these and other questions,' he said.[6]



Think footpaths, pedestrianised areas, coastal paths, historical monuments, castles and football stadiums as just a few examples. [1] The problem with using cars to map streets is that there are some places that cars just can't go.[29]

REFERENCES

1. Google Street View trikes map Britain's footpaths | T3 magazine
2. Google trike to tour Britain | The Sun |News
3. Google Street View Now Using Tricycles : Google Street View Trikes
4. Google Trike coming to the UK - Web User News
5. Google builds Street View trikes to map UK footpaths - Crave at CNET UK
6. Hamburg considers Google Street View ban - The Local
7. Japan forces Google climbdown on Street View - google, google street view, internet privacy, privacy - Computerworld
8. Google must re-shoot all Street View pictures in Japan
9. Google to reshoot street views of Japanese cities
10. Gizmodo - Google Must Reshoot Every Single Street View Image in Japan - Google Japan
11. Google Street View to get on its trike | IT PRO
12. Google Maps Now Tromping Down Footpaths - News and Analysis by PC Magazine
13. Google Street View maps UK's tourist hotspots | News | TechRadar UK
14. Tech Central - Times Online - WBLG: Google says: on yer trike
15. Street View to capture British landmarks with off-road Google Trike | Mail Online
16. Google Uses Tricycles To Take Pictures Of UK Tourist Hotspots - ITProPortal.com
17. Google Woos Brits With Bike-based Street View Project
18. Google wants a better Street View | 18 May 2009 | ComputerWeekly.com
19. Google Street View to add UK tourist attractions News - PC Advisor
20. Google unleash pedal power trikes to map more : Tech Digest
21. Google Street View Trike Captures the Roads Less Driven | Autopia | Wired.com
22. Street View to map Britain's landmarks with new Google trike | Mail Online
23. Google Street View using tricycles to map inaccessible locations - Telegraph
24. Google Street Views Takes to a Tricycle - PC World
25. PC Pro: News: Street View Trike takes to streets
26. REPORT: Google forced to re-shoot all of Japan's StreetView images [w/POLL]
27. Tricycles Bring Google's Street View to Narrow Streets; Feral Cats Rejected
28. Tricycle To Map Tourist Hotspots For Google Street View - BikeRadar
29. Google shifts to pedal power to map UK landmarks

Gumblar Google-poisoning attack morphs

CONTENTS:

• The attack, which can be found on several thousand legitimate Web sites, exploits flaws in Adobe software to install malware that steals FTP login credentials and hijacks the victim's browser, replacing Google search results with links chosen by the attackers. (More...)
• More victims are infected by encountering a compromised site. (More...)
• As usual, the way to keep your PC (and websites) safe is to make sure all of your software is up to date, including browsers, plug-ins, and whatever else. (More...)

The attack, which can be found on several thousand legitimate Web sites, exploits flaws in Adobe software to install malware that steals FTP login credentials and hijacks the victim's browser, replacing Google search results with links chosen by the attackers. Known as Gumblar because at one point it used the Gumblar.cn domain, the attack is spreading quickly in part because its creators have been good at obfuscating their attack code and because they are using FTP login credentials to change folder permissions, leaving multiple ways they can get back into the server." [1] Gumblar, so-named because it infected benign Web sites with attack code that attempted to install malware from a "gumblar" domain onto visitor's computers, has switched to using a "martuz" domain instead, according to ScanSafe, which originally reported the attack. Symantec confirmed the switch in its own post. The attack, which primarily uses stolen FTP logins to spread itself to new sites, continues to spread according to US-CERT, but ScanSafe says its growth appears to be slowing down.[2]

From there, the attack changes the files to inject scripts and distribute more malicious code out of gumblar.cn or from other, varying IP addresses. The code appears to target sites that show up in Google searches, according to the ScanSafe STAT Blog, and although Google began delisting compromised websites months ago, the code keeps changing, keeping Google on its toes. Now US-CERT points out that visitors to Gumblar-infected websites can easily become infected with malware if they have not applied updates to known PDF and Flash Player vulnerabilities.[3] Visitors to corrupted websites who haven't applied updates to various Web applications, including Flash Player and Adobe Reader, could become victims to a drive-by malware download. "This malware may be used by attackers to monitor network traffic and obtain sensitive information," the US-CERT said in its advisory. Short-lived Web malware: Fading fad or future trend? Attackers are increasingly spreading their malicious code through fly-by-night websites that seem legitimate to unsuspecting users, but are actually laden with malware.[4]

Security researchers are stepping up their warnings about the Gumblar malware exploit as it continues to hijack webpages and manipulate Google results. Gumblar recently got the attention of the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), which noted on its website that Gumblar is alive and well and continues to circulate by hijacking vulnerable Web applications, poor configuration settings, or simply by stealing FTP credentials. Experts who have been tracking Gumblar since March say that the malware directly manipulates files on Web servers after getting access to them.[3] Symantec and other security vendors have been successfully blocking malware that attempts to exploit known Web application vulnerabilities. Security researchers have also detected most of the China-based Gumblar domains and have gotten them shut down to protect websites from falling victim, but according to Symantec, those behind the attack have recently switched domains to Martuz, malicious domains based in the UK.[4]

Security researchers are warning that the malware known as Gumblar - which poisons Google search results with links to malicious sites and uses a back door to infect websites - is ramping up and spreading rapidly.[5] The victim joins a botnet that changes the search results of Google. The objective behind the launching of these attacks is to steal money from profitable advertising franchises. Due to the insertion of fake ads and links in certain searches, infected users get results which are different from what they should have been. Users are recommended that if they think that their websites have been compromised, they should first clean off their system from malware by changing the FTP account passwords. They should also install updated security software.[6]

With Gumblar, it has counted 10,000. "It's really just another day with drive-by downloads," he said. "There really are so many of these." Security experts say that if you're using a fully-patched system with up-to-date security software, you should be protected from these attacks. To date, they've worked by hitting the victim with malicious PDF or Flash files.[7] The attack, which has intensified in recent days, can be found on several thousand legitimate Web sites, according to security experts. It targets known flaws in Adobe's software and uses them to install a malicious program on victims' machines, CERT said.[7]

Security vendor ScanSafe has counted more than 3,000 infected Web sites, up from around 800 just over a week ago. That kind of continued growth is unusual, according to Mary Landesman, a senior security researcher with ScanSafe. Attackers have launched many widespread Web attacks over the past few years, but after a few months the total number of infected sites usually drops as Webmasters clean up their servers.[7] The Gumblar attack is continuing to hit websites with new variants detected in Japan. Mary Landesman, senior security researcher at ScanSafe, claimed she had received correspondence claiming that the research on Gumblar ''' sounded very much like the GENO reports that had also been circulating in Japan.[8] Harrison said statistics from the Norton Community Watch, a program that collects security and application data from Norton antivirus users, logged about 10,000 attacks from the malicious Gumblar domain. "From our perspective, there's been so many of these that it is really just another new one in a long line of ones," Harrison said. "Considering the number of attacks we saw and the number of different websites infected, this is somewhat small in comparison."[4]

Gumblar uses a multi-stage attack that exploits bugs in Adobe Flash and PDF to install malware, which steals FTP credentials and takes control of the infected computer.[5] I used to do that, then got infected by a virus of sorts. What it did was sniff the (non-encrypted) FTP packets to steal credentials, then log in and replace all the index files on the server with its malware infected version. That got me to of my websites to be infected and being blocked by Firefox/Google for being reported as attack sites.[1]

The attack first relies on compromising normally legitimate website and planting malicious scripts. U.S. CERT reports that stolen FTP credentials are reckoned to be the main technique in play during this stage of the attack but poor configuration settings and vulnerable web applications might also play a part.[9]



More victims are infected by encountering a compromised site. Web security firm ScanSafe said on its blog yesterday that the number of compromised websites has grown by 246 percent in just over a week, from when the firm began tracking the virus. [5] ScanSafe reported on Monday that Gumblar more than trebled (up 246 per cent) over the preceding week. It describes Gumblar as a botnet of compromised websites in a series of blog postings on the attack, which can be found here.[9]

According to security experts, there is separate exploit code for each website which makes the identification of compromised websites extremely difficult.[6] Security researchers are warning of the latest malware exploits that seize on website flaws in an attempt to inject malicious JavaScript code and ultimately spread malware to unsuspecting visitors.[4]

I got infected with this piece of shit (or some other very similar piece of shit) because malicious code on a website somehow forced Adobe Reader to open a PDF, although Foxit had been my default PDF reader for months (in conjunction with the PDF Download add-on, which was somehow circumvented as well).[1] The attack involves obfuscated JavaScript that is inserted into the website's source code to exploit the flaws in Adobe Flash and Reader programs of a visitor.[6]

To guard your own PC against the Gumblar attack code, see my earlier post about the exploits used in the assault.[2] The number of attacks has grown nearly 88% since the second week of May 2009, said the security company. Landesman also wrote in a blog post that the cyber criminals behind the Gumblar attack had learned the art of morphing its features quickly, as reported by eWeek.com on May 14, 2009. This feature and other characteristics of Gumblar attack are making it to spread more quickly than others.[6]

'''ScanSafe termed the compromises Gumblar because that was the name of the second stage malware domain used. Security folks in Japan termed the compromises GENO because one of the more high profile victims of the compromises in Japan apparently was a site named GENO. Unfortunately for our friends in Japan, it appears these Gumblar/GENO compromises are causing just as much headache there,''' said Landesman.[8] As much as 60% of all websites have a serious flaw that are used by attackers to spread malware or gain access to sensitive data, said Jeremiah Grossman, founder and chief technology officer at WhiteHat Security.[4]

Initially the malware was served up onto vulnerable Windows clients from the website gumblar.cn, which has been offline since Friday. A second domain - martuz.cn - has taken over this key role in the attack, ISC reports.[9]

Really? Now please explain to me, why it is more secure to open the PDF in the standalone Acrobat Reader running under the same uid as your browser (and thus under the same uid as the standalone Reader). It would be a security thing to use another PDF reader instead of Acrobat Reader, but this has nothing to do with the fact if it is runs as a plugin or not. You can both embed Acrobat Reader and other PDF readers into the browser window in Linux. Instead of using lame excuses to your step daugther, thus making her linux experience bad and therefore make her dislike linux, just fix the damn box to show the PDF inside the browser.[1] No, software such as indesign and photoshop. Alternative PDF readers are fine for casually looking at downloaded PDFs but I haven't found one yet with the features Acrobat pro has; the bloat you mention are feautures people in some industries actually use.[1]



As usual, the way to keep your PC (and websites) safe is to make sure all of your software is up to date, including browsers, plug-ins, and whatever else. This is especially important for those who use software that doesn't automatically update itselfaccording to researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) and Google Switzerland, those who use Firefox and Chrome are inherently more secure than those who use other browsers for that very reason. [3] Gumblar's goal is to manipulate Google's results in order to affect as many PCs as possible, which has some researchers describing it as "a botnet of compromised websites."[3]

Gumblar is named for the domain gumblar.cn involved in the attacks, which has a Moscow IP, researchers said.[5] ScanSafe has referred the attack as "Gumblar attacks" because it is associated with the domain name "gumbler.cn".[6]

If you run your own Web site, the company suggested using a free scanning service that can help identify whether your site has been hijacked by Gumblar or another drive-by-download attack.[2] Web security scanning firm ScanSafe, which was among the first to warn of the rise of the attack, notes that the reference to martuz.cn in more recent attacks has been obfuscated, possibly in an attempt to thwart rudimentary blacklists.[9]

According to ScanSafe, a new campaign of websites hijack is trying to implant Google focused software on vulnerable computers.[6] The exploit has also reached the attention of US-CERT, which encouraged users and administrators to apply software updates in a timely manner and use up-to-date anti-virus software to help mitigate the risks.[8] Not sure if it was a web exploit or ftp login theft. We looked at both early on as the footprint was confusing in that things were happening that shouldn't be possible without direct access to the server via ftp.[1] Then added in rewrite rules to stop libwww and other known agents from accessing any files via the web. It's odd that it took so long for this advisory to come out though. Maybe we should have reported it but we did not know it was new as both exploits were known at the time, just no connected with a specific initiative by a hacker/botnet.[1]

REFERENCES

1. Slashdot | Drive-By Download Poisons Google Search Results
2. Web Site Hijack Morphs, Continues to Grow - PC World
3. Google result-manipulating Gumblar exploit picking up steam - Ars Technica
4. US-CERT warns of Gumblar, Martuz drive-by exploits
5. Gumblar malware spreading rapidly | MX Logic
6. Gumblar Attack Diverting Online Users from Google Results to Malicious Pages - SPAMfighter
7. Web Attack That Poisons Google Results Gets Worse - Business Center - PC World
8. Gumblar 'botnet' continues to grow as new variants detected - SC Magazine UK
9. Gumblar Google-poisoning attack morphs ''' The Register

A Book Grab by Google

CONTENTS:

• The settlement makes Google a "digital bookstore," Mr. Kahle says, one with a stranglehold on digital access to books that libraries provide for free. (More...)

The settlement makes Google a "digital bookstore," Mr. Kahle says, one with a stranglehold on digital access to books that libraries provide for free. "Google will be privatizing our libraries," he writes. "Giving control over such access to one company, no matter how clever or popular, is a danger to principles we hold dear: free speech, open access to knowledge and universal education." His main concern which has been echoed by librarians and Internet legal experts in recent months is Google's control over "orphan books." Those are copyrighted works that are out of print and have no author claiming ownership, making it impossible for Google to ask their permission to digitize them. The worry is that, in the absence of any digital collection other than Google's, it will hold a monopoly of sorts on these books, since it would be licensed to scan and sell access to them. Google defends the project, with product manager Adam Smith blogging that its aim is to expand access to hard-to-find works, and that readers can go to the library for free access to all of the books. They can purchase rare works that aren't otherwise available at the local library or at online retailers like Amazon. [1]

REFERENCES

1. Internet Archive Founder Questions Google Books Settlement - Digits - WSJ

Google Releases Tweaked Version of Reader

CONTENTS:

• Instead of having to re-subscribe to every single news source in Google Reader, you can simply import all of the feeds with a few clicks. (More...)
• As part of our "social media for social good" efforts, we also feature one Twitter charity here every month. (More...)

Instead of having to re-subscribe to every single news source in Google Reader, you can simply import all of the feeds with a few clicks. Google also expanded its comment feature by releasing it to all non-English users and added the ability to share notes via Google Reader's mobile interface. They released a new video tutorial and start page for new Google Reader users. These small changes reflect two of the biggest trends in social media today: simplicity and social graph interaction. Comments and Friends Trends are both features that help you better connect with and understand friends, while iGoogle importing and the new user start page are attempts to lower the time and energy cost of starting with Google Reader. Hopefully all of these moves indicate that Google Reader isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. [1] The chart presents details about your friends in Google Reader how many articles they share per day, and how many of those you read on average. It looks like the Reader team is continuing its efforts to make the service more social (for example, it added comments a couple of months ago ), but in a particularly Google-y way, with numbers rather than improved interactions. I guess it's fun in a navel-gazing way to see whose articles you read, but is it useful? If there's someone who posts a ton of articles that you always ignore, you've probably figured that out already.[2]

Google Reader Google Reader reviews has been adding more and more social features recently, like the commenting on shared items options they added back in March. Today, they announced some updates that continue this push with several new social features.[1]

While Friends Trends may be a fun and possibly insightful tool, Google Google reviews 's new iGoogle importing feature takes the cake as the most useful. For anyone who has created a sophisticated iGoogle page with RSS and blog widgets, this is for you.[1]



As part of our "social media for social good" efforts, we also feature one Twitter charity here every month. [1]

REFERENCES

1. Google Reader Tells You Which Friends Are Worth Following
2. New version of Google Reader continues Google's data fetish » VentureBeat

??Nuevo! Google Adds Message Translation To Gmail

CONTENTS:

• As with any non-human inter-linguistic interpretations, the messages suffer in translation. (More...)
• Gmail users can now automatically translate messages they receive into 41 languages, Google announced Tuesday. (More...)
• Chin warned, however, that machine translation still contains flaws. (More...)
• The translation system itself, according to Google, consists of thousands of computers processing billions of words' worth of monolingual and bilingual text to "build statistical language and translation models." (More...)

As with any non-human inter-linguistic interpretations, the messages suffer in translation. Thanks to this new feature, you'll be able to get the gist of the Cyrillic text in your spam folder with just the click of a text link. As today's post on the Gmail Blog claims, "If all parties are using Gmail, you can have entire conversations in multiple languages with each participant reading the messages in whatever language is most comfortable for them. It's not quite the universal translators we're so fond of from science fiction, but thanks to Google Translate, it's an exciting step in the right direction." [1] The new feature is available to individual Gmail users, as well as to people who use it as part of the Apps collaboration and communication suite for organizations. The availability of automatic translation within Gmail is expected to simplify communications among people who speak different languages by letting them compose messages in their native tongue. In the Apps context, the feature should make it easier for organizations that do business in different countries to communicate internally with their employees and externally with partners and customers. Google acknowledges that its machine translation technology isn't perfect, but maintains that, even if mistakes creep into the text, recipients should be able, at the least, to get the gist of a message.[2]

Google's Translate service isn't just for translating text or websites anymore. It's starting to extend into other Google services like Gmail and Google Friend Connect comment translation. In Gmail, there's now a link on the top of the message that lets you translate it to whatever language the user has their Gmail set to. Both the subject and body are translated, while the original message is maintained. For those who ever wondered what those e-mail that are in a foreign language say, this tool can be very useful.[3]

"If your entire company uses Gmail, e-mail communications between people in your company can take place in the language that's most comfortable for them," Jeff Chin, product manager for Google Translate, wrote in a May 19 corporate blog post. "Each person can write messages in their native language and the recipients can translate the messages into their respective native languages."[4]

Recipients can also toggle between the original and translated versions of a message. Individual Gmail users and those in the Apps Standard Edition can turn on this feature by going to the "settings" menu and clicking on the "Labs" tab, which is where Google places early release, experimental features that the company warns "may change, break or disappear at any time." Those using Gmail within Apps Premier and Apps Education must have their domain administrators enable Gmail Labs in their control panel.[2] It took longer than originally thought, but today Google made its inline email translation service available to all Gmail and Google Apps customers.'' This is a really great feature and one that differentiated Google from competitors like Yahoo and Microsoft both in the consumer space and in the enterprise.''[5]

Today Google announced the integration of automatic translation technology directly into Gmail. This integration comes in the form of a lab, so it will have to be activated.[6] The automatic translation was made possible with the integration of the Google Translate program already used to translate web pages and blogs.[7] While I wouldn't say it is ever perfect, it usualy does more than enough to get the point across. As Google said in its blog, "It's not quite the universal translators we're so fond of from science fiction, but thanks to Google Translate, it's an exciting step in the right direction."[5]



Gmail users can now automatically translate messages they receive into 41 languages, Google announced Tuesday. [2] A new feature introduced today allows users to automatically translate emails into English and any other supported language.[1] Most of us probably don't regularly converse with folks via email with whom we don't share a common language (in fact, most of the foreign-language email in our inbox is unfortunately spam), but given the right circumstances, it's a great new feature.[8]

Google cited the advantage of the new feature to companies communicating with clients, employees or partners who speak different languages.[7]

In other Gmail news, Gmail for mobile is getting some new features. They announced the addition of colored labels. Regular Gmail users have enjoyed these for a while, but mobile has been a different story.[6]



Chin warned, however, that machine translation still contains flaws. "It can be quite useful in providing the quick gist of a message, especially if you receive a lot of e-mails that aren't in your native tongue," he wrote. [4] "If the translation is awkward or not quite right, you can quickly return to the original message by clicking 'View original message' link."[4]



The translation system itself, according to Google, consists of thousands of computers processing billions of words' worth of monolingual and bilingual text to "build statistical language and translation models." [4]

REFERENCES

1. Gmail Now Automatically Translates Messages As Well As Could Be Expected - ReadWriteWeb
2. Gmail Gains Automatic Translation - Business Center - PC World
3. Google Translate extends into other Google services
4. Google Offers Gmail Translation in 41 Languages
5. Gmail gains automatic email translation - Computerworld Blogs
6. Gmail Gets One-Click Translation Lab | WebProNews
7. New Gmail Feature Translates E-mails In Foreign Languages | AHN | May 20, 2009
8. Lifehacker - Gmail Labs Automatically Translates Your Email - Gmail Labs

Samsung i7500 Android smartphone gets FCC approval

CONTENTS:

• Here'''s some good news for you folks out there waiting for the latest news regarding the Samsung i7500 Android phone. (More...)
• Korean mobile phone maker Samsung announced a few weeks ago to the world its first mobile phone running under the Google Android operating system, the Samsung i7500, while also informing that the handset would come to the market on the airwaves of O2. (More...)
• If you want to see it live in action, you can check out the Samsung i7500 hands-on video we posted last week. (More...)

Here'''s some good news for you folks out there waiting for the latest news regarding the Samsung i7500 Android phone. It has just been approved by the FCC which means that its release will definitely be happening soon. From what we hear, T-Mobile will be launching this Samsung Android phone in the fall alongside another Android phone, the T-Mobile G1 v2 (currently rumored to be Motorola'''s first Android phone). [1] Good news for those who were waiting on the Samsung I7500 (who's that, exactly?): the FCC has approved the device, so you can expect to see it in retail in the coming months. The spicy ingredient in this phone is the 3.2" AMOLED screen that should be fantastic, if it's anything close to the OMNIA HD.[2]

The good news is that the AMOLED touchscreen smartphone has cleared the FCC, complete with support for T-Mobile's 1700MHz 3G network. While the FCC report contains no new information regarding the I7500 beyond what Samsung themselves told us at the handset’s launch, it's nonetheless good to see that a U.S. release is pretty much confirmed.''[3] According to the latest news on the Web, the said Samsung Houdini might be one and the same i7500 handset officially introduced to the market, as the phone has just passed through FCCs courtyard featuring support for GSM/EDGE 850/1900MHz frequencies, as well as for T-Mobiles 3G AWS 1700MHz bands. The device is confirmed by the carriers recent statements that it intends to release to the market multiple mobile phones running under Android, and that these devices will come from three of its partners.[4]

Looks like Samsung's i7500 Android OS based smartphone has passed the FCC test and is getting ready to be shipped in the States. Samsung has already announced this device back in April and no new features have surfaced.[5]

In case you don't know yet, Samsung i7500 comes with features like: a 3.2 inch AMOLED HVGA (480 x 320) touchscreen display, a 5MP camera, Wi-Fi, GPS, a 3.5mm headset jack and 8GB of internal memory.[6] What the Samsung i7500 is able to offer to mobile phone users includes a 3.2-inch full-Touch AMOLED display, a 5-megapixel photo snapper with auto focus and LED flash, an HSDPA and WiFi connectivity, a music player, a video player, USB 2.0, a Bluetooth 2.0 connectivity, 8 GB of internal memory coupled with a microSD memory card slot with support for up to 32GB, as well as with support for a wide range of Google services and applications.[4] To recap, the i7500 will be powered by Google's Android OS and will come equipped with a 3.2 inch (320x480 pixels) AMOLED touch widescreen, a 5.0 megapixel camera with autofocus, LED flash and video recording capabilities, 8GB of internal memory and a microSDHC card slot for up to 32GB of extra storage, Wi-Fi and a GPS receiver.[5]



Korean mobile phone maker Samsung announced a few weeks ago to the world its first mobile phone running under the Google Android operating system, the Samsung i7500, while also informing that the handset would come to the market on the airwaves of O2. In the meantime, we learn that T-Mobile also intends to release a Samsung Android phone, the Houdini, spotted on leaked shots of its roadmap. [4] Samsung's first Android powered touchscreen smartphone looks like it might hit North American shores soon.[7] Like the G1, the i7500 is T-Mobile only for now, and the specs haven't changed from the first announcement. Having passed this hurdle, the i7500 will likely start production soon, though who knows when it'll actually show up in stores--Boy Genius suspects it might be this coming November.[8]

An exact release date for the i7500 hasn't been announced, but now that it has been cleared by the FCC, expect it to be available in the United States relatively soon.[9] It's widely assumed that T-Mobile will be the carrier to offer it, due in part to passed through the FCC leaked roadmaps. It's not yet known whether the phone will be called the Capella or just go by the model number.''[10] T-Mobile, although falling behind AT&T; and Verizon Wireless in total subscribers, has experimented with Android-based smartphones with good success. Google hopes to see its OS make a transition from the phone market to netbooks and other devices, with manufacturers interested to see how it works on the netbook.[9]



If you want to see it live in action, you can check out the Samsung i7500 hands-on video we posted last week. [1]

REFERENCES

1. Samsung i7500 Android phone approved by FCC, bundled with T-Mobile 3G | PMP Today
2. Samsung I7500 - FCC Approves the Samsung I7500 Android Phone
3. Samsung I7500 clears FCC with T-Mobile USA 3G | Android Community
4. Samsung i7500 Passes Through FCC - Also goes to Switzerland - Softpedia
5. Samsung i7500 Android-based Smartphone Approved by FCC
6. Samsung i7500 approved by FCC, T-Mobile 3G included » Unwired View
7. Samsung i7500 Android smartphone gets FCC approval
8. Gizmodo - Samsung's First Android Phone Creeps Closer to Release - samsung i7500
9. Android-based Samsung phone gets FCC approval
10. Samsung i7500 Passes Through FCC on Way to T-Mobile | AndroidGuys
11. Samsung i7500 Cleared FCC Approval with T-Mobile Network Support - SlashPhone

Google's candid camera

CONTENTS:

• Street View has not been banned in Greece. (More...)
• The service, which already lets users take 360-degree virtual tours of huge swaths of the country, sparked controversy when it was launched in Britain in March. (More...)
• Purchase a GPS logger, carry it with you everywhere while you take pictures. (More...)
• The fisheye lens came with a small utility to create a panoramic view from two such fisheye lens pictures along with the necessary license. (More...)
• Google said it would make "locally appropriate modifications to ensure a better user experience". (More...)
• However there are various challenges: occlusion, moving objects (people, foliage,. ), changing illumination, different cameras, cameras with distortion. (More...)
• CW Live speaks withLin Nease, Director of Emerging Business for HP ProCurve, to discuss the future of networks, including the effect of IP-based storage on datacentres, new capacity requirements generated by the use of 10Gb Ethernet, and how an efficient network design can slash energy and cooling costs, and help enterprises build a "green" image. (More...)

Street View has not been banned in Greece. We have received a request for further information and we are happy to continue discussing these issues with them. We will discuss with them whether it is appropriate for us to continue driving in the meantime." Although that dialogue is ongoing, we believe that launching in Greece will offer enormous benefits to both Greek users and the people elsewhere who are interested in taking a virtual tour of some of its many tourist attractions." Last month Milton Keynes residents tried to prevent the driver of a Google Street Car taking pictures for its Street View service. [1] To assuage local privacy concerns, Google demonstrated Street View for the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, the Australian Privacy Foundation and various welfare groups for homeless people. The privacy commissioner, Karen Curtis, said she would continue to monitor Street View but those with concerns could first contact Google and then her office directly. Dan Svantesson, co-chairman of the privacy foundation's internet subcommittee and a law professor at Bond University, applauded Google for developing the blurring technology but said its effectiveness would only be apparent after Street View went live today. He said he was concerned that the link to the form for users to report privacy concerns with individual images wasn't visible enough. Even with the blurring technology, cars and people - particularly those in small towns or neighbourhoods - could still be identified from other features.[2] Google has developed technology to blur faces and number plates in the Street View photos, although it acknowledges the automated process is not foolproof. Privacy conscious users who notice any potentially invasive images on Street View can report them to Google using an online form. A U.S. couple is suing Google for invasion of privacy because photos of their home, located on a private road, appeared on Street View. In court documents filed in its defence, Google claimed that "even in today's desert, complete privacy does not exist".[2] At a technology industry lunch in May, Google evangelist and internet pioneer Vint Cerf said that "nothing you do ever goes away and nothing you do ever escapes notice. there isn't any privacy, get over it", the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported. The U.S. National Legal and Policy centre responded by releasing a dossier of information about an unnamed Google executive - later revealed to be co-founder Larry Page - including their address and route to work, using information compiled only from Street View images in 30 minutes.[2]

Since it was launched in 2007, Street View has expanded to more than 100 cities worldwide. It has drawn complaints from individuals and institutions that have been photographed, including the Pentagon, which barred Google last year from photographing U.S. military bases for Street View. A privacy watchdog in Greece banned Google from gathering images in the country for its Street View service until it provides more privacy guarantees than the current proposal to blur faces and vehicle licence plates.[3] "We think the new camera height allows us to get a high-quality image of the street while respecting the privacy of homeowners." Earlier this week, the BBC reported that Greece's data protection agency banned Google from expanding its Street View service in the country, pending "additional information" from the firm. n Greek authorities want to know how long the images will be kept on Google's database and what measures it will take to make people aware of privacy rights.[1]

Google-branded Holden Astra cars with roof-mounted cameras began traversing our streets about November last year, taking tens of millions of detailed panoramic street-level photos. Google Maps product manager Andrew Foster said more images would be added to Street View in the coming months as they are processed by Google.[2] Would it make sense to record it with an HD camera, then batch export frames as pictures? Is there any software in the open source community that I can use?" Ismenio includes links to some related pages: Popular Mechanics' look at the camera tech used for Street View, and a company that claims better panoramic image technology than Google's.[4]

TOKYO - Google says it will reshoot all photos in Japan for its Street View service after residents complained the 360-degree panoramic images provided a view over the fences around their homes.[3]

Google Street View allows web users across the world to "walk" along streets, exploring 360 degree images recorded from eye level.[5] Google takes privacy very seriously, and that's why we have put in place a number of features, including the blurring of faces and licence plates, to ensure that Street View will respect local norms when it launches in Greece," a statement read." We have already spoken with the Hellenic Data Protection Authority to ensure that they understand the importance we place on protecting user privacy."[1] "Perhaps in Google's world, privacy does not exist, but in the real world individual privacy is fundamentally important and is being chipped away bit by bit every day by companies like Google," NLPC chairman Ken Boehm said. Domain.com.au, owned by Fairfax Media, has already added Street View features to its real-estate listings.[2]

If you take enough pictures on the way to each location, it should be able to figure that out. Other than that, software projects like photosynth and google street view are massive undertakings and require a great deal of understanding of mathematics, geometry, pattern matching and some terrific coding skills.[4]

Google Street View is sending out tricycles fitted with cameras to map places that its cars cannot reach.[5] I doubt it would be worth the effort to create a google street-view clone for your own personal use, you'd either have to carry around a set of cameras the whole time or stay in your car (with the camera(s) mounted on the car). Personally I've built a small website that shows images I've uploaded from my iPhone using Google Maps, a pretty simple solution that doesn't require a lot of expensive equipment nor a very advanced software setup (on the server it's just apache+mod_python+mysql and a couple of small python scripts for creating thumbnails of the uploaded images.[4] The photos currently on the website were taken by cameras mounted on a pole attached to a car roof. Google Japan said on Wednesday it would lower the cameras after many residents said they were high enough to look over fences around their homes, company product manager Keiichi Kawai said in a statement. Others have previously complained that images on the service recorded vehicle licence plates and laundry hanging in backyards.[3] However the service has come in for much criticism after it was revealed a number of inappropriate images displaying police arrests and even a drunk man wearing antlers were available on the service. Google has had to promise to lower the cameras on its cars by 40cm.[1]



The service, which already lets users take 360-degree virtual tours of huge swaths of the country, sparked controversy when it was launched in Britain in March. Fears were raised that it could be used by burglars or terrorists to research targets, while many people complained because their faces were not obscured in images. Photographs of naked children, and people emerging from sex shops were among those which provoked privacy concerns. [5] For the later two, i use and highly recomend autopano pro (http://www.autopano.net/en/) and its virtual tour software that is integrated with the giga version. The stitch imports images and combines them together into one image. The tour provides a simple way to combine the images into a set of 360x180 views, with hot-points between them to navigate, all automaitcally put together into a swf for easy embedding. if you dont mind a few watermarks, you can use the trial version with very few restrictions. for an example of a high reosution virtual tour created by the stitching software, tyhough without the tour software, i have created a tour of cambridge at http://cambridge.lifeinmegapixels.com/. for other examples and examples of the touring software, check the gallery subforum in the autopano pro forums.[4]

Forgive the self-promotion, but CleVR sounds like the sort of thing that would help. It has a free photo stitcher and easy hosting of the virtual tour. It supports hotspots, so you can click to move between locations.[4]



Purchase a GPS logger, carry it with you everywhere while you take pictures. Or even better, buy/rent a camera with GPS built in. I've seen demos where it can synthesize multiple photos based on GPS data, and present them in a mapping mode where you can 'walk down the street' using your photos, and other people's photos from the area. Not sure what capabilities have been released in this regard, yet, to the general public. [4] Street View, accessed from http://maps.google.com.au/help/maps/streetview/, lets people explore the country at ground level for the first time with little more than a computer and an internet connection.[2] Many of the original photographs that were part of the U.S. Street View launch were taken down following privacy concerns. They include a woman in a G-string, a man striding into an adult bookshop and a man relieving himself on a pavement.[2]



The fisheye lens came with a small utility to create a panoramic view from two such fisheye lens pictures along with the necessary license. [4] The idea of using geo-tagged photos to create a 3D view of the world is really cool.[4] A summer camp I worked at was using software called gigapan. Basically a tripod with a servo on it and some custom software to take a shit load of ~4MP pictures and stitch them together to create an extremely high resolution panorama.[4]

If you feel so strongly abotu sharing your vacation with people you know, then take some of them with you. Then, gasp, instead of spending huge piles of money so that you can occupy your vacation fucking with technology that nobody wants to use anyway (Hey, Martha! Look! George sent more pictures of the LOVELY GREAT FUCKING TIME HE'S HAVING over there! Start the fire!), you'll be able to take a few folks who might actually be interested in this stuff along with you.[4] Last time I checked, QTVR required the use of a rather expensive panoramic head to work well. This is no longer the case, which makes it a pretty viable option, I think.[4] I don't know if it would be able to handle long, multiple streets, but if you take enough overlapping photos, it might work well for you.[4]



Google said it would make "locally appropriate modifications to ensure a better user experience". "We have lowered the height of the camera due to the unique characteristics of many Japanese roads; they tend to be narrow, without pavements and driveways, and houses are built close to the street," the statement said. [1] Kawai said Google's decision to lower the cameras is designed to address concerns in Japan, where many neighborhoods are crowded and privacy is tightly guarded.[3] Google's camera cars have been spotted in dozens of provincial towns in recent months. Residents of the affluent village of Broughton in Buckinghamshire formed a human chain to prevent one of the vehicles filming their homes without permission.[5]



However there are various challenges: occlusion, moving objects (people, foliage,. ), changing illumination, different cameras, cameras with distortion. The software needs to be robust and discard those "outliers". [4] Sorry about replying to myself. For the GPS transmission, I had found a tornado hunter group who had a nice little piece of software that they used to track themselves. It uploaded a very small flat file to an FTP server (or HTTP post, if I remember right), containing my current GPS information.[4]



CW Live speaks withLin Nease, Director of Emerging Business for HP ProCurve, to discuss the future of networks, including the effect of IP-based storage on datacentres, new capacity requirements generated by the use of 10Gb Ethernet, and how an efficient network design can slash energy and cooling costs, and help enterprises build a "green" image. [1] Parturient nasc bene oftis durum quint cum sociis natoque is bo penatibus et magnis dis elipsis geomem tur.[2] The search giant's controversial mapping service is being extended to include coverage beyond the nation's streets in locations such as sports stadiums, monuments and remote beauty spots. The technology would allow tourists to view Britain's national treasures such as castles and heritage sites from their homes at the click of a mouse.[5] Ismenio writes "Does anyone have any ideas for a do-it-yourself Google-Street-View-like project on the cheap? I am planning to visit a few places outside the U.S. that are important to me, and would like to be able to set up a site for friends and family to visit and give them the Street View-like experience so that they could navigate, pan and zoom in the areas I have.[4]

REFERENCES

1. Japan forces Google climbdown on Street View - google, google street view, internet privacy, privacy - Computerworld
2. Google's candid camera
3. Google to reshoot street views of Japanese cities
4. Slashdot | DIY Google Street View Project?
5. Google Street View using tricycles to map inaccessible locations - Telegraph

Google takes aim at Microsoft with new web browser

CONTENTS:

• Although Google is using a cartoonish approach to promote Chrome, the new browser underscores the gravity of Google's rivalry with Microsoft, whose Internet Explorer is used by about 75 per cent of web surfers. (More...)
• Bolstered by an advertising partnership with Google's search engine, Firefox ranks as the second most popular browser, with a market share of more than 10 per cent. (More...)
• The closest Firefox, which has been growing steadily and taking market share from IE, came to the top was version 3.5b4 beta. (More...)

Although Google is using a cartoonish approach to promote Chrome, the new browser underscores the gravity of Google's rivalry with Microsoft, whose Internet Explorer is used by about 75 per cent of web surfers. Google's lead in the lucrative internet search market is nearly as commanding, with its engine processing nearly two-thirds of the web's queries. For the past few years, Google has been trying to take advantage of its search engine's popularity to loosen Microsoft's grip on how most people interact with personal computers. The assault so far has been focused on a bundle of computer programs, including word processing and spreadsheet applications, that Google offers as an alternative to one of Microsoft's biggest money makers, its Office suite of products. Google has tried to make its alternatives more appealing and accessible by hosting them for free over internet connections instead of requiring users to pay a licensing fee to install them on individual computers, as Microsoft typically does. Microsoft has tried to thwart Google by investing billions in the development of its own search engine and making an unsuccessful attempt to buy Yahoo for $US47.5 billion ($A56.8 billion). [1] Google has released its own web browser in a long-anticipated move aimed at countering the dominance of Microsoft's Internet Explorer and ensuring easy access to its market-leading search engine. The California-based company took the unusual step of announcing its latest product on the Labor Day holiday after it prematurely sent out a comic book drawn up to herald the new browser's arrival.[1]

Even as it has backed Firefox, Google has openly fretted about the possible ramifications of Microsoft's huge lead in web browsing. Google is worried that Microsoft could abuse its power by manipulating Internet Explorer's default settings in a way that might diminish traffic to Google's search engine, which serves as the hub of the largest online ad network.[1]

The free browser, called Chrome, is available from today for downloading in more than 100 countries for computers running on Microsoft's Windows operating system. Google said it's still working on versions compatible with Apple's Mac computer and the Linux operating system. Google's browser hits the market a week after Microsoft's unveiling of a test version of its latest browser update, Internet Explorer 8. The tweaks include more tools for web surfers to cloak their online preferences, creating a shield that could make it more difficult for Google and other marketing networks to figure out which ads are most likely to appeal to which individuals.[1] Chrome is also quite a secure browser. It is not an integrated part of the OS, and features none of the ActiveX controls that have plagued IE. This could be said for any of the other browsers out there like Opera, and Firefox to name two, but Chrome updates itself every few days, ensuring users have the latest version. All these things of course, Microsoft would love to do given the chance, so you can see why they are campaigning so heavily against the European ruling. Chrome isn't there quite yet for Mac and Linux users, but it's getting closer, and having it's browser bundled with Windows will certainly have a positive effect. I think competition with IE is certainly a good thing, and I recommend we watch with interest the developments in this area.[2]

A company video released in March claimed IE8 was three times as fast as Firefox when it came to loading web pages and one third quicker than Chrome. Microsoft's competitors have been slowly cranking the performance of Javascript in their browsers.[3] Firefox employs TraceMonkey, which uses tracing optimization and Adobe Systems' nanojit to boost SpiderMonkey. Microsoft has taken a different route on Javascript, arguing this is responsible for just 20 per cent of a web page's load time.[3]



Bolstered by an advertising partnership with Google's search engine, Firefox ranks as the second most popular browser, with a market share of more than 10 per cent. Google recently extended its advertising alliance with Firefox through 2001. [1] For a start Google Chrome has Google. It may seem obvious, but the power of the search engine, and the browser together adds up to quite a bit of potential control over what comes your way. Add to that mix the marketing that Google can muster to push it's browser, potentially through TV adverts, and you have an IE worrier.[2]

Add-ons, plug-ins, extensions or extras. No matter what you call them, they'''ve become as much a part of the modern Web browser as tabs. Now Google'''s own browser is set to add them to the menu. The latest '''preview release''' of Chrome 2.0 ''' a developer build stamped 2.0.180.0 and released earlier this week ''' introduces the framework necessary to support third-party extensions. Google is encouraging developers to begin tinkering with the code and building their own add-ins with the aim of having as many extensions as possible ready for when Chrome 2.0 makes its official debut: or, in Google parlance, migrates from the developer preview track to the beta track and is finally folded into the stable build.[4] In a recent blog post, Google touted Chrome as a more sophisticated web browser better suited for displaying the dynamic and interactive content blossoming on the web as people migrate from television, radio and newspapers.[1]

Extensions are presently displayed in Chrome'''s toolbar strip at the foot of the browser window, using an HTML-based UI element which Google calls a Toolstrip. A few sample extensions are already available, among them an add-in to display how many emails are in your Gmail inbox and the means to subscribe to a page'''s RSS feed in Google Reader.[4]

Microsoft brushed aside the threat posed by Google in a statement from Dean Hachamovitch, Internet Explorer's general manager. "The browser landscape is highly competitive, but people will choose Internet Explorer 8 for the way it puts the services they want right at their fingertips. and, more than any other browsing technology, puts them in control of their personal data online," Hachamovitch said.[1] Internet Explorer 8 is ninth in a list of 10 browsers that have been tested for speed, with the previous version of Microsoft's browser - IE 7 - coming last. This list arrives from 3D-graphics specialist Futuremark.[3] Microsoft's focus on selected improvements in Internet Explorer's handling of Javascript has cost its latest browser in the race against competitors.[3]

Microsoft has explained the changes in terms of making the user more productive. Futuremark results are based on 400,000 users of its new Peacekeeper service designed to measure a browser's JavaScript performance.[3]



The closest Firefox, which has been growing steadily and taking market share from IE, came to the top was version 3.5b4 beta. The figures follow Microsoft's own attempts to sell the recently released IE 8 on the basis of its speed. [3] I think we will see a linux version soon - using WINE like picassa and google earth for linux.[4] Windows is still the dominant platform and google sponsors the mozilla foundation to the tune of 50 million p.a. Why continue to do that if you have a comparable browser? (I know, its not yet. ) Focusing on the windows platform first makes far more sense than worrying about fringe platforms. at least to start with.[4] I would say, using Chrome even if you are comfortable with other browsers would only give you a back up plan if that browser has run into some problems for some reason.[5] If you want two sites simultaneously, you could also choose the Chrome Split Browser plugin and view two sites at a single time. Chrome can be amazingly versatile, these tips reveal.[5] If you do not use a number of tabs and are a going to surf just one site at a time, you could alter the tab settings that Chrome comes with. You could click on the'single process' instead of the 'process per tab' or 'process per site'.[5]

Google Chrome provides nerds and site admins with useful stats that could help one optimize the browsing experience or feel all geeky and nerdish.[5]

REFERENCES

1. Google takes aim at Microsoft with new web browser
2. Chrome gives Microsoft the hebejebies. | Gaj-It.com - UK Gadget and Tech News, Reviews and Shopping
3. Microsoft's JavaScript strategy hurting IE 8? ''' The Register
4. Google's Chrome 2.0 browser to support plug-in extensions
5. Google Chrome Tips for Better Use | Walyou

Google outage lesson: Don't get stuck in a cloud

CONTENTS:

• The Web performance research firm Gomez told Business Week that the Google outage also slowed response times for Web sites in 238 of the 560 global regions Gomez covers -- a result of the disrupted Google Analytics service and the millions of Web pages that use Google Analytics to track content. (More...)
• The company was being notoriously coy about how many users were affected and for how long the service was affected. (More...)
• During yesterday's routing instability, Google's prefixes shifted to different relationships. (More...)

The Web performance research firm Gomez told Business Week that the Google outage also slowed response times for Web sites in 238 of the 560 global regions Gomez covers -- a result of the disrupted Google Analytics service and the millions of Web pages that use Google Analytics to track content. In a statement on Gomez's website, CTO Imad Mouline outlined the implications of what he described as a "ripple effect." "The impact of Google's problems demonstrates the complexity of today's Web sites and their susceptibility to performance issues when third-party content or service providers experience problems," Mouline said. [1] To be fair, Google isn't the only issue. Fact is, Web sites routinely call on a half-dozen or more outside services, from ad networks to analytics programs, to serve up content to their visitors. This Lego approach isn't going to change, because one site simply can't develop and run all the services it needs in an increasingly interconnected online business world. The impact of Google alone today on so many sites no doubt will leave many of them wondering if they want to depend on one company for so much.[2]

The fact that the Internet users worldwide and other Web sites depend quite heavily on Google is more than evident from the fact that Thursday's service disruption at the company resulted in 5 percent fall in Internet traffic, as per the statistics provided by Craig Labovitz of Arbor Networks.[3] According to Google, which took personal responsibility for the outage in a blog post, the problems started about 7:48 a.m. E.T. on Thursday, and ended up disrupting service for more than 14 percent of Google users worldwide. Google blamed the problem on a "traffic jam" that occurred when it erroneously routed some of its Web traffic to Asia. "We've been working hard to make our services ultra-fast and 'always on,' so it's especially embarrassing when a glitch like this one happens," wrote Urs Hoelzle, senior vice president of operations for Google, in the blog post. That Google being disrupted for a few hours managed to cause such a stir is one more indication of the Internet market share it commands.[1]

All the various components and services on the Internet tend to blend into one another and the average user doesn't really differentiate between a hosting provider, a content provider, online storage provider, online services provider, or some other form of online presence. It's all just a website or something that a local application talks to in the background. This blending of the local and the remote and a seamless, continuous availability of the network has helped with the development and uptake of "Web 2.0" services and is a key component of the current line of thought in providing cloud services. Google's outage last week should serve as a warning to advocates of these services and ideas not to make assumptions about the availability and reliability of something that is outside of their direct influence.[4] In the hour it took for the problem to be rectified, around 14% of Google's users were left with severely degraded services, or none at all. When Google or another major site seems to disappear from the Internet, the first thing that many network administrators do is to check an alternate route to see if there is a problem somewhere in their primary network route. This is generally done by running the connection through another Tier-1 service provider, and when it is done fluidly, it is a transparent situation that leaves the end user oblivious to the fact that somewhere in the network something has broken. When Google can't be reached from a multi-homed network request (one that passes through different service providers) it raises the concern that there may be a broader Internet problem (which can be determined by checking other high availability sites, and which was quickly dismissed in this case) or a problem with Google.[4]

Their monitoring equipment sits in nearly all Tier 1 internet providers and if you want data on what the internet looks like and what the top threats are, they've got it through their Atlas service. The graph above from the company's Atlas system shows average traffic from ten top North American ISPs sending data to Google'''s network. (Note this graph only shows traffic to to Google's portion of the internet, not internet traffic generally.)[5] While Arbor Networks' report ledes that "if you happen to be Google and your content constitutes up to 5% of all Internet traffic", it also states that "most large transit providers appear to have been impacted (e.g., Level3, AT&T;, etc.)" while "(o)ther providers (e.g. large consumer DSL / Cable) showed no drop in traffic from/to Google."[5]

Google directly advertises or provides service to approximately 190 different prefixes, so the Internet learns how to reach Google based on the relationships Google has. When trying to reach Google, then, any inbound traffic to them needs to pass across other providers with whom Google has a BGP routing relationship.[6] Google has admitted that the curious outage in a number of their services early Thursday morning was caused by an upgrade error on their part. According to several reports Google had been attempting to make changes to Internet routing numbers as part of its conversion from an older networking standard to a newer one. While undergoing this process Google experienced a hardware failure which in turn prevented Internet service providers from locating Google'''s new routing numbers, thus the shutdown.[7]

''Internet users worldwide were left stranded when Google experienced technical problems overnight. The technical glitch brought down Google's homepage and virtually halted services such as its search site, email, YouTube and Google News performing sluggishly or unavailable to some users.[8] In 238 of 560 global regions Gomez tracks Web performance for, response times more than doubled, some many more than thatsuch as Target, whose Web site took 81 seconds to load at one point. This collateral damage only goes to show how intrinsic Google services, not just obvious ones like search and email, have become to so many Web sites.[2]

Google's other services generate a lot of hits as well. Something that Labovitz points out is that Google has its hand in a lot more.'' Its Web analytics runs on millions more.'' All of these sites were also affected by the outage. These third party sites were also slowed down by Google's outage because code embedded in their webpages needed to contact Google's server.''[9] Thursday's Google outage started like most other service failures ]] most other service failures : People realized things weren't working. They realized the problem was limited to Google-based services. They realized they weren't the only ones experiencing the issues. (Officially, Google says 14 percent of its global userbase was affected.[10] To the casual observer, such outages might suggest that cloud computing, despite the hype, is not quite ready, so to speak, for business prime time. "We're still in the early days of exactly how cloud computing is being defined and delivered, and also what companies are expecting out of these services," Charles King, an analyst with Pund-IT Research, told eWEEK in an interview after Microsoft Azure experienced its temporary shutdown. If a company wanted to increase the reliability of its private cloud-based services to the much-vaunted "five nines" (99.999) level, and thus lower its potential downtime to near zero, then King suggested the company would have to pay for it'and potentially pass those costs along to its customers. Within that context, particularly in the midst of a global recession, most companies may opt to extend 99.99 percent availability, and trust that their customers will live with the slightly increased risk of downtime. Whether small and midsize businesses utilize private clouds or build their businesses on public cloud-based services such as Google Apps, their tolerance for downtime is almost certainly higher than that of the enterprise, which generally demands virtually zero unexpected shutdowns.[11] Surely a company that is responsible for so much of the overall traffic of the Internet should be available all the time? An error in network configuration during some maintenance resulted in some Google traffic being sent on a round trip across the Pacific when a local network segment was also available for transmission. This resulted in an overload on the Asia end of the connections and a self-Denial of Service for Google.[4]

Micro-blogging service Twitter lit up throughout the morning with comments and complaints about the outage at the company that controls more than 60 percent of the U.S. online search market alone. The Mountain View, California-based search giant did not provide any more details about the partial outage, but on their "offical" blog, Google staff used the analogy of "planes piling up over Asia" to explain the meltdown.[8] Google has a lot of traffic? Thanks for the insight. At least he was able to keep "Google" in it for the search engines and go for lamest-google-namedrop-blog-of-the-year. Was it really necessary to write so many words on this? Maybe the article should have been titled, "Graph accurately portrays Google's service outage."[5]

The data in the graph does not impress me in the slightest, other than the fact that Google had an outage. They have a drop from 15Gbps to 1Gbps, but until you see figures for the rest of the network to compare against, the idea that you can infer that Google has a monopoly, or that they are central to the INTERNET is in no way indicated. As for the figure of 35Gbps peak bandwidth for Google, consider how many machines they have to scan in a day, along with people going to do searches.[5] The outage lasted about two hours starting about 10:15 am Eastern time. If I were a regulator, this graph would be piece one in evidence that Google holds a monopoly on the world's information. Update: Actually, the fact that Google's slip-up causes such a stir in the media, on mailing lists and on Twitter, says much more about Google's centrality to the internet than this graph does, even though its a really cool graph. That drop on the right side of the graph from 15 Gbps to 1 is just astounding.[5] The outage lasted for just over an hour and became a hot topic on the Web as many suspected the search giant had been hacked. Google has not been specific regarding what caused the outage but did say they would detail the source of the problem at a later time.[7]

Because the risk is to leave without vital (or not so vital) informations million of user. Google is at it's 3rd or so, outage. That means no informations, documents and applications for many more people than ever. This make me think if we didn't run to much faster than technology and prudence counselled. That is the point. It's not only Google apps, it's the entire paradigm of web apps and informations that is now central for everyone, that needs to be supported by infrastructure.[5] In addition to the public cloud sphere, private cloud computing has found itself confronted with similar breakdowns. In March, the early test release of Microsoft Azure, an enterprise-capable cloud platform designed to eventually compete against Google Apps, underwent a 22-hour outage that left users unable to access its applications.[11]

Yesterday's headache shows that Google is not immune to major problems and glitches that can cost you time and effort. That fact alone should inspire all you Gmail and Google Docs users out there to think about clearing your hard drive of old movies and Heroes episodes, and pulling copies of your more essential data out of the clouds and back onto solid ground.[12] Gmail, YouTube, Google News, even the google.com home page were inaccessible to scores of people. Despite the initial frustrations -- Twitter users dubbed the event #googlefail and rightly ranted for some time about the disruption -- there doesn't appear to be the same lasting hostility and call-to-arms that often follows such incidents.[10]

I'd like to know what the irregularity at approx 6pm to 6:30pm is about. This was a change on their network that affected their function on the internet. I guess with this incident and other(s) in the past(considering all websites to be malware), people are questioning Google's reliability. there are other competiting search engines out there, but Google reins supreme.[5] Compare it to Amazon's now-infamous gay book glitch from last month. That little mishap directly affected far fewer people than the Google outage, yet the outrage was enormous and anything but fast-fading.[10] Google has responded to the outages that affected several of its services in various locations throughout the world.[13] While it is not completely accurate to say that Google suffered an outage, the fact remains that a technical issue resulted in slow or interrupted access to a number of Google services yesterday.[14]

A move to full online service, be it from a cloud or other more traditional provider, should be made with the awareness of the risk of loss of access during a network or service outage, something that happens more often than people will probably be willing to admit.[4] For one, the temporary disruption crystallized many peoples' fear--subconsciously or consciously--that we rely too heavily on cloud services. You see, while few would dispute that such services are incredibly convenient, there is no guarantee that a particular organization will not just close down without warning.[14]



The company was being notoriously coy about how many users were affected and for how long the service was affected. It claimed "about 14 per cent of our users experienced slow services", but a graph of worldwide internet use posted by Wired magazine pointed to a much different story. [8] Over the course of yesterday's instability, virtually all of our peers, at one time or another, chose to reach many of Google prefixes through NTT (ASN 2914), what had been a far less important relationship. Note that the bar chart above is showing the total percentage of Google's approximately 190 prefixes and the total percentage of peers (different vantage points on the Internet) choosing to reach Google through NTT. At no single time did the entire Internet choose to reach Google through NTT, but over the course of the event, almost everybody tried to reach Google on this path.[6] Apparently the site didn't actually go down, traffic packets were only delayed due to the redirection to Asia. You cannot single out Google just because they developed the best product for web searching. Nor can you say they have a monopoly because of one huge factorwe have a CHOICE of where we visit on the Internet.[5] Google said in a blog post the outage came down to a simple traffic jam at an Asian data center.[12] Google says it messed up and routed traffic through an Asian network that couldn't handle the flood.[5] The so-called #googlefail was a result of misdirected traffic, Google says: Because of a system mistake, too many users were being routed through the same location.[15] Regardless of the exact percentages though, it is Google that we talking about here--hence the number of affected users will certainly be astronomical.[14]

In an effort to express networking arcana in common parlance, Hoelzle described Google's service snafu in terms of air travel, the universal touchstone for misery and despair. "Imagine if you were trying to fly from New York to San Francisco, but your plane was routed through an airport in Asia," he said.[16] Google is one of the sites that many people test against to confirm network availability.[4] Google's sites, in case you were hiding in a cave yesterday, were unreachable around the world for a good hour and a half.[10]

In instances when Google was slow or unavailable, the result was the webpage loaded slower, if at all. Using this data, it was estimated that 5% of the Internet was unavailable or slow.''[9] Now, I don't want to give the impression that I'm on a Google soapbox here -- typically, trying to get answers from that place is tougher than resisting regurgitation at the sight of Paris Hilton's face. Google is not known for its transparency or accessibility to anyone (ever tried to get someone from the company on the phone?). That's why I'm hoping it, and other major players we rely on for our online needs, will learn a lesson from what happened this week.[10]

Let's take the popular idea of storing one's data using an online storage service as an example. One such service--Digital Railroad abruptly shut its door just last year, leaving users high and dry. One user who was hit particularly hard was Canadian photographer Ryan Pyle, who suddenly had 7,000 fewer edited and retouched images that he stored at Digital Railroad.[14] If you're seeing this page via a web browser, it means you've setup Tomcat successfully. As you may have guessed by now, this is the default Tomcat home page. If you're seeing this page, and you don't think you should be, then you're either a user who has arrived at new installation of Tomcat, or you're an administrator who hasn't got his/her setup quite right. Providing the latter is the case, please refer to the Tomcat Documentation for more detailed setup and administration information than is found in the INSTALL file.[17] In my opinion, what is experiencing serious outage problems is a model: the model of web based and shared applications and informations.[5]

Apparently the outages were caused by a system error, which necessitated re-routing traffic through Asia.[13]



During yesterday's routing instability, Google's prefixes shifted to different relationships. When automatic, this sort of change is a key feature of redundancy. Sometimes such changes are motivated from a business change. [6] Google has not yet gone through that process, even with a CEO coming out of Sun'it requires a fairly large infusion of people who get the enterprise."[11] CW Live speaks withLin Nease, Director of Emerging Business for HP ProCurve, to discuss the future of networks, including the effect of IP-based storage on datacentres, new capacity requirements generated by the use of 10Gb Ethernet, and how an efficient network design can slash energy and cooling costs, and help enterprises build a "green" image.[12]

REFERENCES

1. When Google Goes Down, So Does 5 Percent Of The Internet? - The Channel Wire - IT Channel News And Views by CRN and VARBusiness
2. Google's Outage Affected More than Google Users; Other Sites Hit Too - BusinessWeek
3. Google service disruption Thursday caused 5% fall in Internet traffic | TopNews United States
4. Snnet Beskerming - Not Every Cloud Has A Silver Lining
5. When Google Goes Down, It Falls Hard | Epicenter | Wired.com
6. Reaching Google via Asia?
7. News and Press release service TransWorldNews
8. Failed Google gridlocks worldwide web traffic | Newspost Online
9. Did Googles outage kill 5% of the Internet? - Computerworld Blogs
10. Why Google's outage wasn't a complete failure - google - PC World
11. Google Outage Shows the Cloud May Not Be Enterprise-Ready
12. Google outage lesson: Don't get stuck in a cloud - Cloud computing, google - Computerworld
13. Google Responds to Thursday Morning Outages - Search Marketing News Blog - Search Engine Watch (SEW)
14. Google outage makes some rethink cloud services - FierceCIO:TechWatch
15. Google explains last Thursday's outage : Ghana Business News
16. Google Outage Caused 5% Internet Traffic Decline -- Google Network Outage -- InformationWeek
17. Apache Tomcat