TechCrunch

Popular technology blog Techcrunch has been hacked and is currently down with all but a message noting that the site has indeed been compromised.

The blog has experienced frequent downtime of late but as have other blogs who host on Rackspace including, Mashable and The Inquisitr – we fortunately aren’t (we’re with Slicehost, owned by Rackspace interestingly enough).

This case appears different however with other blogs remaining live and Techcrunch admitting they had been targeted with a message that reads:

Earlier tonight techcrunch.com was compromised by a security exploit.
We’re working to identify the exploit and will bring the site back online shortly.

Earlier, presumably when the initial hack took place, text with a link to a rapid share download site was posted:

Oddly enough, sister blog CrunchGear is running smoothly, which indicates that TechCrunch in particular rather than its network was targeted.

The irony here of course, as it would be for us, is TechCrunch is a reliable source for information on site downtime.

More info over at Inquisitr and and Technologizer.

Update:

TechCrunch is now back up, interestingly all comments gone. Stay tuned for more info as to what happened.

Update 2:

A statement now on the blog reads:
“As some people noticed, at approximately 10:30 pm PST on Monday evening the main site in the TechCrunch Network – techcrunch.com – was hacked and redirected. The site was back up briefly at 11:30 pm but shortly went down again. As of 2:00 am, the site is back up and appears to be stable.

At this point we’re still gathering information on how the site was compromised, and will update this post with additional information.”

Source: thenextweb

Bill Gates

With little fanfare, Bill Gates joined the ranks of celebrities on Twitter this week. But if 140-character tweets aren’t enough for you, the software-mogul-turned-philanthropist Wednesday started sharing his more complete thoughts on a Web site dubbed “The Gates Notes.”

Mr. Gates’s site, www.thegatesnotes.com, will be a repository for his thoughts on a range of topics from education to energy. He will list books he’s reading and post emails and excerpts from presentations. Areas of the site are broken into categories including “My Travels” and “What I’m Learning.”

The site follows the Microsoft Corp. chairman’s first use of Twitter’s messaging service on Tuesday. His Twitter page bore the blue check-mark icon used to verify the identifies of famous people who use the service.

The Twitter updates and new Web site are part of an effort to increase communication about a broader range of topics that Mr. Gates has focused on since leaving full-time work at Microsoft in 2008.

His first tweet, “Hello World. Hard at work on my foundation letter – publishing on 1/25,” was enough to start pulling in followers, who by Wednesday afternoon numbered more than 230,000. The message referred to an annual letter coming Monday detailing his thoughts on his philanthropy, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Mr. Gates wasn’t just sharing his thoughts, he was also using the service to follow about 40 Twitter users ranging from Queen Rania Al-Abdullah of Jordan to actor Ashton Kutcher. “I’d like to welcome @billgates to the twitterverse,” wrote Mr. Kutcher, who has more than four million Twitter followers.

Since leaving the software company he co-founded Mr. Gates has experimented with other non-Microsoft Web tools, including Facebook, which he stopped using after too many people wanted to connect to him on the social-networking site.

Wednesday Mr. Gates used Twitter to announce the Gates Notes site, tweeting that he’s “excited to share more about what I’m learning.”

The first installments include his thoughts on education reform, Haiti and geo-engineering, among other topics. He also gave a thumbs up to the book “Sustainable Energy” by David MacKay and highlighted the work of Vaclav Smil, a professor at the University of Manitoba and author of books on energy, food and population.

Throughout the site, Mr. Gates’s opinions show his overarching belief that more technological innovation, some of it government-led, can cure many of the world’s ills.

Among them is that he believes in “strong government encouragement” to spur innovation in carbon dioxide reduction. He said the world should push for reducing carbon dioxide emissions 80% by 2050.



Google Calendar

Google Calendar is testing out a new feature that should make scheduling events a tad easier than it used to be by allowing you to see at a glance if the event you’re creating will conflict with the schedules of the people you’re inviting. Dubbed “Sneak Preview”, the feature’s name is perhaps more exciting than its actual function, but it should prove to be quite useful. The feature is apparently in a limited rollout right now, so don’t be surprised if you don’t have access to it.

Once you’ve activated Sneak Preview (assuming you have access to it), whenever you create a new event you’ll see a new viewing mode that displays a calendar alongside your event details. This calendar will show the schedules of each of the people you’ve invited to the event (provided you’re a friend or coworker with access to that information), and the proposed time for your event will appear as a semi-transparent blue box so you can quickly see where you might have conflicts. You can click each guest’s name to show/hide them on the calendar if some are more important than others.

Source: TechCrunch

Google Adsense Check

Today, at the Content Revenue Strategies conference in New York City, we announced that a small group of publishers will begin testing a new AdSense interface in limited beta.  Inspired by the feedback we’ve heard directly from you, the new interface includes features designed around your top three requests:

Provide insights to help you make more informed decisions about your sites.

The new AdSense interface includes more detailed performance reports and enables you to view daily stats in graphical formats. It also will provide you with additional metrics such as the amount you’ve earned from various ad, targeting and bid types. Here’s a glimpse at what the new reports currently look like in our beta:

A new AdSense interface: now in beta

Offer you more control over the ads that appear on your sites.

We’re also continuing to make improvements to the Ad Review Center. Upcoming enhancements will give you more options to manage the ads that appear on your site, as well as a cleaner interface that makes it easier to find and review them within the Ad Review Center.

Help you manage your account more efficiently.

We’ve streamlined the AdSense interface to simplify common tasks, such as making a change to several ad units simultaneously. Additionally, to help you get the most out of AdSense, we’ve added more relevant help on every page, a message inbox for tips from our team, and alerts with important account related notices.

In order to collect feedback on these enhancements from publishers in multiple countries, we’re rolling out the beta test of the new interface today in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Japanese.  Although we aren’t able to extend invitations to additional publishers yet, we’re planning to roll this test out to thousands of publishers over the coming weeks. We’ll be sending email notifications to the beta test participants to let them know.

Thanks again for all of your feedback so far, and we’ll be sure to let you know when we’re able to offer the new interface more widely.

Source: Google AdSense Blog

Facebook slims down

Facebook is testing out a pared-down “Lite” version in an aggressive move to attract more content-sharing. It comes a day after the company launched a real-time search and bought FriendFeed, showing that the company is incredibly focused on moving into the real-time space. The service is in beta testing and invites were sent to specific users. (The photo comes from Twitter and was spotted TechCrunch.)

The Lite version also emulates a bit of Twitter’s spartan look. If Facebook wants to be a social search engine, it can’t let Twitter dominate shared content. It has to be dead-simple for users to share videos, blog posts and comments. Then the company has to collect as much data as possible so that when you do searches, the results highlight timely and relevant activity from your friends and others in the social network.

Here’s Facebook’s comment:

We are currently testing a simplified alternative to Facebook.com that loads a specific set of features quickly and efficiently. Similar to the Facebook experience you get on your mobile phones, Facebook “Lite” is a fast-loading, simplified version of Facebook that enables people to make comments, accept Friend requests, write on people’s Walls, and look at photos and Status updates.  We are currently testing Facebook Lite in countries where we are seeing lots of new users coming to Facebook for the first time and are looking to start off with a more simple experience.

This evening, the test was temporarily exposed to a larger set of users by mistake.  We have not opened up access to lite.facebook.com to all users at this time.  People who are not part of the test and are trying to access “Lite” will be directed to Facebook.com as usual.

This is a good move: about a year or two ago, I started using the site less frequently because the privacy controls were overwhelming; sharing photos and links was fairly slow compared to other services I was using. If Facebook Lite works out, it may encourage other users to move sharing activity back to Facebook.

Source: VentureBeat

Facebook Acquires FriendFeed

Facebook has acquired FriendFeed, we’ve learned. We’re gathering details now.

At this point details on the acquisition are still very sparse, but it’s clearly a good match. Over the last year or so, Facebook has “borrowed” quite a few features that FriendFeed popularized, including the ‘Like’ feature and an emphasis on real-time news updates.

Obviously Facebook has already built out some of FriendFeed’s functionality so there is some overlap, but there are still numerous ways FriendFeed beats out Facebook’s News Feed setup. One of these is the way stories are ‘floated’ to the top as new users comment on them. And FriendFeed’s system is truly real-time, unlike Facebook’s feed which users have to manually refresh.

But the biggest win here for Facebook is the FriendFeed team, which includes an all-star cast of ex-Googlers. Perhaps best known of these is Paul Buchheit, who is responsible for creating Gmail, pioneering some of Google’s early (and incredibly lucrative) advertising products, and coining Google’s “Don’t be evil” motto. Other ex-Googler co-founders include Bret Taylor, Jim Norris, and Sanjeev Singh.

And so begins the next step in Facebook’s assault on Twitter.

Update: Be sure to check out our interview with Facebook VP Products Chris Cox and FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor, where they share their thoughts on the future of FriendFeed and its integration into Facebook.

Update:
FriendFeed has just posted a note to their blog confirming the announcement. FriendFeed’s Bret Taylor writes that the site will continue operating for the time being, but that the company is still “figuring out its longer-term plans for the product”. Likewise, the API will continue to function for the time being.

Update 2 :: Facebook has just issued the following press release:

PALO ALTO, CALIF.—August 10, 2009—Facebook today announced that it has agreed to acquire FriendFeed, the innovative service for sharing online. As part of the agreement, all FriendFeed employees will join Facebook and FriendFeed’s four founders will hold senior roles on Facebook’s engineering and product teams.

“Facebook and FriendFeed share a common vision of giving people tools to share and connect with their friends,” said Bret Taylor, a FriendFeed co-founder and, previously, the group product manager who launched Google Maps. “We can’t wait to join the team and bring many of the innovations we’ve developed at FriendFeed to Facebook’s 250 million users around the world.”

“As we spent time with Mark and his leadership team, we were impressed by the open, creative culture they’ve built and their desire to have us contribute to it,” said Paul Buchheit, another FriendFeed co-founder. Buchheit, the Google engineer behind Gmail and the originator of Google’s “Don’t be evil” motto, added, “It was immediately obvious to us how passionate Facebook’s engineers are about creating simple, ground-breaking ways for people to share, and we are extremely excited to join such a like-minded group.”

Taylor and Buchheit founded FriendFeed along with Jim Norris and Sanjeev Singh in October 2007 after all four played key roles at Google for products like Gmail and Google Maps. At FriendFeed, they’ve brought together a world-class team of engineers and designers.

“Since I first tried FriendFeed, I’ve admired their team for creating such a simple and elegant service for people to share information,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO. “As this shows, our culture continues to make Facebook a place where the best engineers come to build things quickly that lots of people will use.”

FriendFeed is based in Mountain View, Calif. and has 12 employees. FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being as the teams determine the longer term plans for the product.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not released.

Source: TechCrunch

Twitter’s new malware filter is a sign the social media site is stepping up efforts to stem attacks, but the measure has its shortcomings, say security experts.

Twitter’s filtering mechanism was highlighted by Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer of F-Secure, in a blog post Monday. When a user tries to submit a tweet with a suspect Web link, the following warning appears:

“Oops! Your tweet contained a URL to a known malware site!”

Twitter’s latest security measure was a positive one, especially in light of the current threats directed at the site, Hypponen told ZDNet Asia in an e-mail interview. The site, he noted, has been “attacked in many ways” including spam, worms such as Mikeyy, and phishing, he noted.

“None of these problems are at epidemic levels yet, but it’s great to see Twitter take real action on this,” he said.

Hacking is another challenge the popular microblogging site faces. In May, Twitter confirmed its network was hacked and some individual account information were leaked.

Dancho Danchev, independent security consultant and cyber threats analyst, noted that the site’s latest security move was an indication “Twitter is finally moving from reactive to proactive security practices.” However, he pointed out in a blog post on ZDNet Asia’s sister site ZDNet.com, that the malware filter was “clearly still in development” and showed “disappointing results.”

Danchev pointed to how a MySpace phishing page used in a tweet triggered the security filter, but was eventually accepted by adding a “http://” or removing the “www”.

He noted that the site also allowed tweets containing links to several known malicious sites listed in Stopbadware’s database, which has identified over 380,000 sites identified as unsafe. While it would not prevent the abuse of Twitter in the longer term, the failure to integrate such databases listing known malware was a “missed opportunity”, Danchev said.

Twitter did not respond to e-mail queries from ZDNet Asia at press time.

Source: CNET News

Judging by this screenshot taken by an IE6 user who was watching some videos on YouTube, it appears the Google company will be phasing out support for the browser shortly. I don’t have Internet Explorer 6 installed on my computer, so I can’t verify this first hand, but illogical it seems not and a simple Twitter search shows multiple people confirming the news. Heck, some are even downright ecstatic over the news.

The online video behemoth is pointing to ‘modern’ browsers like Google Chrome (twice on the same page even, unsurprisingly), Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3.5 as alternatives.

With the impending move, YouTube follows in the footsteps of that other Web 2.0 poster child, Digg, which recently hinted at wanting to cut support for the browser too. Digg’s User Experience Architect Mark Trammell at the time wrote that the site is strongly considering removing essential features like digging and commenting for IE6 users. He explained that while IE6 users make up around 5% of site traffic, it only accounts for 1% of diggs, buries, and comments.

YouTube so far hasn’t officially communicated about the desire to drop support for IE6, but it’s conceivable that like Digg it would rather have its developers spend time optimizing the service for newer, better browsers than wasting man hours on the oft-despised Microsoft browser. We recently reported that Internet Explorer is losing market share to Firefox and Safari at a rapid pace.

Source: TechCrunch

Google Inc.’s entry into the operating system business poses the strongest long-term threat in years to the dominance of Microsoft Corp.’s Windows software, according to analysts.

Google last week announced that it would launch its long-anticipated operating system, based on the open-source Linux kernel and built around its Chrome browser, sometime in the second half of 2010. The new Web-centric operating system will be dubbed Google Chrome OS.

Though analysts agreed that the Windows hegemony is safe in the short term, Google has the financial muscle, engineering might and industry clout to survive a long-term battle with an industry powerhouse like Microsoft.

“Google doesn’t need an operating system to support its revenue stream,” said Dan Olds, an analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group Inc. “They have lots and lots of revenue from their advertising bread and butter. That means they have [the] staying power that’s critically important in this market.”

Michael Silver, an analyst at Gartner Inc., said that Microsoft is unlikely to ignore the threat to Windows. “Microsoft, after all, is one of the more paranoid companies around,” he said.

He added that Microsoft is unlikely to be adversely affected by Chrome OS in the short term.

Microsoft did not respond to a request for comment on the Google announcement.

Analysts did note that Google must stick to the long, complex grind of developing an operating system if it wants to be successful in that business.

Rebecca Wettemann, an analyst at Nucleus Research, said that in recent months, Google has shut down or stopped supporting several products, including Google Video, Google Notebook, the Jaiku microblogging service and the Dodgeball mobile social network.

“They pick something up, get excited about it and work on it until they find another shiny new object they want to play with,” Wettemann said. “My feeling is that Google needs to stop announcing things and instead execute on completing them.”

Nonetheless, the Chrome OS plan has attracted the support of several top PC vendors, including Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo Group, Acer and Asustek Computer.

Source: ComputerWorld

They’re here–sort of. Twitter has launched the early beta phase of its “verified accounts” program, a background-check for celebrities and other prominent users of the service to weed out impersonators and fake accounts. If they pass the test, they get a graphic “badge” much like a PayPal verified account’s.

“We’re starting with well-known accounts that have had problems with impersonation or identity confusion,” an explanation from Twitter read. “We may verify more accounts in the future, but because of the cost and time required, we’re only testing this feature with a small set of folks for the time being. As the test progresses we may be able to expand this test to more accounts over the next several months.”

Twitter’s team is rolling this out a bit prematurely because there are some powerful people breathing down their necks: the manager of the St. Louis Cardinals has filed a lawsuit against the service after someone started using it to impersonate him. There have also been embarrassing snafus involving a fake Dalai Lama account and a prankster who impersonated the Austin, Texas police department. By rolling out even a very bare-bones verification program, Twitter at least looks like it’s doing something about the problem.

Right now, Twitter’s verified accounts are mostly well-known ones (like @mashable), which suggests that the verification process thus far hasn’t been particularly high-maintenance.

Here is the curious part: Twitter is currently only offering this service to individuals, not businesses. That raises the question of whether account verification will eventually be part of a paid “Twitter for business” account service that’s rumored to be in the works. The presence of lawsuits, however, may have derailed plans to charge for account verification.

Either way, I suppose, you could get caught up in the debate over individuals who are businesses (Robert Scoble, anyone?), but that’s a blog post for another day.

Source: CNET News