Blogging India

Hello all,
    As I was researching some material for my previous post on Moser Baer, I did the usual Googling for Moser Baer, and to my complete astonishment, I got this Malware warning from Google when I clicked on the displayed search result.

click to enlarge

    The search result on clicking, redirected me to this warning page, instead of the Moser Baer website.

    So I read a bit up on such warnings and I found an explanation for the warning on a Google Web Search Help Center page. To my further surprise, the page said -

We want our users to feel safe when they search the web, and we’re continuously working to identify dangerous sites and increase protection for our users. This warning message appears with search results that we’ve identified as sites that may install malicious software on your computer.

    You HAVE to be kidding me! Or is this another outdated April’s Day prank? One of the leaders in Optic Disks in the world, and the pioneer in HD DVD disc manufacturing, has malware on their corporate website?!!

    Well, I trust Google to a certain extreme, thus I sat down and went through every bit of code in the Moser Baer website. Nope. No malicious scripts. No unsolicited codes. No malware. No spyware. Not even ads!

    What is Google playing at? Does this mean that the feel good programmes by Google need a little more in depth viewing and manual touch?

[tags]moser baer, malware warning, google, google malware, moser baer malware, search malware, malware[/tags]

Hi all,
    The Pirate Bay (www.piratebay.org) – a very comprehensive torrents website, was hacked today. Or rather, cracked.

    The cracker evidently found a security hole via the blog, and was able to obtain a copy of the entire user database, including passwords, email ids, the works. Fortunately, the email ids and passwords were encrypted (how strongly, we can only imagine) and this will prevent, or atleast delay, the cracker in his nefarious deeds.

    If you are a regular PirateBay user, please read THIS post at the PirateBay Blog, and please change you PirateBay password as soon as possible. PirateBay also advices users to change any other passwords which correspond with the PirateBay password.

    As an outsider, the most interesting thing is, a line in their blog…

Some people (and yes, we know who) found a security hole on our web site (in fact, actually in this blog).

    They know who? Thats cool. Then why don’t they sue him/her/it? Their lack of legal action seems ominous… Makes us wonder whether its an inside job?! Or was it just a terrorist action, not intended to harm, just to spread terror, and get demands done?

    Very interesting…

    Anyone got any clue to whats happened and who did it? Dash an email to me [mohan AT bloggingindia DOT net] and if its worthwhile, I’ll make it worth your while with some cash delivered right into your PayPal!

    So start pirate hunting

[tags]piratebay hacked, torrents hacked, torrents website[/tags]

Hi all,
    Early today, the NASA unveiled a model of their latest – James Webb Space Telescope. The JWST, the successor of the Hubble Space Telescope, according to scientists, will be able to see to the farthest reaches of the Universe, reports BBC UK.

    NASA had plans to get rid of the Hubble telescope last year, but gave into to public sentiments, and let it be. The JWST is supposed to replace the 17 year old Hubble telescope.

It will be larger than its predecessor, sit farther from Earth and have a giant mirror to enable it to see more.

Officials said the JWST – named after a former Nasa administrator – was on course for launch in June 2013.

The full-scale model is being displayed outside the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in the US capital, Washington DC.

It was recently shown off in Seattle at the American Astronomical Society meeting.

    The JWST has been named after James E Webb, Nasa Administrator during the Apollo lunar exploration era(1961-1968). Placed 1.5 million KM from the Earth, it will be kept in the Lagrange Point 2, an area of gravitational balance that will keep it in a Sun-Earth Line. Its supposed to be more sensitive to infra red radiation, due to “staying cool” as the effect of a shield. Primarily deployed to yield new information about the initial formation of stars and galaxies after the Big Bang, this telescope is set to break the boundaries in space imaging, just like its predecessor, Hubble Space Telescope.

    So lets wait for about 6 more years, and see what information about the primordial universe this beauty can bring us.

[tags]nasa, james webb space telescope, hubble space telescope[/tags]

Hi,
    The Indian Government is at a near-impossible task. Making a laptop for $10, and giving it to the children, under the One Laptop Per Child scheme. Reportedly, the manufacturing cost of a low cost laptop has reduced to a mere $47, and can be reduced further.

    This is an initiative by the world’s largest IT employee supplier to begin tech education at a younger age.

    Lets hope that this aim achieves fruition soon and make our country truly computer literate.

    You can read more on the news at TGDaily.

[tags]laptops, $10, low cost laptops[/tags]

Hi all,
    Today, the first message which highlighted my email inbox displayed “Facebook becomes NETLOG”!

    Yes… The very famous and popular social networking site, Facebook, decided to close their accounts and be acquired by Netlog.

    They have introduced new features like Music sharing (as in ILike) and something they call “Friendslog”, which is, as far as I could figure out, an idea similar to that of viewing all threads Digged by your friends in the social bookmarking, and user driven content site, Digg.com .

    Netlog also seems to have an array of languages, will a cool theme. Though I dont appreciate the volume of ads they have.

    Why was Facebook, a web 2.0 startup which was doing so well, acquired by Netlog, something which most of us havent heard of? We’ll wait and see…

[tags]facebook, netlog[/tags]

Hi all,
    While Digging today, I found a member who had pointed the readers’ attention to the new AOL main page.

    And now that he mentions it, the AOL main page looks like a complete rip off of the Yahoo! main page. Except for the colour, and the Search Enhanced By Google.

    The links, the ads, the logo placement, the search placement, the tabs, the news items… All these object designs are exactly similar to those on Yahoo!. Hmmmm… Even the Page Ranks for Yahoo! and AOL are same(9/10)!

     Whats happening? The AOL designers ran out of ideas? And will Yahoo! sue AOL? Lets wait and see…

[tags]aol, new main page, yahoo, ripoff[/tags]

Hello all,
    Yesterday, TechCrunch reported that PayPerPost, the company which was the first in league to introduce payment for blog posts, acquired Zookoda, the blog to email system.

    Arrington said -

Controversial startup PayPerPost will announce the acquisition of Zookoda, an Australian blog-to-email service, tomorrow.

We wrote about Zookoda last year, and the company put the product up for sale last September. There were reportedly a number of offers for the service when it was originally put up for sale, but the asking price of US$500,000 was too rich to close a deal. Now, nearly seven months later, PayPerPost has stepped in to acquire the company. PayPerPost is not disclosing what they paid for Zookoda, although CEO Ted Murphy did tell me it was a cash deal.

PayPerPost previously announced the acquisition of Performancing only to back out of the deal a week later. Murphy assured me that the Zookoda acquisition won’t suffer the same fate.

PayPerPost says that Zookoda has 10,000 blog customers sending emails to 2.3 million people. Like the Performancing deal, PPP will want to market their core service to those 10,000 bloggers. Murphy tells me that they are also looking for new distribution channels for their content, and email is a natural fit. PPP bloggers will probably soon be seeing pitches to join the Zookoda service, perhaps with the promise of higher payouts when they post.

    Its funny to note how Arrington calls PayPerPost as the “controversial startup”. Ironically, it was he who made the maximum controversy when they started up

    Anyway, I can only wonder what PPP would want with a website like Zookoda. Indeed, PPP’s earlier trial at acquisition, with Performancing, had some meaning for their then intended segmentation, but right now, Zookoda seems like a meaningless acquisition for a company like PayPerPost.

    Arrington says that PPP will utilize their means to influence the 10,000+ bloggers who use Zookoda. But honestly, I think Ted Murphy, CEO of PayPerPost, has something much more vast under his sleeve.

    I’d tried Zookoda for BloggingIndia, and was quite unsatisfied with the service. It seemed to lack something… Maybe it was just a bit new to me, and the fact that with Zookoda, a blog lost all its importance.

[tags]payperpost, acquires, zookoda[/tags]

Hey all,
    Did you see the brand new(OK fine, so I’m a day late in reporting it!) Google logo for World Earth Day? Somehow, the Google designers have gone out of their way, and done a totally new logo, rather than the logo modifications they used to do earlier…

    Nice, isnt it?

[tags]world earth day, google, logo[/tags]

Hello all,
    In the ongoing battle between AMD and Intel in the microchip manufacturing world, it seems like Intel won the game during the last fiscal, since AMD has reported a loss of $611 million!

    Their 1st Quarter margins this year were 59% lower than their 1st Quarter in 2006! The AMD’s stock dropped about 2% in after hour trading late Thursday, following this financial report.

    Is this financial failure of AMD’s due to the lead taken by Intel? Earlier during the quarter, Intel had announced a few of its brand new brands like the quad core Clovertown. It seems like Intel’s winning the war, though AMD had the battle a year ago…

[tags]intel, amd, amd loss, $611 million loss[/tags]

Hi all,
    UnWired View reports that Motorola, one of the leading mobile manufacturers, tried out Digg and Del.icio.us for promoting their new mobile, Moto Q 9h( earlier called Moto Q g9 ).

    There are buttons on the Product page which say “Digg This” and “Save this page to del.icio.us”.

    While UnWired View reported that the product had only “1″ Digg, today, after about 1 day and 9 hours of its releasing, there are 197 Diggs (196+1 mine=197 ).

    So are corporate giants eyeing the online newsbuzz to promote products? Like the blogging revolution, will there be a Digging revolution too? Gotta wait and watch!

[tags]motorola, digg, del.icio.us[/tags]