Bellingham Mayor Dan Pike has asked his staff to start discussions about applying to be a part of Google’s Fiber high-speed Internet project.

Google announced Wednesday, Feb. 10, that it is planning to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States.

The networks would deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than the average U.S. Internet connection, according to Google’s announcement, and the service would be offered to between 50,000 and 500,000 people.

They’ve asked local government and the public to offer up proposals through March 26 to take part in the project.

“The first blush reaction was, well, first of all more speed is a better thing for the city because it helps us in terms of attracting economic development,” Pike said.

The project also has sparked the creation of a Facebook group – Bring Google Fiber for Communities to Bellingham – by residents excited for the city to seek the network.

Pike’s piqued interest is shared by new Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn, who announced Thursday, Feb. 11, that his administration would respond to Google’s request for proposals, too.

In Bellingham, any work toward a proposal is in the very early stages, said Information Technology Services Department Director Marty Mulholland.

The city must determine if the project is viable, she said, so staff will look at the status of the city’s infrastructure, use of utility poles, regulatory requirements, existing broadband in the community and more.

“We have many community attributes that seem to me to be positive in considering whether to take this on,” she said. “Our community size, presence of university, commitment to ‘green,’ presence of specific business types, active engaged citizens, and beautiful desirable community setting all seem to me to be positive factors.”

Twitter is launching tools to let third party Web sites more easily integrate Twitter features directly into their sites and services, in what some are calling “their response to the massively popular Facebook (News – Alert) Connect.”

That’s the opinion of industry observer Michael Arrington, who writes that “Facebook says 80,000 websites have added Facebook Connect, and 60 million Facebook users engage with Facebook connect on these third party sites each month.”

Baltimore Sun blogger Gus Sentementes notes that he “would be much more inclined to connect to a site via a ‘Twitter connect’ feature than Facebook Connect. I have far less personal information associated with my Twitter account than with my Facebook account… A lot of people want a way to connect with others without sharing private information with third parties.”

Facebook Connect was announced in May 2008, and Google (News – Alert) and MySpace quickly rushed out similar products.

Arrington says Facebook Connect is attractive to a lot of smaller sites “simply because it’s so easy to implement. They’ve created a number of widgets that bring Facebook features directly to third party sites, and integration is easy.”

Twitter is using an open, standards based approach with OAuth for authentication and data sharing, while Facebook uses proprietary protocols for Facebook Connect.

We can’t say we didn’t see this coming: Last April Ben Parr reported that Twitter “has quietly given some developers access to a new feature, Sign in with Twitter, which uses Twitter’s new OAuth technology to allow people to log into and access third party Web sites using their Twitter accounts. Sound familiar? On the surface, this has striking similarities to Facebook Connect.”

Industry observer Kit Eaton (News – Alert) writes that Facebook Connect is a juggernaut Twitter would do well to be wary of — “… it’s been so very successful it’s basically stamped out competing services from Google. And now there’s news that it’s hitting MySpace (News – Alert) — which is an even more potent demonstration of Connect’s power, since MySpace was a vicious Facebook rival in the early days, and it actually had its own competing service just two years ago.”

Eaton describes Twitter, “Facebook’s newest rival on the social network scene,” as determined to “get into the same sort of cross-Web site login business that Connect operates in.”

Trying to make Yahoo Mail more interactive, give users a social experience and stay with the people they care about most, Yahoo plans to integrate with Facebook and Twitter by 2010 end.

Silicon India on Monday, quoted the Senior Vice President, Consumer Products, Yahoo, Bryan Lamkin, as saying that, “With the integration of Yahoo and Facebook, we can enable users to share meaningful content with their friends.”

Yahoo’s Facebook Connect integration will give consumers richer experiences on Yahoo!, including in Yahoo! Mail and on properties like Yahoo News, Yahoo Sports, and Yahoo Finance.

It would allow them to connect with Facebook friends on Yahoo, view a feed of their friends’ related activity on Yahoo, and share content – such as photos from Flickr or comments on news stories, with all of their friends on Facebook, Yahoo said, adding that the content that consumers share with Facebook friends would then create a loop that drives visitors back to Yahoo.

It is being speculated that the partnership will not only help Yahoo users, but would also allow Facebook users to access their stream and update their status from the Yahoo homepage, provides ‘Share on Facebook’ options across the Yahoo network, and allow Facebook to access Yahoo Contacts.

People who use Yahoo and Facebook, according to Yahoo, would soon be able to share updates across both networks, creating a richer and more relevant social experience by connecting the broad range of Yahoo content and services with their friends on Facebook.

Yahoo is also trying to make mail more secure, safe and personal by blocking 300 billion spam messages every month.

Security is a huge part of the job for most IT administrators. We’re always striving to protect our organizations from the latest barrage of viruses, worms, and other malware. With 2009 over, what types of threats could we face in the year ahead? The recent 2010 Threat Predictions report from McAfee (News – Alert) pegs a few different areas to watch out for in 2010.

Social networks will be one key breeding ground for cyber attacks, says McAfee. As sites like Twitter and Facebook (News – Alert) continue to grow in popularity, especially among the business crowd, cyber crooks will increasingly employ their usual bag of tricks to try to ensnare users.

A site like Facebook can be especially vulnerable as many people will implicitly and unthinkingly trust any “invitation” from their friends. But as McAfee points out, that next invite to play a cool game or run an interesting application from a Facebook friend could be a fake app created by a cybercriminal designed to infect your PC. We’ve already seen such malware attacking Facebook, such as the infamous Koobface worm that first reared its ugly head about a year ago.

Personally, I’ve just about stopped playing games, filling out quizzes, and running most applications in Facebook. I’ve never been comfortable with the way a Facebook app needs to gain access to your personal information in order to run. That’s always seemed like an open vulnerability that could easily allow the wrong people to learn too much about you. Now McAfee’s reminder that these apps are also a way to spread malware is something IT admins and Facebook users should keep in mind.

Another area to watch out for is the use of URL shorteners, popular on social networking and bookmarking sites. Services like bit.ly and tinyurl.com shorten URL strings so they can fit in smaller spaces, such as the 140-character limit imposed by Twitter. But you can’t preview a shortened URL, so you don’t know where it’s going to take you until the page pops up. This makes it easy for cyber crooks to point these URLs to pages that could deliver malware.

Microsoft (News – Alert) apps have traditionally been a popular target for malware writers. But that “honor” may switch over to Adobe this year. As Adobe Reader and Flash have become more prevalent, they’ve also become more of a target for cybercriminals. Adobe Reader in particular has been hit by security holes over the past year, forcing Adobe to take a more active role in keep its app properly patched.

Other threats that McAfee sees in its crystal ball for 2010:

Banking trojans designed to grab your financial account information may become more advanced. Already in 2009, they showed off the ability to sneak past some of the protections currently used by banks. McAfee warns that this year they may be able to silently interrupt transactions and even make withdrawals without being detected.

E-mail attachments will also continue to grow as a primary means of spreading malware. McAfee believes that these attachments could even target specific audiences, such as corporations, journalists – not good news on my end – and individuals.

Botnets, which are responsible for carrying out cyberattacks, will also increasingly use peer-to-peer networking to hop from one computer to another without a central base of operations. Such a strategy will make it more difficult for security professionals to track them down.

So how do you prepare yourself for the potential threats that lie ahead? Well, naturally since McAfee wrote the report, the company would like you to buy its own security software to protect your users. And McAfee does offer software with certain capabilities, such as the ability to scan shortened URLs. The company also recently struck a deal with Facebook to provide Facebook users with a free six-month subscription to its security software.

But any good security suite or application would be your first line of defense in protecting you and your users from the coming threats. It goes without saying that choosing and using the right software and keeping it updated is critical, no matter what security software you deploy. Also, make sure that you keep your organization’s PCs updated with the latest patches from Microsoft to protect the operating system, office suite, and browser.

But beyond the right software, user education is vital. Make sure your users are aware of the latest threats and realize that their actions can have consequences. They need to think twice before opening a file attachment or downloading an application that could expose them and your business to malware. Though 2010 may bring its own share of cyber threats like any other year, protecting your organization and your users is the best role you can play.

Facebook and McAfee Join Hands to Offer Free Security Trial Giant social networking website Facebook, on Tuesday announced that it will be providing its user base with a free of cost 6 month trial of McAfee security software suite which has been released as Internet Security Suite. With the effort, the website is looking to offer better protection to its users.

The major player of the computer security world, McAfee is offering an independent online tool that would look to scan and remove any cyber attacks from a Facebook user’s computer.

As confirmed by the social networking site, the scanner would be offered free of charge to users, and if the users purchase the software after 6 months of trial, Facebook would not be taking any share in the revenue.

As of now, only the English version of the scanner is available, but soon users of other languages will be able to make use of it as well.

“Facebook is very serious about security and has made significant efforts to protect its users and service by investing in dedicated teams and sophisticated systems, and this partnership with McAfee furthers that mission. We believe our partnership will make a real difference in the battle to secure the Internet”, said McAfee Consumer, Mobile and Small Business executive VP, GM Todd Gebhart.

Microsoft has taken a plunge into the URL Shortening market with its own URL Shortener – Binged.it. The massive surge in Twitter’s popularity has bolstered the URL shortening market and it seems that every one wants to have their own short URL.

Binged.it is not yet public and is currently available only for internal use. According to SeattlePi, Microsoft is collaborating with Bit.ly on the URL Shortener. Microsoft didn’t reveal exactly what it wants to do with Binged.it. However, I don’t see Binged.it gaining much traction. The main point of a URL Shortener is to be short. Is.gd is 4 characters, Fb.me (Facebook) is 4 characters, Goo.gl is 5 characters, Youtu.be is 7 characters while Binged.it is 8 characters.

Why Microsoft decided to use a name which is longer than its original domain name (Bing.com) is beyond me. Sometimes, Microsoft’s stupidity can reach baffling heights. This is one such occasion.

370 words cannot be used as Twitter password: To protect the users’ data, Twitter has banned 370 words it considers “too obvious” to be used as passwords.

Words like “123456″, “password”, “Porsche”, “Ferrari”, etc cannot be used as passwords because Twitter thinks they are too easy to guess.

A few science fiction words are also a part of the banned word list of the website.

So, beware, Twitter and Facebook users. Hackers are already eying your account in this New Year.

Facebook, Twitter, basically social networking sites are potential targets for the cybercriminals in the year 2010, reports, McAfee Inc, world’s largest dedicated security technology.

McAfee said, that the blowup of apps on Facebook and other services will be a perfect vector for cybercriminals, who will take advantage of friends relying friends to click links they might otherwise treat carefully. Web users rely on friends and trust them as the link is send to them by their friends and family.

There are 350 million users of Facebook and that is a fairly target-rich environs. McAfee has also admonished that URL shorteners, like those used to fit Twitter’s 140-character limit, make the cyber criminal’s task even easier.

Symantec in its recent report on 2010 threats, said, URL shortening services will “become the phisher’s best friend.”

McAfee also reported that the release of Google Chrome OS and the technological advancements of HTML 5 will go on to shift user activity from desktop to online applications, creating yet another opportunity for malware writers to prey on users.

The growing popularity of Adobe applications will give an opportunity to cybercriminals to target Adobe products, primarily Acrobat Reader and Flash, two of the most widely deployed applications in the world, McAfee lab anticipated.

Consumer’s online banking will be the major threat on financial sites and is probable to increase in 2010.

McAfee Labs also forebodes 2010 will be a good year for law enforcement’s fight against cybercrime.

Jeff Green, Senior Vice President of McAfee Labs said in the press statement, that over the past decade, they have seen an enormous advancement in the ability to successfully monitor, reveal, and stop cybercrime. “We’re now facing emerging threats from the explosive growth of social networking sites, the exploitation of popular applications and more advanced techniques used by cybercriminals, but we’re confident that 2010 will be a successful year for the cybersecurity community.”

We spent most of 2009 listening to an unending stream of information about the world’s financial crisis. But not all the news was bad for Mac businesses. Here are some of the highlights:’

Snow Leopard Server

Is Apple serious about the business community? This year, the company cut the price of its server software in half and added numerous features geared to turn IT administrators’ heads. Snow Leopard Server ($499; Macworld rated 4.5 out of 5 mice ) now includes Address Book Server and Mobile Access Server as well as Push services for e-mail and calendaring. Instead of a confusing mash of licensing options, now there is just one–unlimited access. Most of the server software’s existing features saw improvements in speed and ease of use.

The Mac mini with Snow Leopard Server

As a follow up, Apple released the $999 Mac mini with Snow Leopard Server ( Macworld rated 4.5 out of 5 mice ). The mini has a dual-core 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 4GB of RAM, a gigabit ethernet port, FireWire 800, and five USB 2.0 ports. It also has a second internal Serial ATA hard drive in place of an optical drive, which brings it up to 1 terabyte of internal storage. Combined with Snow Leopard Server’s workgroup tools, this compact, low-cost server is a great new option for small businesses, small workgroups, and schools.

iWork ‘09

Introduced in January, Apple’s iWork ‘09 improved Apple’s $79 office suite with a host of new features. Keynote ‘09 ( Macworld rated 4 out of 5 mice ) got new animation abilities.Pages ‘09 ( Macworld rated 4 out of 5 mice ) gained the ability to mail merge with Numbers spreadsheets and started supporting MathType and EndNote X2–a big help for scientists and academics in particular. Numbers ‘09 ( Macworld rated 4 out of 5 mice ) beefed up with better charts and formulas. Apple also launched the beta of iWork.com, a new online service for sharing documents.

Social networking

Even though the potential loss of employee productivity gave some pause, this year businesses embraced social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook to promote their businesses. One survey showed business use of Twitter jumped more than 250 percent from last spring. (You can follow Macworld’s Business Center at @macworldbiz or Macworld’s general Twitter account at @macworld.)

The cloud

Dell may have tried to trademark the term way back in 2007, but it was 2009 when “the cloud” came into its own as a buzz phrase. “Cloud computing” generally refers to Web-based programs that rely on distant data centers. One prime example is the Google Apps. Those programs continued to make inroads into businesses, luring some high-profile groups, such as the city employees of Los Angeles, away from Microsoft Office and other desktop programs. But several mishaps this year, including data loss by T-Mobile Sidekick users and some notable service outages, also drew attention to some of the problems with the cloud computing model.

Onward to 2010

Next year, we look forward to the newest edition of Microsoft Office for Mac. This update will replace Microsoft’s venerable Mac e-mail program, Entourage, with Outlook for Mac. Microsoft has also said the update will bring back Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), the programming language that many businesses relied on extensively for macros and have bitterly grieved for since it was removed from Office 2008.

Opera 10.5 Alpha may have just become the first web browser to perform faster than Chrome, but it now looks like Google is ready to bring out its biggest weapon of all as it wages war on rivals.

The Web giant is placing ads on its Google search homepages around the world (including .com) promoting Chrome under the tagline: “A faster way to browse the web”. It also includes a direct link to download the browser.

Why is this so significant? Firstly it is a major break in protocol for Google since it has famously kept its search homepage(s) as minimalistic as possible. Secondly, Google.com is the most visited page on the Internet meaning Chrome is now actively being pushed to an unparalleled audience.

The really ingenious part? Google indentifies the browser visiting the page before deciding whether to show the ad or not and it isn’t as simple as Chrome = no ad, everything else = ad. The first part of this sentence is true, Chrome users don’t get an ad while Internet Explorer users do. By contrast Firefox users only get more subtle link to a ‘Google Pack’ of which Chrome is a part of software bundle. This is most likely because Firefox is a major Google business partner. Opera? Safari? I don’t know, I don’t use them so let us know.

Should you be happy in your browser choice (with IE? Really?) then the Chrome ad can be closed and won’t reappear in future. Either way, however, Google ultimately wins since Chrome brand awareness increases and this will undoubtedly help recognition of the similarly named Chrome OS when it eventually rolls out later next year.

So where is Chrome market share at present? It is just inched past Safari at 4.4 per cent and has been available on the PC for just over a year. This puts it roughly inline with the annual gains made by Firefox, which is at 24.7 per cent after five years. IE still leads the way with 63.6 per cent, though the finalised Windows browser ballot screen could change all that.

If you are considering switching to Chrome then jump on in, the water’s warm – I just migrated myself. One big tip though: go for the beta version (4.x) , it’s solid as a rock, eliminates the Facebook glitches in the ‘stable’ 3.x edition, is faster and – vitally – supports third party extensions.

Links :
via Business News Insider
Google Chrome Beta