Bellingham officials interested in Google high-speed Internet project

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.”

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Google Books project face trouble in India

A group of Indian author and publishers have raised voice against Google and filed charges at the New York district court alleging copyright violation for scanning several books in Indian languages without notifying the authors.

Star Publications Pvt. Ltd., Abhinav Publications, Daya Publication House and Pustak Mahal also include in the group of publishers, who have moved court against the Google Book Settlement.

By reaching an agreement with several universities in the US, Google has been scanning millions of books under copyright protection since 2004 and thus the snippets of these books were made available online under the initiative, known as the Google Library Project.

Siddharth Arya, the legal counsel for IRRO (Indian Reprographic Rights Organisation) said, “Google’s unilateral conduct is a brazen attempt to turn copyright law on its head, by usurping the exclusive rights of the copyright holder”.

“The outcome of all of this was GBS 2.0 that incorporates minor cosmetic changes but continues to violate basic copyright laws. It retains several fundamental issues in the original settlement such as a mechanism known as ‘opt out’,” Arya said.

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Google Transliteration IME to support 14 Indic languages

The search engine giant Google on Thursday released a desktop Transliteration IME, an Input Method Editor which aids users to type in 14 Indic languages using Roman keyboard accessible in online or offline mode. The service was previously available by the name Google Indic Transliteration as an online service.

Users can type words phonetically using Latin characters and the Google Transliteration IME would convert the word to its native script.

The Google Transliteration IME was developed at Indian R&D center in Bangalore which is available in 14 languages like Arabic, Bengali, Farsi (Persian), Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.

For the time being, the IME engine is compatible with Windows 7/Vista/XP and can be downloaded for free. The tool also has features like personalized choices, word completion, quick search, easy-to-use keyboard and various other neccessary required options.

The IME enables businesses, students and teachers to author content and share views in their local languages and also helps users to use the feature with Gmail, Orkut, Blogger and Knol.

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Hackers spied on US oil companies: Report

Three major US oil companies came under cyber attacks that may have come from hackers in China, the Christian Science Monitor newspaper reported Monday.

Sensitive bid data on oil discoveries by Marathon Oil, ExxonMobil, and ConocoPhillips were the target of the attack, the newspaper said citing documents and sources familiar with the investigation.

The attacks occurred in 2008, but their extent only became clear later after the FBI alerted the firms.

At least one attack was traced back to a computer in China, but it was unclear the extent of China’s involvement.

E-mail passwords, e-mails and other information were among the stolen data.

Internet giant Google earlier this month said it had been the victim of cyber attacks and said as a result it would review its operations in China.

China has rejected any involvement in such attacks.

“Accusations that the Chinese government participated in cyber attacks, either in an explicit or inexplicit way, is groundless and aims to denigrate China. We firmly opposed to that,” a spokesman of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology was quoted as saying by the Xinhua news agency earlier Monday.

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Chinese Human Rights Sites Hit by DDoS Attack

Five Web sites run by Chinese human rights activists were attacked by hackers over the weekend, as a separate row continued between Google and China over political cyberattacks.

The Web site of Chinese Human Rights Defenders, an advocacy group, was hit by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that lasted 16 hours starting Saturday afternoon, the group said in an e-mailed statement on Monday. A DDoS attack involves the attacker ordering a legion of compromised computers all to visit a certain Web site at once, overwhelming its server with requests for communication and leaving the site inaccessible to normal visitors. The group said it could not confirm the origin of the attackers but called the Chinese government the most likely suspect.

Google this month said it had been hit by cyberattacks from China partly aimed at accessing the Gmail accounts of human rights activists. The company cited the attacks, which also resulted in the theft of Google intellectual property, as one reason it plans to stop censoring its Chinese search engine, even if that means closing down its China offices.

The latest hacking attack also targeted another Chinese rights group named Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch; two news sites run by Chinese activists, Canyu and New Century News; and the Independent Chinese Pen Center, which posts essays by dissident writers, according to the e-mailed statement. Public records show the Web sites all share two neighboring IP (Internet Protocol) addresses, suggesting the sites were all affected by the DDoS attack.

The bandwidth consumed by the attack hit 2GB per second at its peak, the statement said, citing the Internet service provider for the Web sites.

The targeted IP addresses belong to The Planet, a server hosting provider based in Texas. No one at The Planet was immediately available to comment.

Hackers also placed malware on two of the Web sites before the attack, but that is now being removed, the statement said. The group that sent out the statement has often been hit by cyberattacks, sometimes leaving its Web site down for days, it said.

An advocacy group for foreign journalists in China last week said the Gmail accounts of at least two reporters there had been recently hijacked.

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Gartner Predicts Modest Overall Growth in IT Spending

Gartner has revised its outlook for worldwide IT spending this year, predicting the industry as a whole will see 4.6 percent growth to $3.4 trillion, up from its previous prediction of 3.3 percent growth, according to its latest figures released Thursday.

That figure contrasts with 2009, when spending fell 4.6 percent. Gartner revised its forecast upward to account for an expected weakening of the U.S. dollar.

Spending is also expected to increase due to the increasing confidence of CEOs and CFOs as economic conditions gradually improve, said Richard Gordon, a research vice president with Gartner, in avideo.

Emerging markets will see the strongest gains. Gartner predicts that spending will increase 9.3 percent in Latin America, 7.7 percent in the Middle East and Africa and 7 percent in the Asia-Pacific region.

Due to the recession, the U.S. is expected to post only 2.5 percent growth, with Japan just 1.8 percent. In a bright spot outside of emerging markets, Gartner expects Western Europe to come in at 5.2 percent growth.

On the consumer side, confidence appears to be more fragile, Gordon said. “We think consumers are a bit nervous about job prospects,” Gordon said.

The recovery from the recession will take between 12 to 18 months. The availability of credit should increase, which will help increase spending, and companies may look to make more hardware investments during the second half of this year, Gordon said.

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Bing to oust Google as default iPhone search?

Apple and Microsoft may be in talks to expel Google as the iPhone’s default search engine, in favor of Bing, according to BusinessWeek. The Apple-Google battle for the mobile throne is getting heated.

This is all coming from “two people familiar with the matter,” so, you know, eat a bowl of salt or whatever, but it sort of makes sense in a Machiavellian kind of way. Windows Mobile 7 notwithstanding, Apple’s competition in the mobile arena isn’t Microsoft, but Google, and so it’s not really that outlandish, especially considering that Bing isn’t necessarily a worse search engine than Google. Apple avoids throwing unnecessary support to Google (although the iPhone will still feature Google Maps, YouTube, and Gmail) while Microsoft gains a huge market for Bing. Everybody wins, except Google, which only mostly wins.

If Bing were the default search engine on your phone, would you go through the necessary steps to change it to Google? I have a feeling a lot of people just might not care. (Via BusinessWeek).

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Google campaign to increase net exposure in state

Google India on Tuesday announced the arrival of the Google Internet Bus, a mobile campaign aimed to reach out to people in tier II and III towns with limited exposure to the internet. After covering Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Madhya Pradesh, Google India kick-starts its 2010 journey in Rajasthan.

The bus is designed to provide an Internet experience to the people. The 30-day journey in Rajasthan will be covering Jaipur, Kota, Ajmer, Beawer, Bhilwara, Udaipur, Pali, Jodhpur, Bikaner and Sikar With a focus on four themes, information, communication, entertainment and education, the Internet Bus will have content in English and Hindi to give users an understanding of how the internet can be used for all these needs.

It is a Google India’s exercise to learn from users on their requirement. The bus experience is specially designed to familiarise people with various applications and services that they can use to make their life simple. In addition to basic familiarisation on using services like search, email, social networking and online maps, the bus will also aim to reach out to first-time users who have little or no exposure to the Internet.

During its 11-month journey the Internet Bus has made an impresssion each time it has visited a city: A businessman in Krishnagiri (Tamil Nadu) was amazed to see how he could pay off his utility bills and book train tickets with the click of a button. It was a thrilling experience for a local musician in Vijaywada (Andhra Pradesh) to learn how he can use the internet to compose music and showcase his work to the world. A millet farmer in the remote fringes of Tumkur (Karnataka) went back with a memorable experience with the bus and asked his son to go online to search for a job.

“The year 2009 has been a great journey for the Google Internet Bus. Having covered five states we touched the lives of over 460,000 people and showcased the benefit of internet and how it can revolutionize daily lives,” said Prasad Ram, head ,Google R&D, India.

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How to Protect Yourself When Using Internet Explorer

It won’t take more than a few minutes to close a security hole in Internet Explorer that allowed attacks against Google.

Worried about the security hole in Internet Explorer that was used to launch attacks by China against Google and others? There are ways to help close it and limit your exposure to similar threats — and it won’t take more than a few minutes. Here’s how to do it.

Microsoft has confirmed that an IE vulnerability was at fault for the Google attacks. In Microsoft Security Advisory (979352) it spells out details and in a company blog, Mike Reavey, director of Microsoft’s Security Response Center (MSRC) provides more information.

The security advisory notes that IE 5.01 running on Windows 2000 was not vulnerable to the attack, but that IE6, IE7 and IE8 on Windows 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista, Server 2008, Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 are all at risk.

As of yet, you can’t completely close the security hole. However, there are ways to limit your exposure, notably using Protected Mode in IE on Windows Vista and Windows 7, and enabling Data Execution Protection (DEP). Changing your IE security zone to “High” will help as well. Here’s what Reavey has to say:

Protected Mode in IE 7 on Windows Vista and later significantly reduces the ability of an attacker to impact data on a user’s machine. Customers should also enable Data Execution Prevention (DEP) which helps mitigate online attacks. DEP is enabled by default in IE 8 but must be manually enabled in prior versions.

Customers can also set Internet and Local intranet security zone settings to “High” to prompt before running ActiveX Controls and Active Scripting in these zones or configure Internet Explorer to prompt before running Active Scripting or to disable Active Scripting in the Internet and Local intranet security zone. You can find details on implementing these settings in the advisory.

Unfortunately, though, he doesn’t detail how to do that. It’s all relatively straightforward to do, though. Here’s how.

Turning on Protected Mode

Turning on Protected Mode in IE 7 and IE 8 is exceedingly simple. Select Tools –> Internet Options, and click the Security Tab. Then check the box next to Enable Protected Mode, as you can see in the screenshot below. You’ll have to restart IE for it to take effect.

Changing your Security zone to high

It’s also quite simple to change your IE security zone to high. Select Tools –> Internet Options, and click the Security Tab. Then move the slider to High. You won’t need to restart IE for this setting to take effect.

Enabling DEP

DEP ie enabled by default in IE8. To turn it on in IE7, and to ensure that it’s on in IE8, select Tools –> Internet Options and click the Advanced tab. Scroll down until you come to the Security section. Check the box next to “Enable memory protection to mitigate online attacks” then click OK. You can see it, below. You’ll need to restart IE for the new setting to take effect.

As for IE6, I don’t have a copy, so can’t tell you how enable DEP from my own first-hand experience. However, according to About.com, right-click My Computer, select Properties, then choose the Advanced tab. Under Performance, select settings, then select the Data Execution Prevention tab. Next, select the option to “Turn on DEP for all programs and services except those I select.” Click Apply then click OK.

Microsoft has also released a tool that turns on DEP. To use it, go to this page and follow the instructions.

Will taking all these steps keep you safe from the Chinese Google-style attack? Not completely, but it will keep you safer than if you don’t do it. At some point, though, expect a patch from Microsoft to fix the problem.

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Twitter Punches Back at Facebook Connect

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.”

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