Hackers go mainstream, no matter the experience level

Hackers have saturated the technology industry for the past few decades, but have become a mainstream part of technological culture very recently. The month of July 2011 has been no stranger to the hacking subculture, as two major, but divergent, incidents garnered worldwide attention. The first involved the Pentagon’s revelation that 24,000 Department of Defense files were “lost” in a cyberattack in March. This potentially has massive implications for American national security, and is the most damaging breach the U.S. military has ever seen. The Department of Defense has not disclosed who they believe hacked their system, or what files were stolen.

Courtesy of www.abcnewsradio.com

The second incident, the News Corp. phone hacking scandal, has gotten even more coverage because of its effects on a wide base of people, including British Prime Minister David Cameron and News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch. Specifically, the hacked accounts belonged to families of murder victims, or in the case of 13-year-old Milly Dowler, the victims themselves. In this situation, the alleged hackers weren’t even experts, but rather journalists of the shamed and now obsolete News of the World tabloid. In an example where hacking has been simplified to the lowest degree, the alleged hackers most likely used a Caller ID spoofing service that would trick the voicemail into believing it was being called by the typed number. Principles of the scandal aside, this may disturb people who don’t yet realize the power the average person can have once they harness technology.

The final issue of News of the World courtesy of www.mirror.co.uk

Organized hacking… sort of

True hackers, like the ones that compromised the Department of Defense attack, are more dangerous toward the future of the internet’s openness. Two major factions are gaining notoriety for their attacks on government and private websites: Anonymous and LulzSec. Little is known about the factions due to their loose foundation of members, making it increasingly difficult for law enforcement to keep track of them.

Courtesy of www.ebaumsworld.com

Anonymous has been known for disrupting MasterCard, VISA, and Monsanto websites with a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDOS), preventing the sites from functioning properly. LulzSec aimed even higher, bringing down the CIA website for a day in June and redirecting the Sun’s homepage to a hoax story about Rupert Murdoch’s death. (Anyone can appreciate the irony of the Murdoch umbrella being hacked.) In both the U.S. and the U.K., authorities have conducted a series of raids to combat these kinds of cyberattacks. It is very possible that these raids, while admirable in trying to obtain information on primary members, are only going to instigate more online security breaches.

Why the game changed

What is striking about this recent attention to the hacker world is the way it has entered pop culture and government. People looked at computer hackers and the first thing that popped into anyone’s head was “e-mail chain virus.” Now they may think “Wikileaks.” The intentions of each hacker may be different, and may be held with opposing values, but these mainstream hackers are driven by more than just the idea of making someone’s website freeze. Just look online to any related news article and see who is being hacked the most.

With governments making it a clear initiative to put an end to hacking, it shows the impact these focused attacks have already made. The prevalence of news coverage is more than enough evidence to show that computer hacking is the new “in” crime, and one that can grow into an even bigger problem in the next decade if more people plan to use it with malicious intent.

How Much Change is too Much? LinkedIn Makes Some Interesting Choices

Recently LinkedIn has added some interesting features to their site, as well as a few new acquisitions. These changes have many believing that LinkedIn may be shifting their brand image.

New Acquisitions

LinkedIn, a business-orientated social networking site founded in December 2002, has recently made some interesting choices in growing its business. It all started back in August with LinkedIn’s debut acquisition. They snatched up recommendation start-up m-Spoke, and people are buzzing that LinkedIn was on route to offering an IPO (Initial Public Offering).

LinkedIn plans to use m-Spoke’s recommendation technology to deliver relevant content, advertising and products to its social network users. The m-Spoke deal is the first in what the company expects to be a string of acquisitions that will aid a move to make its information more relevant to users and to increase its presence on mobile devices.

This was shown to be true when just a little over a month later LinkedIn acquired ChoiceVendor Inc., a website for reviews of business service providers such as accountants, call centers, and payroll services. To many, this second acquisition in as many months wasn’t just a sign of the business social site’s switch to a new acquisition strategy, but also that the company may be on the road to becoming public.

New Features

On the very last day of TechCrunch’s Disrupt Conference in late September, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner announced the launch of Signal, a filter for a user’s Twitter feed that displays only the tweets coming from the professionals the user is connected with on LinkedIn. And, on October 4^th LinkedIn and PwC announced the launch of Career Explorer, an interesting product targeted at the college graduate, or soon-to-be graduate who wants to plot a path towards their job of choice.

Is LinkedIn Going Public?

Investors and analysts have watched LinkedIn, along with Facebook, for a long time waiting to see if it launches an IPO, and with these new acquisitions it seems it may be time. Weiner has previously stated in a Reuters article, “an IPO is not in the front of mind”, but the company is rather focused on building business and executing its plans.

Weiner plans to use the small acquisitions and changes as a means to build LinkedIn’s business, not as a means for LinkedIn to become a publicly held company.

LinkedIn may be changing a bit too much, and people are now not only thinking the company may become public, but could possibly be revamping their overall image.

What is LinkedIn Becoming?

Moves like the acquisitions, along with other aspects of LinkedIn’s products, position them at an interesting intersection, somewhere between social networking and professional tool kit. With so many product launches and initiatives, many believe LinkedIn doesn’t know exactly what it wants to be and risk the loss of their user base.

Only time will tell if all these choices can lead LinkedIn to what they truly want: an increase in revenue and growth in their market share, while holding tight to their base and brand.

YouTube has recently made interesting changes to their website that impact how users interact with the site, as well as the level of information available to ‘channel’ owners. The most notable introduction is YouTube Insight, a comprehensive video analytics program.

Google and YouTube partnered to create YouTube Insight. Users can now log into their account (channel) and view statistics on video traffic aspects. Members can view the number of times the video is watched cross referenced with geographical region. Channel owners can view their video’s popularity in comparison to similar video types over a given time period. Other features include measurement of how long it took for a video to become popular and when it reaches its peak viewing volume.

YouTube Video Views

YouTube Insight Video Analytics: Total Video Views

Breaking It Down

Each category has unique, simplified features. The main features of YouTube analytics can be broken down by a summary of all videos or by individual video. The categories include:

• Views
• Discovery
• Demographics
• Community
• Hot Spots
• Popularity

The following gives an overview of each category along with illustrations:

Views: Views uses a graph to display how frequently a video has been viewed in a given period of time. The timeframe on the graph can be adjusted, a beneficial feature if a user is looking to see how often a video was viewed in a day, multiple days, a month, or up to a year. In the Views section, a world map is also displayed. Users can see where the video is being viewed all over the world.

Discovery The Discovery option allows uploaders to see how users found their videos. A variety of options are available, including a YouTube search, no link referrer, related videos, Google search, external links, and an ‘other’ category. Insights breaks these down to percentage of total views as well as creates a stacked or line chart.

YouTube Insight Video Analytics: Total Video Links

Demographics This video analytics option breaks down the age groups watching a video. A pie chart displaying male and female viewers is also given.

Community The Community option allows uploaders to see how viewers engage with a video over time, including the geographic location, as a means to break down the statistics.

Hot Spots This Insight tool graphs the ups-and-downs of viewership. At any given time in a video, it can be seen if a viewer has left the video or replayed a specific section. “Hot” signifies that fewer viewers are leaving a video at that point compared to other YouTube videos of a similar length. This feature offers the ability to really fine tune video messages to the target audience.

Popularity This option is available on the Summary page, and allows uploaders to view how popular their video is in comparison to all other YouTube videos on a scale of 0 to 100. The popularity scale allows channel owners to once again break down by geographical location (country, state) to see how it ranks compared to other videos on the site.

YouTube Insights: What it Means for Online Marketers

Online marketers are constantly looking for ways to measure the impact of social media marketing and solid metrics can be hard to come by. Most businesses know the serious impact viral venues such YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter have on today’s instant response culture. The problem has been finding relevant metrics to present to top corporate to gain budget, create a cultural buy-in to social media, and to fine tune campaigns to the audience.

YouTube Insight delivers lots of data that marketing managers can wrap their reports around. The tool is easy to work with, much like Google Analytics, and a welcome addition to the digital marketing tool kit that’s been long awaited.

You’ve probably already seen them everywhere today. That amazing deal, or that new app that sounds too good to be true, chances are….it probably is — very few companies take April 1st seriously, but its all in good fun!

Here are some our favorites so far for this year:

Google is now  TOPEKA

Effective 1AM (CDT) on April 1, 2010, Google changed its name to “Topeka.” In case you haven’t heard, this is because Google has decided to repay the tribute due to Topeka, Kansas renaming itself Google as part of a stunt to become part of Google’s municipal broadband project.

Starbucks introduces 2 new sizes (Digital Surgeons Fav)

Forget about Tall, Grande and Venti, Starbucks has two new sizes: Plenta and Micra. The Plenta is a 128-ounce drink for caffeine addicts who can’t get enough coffee, and for those who need just a tiny sip, you can get the 2-ounce Micra. And don’t worry about all that paper waste from the new Plenta sized-cup, they’ve thought about the environment. Starbucks says you can reuse your gigantic Plenta cups in a number of useful ways including as a “planter, lampshade or yoga block”.

Google street view now available in 3D

Google added a cool new element to is street view maps today: 3D view! In any street view map you can drag the little man icon from the upper left part of the screen anywhere on the map. Get your 3D glasses out!

Google Translator available in any language….How about animal??

Google placed a link on their homepage today, advertising a new Google Animal Translator service to add to their Language Translator service. Clicking the link would take you to a page advertising an app for Android phones for the translator, with the tagline being “Bridging the gap between animals and humans”. http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/landing/translateforanimals/

Once the app is installed on an Android phone it provides some amusing translations depending on the animal you select.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I24bSteJpw]

Ever wanted to swap your wife for a new one?

Wikipedia has hopped on board with the game today too! They featured an article on the homepage about the ancient English practice of Wife Selling, as well as strange but true news about a certain Japanese company that accidentally sent some of its customers back in time to 1999!

Justin Bieber: Bieber or Die?

If you plan on visiting the viral video site Funny or Die today, you’ll will be in for a surprise. This favorite comedy site of many has caught Bieber fever. The entire site is designed around the teen pop sensation Justin Bieber, after the singer bought up the site as a tribute to himself. As Bieber says in a video explaining his take over, “anything that’s not Bieber dies.”

Google Waves to Wave

Google Wave introduces humans that wave at you when Google Wave has been updated. With new “wave wave” notifications for Google you can find out if you have a notification in your mailbox, no matter where you are.

Hulu has a plan

Visit Hulu today, select a video and you’ll see an option to view content in 3D. You won’t need those special 3D glasses from earlier (or though you can try it), but you will go through the looking glass to see the horrible truth about Hulu and television itself. It turns out there is scientific proof that TV really will rot your brain, and the entertainment industry is filled with aliens (tell us something we didn’t know!)

The random comments and posts that show up on blogs and forums are a result of a webmaster trying to boost their site’s page rank. He or she exploits an innocent site, by posting links like “Try this for free,” or “Take a vacation of a lifetime” in hopes to get users to click and view their site.  

But little do these spammers know that this kind of technique is very bad for business. A once- reliable web page is loosing credibility with each spam post and the quality of the World Wide Web is dwindling.  No one wants to read random comments or message about free getaways or prescription drugs when searching for recipes or garage door openers.

 What Spam Looks Like

Links in comment sections on blog or forum pages that are unrelated to the site are most likely spam. Random comments (posts that are short, impersonal and generic) and hyperlinks about prescription drugs, exercise tips, hair loss techniques, vacation getaways and etc. are probably spam as well. If after you leave a trustworthy comment on a site and a quick response with a link pops up, then this site has been infected with spam.  These spam ads are just hoping to get clicked on, to get some attention and bring some viewers to their homepages. Don’t give it. Nothing good will come of this. 

Promote your site…without using spam

Believe it or not you can still promote your site without becoming a hated spammer.

Improve your site. Display informative, original content that will benefit an audience. Utilize good search engine optimization strategies so your site shows up in Google and Yahoo. If your site is user friendly, appealing and optimization with keywords and phrases, users will take notice of this. People will link to your site over time.

I don’t want spam on my site

Because comments and messages are a vital piece to any website-they bring users together, ideas are shared and improvements are made-it’s crucial these sections are made secure. To help eliminate spam and retain your site’s integrity, try taking some quick action: 

• Don’t allow anonymous posting
• Use a comment moderation
• Refuse hyperlinks in comments

Already been infected…

Don’t fret. Take some time and energy and clean up your site and get rid of the spam posts that made it your site. Also, you can enlist some of the security measures mentioned in the above list to stop the spam.

Guilty of spamming?

If so, click on the “your site on the web” section. Look at where you’ve posted your link. Are there any suspicious messages posted on blogs or forums? If so, delete them. If this doesn’t work try and contact the site manager for that page to get rid of it.

There are more than 60 million page views that come from mobile phones per month for Wordpress blogs, proving that your site needs to be mobile-ready.

To make your site render better on mobile devices, Wordpress has launched two new mobile themes that will automatically be displayed when compatible mobile phones attempt to access your site.

Smartphones with top notch mobile browsers (i.e the iPhone) will have a tweaked version of the WPtouch theme. WPtouch comes complete with all the standard Wordpress blog features: search, login, categories, tags, archives, photos, and more. It also offers many customization features through a beautifully designed WordPress admin panel. It even includes custom header image scaling, and AJAX commenting and post loading.

Other devices will sport a variation of the Wordpress Mobile Edition, which is a plugin that portrays your interface specifically designed for a mobile device. It a viewer do not have as sophisticated of a browser, this mobile theme will help sites load faster and display as much relevant information on the blog as possible.

It airs every weakness of the iPhone and plays on Apple’s ad campaign “I,” by saying things like, “I don’t have a real keyboard,” and “I don’t take pictures in the dark.” At the end of the commercial, the caption says, “Everything iDon’t…Droid does. November.”

Although we are suddenly made aware of all of the things the iPhone does not do, we are not really sure what exactly the Droid does. At first glance, it seems clever, but after viewers start to think a bit deeper, they are a bit confused.

At the end of the ad, you are prompted to the microsite, droiddoes.com. The copy reads, “Don’t you wish you had a robot sidekick that moved at light speed, could get you out of any problem and lived in your pocket? Soon you will. Input your email address and Droid will notify you when compromise has been deactivated.”

You then see some of the features, including high speed, hi-res, 5 megapixels, speech recognition, notification panel, directions, video, tunes, 10,000+ apps, the network, and multitasking, as well as a Verizon Wireless logo at the bottom. That’s where things start to come together.

This is the final installment of the Insights for Search blog. The first section covered how Insights operates, the second concentrated on the pros of the site and the third section addressed some concerns about Insights for Search. This last section will help the bewildered user master Insights and reap all of its benefits.

Let’s Get into the Mindset of Insights Users: A ‘How to’ Walk Through of Google Insights for Search

For any overwhelmed Insighters out there, lets do a little role playing and hopefully that light bulb will go off for you…”A-ha! I get it! Insights is awesome!” Maybe you won’t get that excited, but at least you’ll understand the site and how to go about utilizing it.

So let’s just say you’re a business owner. You own a Trailblazer, you know one of those hiking, camping and outdoorsy stores. You sell everything from mountain climbing gear and running sneakers, to kayaks and bathing suits. So with the economy being on somewhat of a low these days, you decide you can’t sell all the products you once sold. You have to make some eliminations in your inventory and you have decided that it’s between Sigg bottles and Nalgene bottles. (Both are containers that carry fluid in air tight, unbreakable bottles). It’s hard for you to make a decision and you recently heard about this Google Insights thing that compares the interest in certain products around the world…so here goes nothing.

A Walk Through Google Insights

Step One: Basic

Go to Google Insights. http://www.google.com/insights/search/#

Your search is simple. You want to compare the interest of Sigg bottles to Nalgene bottles.

Step Two: What are you Comparing the Interest in?

Type in Nalgene, then click add search term and type in Sigg.

Step Three: Where do you Want to see Interest Levels?

Because your store is located in Connecticut you’re concerned about the interest in these products in this area, so under “Compare by” click on “locations” then click “World Wide” and change that to “United States.”

Then under sub regions you find Connecticut.

Now just click search and wait for the results page to load.

Step Four: The Results are In

Now you have the results page. The “interest over time” chart is the first graph that appears before you. It is quite clear that at first glance Nalgene (which appears in blue) seems to have sparked the most interest over the years.

(Nalgene vs. Sigg Interest Levels)

Step Five: Check out News Headlines

Because you want to see why the slumps and peaks have occurred for both products over the past couple of years you click “News headlines” to get a list of informative articles that could explain maybe why some of these trends have occurred.

Once this box is checked off you get a new and improved graph and list of articles.

(Interest levels: Nalgene vs. Sigg plus News headlines)

These articles allow you to see why interest in these products has varied through out the months. New products, findings and scandals have come out that allowed the interests to go up and down. For example, the harmful chemical BPA (a substance used to harden plastic) was found in these bottles causing a variation in interest for Google searches.

As a business owner, you are aware of the issues these bottles had in the past. You are pretty sure that these problems have been fixed and both brands offer BPA free products. This still doesn’t help you decide which product you want to sell.

Step Six: Results in the Region

The next graph displays the regional (Connecticut) interest for Nalgene.

To change the regional interest to Sigg, you just have to click on the bar after “regional interest” and select “Sigg.” You then get Sigg’s graph.

The final graph on the result’s page shows you what other terms people use to search for these bottles. (To get Sigg results just change the term in the “search term” box).

After observing this final chart it seems that most people are concerned about BPA. A lot of people search for Nalgene and BPA more than Sigg and BPA. Although Nalgene sparks more interest for searches, it’s only popular because of the BPA findings. This doesn’t seem like a positive trend.

Step Seven: Repetition and Decision Making

You have an idea on which product you’re going to pick to be sold in your Trailblazer, but before you make any final decisions you’re going to search another New England state, Massachusetts, and see which product people are more interested in.

After simply changing the location to “Massachusetts” and reviewing the graphs you have decided to sell Sigg bottles in your store. The product shows a rising interest in Connecticut and Massachusetts (you could continue to compare more New England states to truly finalize your decision) and with all the commotion over BPA and Nalgene it seems that Sigg is a safer, more trusted bottle. Plus a headlining article briefed you on how Nalgene is making a stainless steel bottle…kind of what Sigg already does. It just proves that Sigg’s products are more in demand than Nalgene’s at this point in time.

Overall…

Google Insights is an extraordinarily useful web site for researchers, business owners, advertisers and your average curious consumer. After a brief visit to the site, users will grasp its purpose and will be able to utilize it for their own needs. It gives a boatload of information to the user by displaying interest levels of products in clear, concise graphs and charts. Visitors can tailor their searches to their specific needs to find out what products are the most popular in all areas of the world. The site doesn’t give you much to complain about and if any problems were to arise, Insights for Search personnel are only an email away.

]]> http://www.buzzwordchasers.com/buzzworthy/google-insights-review-4/feed/ http://www.buzzwordchasers.com/buzzworthy/google-insights-review-3/ http://www.buzzwordchasers.com/buzzworthy/google-insights-review-3/#comments Mon, 28 Sep 2009 16:17:42 +0000 kim http://www.buzzwordchasers.com/?p=1086

This is blog entry three of four. Previous sections included Part 1:  how Insights works and Part 2:  positive aspects of the site.

Get more Insightful!

There’s no doubt that Insights is helpful, useful and interesting. It’s fascinating to look at the trends, see what people are interested in and where certain items create the most buzz. As cool as this site might be, there certainly is room for improvement. The following are some ideas that could make Insights even more powerful:

Blog, Please!

Google Insights provides its users with a helpful and useful forum to find out information and post questions. But perhaps a blog would serve as a more effective and efficient tool for visitors trying to find out information. A blog would help those newcomers out there who are truly trying to understand the site and what it’s used for. Bloggers could write about the recent, important trends that affect companies and their consumers. Yes Google Insights you have a great help spot and a place to pose questions, but we want more! A blog would also enhance the website, allowing for more help tips and user advice to show up for those in need.

Show Me More

I think seeing the rising trends in products is fascinating to most people, but is there a way to show sales of these products? Or a way to link statistics of these products for consumers and producers to observe right away? Companies want to know if consumers are buying one product over another, and its one thing to see that people are interested in something, but it’s another to see if they actually follow through and buy a product. I think it would benefit the consumer, the company and Insights if data expressing the buying rates on products was made available. Suggestion: Maybe Insights can give links to various consumer reports web sites.

How Many People are REALLY Interested in a Product?

Alright, I think I get it, Google Insights somehow figures out how many people search for “Apple” products in the Google search engine daily. Anyone can go onto Insights and find out more about Apple computers and see the rising or diminishing popularity in that product. That’s fantastic. But let’s say I searched “Apple” about ten times today and about five times yesterday. (You know, I can’t really decide if I want to buy a Mac or not). My point is, does Insights have a unique visitor counter, or are all of my fifteen searches counted? Doesn’t this make the interest level of Apple go up? And wouldn’t this be a false representation of interest just because one indecisive woman can’t make up her mind on a computer? Shouldn’t I be counted as one? Because I certainly think so. Think about the amount of times you go onto Facebook daily; wouldn’t you want all those hits to be counted as one?