["internet is freedom"]

Lawrence Lessing's speech at the Italian Parliament, "Internet is Freedom":

[education and IT employment]

New Job Database:
The Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE), an international, educational organization reaching 75,000 professionals in Information Technology in Education and E-Learning, has launched a new Career Center to assist job seekers and employers in these fields.


*However most of the jobs, at least so far, are based in the States.


Have a peruse of the 10 most recent positions:

[blogosphere blamed in political fakery]

What's that? Sarah Palin doesn't know that Africa is a continent. Well, I certainly wouldn't be jumping to defend her. I probably wouldn't think that she was misquoted. I'd assume, well, that she was Republican and that is pretty much synonomous with...well, you know.

When Fox news made this assertion, it was (mostly) taken as fact. Now that the election dust has settled, it turns out that Martin Eisenstadt who fed this information to Fox doesn't exist, and the guys who created the now famous character were really only trying to pitch a new tv show.

But, the imporant thing that you'll discover if you read the NY Times, it's all the fault of the blogosphere.

"Mr. Gorlin, 39, argued that Eisenstadt was no more of a joke than half the bloggers or political commentators on the Internet or television.
[...]
But most of Eisenstadt’s victims have been bloggers, a reflection of the sloppy speed at which any tidbit, no matter how specious, can bounce around the Internet. And they fell for the fake material despite ample warnings online about Eisenstadt, including the work of one blogger who spent months chasing the illusion around cyberspace, trying to debunk it."
[...]
Among the Americans who took that bait was Jonathan Stein, a reporter for Mother Jones. A few hours later Mr. Stein put up a post on the magazine’s political blog, with the title “Hoax Alert: Bizarre ‘McCain Adviser’ Too Good to Be True,” and explained how he had been fooled.

In July, after the McCain campaign compared Senator Barack Obama to Paris Hilton, the Eisenstadt blog said “the phone was burning off the hook” at McCain headquarters, with angry calls from Ms. Hilton’s grandfather and others. A Los Angeles Times political blog, among others, retold the story, citing Eisenstadt by name and linking to his blog.

Last month Eisenstadt blogged that Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, Joe the Plumber, was closely related to Charles Keating, the disgraced former savings and loan chief. It wasn’t true, but other bloggers ran with it.

Among those taken in by Monday’s confession about the Palin Africa report was The New Republic’s political blog. Later the magazine posted this atop the entry: “Oy — this would appear to be a hoax. Apologies.”

But the truth was out for all to see long before the big-name take-downs. For months sourcewatch.org has identified Martin Eisenstadt as a hoax. When Mr. Stein was the victim, he blogged that “there was enough info on the Web that I should have sussed this thing out."

[employment - lecturer in internet studies]

This sounds like a great post for all you internet researchers:

Lecturer, Internet Studies
REF: 4511
Closing: Monday, 24 November, 2008

Documents: Position Description Application Advice (Before applying for this position, please view the Application Advice document mentioned above) Apply Now
Location
School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts, Faculty of Humanities
Bentley
Position Details
Academic, Full Time
Salary: $70,846 - $84,132, Level ALB
Conditions of Employment: "Employment at Curtin is governed by either an Individual Transitional Employment Agreement (ITEA) or a Certified Agreement. The University reserves the right to offer a position under an Individual Transitional Employment Agreement only"
Description Summary
(Full-Time, Fixed term – 3 years) This position will involve teaching, research and research supervision in the broad field of Internet Studies. It has a particular emphasis on the use of the Internet for communications and the relationship of the Internet with other media. The successful applicant will require a PhD in a field of research relevant to Internet Studies, be an active researcher while focusing on the Internet and being an experienced university educator. Benefits and Remuneration The salary ranges presented are those which are contained within the University’s Certified Agreements. An individual may negotiate an alternative salary arrangement under an Individual Transitional Employment Agreement (ITEA). Employee benefits include up to 17 percent employer superannuation contribution, study assistance, a comprehensive salary packaging program, and flexible and family friendly work practices in a cosmopolitan community at a convenient location. Eligibility Applicants must meet all essential criteria to be considered for the position. Successful applicants must be eligible to work in Australia for the duration of the appointment. Contact Further information about the position can be obtained by contacting Associate Professor Matthew Allen (Head of Department, Internet Studies), on telephone +61 8 9266 3511 or via e-mail at m.allen@curtin.edu.au. To submit an application, please click on the Apply Now button. Alternatively, post your application to: Ms Angela Glazbrook Deputy School Administrator School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts Faculty of Humanities Curtin University of Technology A.Glazbrook@curtin.edu.au +61 8 9266 2509 Valuing Diversity and Affirmative Action Applications are invited from women and men who share the University’s values, ethics, international outlook, value diversity and have an informed respect for indigenous people. Curtin University reserves the right at its sole discretion to withdraw from the recruitment process, not to make an appointment, or to appoint by invitation, at anytime. Closing Date: 5pm on Monday 24 November, 2008

[digital literacy: what is it and do we really need it?]

I'm reading "Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?" and while I'm scrolling through the article I'm googling some of the researchers mentioned (Rand J. Spiro, Elizabeth Birr Moje and Linda A. Jackson) and looking up some of the reports and studies. I'm also skimming through Research in Research Quarterly and Journal of Research in Reading (and complaining to myself loudly because of the 12 month embargo) and examining brain scan images. Obviously I'm reading and obviously I'm doing it in a manner different from print. But is it better? Better than what exactly? I think this is where my difficulty lies. It seems, as with the NYT article, that this is a vs matter. Print vs digital. Reading vs surfing. Literacy vs adequacy. But it isn't a simple vs issue is it? The video included in the NYT article shows a white affluent family. Each family member enjoys reading but the mum says reading for her is *quiet* and requires a comfy chair: "I can't curl up with my computer." But is this part of a quantitative assessment of online reading? Is it a feature of literacy per se? I wouldn't disagree with anyone that reading online and reading in print are different. But can we generalise and say that all reading online is different from all reading in print? Can we compare Manga online to its offline sibling? I think we could even find suitable comparisons between some early more text-based hypertext stories and print novels. Maybe instead of citing the differences we should be looking at the similarities as that might form part of the base of new literacies education and assessment. Ken Pugh says that reading in print encourages a more reflective stance, allowing time for rumination. Well, would that not only hold if students/readers are encouraged to do so. I know I've skipped to the good bits in books before {of course this is firmly in my past :)}. Do we reflect on what we read *only* when we read in print? Reading online is not always just about the "short bits" that Pugh refers to. Take a look at the project "Evaluating The Development of Scientific Knowledge and New Forms of Reading Comprehension During Online Learning" run by Dr. Donald J. Leu and Dr. Douglas Hartman. Their main research questions addressed the effects that "varying levels of intensity of Internet integration into seventh grade classroom science instruction." Their general findings suggest that:

"Internet integration generates greater online reading comprehension ability. Our results suggest it is better to have no integration or high-intensity integration of the Internet for developing concept knowledge, but not low or moderate intensity integration. Our study also provides preliminary data that suggests online and traditional reading achievement tests are not correlated."

• internet integration in a seventh grade science classroom resulted in higher achievement levels in online reading comprehension. This was true for both the ORCA-IM and ORCA-Blog; two assessment instruments with good psychometric properties. Each assessment required students to locate, evaluate, synthesize and communicate information on the Internet.
• Conceptual knowledge development in science was greater among students in the high-intensity Internet integration group and the control group.
• Consistent with new literacy predictions, we found no association between either of the measures of traditional reading comprehension (January and June DRP)and the measure of online reading comprehension (ORCA-Blog). No evidence of gains on a test of traditional reading comprehension following treatment.

Of course there are different kinds of reading too. Sometimes we read for information (and then maybe on the 'net we have quicker access to more resources) and sometimes maybe we're reading for the whole tactile and sensory experience and then we want our comfy chairs and crisp pages. But as educators, parents and leaders we need not only to address the different reasons our students/children etc... might read but also how. As Gay Ivey, a professor at James Madison University says “I think they need it all.”

[superfast internet]

From the Times

"The internet could soon be made obsolete. The scientists who pioneered it have now built a lightning-fast replacement capable of downloading entire feature films within seconds.
At speeds about 10,000 times faster than a typical broadband connection, “the grid” will be able to send the entire Rolling Stones back catalogue from Britain to Japan in less than two seconds.
The latest spin-off from Cern, the particle physics centre that created the web, the grid could also provide the kind of power needed to transmit holographic images; allow instant online gaming with hundreds of thousands of players; and offer high-definition video telephony for the price of a local call.
David Britton, professor of physics at Glasgow University and a leading figure in the grid project, believes grid technologies could “revolutionise” society. “With this kind of computing power, future generations will have the ability to collaborate and communicate in ways older people like me cannot even imagine,” he said.
The power of the grid will become apparent this summer after what scientists at Cern have termed their “red button” day - the switching-on of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the new particle accelerator built to probe the origin of the universe. The grid will be activated at the same time to capture the data it generates.

[...]

That network, in effect a parallel internet, is now built, using fibre optic cables
that run from Cern to 11 centres in the United States, Canada, the Far East,
Europe and around the world. One terminates at the Rutherford Appleton
laboratory at Harwell in Oxfordshire. From each centre, further connections
radiate out to a host of other research institutions using existing high-speed
academic networks. It means Britain alone has 8,000 servers on the grid
system – so that any student or academic will theoretically be able to hook up
to the grid rather than the internet from this autumn.

[...]

“Holographic video conferencing is not that far away. Online gaming could evolve to include many thousands of people, and social networking could become the main way we
communicate."

[learning on screen - day 2]

1st speaker of the day: Paul Maidment, BBC Worldwide, BBC Motion Gallery

check out: https://jisc.bbcmotiongallery.com (but this is the corporate site although there is a 30 day free trial), the accessible version is here.

(nb: am struck again how un-googleable some of these speakers are...)

One of the pros of using the bbc motion gallery is the ability to view a video (which are tagged with key words but the tags are more or a taxonomy rather than folksonomy as it is the bbc who ass the "search related keywords") and then choose the key words which allows an "intuitive" way to search.

Interesting is the ability to choose the "inspiration" link which provides a *concept randomiser* "spawning new keywords as fast as you can click."

500 new BBC clips added each month, feedback from establishments to dictate future content addtions, more content collections to be added each quarter, including both broadcast and niche archives, showcasing of student work, competition to encourage students to creatively use BBC material (winning entries will appear on BBC tv)

---

Professor Sean Street, Bournemouth University speaking about Online Access to the Archives of Independent Radio




Challenge: how to make available radio archives: radio.bufvc.ac.uk


(just tried to access the site but, sadly, my athens account doesn't give me access...so is this really accessible?)




We're being shown a radio documentary on Albert Pierrepoint called "The Hangman." Though a sound piece they're using windowms media player and have the image randomization turned on so we're all feeling slightly hypnotised.



Sean decides to show us how the search function works on this radio archive and decides to search for "suicide"..funnily enough: "no clips match your terms." The archive is still under construction. What is available is Brodsky and James Stewart, The Glen Miller Story (with some typos but we're told "it's a work in progress"). The idea of making independent radio clips available

The problem: the digitisation of clips. sticky-tape syndrome, some take was left to oxidise and that means part of the tape would be unreadable. The British Library figured out a way to *bake* the clips which could then be played ONCE and digitised then, if not the clips would be lost. This is restoration as well as access.

---

Nipan J. Maniar, head of advanced interactive multimedia research group (what a great job title!) at Uni. of Portsmouth. He's talking about the university's use of streaming media.

• there are security issues, DRM
• right now the database has to be updated manually so out of 3000 uploads only 380 are available
• available in different kinds of quality because "bandwidth is not an issue" hrm...I think it's a huge issue in this country, some parts don't even have the possibility of broadband (lack of providers or inadequate lines etc..)
• they track the usage of any media that *leaves* portsmouth
• how to combine the teaching with the showing of streaming video? it shouldn't be a case of spectatorship but should be interactive
• look at www.lifesign.ac.uk and stream.port.ac.uk but nanonet.org.uk seems to have a really useful tool that allows people to upload ppts and video so on one side of the screen there is an image (ppt or page of text) and on the other side of the screen is a video of a lecture or presentation.
  

Here is a sample of Nipan using streaming media in his lectures:

• One stop media shop


• securing media
http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

• log usage


• tools for teachers - helpful way of encouraging/enabling academics' independency
  access to streaming media server


"it is good to give academics some weapons to make media interesting"

Nipan's idea to have educational media online for people to download as and when (like any other kind of video store but online and for educational media): www.sourcelearn.com.

---

Chris Lane: "Presentation of DVD player/text commentary software (DPTCS)


This seems to be an idea that allows DVD content to be re-edited and integrated with other media such as text etc...

as teachers, we are moving from film educators to film makers, enacting while teaching

why is more sohpisticated DVD control important - prepare a teaching presentation, embed production in student learning

There is a really great idea - add GIS information to films so that students can literally track not only the shots but how the events/timeline unfold - the actual physicality of the more ephemeral film.

They have also created a massive database of their films that means all film files are searchable by character (how many shots and types of shots, close up etc...), by mood, by lighting...a major taxonomy behind each film but how great a resource would this be in any classroom?




We've just been shown a little clip of how users can add commentary to a dvd: AMAZING! I wish I'd had this software for my thesis. It means I would have been able to annoted web fictions with my different points of view. The clip we've been shown is a "traditional" reading of Vertigo, then a commentary employing theories of the male gaze and finally a third commentary with suggests a feminist interpretation.

But, right now this software seems only available for DVDs.

[feminism and copyright]

In this month's issue (I believe it is also the first ever issue) of the International Journal of Internet Research Ethics there is a fascinating article by Erin Hvizdak. Her "Creating a Web of Attribution in the Feminist Blogosphere" takes a feminist look at issues of copyright. She begins by suggesting that although legal issues (such as copyright) have been criticised, little in fact has been written about it. Why might this be so? Well, because "women are more likely to participate in collaborate activities, such as quilting, knitting, or cooking, activities that produce domestic "works" not generally protected by Title 17, section 102(a)." (Bartow qtd. in Hvizdak).

Moving from to the very interesting idea of "author" as a singular "'heroic self-presentation of Romantic poets' (Woodmansee & Jaszi, 1994, p. 3)" to collaborative efforts which mean authorship is plural and distributed. Hvizdak (using Bartow) explains that women seeking copyright protection "violate the feminine social norms of caring, sharing, and nurturing, therefore deterring women from seeking this protection" (Bartow, 2007, p. 33). However, usual instantiations of copyright, according to Hvizdak, privilege the singular author over a composite notion of authorship, highlighting binaries as evidence of a certain kind of privileging:

"Feminist theory also deconstructs the binaries present in copyright doctrine, exposing patriarchal power structures. Dan L. Burk cites dualisms such as mind/body and nature/culture, (Burk, 2006) while Craig cites laborer/free-rider, creation/reproduction, and author/user (Craig, 2006). Each of these binaries holds the characteristic of one side being privileged over another, or one side being "inferior and feminized" (Burk, 2006, p.11). For example, the most prevalent binary, author/user, is invoked to determine infringement. The author is the creator, the sole owner of the work, and that who has control; the user, in any attempt to become involved with the piece, such as changing or borrowing from it, becomes an infringer and is punished by law. The user must separate him or herself from the author and his or her work, becoming an outside spectator rather than an active participant. Not only is this binary problematized by the assertion that
culture, and therefore creation, works in a dialogic manner, but also in the fact that it is the public, the audience, or the user that makes a work economically viable or worthy of copyright protection (Zemer, 2007, p. 5-6). In other words, without the user or consumer, the author or creator would have no reason to call him or herself a unique, autonomous, author-genius under copyright protection."

Considering writing in the blogosphere, Hvizdak notes that one might *expect* women bloggers to *not* copyright their work because

"Blogs are highly collaborative efforts, relying on information from external sources (news media, other individuals) to create meaning, and encouraging readers to add to the creation by posting comments. This is in stark contrast to the concept of the autonomous author as sole creator in copyright law, so bloggers might not see their blogs as created by a single person and therefore worthy of or needing protection. Additionally, rejecting copyright protection might align itself with feminist activity, subverting hierarchical patriarchal power by emphasizing and encouraging collaborative creation."

***However, women in the blogosphere do employ copyright.***

"Of 143 blogs surveyed, 55 had some type of copyright statement or a link to it present on the homepage, while 88 did not. These data can be further broken down into women's and feminists' blogs. Women-authored blogs expressed copyright-protected status in 31 out of 72 instances, while feminist blogs expressed it in 24 of 71 instances."

Hvizdak goes on to detail her findings and ends with her conclusion:

"Attribution is a way of bringing these two sides of the copyright binary together - it allows one to retain control over his or her creation and therefore obtain social gains while at the same time emphasizing the collaborative nature of knowledge production and the forging of social relationships. While many of the authors of texts on feminist perspectives of copyright call for a change in the law to embrace traditional 'women's' collaborative works such as quilting or cooking, the feminist focus should instead work to negotiate the author/user binary so that shared knowledge production is encouraged and the rights of authorial ownership and attribution are ensured."

I highly recommend reading the full article.

[save energy, save the world]

we can all be a little bit of a hero...even when searching the 'net:

"Blackle was created by Heap Media to remind us all of the need to take small steps in our everyday lives to save energy. Blackle searches are powered by Google Custom Search.
Blackle saves energy because the screen is predominantly black. "Image displayed is primarily a function of the user's color settings and desktop graphics, as well as the color and size of open application windows; a given monitor requires more power to display a white (or light) screen than a black (or dark) screen." Roberson et al, 2002
In January 2007 a blog post titled Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-hours a Year proposed the theory that a black version of the Google search engine would save a fair bit of energy due to the popularity of the search engine. Since then there has been skepticism about the significance of the energy savings that can be achieved and the cost in terms of readability of black web pages.
We believe that there is value in the concept because even if the energy savings are small, they all add up. Secondly we feel that seeing Blackle every time we load our web browser reminds us that we need to keep taking small steps to save energy."

[if ET had the iphone he wouldn't have made it home]

Two weeks (or there about) after people were seen running to the nearest store only to stand in a queue for hours in order to pay over a week's rent (400 pounds for 4 gig) for a 'phone (albeit a super pretty one), they're seen running right back to return them.

As Cade Metz explains

"Let's be honest here: The iPhone's all-finger, no-stylus interface is a beautiful thing. With the exception of the on-screen keyboard - which isn't
quite up-to-snuff if your hands are any larger than a twelve-year-old's - this
is pretty close to the ultimate UI, an interface you can use without a second
thought. From the get-go. But $541.42 is too much to pay for an interface. UI
aside, the only real reason to buy an iPhone is peer pressure."

He ends his musings with this one-liner:

"More importantly, if you carry an iPhone, what happens to your self-worth? I can assure you: It plummets. Carry an iPhone, and you're just one of the lemmings."

As for technical issues, well, here are 28!


I think I'll stick to my Blackberry. So it doesn't have a 5mp camera but it has a fast web connection (Edge is soooo 2005...), security, loooong battery life, and loads of other businessey-type apps (the iphone doesn't let you edit Word of Excel files?!) that Apple doesn't seem to want to provide (yet).

Plus there's a major security flaw with iphone technology:

"Hackers could take control of an iPhone if its owner visits a doctored Web site or Internet hotspot, security researchers reported Monday.

The vulnerability of the vaunted device, Apple Inc.'s first cell phone, is only theoretical for now. There are no reports of criminals actually taking advantage of the security glitch to remotely access an iPhone. But if it were exploited, hijacked iPhones could be very useful to the same gangs that take over personal computers and use them to disseminate spam, said Charlie Miller, principal security analyst at Independent Security Evaluators, which discovered the flaw. "You could have a million iPhones dialing the company's main line and overwhelm it that way," Miller said."

For more ranting check out anti-ipod.

[the semantics of the web]

In an interview published yesterday in IT World, the creator of the web talks about how he envisions the future of the semantic web. Here is a sample of the interview, the full text is here.

Berners-Lee: (Laughs) No, I don't do that. I think about real technology. I didn't invent the term "Web 3.0." The Web is constantly developing. If you want to see what's happening that I am interested in now, there are several technologies laced together. In Web 2.0 there are some technologies like JavaScript and others that are all standards that came out of allowing people to do things. Most standards are coming out now that will have a good push towards the mobile Web initiative, which is the use of the Web on lots of different devices.
In the future we will have the Semantic Web that will allow a whole lot of other things. One of the powerful things about networking technology like the Internet or the Web or the Semantic Web, one of the characteristics of such a technology is that the things we've just done with it far surpass the imagination of the people who invented them. Take for example the inventors of TCP/IP, the original protocols for communication between computers over the Internet, created by Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn in 1974.
When I invented the Web, I thought of it as an infrastructure; I designed the Web as a foundation for many things. With Web 2.0, social networks and all kinds of things happen on top of it. When the Semantic Web arrives in the next few years, things will be using it in a way we cannot know yet. So, in a way, it's foolish to try to imagine what Web 4.0 will be like when we still don't know what will be done with 3.0.
For Web 3.0 to succeed, the people who are studying it at this moment will have ideas which will enable the new technology. They will design fantastic things just like people with Web 2.0 are designing fantastic things right now. People working with the Semantic Web will make much more powerful things. We can't imagine what they will do. But we have to build the Web to be an infrastructure. It shall never be used for particularized purposes but just to be a foundation for future developments.

[no privacy online - online fingerprints are ba-ack]

New Software Can Identify You From Your Online Habits

IF YOU thought you could protect your privacy on the web by lying about your personal details, think again. In online communities at least, entering fake details such as a bogus name or age may no longer prevent others from working out exactly who you are.

That is the spectre raised by new research conducted by Microsoft. The computing giant is developing software that could accurately guess your name, age, gender and potentially even your location, by analysing telltale patterns in your web browsing history. But experts say the idea is a clear threat to privacy - and may be illegal in some places.

Previous studies show there are strong correlations between the sites that people visit and their personal characteristics, says software engineer Jian Hu from Microsoft's research lab in Beijing, China. For example, 74 per cent of women seek health and medical information online, while only 58 per cent of men do. And 34 per cent of women surf the internet for information about religion, whereas 25 per cent of men do the same.

While each offers only a fairly crude insight, analytical software could use a vast range of such profiles to perform a probabilistic analysis of a person's browsing history. From that it could make a good guess about their identity, Hu and his colleagues last week told the World Wide Web 2007 conference in Banff, Canada.

"It could make a good guess about your identity from your browsing history"

Hu's colleague Hua-Jun Zeng says the software could get its raw information from a number of sources, including a new type of "cookie" program that records the pages visited. Alternatively, it could use your PC's own cache of web pages, or proxy servers could maintain records of sites visited. So far it can only guess gender and age with any accuracy, but the team say they expect to be able to "refine the profiles which contain bogus demographic information", and one day predict your occupation, level of qualifications, and perhaps your location. "Because of its hierarchical structure - language, country, region, city - we may need to design algorithms to better discriminate between user locations," Zeng says.

However, Ross Anderson, a computer security engineer at the University of Cambridge, thinks the idea could land Microsoft in legal trouble. "I'd consider it somewhat pernicious if Microsoft were to deploy such software widely," he told New Scientist. "They are arguably committing offences in a number of countries under a number of different laws if they make available software that defeats the security procedures internet users deploy to protect their privacy - from export control laws to anti-hacking laws."

From issue 2604 of New Scientist magazine, 16 May 2007, page 32

[Google searches web's dark side]

One in 10 web pages scrutinised by search giant Google contained malicious code that could infect a user's PC.

Researchers from the firm surveyed billions of sites, subjecting 4.5 million pages to "in-depth analysis".

About 450,000 were capable of launching so-called "drive-by downloads", sites that install malicious code, such as spyware, without a user's knowledge.

A further 700,000 pages were thought to contain code that could compromise a user's computer, the team report.

To address the problem, the researchers say the company has "started an effort to identify all web pages on the internet that could be malicious".

Phantom sites

Drive-by downloads are an increasingly common way to infect a computer or steal sensitive information.

They usually consist of malicious programs that automatically install when a potential victim visits a booby-trapped website.

"To entice users to install malware, adversaries employ social engineering," wrote Google researcher Niels Provos and his colleagues in a paper titled The Ghost In The Browser.

Finding all the web-based infection vectors is a significant challenge and requires almost complete knowledge of the web.
Google researchers
Avoiding attacks

"The user is presented with links that promise access to 'interesting' pages with explicit pornographic content, copyrighted software or media. A common example are sites that display thumbnails to adult videos."

The vast majority exploit vulnerabilities in Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser to install themselves.

Some downloads, such as those that alter bookmarks, install unwanted toolbars or change the start page of a browser, are an annoyance. But increasingly, criminals are using drive-bys to install keyloggers that steal login and password information.

Other pieces of malicious code hijack a computer turning it into a "bot", a remotely controlled PC.

Drive-by downloads represent a shift away from traditional methods of infecting a computer, such as spam and email attachments.

Attack plan

As well as characterising the scale of the problem on the net, the Google study analysed the main methods by which criminals inject malicious code on to innocent web pages.


It found that the code was often contained in those parts of the website not designed or controlled by the website owner, such as banner adverts and widgets.

Widgets are small programs that may, for example, display a calendar on a webpage or a web traffic counter. These are often downloaded from third-party sites.

The rise of web 2.0 and user-generated content gave criminals other channels, or vectors, of attack, it found.

For example, postings in blogs and forums that contain links to images or other content could unwittingly infect a user.

The study also found that gangs were able to hijack web servers, effectively taking over and infecting all of the web pages hosted on the computer.

In a test, the researchers' computer was infected with 50 different pieces of malware by visiting a web page hosted on a hijacked server.

The firm is now in the process of mapping the malware threat.

Google, part of the StopBadware coalition, already warns users if they are about to visit a potentially harmful website, displaying a message that reads "this site may harm your computer" next to the search results.

"Marking pages with a label allows users to avoid exposure to such sites and results in fewer users being infected," the researchers wrote.

However, the task will not be easy, they say.

"Finding all the web-based infection vectors is a significant challenge and requires almost complete knowledge of the web as a whole," they wrote.



Story from BBC NEWS

[google ≠ privacy]

Google's Data-Storing Feature Fuels Privacy Fears
By Joseph Menn, Times Staff Writer
April 21, 2007

"Facing worries about its tracking Web surfers' every move, Google Inc. is now offering a feature to track Web surfers' every move.

Its free Web History service is strictly voluntary — Google users can sign up to have the Internet giant keep detailed records of every website they visit so they can easily find them again later.

The feature is similar to that offered by Web browsers, except the data are stored on Google's servers instead of users' computers and there's no set time after which it is erased.

Web History's quiet debut this week came as privacy advocates continued to raise alarms about the prospect of Google combining its collection of information on individuals with that of DoubleClick Inc. Google has agreed to acquire the New York-based company, which distributes Web ads and tracks where the majority of people go on the Internet, for $3.1 billion.

Three consumer groups filed a complaint over Google's privacy practices with the Federal Trade Commission on Friday, asking it to investigate before approving the DoubleClick deal.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center and two allied groups make a novel argument: Although Google discloses how it retains data in its privacy policy, the search engine goliath is engaging in deceptive practices because most Google users don't know that their search queries can be tied to them, the groups say.

The complaint to the FTC cites a 2006 poll by the Ponemon Institute, a Michigan-based research group that studies privacy issues. When Google users were asked whether they believed that the company captured data that could be used to identify them, 77% said no.

In fact, Google ties search queries to the Internet address associated with a specific computer. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company said last month that it would "anonymize" the data by stripping those addresses from its records after 18 to 24 months.

"Polling information can be persuasive in establishing a reasonable belief that the data aren't identifiable," said privacy attorney Chris Hoofnagle, who worked at the Electronic Privacy Information Center and is now at the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology. "They've got a shot, but it's still a stretch."

In a statement, Google said the electronic privacy group's complaint was "unsupported by the facts and the law." It said that the trust of its users was essential, that its privacy policies were clear and that its users were given choices about what would be done with their information.

Google says the personal data it collects allow it to customize its search and other services, making them more useful for consumers.

Gartner Inc. analyst Allen Weiner agreed that Google users benefited from the practice but said it was a trade-off most people were uncomfortable with. Still, he said, Google continues to push the boundaries because "in order to continue to evolve its product, it truly needs for some of these things to be overcome."

Privacy concerns also have arisen over DoubleClick. A public outcry in 2000 ended the ad company's efforts to use people's names and Internet addresses in tracking online habits. In 2002, it settled lawsuits by state attorneys general and consumers over its privacy practices and promised to tell consumers more about their ability to block tracking software.

Google and DoubleClick took pains this week to explain that because only DoubleClick's advertising clients own the data about where Web surfers go, Google cannot simply merge that information with the profiles it has.

But Richard M. Smith, a privacy and security researcher, said Google could instead give its data to DoubleClick's clients.

"It doesn't matter if it is in one big database," Smith said. "It will go the other way."

DoubleClick referred questions on that theory to Google, which declined to make an executive available for comment.

As for the new Web History offering, Smith notes that Google already collects lists of websites visited when people use its Toolbar and PageRank functions.

Web History, Smith said, "illustrates to people directly how much information Google is capable of collecting."

['net gender stats]

So, in the US it seems women outnumber men in terms of online use:
"eMarketer estimates that there will be an estimated 97.2 million female Internet users ages 3 and older in 2007, or 51.7% of the total online population. In 2011, 109.7 million US females will go online, amounting to 51.9% of the total online population."



The University of Southern California's Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future reported that in 2006 the percentage of females who went online had, for the first time in the six years the center has conducted the survey, surpassed males. It reported that 78.4% of the female population ages 12 and older go online, vs. 76.7% of males.

However, from the CBC, "women don't appear to be as enamoured of online video as their male counterparts, the study found. Only 66 per cent of the estimated 97.2 million females online watch videos, compared with 78 per cent of the 90.9 million men."

"A Statistics Canada study of adults conducted in 2005 found a minuscule difference in usage between the sexes, with 68 per cent of men versus 67.8 per cent of women counting as internet users" (CBC).


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