Archive for the ‘shutterstock’ tag
These two tools determine if you have the Gauss virus
Researchers at security firms Kaspersky Lab and Crysys Lab released tools today to detect if your computer is infected by the Gauss virus, a piece of malware that focuses on stealing bank account login credentials.
Gauss was discovered yesterday by Kaspersky Lab, and its function is to steal access credentials to Lebanese banks. These include the Bank of Beirut, BlomBank, EBLF, ByblosBank, Credit Libanais, and FransaBank. It also steals information for Citibank and PayPal. On top of that, the malware grabs browser history, cookies, passwords, system configurations, and more. Researchers have not been able to get much information about the builders themselves, as the command and control servers were shut down, leaving the malware in limbo.
Gauss is related to a number of high-profile viruses including Stuxnet, which became famous after attacking nuclear plants in Iran in 2010, and its sister malware, Duqu. It is also related to the recently infamous Flame, which has been referred to as a major advancement in cyberespionage.
Gauss and Flame are closer together in relation. Kaspersky says the two share nearly identical features and were built off of the same code base. The firm says Stuxnet’s creators probably worked closely with those of Gauss and may have even shared source code.
Find the Kaspersky detector here and the Crysys detector here.
via The New York Times; Image via Shutterstock
Filed under: security 
Google Translate for Android now lets you translate by taking a photo
A picture speaks a thousand words, and with its latest update, Google Translate can translate both.
Google is rolling out a big update to its translation app, which now allows users to translate objects like street signs and notes just by photographing them.
While the feature is new to Google Translate, it’s been a fundamental part of Google Goggles for a while now. Goggles allows users to search the web by photographing physical objects like landmarks, books, and text on street signs (which can then be translated).
Lack of pure novelty aside, the addition is a massively important one to Google Translate, which can now help people save lots of time during one of the most common instances of encountering new words.
Alongside the camera addition, the Google Translate update also improves Japanese handwriting input, adds dialect preferences, and offers instant translation results.
Photo: Shutterstock/Stephen Aaron Rees
Filed under: mobile 
iPad: higher market share in China than the rest of the world
Apple’s market-leading iPad has great penetration globally at 68% market share. But it’s even bigger in China, where Analysys International says that iPad has almost 73 percent of the tablet market.
IDC’s latest numbers show that Apple owns the global tablet scene — 17 million shipped just in the second quarter of 2012. And selling almost seven out of ten tablets sold worldwide is impressive.
But selling more than seven out of ten in a market where the the cheapest retina iPad costs easily 10 percent of an average worker’s annual salary is unbelievable.
iPad2 and new iPad sales rising in China
In fact, that’s a 20 percent increase from the first quarter, most likely due to price cuts on earlier models. But going down from 10 percent of an average salary to 7 or 8 percent is not terribly significant.
The Chinese iPad numbers contrast with home-grown Lenovo, which mustered up only just over 8 percent of tablet market share, and near-neighbor Samsung, which actually lost market share in China this quarter, coming down to 3.59 percent.
Perhaps the numbers should not be that shocking. With a middle class already as large as 250 million people, there will soon be almost as many well-off Chinese as there are Americans in total.
And the 33 percent of global iPads sales that are currently recognized in the U.S. could soon be 20 percent or fewer.
Image credit: Aleksandar Mijatovic/ShutterStock
Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat 
Study shows 15% of Mitt Romney’s Twitter followers are fake
Research has revealed that more than 15 percent of the President hopeful’s followers are likely fake, and generated by paid services that artificially inflate social media influence.
The study was conducted by security provider, Barracuda Security, which analyzed about 70,000 fake Twitter accounts, as well as public figures who may be engaging in the shady act of buying followers.
@MittRomney stood out for several reasons: most of the followers are new, the user-base experienced an insane spike of 150,000 followers on a single day in July, and 1 in 4 of the politician’s followers have never sent a single tweet.
A single dealer controls upwards of 150,000 Twitter accounts.
These paid services are part of a thriving underground market. The report uncovered 20 sellers on eBay and 58 websites out of the Google Top 100 search results that sell fake Twitter profiles. Search for “buy Twitter followers,” and you’ll quickly find hundreds — if not thousands — of services offering to to set you up with a large following.
This news follows Twitter’s recent crackdown against services like TweetAdder, TweetBuddy, and other spammers which track trending conversations and purposely inject marketing materials.
“Our engineers continue to combat spammers’ efforts to circumvent our safeguards, and today we’re adding another weapon to our arsenal: the law,” Twitter said in a blog post this spring.
Buying a following on Twitter is certainly against the terms of service, but it remains to be seen whether the social networking giant will play hardball against the growing army of social media dealers.
Photo: Maria Dryfhout/ Shutterstock.com
Filed under: social 
Study: Cyberbullying Is Far Less Frequent Than Traditional, Face-To-Face Bullying
Despite the breathless headlines and TV news segments, researcher Dan Olweus of the University of Bergen, Norway, reported the results of a study that found traditional bullying in schools and on playgrounds is far more common than cyberbullying. Olewus studied 450,000 students in the U.S. from Grades 3-12 and 9,000 students in Norway.
Eighteen percent of the U.S. students reported being bullied while only five percent complained of cyberbullying. Of the bullied students, 80 percent said that cyberbullying was just part of the traditional bullying pattern of in-school interaction. Three percent reported cyberbullying others.
“These results suggest that the new electronic media have actually created few ‘new’ victims and bullies,” Olweus said in a release. “To be cyberbullied or to cyberbully other students seems to a large extent to be part of a general pattern of bullying where use of electronic media is only one possible form, and, in addition, a form with low prevalence.”
Obviously any bullying is abhorrent, but the focus on high-profile cyberbullying attacks often ignores the real life bullying that goes on in schools around the world. Like any social problem, news organizations love splashy headlines about “new” forms of bullying and lawmakers are even trying to legislate it. What really needs to be fixed are the systems in place designed to react to and prevent bullying in the first place.
As a kid who got his licks in grade school, I can only imagine what modern children feel when they’re attacked on the playground and on their computers. Clearly the best hope for a solution is in education and disciplining of the bullies who make kids’ lives a living hell.
[Image: Karen Roach/Shutterstock]
Mayer’s first Google personnel poach: not a geek
As Kara Swisher notes, Marissa Mayer has brought the first Google staffer to join her at Yahoo: Anne Espiritu, who ran consumer technology PR for Google. In other words, not a geek.
Espiritu seems happy about the move, if we can take her most recent tweet seriously:
Someone please pinch me. Just to make sure I'm currently not in a state of dream. #overthemoon
—
Anne Espiritu (@Anne_Espiritu) July 29, 2012
Espiritu has not yet updated any of her social media accounts. LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google+ still show her as employed by Google, where she has worked since 2005 on projects including “proactive consumer media outreach for Google’s new social platform, Google+.”
Anne Espiritu
Espiritu also worked with Google Maps and various local initiatives for Google, which probably accounts for at least part of the Mayer connection. Mayer was most recently VP for maps, local, and location services at Google.
The obvious question: Does Yahoo really need help in the PR department?
OK, that was a stupid question.
Let me re-phrase: Does Yahoo need help getting its message out more than it needs help actually creating something cool? That’s perhaps a better question.
But it’s one that Mayer will have some time — and more than one hire — to answer.
Image credit: Eric Broder Van Dyke / Shutterstock.com
Filed under: media, VentureBeat 
Olympic fail: Officials tell crowd not to tweet or text during events
Olympic committee organizers are blaming the crowds of people in attendance for failed television coverage of the cycling event today.
So, what exactly did these fans do that was so wrong? They excitedly tweeted and sent text messages during the race, which apparently overloaded the wireless networks, reports Reuters. As a result, TV commentators were unable to give their audience correct placement of cyclists during the race or their finishing times.
“From my understanding, One network was oversubscribed, and OBS (Olympic Broadcasting Services) are trying to spread the load to other providers,” IOC Communications Director Mark Adams told The Guardian. “We don’t want to stop people engaging in this by social media but perhaps they might consider only sending urgent updates.”
Regardless of how it happened, I think it’s pretty much impossible to tell a crowd of excited sports fans to stop communicating with friends not at the event.
The network failure, however, isn’t a complete shock. U.K communications regulatory body Ofcom predicted that mobile data usage would double during the games, and previously said it was rolling out a plan to ensure sufficient spectrum was available deal with any congestion. But obviously, they didn’t do nearly enough.
I’d suspect more network failure news to come before the event officially end. We’re only two days into the games, with the good part of two weeks left to go.
Cyclists photo via Valeria73 / Shutterstock
Filed under: media, mobile, social 
Last.fm gets a pretty new UI for its most important pages
Last.fm has just rolled out the work of a few months: upgrades to some of the site’s most important pages, including the individual pages for artists, albums, and tracks.
The UI changes should make the service easier to use and should help music fans find more new tunes, the Last.fm team says.
“We’ve redesigned Artist, Album, and Track pages from scratch,” reads the company blog.
“We’ve tidied up the page and grouped things together into sections so that you can quickly find what you’re looking for. Actions like playing radio, buying music, and sharing pages with friends are now accessible at the top right of every page. The text is easier to read, and the pictures are bigger. You can also find better listening data for albums and artists.”
Also, across the whole Last.fm site, the navigation menu is now up in the top right corner. “This gives you tidier, wider pages, with more space for the page content,” the team says. Less popular features have been tucked away under a “more” menu item.
Last.fm will be listening closely to user feedback and making tweaks accordingly.
Here’s a sneak peek at the new look and feel of Last.fm:
While we’re sure the team is getting plenty of comments reading, more or less, “New album page really suck. Bring back the old album page PLZ!”* other users seem pretty positive on the changes.
London-based Last.fm is a CBS company; it was acquired by the network in 2007 for $280 million in a cash-only deal.
*actual user comment
Rad picture of bass guitarist on fire courtesy of Sinelyov, Shutterstock
Filed under: media 
Brand protection startup Mark Monitor acquired by Thompson Reuters
Thompson Reuters, one of the biggest companies for news gathering and public relations services, has purchased Mark Monitor for an undisclosed sum, the companies announced yesterday.
Mark Monitor is basically a service that helps brands track what’s said about them in public, and offers trademark protection, copyright infringement, domain management, and more. The company has more than 400 employees across five countries, and its clients include about half of the top Fortune 100 brands.
Thompson Reuters said it will add Mark Monitors services to its own to enhance the quality of protection offered to its vast number of clients. As part of the deal, the Mark Monitor team, including President and CEO Irfan Salim, will join Thompson Reuters.
Founded in 2006, the San Francisco-based company previously raised $12 million in total funding to date from Cargill Ventures, Focus Ventures, Foundation Capital, and Institutional Venture Partners. Completion of the acquisition by Thompson Reuters is subject to standard regulatory approvals.
Image via IKO /Shutterstock
Facebook stock hits new low of $24 after its first earnings report
Facebook’s stock fell 11 percent in after hours trading this afternoon, reaching a new low of $24, after the social network reported earnings for the first time as a public company.
Facebook barely exceeded Wall Street’s expectations with $1.18 billion in revenue and earnings per share of $0.12 for the second quarter. The company reported a net loss of $157 million, attributed to its share-based compensation plan. At the time of this post, Facebook’s stock was down 10 percent at $24.15.
The dip isn’t too shocking for Facebook’s stock, given how tumultuous it’s been so far. After going public at $42, Facebook’s stock closed at $38.37 on its first day of trading. The stock eventually fell to $33 on its second day. It certainly didn’t help that Nasdaq couldn’t keep its systems afloat during Facebook’s debut. Eventually, it became apparent that Facebook panicked and botched its IPO, as we’ve reported in-depth.
It’s not all doom and gloom for Facebook though: The company reported today that it has reached 955 million monthly active users — tantalizingly close to the coveted 1 billion figure. 543 million of those users access the site from mobile devices, a statistic which has no chance of slowing down anytime soon.
Photo via Shutterstock
Filed under: social, VentureBeat 