Posted 05/21/09 at 05:00:44 PM by Andy Salisbury

According to Google’s co-founder Larry Page, Twitter has them beat in the race to meet web user’s demands for real-time information – by a long shot.

Instead of gearing up for some heavy competition in this market, Google’s Search Engine Chairman and Chief Executive, Eric Schmidt, has hinted towards them becoming a partner of Twitter. “People really want to do stuff real time and I think they [Twitter] have done a great job about it,” said Eric Page. “I think we have done a relatively poor job of creating things that work on a per-second basis.”

No official word yet on what the partnership could be, but it’ll surely be an interesting situation to watch.

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Posted 05/08/09 at 05:02:55 PM by Andy Salisbury

There are certain things that you expect to find when you buy a used hard drive, personal files, leftover pictures, and sometimes (just sometimes) top secret information. At least, that’s what some recent hard drives sold off of eBay contained.

100 hard drives recently bought on the online auction site contained building blueprints, test launch procedures for Lockheed Martin’s ground to air missile defense system, medical records (including x-ray images and patient photos), confidential letters, and even some confidential corporate information detailing a 50 billion currency exchange. Good. Lord.

Thankfully, those that got the drives weren’t any variety of bad guy, but rather some folks at British Telcom’s Security Research Centre. They purchased the drives for a security study with the University of Glamorgan in Wales, Edith Cowan University in Australia and Longwood University in the US. Needless to say, I’m sure they got more information than they bargained for.

So, let this be a reminder to you! If you do insist on selling a used hard drive, be absolutely sure that you wipe that sucker clean (or, format it, then drive a drill bit through it).

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Posted 07/19/08 at 10:46:41 PM by Mark Edward Soper

 

Wikipedia is famous for being the free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Unfortunately, there are numerous examples of so-called "Wikipedia vandalism," where the reputations of people past and present have been blackened by bogus entries in their Wikipedia pages. To help reduce vandalism, Wikipedia is now experimenting with flagged revisions on its German Wikipedia site, which is apparently a hotbed of vandalism. When pages are changed, a checker must sign off on the changes to a page before they are posted.

How big a problem is Wikipedia vandalism? How do we know that the checkers who approve pages can be trusted? And what do Wikipedia fans think about all of this? To find out more, join us after the jump.

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Posted 08/26/07 at 07:51:29 PM by Erin Simon

Job-seekers and retirees get their personal information compromised, reminding us all of the importance of data security breach notification laws.

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