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| Hackers used “forgot my password” feature to hack Palin’s account Posted: 18 Sep 2008 04:55 PM PDT
The hackers evidently used information they knew about Palin — her zip code, date of birth, and that she met her husband in high school — to convince Yaho’s service into assigning a new password for Palin’s e-mail account. PC World notes that the security question that Palin chose didn’t turn out to be so secure. Most online services asks questions that only you should know. But in Palin’s case, it must have been something that could easily be guessed, given all of the public information available about her. Meanwhile, Ars Technica suggests that current accounts (such as one from Wired’s Threat Level blog) fingering the son of a Democratic politician could be a set-up and that it should be possible to track down the actual attacker via the IP address used via an anonymizing service. Lastly, if you recall, security researcher Dan Kaminsky warned in August that the “forgot my password” feature of many web sites was insecure, particularly if you consider the ability to redirect emails in a system where servers with the DNS flaw exposed by Kaminsky haven’t been patched. If authorities track down the perpetrator, the attacker could face jail time. Sophisticated or not, it’s still illegal to crack someone’s password for a private email account. |
| T-Mobile does the talk: 3rd party applications on-deck “in days” Posted: 18 Sep 2008 04:50 PM PDT At todays' Mobilize conference Venetia Espinoza, Director Mobile Applications and Partner Programs T-Mobile, disclosed more information on the coming T-Mobile app store and the expectations T-Mobile has for its efficiency. Asked about the timeline it will take to launch on the new app store Espinoza said:"What used to be months, we are hoping to become days." She also disclosed the way how T-Mobile wants to reach that goal, saying Venturebeat's Matt Marshall is currently moderating a VC panel where, again, VCs express their dislike for the current terms on-deck deals with carriers have and cite it as the most important reason why mobile VC investments have not taken off so far. Here are more take-aways from her statements, where she clearly talks about the T-Mobile-Google relationship: "We are investing heaviliy in our relation with Google. I'm also pleased announced the Beta version of our partner development community program. Our community programm is intending to embrace and get rid of some of the hurdles related to bringing applications to market. You heard some statements from Google earlier (meaning Rich Miner's talk) that are dead on in saying where the problems are. Historically, we, as carriers, have been been very difficult with doing business with. First of all, you've got to figure out whom and where you need to talk to. It takes months to find the right person. Then it takes months to negotiate an agreement. With the partner development community program we hope to solve the problem. What we hope to be doing is: What we are doing is we hope to be very transparent about what it takes to do business with T-Mobile. We'll be publishing and open great parts so that publishers and partners can see what the economic terms are. So: no more guessing about "what kind of percentage am I gonna get", or "what's the deal gonna look like" and we'll also be implementing what we call a Of course, we will have our traditional channels because not every type of application will fit into that program. But the goal is to create an online, transparent easy-to-do-business-with path to engage with us. |
| Stealth online classified ad company The Worldwise Exchange gets $5 million in funding Posted: 18 Sep 2008 03:40 PM PDT |
| Nvidia cuts 360 jobs to deal with sinking financial performance Posted: 18 Sep 2008 03:18 PM PDT
These are the first layoffs since Nvidia became a publicly-traded company. The cuts are expected to be completed by the end of the third fiscal quarter, which closes Oct. 26. The company said it will give severance pay, counseling and job placement services to the affected employees. “Our action today is difficult, but necessary considering current business realities,” chief executive Jen-Hsun Huang said in a statement. He said the company would continue to invest in new markets, such as the CUDA parallel computing technology and Tegra mobile phone chips. Nvidia will take restructuring charges of $7 million to $10 million due to the layoff. Calisa Cole said that the company identified its strategic projects and then assigned employees to match them. The cuts will affect all geographies and functions. Nvidia hasn’t had the best summer. The company set aside $200 million to deal with a chip packaging flaw. And AMD is recovering market share in graphics chips from Nvidia because it’s getting a better reception for its new line of chips. |
| New FriendFeed leaves beta, and one more thing: Dupe detection! Posted: 18 Sep 2008 03:12 PM PDT
More interesting however, is that FriendFeed has added a new features with the roll out. Users of the service earlier today noticed that FriendFeed had started bunching together related entries. The feature was taken down for a bit, but now has re-appeared. The service apparently has a new function in place to find duplicate postings (or “dupes”). FriendFeed confirmed it just now in a blog post:
Such functionality, assuming it works well, should help cut down the noise — that is, multiple posts about the same thing — even further. Noise has become an issue on FriendFeed as it gains popularity and thus, more content. I’ve also found that the friend lists feature is helping me sort through information on FriendFeed better. The FriendFeed beta site is still in action, and I’d imagine we will continue to see new things showing up on that site before they roll live to FriendFeed proper. Also, FriendFeed’s Simple Update Protocol (SUP) feature, the method it is working on to speed up RSS collection, is close to being rolled out, FriendFeed co-founder Paul Buchheit confirmed to me in an email late last week. Find me on FriendFeed here, along with fellow VentureBeat writiers Eric Eldon, Dean Takahashi, Anthony Ha, Chris Morrison and Dan Kaplan. Update: FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor described a bit more how dupe detection works in response to a question I posed on FriendFeed: “We are pretty conservative with dup[e]s and don’t cluster things on the same topic if they are from different places (like VB and the FF blog),” Taylor says. Below, see dupe detection in action. I posted the link to this story on Twitter, then it came in to FriendFeed through the regular VentureBeat RSS, then another FriendFeed user, Veronica Belmont, re-shared it. All three were clustered together. Brilliant.
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| Hollywood Interactive gets $5M to try for celebrity status in casual gaming Posted: 18 Sep 2008 02:53 PM PDT
This initial online destination site features celebrity, entertainment and fashion news, along with casual games, and targets women between the ages of 18 and 34. The “Red Carpet Game” is the highlight of the site so far. This massive multiplayer online game (MMOG) is an integrated experience for game players, that includes a series of entertainment-themed mini games that allow users to work their way into virtual stardom. You create your own avatar that you can accessorize with various advertiser-branded virtual goods. Quizzes about recent blog headlines and other celebrity news items are incorporated into the game — answer correctly to achieve a recognized status versus other game players. Through winning MyHollywood’s games, you can gain access to restricted “VIP” areas.
Hopefully some of Hollywood Interactive’s funding will go towards more tangible prizes for game leaders, as well. It’s sometimes considered a poor move to use venture funding to directly reward users. But, I think that offering physical prizes as well as virtual goods has the potential to give a desired increase in engagement between brands and MyHollywood gamers and could work well for such an entertainment-centric site. Unfortunately, MyHollywood’s particular implementation leaves something to be desired as far as the user’s game experience goes. I tried the site on Firefox 3, Safari and Internet Explorer 7 browsers, and I’m having trouble even logging in. In any case, the pairing of interactive features like games alongside ads is a large trend. Retailers, especially those in the U.S., are moving to the web for advertising and sales purposes, and games provide a more unique and direct manner of reaching potential customers. Others that have taken an interactive approach to gaming and entertainment include CelebSpleak and various Facebook applications that have taken on gifting for branding purposes. |
| The Digital Car Is the Next Big Applications Market Posted: 18 Sep 2008 02:39 PM PDT
In parallel to the Web and mobile devices, a new marketplace for applications and services is becoming accessible to entrepreneurs and developers — the Digital Car. Over the last five years, consumers around the world have started bringing their own “off-deck” communications and infotainment solutions into their cars, including mobile phones, personal navigation devices, iPods, satellite radios, DVD players and more. The market for in-car electronics and services has surged to $27 billion over an installed base of 210 million cars, according to the Consumer Electronics Association. As a result, a whole industry has sprung up around selling car-related technologies through dealerships, retailers (such as Best Buy and Circuit City), and online vendors (such as Amazon and Walmart.com). In addition, media companies such as Clear Channel and XM/Sirius have emerged, delivering audio entertainment and text data such as traffic to drivers. Yet, despite this barrage of new devices and services coming into the car, automobile manufacturers (OEMs) continue to turn out vehicles equipped with 3-5 year-old navigation products; tightly control human-machine interfaces (HMIs) including in-dash touchscreens, voice interfaces, side-controls and telematics offerings; and they still tediously vet new technologies through their Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers. Meanwhile, their margins and bottom lines have been sustained through relentless supply chain management, aggressive branding, channel control and jealous protection of high-margin components such as air-conditioning, stereo systems and navigation. Most consumers would point to only a few major innovations in the auto OEM market in the past several years, namely, Bluetooth, iPod integration and hybrid electric cars. Consequently, early-stage venture investors have historically stayed away from investing in automobile information technologies. But today's "closed-garden" automobile eco-system is now opening up to application developers. While there is no dominant computing platform to build to for cars, automotive OEMs are feeling the pressure from consumer electronics devices and are slowly adopting third-party technologies – witness Ford’s successful introduction of the Sync, the recent awarding of telematics and connected services contracts by Chrysler and Mercedes to Hughes Telematics, and BMW's collaboration with Google.
Entrepreneurs and developers aren’t waiting for the OEMs to lead the way, of course. With the large-scale consumer adoption of electronics devices in the car and wireless connectivity for CE devices, they’re starting to build new companies for this Digital Car marketplace. These application companies (some of which are mentioned below) are combining cloud computing resources with cheap wireless connectivity, access to any information or services on the Web, GPS location technology and new ad-supported and subscription business models. As a result, applications built around location, social media, communications, entertainment and a greener lifestyle are now all possible. And finally, in terms of channels available to reach the consumer, application developers have an increasing number of options:
Dev Khare is vice president of VC firm Venrock in Palo Alto, Calif. He has a background in product management, marketing and international finance. |
| Q&A: Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon on Second Life’s latest evolution Posted: 18 Sep 2008 01:56 PM PDT
VentureBeat: What have you been up to since taking over as CEO? MK: I started in May. I've crossed my third month. It's been incredible. So much is happening with Second Life. My focus has been getting to know the people and the company and working with our teams to map our strategic direction for the company. We're wrapping that exercise up. It started before I joined. We have a clear sense of direction. We are making progress with our platform from a stability perspective. Our viewers are getting better with each release. We are continuing to expand the user base and the number of simultaneous users. We hit a new concurrency high. VB: You replaced longtime CEO Philip Rosedale. And one of Linden Labs' early employees, Cory Ondrejka, also left. How do you view the change in leadership?
MK: My decisions have more to do with priority and focus. We are focused on making the experience more accessible. And we are working to make it stable as it scales to greater numbers. We hired Frank Ambrose as senior vice president of global technology. He was at AOL and MCI before he joined us and he is focused on scalability and stability. VB: What are your user numbers like now?
VB: How many registered users are there now? MK: We focus more on the simultaneous users and usage hours. The last stats we posted showed user hours grew 8.5 percent to 380 million in the second quarter. The number of regions owned by residents increased 44.2 percent over the first quarter to 1.5 billion square meters.
MK: Yes, we don't really have a tourist visa for people who want to check it out. We're thinking about making it more accessible for people who don't have the time to invest in it. VB: Will you do a visa? MK: We are thinking about the best way to do it. One thing we did this summer was simplify the registration process, taking it from seven pages to one page. That really boosted the completion rate starting in early July. That's paying off now in concurrent users, we believe. We're looking at a lot of ways to simplify the consumer proposition. We are making strides. Our latest viewer (the screen interface the member uses to view and navigate through the world) is simpler and easier to use. We'll do more redesign over the next 12 months to make it more accessible for new users.
MK: It's been a very compelling proposition for some time. The excitement comes when someone spends time in the world and learns how Second Life works. There is an "aha" moment. They see the power of the experience. The media has helped to raise the visibility of Second Life. There is no question when the media covers cool things inside the world that we see a spike in registrations. There is good awareness in the market today. The first wave was virtual-world pioneers coming in. The second wave was when businesses saw a brand-building opportunity. The third wave is now where consumers find the experiences that are most relevant to them, like live music, or participating in groups with common interest. Also, we are seeing businesses re-enter Second Life with a focus on collaboration, learning and product development. We've been through substantial expansion as a platform. You can see it in the diversity of the user base. VB: Has the company found the right business model? MK: The company is profitable and growing. That's an enviable place to be in an emerging medium. We have a strong business model, built on the strength of the in-world economy. There are almost $1 million US dollars changing hands in user-to-user transactions every day. That makes the Linden Dollar strong. In August, we served our 8 billionth minute of in-world voice, a year after it was introduced. Looking forward to the next 12 months, we are on a run rate of 22 billion minutes.
MK: No. It is a free service today. We see opportunities to expand the service and add dimensions we can charge for. It has had wide adoption and I use it a few hours a day myself. We are spread out and so we do our company meetings in the world. Our revenue comes from the sale of land. That's server space with services around it. There are other revenue sources in search and classified advertising. Those are relatively small compared to the sale of land. VB: In Asia, there are a lot of companies with the free-to-play model supported by the sale of virtual goods. Do you view that as serious competition? MK: I don't. The sale of digital goods is something that has enormous room for expansion. You can see the in-world economy continues to grow at a nice clip and it will for quite some time. Our model is based on all user-generated content and there are more than 2 billion pieces of user-generated content that users have spent hundreds of millions of dollars creating. The in-world transactions are all about buying and selling those digital goods. It's a huge market opportunity for us.
MK: That always happens. Now the coverage is much more balanced. It focuses on the interesting things people are doing in Second Life. We still garner a huge amount of coverage. VB: There is also a hype cycle for virtual worlds. We see dozens of new virtual worlds getting funding or launching every quarter. MK: About 12 or 18 months ago, there was an enormous amount of VC investment in virtual worlds. A lot of those companies are coming into the market now and I see that as enormous validation of this space. We have seen no slowdown as the result of competitors. VB: Where is this heading? MK: You are seeing validation of the virtual world space. You see new entrants coming in, targeted at specific market segments. You will see Second Life continue as the dominant platform because of its size and wide user base. And because of its growing and vibrant in-world economy. VB: I see a lot of activity in the virtual room category, like Habbo, IMVU, and now Lively by Google.
VB: One of the virtual room companies said they get the sweet spot of customizing a room but not needing to pay big server costs because they don't have to maintain the position of this room in a larger world. MK: The question is whether that is compelling to the consumer. Are they looking for more? It's hard to say. What we do know is people are very attracted to the in-world economy that Second Life offers, like live music events. They show off the power of the medium to give you a feel for a real-life concert. VB: How did you view Google's entry into virtual worlds with Lively by Google? MK: When Google enters your market, it makes you look twice. We say, wow, look who's here. We were pleased it validated our market. The world realizes that this is real and has great potential. There is no impact on our business. VB: Have you answered the question of what you do in a world that is not a game? MK: Yes. Have we answered it perfectly? No. Do users answer that for themselves? Absolutely. They find meaningful content, people to enjoy it with, and then they become loyal. We could do a better job of showcasing the content for people.
MK: There are lots of successful businesses in Second Life. People can make a lot of money selling virtual goods and services. It becomes very meaningful for people. It explains why people are so committed. VB: Wagner James Au's book, "The Making of Second Life," has a section where he tried to figure out how much of the world related to sex. He said it is not all about that. Have you figured that out? MK: Second Life is broad. It has live music, education, health and wellness, business, arts, and cultural events. It's as diverse as the real world. It's hard to characterize it as dominated by any one thing. It's a lot more about being social. About shopping, buying and expressing oneself. Last weekend, we had a huge "hair fair." People want to buy hair for their avatars.
MK: Over time, our diversity will continue. You'll see some avatars that are both realistic and fantastic. The one thing that is evident is its breadth, depth and diversity. We will continue to build content creation tools that let residents create dynamic content. That's a singular focus of ours. VB: Where will the Metaverse (as author Neal Stephenson called an avatar-driven 3-D world in his book Snow Crash) wind up? MK: If we look out more than a few years, I can see that most people who are connected digitally will have a presence in a virtual world. It's compelling. Travel is becoming more and more expensive. We can visit places virtually because of the cost. It will be a huge market. VB: Does the recession have any impact on the virtual world industry? MK: We're not seeing it. It might affect the startup world. |
| A taste of some post-2.1 iPhone software updates? Posted: 18 Sep 2008 12:40 PM PDT
Well, copy and paste functionality is still high on many people’s list of wants, as is turning on the video functionality for the camera, but a couple of patents uncovered by AppleInsider today shows some smaller changes that Apple may be working on. The first one shows iPhone home screen application icons that have a small “i” in the corner. Anyone who uses a Mac computer with Dashboard (the widget screen overlay feature) will recognize this immediately. Apparently, some soft of multi-touch gesture will trigger the “i” to show up on the icons, and when you click on one, it will allow you to directly change that applications settings. Such a feature would significantly cut down on the time it takes to edit individual application settings. Currently, you have to go into the Settings area, and scroll to the bottom to find the one you want to edit. The problem with this is that as you install more and more app, that list gets longer and longer and the right one becomes harder to find.
Another nice, but small feature laid out in a patent shows a new notification system for when the iPhone is in its locked state. Currently, if you miss a call or a text it shows up in a button overlaid on this main screen. If you miss a lot of events, it can fill up and be hard to follow. That becomes really problematic when you unlock the device and all of those notifications disappear, leaving you to remember what they were, as AppleInsider rightly notes. A new method would break up calls, text messages and voicemails on the screen. It appears to also have an option to break up notifications by person. But the best part in separating these is that it appears you will be able to pinpoint which one you want to respond to right on the main screen. So if you just want to respond to a text message from one friend, you can tap on that, unlock the phone and be taken into a text window for them. Such an interface update could definitely prove useful when Apple’s new Push Notification System finally rolls out. Push Notification is the service which mimics applications running in the background by using Apple’s servers to send your iPhone updates even when your phone isn’t running a particular app. If a lot of the services you are using start implementing that, you phone’s locked screen could clutter up quickly. This new layout should help that. It’s important to note that these updates are still just patents, and may never seen the light of day. Still, both seem to make sense, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see either in an upcoming iPhone OS release.
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| Posted: 18 Sep 2008 12:00 PM PDT
Meanwhile, another Chinese investment group, CITIC Securities, is denying rumors that it’s in talks to acquire Morgan Stanley, and says it has no interest in acquiring foreign banks during the credit crisis. Alas, I don’t have much insight into the truth behind those rumors, but I did catch a talk that Gao gave in Redwood Shores yesterday to a small audience of finance industry professionals — mainly Chinese Americans, from what I could gather — before heading to New York. As you might expect, Gao didn’t offer any concrete statements on the Morgan Stanley rumor, but it was still interesting to hear the comments of a man recently named by Esquire magazine as one of the 75 most influential people of the 21st century (the magazine dubbed him “the investor of China’s money“) on U.S. financial markets, as well as his take on venture capital. Someone asked Gao if he thinks the United States is a good area for investments right now. Again, Gao offered little specifics, but he did note that when the CIC was mulling its first investments last year, it actually tried to “underweight” the United States due to the subprime crisis — in other words, to invest less in U.S. firms than their role in the global economy might warrant. However, given the CIC’s connections (Gao went to law school at Duke University, for starters), U.S. investments like the CIC’s $3 billion stake in Blackstone were hard to avoid, which led to the impression that the CIC favors U.S. firms. That’s an assertion Gao denies. Gao was also asked if he thinks the current financial crisis marks a turning point in the global economy — the comparison drawn by one speaker was to the fall of the Roman empire. It’s far too early to count the U.S. out, Gao responded, although some shift in global financial power is probable. One audience member, Greg Tarr of CrossPacific Capital, asked Gao about his view on investing in venture capital firms. Gao said the CIC has a small portion of its budget allocated for venture capital, but overall he says the venture market is too risky for a substantial investment. That doesn’t preclude opening an office in Silicon Valley or elsewhere in the United States, he said, and the CIC does speak to venture firms and high-tech companies regularly. In fact, Gao said he visited the Google campus in Mountain View earlier that day. “Personally, I’m a strong believer in the development of technology and scientific programs, but that’s very different [from my investments at CIC],” he said. [Image from Esquire] |
Thanks to the fast-growing female web demographic, celebrity and entertainment sites have become a dime a dozen. 
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