Christopher Lacroix's NEW MEDIA TRENDS

This blog is closing

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 11:26:39 -0400

This blog is closing due to lack of income. Thank you.

BCE put on hot seat at hearing on Web pricing

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 09:48:45 -0400

BCE put on hot seat at hearing on Web pricing:

(Canada’s) telecom regulator has cast doubt on BCE Inc.’s (BCE-T37.54-0.21-0.56%) argument that fast-growing Web traffic requires new usage-based pricing measures, setting the tone for regulatory hearings that will help shape the future of Internet pricing in Canada.
At the same time, critics say the entire regulatory exercise misses the essential point: That Canada’s strict Internet download limits are the real problem for consumers and threaten innovation in an increasingly digital economy.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission ordered the hearings after intense public outrage greeted the agency’s approval of a previous proposal from BCE Inc. That would have allowed the company to tack on additional charges for smaller Internet providers that lease space on Bell’s massive network to offer Internet plans with much larger download limits than their larger rival.-G

Globe and Mail: http://goo.gl/Yo4qj

News Corp Shuts Down 'News of the World

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 14:28:22 -0400

News Corp Shuts Down 'News of the World: #newscorp #newsoftheworld

In a stunning move, Rupert Murdoch’s media empire announced Thursday it was shutting down the News of the World tabloid, Britain’s bestselling Sunday newspaper, because of an alleged phone hacking scandal that has triggered a major public backlash here.
James Murdoch, a senior executive at his father’s News Corp., said Sunday’s edition of the News of the World would be its last. In a statement, he said the company accepted responsibility for the distress inflicted by the phone hacking allegations and the paper’s breach of journalistic ethics….
The statement acknowledged the gravity of allegations that the paper hacked into the cellphones of celebrities, politicians and even crime and military combat victims in its pursuit of scoops. Earlier this week, Britain was rocked by reports that a private investigator hired by the tabloid had illegally accessed – and deleted – voicemail messages on the phone of a 13-year-old girl who was kidnapped and later found murdered.-L

Los Angeles Times: http://www.latimes.com/health/la-fg-britain-newspaper-closing-20110708,0,5723579.story

News Corp Shuts Down 'News of the World

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 14:24:59 -0400

News Corp Shuts Down 'News of the World: Breaking News: News Corp Shuts Down ‘News of the World’

Details to come.

New York Times vs. New Media An acclaimed, new documentary, Page...

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 06:47:43 -0400

New York Times vs. New Media

An acclaimed, new documentary, Page One: Inside the New York Times, chronicles the slow, painful demise of a news gladiator in a new world where new-media, citizen journalism rules.

Murdoch hacking crisis deepens with war dead outcry

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 06:38:30 -0400

Murdoch hacking crisis deepens with war dead outcry: #hack

The scandal rocking Rupert Murdoch’s media empire deepened on Thursday with claims that his top-selling British Sunday tabloid hacked in to the phones of relatives of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The national veterans’ association, “shocked” that News of the World journalists may have been “preying on … families in the lowest depths of their misery”, broke off a deal to campaign with the paper for better conditions for service personnel.
Highlighting how the News International title has alienated readers of its flag-waving, populist journalism, the British Legion also said it may join major consumer brands in pulling advertising. After accusations it hacked the phones of not only celebrities and politicians but relatives of missing children and bombing victims, boycott calls have swept the Internet.-G

The Globe and Mail: http://goo.gl/Jc8bs

NEW MEDIA TRENDS has Continuing Coverage of The Cyber War >

La dangereuse starification des hackers

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 06:31:44 -0400

La dangereuse starification des hackers:

Ces derniers jours, les attaques se revendiquant d‘“AntiSec” se sont multipliées à vitesse grand V : publication de documents confidentiels de la police de l’Etat d’Arizona (Etats-Unis), “défaçage” (modification de la page d’accueil) de plus de 100 sites web au nom de la Turquie, attaque d’un serveur d’Apple, usurpation du compte Twitter de la chaîne Fox News, etc.
Les piratages se multiplient et ne se ressemblent pas. Dernier en date : le piratage du compte e-mail du critique de cinéma Roger Ebert par un groupe de hackers, qui affirme au Nouvel Observateur que tous les détails de sa boîte seront bientôt révélés sur le futur site HackerLeaks, le WikiLeaks des hackers promis comme le relai des informations issues d’AntiSec.
“Il n’y a aucune logique dans ces piratages”, analyse Damien Bancal, responsable de site de sécurité informatique Zataz, interrogé par Le Nouvel Observateur. “La plupart du temps ce sont des mômes qui s’amusent sur le web en lançant de simples injections SQL [requête non prévue permettant de compromettre la sécurité d’un système, NDLR] ou en devinant des mots de passe”, poursuit-il.

Le Nouvel Observateur: http://goo.gl/sNdIZ

NEW MEDIA TRENDS Continuing Coverage: The Cyber War

New @ Google: Ending privacy, Phoney invites, and bye-bye Blogger

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 05:01:11 -0400

#google

As of July 31st, all Google profiles will be public
This change means that you must have at least your full name and gender shown publicly to join Google+.
The Next Web: http://thenextweb.com/google/2011/07/05/as-of-july-31st-all-google-profiles-will-be-public/

Fake Google+ invites sent by spammers looking to cash-in on new social network’s popularity
Anybody responding to the bogus invites to join Google+ is instead directed to a pharmaceutical website selling Viagra.
The Daily Mail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2011491/Fake-Google-invites-sent-spammers-looking-cash-new-social-networks-popularity.html?ITO=1490

Google to retire Blogger & Picasa brands in Google+ push
Google intends to rename Picasa “Google Photos” and Blogger will become “Google Blogs.”
Mashable: http://mashable.com/2011/07/05/google-blogger-picasa-rebranding/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29

Hackers tweet Obama dead from Fox News account

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 03:50:51 -0400

Hackers tweet Obama dead from Fox News account: #obama #hack

FoxNews.com alerted the Secret Service on Monday about the apparent hacking of its Twitter feed for political news, after the feed was used to falsely report that President Obama was killed.
Jeff Misenti, Fox News Digital’s vice president and general manager, said in a statement that the website has also requested “a detailed investigation from Twitter about how this occurred, and measures to prevent future unauthorized access into FoxNews.com accounts.”

Tweets from hacked Fox News

We wish @joebiden the best of luck as our new President of the United States. In such a time of madness, there’s light at the end of the tunnel -@foxnewspolitics

BREAKING NEWS: President @BarackObama assassinated. 2 gunshot wounds have proved too much. It’s a sad 4th for #america. #obamadead RIP -@foxnewspolitics

#ObamaDead. it’s a sad 4th of July. RT to support the late president’s family, and RIP. The shooter will be found -@foxnewspolitics

Secret Service spokesman George Ogilvie said Monday that his agency “will be investigating the matter and will conduct the appropriate follow up.”-CNN

CNN: http://goo.gl/c2DJH

Apple hacked

A list of 27 user names and encrypted passwords apparently for an Apple website was posted to the Internet over the weekend along with a warning from hacker group Anonymous that the Cupertino-based computer maker could be a target of its attacks.
The list was posted to the Pastebin website, a hosting site for text files, by an unidentified user under the title “Not Yet Serious.” It wasn’t immediately clear if the user was allied with the Anonymous hacking group, but the existence of the file became widely known after Anonymous linked to it in a Twitter message….
The data appears to be a set of user names and encrypted passwords from an SQL database for an online survey at the Apple Business Intelligence website. The site is currently offline.-CW

Computerworld: http://goo.gl/rs4EZ

Microsoft partners with Baidu, shunned elsewhere

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 01:23:42 -0400

#microsoft #baidu

NEW MEDIA TRENDS’ Christopher Lacroix reports

Microsoft is barging its way into China, but faces image problems in Massachusetts and Switzerland.

Microsoft has partnered with Baidu. Bing search results will appear in English-language queries on the number-one Chinese search engine. The move vicariously thrusts Microsoft ahead of Google in the world’s most populated country.

Over in America, a Massachusetts man is calling Microsoft on its suggestions that it values customer input, Cnet reports. Chris Carlucci has shared a customer-service response to an idea he submitted to improve Windows: it says it does not accept consumers’ ideas for new products.

“We hope that you will understand our intention to avoid any potential misunderstandings or disputes,” the e-mail reads.

Microsoft launched an advertising and promotional campaign that touts Windows 7 as developed from users’ suggestions.

The company could stand to take a few suggestions to improve its image in Switzerland, where a political party has emerged devoted solely to ridding the nation of Powerpoint. The Anti-PowerPoint Party claims the software saps 2.1 billion Swiss francs ($2.5 billion U.S.) annually. Party president Matthias Poehm says its existence is a promotional mechanism for his book, “The PowerPoint Fallacy.”

Cnet: http://goo.gl/kcwFi
Cnet: http://goo.gl/XrjuZ
PCWorld: http://goo.gl/qWcMg

Kinky Canadian civil servant misused government computer

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 00:33:10 -0400

Kinky Canadian civil servant misused government computer: #porn

A naughty federal employee who surfed “fetish oriented” pornographic websites at his Industry Canada work station may still be working for the federal government.
QMI Agency has obtained a copy of a security report that says a Montreal-based employee used his work computer to access porn between November 2009 and January 2010.
Typically, the employee would surf pornographic sites that involved bondage or dominatrix-related themes.-T

Toronto Sun: http://goo.gl/7CpMn

New @ Google: realtime downtime, video-rental teaser, and begging Apple

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 00:25:42 -0400

#google #facebook

Google Realtime Search disabled, to work in Google+?
Google has temporarily disabled its Realtime Search function, which gave results that included real-time updates from Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed and a bevy of other social networking sites.
MSNBC: http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/07/04/7011065-google-realtime-search-disabled-to-work-in-google

Google Videos rental app makes fleeting cameo in Market, portends of an imminent release
The new Google Videos is a movie rental app that will give Android users in the US mobile access to the 3,000+ premium titles that are already available to rent on a desktop.
Engadget: http://www.engadget.com/2011/07/04/google-videos-rental-app-makes-fleeting-cameo-in-market-portend/

Mark Zuckerberg Is The Most Followed User On Google+
The Facebook CEO has 21,213 followers, compared to the Google CEO at 14,798, Google social czar Vic Gundotra at 13,783, Google co-founder Sergey Brin at 11,629, blogger Robert Scoble at 11,389, Google spam avenger Matt Cutts at 9,153, TWIT founder Leo Laporte at 7,566, Google’s Bradley Horowitz at 7,187, TechCrunch’s MG Siegler at 6,579 and blogger Gina Trapani at 5,649.
TechCrunch: http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/04/mark-zuckerberg-is-the-most-followed-user-on-google/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29

Google+ for iOS Awaiting App Store Approval
Based on previous experience with the approval process, we believe that the Google+ iOS app will debut sometime in the next two weeks.
Mashable: http://mashable.com/2011/07/04/google-plus-ios/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29

NEW MEDIA TRENDS Podcast Play the NEW MEDIA TRENDS Podcast for...

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 22:00:08 -0400

NEW MEDIA TRENDS Podcast

Play the NEW MEDIA TRENDS Podcast for the week of July 3, 2011.

Download: http://whizondemand.com/podcast/newmediatrends.mp3

Florida polls hacked

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 20:37:25 -0400

#abhaxas #hack

NEW MEDIA TRENDS’ Christopher Lacroix reports

A hacker under the handle Abhaxas has nabbed and published protected information from the Florida voting system.

Included in the information are identification numbers, usernames, and passwords for poll employees and logs of each user’s access to the system.

So, this is a little ironic. Here is inside details of florida voting systems. Now.. who still
believes voting isn’t rigged? If the United States Government can’t even keep their ballot
systems secure, why trust them at all? FAIL!

##############
# voterstats #
##############

category,id,pdf,title

“Now.. who still believes voting isn’t rigged?” the hacker wrote atop the stolen code. “If the United States Government can’t even keep their ballot systems secure, why trust them at all?”

The information dump also includes a listing of training documents and basic data about candidates.

Journalist forced to apologise

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 20:18:13 -0400

Journalist forced to apologise: #censorship #journalist

A newspaper journalist who cruelly mocked the the deaths of three teenagers killed on a gap year has been forced to apologise for her grossly insensitive comments on Twitter.
Guardian columnist Kia Abdullah tweeted that she had ‘smiled’ when she heard the news that students Max Boomgaarden-Cook, 20, Bruno Melling-Firth and Conrad Quashie, both 19, had died in a coach crash in Thailand.

The journalist, who has published a controversial book about paedophiles, asked her hundreds of followers if it was ‘awful’ that she felt no sympathy for the death of the three school friends, who had spent months saving for a tour of South-East Asia.-D

The Daily Mail: http://goo.gl/K6xKn

BBC has more high-earning men than women

The BBC has been plunged into a new sexism row after an enormous gender pay gap emerged.
Figures reveal there are five times as many full time male staff earning over £200,000 as women.
There are also twice as many men on more than £100,000 at the BBC and the average man’s pay is £41,916 while it is only £36,827 for female employee.-D

The Daily Mail: http://goo.gl/dHrl4

Microsoft releases Wi-fi tracking code

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 20:07:00 -0400

Microsoft releases Wi-fi tracking code: #microsoft #code

Microsoft has released some of the source code for the software it uses to collect details of people’s Wi-Fi hotspots, so that it can be examined for privacy implications.
In a blog post on Friday, Reid Kuhn, partner group program manager for the Windows Phone engineering team, said the publication of the code should demonstrate Microsoft’s commitment to privacy and ensuring the protection of people’s information.

Image: Nyuhuhuu

The code released by Microsoft is part of that used in an activity it dubs ‘managed driving’, whereby Microsoft uses cars to collect cell tower, Wi-Fi and GPS data. The idea behind the mapping is to be able to provide faster and better-targeted location-based services to Windows Phone users.-Z

ZDNet: http://goo.gl/umq4U

Game over for Games for Windows

Microsoft has pulled the plug on its Games for Windows Marketplace less than one year into the service’s life. But before you shed tears on your keyboard at the thought of no longer being able to purchase digital copies of PC titles, fear not: The store isn’t really going away. Microsoft’s just merging the Games for Windows marketplace into the one place that naturally comes to mind when you think about downloading PC titles: Xbox.com.
And we’re not being snarky just for snark’s sake. The general reaction of “huh?” is being echoed by a number of different commenters who remain a bit confused as to why Microsoft would sell PC games under its console brand. Especially after the bold claims issued by Microsoft executives last year just prior to Games for Windows Marketplace’s November 2010 launch.-P

PCWorld: http://goo.gl/BCRPK

Apple clamps down on iOS in-app sales

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 19:58:00 -0400

Apple clamps down on iOS in-app sales: #apple #app

A reported deadline for developers to comply with an Apple policy on in-app subscription content has passed, with some developers yet to modify their apps. But Macworld has learned that Apple is working with developers to bring their apps into compliance as the company will look to start enforcing its new rules.
First announced in February, the in-app content rules came as part of Apple’s subscription system, requiring that apps offer in-app content for the same price regardless of whether it was purchased via the app or outside of it. Apple later revised the rules, instead just requiring that developers remove any links to external sources for purchasing content accessible from within the app….

Apps can read or play approved content (specifically magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, and video) that is subscribed to or purchased outside of the app, as long as there is no button or external link in the app to purchase the approved content. Apple will not receive any portion of the revenues for approved content that is subscribed to or purchased outside of the app.-P

PCWorld: http://goo.gl/E4B2C

New @ Google: Plus promos, Gmail makeover, and gay pride

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 19:41:10 -0400

#google

Google releases Google+ promotional videos

Gmail Redesigned: Google’s Email To Get A New Look
Google’s popular email service will soon roll out updates to the Gmail interface that are designed to streamline the appearance of the tool to make it easier for users to manage their mail.
The Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/01/gmail-redesigned-google-email_n_888539.html

Gayglers: Google’s LGBT Employee Resource Group By raising awareness internally and externally, Gayglers work in a small way towards the fully equal treatment that we believe all LGBT peoples deserve.

Google Blog: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/celebrating-pride-2011.html

Tennessee bans offensive bumper stickers Tennessee has begun...

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 19:23:00 -0400

Tennessee bans offensive bumper stickers

Tennessee has begun rolling out fines of $50 (U.S.) for drivers sporting lewd, crude or otherwise offensive bumper stickers.

Advertise with NEW MEDIA TRENDS >

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 04:20:47 -0400

Advertise with NEW MEDIA TRENDS >