NEW YORK (Reuters) - Think your family going green won't make a difference? Wrong, says a U.S. study released on Thursday that shows one household ditching paper statements for Web transactions would save 24 square feet of woodland a year.

The PayItGreen Alliance said it believed this was the first detailed study commissioned to determine the impact of one individual household on the environment and it hoped to get across the message that every green step counted.

The study found the medium U.S. domestic receives about 19 bills and statements from credit card companies and banks every month and makes about seven payments by paper each month.

by dint of. switching to electronic bills, statements and payments, the average American household would save 6.6 pounds of paper a year, save 0.08 trees, and not produce 171 pounds of greenhouse gases — the equivalent of driving 169 miles.

The survey, whose results were vetted by the Environmental Protection Agency, said it would also vile avoiding the deforestation of 24 square feet of woodland, the release of 63 gallons of wastewater into the environment, and save 4.5 gallons of gasoline used for mailing.

"Individuals who think they are only one person and can't really have an impact should re-evaluate their position. Even small contributions be able to have a impact when aggregated," said Craig Vaream, a member of the PayItGreen Alliance and JPMorgan Chase.

JPMorgan Chase is one of about 16 members of the alliance what one. is made up of financial services companies and also includes Bank of America and the Federal Reserve Banks.

The alliance is lead by NACHA, the non-profit electronics payment association, that represents in addition than 11,000 financial institutions who are encouraging customers to conduct more transactions online.

The group was set up in 2007 to promote the positive environmental impact of choosing electronic payments, bills, and statements instead of paper.

It found that Americans each year mail 26 billion bills and statements and 9 billion payments in paper configuration with the related production and transportation consuming 755 million pounds of paper, 9 million trees, and 512 million gallons of gasoline.

The survey found that if 10 percent of U.S. households, or about 11.4 million households, gave up paper bills and statements the results would be significant.

It would save 75,469,808 pounds of paper, 905,638 trees, avoid producing 1.96 million pounds of greenhouse gases which was the equivalent of taking 162,861 cars off the road.

It would also preserve 6,202 acres of forest from deforestation, avoid creating 719,800,685 gallons of wastewater which is enough to fill 1,090 Olympic-size swimming pools, and avoid filling 3,071 garbage trucks with waste.

(Writing by Belinda Goldsmith, Editing by Patricia Reaney)

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc's losing bid in opposition to coveted wireless airwaves may prove a victory for the Web make inquiry leader as it stillatory stands to possess access to mobile networks without spending tens of billions of dollars to build one, analysts said on Thursday.

Wall Street analysts said the Silicon Valley Internet search and advertising giant has succeeded in forcing open network requirements upon winning bidder Verizon Communications via Google's apparent strategetics of "bidding to lose."

Verizon will control the open network but will be required to bate devices and applications from other companies to use it.

"Google was never in this game to actually build out a telecom netting. Their key goal was to open up closed networks," Cowen & Co analyst Jim Friedland said of the restrain that carriers hold over handsets and services on their networks.

Google's participation in the U.S. government's auction of wireless licenses is credited with helping to drive up the price Verizon paid to win a nationwide wireless license, giving it govern of a major work of the airwaves being vacated by TV broadcasters as they move to digital signals early next year.

Verizon Wireless, a joint venture of Verizon Communications and Vodafone Group Plc, AT&T Inc and Frontier Wireless, a partner of U.S. satellite TV company DISH Network Corp, took the lion's share of new airwaves.

The auctions raised a record $19.12 billion for government coffers.

"By creating a system that is completely open, Google may prevent carriers from using their monopoly position to drive users in a particular way to their services," Friedland said.

Google and rivals Yahoo Inc and Microsoft Corp have stepped up moves over the past year to help ensure that consumers will one day be skilful to use the Internet services on mobile phones in the way they now use computers.

Google believes making the Internet easier to use for billions of mobile phone users will translate into increased demand for its Web search and advertising services.

"Consumers soon should begin enjoying new, Internet-like freedom to get the most out of their mobile phones and other wireless devices," Google attorneys Richard Whitt and Joseph Faber said in a succinct statement following the FCC auctions.

Earlier this year, investors had begun dismissing the creative that Google was seriously aiming to win licenses to build a nationwide U.S. wireless network as a way to expand its Web services business from computers to phones.

"Glad they didn't win it. Glad Google isn't going to be a wireless network operator," Global Crown Capital Martin Pyykkonen said. "Look at the margins of wireless operators!"

Google's extremely profitable business involves selling online advertisements alongside its Web search services. Building out and operating mobile networks could have slashed operating margins now in the high 30 percent range to network operator levels in the mid-teens or low-20s, Pyykkonen said.

What remains up for debate is the degree to which Google be possible to make Verizon live up to auction rules that protect independent Internet services such as Google from being kept off phones and other devices by network owner Verizon.

"Whether or not Google can be charged for access to the devices or if customers can be surcharged for using Google applications remains unclear for now," Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay said in a research note.

(Editing by means of Gary Hill)

EVANSVILLE, Indiana (Reuters) - The controversial pastor who roiled Democrat Barack Obama's presidential campaign this week shook hands with former President Bill Clinton at the White House nearly 10 years ago, according to a photo published on The New York Times' Web site.

Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose polemical comments spurred Obama, who would have being the first black U.S. president, to give every emotional speech about race in America on Tuesday, attended a adoration breakfast at the White House in 1998, the photo shows.

New York Sen. and former first lady Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign accused the Obama team of circulating the picture toward political purposes.

"Less than 48 hours after calling for a high-minded conversation on race, the Obama campaign is peddling photos of any occasion when President Clinton shook hands with Rev. Wright," a Clinton campaign spokesman said.

"To be clear, President Clinton took tens of thousands of photos during his eight years as president."

The Obama campaign shot back, accusing the Clinton team of pushing the Wright lie to knock Obama's lead in the race to become the Democratic presidential nominee.

"After their top surrogates pushed this storyline, and Senator Clinton's campaign outlined this as a central strategy in her plan to overturn the will of Democratic voters, I can see why they wouldn't failure a photo out there that shows the kind of hypocrisy we've all reach to expect from their campaign," Obama spokesman Bill Burton said in an e-mail.

He confirmed that the campaign had circulated the picture.

Clinton and her advisers have deflected questions about Obama's relationship with Wright all week. Clinton said on Thursday that Obama's speech on race had been important.

"I commend him for making the speech. I thought it was a very important observation," she told reporters.

Obama sought to quell a political firestorm with his address after news outlets called attention to sermons by Wright at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, which the Illinois senator attended for two decades.

Wright, who retired freshly, has railed that the September 11 attacks were retribution for U.S. foreign policy, called the polity the source of the AIDS virus and expressed anger over what he called racist America.

Apple on Thursday said it is distributing the latest version of the Safari Web browser to Windows users through Apple Software Update, a move that reflects a more aggressive attempt to grab market share from Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Apple uses the update mechanism for Windows for distributing the latest versions of its iTunes music store and for the QuickTime video player, which is a foundation technology for iTunes. With the release of Safari 3.1 this week, Apple also started sacrifice Windows users the option of installing the browser upgrade. Software Update is also used to update Apple software in Mac computers.

"We are using Software Update to make it easy and convenient for both Mac and Windows users to get the latest Safari update from Apple," company spokesman Bill Evans said in an emailed statement.

being of the kind which of February, IE had 74.9% of the browser market in terms of usage, followed by Mozilla Firefox, 17.3%; and Safari, 5.7%, according to Web site analysis company Net Applications.

By shipping Safari via Software Update, Apple is taking a more aggressive approach to distributing its browser within Microsoft's home turf. In releasing Safari 3.1, Apple claimed its browser loads Web pages 1.9 times faster than IE 7 and 1.7 times faster than Firefox 2. Such claims are not unusual among vendors comparing products to rivals'.

Among the key improvements in the latest version of Safari, which is available at no charge, is support for additional Web standards. On that front, the upgrade supports new video and audio tags in HTML 5, and animations created through the use of cascading style sheets. The browser also supports CSS Web fonts.

Microsoft this month related it would configure the default settings in the upcoming IE 8 to render content using methods that give a top priority to Web standards interoperability. In choosing to favor standards, Microsoft recognized a "concrete benefit to Web designers if all vendors give priority to interoperability around commonly accepted standards as they evolve," Ray Ozzie, chief software architect for Microsoft, said in a statement.

A blog isn't just a welcome vehicle for journalists to escape the editor's red pen or for teens to wax poetic about their latest crush. They can also be a great tool for promoting your business.

Whether it's computer security, San Francisco real estate or pretty much any other business venture under the sun, some of the best info you can find comes from pros who jot down their own blogs. Namely, people who can put expert analysis and commentary to the latest trends and practices in their sector, and do just that in a blog format.

Whatever your business, odds are that you've had to become an industry prompt in your field as well. And if you share that expertise on a blog, you'll help build believe in your brand as you show you know your business. You'll also put a personal face upon the body your company.

And it's pliant. Free sites like blogger.com or wordpress.com get you up and running through your own online soapbox in minutes, and you can strange to say choose a blog URL that incorporates your company name. For example, Roger Thompson of Exploit Prevention Labs has for years run a useful Internet security blog at explabs.blogspot.com. He links to it from his company Web site, and the additional name and kind recognition afforded by the blog no doubt contributed to Grisoft's recent purchase of his corporation.If you decide to take the digital plunge, here are a few tips for online presentation.1. Be professional, but personal. It's fine and even expected to share your opinions on a blog.

2. Avoid the hard sell. By all means mention your company and/or products in the context of industry news or commentary, but save the direct advertisements for your company site.

3. Write for the Web. Keep your sentences and paragraphs to the degree that open and brief as possible. Most online readers will quickly abandon a page full of dense text.

What better way to kick off a blog about business software than to talk the same of the most significant business productivity applications out there? Sometimes it seems like we writers spend entire days inside our word processors. But for the majority of you, I'm betting you might as well be married to Microsoft Excel.

A good spreadsheet is a powerful tool, but like anything, you can overdo it. It's like the old carpenter's aphorism: When the only tool you have is a excogitate, every problem starts to apply the mind like a nail. In my time as an IT manager, I saw employees trying to use Excel for everything from storing complex databases to typing up entire reports, complete with fancy formatting. Often they would claim it was easier for them to shoehorn an inappropriate task into Excel than to learn a new program for the job.

It sounds harmless enough, but misuse of Excel may be further serious than you think. According to risk analysis firm Protiviti, productivity isn't all you hesitation to lose. Using Excel for tasks Microsoft never intended can actually open your company to alarming security risks.

The problem lies in how Excel applications are developed at most businesses. Programmers who build vigorous network-enabled software are trained to recognize possible security risks and minimize the chance of catastrophic errors. The business managers and other employees who code Excel macros, on the other hand, often have only enough knowledge to be dangerous (as engineers are fond of saying).

When an amateur Excel spreadsheet is only running on a user's local desktop, the danger is minimal. Connect that spreadsheet to a mission-critical application like a networked ERP system, however, and alarm bells should initiate ringing. Unfortunately, too few companies recognize the risk before things move suddenly breaking down.

Let's not forget that Excel itself is hardly a battle-hardened, secure application. Microsoft's most recent Office updates patched a security hole in Excel that attackers had been exploiting since January. Unfortunately, the same patch introduced a bug that causes Excel to miscalculate the results of certain kinds of macros. So while Excel is by the agency of no resources the least secure piece of the Microsoft Office portfolio (that would be Outlook), it's not without blemish, either.

How are you using Excel in your business? Is it still just a spreadsheet, or have you shaped it into something more? How farther do you muse it can bend before it breaks? And is Microsoft doing enough to make security a top priority for its millions of Excel users? Sound off in the comments.

NY body of rules Would Restrict Tracking of Web Users

After reading about how Internet companies like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo collect information about nation online and use it for targeted advertising, one New York assemblyman said there ought to be a law. So he drafted a bill, now gathering support in Albany, that would make it a crime punishable by a fine to be determined for certain Web companies to use personal information about consumers for advertising without their acquiescence. And because it would subsist extraordinarily difficult for the companies that collect such data to be faithful to stricter rules for people in New York sole, these companies would probably have to adjust their rules everywhere, effectively turning the New York legislation into national law.

A Push to Limit the Tracking of Web Surfers Clicks, New York Times, March 20, 2008.

State Dept.: Three Federal Contractors Illegally Accessed Senator Obama’s Passport Files

The State Department says it is difficult to determine whether three epitomize workers had a political motive for looking at Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s passport file. Two of the employees were fired for the security breach and the third was disciplined but is calm working, the department said Thursday night. It would not release the names of those who were fired and disciplined or the names of the two companies for which they worked. The division’s inspector general is investigating.

2 fired over Obama passport file breach, MSNBC, March 21, 2008.

Maryland DNA Bill Faces Strong Opposition

A measure to expand the collection of DNA samples from people arrested for violent crimes and burglary has extend into strong resistance from the NAACP and members of the Maryland Legislative Black Caucus, who walked out of a House caucus meeting Tuesday in frustration. Opponents are fighting the bill because they say it’s too broad and requires DNA collections from innocent people who haven’t been convicted of any crimes. Initially the brush-cutter, which is one of Gov. Martin O’Malley’s priorities this session, would have required that DNA samples be kept by law enforcement, even if people ended up being exonerated. The measure has been amended so that the government would have to inform someone of the right to expunge the sample, if the charges are dropped or the person is acquitted.

Maryland DNA Bill Runs Into Opposition, Associated Press, March 19, 2008.

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - British Internet startup Songkick launched Wednesday with a vow to inspire digital-age music lovers to reclaim the be glad of hearing bands play live in real-world venues.

The London-based website debuts with a free online service that matches people's tastes in music with the schedules of bands performing in the US or UK.

"It's all about changing the way people think about Friday night," Songkick cofounder Ian Hogarth told AFP during an interview in San Francisco.

"The music industry isn't dying; it is just moving to live. People really value that real-world experience. We are focused on using the web to make people get off the web and in front of a band."

Songkick's goal is to make it as simple to find live music as it is to supply out which movies are playing at local theaters.

"I was by a musician friend sharing frustration about how he tours in the way that much and how hard it is making money; then quit my job the next day," Hogarth said of the inspiration according to Songkick.

"I was about to turn 25 and frustrated I hadn't started anything yet. I lived for a while in Silicon Valley and everyone here seems to be doing things by the time they are 19."

He went to work on Songkick in February 2007.

Hogarth, who has a graduate step in machine language from Cambridge University, teamed with best mate and Cambridge law student Pete Smith and magazine editor Michelle You to fill what they saw as an empty nook.

"My co-founders and I lived abroad and the Internet became our source of music, but there was nothing on live music," Hogarth aforesaid.

"It was very frustrating. We are the kind of people that like to go to concerts at least once a week."

Songkick struck alliances with all major concert ticket vendors in the United States and United Kingdom, compiling a database of scheduled performances and getting fees for each customer sent their ways.

Songkick uses "symantic web" software to scan the Internet for references to bands in blogs, social-networking pages and other online commentary.

The program uses artificial discernment to learn of gigs and whether bands have appeal to similar audiences.

For example, if a blogger likens the band Linkin Park to Limp Bizkit the software notes that for future recommendations to Songkick users that enjoy either of the groups.

"It turns anyone writing about the music they love into a human approbation service, automatically," Hogarth said.

"It makes the continued movement of discovering live music ubiquitous and simple."

Songkick have power to inquire into digital music libraries in users' computers to search for bands performing locally and suggest other shows.

Songkick also lets people search by band names and provides feedback about other performances they might like.

The website co-opts music bloggers directly with "Bandsense," an algorithm that automatically turns concert references in postings into links for online ticket purchases, with bloggers getting commissions for ticket sales.

Industry statistics indicate that while music CD sales are dropping, digital song sales are thriving and artists are earning most of their money from live tours.

"The music assiduousness is booming in a space people aren't addressing online," Hogarth said. "You are seeing the industry return to what existed previous to — live music is where you make your money."

Industry figures estimate the US concert market in 2007 was just shy of four billion dollars.

Meanwhile, there are millions of bands with profiles on social-networking website MySpace bound no contracts with recording studios.

"We are coming at an unusual time in the industry," Hogarth said. "Songkick is very much an automated version of that friend of yours that always tells you about concerts."

Songkick announced Wednesday it is getting new backing from US and UK "angels" including Ticketweb co-founder Dan Porter and Index Ventures, which funded Last.FM, a hot music radio firm

"Live music is the fastest growing segment of an industry facing bulky shifts in consumer behavior," said Index partner Saul Klein.

"Concerts are loved by fans, critical for artists to build a loyal base, and increasingly interesting as a revenue stream for labels."

Songkick hopes to expand internationally as quickly as possible.