Google announced Tuesday it bequeath begin offering free music downloads to Chinese customers. The Chinese Google site will allow searches by song, artist or entire album, then download DRM-free songs.

Music is hosted on China's Top100.cn, a Chinese-based music location. The downloads will be financed by advertising, with revenue split between Google, the music companies, and Top100.cn.

Heading Off Piracy?

It's estimated that 90 percent of Internet users in China download pirated music with the help of search engines. Some worldwide memory labels of that kind as Vivendi have significant stakes in Chinese recording artists, and many give attention to the new Google service as a way to help protect that intellectual property. Pirated music is costing labels millions of dollars in lost revenue in China, where piracy is most rampant.

Apple's iTunes Store is open and doing business in China, but it has little place of traffic share compared to the number of pirated music files on the Chinese Internet. In addition, the Top 100.cn site may initially carry just a small fraction of current popular Chinese score files, crippling its chances of becoming a number-one destination for Chinese music lovers.

It's unclear how people artists and labels are part of the Google-Top100.cn music rollout. Reports confirm that Universal is onboard, but there has been no word from Sony, EMI or Vivendi. Google could not be reached for comment. If the selection is not deep enough, some critics suspect it will have little chance of preventing illegal minstrelsy downloads.

Heading Off Competition as Well?

Some observers are speculating that Google's prevail upon into the China music scene is more about gaining search-engine place of traffic share than MP3 downloads. While Google may dominate the search-engine field in the U.S. and Western Europe, its Chinese rival Baidu has captured 60 percent of China's market, according to a Beijing analyst group. Google has an estimated 25 percent of the Chinese search market.

Other reports indicate China will soon surpass the U.S. in the number of Internet users, workmanship it a significant market that has so far eluded Google dominance. Baidu has attempted to become a Web-within-the-Web for Chinese users, mimicking other Internet giants such as Wikipedia with its confess Baidupedia and social-networking applications to rival Facebook and MySpace.

Baidu is estimated to achieve seven percent of its probe trade on music downloads. For this reason a number of music labels, including Sony, filed a lawsuit with the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry against Baidu in in good season June, alleging the company does little to prevent music piracy. The suit also alleges that of the millions of MP3s illegally downloaded in China, 70 percent originated with a Baidu search.

LAS VEGAS (AFP) - Computer security professionals crammed into a Las Vegas ballroom on Wednesday for the first public briefing on an Internet flaw that lets hackers hijack traffic on the World Wide Web.

"There is bunch of weird (stuff) going on out there right at once," expert Dan Kaminsky told AFP, confirming that attacks are being launched online despite efforts to conceal and patch the vulnerability in the Internet's foundation.

Kaminsky, the director of IOActive penetration testing, was met with applause and cheers when he stepped to a podium at the premier Black Hat conference to reveal details of an attack that is a boon to ill-willed hackers.

An elite squad of computer industry engineers labored in secret to solve the problem, and released a software "patch" in early July but sought to keep details of the vulnerableness hidden until Black Hat to give people allotted period to protect computers from attacks.

The Domain Name System (DNS) flaw was figured out and stretch online within two weeks of the patch's release and US telecom giant AT&T was the first confirmed victim of an attack.

Kaminsky said that in which case businesses are still hustling to protect their Internet traffic, only 15 percent Fortune 500 companies have "done nothing" to defend their computers.

"How do you force a server to 1.badguy.com?" Kaminsky asked rhetorically for the reason that he addressed the crowd.

"Oh, let me number the ways. God, it's good to be finally able to talk about this stuff."

Kaminsky stumbled upon the DNS vulnerability about seven months gone and reached out to industry giants to collaborate on a solution.

DNS is used by every computer that links to the Internet and works similar to a telephone system routing calls to proper numbers, in this particular occurrence the online numerical addresses of websites.

The vulnerableness allows "cache poisoning" attacks that tinker with data stored in computer memory caches that relay Internet traffic to its harbor.

NEW YORK - The search box is everywhere online these days. It’s built into Web browsers. It’s incorporated into Web sites of all sorts. And it’s a major driver of traffic and revenue for Google Inc. and the like.

So it should come as no confuse that nearly half of Internet users conduct a search on a typical sunlight, up from about a third in 2002, the Pew Internet and American Life Project said Wednesday. Search is approaching e-mail as the most popular thing to render on the Internet; about 60 percent employment e-mail on any given day.

Users with college degrees, higher incomes and broadband connections are more likely to conduct a search. So are men and younger users.

Firing off queries to search engines seems to be replacing a different kind of Internet starting point that people used to favor: making rounds of checks on previously visited, bookmarked sites.

Whether this shift is making people smarter remains to be seen, of course.

And by launching their Web surfing with precise peer into terms, people might be less credible to serendipitously come across off-topic content that might get interested them.

Nonetheless, greater use of search is inevitable in the same manner with people grow more comfortable with the Internet, said Susannah Fox, an associate director at Pew.

“As more and more content is being uploaded to the Internet, people are putting themselves in the driver’s seat instead of waiting for Web sites to serve up the content,” Fox said.

The phone study of 1,553 Internet users was conducted April 8 to May 11 and has a rim of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Thousands of network security professionals are in Las Vegas for the annual Black Hat Briefings computer security conference, that will be immediately followed by the DEFCON hacker assembly. Both events focus onward network and Internet security issues. The Black Hat conference is held at Caesars Palace Las Vegas Hotel & Casino, while DEFCON is at the Riviera Hotel & Casino August 8-16.

Black Hat is targeted to more mainstream professionals; for example, security experts from the Department of Homeland Security are scheduled to speak. Meanwhile, DEFCON has a looser, else underground reputation: Its schedule is peppered with hacker challenges and hacking contests. Paid delegates to the Black Hat conference can attend DEFCON for free. Conference organizers expect between 5,000-7,000 attendees this year.

Black Hat Events

At Black Hat, the keynote speaker this year is Ian Angell, a professor of information systems for the London School of Economics. His topic: the mix of computer and human activity on the reticulated spawns not only computer security but also institutional security issues. Also slated to appear in a keynote event is Rod Beckstrom, director of the National Cyber Security Center for the Office of Homeland Security.

The most anticipated presentation at the show, however, will be IOActive's Dan Kaminsky when he unveils details of the flaw he discovered in Domain Name Service software. The flaw had been kept under the load of wraps in an attempt to proactively convince major network suppliers and operators to patch the flaw before accusation about it was made public. Unfortunately, the flaw was leaked to the public on a blog site, and the race was on to patch servers before hackers could exploit the vulnerableness.

Kaminsky is expected to detail the flaw, its discovery, and what measures have been taken to patch the vulnerability. Weeks after the public disclosure of the flaw, some systems are reported to be still unprotected.

Other important presentations include details on past attacks of Cisco routers, with a live demonstration of infecting switch-operating software with viruses, and research from HP on how malware may be able to evade detection software.

Black Hat also offers training events for participants on topics such as advanced Web-penetration testing and effective intrusion testing of networks. Some training sessions are extremely capable of intensification, multi-day events.

DEFCON Events

Again, DEFCON is a looser event, with wild competitions and events in store for attendees. The most novel this year is an bidding to hack conference badges — those ubiquitous name tags everyone is forced to wear encircling convention halls. According to information on the DEFCON Web site, "The DEFCON token of office Hacking Contest awards the top 3 in the greatest degree ingenious, obscure, mischievous, ill-boding, or technologically astounding badge modifications created over the weekend. No longer just a boring piece of passive stuff, the badge is now a full-featured, active electronic product, and it exists for your hacking pleasure." Other "invitations to hack" take in a wireless network, Capture the Flag hack and a hardware hacking village.

Both DEFCON and Black Hat were founded 15 years ago by Jeff Moss, former director of the Secure Computing Corporation.

Google on Wednesday began offering an upgraded version of its inquire after Appliance. The hardware targets enterprises and government agencies that want a Google-like Web search as being office documents.

The upgraded Google Search Appliance searches up to 10 million documents. That's the corresponding; of like kind document storage capacity as the previous version that was offered in a five-box rack. A larger, 12-box version can store, manage and search up to 30 million documents.

Searching for New Features

The latest appliance lets employees subscribe to e-mail alerts for topics and documents of interest, choosing an hourly, daily or weekly schedule. It offers a spell checker in six of recent origin languages: French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch. Administrators can adjust search results for different user groups, based on department or function.

The upgrade offers native support for Kerberos, enabling a silent authentication experience for end users. Administrators can bias results based on metadata, in joining to biasing based on source, URL or date.

Administrators can also view and export daily and hourly result sets, top queries, and special fashion usage, and generate a report for every query, including reports on which queries receive no clicks by a user and how often users are clicking on sponsored links in comparison to search results or OneBox modules.

Universal Search Capabilities

Google said its Search Appliance delivers fast, relevant and stable access to information by tapping into Google's core search technology and optimizing it for business use. Once administrators install the appliance on the network, it lets stay search documents in a variety of document types, including IBM's FileNet, Microsoft's SharePoint, EMC's Documentum, and Open Text's LiveLink.

"The Google Search Appliance provides ecumenical search across a variety of internal and external sources — including file shares, intranets, databases, applications, hosted services and content-management systems," the company said. "The Google Search Appliance makes all of the information that employees need to be productive accessible through a single easy-to-use search box."

The Search Appliance crawls content and creates a master index of documents ready for instant retrieval whenever a customer or employee types in a search query. Its security features ensure that users can only access information that they have permission to view.

Google's Bottom Line

Will Google's enterprise endeavors have an impact on its bottom line?

Greg Sterling, principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence, said Google generates so much revenue from search-engine advertising that it would take a long time to put a dent in that cash cow. Indeed, about 98 percent of Google's earnings are advertising-related. It's not clear from Google's earnings reports how much revenue its other products and services engender.

"Google has competitors in the search-appliance space that have been around much longer, like FAST, which was acquired by Microsoft, and Autonomy," Sterling said. "Google seems to be getting a little bit more serious about B2B products recently and Google does have a brand advantage. The Google Search Appliance reinforces Google usage and the Google brand."

Credit Card Thieves Used Knowledge of Retail Computer Networks

It is estimated that 40 million credit card numbers might have been compromised by well coordinated attacks on large US retailers. TJX, DSW Shoes, BJ’s Wholesale Club, OfficeMax, and Boston Market are a few of the retailers identified as having lost customer credit card data. The Department of Justice outlined the means used by thieves to steal credit card information. Some of the methods include wireless surveillance technology to capture unencrypted credit card dot of sale data, and break-ins into computer networks owned by retailers. Two key privacy principles are implicated by the incidents: securing of personal information held by third parties, and not discarding information formerly payment is received and the benefit or service is provided.

DOJ: Credit card thefts helped by ‘well designed’ software, Computer World, August 5, 2008

PARIS (Reuters) - Publicis is to acquire a search marketing services provider from U.S. search engine group Google Inc as part of its push into digital advertising, the French advertising company said on Wednesday.

Publicis, which aims to generate 25 percent of its sales from the Internet by 2010, said it would acquire Chicago-based Performics Search Marketing from Google for an undisclosed amount.

The unit will boost Publicis's strategic entity unveiled in June called Vivaki, aimed at spurring growth at its digital advertising units such as Digitas and Zenith-Optimedia.

In a statement, Publicis quoted the research house Jupiter Media saying the global search market was worth an estimated $9.9 billion in 2008 and is projected to grow at 12 percent compound annual growth degree through 2012.

(Reporting by Astrid Wendlandt; Editing by David Holmes)

Time Warner will indeed split its AOL access and media units starting next year, CEO Jeff Bewkes confirmed in a release announcing the company's second-quarter earnings.

It's the first time the executive has confirmed that the split self-reliance take place soon, though it's been widely talked about for months since the chief mentioned it speculatively earlier this year. the sort of he hasn't reported yet–and what some are expecting may come soon–is that Time Warner will get rid of AOL altogether, perhaps selling it to a bigger player in the online-advertising market.

It was another tepid quarter for the online-service-turned-media-company, that saw revenues drop 16 percent, to $1.1 billion. Its ad revenues are up 2 percent ($8 million)–though display ad revenues on AOL-owned sites are down–but that business still isn't proud enough to offset the losses from AOL's sputtering Internet avenue service.

Once a national mainstay, the provider lost 604,000 subscribers in the second quarter alone and is down 2.8 million from the previous year, leaving it at 8.1 million subscribers. That's a $200 million loss (29 percent small quantity) for the circle, which had raised fees on the dial-up service in late June.

Operating income at AOL dropped 36 percent, to $230 million.

Reports have suggested that Internet provider EarthLink may be interested in acquiring the access business from AOL.

Meanwhile, at Time Warner Cable, which Time Warner spun off in May, revenues are up 7 percent, seeing a decline only in television pay-per-view revenue. An additional 214,000 people have subscribed to its "triple play" offering of cable TV, broadband Internet, and telephone service, CEO Glenn Britt declared in a release.

This post was last updated at 11:36 a.m. PT.

Kirby-le-Soken, England (Reuters) - Many Scouts may still meet in damp draughty village halls, but those wanting to widen their circle of friends have also joined up in the virtual world on social networking Web site Facebook.

"First Facebook" Scout troop has only been up and running for a year but can already lay claim to essential being the largest Scout group in the world, boasting within a little 10,000 members, most of whom belong to "real" groups as well.

"It just occurred to me there should be a scout group on Facebook. It was a bit tongue in cheek to start with, it was never meant to have the impression it has," founder and leader of the group Mark Foster told Reuters.

Members of First Facebook are not limited to traditional catchment areas, with Scouts joining from countries similar to far afield viewed like Hong Kong, Chile and the Maldives. The group's message boards allow friends to talk as well as arrange get-togethers in the real world.

"It's like a comfort thing, I'm going to university in October and it will be perplexing to stay in touch so it will allow me to keep up with scouting. I don't want travel and time restraints to be a problem" said 18-year old Andrew Duke, a member of First Facebook, as being in favor as First Weeley/Little Clacton in Essex.

further traditional scouting continues.

Scouts still congregation to large camps. Over 12,000 Scouts and Guides camped last week in Kirby-le-Soken at the Essex International Jamboreee and members of First Facebook have been meeting up, sometimes concerning the first note the rate of, recognizing each other from their distinctive navy blue and white scarves.

"If I see anyone wearing the necker (scarf) then we stop and talk. It's a chance to meet people from all over the country as well as other countries and learn about their culture," said 18-year old Oliver Clews from Stoke-on-Trent, a regular inspector to the group's Web site.

The Jamboree took place a year after the Scouts celebrated their 100th anniversary when over 28 million scouts in more than 216 countries renewed a vow to do their best and emphasized the environmental and friendship word of the world's largest co-educational youth movement.

"If I didn't come to scouts, I wouldn't have met all the people I have, I've met different people, Americans, Swedish, Nigerians and Germans," said 15-year old scout Hannah Everard from Thurrock in Essex.

"We are all Scouts, we're all the same, we're equal," she said from the shade of a dining tent.

The movement, which includes England soccer star David Beckham and ex-Beatle Paul McCartney as previous members, was founded by the far-sighted Boer War hero Robert Baden-Powell in 1907 following an experimental camp on Brownsea Island off the south coast of England.

"I'm sure Baden-Powell would have loved the idea. It's all about what he started the movement for, it's just what scouting is about — it's about making friends" Foster related.

"Scouting for Boys" written in 1908 by Baden-Powell, who last year was voted the 13th most influential person in the UK in the 20th century, is the fourth biggest selling book in the world after the Bible, the Koran and Mao's Little Red Book.

Facebook, which boasts 90 million active users worldwide, has exploded in popularity over the past year as a convenient way for Web users to communicate and share personal details with selected groups of friends or acquaintances and terms such as "Facebook me" are now heard from business meetings to playgrounds around the world.

(Editing by Paul Casciato)

SHANGHAI (AFP) - Google has launched a free music search service in China in partnership with a website backed by investors who include basketball star Yao Ming.

The service, launched on a trial basis, allows Chinese Internet users to sample or download licensed music — for free — from the database of Beijing-based music website www.top100.cn, Google said in a statement.

Chinese Internet users can search for music by the remembrance of the singer, song or album using Google's Chinese website, Google reported. The service, which began Tuesday, is not available for users outside China.

The service will provide access to tens of thousands of Chinese songs in Top100.cn, which was co-founded by Yao Ming in 2006 and attracted Google as an investor in 2007, the US company said.

Google, record labels and Top100.cn will share advertising revenue, it said. Google did not give fiscal details or speak what music companies were part of the revenue-sharing agreement.

However, it said the service was a new business model in China that would allow international record labels, which have been plagued by rampant online piracy in the country, to make money from their recordings.

"It provides a sustainable solution for legal downloads of licensed music," Google said.

More than 99 percent of all music files in China are illegal, costing record companies billions of dollars in lost return annually, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, a music industry trade body.