Surf’s up: Google Wave arrives for chosen few
By Amy Farnsworth | 09.30.09
For a few fortunate beta testers, Google Wave has finally arrived. Google’s new communication and collaboration tool, which they say is their attempt at “what email would look like if it were designed today,” integrates aspects of e-mail, social networking, instant messaging, and real-time editing. Today, it’s being offered to 100,000 beta testers by invite only.
So who received these invitations?
Google says they were sent to developers “who have been active in the developer preview” since June, users who signed up early and gave feedback about the project, and some Google Apps customers. Those who received invitations will also able to nominate up to five friends to use the system.
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Craigslist goes down: apartment hunting, job searching comes to a halt
By Amy Farnsworth | 09.29.09
If you were trying to search for apartments, free stuff, a job, or a pair of Red Sox tickets, you may have had a hard time finding them this afternoon.
That’s because Craigslist, the Internet classified site, went down this afternoon for a few hours – and for some areas of the country the site is still struggling to load.
A bunch of Tweets began circulating the Internet this afternoon asking if the site was down and if others were experiencing Craiglist withdrawal.
ceseco: Not sure if I’m the only one but looks like CraigsList is down down down… that bytes..
JaysonElliot Both CraigsList.org and AmericanExpress.com are down - and it’s not just me. What’s going on today?
friedoxygen Craigslist is down. I have two jobs that require this site to function. What do I do now?
What now?
It looks like the site is now loading in certain areas (Western Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Indiana worked around 3:45 pm EST, but The UK and the Caribbean didn’t load).
Last week, Google News shutdown. Gmail Contacts went berserk. And earlier this month, Gmail shut down for a few hours after a server error.
We’ll keep you posted about Craigslist. Until then, browsing through the free stuff will have to wait.
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EU on portable audio: Turn it down.
Turns out listening to your MP3 player at full volume isn’t good for your hearing. Who knew? Now the European Union wants to set a limit on the default maximum volume of personal audio players. Read more.
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Is Craigslist back up for you? Let us know below or follow us @CSMHorizonsBlog.
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I got phished
By Tom Regan | 08.20.09
A long time ago, my father told me his definition of an “expert.”
“An ‘x’ is an unknown factor,” he said. “And a ’spurt’ is a drip. Most people who call themselves ‘experts’ are ‘unknown drips.’ ”
Now, I’ve been writing this column on personal technology for a long time. I consider myself a bit of an expert on tech topics, particularly on things like computer security and making sure you don’t get swindled by Nigerian e-mail scams or phony bank claims. I’ve issued warnings many times in the past about the need to be on your toes.
Then a week ago Saturday, I had a very clear sense of my father’s words about experts. I suddenly felt like a drip.
I got phished. Totally and completely. And even worse, the information I gave up wasn’t mine – it was my wife’s.
Phishing is when criminals send out phony e-mails telling you that there are problems with your bank statement or your credit card account. They are very clever, these phisher folk. Often the e-mail looks exactly like one that you would expect from your financial institutions. There are ways to detect these scams, none of which I put into practice until it was too late. So allow me to go over my blunder step-by-step in the hope that you won’t fall victim to a similar scam.
First, I wasn’t paying attention. It was early Saturday morning. The kids were buzzing around, the dog hadn’t been fed, and the house needed a good tidy. But I stopped for just a moment to check my e-mail. There was a message from one of our credit card companies about a problem with my wife’s credit card. Not thinking, I opened it.
Warning bell No. 1: Why would I get an e-mail about a problem with my wife’s credit card? If there was a problem, it would have gone to her account, not mine.
So, I opened it. It said there was a message waiting for my wife on her account. To be honest, at this point, news headlines jumped to mind. “Aha,” I thought. “This has to do with the credit card companies upping their rates because of the new credit card rules that will take affect soon. I heard about this.”
So I clicked on the link in the message. It took me to a page that had trouble written all over it. But I was still not paying attention.
The page said that in order to get my wife’s message, I had to give some information: the last four digits of her social security, password, her mother’s maiden name, her mother’s date of birth, and other important credit info.
Warning bell No. 2: This actually is not a bell. It’s more like the sonic boom that happens when you break the sound barrier. No credit card company or bank will EVER, EVER, EVER ask you for this information.
That should have been a gigantic tip-off. But I was still asleep at the wheel. I entered the info and pushed the button and … it took me to the regular credit card sign-in page. And that’s when I got slapped in the head. “Wait a minute,” I thought. “Where’s the message?” It hit me all at once. I quickly went back to the original e-mail and clicked on the link again and I looked at the Web address.
D’ohhhh
It was a phony. One of the best ways to tell if you are being scammed is to look at the Web address. A real bank or credit card company’s address is pretty straight forward: like www.citibank.com, for instance. But a phony Web address will be something like www.hel.ge.citibank.ge. There are ALWAYS extra letters or numbers. If you’re not sure, just call and ask if it’s real.
I immediately called my wife’s credit card company and told them we had been phished. They canceled her card on the spot and we changed the password to get into the account. I also signed up with one of the identity theft protection companies, which immediately sent out a warning to all concerned credit card companies to keep an eye out for strange activity. My stupidity cost me $20 a month for me and my wife to protect ourselves. It’s not a big cost, but it’s a bit like closing the barn door after the horse is already out.
So be vigilant. These folks are extremely tricky. They count on people being distracted to do something dumb like I did.
You don’t have to be an “unknown drip” to get caught on the end of a phishing hook.
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Food52: A delicious crowd-sourcing experiment
By Amy Farnsworth | 08.12.09
Are you harboring a tasty recipe you can’t wait to share with the world?
Well, here’s your chance to do just that.
Soon, cooks can take part in a delicious culinary experiment: the first crowd-sourced cookbook.
The idea for the collaborative cookbook experiment, Food52, was cooked up by New York Times food columnist Amanda Hesser and freelance food writer and recipe-tester Merrill Stubbs. The Brooklyn culinary team will list two new cookbook categories each week over the course of 52 weeks and ask online contributors to submit their best recipes pertaining to these categories. This week, for example, the categories are “Your best grilled pork recipe” and “Your best watermelon recipe.”
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OMG! What do people do when Twitter goes down?
By Amy Farnsworth | 08.07.09
Yesterday, late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel poked fun at Thursday morning’s Twitter blackout, when he said, “a vicious attack by hackers shut down our nation’s most vital method of communication.”
The microblogging site was inactive for around two hours Thursday morning, after a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack bogged down servers on Twitter, Google, Facebook, and LiveJournal.
“For about two hours this morning [Thursday] no one could find out what breakfast cereal Ashton Kutcher was eating,” Kimmel joked. “It was a disaster.”
The Twitter shutdown, he said, actually forced some people to tweet in person. Hilarity ensued as two people reenact a real-life Twitter conversation.
Updates on the DDoS attacks
Reports now say the DDoS attacks have been aimed at a pro-Georgia blogger known as Cyxymu. CNN reported earlier today that Cyxymu has revealed his identity as George, a 34-year-old living in Tbilisi, Georgia. The targeted activist blogger, told CNN, that “the cyber assault was politically motivated and timed to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the Russia-Georgia conflict.” Details on these attacks are still emerging.
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