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<title>Haaze.com / darrylkikr / All</title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com</link>
<description>Test Web 2.0 Content Management System</description>
<pubDate>Mon, 18 Apr 2011 07:11:04 +0000</pubDate>
<language>en</language>
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<title><![CDATA[Is there a bidding war over TweetDeck]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=is-there-a-bidding-war-over-tweetdeck</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=is-there-a-bidding-war-over-tweetdeck</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 18 Apr 2011 07:11:04 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>darrylkikr</dc:creator>
<category>Marketing and advertising</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=is-there-a-bidding-war-over-tweetdeck</guid>
<description><![CDATA[TweetDeck&amp;39's logo.A report Monday in The Wall Street Journal claimed that Twitter is in &quot;advanced talks&quot; to acquire TweetDeck, a Twitter desktop client preferred by many of the social-media service's most active users, for about $50 million. &quot;TweetDeck has emerged as a favorite of heavy users of Twitter, letting people track tweets about multiple topics at the same time,&quot; the story explained. &quot;The program, which many people download and use on their desktop computers, also lets people write tweets longer than 140 characters, among other features.&quot;But wait: Two months ago, TweetDeck was reported to have sold to UberMedia, a company that owns a portfolio of Twitter clients and related applications. Shortly thereafter, Twitter blocked UberMedia's applications, citing a variety of concerns including trademark violations and privacy issues, and then reinstated them several days later. And then earlier this month, a CNN report surfaced that claimed UberMedia was going so far as to construct a service designed to rival Twitter, suggesting that the bad blood between the two companies was even thicker than expected.So if Twitter is attempting to acquire TweetDeck, it could be a reactionary counter-bid to UberMedia's offer. Or it might not.Twitter has declined comment on the rumors, updating its official public relations Twitter account with: &quot;We don't comment on rumors. We don't provide off-the-record background on rumors. We don't wink twice or release puffs of smoke (about) rumors.&quot;It's true that Twitter has aggressively pursued an acquisition strategy in building up a suite of applications--buying Tweetie and turning it into Twitter foriPhone, or buying Summize and turning it into Twitter Search--and that it does not yet own or operate a desktop-based Twitter client. (UPDATE: Actually, it does, sort of. When Twitter acquired Tweetie, it also acquired Tweetie forMac, which has been turned into Twitter for Mac. But it's a desktop app for casual users who do more reading than tweeting, not the &quot;power users&quot; drawn to TweetDeck.) So it would, one could surmise, want to buy TweetDeck independently of any competition from UberMedia. It's a sensible fit for Twitter to own the client of choice among its most dedicated (dare we say obsessed) users, and these &quot;advanced talks&quot; may have been going on for far longer than we think.To make matters even more complicated, UberMedia has never confirmed that it was about to buy TweetDeck in the first place (the company was not immediately available for comment).This post was updated at 6:45 p.m. PT to clarify that Twitter for Mac is, technically, a desktop Twitter client.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Symantec: Malware masquerading as Android apps]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=symantec-malware-masquerading-as-android-apps</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=symantec-malware-masquerading-as-android-apps</comments>
<pubDate>Tue, 01 Mar 2011 08:10:16 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>darrylkikr</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=symantec-malware-masquerading-as-android-apps</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Legitimate Android apps are being compromised by phony versions that masquerade as the real thing but deliver a payload of malware, according to a Symantec blog published yesterday.Found on unregulated third-party Android markets, malicious versions of legitimate apps like Steamy Window are difficult to distinguish except for their tendency to request permissions that are more excessive than usual, says Symantec. But once installed, these apps carry a new piece of Android malware dubbed Android.Pjapps.Even running the app doesn't raise a red flag to the user as the fakes closely look and act like the legitimate versions. But behind the scenes, these Trojans are actually trying to build a botnet that can take over the device by installing apps, adding bookmarks, sending out spam, and texting messages to premium-rate numbers.Symantec notes that none of the domains identified in the traffic between the bot and its C&amp;amp'C (command and control) servers are as yet active. But the company believes the goal behind this piece of malware is to push out ads and send out texts to premium-rate phone numbers, resulting in expensive charges for the user.As Android has grown in popularity, it's naturally become more of a target for cybercriminals. Revealed last August, another piece of malware called Trojan-SMS.AndroidOS.FakePlayer.a, was believed to be the first SMS Trojan to pop up on Android-based devices and was also designed to send texts to premium-rate numbers.Symantec told CNET that it didn't want to name the specific Android marketplaces where it found the malware since they are legitimate sites where people can create and share apps. The author of Android.Pjapps simply targeted these sites. However, this type of vulnerability does point to the problems that Android owners can face when using unregulated app markets, leading Symantec to recommend that people download apps only from the official app market.The threat of Android.Pjapps seems limited for now since Symantec has rated its risk factor as very low. The company explained that the bot earned a very low risk rating for three reasons: 1) Few people are downloading apps from unregulated app stores' 2) A specific setting in the Android OS lets people disable the downoad of apps from unofficial marketplaces' and 3) The C&amp;amp'C servers are not currently active.But still, all it takes is one wrong download to compromise a device.To guard against this type of threat, Symantec offers a few pieces of advice:Use only regulated Android marketplaces to download and install apps.Turn on the option to stop the installation of non-market apps, which is available in the Android OS application settings.Check user comments in the marketplace to help determine if a certain app is safe to download.Finally, be aware of the access permissions requested during the installation of an Android app. If they seem excessive, stop the installation.Updated at 11:42 a.m. PT: with additional information and comments from Symantec.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Web Sockets and the risks of unfinished standards]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=web-sockets-and-the-risks-of-unfinished-standards</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=web-sockets-and-the-risks-of-unfinished-standards</comments>
<pubDate>Fri, 10 Dec 2010 08:13:29 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>darrylkikr</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=web-sockets-and-the-risks-of-unfinished-standards</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Enthusiasm for a promising new standard called Web Sockets has quickly cooled in some quarters as a potential security problem led some browser makers to hastily postpone support.The Web Sockets technology, which opens up a live communication link between a browser and a server, remains an important part of plans to make the Web a home for more dynamic, interactive sites. It could, for example, speed up Google Instant searching and multiplayer games. But Mozilla and Opera put their Web Socket plans on hold this week until the wrinkles are ironed out.The reversal is only the latest difficulty, though. Web Sockets development already had become somewhat contentious as eager browser makers--Google in particular--began including support for a specification they knew wasn't done. Overall, the Web Sockets history illustrates some pitfalls of the style and pace of Web standards development.When technology companies are working on the next version of standards for Ethernet or USB, much of the work happens among dedicated engineers informed by work at test labs. But with the Web, the entire Internet is the test lab. That's because Web developers, not just browser makers and other industry powers, play a role in early-stage work shaping specifications and gauging interest.Browser makers, naturally eager to curry favor with this influential audience in the highly competitive browser market, race to include new technology. With Web Sockets, Google was the first with a version of Chrome a year ago. Apple has followed suit withSafari 5' Mozilla had been building Web Sockets into the upcoming Firefox 4 and Opera into its upcoming Opera 11.Web Sockets problemNow, though, plans are shifting with publication of a security problem by Adam Barth, a programmer with extensive browser security expertise. In a November 26 paper  (PDF), Barth pointed out a problem with the &quot;handshake&quot; used to set up Web Sockets connections. By exploiting it, an attacker could get a browser to run malicious code through a mechanism called cache poisoning, Barth and the paper's co-authors said.&quot;Although raw socket access is an important capability for full-featured browser-based applications, providing sockets safely has proven to be challenging,&quot; the paper said. The paper proposed a new, more secure mechanism that has won support among browser makers.The backtracking came a few days later.&quot;We've decided to disable support for WebSockets inFirefox 4, starting with beta 8 due to a protocol-level security issue,&quot; Christopher Blizzard, a Mozilla leader of new-technology work, said in a blog post. &quot;Once we have a version of the protocol that we feel is secure and stable, we will include it in a release of Firefox, even a minor update release...To be clear, we're still excited about what WebSockets offers and we're working hard with the IETF [Internet Engineering Task Force] on a new WebSockets protocol.&quot; (Although the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is standardizing Web Sockets as part of HTML5, the IETF is in charge of the actual communication protocol it uses.)An illustration of the cache-poisoning security risk raised by a prototype version of Web Sockets.(Credit:Adam Barth et al.)Next came Opera. &quot;Until the new WebSocket protocol handshake is sorted out by the IETF it will be behind a preference in Opera,&quot; Anne van Kesteren, who works on standards for Opera, said in another blog post.Apple hasn't made commitments, but it appears to be concerned too. &quot;We would be hesitant to ship protocol updates that do not fix the handshake. Given the security issues identified by the paper from Adam and company, we would even consider disabling WebSocket entirely in future releases until there is a more robust handshake,&quot; Maciej Stachowiak, a lead developer of Apple's Safari, said in a mailing list post.Microsoft, which is trying to make up for lost time supporting new Web standards with Internet Explorer 9, was more cautious about Web Sockets support even before the security problem arose. So its commentary on the matter took the form of an I-told-you-so in a blog post by Web technical evangelist Giorgio Sardo.&quot;Rushing the implementation of a specific feature and call it &quot;done deal&quot; is dangerous and in some circumstance can bring to unpleasant results,&quot; Sardo said.But Google, which employs Web Sockets editor Ian Fette, sees things differently from the rest of the pack. Fette had this to say in a statement to CNET:We are not hiding it behind a flag at the current point in time. We released the details of the research to help guide the working group towards what we believe will be a more secure version of the Web Sockets protocol, and are hoping that the group will reach consensus in the next few weeks. We already have detailed a proposal for a more secure version, and are addressing various concerns that have been raised by others in the standards community. It's important to note that the research paper Adam Barth et al. published does not demonstrate a working attack against the actual Web Socket implementation, but rather against one part [of] the protocol taken in isolation. There are other parts of the protocol that would make an actual attack more complicated in practice. We believe there will be consensus on a new version of the protocol, and implementation in Chrome of that new version, before someone is able to actually demonstrate an attack against the full Web Socket protocol as currently shipping in Chrome.Web Sockets' backgroundIn the early days of the Web, communications between browsers and servers were limited. A browser would request a Web page and a server would deliver it.The modern Web, though, needs more. Web sites are becoming actively updated, and Web applications must communicate with the outside world. To that end, programmers have come up with workarounds such as Comet and long polling to try to keep a communications channel open.Web Sockets is designed to make this task much easier to program and much faster in operation.That could be very useful for many dynamic Web tasks--for example a site with live-streaming updates or multiplayer games with real-time interaction. Another example, from Fette, is a Web-based e-mail program: typing a letter in the &quot;To:&quot; field, the server might want to start providing a list of names or e-mail addresses that begin with that letter, then update the list when the next letter is typed.That sort of communication is exactly what goes on with Google Instant, which provides search results on the fly, so it's not hard to imagine that Google would like Web Sockets there, too, in its obsession over cutting any millisecond possible out of the search process.The technology has two important attributes. One is low latency: there's a smaller delay between when a message is sent and when it's received than using current approaches. Another is that Web Sockets doesn't use as much data.It's therefore no surprise that browser makers were eager to embrace Web Sockets. Google, with its Chrome OS and Chrome Web Store push to enable a world of rich Web applications, has a particularly strong incentive.Breaking changesEven before the new security problem, the Web Sockets development had been contentious as Google and others issued browsers using the early &quot;-76&quot; version of the technology. One issue was whether Web Sockets support should be tucked behind what's called a vendor prefix. That would mean a Web programmer would call upon the feature using browser-specific instructions. That approach protects against Web sites breaking when the final, incompatible version is released later.The debate about how to handle early-stage Web Sockets support has been going for months on the Mozilla mailing list.&quot;I think the best strategy is to just keep breaking people to force the expectation that this is still a work in progress, and if you're not aware of that you shouldn't be using it,&quot; Fette said in one comment. &quot;From the browser perspective, my intent is to keep pushing out new revisions, with the assumption that we auto-update and will not have old versions lying around to deal with.&quot;But not everybody updates software as diligently as might be ideal. That can lead to difficulties ensuring new technology doesn't break older technology, even if the older technology doesn't comply with modern standards.&quot;Personally I like Web Sockets. I'm looking forward to seeing them available in all browsers. But I also do care about consistent implementations, that work the same (interoperable, secure, stable) way across any browser--over time,&quot; Sardo said. &quot;I don't want to write some code today, falling in the '(non) Web Standard trap,' and then have to re-write my code in 1 year from now because that particular implementation wasn't exactly ready for prime time yet and has been removed or changed.&quot;In his comment to CNET, Fette defended Google's approach, including shipping Web Sockets early in Chrome with the possibility that its underlying technology would change.&quot;We have gained a good deal of insight by having an implementation we and others can experiment with,&quot; Fette said, including details about message sizes, compression, and interactions with the complex realities of networking. &quot;I don't think it would be possible to do this work without that ability to experiment.&quot;Because of that value, it's not likely that Web standards development will stop relying on real-world trials.But what is changing is that development's pace. Google has a sense of urgency around developing Web Sockets. But with other major browser powers concluding otherwise, it's clear that Web Sockets' momentum has been slowed.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[On the GreenBeat: Electric car charger Coulomb gets new CEO, Gevo&'s biofuels shares rise]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=on-the-greenbeat-electric-car-charger-coulomb-gets-new-ceo-gevorsquos-biofuels-shares-rise</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=on-the-greenbeat-electric-car-charger-coulomb-gets-new-ceo-gevorsquos-biofuels-shares-rise</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>darrylkikr</dc:creator>
<category>Latest News</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=on-the-greenbeat-electric-car-charger-coulomb-gets-new-ceo-gevorsquos-biofuels-shares-rise</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Herea4a4s the latest action wea4a4re following on the GreenBeat:Gevo shares rise after $107 million biofuels IPO &amp;8212' Gevo&amp;'s shares have climbed about 13 percent today to $16.94 at the time of this posting, up from its initial offering price of $15. The companyIPO&amp;'d on the Nasdaq at the high end of its range, selling 7.1 million shares at that price.Gevo plans to use the proceeds in part to retrofit an ethanol facility in Minnesota to produce isobutanol, a versatile alcohol compound used in rubber and lubricants. The company is backed by Khosla Ventures and Richard Branson&amp;'s Virgin Green Fund.Charging station startup Coulomb gets new CEO &amp;8212' Electric car charging company Coulomb Technologies announced a new chief executive today, Pasquale Romano. Romano was formerly president and CEO of 2Wire, a home broadband services and hardware provider recently acquired by Pace for $475 million. He will replace CEO and company co-founder Richard Lowenthal, who will move into the new position of Chief Technical Officer.Waste Management and Genomatica ink chemicals deal &amp;8212' The two companies announced a strategic joint agreement to research the production of chemicals from &amp;''syngas&amp;'' (synthetic gas) made from municipal waste. Genomatica will create specially-designed organisms and manufacturing proceses to convert the syngas into bio-chemicals. Waste Management is a top waste player that has previously invested in waste-to-biofuels ventures, and the deal with Genomatica could yield uses for syngas produced by the company through landfill gas and other means.Zero&amp;'s new electric motorcycles offer public charging &amp;8211' The electric motorcycle maker will offer a fast-charge option in its 2011 lineup and an optional J1772 accessory that will allow the vehicles to be charged at the same public charging stations electric cars use.GridPoint to use Solyndra solar panels &amp;8211' Venture-backed Solyndra, which closed its first factory last year, will supply solar modules to GridPoint in a small-scale project in North Texas. GridPoint said it will use the panels in a 582-kilowatt solar panel system for the Lady Bird Johnson Middle School, set to open in 2011 as the largest net-zero energy school in the country.Yingli nabs Borrego solar deal &amp;8212' Chinese solar manufacturer Yingli Green Energy will supply 20 megawatts of solar modules to San Diego-based Borrego Solar this year. The panels will be used in U.S. commercial solar projects being developed by Borrego.Next Story: Foursquare short-cut to debut on Japanese smartphones Previous Story: HP to bring Palm&amp;'s WebOS mobile operating system to PCsPrintEmailTwitterFacebookGoogle BuzzLinkedIn      DiggStumbleUponRedditDeliciousGoogleMore&amp;8230'          Tags: biochemicals, biofuels, electric cars, electric motorcycles, electric vehicles, SolarCompanies: Borrego Solar, Coulomb, Coulomb Technologies, Gevo, Gridpoint, Solyndra, Yingli, Zero          Tags: biochemicals, biofuels, electric cars, electric motorcycles, electric vehicles, SolarCompanies: Borrego Solar, Coulomb, Coulomb Technologies, Gevo, Gridpoint, Solyndra, Yingli, ZeroIris Kuo is the VentureBeat's lead GreenBeat writer. She has reported for The Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong, Houston Chronicle, the McClatchy Washington Bureau and Dallas public radio. Iris attended the University of Texas at Dallas and lives in Houston. Follow Iris on Twitter @thestatuskuo (and yes, that's how you  pronounce her last name). Have news to share Launching a startup Email: tips@venturebeat.comVentureBeat has new weekly email newsletters.  Stay on top of the news, and don't miss a beat.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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