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<title>Haaze.com / gardenislandphotography / All</title>
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<pubDate>Thu, 17 Feb 2011 08:10:32 +0000</pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Fighting spam and scams on Twitter]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=fighting-spam-and-scams-on-twitter</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=fighting-spam-and-scams-on-twitter</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 17 Feb 2011 08:10:32 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>gardenislandphotography</dc:creator>
<category>Technology</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=fighting-spam-and-scams-on-twitter</guid>
<description><![CDATA[SAN FRANCISCO--Twitter presents a relatively new frontier for spammers, malware creators, and all around bad guys, which in turn has created the opportunity for security researchers and vendors alike to try to figure out, and put a stop to, their efforts.One company that's trying to get a handle on the size of the problem, and on ways to fight it, is Barracuda Networks. During a talk at the RSA security conference here, which wraps up tomorrow, Barracuda outlined some of the research it's been doing in this area over the past two years.Paul Judge, chief research officer and VP of cloud services for Barracuda, noted that what makes Twitter a particularly attractive target is that it's both a social network and a search engine. This lets scammers place their wares on a public feed to reach a list of followers, as well as seek new eyeballs by making use of trending keywords to have their wares appear in Twitter search results (more on that here).But who, you're wondering, would follow a scammer on Twitter It's more common than you'd think, said Barracuda research scientist Daniel Peck. One example the company tracked was Download-Heaven, a site that was using a Twitter account to push links to hosted shareware filled with malware and Trojans. Download-Heaven had 445 followers while following only one account itself. Peck said the scammers were following other Twitter users as a way of getting them to return the favor and follow Download-Heaven. Then the scammers would simply unfollow those users while leaving them to continue receiving its updates, including links to malware.Barracuda looked for that sort of imbalance as it tracked a raw stream of data from Twitter. It also looked for accounts that had been unfollowed by a lot of users over time' such accounts have often been recognized by other Twitter users as bad news. Finally, Barracuda tried to figure out the behaviors of typical users to see if it could put together additional filters that would spot users who were up to no good.The result was a reputation system that looked at the Twitter public stream (through its API), as well as an extra 20,000 queries per hour outside of the normal public stream. The test ran for two years and evaluated tweet-to-follower ratios as well as the content of what users were sharing. What Barracuda found was that just 43 percent of Twitter users could be classified as &quot;true.&quot; These were users that had more than 10 followers, friends, and tweets. That was compared with the other 57 percent of the network, which fell into a bucket of questionables.By analyzing the flow of accounts, Barracuda was also able to create a &quot;crime rate&quot;--the percentage of accounts created per month that end up getting suspended by Twitter. This number would swing wildly based on real-world events, such as Oprah joining the network, or the World Cup kicking into gear, which would bring in big swells of new Twitter users, and, in turn, flocks of scammers.These topical items were another area Barracuda focused on during the test. Much like trying to game conventional search engines to get new eyeballs, scammers were adding topic tags and/or popular words and phrases to tweets to get them to show up in the &quot;Trends&quot; field on Twitter pages and higher up on Twitter's search results pages. To track how widespread this practice was, Barracuda began grabbing popular search terms on Twitter every hour, and doing searches for them on the site. It would then look at the tweets that turned up, follow any included links, and look for malicious code on the resulting Web sites.A breakdown of malware found on each search engine over the course of five months. (click to enlarge)(Credit:Josh Lowensohn/CNET)What they found, after five months of searching for popular words and phrases on Twitter as well as on more traditional search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing, was a total of 34,627 samples of malware. Twitter accounted for 8 percent of this total, with the other search engines logging the remainder. &quot;It's interesting, because we've been doing this work for probably nine months of a year now, and the last time we really examined it and looked back on this, it charted very differently,&quot; Judge said. &quot;About 69 percent of the malware that we found was on Google at the time, only 1 percent was on Twitter.&quot; &quot;A couple things happened,&quot; Judge continued. &quot;Google didn't necessarily get better--there was more malware--basically Bing, Twitter, and Yahoo got worse. So, as the amount of malware increased, Google pretty much stayed steady with the amount of malware that was found there, but the other engines we started to see become a little more equal opportunity.&quot; To Twitter's credit, the company has made several efforts to keep this malware at bay. Back in March of last year, it began routing links through a filter that scans for malware and keeps sullied links from being posted. It also employed its own link-shortening service that similarly vets links. And the company transitioned to using OAuth, which lets users authenticate their credentials without providing a username or password, potentially keeping users from having their credentials hijacked by rogue third-party applications.Judge closed by noting that Barracuda had put together its own tool that can help users see if they've accidentally befriended one of these spammy or scammy users, or posted one of their links. The free Profile Protector scans both your Facebook and Twitter profiles and identifies users that are on the company's watch list. <br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[DanKam smartphone app aids the colorblind]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=dankam-smartphone-app-aids-the-colorblind</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=dankam-smartphone-app-aids-the-colorblind</comments>
<pubDate>Fri, 17 Dec 2010 08:10:41 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>gardenislandphotography</dc:creator>
<category>Technology</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=dankam-smartphone-app-aids-the-colorblind</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Distinct colors pop when DanKam is used to view the Ishihara color test online.(Credit:James Martin/CNET)When Jeff Sparkman draws his comic book-style superheroes with colored pencils he often has to ask other people to tell him what color his masked men turned out to be because he's colorblind.  Now, a new smartphone app can help him figure out what colors he's using and how the picture looks to most everyone else.  The DanKam app, available foriPhone and Android for $2.99, is an augmented reality application that turns the vague hues that 1 percent of the population with colorblindness sees into the &quot;true&quot; colors as everyone else sees them.  &quot;DanKam takes the stream of data coming in through the phone's camera and changes the colors slightly so they fall within the range that people who are colorblind see,&quot; developer Dan Kaminsky told CNET. &quot;You can tweak it to fit your needs. There is a spectrum and not everyone who is colorblind sees things the same.&quot; Kaminsky, a security researcher more well known for uncovering holes in the Internet infrastructure than being a graphics nerd, released the app this week after working on it for a year as a side project. &quot;It's been nice to be working on something that has absolutely nothing to do with DNS (domain name system),&quot; he said. He came up with the idea after watching the 2009 film &quot;Star Trek.&quot; He asked a friend who was with him what he thought of a female character whose green skin was amply displayed. &quot;There was a green girl I thought she was just tan!&quot; his friend replied.The Bioshock 2 console as seen through the DanKam smartphone app, designed to help the colorblind.(Credit:James Martin/CNET)Sparkman, a copy editor at CNET, tried out the app and was pleased with the results. &quot;It would be useful for dressing for a job interview,&quot; he said. But using it for his art &quot;is the most practical application.&quot;  It worked well on LED and other lights on electronic gadgets, which means Sparkman can now identify the power light on his computer display as green. And it would be helpful in playing the computer game Bioshock 2 in which a player must quickly differentiate between different colors on a console, except that it would be impractical to use a smartphone app when playing the game because you need both hands on the controller.  Kaminsky said he is fascinated by colorblindness and by a theory of its origin proposed by evolutionary neurobiologist Mark Changizi that it developed so humans could be able to judge the health of a person by seeing changes to skin tone based on the amount of oxygen in the blood stream.  &quot;Most people are not dichromatic. They are anomalous trichromats, meaning their green sensor is a little shifted towards red,&quot; Kaminsky said. &quot;It's what got a security guy so fascinated by green girls.&quot; <br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Are all bets off for solar and wind if Treasury grant program isn&'t renewed Not everyone agrees]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=are-all-bets-off-for-solar-and-wind-if-treasury-grant-program-isnrsquot-renewed-not-everyone-agrees</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=are-all-bets-off-for-solar-and-wind-if-treasury-grant-program-isnrsquot-renewed-not-everyone-agrees</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>gardenislandphotography</dc:creator>
<category>Latest News</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=are-all-bets-off-for-solar-and-wind-if-treasury-grant-program-isnrsquot-renewed-not-everyone-agrees</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Major renewable energy associations are cranking up the heat on Congress to renew a federal cash grant program that expires at the end of this year.The latest salvo fired came today from the American Council on Renewable Energy, which warned that 104,000 U.S. jobs are at risk if the program is not renewed.&amp;nbsp'In danger is a Treasury grant program that covers up to 30 percent of the cost in cash rebates of alternative energy projects. Industry associations have warned that&amp;nbsp'15,000 wind jobs are at risk if the program isn&amp;'t extended, and that 2,000 megawatts of solar energy slated to come online in the U.S. could be cut to just 800 megawatts if supports expire.In California, the looming deadline &amp;8212' and uncertainty of whether or not the program will win renewal &amp;8212' has set off a race to approve solar projects before the end of this year, leading The New York Times to question whether some risky ventures are getting clearance in the scramble.It&amp;'s no secret that cleantech relies heavily on the government for support, whether that&amp;'s in the form of subsidies, tax credits or massive conditional loan guarantees that have been granted to solar companies like BrightSource and Solyndra. At hand is the question of whether or not other sources of funding for renewable energy projects will be enough to make up for the shortfall in investment.Nope, says Lux Research analyst Matt Feinstein &amp;8212' by his firm&amp;'s calculations, there&amp;'s not enough tax equity on the market to make up for the predicted shortfall in government support. Given that the U.S. is a big market for solar and that Germany &amp;8212' the world&amp;'s largest market for solar &amp;8212' has recently began cutting its generous subsidies, companies may have to turn to Asia and emerging renewable energy countries for business.&amp;''The (solar) industry as a whole is 100 percent reliant on subsidies, and this is by far the best one,&amp;'' Feinstein said. &amp;''If the grant is just not extended and we stay without it, that&amp;'s a huge blow.&amp;''Solar developer Silverado Power CEO John Cheney doesn&amp;'t see the situation as so dire. His company recently won a deal with Southern California Edison for 113 megawatts&amp;' worth of solar power.&amp;''There is absolutely no shortage of money worldwide, nor in California. It&amp;'s the difficulty of getting&amp;nbsp'projects done and the lack of speed and the lack of policies that are being implemented,&amp;'' Cheney told me last week. He agrees with Feinstein&amp;'s assessment that there&amp;'s not enough tax equity on the market and that the expiration of the program would cause &amp;''momentary shrinkage&amp;'' in funding sources, but argues that the supply of tax equity financing in the U.S. is building back up.Residential solar company Sungevity CEO Danny Kennedy says that the program helps solar in increasing the supply of available capital.&amp;''While not fatal to the industry, the cash grant issue is important for us achieving our potential,&amp;'' Kennedy said. He echoed the argument made by many in cleantech that renewable energy needs long-term, stable policies in order to thrive.Silverado&amp;'s Cheney also adds that the endangered grant program&amp;nbsp'has helped more wind projects than solar.&amp;''Wind was the largest beneficiary and now is a bit under water with hundreds of stranded projects in the U.S.,&amp;'' Cheney said. &amp;''Solar is not dead at all and in fact is growing rapidly.&amp;''One wind expert has been advocating for smaller, less ambitious wind projects to keep the wind waters churning &amp;8212' R.J. Lyman, a partner at law firm Goodwin Proctor and former Massachusetts assistant environmental secretary. Lyman asserts that there will always be governmental support in some way or another for wind energy.&amp;''I do not happen to believe there is a major risk of a catastrophic collapse,&amp;'' Lyman said. &amp;8216'&amp;''The government has been trying to feed everybody steroids. We appreciate that, but you can&amp;'t do that forever.&amp;''Residential solar company SunRun CEO Edward Fenster is advocating for the Treasury grant program&amp;'s renewal. He estimates that an extension of the grant program would allow his company to create 6,000 jobs and build 36,000 more residential solar installations &amp;8212' and currently allows SunRun to charge three cents per kilowatt-hour less for solar-generated electricity than it would otherwise.[Image via Flickr/waffler]Next Story: Email: The hottest revenue generation technology in social media Previous Story: Why Facebook&amp;'s playing a dangerous game with the Winklevoss brothersPrintEmailTwitterFacebookGoogle BuzzLinkedIn      DiggStumbleUponRedditDeliciousGoogleMore&amp;8230'          Tags: Solar, Treasury grant program, windCompanies: ACORE, American Council on Renewable Energy, American Wind Energy Association, BrightSource, Lux Research, Silverado Power, Solar Energy Industries Association, Solyndra, Southern California Edison, SunrunPeople: Edward Fenster, John Cheney, Matt Feinstein, R.J. Lyman          Tags: Solar, Treasury grant program, windCompanies: ACORE, American Council on Renewable Energy, American Wind Energy Association, BrightSource, Lux Research, Silverado Power, Solar Energy Industries Association, Solyndra, Southern California Edison, SunrunPeople: Edward Fenster, John Cheney, Matt Feinstein, R.J. LymanIris 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).VentureBeat 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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<title><![CDATA[Deals &038' More: Novariant grabs $4.5M for hands-free farm equipment]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=deals-038-more-novariant-grabs-4-5m-for-hands-free-farm-equipment</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=deals-038-more-novariant-grabs-4-5m-for-hands-free-farm-equipment</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>gardenislandphotography</dc:creator>
<category>Latest News</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=deals-038-more-novariant-grabs-4-5m-for-hands-free-farm-equipment</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Today&amp;'s funding announcements include technology to run farms efficiently, monetize videos and monitor theft in stores:Novariant gets $4.5M for GPS technology: The Fremont, Calif.-based company has raised funding as part of its fifth round, according to a filing with the SEC. The firm, a spinout from Stanford University in 1994, creates products for the agriculture, mining and aerospace industries that perform functions like automatically steering farm equipment and landing aircraft.Auditude brings in $4M to bring ads to online videos: The Palo Alto-based company raised a third round of funding, according to a filing with the SEC. Big name clients including Comcast, Sony Music and Universal Music Group use Auditude&amp;'s ad platform to monetize online video content.  3VR gets $17M to watch over businesses with video surveillance: The company has raised a new round of funding led by Menlo Ventures with participation from Kleiner Perkins Caufield &amp;amp' Byers, DAG Ventures and Focus Ventures. The San Francisco-based company develops video search technology that helps retailers, banks and hotels fight theft and fraud.Revolution Foods gets $20M to bring healthy lunches to schools: The Oakland-based company has raised a new round of equity funding to provide high-quality lunches to students in more than 100 schools, according to a filing with the SEC. The business, started by graduate students at the UC-Berkeley Haas School of Business, works with partners like Whole Foods Market and Berkeley Farms to serve schools in California, Colorado and Washington, D.C.Next Story: Zumbox raises $9.7M to kill the post office with a digital mailbox Previous Story: Pruning rotten apples from your companyPrintEmailTwitterFacebookGoogle BuzzLinkedIn      DiggStumbleUponRedditDeliciousGoogleMore&amp;8230'          Companies: 3VR, Auditude, Dag Ventures, Focus Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield &amp;amp' Byers, Menlo Ventures, Novariant, Revolution Foods          Companies: 3VR, Auditude, Dag Ventures, Focus Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield &amp;amp' Byers, Menlo Ventures, Novariant, Revolution FoodsVentureBeat 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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<title><![CDATA[Sony says PS 3 hacker Geohot has fled to South America]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=sony-says-ps-3-hacker-geohot-has-fled-to-south-america</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=sony-says-ps-3-hacker-geohot-has-fled-to-south-america</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>gardenislandphotography</dc:creator>
<category>Latest News</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=sony-says-ps-3-hacker-geohot-has-fled-to-south-america</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Sony says that 21-year-old George Hotz, the hacker who reverse-engineered the security system for the PlayStation 3, has fled the country to South America rather than face a court over charges that he destroyed evidence.Sony said in a court filing that Hotz, known as GeoHot, lied about having a PlayStation Network account and destroyed his computer hard disks rather than hand them over to Sony&amp;'s lawyers. Hotz allegedly wrote code capable of circumventing the security protection on the PS 3 so it can run unauthorized software and pirated games.[Update: Hotz's attorney, Stewart Kellar, told Threat Level and IGN that Hotz has not fled to South America and that the missing components have been provided to Sony.]Hotz&amp;'s escape, if true, is a weird twist in a case that is being closely watched as a battle between a copyright owner and a freewheeling hacker. At stake is whether Sony can stop hackers and users from playing lots of pirated software or unauthorized software on machines that generate billions of dollars in revenue a year for Sony.A federal magistrate had ordered Hotz a couple of weeks ago to turn over his PS 3 consoles, computers and other equipment, untouched, to Sony&amp;'s lawyers. But Sony said that Hotz allegedly erased key evidence that Sony planned to use against him. Sony accused Hotz of violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Computer Fraud Abuse Act by distributing his tools for &amp;''jailbreaking&amp;'' the PS 3. Sony said it had found through its research that at least 13,300 unique internet addresses had downloaded the tools from Hotz&amp;'s web site in California alone. (Sony does not have access to each address, as is commonly thought' it only has the total number of them.)In a filing today, Sony said that Hotz has thwarted its legal discovery at every turn and that &amp;''Hotz had deliberately removed integral components of his impounded hard drives prior to delivering them to a third party neutral and Hotz is now in South America.&amp;''Sony said that, while Hotz declared under oath that he did not have a PSN account, Sony found that one of the PS 3s that Hotz had identified as his was used to created a PlayStation Network account &amp;8212' which gives users access to online gaming and other entertainment &amp;8212' on March 10, 2010 using an IP address located in Glen Rock, N.J., where Hotz lives. He used the nickname &amp;''blickmanic,&amp;'' which was associated with postings on the internet related to jailbreaking cell phones. Hotz reportedly publicized his hacking software at psx-scene.com, a site for PlayStation hackers and gamers. The PSN information was critical because users who sign up for it agree to a user agreement that prohibits hacking the PS 3. Sony wants jurisdiction for the case established in California, while Hotz&amp;'s attorney is fighting that.Beyond what Sony said, there isn&amp;'t yet independent confirmation that he has fled.Next Story: Yahoo shows signs of life with Search Direct Previous Story: With massive funding, Color aims to reinvent mobile photosPrintEmailTwitterFacebookGoogle BuzzLinkedIn      DiggStumbleUponRedditDeliciousGoogleMore&amp;8230'          Tags: hackerCompanies: SonyPeople: Geohot, George Hotz          Tags: hackerCompanies: SonyPeople: Geohot, George HotzDean is lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He covers video games, security, chips and a variety of other subjects. Dean previously worked at the San Jose Mercury News, the Wall Street Journal, the Red Herring, the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register and the Dallas Times Herald. He is the author of two books, Opening the Xbox and the Xbox 360 Uncloaked. Follow him on Twitter at @deantak, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat. 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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