Spammers And Crime, Continued

The ISP bites back. EarthLink , an Internet service provider, has announced legal action against a multi-state spam ring called the Alabama Spammers. The 16 individuals and corporations allegedly sent out more than 250 million illegal junk emails and “represent a technically sophisticated criminal organization that engaged in a massive scheme of theft, spamming and … Read more

Is Google Making Journalists Sloppy?

Interesting piece from MediaBistro about how journalists use Google searches as a fast and loose way to prove a point. The article doesn’t pull its punches. “What’s a simpler, or faster, way of quantifying a trend,” writes Lionel Beehner, “than typing a key word or phrase into Google? Type in almost any person, place, or … Read more

Yahoo Cuts Loose With Its Own Search Engine

Yahoo has cut loose from Google and now offers a very passable search engine of its own. Yahoo today announced that it has deployed its own algorithmic search technology on Yahoo Search. Starting today, “the company will begin rolling out the new Yahoo! Search Technology and expects to continue the process on a worldwide basis … Read more

New Variation Of Bagle Spreading Fast

More virus trouble afoot. This time it’s a variation of Bagle. MessageLabs reports that it’s intercepted more than 10,000 copies in an hour as of this morning. Most seem to be from the UK and the U.S, although the first copy it received was from Poland. It appears to be a mass-mailing worm, installing a … Read more

Voice Commands, Singapore Style

Here’s more on voice recognition replacing touch-tone menus. Is it a good thing? ScanSoft have teamed up today with Unified Communications –  ’the leading provider of proprietary telecommunication solutions in Asia’ — to launch OneVoice, a ‘voice portal application’ for Singapore Telecommunications Limited (SingTel). OneVoice is a speech-activated service that uses ScanSoft’s SpeechWorks speech recognition and … Read more