Data security

NEW YORK (Reuters) - It may be about time to dig out that old library card. Hoping to draw back readers, libraries have vastly expanded their lists of digital books, music, and movies that be able to be downloaded by their patrons to a computer or MP3 player -- and it doesn't cost a cent, unlike, say, media from Apple Inc's (AAPL.O)iTunes or Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O).

In Phoenix, for instance, branches have banded together to create a digital library that currently has about 50,000 titles of e-books, audiobooks, music and videos that can be "checked out" from anywhere.

Once discovered, says Tom Gemberling, the electronic resources librarian for the Phoenix Public Library, the program often proves wildly popular.

Not long ago, Gemberling visited a local trailer park to speak about the program to 100 or so seniors -- who regularly travel the roads touring in their recreational vehicles.

"They were cheering and screaming by the end," he said. "They were so excited. They're RVers, so they can go anywhere on the route, find a computer, go into the Phoenix Public Library catalogue, download a book and play it while they drive down the highway."

Available in thousands of libraries across the country, the programs work like this: First you need a library card, access to the web, and some easily downloadable software -- the Adobe Digital Editions, the Mobipocket Reader or the OverDrive Media Console.

At that point, just browse around the library's website, select some titles, affix them to a digital book bag and click the download button. If the title isn't available, it can be placed on hold for downloading later.

Depending on the library and title, the item remains on your computer for one to three weeks before disappearing, meaning you don't have to bother through returning a book, CD or DVD to the actual library.

FROM PHONES TO PALMS

One of the main distributors to libraries is OverDrive Inc, based in Cleveland, which has deals with publishers including HarperCollins and Random House as well as music labels like Alligator Records.

David Burleigh, OverDrive's director of marketing, says the company now has an inventory of around 100,000 titles, works with about 7,500 libraries and has racked up millions of downloads of its media player and digital check-outs.

"We also know we are touching only a small percentage of each library's patrons. Everyone we talk to is like 'Wow, you do that?"' he says. "It's a like this nice secret, that we of course don't want to be kept secret."

Although it depends on publisher permission, books can usually be transferred from a desktop computer to any number of mobile devices.

Sony Corp's (6758.T) Reader, SanDisk Corp's (SNDK.O) Sansa, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd's (005930.KS) Blackjack, Palm Inc's (PALM.O) Treo 700wx, Motorola Inc's (MOT.N) Q, Microsoft Corp's (MSFT.O) Zune, iRiver's 510, Hewlett-Packard Co's (HPQ.N)iPAQ, Dell Inc's (DELL.O) Axim, Creative Technology Ltd's (CREA.SI) ZEN, AT&T Inc's (T.N) Cingular Smartphone, and Apple's iPhone and iPods can all be used with the downloads, depending on the title and the library.

"People like the portability of it," Jim McCluskey, collection development assistant manager for Washington State's Sno-Isle Libraries, which will soon be offering iPod compatible downloads.

While having a mass of books and music available for downloads helps libraries keep up with changes in technology, McCluskey said, it carries other advantages, too.

"A lot of our libraries are cramped for space," he notes. "Material that doesn't take up shelf space and is available 24/7 -- that's really attractive for libraries."

(Reporting by dint of. Paul Thomasch, editing by Gerald E. McCormick)

After all the back and forth over whether Google's acquisition of DoubleClick would have existence anti-competitive or an invasion of our privacy, the search engine giant on Thursday released new details about how the online advertising company will be integrated into Google.

Specifically, Google unveiled four new enhancements to its advertising platform.

With frequency capping, advertisers will be able to control the number of times a user sees an ad so they are not faced with the like ad every time they sign on to a particular Web site, Google said.

Google will also provide advertisers with data on how many people have seen their ad campaign and the average number of people who view their ads. The company also promised improved ad quality, and information on "view-through conversions" -- or how many persons people actually visited a certain Web site because of its ad.

How is Google doing this?

"We are enabling this functionality by implementing a DoubleClick ad-serving cookie across the Google content network," Rajas Moonka, senior business product manager, wrote in a blog post.

"With one click, users can opt out of a single cookie for both DoubleClick ad serving and the Google content network," Moonka related. "If a user has already opted out of the DoubleClick cookie, that opt-out will in addition automatically apply to the Google content network."

Google has updated its privacy policy with greater degree tidbits related to the DoubleClick acquisition, he related.

Originally published at AppScout.

Not simply will MMO developer Cryptic be unveiling Official Star Trek Convention in Las Vegas; they're also bringing out the swelling guns for their appearance: Leonard Nimoy, aka Mr. Spock. This -- coupled with their GenCon sponsorship announcement earlier this week -- has us convinced that Cryptic is really going for the throat when it comes to scoring the nerd promised.

It's uncertain the kind of part (other than fan service) the 77-year-old actor will play during the gallant's onstage reveal, much in a less degree to what space he'll potentially be involved with Star Trek Online -- perhaps a voice acting reprisal of his career-making role? It certainly wouldn't be the first time Nimoy has lent his talents to a videogame, having served as the narrator in Sega's delightfully remaining Dreamcast game Seaman.

The Official Star Trek Convention kicks off tomorrow, August 6, with the Star Trek Online announcement coming the final sunlight of the show, August 10. Fans can see what all the fuss is about either in person or by dint of. watching the live stream of the event on Cryptic's Star Trek Online site.

The current system for getting royalty payments to musicians in the United States is seriously hampering the introduction of new, innovative music distribution models, and that problem is not going to get any better in the era of the digital download, ruling music experts said Thursday.

As consumers abandon CDs for Internet-based downloads, the industry is filling the gap through new licensing models, but many of the most innovative models are being done internationally, like ISPs abroad bundling unlimited music downloads in with Internet service, Cary Sherman, chairman and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), said during a panel at the American Bar Association's annual meeting.

"That will expand, but it's embarrassing to do here because we don't have a system of royalty rates" that supports it, Sherman said. The U.S. needs to embrace a percentage proportion structure rather than cents-based system, he said.

Distribution of music is not going away, said Bob Kohn, chairman and chief executive of RoyaltyShare, which offers Web-based royalty processing and reporting solutions for the entertainment industry. "It's now becoming a data management problem."

One organization that handles the data is SoundExchange, which governs the music industry's royalty rates. Sherman slammed SoundExchange for delaying payment and using a reporting system that is inaccurate and turns over data in an untimely fashion.

The collection of that information is "getting improvement every year" but-end it has a long way to go, Sherman said.

A company that has battled SoundExchange over royalty rates is Internet radio station Pandora, which says it and many other Web-based stations will have to shut down if the government does not sink the royalty rates handed down last year by the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB).

Pandora has been on Capitol Hill several times to plead its case and a number of bills have been introduced on the issue, but there has been no major movement.

Fred Koenigsberg, general counsel for the American Society of Composers, Artists, and Publishers (ASCAP), also had little sympathy for Internet radio stations like Pandora.

When there are congressional hearings on royalty rates and representatives from new media state, they say two things: we like the ASCAP model; and we want artists to receive payment, Koenigsberg said.

"The problem is, when you sit down with them, all of a sudden their great desire [to pay the artists] seems to evaporate," he said.

In rejecting the CRB's royalty rate judgment, Internet radio stations are saying "we don't preference the result of services we asked you to set up," Koenigsberg said.

Internet radio claims the CRB's decision unfairly targets Internet radio for the reason that rates for satellite and cable broadcasts are considerably less amount expensive.

In May, a U.S. district court ruled that AOL, RealNetworks and Yahoo must pay a percentage of their music-oriented revenues to ASCAP after the three companies were unable to agree on the rates owed to songwriters. In total, ASCAP said, the payments owed by dint of. all three companies could equal $100 million.

Not acquisition that royalty check "affects the whole food chain" of people in the music industry, said Amaechi Uzoigwe, co-founder of independent record label Definitive Jux.

"The RIAA has taken its lumps, but is not getting its kudos" for taking a stand against the illegal use of copyrighted material, Uzoigwe said. "There has to be a symbiotic relationship" between the label, the consummate performer, and the technology used to distribute the material.

"It's harder and easier to be a musician these days," said Mark Fischer, a principal with Fish & Richardson. It's easier to get your hands on affordable equipment to create music, but it's harder to find an audience conducive to it, he said.

In the events to come, we'll see a much added de-centralized, smaller music industry, Fischer predicted. Though he is not in favor of it, Fischer sees many more compulsory licenses, clearinghouses, and the need to bring ISPs to the table.

The ISPs "role in this is worthy of a multi-hour discussion," Fischer said, especially when it relates to Net neutrality.

Sherman acknowledged that ISPs "sometimes do prosy things" but warned that Net neutrality is a "more complicated issue than people give it credit for."

"We have to effect enduring [ISPs] have an incentive to innovate," Sherman said. "Be careful before you legislate gone [their incentive] for business expansion."

"It's about embracing technology," said musician and drummer Omar Hakim, who has worked with artists like Madonna, David Bowie, and Miles Davis. "The keyword is survival. We are married to technology, and technology does drive a lot of the decisions" in the music industry.

When Hakim started his career in the late 70s, Roger Linn had just introduced his drum machine, and Hakim's drummer colleagues were grumbling about how the device was putting people out of work.

"I went in a puzzle and bought myself a drum machine and added 'drum programmer' to my business card," he said. "If you be possible to't pommel 'em, join 'em."

LAS VEGAS--Speaking in front of a packed audience, researcher Dan Kaminsky explained the urgency in having everyone patch their systems: potentially everything we do on the Internet involves a Domain Name System request and therefore is vulnerable.

Expectations ran running high before Wednesday aurora as Kaminsky, director of penetration testing for IOActive, had revealed little about his DNS vulnerability up till then. That didn't obstruction others from trying to figure it out. But that actually helped Kaminsky in the end; it meant for the time of his speech, he was able to skip the what and go directly to the why.

Security researchers always thought it was hard to poison DNS records, but Kaminsky said to think of the process as a race, with a good guy and bad guy each trying to get a secret number transaction ID. "You can get there first," he said, "but you can't cross close line unless you have the secret number."

The question is why would someone bother? Well, Kaminsky talked well-nigh how deeply embedded DNS is in our lives. Kaminsky said there are three ages in computer hacking. The first was attacking servers (for example FTP and Telnet). The second was attacking the browsers (for example Javascript and ActiveX). We're now about to enter the third age, where attacking Everything Else is feasible.

We know that if we type a name.com into a browser, the DNS resolves it to its numerical address. But what we don't realize is that same course occurs when we send e-mail or when we log onto a Web site. These also require DNS lookup.

Kaminsky then detailed how various security methods on the Web can subsist defeated if one owns the DNS. For example, if a site wants to establish a Trust Authority Certificate with the Certificate Authorities, they use e-mail to assure the identity of the requester. He also said that it's possible to poison Google Analytics and even Google AdSense, which also rely on DNS lookup.

Prior to the patch, the bad guy had a 1 in 65,000 chance of getting it because the event ID is based, in part, on the port number used. With the patch, the chances decrease to 1 in 2,147,483,648. Kaminsky said it's not perfect, but it's a good enough startle.

Click here for full coverage of Black Hat 2008.

Google is catering to advertising agencies with a new product called Google Insights for Search. The search giant introduced the new product on Wednesday.

Insights for Search is a disinthrall hireling that taps Google's database of search results to unearth information advertisers covet. Google said the product was designed with marketers in mind.

"It provides more pliancy and functionality for advertisers and marketers to understand search behavior, and adds some cool new features like a world heat map to graphically display search volume and regional interest," Elan Dekel and Niv Efron wrote on the Google blog.

Lots of Analytics

Google is on an analytics roll. In June, the company updated Google Trends with poetry and the ability to download results to a spreadsheet. Google said it received good feedback from agencies and advertisers put on how they're using the new version, from identifying new growth markets to optimizing Google AdWords campaigns.

Like Google Trends, Insights for Search lets advertisers and agencies type in a search designate to see search volume patterns over time, as well as the top related and rising searches. Users also have the ability to compare search-volume trends across multiple search provisions, categories (commonly referred to as verticals), geographic regions, or specific time ranges.

Google offered the example of entering the term "apple." Perhaps not surprisingly, the majority of the top searches are associated through Apple, Inc. rather than the fruit.

Google Insights for Search allows users to filter this query with the "Food & Drink" predicable, resulting in a dramatically different view of search-volume trends and akin searches for the fruit. Users can also use the filter to compare search terms within the category.

"If you love Trends, we hope you'll fall in love all over again with Google Insights for Search," Dekel and Efron said. Users need a Google account to tap into the data and download results to a spreadsheet.

Optimizing Traditional Ad Campaigns

Traditional marketers could use Insights for Search to withstand measure the impact of traditional media campaigns, according to Greg Sterling, principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence. Advertising agencies and advertisers could sift through the data for brand terms, catchphrases, and words that appear in television, radio or magazine ads to see how prevalent they are in Google searches.

"Consumers might see an ad on TV or in a magazine and go online to search for more information. So you could use this as a tool to see if there's been a response to a traditional media campaign in a particular market. That's be concerned feedback," Sterling said.

Advertisers can also gauge the potential demand for a product in a specific market. Conducting a exploration for "Apple" in the consumer-electronics category, for example, shows that the iPod touch seems to be a product with demand potential because of the way queries are arrayed. Advertisers could also search for terms like "hybrid cars" to see what specific regions and markets might hold potential buyers.

"There are some interesting queries you can make to determine expressions of interest nation have about certain products or services in certain areas in addition to keyword research," Sterling said. "This is not a keyword-research tool because it doesn't give you variations on keywords, but it is one of the types of tools you would use to figure out what people are doing so you can optimize your campaign."

LONDON (Reuters) - An eccentric British millionaire has put his entire life up on the side of sale on the Internet -- including his title of Lord of the Manor of Warleigh -- in the hope of converting his assets into cash.

David Piper, a hotelier who made headlines six years ago after advertising for a wife to become his "lady of the manor," wants to sell his west of England existence on the auction site eBay and move to London to be closer to his children.

He is selling two hotels, two Bentleys, a collection of paintings and his title of Lord of the Manor -- which he bought along by means of a large estate in spite of one million pounds ($2 million).

"This sale is brought about as the grant lord has been diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer," the notification for the sale explains.

"For sale as a whole or in part... Can include David, the existing eccentric lord of the manor, physically as for one's interest to a suitable vendee."

Piper, who is well known in his hometown of Plymouth for his antics, is hoping to raise up to 4 million pounds, for all that he estimates that the total value of the estates was as much as 6 million face to face with property prices fell.

More than 100 bids have been received so far, with the current venture standing at 1.3 million pounds. Bidding closes on August 11.

Piper's move follows that of Ian Usher, a British-born man living in Perth, Australia who earlier this year auctioned off all his worldly goods, including his home. He ended up raising much less than he had hoped -- barely making $380,000.

Piper's attempt six years ago to find a bride ended in minor disaster. More than 2,000 young women answered his advertisement in the International Herald Tribune newspaper and he chose a 32-year-old American divorcee to try out to be his lady.

She arrived with her two young children, but fled the manor after only a few days, unable to set out through with the union.

As part of his new venture, Piper said he was offering to introduce whoever purchased his life to some of the women whose applications he turned down.

(Editing by Paul Casciato)

The developers of Firefox have unveiled an experimental project, Snowl, designed to gather all your inbound communications, whether they're in the form of email, RSS, Twitter, or social network updates. The interface determination be search based, let you prioritize messages, and cause to surrender advantage of the browser. In fact, the prototype is a Firefox extension.

The prototype is limited to two intimation source types: RSS and Twitter feeds. It offers two views of the feeds: A three-panel email-style inspect with preview, and a "river of news" view, based on a concept popularized by RSS developer Dave Winer. This second view resembles a three-column connected newspaper layout.

The Snowl team is still testing the waters and looking for feedback, as well as considering adding features like more message sources such as instant messaging, a response mechanism, and an API for developers.

More information is available on the project at Mozilla Labs site, and you be possible to download the prototype implementation from the Firefox Add-ons location.

BEIJING - Text of a statement by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang in response to President Bush's speech, posted adhering the ministry's Web site Thursday and translated from Chinese by The Associated Press:

by the common efforts made both by China and the U.S., the Sino-U.S. relationship has developed steadily in the last few years. The two countries have conducted fruitful talks, communication and cooperation bilaterally and on a range of international issues. Facts prove again that although there are divergences between China and the U.S., there is a wide range of common interests, and a basis for cooperation. A utility Sino-U.S. relationship is a benefit to the people of both countries, and helps peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region and throughout the whole world.

We are willing to work together with the U.S. on strengthening dialogue and cooperation, appropriately dealing with divergences and sensitive issues and helping the relations to develop constructively and stably.

The Chinese government puts populace first, and is dedicated to maintaining and promoting its citizens' basic rights and freedom. Chinese citizens be under the necessity freedom of religion. These are indisputable facts.

As for the radiation on human rights and religions, we always advocate that both sides talk from a basis of mutual respect and equality, to enhance understanding and diminish divergence, and enlarge mutual consensus.

We firmly oppose any words or acts that interfere in other countries' mental affairs, using human rights and religion and other issues.

The greatest game at the 2008 Olympics won't be Michael Phelps's quest for multiple gold metals or the U.S. Men's Basketball team's attempt to redeem its reputation. The real contest won't take place on any field, court, or pool. It will be played on the Internet. Journalists, Olympic spectators, and Chinese citizens will attempt to write, publish, broadcast, and read stories. The Chinese government inclination attempt to control these stories or stop them entirely. To me, this is the only animals of the chase worth watching, and I'm going to really enjoy seeing the Chinese government lose.

It wasn't supposed to be this way, of course. When China was wooing the Olympic Committee, the country promised it would offer free fit to the press. Just a couple of days ago, International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge boasted in an IOC press conference, "For the first time, foreign media will be able to report freely and publish their drudge freely in China. There will be no censorship onward the Internet." Bold words. And fallacious ones.

When the Olympic Village press center opened this week, the Web sites for Amnesty International, Radio Free Asia, BBC's Chinese-language news, and many more news outlets were blocked. In fact, anything that the Chinese government deemed not in its national interest was forbidden. Forget about anything having to execute with the Falun Gong or Tibet. And it doesn't tarry there. Reports have claimed that house of entertainment chains have had to install software that allows the government to monitor the Internet communication of its guests. Clearly, the Great Firewall of China is still standing.

No one knows exactly how many cybersnoops the Chinese government keeps on its payroll; the commonly cited figure is around 30,000. To augment the with reference to something else low-tech "fear of imprisonment," the Chinese government uses several techniques to control the flow of information. First, the government uses network sniffers that monitor all the traffic coming in and out of the country's servers. Another technique is to block the DNS entries for especial sites. And although the Great Firewall isn't 100 percent effective, it definitely succeeds at material information difficult to get.

There are a number of tools that will help you find out if your site is blocked by the Great Firewall. I checked out a few URLs with WebSitePulse to see rightful what the average Chinese citizen could and could not see. PCMag.com works fine. So does Gearlog.com. Freetibet.org? No such luck.

Determining what gets through, and why, must be difficult, and the results often appear to be random. I have a friend who operates an innocent and apolitical travel blog at www.portablemind.typepad.com. Her blog was accessible last year, when she was in fact visiting China, but at present it's blocked. And that's a shame, because she offers up some great Beijing restaurant recommendations.—Next: The Great Firewall Has Already Been Hacked >

Despite all its surveillance technology and an army of cybercops, the Chinese government's attempt to keep a lid on the flow of information is doomed. First of all, the Great Firewall has already been hacked. For example, the Global Internet Freedom Consortium offers an entire toolkit designed solely to circumvent censorship and is encouraging foreign reporters to use it when they toothed their stories. The GIFC tools use encryption to bypass the firewall. Tools like this are dead simple to use and are popping up all over the Web.

Second, the Olympic stage is simply too massive, and the cameras are always running. Stories be able to have being encrypted and filed over the Internet. Camera phones will take pictures and instantly send them across the world via MMS. There will subsist more than 25,000 foreign reporters in Beijing, and every one will want a story. There simply aren't enough government handlers to manage all of them. It won't be easy to set up live video feeds, but the technologies for uncontrollable mass communication are inside the rural parts's borders. My bet is they will stay there.

The tide is already turning. After logging on and being unable to avenue the most professional walker of Web sites, the journalists in the Olympic village revolted. Scared by the pending flood of negative publicity previous to the games even began, the Chinese government relaxed restrictions and opened access to some sites. Not for ordinary Chinese citizens, mind you, just for the press. This mildly liberal policy could be short-lived, but clearly cracks are forming in the Great Firewall.

Right now, the media seems preoccupied with the spectacle of the opening ceremonies and the focus on medal counts. And it will take a few days after that for the thousands of journalists dispatched from around the world to tire of hagiographic stories of athletic achievement and prepackaged cultural stories. When that happens, they'll start to look around at China's political system, the plight of Tibet, the country's catastrophic environmental record, and its heavy-handed attempts to control what its citizens can read and write online. Those stories will get past the Great Firewall, and I can't wait. This revolution will be televised.

Let the games begin.

More Dan Costa: