DaniWeb Forum Index

Inside Edge - IT News, Analysis and Opinion

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All About happygeek (Davey Winder)

Follow me on Twitter: happygeek

I am a freelance technology journalist from England, and have been for fast approaching 20 years now. For 14 of them I have enjoyed being Contributing Editor with PC Pro magazine, the biggest selling monthly IT publication in the UK.

Currently, I hold the title of Information Security Journalist of the Year (2008) an award that I also was fortunate enough to win in 2006 as well. Other awards include Best Information Security News Story (2008) for a DaniWeb piece about TomTom satnav Trojans, Best IT Security Feature (2008) and (2007), as well as Technology Journalist of the Year back in 1996. All of the above being UK based awards, I hasten to add.

My latest book 'Being Virtual' was published by Wiley, in conjunction with the Science Museum in London, during May 2008.

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Game Development

FIGHT: World of Warcraft vs China

4 Days Ago - It would seem that there is something of an ongoing battle in the world of online Chinese gaming, and World of Warcraft is right in the midst of it. As I reported back in July, the company behind World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment) was having problems in getting The Burning Crusade... (Read More)

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eCommerce

Hold the front page: Piracy is not killing the music business!

5 Days Ago - If piracy and illegal downloaders really are killing the music industry, how come more singles have been sold this year than ever before and people who file-share spend more money on legal releases than those who do not file-share? I have to admit, it's not been a good week to be on the side of... (Read More)

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Viruses, Spyware and other Nasties

Trick or Treat Security Scares

9 Days Ago - You probably call it Halloween, for myself and other pagans it is Samhain, but for the cyber-gangs it is phishing time. Seasonally-themed spam is on the up at this time of the year, Halloween related messages accounting for 0.5% of the daily spam traffic by volume in mid-October according to the... (Read More)

Spam fighting Europeans must do better

26 Days Ago - The European Commission has called on EU member countries to do more, and do better, in fighting spam and other online privacy threats. In a newly published study, commissioned by the EC, it was revealed that almost all EU countries have at least one spam, spyware or malware reporting site for... (Read More)

Malware hosting trends exposed

Sep 30th, 2009 - Using newly registered domains with a very short lifespan to host malware websites is so last year. It would appear that these days such things are far more likely to be hosted on much older compromised web sites instead. Could this be down to a decline in domain tasting? The latest MessageLabs... (Read More)

The evil twins of cyber-security: clients and servers

Sep 15th, 2009 - According to a new report, published today by SANS, the overwhelming majority of all cyber-security risks can be laid at the door of just two areas: unpatched client-side software and vulnerable Internet facing web sites. The report was compiled by Rohit Dhamankar, Mike Dausin, Marc Eisenbarth... (Read More)

Conficker is back and twisted

Sep 11th, 2009 - Remember Conficker, the virulent worm which caused such havoc at the start of the year? No, well maybe news headlines such as 'Virus sinks Royal Navy fleet comms' and 'Windows worm infects millions' might help jog your memory. Well hold onto your hats people, Conficker is back. And this time it... (Read More)

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Web Browsers

Firefox by the numbers: 30 million new users in just 8 weeks

10 Days Ago - Some Twitter postings just demand you read them two or three times to take in what is being said in 140 characters. One such posting was made today by Mozilla CEO John Lilly which simply said: "Firefox user growth has been amazing last 8 weeks or so. +30M or so unique monthlies" That's worth... (Read More)

Mozilla says Microsoft browser malware can Firefox off

20 Days Ago - Odd isn't it, how Microsoft kicked up a fuss when Google announced the Chrome plugin for Internet Explorer on the grounds that it could make the browser more insecure. Indeed, it went as far as to suggest that it doubled the potential surface area for malware and scripted attacks. Yet, amazingly,... (Read More)

Netscape Communicator is born again

26 Days Ago - Remember when a web browser was so much more than just a web browser? It seems that the days of the all-you-can-eat Internet suite are back as the SeaMonkey 2.0 release code is made available to download. There was a time when Netscape ruled the online world, but you have to be something of an... (Read More)

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Search Engine Optimization

Google, Bing and Twitter sitting in a tree...

16 Days Ago - Forget the Windows 7 launch, the real big news from Microsoft this week is that it has reached a deal with Twitter to include real-time tweet data in Bing searches. If that wasn't excitement enough for the Twitterati, just a few hours after Microsoft made its announcement Google joined in and... (Read More)

Blogger uses SEO to get vacation refund

Sep 18th, 2009 - When a complaining consumer starts topping the Google search rankings for your company, perhaps it is time to start taking them seriously? Who says that blogging is a waste of time? Not me, but then I've been blogging for a while now, admittedly in a professional capacity as a technology... (Read More)

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Growing an Online Community

5 Billion Tweets!

18 Days Ago - GigaTweet has been counting the total number of messages posted to Twitter in real time, and the rolling count is almost hypnotic. Overnight the 5 billionth Tweet was posted. So what was it? Perhaps someone speaking out against corporates trying to gag freedom of the press again? Nope. ... (Read More)

Twitter gets knickers in a twist over security scare

26 Days Ago - I love Twitter, and post a lot of links to security related stories via my @happygeek account. But now I am getting a little worried that I might suffer the same fate as a well known, and highly respected security expert. Mikko Hypponen is a familiar face around the security conventions, and a... (Read More)

The political power of Twitter challenged

34 Days Ago - It would appear that a political activist from New York has been arrested by the FBI in connection with helping orchestrate G20 summit protesters in Pittsburgh. According to The Guardian the man, Eliot Madison from Queens, has been charged with hindering prosecution after helping G20 protesters... (Read More)

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Network Security

Gary McKinnon wins extradition reprieve for psych review

19 Days Ago - Just when it looked like every avenue to prevent the extradition of self-confessed NASA Hacker Gary McKinnon had been exhausted, especially when just last week a couple of High Court judges denied him leave to appeal his case to the highest court in the UK, it looks like the hacking cause célèbre... (Read More)

FTP Security FAIL

Sep 16th, 2009 - One third of businesses totally fail to encrypt their sensitive data transfers. That's the conclusion of a new survey into file transfer security which noted the huge disparities in attitudes towards data security in general and data security during transfer. According to the 2009 File Transfer... (Read More)

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Advertising Sales Strategies

World ad-supported first as C4 lets you see more on YouTube

23 Days Ago - UK broadcaster Channel 4 has signed a deal with YouTube to bring full TV programmes online, streamed for free. It's the first time that any broadcaster in the world has made such a comprehensive schedule of 'catch-up' programming available for free via YouTube. Of course, when I say free I mean... (Read More)

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The Return Oriented Programming Hackers

29 Days Ago - Want to know how to fix an election without resorting to bribery and corruption? Ever thought about throwing some Return Oriented Programming into the voting equation? Ordinarily, the hacking into of an electronic voting machine might spark a little bit of interest if there were an election... (Read More)

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Computer Science

WW2 code breakers win the lottery

Sep 29th, 2009 - Bletchley Park, the top secret code breaking hub that played a pivotal role in the outcome of World War Two, has finally been awarded development funding of some £460,500 ($735,500) from the Heritage Lottery Fund. The money will literally save the place the saved the lives of countless people by... (Read More)

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Cellphones, PDAs and Handheld Devices

How the music copyright debate turned into a copywrong farce

Sep 27th, 2009 - When singer Lily Allen posted a passionate plea for people to stop illegally sharing music files, and started a dedicated blog where fellow pop stars could voice their concerns over the 'theft' of their work, you might have been forgiven for thinking it would just turn into the usual bunch of rich... (Read More)

Time for the SexBox 360 and PornStation 3?

Sep 12th, 2009 - If it wasn't bad enough that someone is filing for a trademark to cover an adult-oriented games console called a SexBox, the world's largest adult entertainment company is seeking approval from Sony to turn its entertainment console into a PornStation 3. Silican Xtal Corp, a San Jose based... (Read More)

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Windows Vista and Windows 7

The true cost of a free Windows 7 upgrade revealed

Sep 22nd, 2009 - There ain't no such thing as a free Windows 7 upgrade. At least that's what it is starting to look like for the majority of people, despite the 'free upgrade' vouchers that are being handed out with new computers as part of the Windows 7 Upgrade Option scheme. A scheme which has been introduced to... (Read More)

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Apple Hardware

Can a Cosmic iPhone bring order to your life?

Sep 21st, 2009 - It has long been affectionately known as the Jesus Phone because of the almost religious following it receives, but can the iPhone really harness the power of the Cosmos to help organise your life? Veteran TV presenter Noel Edmonds, he of Deal or No Deal, Are You Smarter Than A 10 Year Old and... (Read More)

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Mac Rumors and Reports

Top 10 reasons why I don't care about The Beatles on iTunes

Sep 9th, 2009 - All the news and social media feeds seem to have overdosed on one story this week: will The Beatles be on iTunes after the big Apple 'Rock and Roll' event today? News at eleven: I don't give a stuff, and here's my top ten reasons why. Most people would rather have an iPod with a camera than an... (Read More)

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