John Lister

The rise of online video sites could cause major problems for the Internet as a whole, according to researchers. The amount of traffic on the web is increasing much quicker than its capacity. Brett Swanson of the Discover Institute says this is most ... likely to affect the 'edges' of the Internet, the final mile or so of cabling between telephone exchanges and peoples homes. He has coined the phrase 'exaflood', which refers to an exabyte, or one thousand million gigabytes of date. Until recently, an exabyte had simply been a mathematical concept, but Cisco estimates total Internet traffic will ... (view more)

Google is launching an ambitious project to become the Internet's leading source of information on just about every subject. Their plans appear to be a direct attack on Wikipedia's popularity. According to a blog by Google's Vice President of ... engineering, the company wants to make it easier for experts to share knowledge. They plan to do this through a project titled 'knol' (a term they are also using to refer to each entry). The idea is for Google to take care of the hosting and formatting, leaving the experts to concentrate on the information. The goal is for the 'knol' to be "the first ... (view more)

As much as 95% of all email is spam, according to new research. Barracuda Networks, an email and web security firm, analysed more than a billion emails sent to its customers this year. They found between 90-95% was spam, compared with 85-90% last ... year. They also carried out a survey of their customers, which include major firms IBM, Coca Cola, and Harvard University. They found that 57% considered spam the worst form of unsolicited advertising, more than junk mail and telemarketing put together. Though they found that most people receive five or fewer spam emails each day, an unfortunate 13% ... (view more)

The Ask.Com search engine now offers users the ability to search without any records being collected. Anyone using the site can, with just two clicks, make sure details such as their IP address (which identifies the particular computer they are ... using) and the phrase they are searching for are not stored by the site. (Source: irconnect.com ) The service is titled AskEraser. Some critics have noted that the name is slightly misleading; rather than erasing data, it simply makes sure the information is never written in the first place. It only applies to future searches and it isn't possible to ... (view more)

America OnLine (AOL) has launched a new version of its software, designed to work more efficiently with Windows. In the past, AOL users have generally had to access all of their Internet services (such as web browsing, email and instant messaging) ... through a single screen (or 'window'), an approach dubbed 'walled garden' by some commentators. AOL's tactic kept everything together in one place, but some users found it wasn't possible to use tabbed browsing. That's where you can quickly switch from one screen to another by pressing the ALT + TAB keys or simply clicking with the mouse. The ... (view more)

Microsoft has announced they will soon be testing Windows XP on the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) "$100 laptop". It's all part of a project to produce computers so cheaply that it can be donated to children in the developing world. Despite the ... nickname, the machine currently costs $188 to produce. Known as the XO, it's designed to be sturdy enough to work under a variety of conditions such as in extremely warm or cold countries. (Source: laptopgiving.org ) James Utzschneider of Microsoft says he'll be meeting the team behind the XO this week. He says reports that Windows already works ... (view more)

Security experts have found a way to intercept information from Microsoft's wireless keyboards, and warn that other brands could also be at risk. The affected keyboards don't use the popular Bluetooth technology, but instead broadcast on a very ... short radio frequency. Most surprisingly, the encryption appears to be shockingly weak. It turns out that much only the keystrokes themselves are encrypted, not any of the background information such as that used to synchronise the keyboard and computer. Shockingly, the same encryption key (the code needed to decipher the data) is used for the entire ... (view more)

A company specializing in niche social networking sites has launched an online Christian community. That's not so strange; what is raising some eyebrows is the nature of that new meeting place. New York based Community Connect has launched ... Faithbase.com, described as "your place to meet and connect with Christians around the country". The company, which is now 10 years old, already runs social networking sites for the black (Blackplanet.com), Asian (Asianavenue.com) and Hispanic (MiGente.com) communities. However, it's their remaining site that is causing eyebrows to raise. GLEE.com serves ... (view more)

A French watchdog is attempting to close down eBay's site in the country, claiming it is failing to protect consumers. The Council of Sales, which regulates auctions, argues that the site should have to follow the same rules as 'bricks and mortar' ... auction houses in France. These rules, passed in 2000 and designed to clamp down on scams, require all auctioneers to have a government permit. The Council says it's put together a series of complaints about shady practices by eBay sellers, including selling a photocopy as an original 18th century painting, or simply scanning images from auction ... (view more)

Mozilla, the company behind the Firefox browser, have dismissed a Microsoft study claiming Internet Explorer has fewer security problems. The study was produced by Jeff Jones, a Microsoft security researcher. He compared the publicly-announced ... problems of both new and old versions of both browsers. His figures say that in the past three years, Internet Explorer has had 87 'vulnerabilities' (potential security problems that need fixing), while Firefox has had 199. He also found that Microsoft was improving security at a quicker pace; looking at vulnerabilities for each version of a browser in ... (view more)