WWW Trivia

Did you know that “www” (pronounced as “double you double you double you”) is the longest possible three-letter acronym to pronounce in English. With nine syllables, it would not be impossible to imagine that some Web users might find the acronym a bit tricky to pronounce when used in everyday conversations. Fortunately, there are shorter pronunciations for such people like “triple double you”, “dub dub dub”, or “wuh wuh wuh”. Also, the World Wide Web has its own Mandarin Chinese version and is translated to wàn wéi wÇŽng (万维网). It literally means “ten-thousand dimensional net” and is quite a fitting definition for something as vast and powerful as the Web.

Making Web Content Accessible

In an effort to make web content accessible for everyone who wishes to access the Web, including disabled users and user agents like the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) used for mobile phones, the W3C’s Web Accessibility Initiative had released Web accessibility guidelines called the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). The guidelines have 3 priority levels:

Priority 1: Web developers must satisfy these requirements, otherwise it will be impossible for one or more groups to access the Web content. Conformance to this level is described as “A”.
Priority 2: Web developers should satisfy these requirements, otherwise some groups will find it difficult to access the Web content. Conformance to this level is described as “AA” or “double A”.
Priority 3: Web developers may satisfy these requirements, in order to make it easier for some groups to access the Web content. Conformance to this level is described as “AAA” or “triple A”.

Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Content_Accessibility_Guidelines

The Continuing Conficker Menace

Security

Mobile Internet and Clouds

The introduction of the many mobiles and smart-phones that are capable of accessing the internet have grown as fast as the number of users the net gains day by day and with that, the rest of the internet has evolved, following suit. Most web sites that have growing mobile users have stripped down versions of their pages to allow people using them to gain access as if they were using their desktops. Social bookmarking has allowed us to surf the web and keep tabs on all the sites we are interested in for further review later. Read the rest of this entry »

Social Net – Censored Net ?!?!?

The internet has indeed become one of the most sociable technological wonders the world over yet it has been also subject to controversy time and time again. in countries where the government seeks to control the influx and outflow on information, it is censored and filtered, maybe using keywords or user name databases to block and deny access to them. The upcoming anniversary of the Tienanmen Square Events is sure to get some attention from the Chinese authorities and in the past, Iran has done some filtering of their own when elections and other events of international significance tends to be cut-off from the rest of the internet. Read the rest of this entry »

Ever Faster Speeds

The internet, unbeknownst to most evolves and changes day by day with respect to hardware upgrades and software revisions that makes it faster and better for all of us. Hard to imagine back during the times when dial-up and speeds of 1bps were the norm and BBS services ruled the developing net. In a span of a few years, we have Yahoo, Google and now Bing that Microsoft is betting to be the next big thing is search engine technology. The internet being comprised of several interconnected networks can in fact make new connections in cyber-space should one of the links fail allowing us to see a bit of a slowdown but allows life to continue in a few minutes, or hours or even days for major ones. Read the rest of this entry »

Social Sites – Fast Becoming Favorites

Of hackers as they try to find ways of spreading their wares, stealing the identities of unsuspecting people and cashing in on other people’s hard earned cash. The many budding social sites that are popping out all over the place, deemed as revolutionary startups are falling one by one to hackers who are after their sites, or their members who are running into the millions ripe fruits for the picking of their wrongdoing. Read the rest of this entry »

Phishing – subtle but more damaging

It may not be as obvious as viruses, trojans, worms, or even spyware, but phishing is much more damaging than it seems.

You see, phishing – which refers to the illegal procurement of personal information like credit card numbers and passwords – has a direct impact on you life. While all the woes before mainly just affect your computer system, victims who feel the full force of phishers end up losing a lot more. Just imagine someone being able to break into your credit account and makes the credit limit buying things WITH YOUR MONEY.

The key here is to be wary of registering and filling out forms on the net. Many untrustworthy phishing sites masquerade as legitimate sites like online banks – to the extent of duplicating the look – to steal info from people. So always be on your guard, the internet isn’t what it used to be.

The Continuing Conficker Menace

Security centers around the world have found that the famed conficker worm has again sprung back to life at the expected time and date April 1, April Fools Day. This was marked by updates sent to the sleeping code that told it to revise it’s strategy allowing it to circumvent many of the measures put in place to battle the long running malware that is estimated to have infected 9 million computers according to the latest estimates.
Read the rest of this entry »

2009 will be a better year for internet security?

Will next year a better year for internet security? If the report from McAfee below is right, it may seem so:

The investigation, conducted by McAfee(R) SiteAdvisor(TM), studied the five major U.S. search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, Ask) and found that the overall chance of clicking through to a risky site declined by 12.0%. Still, McAfee estimates that consumers click through to risky sites more than 268 million times each month.

“It’s good to see that clicking on search engine results has gotten modestly safer,” said Chris Dixon, director of strategy, McAfee SiteAdvisor. “But when almost one of 12 sponsored links still clicks through to a risky site, there remains significant room for continued improvement.”

Whether 2009 becomes the year of internet security or not, internet users must stay alert for any possible attack through websites surfed.

Source