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Flash designers ready for a new AIR

Saturday, August 13th, 2011

Adobe is launching the latest version of Adobe AIR 2.7 SDK, as well as the Adobe AIR 2.7 runtimes. The upgraded versions have new features for both desktop and mobile applications–including mobile support for Android 2.2+, BlackBerry Tablet OS* and iOS 4+.

Web designers and developers can build off this framework using Adobe Flash Builder 4.5. Soon there will be a new update to AIR for developers.

New mobile features include:

Enhanced rendering for iOS
Video – Faster App Performance on iOS
Faster development time for iOS applications
AIR installation on SD cards for Android devices

New desktop AIR features include:

Integrated support for Media Measurement
Acoustic echo cancellation
Navigation Improvements for HTML Content

Testing Flash Player and HTML5 on various phones and tablets

Tags: mobile development, web, web design
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ISPs dirty monetization: investigation of unexpected DNS-based redirections using keywords for profit

Sunday, August 7th, 2011

A recent study by a UC Berkeley research group, Netalyzr, revealed a sneaky tactic by ISPs in the US, which redirect keyword search traffic directly to websites instead of a search engine–allowing the ISP to profit from the affiliate relationship. Essentially the ISPs are (as the research group put it) “hijacking” users’ web search queries for their own profit.

The study consisted of over 2,000 Netalyzr sessions initiated by customers of a dozen US ISPs. The study noticed that the redirection occurs with approximately ~170 keywords, derived from the names of large websites. Outside of these cases the search conducted by a user would direct normally to Bing, Yahoo, Google or an ISP run search engine as expected. The ISPs have used a service called Paxfire, which specializes in DNS error traffic monetization in order to hijack the select search traffic based on backroom business deals.

Source: Netalyzr – Debug your Internet, A tool and comprehensive measurement study focusing on the health of the Internet.

This study was conducted in conjunction with New Scientist and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Tags: internet, web
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Bing feeds IE web usage, while Firefox, Chrome and Safari feed Google

Saturday, July 30th, 2011

The is an interesting correlation between web browsers and preferred search engine by web users. Nearly 75% of Bing users run Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser. On the other hand, only 40% of Google users run Internet Explorer. Google’s users tend to be more diverse in their choice of preferred browser–ranging from IE to Chrome, Firefox and Safari. The combination of Safari, Chrome and Firefox can surpass the IE usage alone. Bing seems to not be gaining traction from other browsers. However, Google has also ceased to be the default search engine set by manufacturers since 2008–when Microsoft began to take the lead with hardware manufacturers.

This insight stems from a new report by Chitika, which recorded a week’s worth of traffic within it’s advertising network in the month of July for North America.

In terms of top referring browsers for Google’s search engine, here are how the browsers are ranking according to Chitika:

1. Internet Explorer at 40%
2. Firefox at 20.3%
3. Chrome at 20.1%
4. Safari at 19%

Tags: web
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Expanding Twitter Advertising Enables A Focus On Followers

Thursday, July 28th, 2011

Twitter is in the process of refining it’s advertising service, Promoted Tweets. Specifically, it is trying to expand the types of advertising opportunities for big brands to engage Tweeters. A service service will allow brands to advertise to followers only–rather than to the general public.

Similar to normal “promoted tweets”, this new service will appear at the top of users’ timelines upon login. Ultimately, this new web advertising service is a targeting tool for big brands. Normally, promoted tweets generate 3-5% engagement with users, but this new service will help to push that number up.

The service will also help to extend the engagement metrics by ensuring that these particular promoted tweets are accessible to users even if a user isn’t online when the ad is originally pushed. Additionally, the ads will extend beyond the Twitter.com website–into other platforms and vehicles for Twitter’s service.

Tags: online advertising, web, website
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US military taking cyber security lessons from the private sector

Sunday, July 17th, 2011

As evidenced by a new document from the DOD, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE STRATEGY FOR OPERATING IN CYBERSPACE, published July 2011, the US military is taking “learning lessons” from the private sector in cyber security, agility, lifecycle management and supply-chain protection.

The new agenda calls for copying attributes in the private sector, including best practices for securing networks.

“DoD will integrate the private sector’s continuous renewal method to harden its own computing devices and sustain its cyber hygiene best practices.”

In addition, the new initiative relies on the private sector for meeting some of it’s goals. This may include a working relationship between ISPs and the government–helping to mitigate risks that affect military networks.

Additionally, to advance the modernity of it’s approach, the military will shorten the lifecycle for network infrastructure to come in line with common private industry practices–from the previous 7-8 years to now 12-36 months.

Tags: internet, security, web
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Behavioral targeting now available to all advertisers on Adwords

Saturday, June 25th, 2011

Behavioral targeting will now be available to all Adwords users, which was a feature long-in-waiting for many advertisers. The search giant first launched a BETA version of this tool back in 2009, but made it available only to small groups of advertisers–until now.

The new functionality will allow advertisers to select audience based on interests based on their browsing activity or online behavior. More specifically, the tool groups users based on the types of pages that a user visits. The tool considers how recently and frequently the user visits those websites or web pages. Using identifying browser cookies, users can be targeted by advertisers of specific categories. Currently the program supports about a thousand categories, and the functionality has been shown to increase ROI.

There is also an opt out function for the user–should they not wish this extra level of tracking.

Tags: analysis, online advertising, web
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Database security breach at Sega

Sunday, June 19th, 2011

Sega, the video game company, reported a database intrusion with approximately sensitive information on about 1.3 million customers may have been compromised.

The comprised database was on the Sega Pass website, and the compromised information included customer names, dates of birth, e-mail addresses and encrypted passwords. The company noted that the customer passwords were not stored in plain text. Even though the passwords were encrypted, it is recommended that users who maintain the same user/passwords across multiple websites change update their access information for all sites.

Sega sent an email to Sega Pass registered users informing them of the data breach.

Tags: Internet gaming, security, web
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First CNN now Netflix – being sued for missing captions

Sunday, June 19th, 2011

The National Association of the Deaf (NAD) is suing Netflix for not comforming to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) as they do not provide captions for the majority of their online streaming videos. According to the suit, ADA law requires that all places of entertainment must offer “full and equal enjoyment” for individuals with disabilities. According to this suit, the NAD is attempting to classify Netflix under Title III of the ADA. Netflix has made an attempt to add captions to a number of titles–albeit limited in selection.

Tags: video, web
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Nations hacking nations may now provoke war

Tuesday, May 31st, 2011

The Pentagon is in the process of developing a formal policy that would consider a computer attack from another nation against the US an act of war, which would carry military engagement implications.

There has been debate for quite some time that the US response to a computer attack should be found within an array of reprisals including economic sanctions, retaliatory cyberattacks or a military strike.

This new policy does not address how the US will respond to non-nation states conducting cyberattacks against the US or it’s inhabitants. One of the clear challenges of this new deterrence policy is the difficulty in accurately and confidently pinning an attack to a nation or non-nation state. Take, for example, the case of Google which pin-pointed the attack to computer servers in China, but the US Government did not formally accuse China as being responsible for the attack–an act that would carry clear political implications.

Tags: security, web
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