Google , April's Fools

photo credit: Oops. John T Takai/Shutterstock

April Fools’ jokes are normally a bit of harmless fun. But that doesn’t seem to have been the case for one of Google’s latest pranks.

The Internet giant is known for its numerous annual April Fools’ jokes, but one seems to have failed spectacularly this year. They decided to install a “drop mic” button on Gmail that would send recipients of the email an animated gif of a Minion character “dropping a mic,” ending the email thread and blocking any future emails in the chain.

Things seem to have taken a turn for the worse, though, as unaware users who clicked the button – next to the normal “send” button – found that what were supposed to be serious emails became mocking replies.

“Thanks to Mic Drop I just lost my job,” said one user on Google’s Gmail Help Forum. “I am a writer and had a deadline to meet. I sent my articles to my boss and never heard back from her. I inadvertently sent the email using the 'Mic Drop' send button.

“I just woke up to a very angry voicemail from her which is how I found out about this ‘hilarious’ prank.”

The orange button appeared next to the regular blue "send" button. Google

Other users reported similarly awkward instances, where what should have been professional emails were anything but. Google, realizing their error, has now removed the “drop mic” button from Google.

“Well, it looks like we pranked ourselves this year,” they wrote in a blog post. “Due to a bug, the Mic Drop feature inadvertently caused more headaches than laughs. We’re truly sorry. The feature has been turned off. If you are still seeing it, please reload your Gmail page.”

It just goes to show that, while April Fools’ is normally all fun and games, things can occasionally not go to plan. Let’s just hope no one has spent the last few decades trying in vain to grow spaghetti trees.

*drops mic*

Nichols PC Help -Sedona, Az 877-772-6541 www.nicholspchelp.com

Google’s New Modular Phone May Be the Last You’ll Need to Buy

At the Project Ara Developer’s Conference in Santa Clara, California, the moment of unveiling was a bit of a letdown. When project lead Paul Eremenko got ready for the big reveal — finally showing off Google’s vision for a modular phone with working, user-interchangeable components — he had to dampen expectations from the enthusiastic crowd. “You should temper your applause,” he warned, explaining that the device had been damaged the previous day. “We did crack the screen, and the phone doesn’t quite boot.” A disappointment, sure, but it did little to actually temper anything. Project Ara is Google’s attempt to reinvent the cellphone as we know it. Instead of a slab of glass and metal that you have no ability to upgrade, save for buying a new device, it’s an attempt to launch a phone where all of the main components are interchangeable via modules that click in and out, attaching via electro-permanent magnets. Despite being highly customizable, it will only come in three main sizes, helping to eliminate the kind of device fragmentation that currently plagues Android. Google plans to roll out a “gray model,” a very basic device that costs as little as $50, as well as higher-end handsets that could go for as much as $500 and up. The former will be released first — around this time next year if all goes according to plan — and will likely be a smaller, Wi-Fi-only version. This bare-bones model will be followed by the higher-end ones eventually. But Google’s initial objective is to ramp up a hardware ecosystem that moves at the same pace as the software it runs. It’s ambitious, to say the least. There’s a certain prescience to the damaged prototype. It bears one of the most common injuries you’ll see on a smartphone: a cracked screen. In theory, this is just the kind of issue Ara will solve. But because it came directly from Germany, and because there is no way to replace the module here in the United States, it’s just another broken phone. It also drives home another point: When Ara devices do hit the streets, they will only be as good as their support network. For the support to work, you’ve got to have a lot of modules, and a lot of access to those modules. Project Ara needs a network of retail stores where people can do things like pick up a new screen. It also needs enough developers making modules to sustain that kind of retail presence — and it needs it globally. Google is working to make things easy for programmers and hardware manufacturers to work with the Ara standards, but for many items — anything that uses radio frequencies and thus requires FCC approval for example — it’s going to need buy-in from consumers too. GOOGLE’S WILLINGNESS TO TRY SOMETHING SO AMBITIOUS IN PUBLIC IS ENERGIZING, PARTICULARLY IN THE ERA OF THE GET-RICH-QUICK SMARTPHONE APP. All of this makes for a heady and optimistic yet extremely uncertain future. Ara is a project from Google’s ATAP (advances technology and projects) group. ATAP is philosophically and structurally based on DARPA; it was one of the few things Google kept from Motorola when it sold the company to Lenovo. And honestly Ara, at least as a concept, is fantastic. Who wouldn’t want the ability to some day print out new parts for their smartphone at home, expanding its life expectancy to six years and beyond? Google’s willingness to try something so ambitious in public is energizing, particularly in the era of the get-rich-quick smartphone app. Project Ara’s goals could transform the industry, give people greater control over their own devices, and free them from the annual cycles of obsolescence. It’s flexible platform suitable for everyone, everywhere, from every walk of life. Or, it could be a catastrophic and very public failure. A huge embarrassment. This is what Google does best. Its willingness to take big risks and make big bets knowing they may not pan out is a remarkable attribute in a publicly traded company. The Project Ara conference is an important first step for the initiative. It’s the first time Google is looping in developers and laying out the technical groundwork. There will be two more conferences this year, where presumably we’ll see more modules and hopefully working prototypes. Whether or not Google can pull this off remains to be seen. But it will be one of the most exciting stories to watch in technology during the next year.

Microsoft Should Be Worried About Google’s Chromebooks

Just ahead of the holiday shopping season, Microsoft ramped up its FUD machine and  launched the next phase of its infamous anti-Google Scroogled campaign last week. This time, the company is targeting Chromebooks, Google’s cheap ChromeOS-based, web-centric laptops. Why is Microsoft worried about Chromebooks? Because it can see the writing on the wall.

For many mainstream users, the operating system they use is slowly becoming irrelevant, and even though Chromebooks are not right for everyone, they are slowly becoming a real alternative in the low-end laptop market.

Most Chromebook distractors will argue that there’s no need to even try to poke fun at these devices. Who, after all, wants a laptop that can’t do anything else but surf the web? Who would even buy one of these things? It’s the platypus of the notebook world, after all. But while most people think of Chromebooks as laptops that can’t do anything else but surf the web and aren’t “real laptops” (an idea Microsoft plays up in its Scroogled campaign), that perception is quickly becoming outdated and that’s why Microsoft has decided to go for the FUD.

Microsoft wants you to believe that you can’t do anything with a Chromebook when you’re offline. That’s just plain wrong at this point. Sure, Chromebooks make more sense in an always-on environment (which is where most people use them), but nobody is stopping you from playing Angry Birds while you’re offline. Indeed, while Microsoft specifically calls out Angry Birds as the kind of thing you can’t do on a Chromebook, Google would be more than happy if you downloaded it from its Chrome Web Store and played it offline.

More and more ChromeOS apps now work this way, which is great, but if you think about it, how much of what you do on a laptop these days actually happens offline? Unless you really need Photoshop or high-end CAD software or a similarly demanding program, the software you’re probably using most on your laptop is your browser.

Microsoft says you can’t play Call of Duty or Age of Empires on a Chromebook, and that’s fair enough. But you’re not going to enjoy playing Call of Duty on those sub-$250 Windows laptops that Microsoft highlights on its Chromebook vs. Windows laptop page, either. There may never be a Microsoft Office for ChromeOS, but there’s a pretty good version of it available on the web courtesy of Microsoft itself. You can’t do Skype, but Hangouts isn’t bad either. There’s no iTunes, but if you’re online, the Spotify web app works just as well as the desktop app.

At this point, it’s clear that Google and its hardware partners are in the Chromebook game for the long run. Google found an attractive niche for these devices in the education and low-end laptop market and it’s slowly building on this momentum.

The first versions of ChromeOS were indeed too limited and I could never quite recommend them to anybody. Ever since Google switched to a real window manager, however, and started adding more offline capabilities, Chromebooks started making more sense for everyday use. The Cr-48 pilot program launched three years ago. At that time, ChromeOS was exactly what Microsoft describes in its Scroogled campaign: an underpowered laptop that offered little else but the ability to surf the web and get annoyed at its horrible touchpad. Today, it’s a pretty capable laptop, even if it’s not right for everybody yet. In three years, it could become a real challenger for Windows, especially as the modern web slowly catches up to apps.

For all your Computer and Website needs www.nicholspchelp.com

Dawning of the Age of Quantum Information Teleportation

Researchers at ETH Zurich, a university of science and technology, have teleported information from one end of a superconducting circuit to another -- a distance of 6mm.

macroscopic electrical circuits

The ant depicted on top of the superconducting circuit illustrates the relative proportions of the macroscopic electrical circuits for the first time used for teleportation. (Credit: Jonas Mlynek/ETH Zurich)

The experiment has two unusual features: 1) It is the first time quantum teleportation was conducted over a circuit without the use of a powerful laser beam; and 2) the information was relayed making use of the laws of quantum physics rather than classical physics.

This achievement is "extraordinarily impressive," remarked Carl Williams, chief of the quantum measurement division of the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology.

"Anybody who understands how to do the coherence and other aspects understands how difficult it is to achieve that at that level," Williams continued.

'Spooky Action'

The researchers created two small superconducting circuits on a chip measuring 7mm square. They cooled the chip to very close to absolute zero using helium in order to access the system's quantum properties.

The researchers then created quantum entanglement between the superconducting circuits.

Quantum entanglement results when particles such as photons or electrons interact physically and then become separated but remain in the same quantum state. A quantum state is a set of mathematical variables, including position, momentum and spin, that fully describes a quantum system.

Once the circuits were in an entangled state, information programmed into the sending circuit vanished, to reappear in the receiving circuit when it was read out. The information did not travel from one circuit to the other, said Andreas Wallraff, who headed the study. Think of Star Trek's transporters beaming people up to the mother ship or out of the vessel.

If the concept of spooky entanglement sounds puzzling, rest assured it is: Albert Einstein derided it as "spooky action."

'Truly Impressive'

Other teleportation experiments have moved information over far greater distances. For example, scientists in China transmitted quantum bits, or qubits, over a distance of 97 km, or roughly 60 miles, and European scientists moved information x143 km, or 89 miles, between the Canary Islands of La Palma and Tenerife. Both experiments were conducted last year.

However, both of those experiments used beams of light from lasers to encode qubits, which are quantum bits.

Although the ETH experiment teleported data over only 6mm, it is "a truly impressive experiment using superconducting electronic circuits, a couple of Josephson junctions, and a planar array," NIST's Williams said. The Institute first demonstrated quantum teleportationback in 2004 and has a US$20 million budget for quantum research.

'The First Small Spinoffs'

Quantum information processing allows for more storage density and lets information be more efficiently processed than when classical bits are used.

However, "in classical computing, we use different technologies to access RAM or a USB drive or cache memory or do actual processing," Williams pointed out. The technology used in the ETH experiment "may win a specific piece or place in a quantum computer, although it may not end up being the technology primarily used in the processor or cache memory."

Quantum technology "is futuristic," observed Williams, "and we are beginning to see some of the first small spinoffs." 

For all your computer and website needs www.nicholspchelp.com

WordPress hit by massive botnet: Worse to come, experts warn

The performance and security firm CloudFare warned in a blog post today that the unknown attacker is using a "relatively weak botnet of home PCs in order to build a much larger botnet of beefy servers in preparation for a future attack," suggesting a calm before a heavier storm. The botnet is attempting to "brute force" attack WordPress websites using the username "admin", with thousands of different passwords. The botnet of machines — often individual machines infected with malware and subscribed to target servers and websites with vast amounts of data — is being used to hack web-based WordPress installations. This botnet channels some bandwidth from individual computers infected with malware, which in mass and collectively can cause the overloading of servers. Typically, this kind of attack is either used by willing participants to cause a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack against websites to force them offline, or by "slave" computers that can be used to carry out hacking attempts. It comes only a week after WordPress enhanced user security by rolling out an optional two-factor authentication system. WordPress founder Matt Mullenwag criticized those who were offering "solutions" to the problem, such as CloudFare, and instead suggested changing default usernames as an additional step to protect their WordPress accounts. "If you still use 'admin' as a username on your blog, change it, use a strong password, if you're on WordPress.com turn on two-factor authentication, and of course make sure you’re up-to-date on the latest version of WordPress," he said. "Do this and you’ll be ahead of 99 percent of sites out there and probably never have a problem." WordPress remains a large target for hackers, which has around 64 million individual blogs and websites, with more than 370 million readers each month. Alexa ranks the blogging network as the 21 most visited site in the world.

For all your computer and website needs www.nicholspchelp.com

Google Translate app for Android gets offline support

Google today added offline language support to the Google Translate app for Android. Available for devices running Android 2.3 Gingerbread and up, the new feature allows for translation in 50 languages, even where a data connection is not present. To enable the offline capabilities on your device, simply download and install your desired language packs. While Google is quick to admit that the offline results pale in comparison to the online version, it should still help when you find yourself hiking in the Andes mountains. Those interested in kicking the tires on the new app experience are encouraged to head to Google Play, where you can download it for free. Samsung, for its part, recently introduced a similar translation app experience for the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S4. Dubbed S Translator, it can be embedded into e-mail, messaging, and ChatOn, or function as a standalone tool. Remember For all your technology needs www.nicholspchelp.com

Google Maps for iOS gets first big update

Google today pushed out its first update to its mapping software on Apple's iOS, adding a few new features. Chief among them is integration with a user's Google contact list, a feature that will pull up any addresses you have stored with Google, and not just on your phone. The update (iTunes) also adds a new option in the search menu that will quickly look for nearby points of interest, including restaurants, gas stations, movie theaters, and coffee shops. You could search for these things before, but the new menu means you don't actually have to type out the search. Google released a standalone maps app for iOS in December, three months after Apple replaced Google's technology with its own inside the Maps app that ships on iOS devices. The main attraction, besides Google's more mature set of mapping data, was spoken turn-by-turn directions, something that Android users had enjoyed for years but wasn't offered out of the box for iOS users until iOS 6. Other features in the update are the option to toggle between kilometers or miles, regardless of what country you're in, and the app's release in Bahrain, Egypt, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Google's iOS app is still missing a few things found on the Android version. That list includes mapping layers, the offline mode that lets you save mapping tiles to your phone for use if you're away from a data connection (though it will temporarily save them once loaded), biking directions, and indoor maps. Google has not spelled out if those features will be carried over. Remember for all your Computer Repair Needs. 928-399-9101 www.nicholspchelp.com

Custom Contractors Insurance

Happy to report www.custom-contractors-insurance.com is now at a 19% conversion rate. thats 5% higher then the national average. (conversions are how many people visit the site and buy the product.) Its amazing what a professionally designed website can do for your business! Remember for all your Web and Computer needs! 928-399-9101 www.nicholspchelp.com

Samsung owes Apple $1Billion

Samsung owes Apple more than $1 billion in damages for violating Apple hardware and software patents, a California jury ruled on Friday. The jury found that Samsung infringed upon Apple patents having to do with physical design and user interfaces, often willfully, and that several of the South Korean company’s products diluted Apple’s trade dress, especially as it related to various iPhone models.

The jury did not find that Samsung proved by clear and convincing evidence that Apple’s asserted utility and design patents were invalid, as Samsung had claimed, and found that many Samsung products violated those patents.

Though Apple was awarded less than the $2.5 billion it originally sought, this was clearly a resounding win for the company. And it could have far-reaching consequences to the smartphone and tablet industry, ranging from product injunctions, like we just saw happen in South Korea Friday morning, to the need for mobile device makers to overhaul the designs and UIs of their products.

For the ’381 patent, which covers the “bounce-back” feature in document scrolling, all applicable Samsung products were found to be infringing for Samsung Electronics Ltd, Samsung Electronics America, and Samsung Telecommunications America, with the exception of the Galaxy Tab under Samsung Telecommunications America. This is a total of 21 smartphones and tablets including the Samsung Nexus S 4G, Galaxy s II (AT&T and i9100), Galaxy Tab, and Galaxy Tab 10.1.

One bit of good news for Samsung: The jurors found that the Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet did not infringe on any physical iPad design patents, as Apple had claimed.

After delivering its rulings, the jury was excused for approximately 15 minutes while Judge Lucy Koh and lawyers for Apple and Samsung examined the conclusions for any inconsistencies.

The jury reached a verdict after only three days of deliberations, which came as a surprise, given the complexity of the case, which has touched upon everything from device design to the way data is transmitted over a 3G network. Many observers expected the largely non-technically inclined jury to take at least a week to sort through the morass of evidence, arguments, and other information presented over the course of the trial.

Samsung and Apple have been embroiled in a multi-pronged intellectual property battle in courtrooms across the globe for over a year. Apple claimed that Samsung had infringed on patents covering the design of the iPhone and iPad, as well as utility patents over a few iOS user interface features. Samsung said Apple was in violation of its essential 3G transmission patent holdings.

In all counts but the claims about iPad design, the jury ruled overwhelmingly in Apple’s favor.

For all your Computer and Webdesign needs www.nicholspchelp.com

Particularly useful for restaurants as people on the move may be looking for somewhere to eat. London Restaurant, Da Paolo's have launched a mobile version of their website.

The site detects whether a mobile device is being used and automatically diverts the visitor to the appropriate mobile website design. This now being developed so that the individual property details are also mobile friendly. The additional advantage of this is that the website is effectively increasing its SEO equity in terms of content as each version has its own unique URL.

http://www.studio5usa.com/website-design/mobile-website-design.htm

For all your technology needs www.nicholspchelp.com

Explosive Combination

When Timon Pratt arrived in Sedona equipped with just his PC which he had lovingly carried through hand luggage to start a web design business things did not quite go to plan. UK computers use 240 volts and despite his care with transformers and adapters the minute he flicked the switch there was an

unnerving fizzing sound and that acrid electrical burning smell. It was this incident that actually led him to a new beginning here in Sedona when he called Nichols PC Help to get him out of the fix.

Timon & Ryan met and while discussing the options for the recovery of his system the conversation lead to each other’s’ skills and expertise. It wasn’t long before they decided to team up and work together on providing a total technology solution for clients in Arizona.

Ryan Nichols has lived in Sedona for over 20 years. After graduating from Full Sail University in 2009 at the top of his class, with a Bachelors of Science for Digital Arts & Design found there were no jobs for a fresh graduate in the mist of the financial issues burdening our country. Nichols started
freelancing locally doing whatever kind of work he could find; web design, video editing, software installation tutoring and computer repair and maintenance.

Situated in West Sedona their offices provide a hub for the website design and technology studio. Timon heads up Studio 5 USA LLC and has spent more than 15 years in website design from its very infancy in the mid 1990’s and the UK client base remains on board as Studio 5 broadens its horizons to
the USA.

“Ironically two of the first jobs we looked at here in the USA were in NYC, but we’ve actually built a site already for a Sedona based artist and there are a couple more about to go live.” says Timon, whose UK client base covers the entire country. “By teaming up with Ryan we’re offering a one stop
shop for technical issues, from professionally designed websites, custom content management and e-commerce systems to social media management, WordPress site setup and tutoring as well as computer performance enhancements and hardware installation and repair.

Their first joint project was for a local artist and the website was up and running in just over 10 days, a totally bespoke website with a tailored content management system to allow the client to manage and update the website pages with new work and news of events and workshops he organizes. The
intention is to add in an e-commerce facility at some point in the future. The project also involved working with a local Graphic Designer, Tonita Abeyta, who will likely be involved with other projects in the future.

“It’s refreshing to be working with a real professional web designer” says Ryan “who builds custom websites tailored to the client’s needs with an understanding of their business aims. “

Remember for all your Website and Computer needs www.nicholspchelp.com

Facebook stock drops on news of decline in user base

Facebook stock dropped 2.8 percent this morning after an investment firm indicated that the social network's number of users have fallen over the last six months, Bloomberg reported.

The shares of Menlo Park, Calif.-based Facebook decreased 2.8 percent to $27.45 at 10:53 a.m. ET, Bloomberg said, while the shares of Zynga, which has games that are mostly played on Facebook, dropped 6.1 percent to $4.54. Perhaps the panic was short-lived, as the stock ended the day at $28.09, a 0.55 percent decline.

This comes on top of the stock's 8.1 percent decline yesterday.

The Capstone report, written by analyst Rory Maher, revealed that Facebook's user base in the U.S. decreased 1.1 percent over the past six months. Additionally, 14 of the 23 markets where Facebook has been successful saw a decline or little growth over the past three months.

These numbers add to the slew of stats on Facebook's declining member base. ComScore numbers from late June showed a decline of unique U.S. visitors to the site in a three-month period -- from 158.9 million in March to 158.01 million in May. Another analytics company, ForeSee, said user satisfaction also continues to decline.

Remember for all your Technology needs www.nicholspchelp.com

Sony patent filing for glasses would share data face to face, carry more than a hint of Project Glass

Google might not realize it, but Project Glass isn't alone in the patent race these days. Sony has quietly applied for a patent on a familiar-looking smart glasses system whose advantage over Mountain View would be an emphasis on things in twos. Eyepieces are the most obvious, but Sony is also keen on sharing data between two friends:transmitters on a pair of glasses would send personal info through a likely very uncomfortable glance at someone else with the same eyewear. If your friends are more than a little weirded out from sharing by staring, the proposed glasses could still pick up information from visual tags on posters, products and virtually anything else.There's even the obligatory connection to a watch for sharing data with the rest of the world. Whether or not the patent leads to Sony head-mounted technology more advanced than a personal 3D TV is still up in the air, especially with Google currently hogging the spotlight... not that existing, more conservative designs have ever stopped Sony from rolling out wild concepts before.
Remember for all your Technology needs www.nicholspchelp.com

Groupon now worth less than the $6 billion Google offered

Andrew Mason could probably use a Groupon for a massage, a beer, or some comfort food right about now.

His company's precipitous stock decline continued on Monday, sending Groupon's market cap below the $6 billion that Google offered as a buyout in late 2010.

Groupon's stock ended nearly 8% lower on Monday, sending shares to a new low of below $9 per share.

That extended the stock's heavy losses on Friday, when Groupon (GRPN) shares tumbled 9% on heavy volume as company insiders got their first chance to sell their stock. With Monday's plunge, shares are down about 26% over the past week.

There hasn't been any major news specific to Groupon -- other than the so-called lockup expiration that allows insiders to sell -- to explain this week's sell-off. But several Internet companies have tumbled along with Facebook (FB). Since the social network's IPO about two weeks ago, Facebook shares are down more than 30%.

Monday's decline brings Groupon's market capitalization to about $5.8 billion. That's less than the roughly $6 billion that Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) offered to buy Groupon in December 2010.

Groupon chose instead to go public, making its debut on the Nasdaq exchange on November 4.

Life on Wall Street has proven difficult.

Related story: Meet the anti-Groupon

As soon as Groupon disclosed its financials in its June 2011 IPO filing, critics slammed the company for its unorthodox accounting measures. That led to several downward revisions of Groupon's financials as it adopted more conventional metrics.

Despite that, Groupon shares soared about 31% on their debut day. But the gains didn't last long. A few weeks after reporting its fourth-quarter financial results, Groupon was forced to revise its quarterly income and sales lower, thanks to a higher-than-expected rate of customers asking for refunds.

In that same statement, Groupon revealed that its independent auditor uttered the dreaded phrase "material weakness." Ernst & Young's 2011 audit report found that Groupon had a deficiency in its process for closing its quarterly financial statements.

Groupon has since taken steps to resolve that issue. Last month the companyreported narrower losses and better sales than analysts had expected for the second quarter.

Anonymous Hackers Deface 500 Chinese Government Websites

The Anonymous movement has pulled off one of its biggest hacktivist coups yet, successfully defacing hundreds of Chinese Government websites in a spectacular protest against Internet censorship.

Defacement attacks are frequent but the scale of what the previously unknown Chinese wing of the group and hackers invited via Twitter launched from March 30 onwards is still unusual.

The full list of attacked domains posted on Pastebin has now reached 501 after rising in recent days, some of which were defaced more than once after Chinese officials regained control.

"Your government controls the Internet in your country and strives to filter what it considers a threat for it," read the opening text of the defacement message posted on many of the sites.

"In the defaces and leaks in this day, we demonstrate our revolt to the Chinese system. It has to stop! We aren't asking you for nothing, just saying to protest, to revolt yourself, to be the free person you always want to be," continued a message on Pastebin backed up with a Chinese-language translation.

Defacements were accompanied by The Who's 1971 song, Baba O'Reilly, which famously contains the protest refrain "teenage wasteland."

The following protest message was also posted to two sites:

"Dear Chinese government, you are not infallible, today websites are hacked, tomorrow it will be your vile regime that will fall. So expect us because we do not forgive, never. What you are doing today to your Great People, tomorrow will be inflicted to you. With no mercy," it read.

Most of the sites appear to have returned to normal, but the attacks are another example of how vulnerable large numbers of such websites can be to a determined and coordinated group of hackers out to create maximum nuisance.

Hackers sympathetic to the Anonymous movement have now defaced so many sites it would probably be easier to state which high-profile companies and governments haven't been hit.

However, hacking is no longer an act that can be carried out with impunity, as the police sweep of LulzSec members last summer demonstrates.

One of these accused, Ryan Cleary, was re-arrested in March for breaching his bail conditions after being arrested for allegedly DDoSing the website of the UK's Serious Organised Crime Office (SOCA).

For any and all your computer needs visit us at www.nicholspchelp.com

110,000 PC-strong Kelihos botnet sidelined

A new version of the Kelihos spamming botnet has been sidelined by using the peer-to-peer distribution mechanism to basically hijack it, researchers announced today.

The botnet, which was used mostly to distribute spam for Canadian pharmaceutical firms but also stole bitcoin wallets containing virtual currency, was about three times larger than an earlier variant, according to CrowdStrike, the security firm that worked with Kaspersky, Dell SecureWorks, and Honeynet Project to shut down the botnet.

The researchers reverse-engineered the malware code and wrote their own software that rerouted infected computers to communicate with servers controlled by researchers and law enforcement rather than servers operated by the malware creators where they would get instructions for sending spam.

"Last week they began poisoning Kelihos.B using the peer-to-peer mechanism and within minutes we were talking to 110,000 infected machines and sending them to our sinkhole," which is composed of benign servers controlled by researchers, Adam Meyers, director of intelligence at CrowdStrike, told CNET. "This is a cool factor. That we were able to use one of the attributes of the botnet, the peer-to-peer networking, against it."

The researchers injected their code into the botnet by sending it out to a number of infected computers that in turn sent it on to others in a viral distribution manner. "Eventually, the code overtakes the network and the bad guys lose control," Meyers said.

The sinkhole collects data from the infected computers, such as IP address and operating system version. The statistics allowed indicated that more than 9,400 computers were running Windows 7, just a few hundred more than those running Windows XP.

Researchers are working with Internet service providers to identify the infected machines and help get the malware removed from them, according to Meyers.
It's unclear who is behind Kelihos, he said. It was created last October after Microsoft used a sinkhole to halt the original Kelihos botnet, which had infected about 41,000 computers.

The latest Kelihos used servers with hosts registered in Sweden, Russia and Ukraine that were controlled by a botmaster, according to CrowdStrike. The command-and-control infrastructure used by the botnet was abandoned by the gang operating it two days after the researchers began hijacking it using the peer-to-peer feature, the company said.

Earlier this week, Microsoft announced that U.S.Marshals seized command-and-control servers used to control Zeus botnets that had been used to steal more than $100 million via 13 million infected computers.
Updated 7:47 a.m. PT to clarify that Windows 7 had the most infections.

For any and all your computer needs visit us at www.nicholspchelp.com

With ‘Play,’ Google Serves Up Its iTunes Moment

Google unveiled Google Play on Tuesday, a grand plan to unify all the media it serves up from various portals to one recognizable brand identity and location. Call it Google’s iTunes moment.

Instead of separating media by category — Google Music, Android Market, Google Books — all of Google’s disparate sources will be accesible from a very iTunes-like storefront, accessible via the web or through apps on Android smartphones and tablets.

“This is about going beyond just Android,” said Google engineering director Chris Yerga in an interview.

It’s a branding thing, sure, but more than that. It’s part of a maturing process that Google’s steady introduction of cloud-based media options has more or less compelled. Even as Android devices rose to a position of market leadership over the past four years, Google’s content-side efforts have floundered; Google took 2.5 years to unveil an Android app web store, and more than three years to launch its music retail service.
Success may hinge as much on a simpler experience as what sounds … inviting. Do you prefer the word “Android,” or “Play?”

As one would hope, your files won’t move, your past purchases won’t change. And as always, you’ll log in with your Google account information to access all of your content from mobile devices or the web.

As big a step Google Play is, not a great deal will change. Movies, music and apps aren’t going anywhere; instead, they’ll be rebranded across the app and web interfaces. The Google Music app, for instance, becomes “Play Music” on your Android devices. Google Books, similarly, changes to “Play Books.” But gone is “Android Market” — in name only. Google rebranded the market as the “Play Store,” which, like the Market, will be available both on the web and on phones and tablets.

The unification exercise aims to address a natural fragmentation which came from rolling out services piecemeal. Android Market, for instance, made sense as a go-to destination for Android apps, programs to be used on Android devices. But Google Music users may not be inclined to go to — or even think of going to — the Android Market for MP3 purchases. And Google Books was practically off in its own orbit, with a web store entirely separate from the Android Market until recently.

Contrast this with Apple’s iTunes model, a desktop application which pre-dates even the iPod (and all of mobile) and funnels all Apple-sold music, movies and books through one unified, idiot-proof storefront.

Google’s unification efforts, though, aren’t as simple as Apple’s early iTunes days. Part of Android’s great allure has been its ability to sync content across devices wirelessly, with no need to hardwire your smartphone or tablet in to your laptop for app or music file transfer. That’s been Apple’s greatest negative (until the recent launch of iCloud), and Google’s biggest potential advantage.

It’s a start. Ultimately, Google needs to execute well to boost its mobile content bottom line. In Apple’s last fiscal quarter alone, iTunes sales accounted for $1.7 billion in company revenues. Google isn’t sharing any information on its mobile content sales business (which isn’t a good sign), but has seen over 10 billion app downloads, and has cultivated a customer base of over 4 million Google Music users since the service’s full roll-out in November.

U.S. users should expect to see the changes appear in the form of Google app updates and a web portal face lift in the coming days. Only limited offerings will appear in Canada, the U.K., Australia and Japan for now, though Google has made it clear the initiative will eventually be a global one.

For any and all your computer needs visit us at www.nicholspchelp.com

If you're using 'Password1,' change it. Now.

The number one way hackers get into protected systems isn't through a fancy technical exploit. It's by guessing the password.
That's not too hard when the most common password used on business systems is "Password1."

There's a technical reason for Password1's popularity: It's got an upper-case letter, a number and nine characters. That satisfies the complexity rules for many systems, including the default settings for Microsoft's (MSFT, Fortune 500) widely used Active Directory identity management software.
Security services firm Trustwave spotlighted the "Password1" problem in its recently released "2012 Global Security Report," which summarizes the firm's findings from nearly 2 million network vulnerability scans and 300 recent security breach investigations.

Around 5% of passwords involve a variation of the word "password," the company's researchers found. The runner-up, "welcome," turns up in more than 1%.
Easily guessable or entirely blank passwords were the most common vulnerability Trustwave's SpiderLabs unit found in its penetration tests last year on clients' systems. The firm set an assortment of widely available password-cracking tools loose on 2.5 million passwords, and successfully broke more than 2.1 million of them.

Verizon came up with similar results in its 2012 Data Breach Investigations Report, one of the security industry's most comprehensive annual studies. The full report will be released in several months, but Verizon (VZ, Fortune 500) previewed some of its findings at this week's RSA conference in San Francisco.

Exploiting weak or guessable passwords was the top method attackers used to gain access last year. It played a role in 29% of the security breaches Verizon's response team investigated.

Verizon's scariest finding was that attackers are often inside victims' networks for months or years before they're discovered. Less than 20% of the intrusions Verizon studied were discovered within days, let alone hours.

Even scarier: Few companies discovered the breach on their own. More than two-thirds learned they'd been attacked only after an external party, such as a law-enforcement agency, notified them. Trustwave's findings were almost identical: Only 16% of the cases it investigated last year were internally detected.
So if your password is something guessable, what's the best way to make it more secure? Make it longer.

Adding complexity to your password -- swapping "password" for "p@S$w0rd" -- protects against so-called "dictionary" attacks, which automatically check against a list of standard words.

But attackers are increasingly using brute-force tools that simply cycle through all possible character combinations. Length is the only effective guard against those. A seven-character password has 70 trillion possible combinations; an eight-character password takes that to more than 6 quadrillion.

Even a few quadrillion options isn't a big deal for modern machines, though. Using a $1,500 computer built with off-the-shelf parts, it took Trustwave just 10 hours to harvest its first 200,000 broken passwords.

"We've got to get ourselves using stuff larger than human memory capacity," independent security researcher Dan Kaminsky said during an RSA presentation on why passwords don't work.
He acknowledged that it's an uphill fight. Biometric authentication, smartcards, one-time key generators and other solutions can increase security, but at the cost of adding complexity.

"The fundamental win of the password over every other authentication technology is its utter simplicity on every device," Kaminsky said. "This is, of course, also their fundamental failing."

For any and all your computer needs visit us at www.nicholspchelp.com

New Blog!

Nichols PC Help your Everything Technology company, is now keeping you up to date with all the latest need to know information about Viruses, New Software, and great Deals! Add Nichols Pc Help to your bookmarks and check with us often!

For any and all your computer needs visit us at www.nicholspchelp.com