Results for "internet"
Earthquake Alerts via Internet


The U.S. Geological Survey agency monitors earthquake activity around the world. It reports the geographic location and intensity of an earthquake and anyone can subscribe to this data through Twitter, RSS feeds and KML files for Google Earth.

Then there are desktop software like Quake Alert that poll the USGS website and will pop-up an alert as soon as a new “big” earthquake is reported anywhere in the world.

Get Earthquake Alerts for your Surrounding Areas

The Twitter and RSS feeds will report earthquake activity worldwide but if you are only interested in receiving email alerts for your own geographic region, you should use the Earthquake Notification Service.

Here you have a Google Map and all you have to do is draw a custom polygon over regions that you would like to monitor for earthquake activity. You can mark one or more regions on the map, set the notification magnitude threshold (like only send me alerts for earthquakes with magnitude of 5 and above) and save your profile.

Earthquake Alerts via Internet

The USGS website says that information for U.S. earthquakes is generally available within 2-8 minutes but for earthquakes outside the U.S., it may take up to 20 minutes to report the activity. Twitter may thus be a faster medium to get earthquake news but as USGS says – “it cannot provide quantitative data such as location and magnitude.” (via)

takecy 11/28/2011
Adidas Websites Hacked
Adidas Websites Hacked
Adidas has been forced to take some of its main websites offline after a "sophisticated, criminal cyber-attack" that took place last week, the company said.

Adidas.com, reebok.com, miCoach.com and adidas-group.com all were taken offline, along with various local e-commerce sites, the company said in a statement Sunday.

At least two of the sites, adidas.com and miCoach.com, appeared to still be offline Monday evening. "Due to technical difficulties our website is currently not available," said a message at adidas.com.

The sportswear vendor first learned of the attack last Thursday, it said.

"Our preliminary investigation has found no evidence that any consumer data is impacted. But, while we continue our thorough forensic review, we have taken down affected sites ... in order to protect visitors to our sites," it said.

It didn't provide further details of the attacks or say who was responsible. A note on the miCoach website said Adidas hoped to have the site running again by the end of the day Tuesday. via

takecy 11/08/2011
LG Website Hacked
LG Website Hacked 

One of the Australian websites belonging to global electronics giant LG has been hacked by a collective calling itself the Intra Web Security Exploit Team.

According to Asher Moses of the Sydney Morning Herald, the site, lge dot com dot au, was pwned over the weekend, and was still in embarrassing post-hack distress this morning:

The attackers replaced the site with some lightly-obfuscated JavaScript. The script pretends to be conducting an injection attack as you watch, whilst an expletive-laden track by nerdcore hacker-rapper BeWiz plays in the background.

(The BeWiz track is called TwistedWanted. I'm not sure if that's a reference to Twisted Matrix, the event-driven networking engine written in Python, to UK indie music company Twisted Music, or something else. Listening to BeWiz's whole track was a mission I was unwilling to accept.)

When the simulated attack is complete, the attackers announce, perhaps not without some justification:

It seems as though your website has been hacked.
How did we get past your security?
What security? ;)

takecy 10/25/2011
Box.net Gives 50GB Free Online Storage
Box.net Gives 50GB Free Online Storage

When you hear that 50 GB of free storage is up for grabs you naturally have to ask, “What’s the catch?” Well the catch is that you have to be an Apple iPhone, iPod, or iPad user to qualify.

This is what people found out when they quickly tried to capitalize on the offer made by Box.net to give away 50 Gigs worth of free storage for life. Apple product users were thrilled, but other people were incensed. The offer was made on Box.net’s official blog by the company’s social media manager, Mark Saldana. It will run starting the 13th of October 2011 and last for 50 days.

So, lucky Apple product users will get a chance to get 50 Gigs worth of cloud storage; something which non-apple users can only dream of. If only there was the equivalent of the iPhone 4S on other platforms. According to some experts the offer by Box.net is really just an effort to capitalize on the euphoria surrounding the launch of the Apple iPhone 4. This naturally is being denied but for people who don’t own an Apple product and who can’t get their hands on the 50 Gigs worth of storage, the motive is crystal!

Still, we won’t begrudge Apple users of the ton of storage space they’ll now enjoy. We’ll patiently wait our turn. Let’s just hope that Android users benefit from the launch of a new product—100 Gigs free from Dropbox.com would be might handy indeed.

takecy 10/20/2011
New Feature at Facebook
Facebook Evolution

New Feature at Facebook | Since Thursday many changes introduced in Facebook. Here is a guide which helps provides all the information you need about Facebook changes.

1. Timeline - Facebook has introduced Timeline. This stream of informationcontains all your were abouts — all your photosyou’ve posted, all your status updates, all the apps you’ve used, all the places you’ve visited on a world map.

This will displays the most interesting parts of your history compressing the otherinformation. You can even customize this by clicking on a star next to a status, say, or enlarginga picture.

2. You don’t have to just Like — now you can [verb] any [noun]- Social network has launched Facebook Gestures, which can turn any verb into a button.

3. Facebook apps need only ask permission once to share stories on your behalf.- Previously, apps had to ask every time they shared information about you in your profile. Now, the first time you authorize the app, it will tell you what it’s going to share about you. If you’re cool with that, the app never has to ask you again.

But you don’t have to worry about this app stuff clogging your news feed, because …

4. All “lightweight” information is going to the Ticker. Status updates, photos from a wedding or a vacation, changes in relationship status: these are the kinds of things you want to see from your friends when you look at your news feed. Who killed whom in Mafia Wars? Who planted what in FarmVille? Not so much. So that kind of trivial detail has been banished to the Ticker, a real-time list of things your friends are posting now that scrolls down the side of your screen.

5. You can watch TV and movies, listen to music, and read news with your friends — all within Facebook. Starting today, thanks to a whole bunch of partnerships, there are a lot more things you can do without ever having to leave Facebook. You can watch a show on Hulu, listen to a song on Spotify, or check out a story on Yahoo News (or Mashable, via the Washington Post‘s Social Read app). The ticker will tell you what your friends are watching, listening to or reading, allowing you to share the experience with them by clicking on a link.

The upshot: a brand-new kind of media-based peer pressure. On stage, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings — a launch partner — revealed that he had only just decided to watch Breaking Bad because Facebook’s Ticker told him a colleague was watching it. Netflix’s own algorithm had been recommending the show to him for years, but that was never reason enough for Hastings.

6. Facebook has more users and more engagement than ever. We got two interesting nuggets of information out of Zuckerberg (and the Zuckerberg-impersonating Andy Samberg): Facebook has hit 800 million users, and most of them are active. The social network just saw a new record for the most visitors in one day: an eye-popping 500 million.

Indeed, the whole impression left by the event was that of a confident, fast-evolving company that is becoming ever more professional, and Zuckerberg’s stage show bore more than a little resemblance to an Apple keynote. It’s going to be interesting to see what Google+ can do to keep up. (via)

Unknown 9/29/2011
4Shared Gives 15GB Free Cloud Storage

4Shared Gives 15GB Free Cloud Storage | A light chat with colleagues over the preferred place for digital storage these days can descend into embarrassment unless you can vouch for the ‘Cloud’. Indeed the Cloud is fast cementing itself as the new paradigm and companies are rushing to fill the void and act as ‘repositories in the sky’.

15GB Free Cloud Storage

The latest company to make a foray into the Cloud storage business is 4Shared, the popular file sharing website. News is that 4Shared is taking a page out of Microsoft’s book by offering 15 GB of free storage to anyone willing to confirm their email address and stick to an uploading stipulation. That stipulation is that no file larger than 2GB can be uploaded at any one time.

This (fantastic) offer by 4Shared is good news indeed, and although it’s not quite the free 25 GB free storage offered by Microsoft Sky Drive, it is a massive improvement on the free storage offered by other big players such as Dropbox (who only offer a paltry 2GB). Of course storage would be nothing in today’s environment unless the data stored can be synced with the plethora of devices that we all tend to lug around. The new 4Shared Cloud storage system reportedly works with most Smartphones and Tablets, including the iPhone and Ipad.

Now that 4Shared has joined the Cloud storage battle, we can expect other players to step up their game. Dropbox in particular will need to be more liberal on the ‘free’ side.

Do you think 4Shared can displace DropBox or Microsoft Sky Drive as the default Cloud storage service? Let us know what you think in the comments below. (via)

takecy 9/19/2011