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Google takes over Dealmap

admin — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 18:21:13 +0000

Technology giant Google is once more trying to corner more of the social shopping market by buying The Dealmap, a 15-month-old company that offers its own location-based daily deal service. Menlo Park, Calif.-based The Dealmap collects data from hundreds of sources and arranges deals by location, on its website and a smartphone application. The start-up, founded last year, has 15 employees and 2 million users, according to published reports.

Google tried to buy Groupon for as much as $6 billion last year, and decided to launch its own service, Google Offers, in Portland. Google’s service has since expanded to New York and the San Francisco Bay Area. Google has made many moves into the location business in the last two years. It is trying to grab a large share of the European traffic market by offering real-time services in 13 European companies. Google shook up the navigation market with free navigation service for Android phones in 2009.

At least one analyst said he was intrigued by the acquisition, of which financial details were not disclosed. Mike Dobson, TeleMapics president, said that The Dealmap acts as a deal aggregator and cross-channel distributor for national in-store deals from brand retailers, restaurant chains, and other businesses; local daily deals (from Groupon, Living Social, and more than 200 other sources); and what The Dealmap calls “store window” deals from individual local businesses.

In a recent presentation that The Dealmap made at the Kelsey Deal3D Conference, the company claimed to have grown in its first year to 2 million-plus cross-channel users, including more than 1 million mobile users, said Dobson, who authors a location blog. The volume of monthly deal searches on its network was more than 75 million and the monthly network reach was estimated at 85 million, he said.

The Dealmap and others (Borrell Associates, Needham and Company, and Groupon) have predicted that the projected size of the local daily deal market will be sized at $10 billion by 2015, while the online local ad revenue will be $32 billion by 2013, Dobson said. “The Dealmap claims that its deals provide more than $10 million in savings each day, although it is less clear what earnings it creates in the way of margin/profit for distributors, such as, well, Dealmap,” he said.

Dobson said that the “deal supplier” market appears to be dominated by top sites. Eighty percent of the local deal inventory nationwide is dominated by 20 sources, 69 percent by 10 sources, and 40 percent by two sources, Groupon and Living Social, he said. “The Dealmap claims that its daily ad inventory is supplied at a modest 6.25 deals per source, while half the deal supply sources offer only one-to-two deals a day,” he said.

“Perhaps more disconcerting is the fact that 69 percent of deal suppliers have a presence in from two to nine markets, while 19 percent cover only a single market. Only 4 percent of The Dealmap’s suppliers have a national footprint, which the company defines as 25 or more markets, Dobson said. “While this could suggest that the deal market is inherently local, I think it suggests that local suppliers add the ‘long tail’ that is appended in local markets to the offerings of Groupon and Living Social. In other words, the market appears to be close to a duopoly at a national scope, with numerous smaller players operating as regional and local suppliers. My conclusion is that the market for local deals from individual local suppliers is quite small, and that the major force of deals in all markets are national chains who wish to present deals to draw local users to their shops.”

Dobson says the reason he makes this distinction is that it does not appear likely that “deal-based advertising” is going to be the replacement for local newspaper advertising, or a real-time Yellow pages, at least not as currently configured.

“The Dealmap indicates that in a sample taken from Chicago for one day of deals, the inventory from the two leading providers was split one-quarter each for fitness spas and shopping, while attractions and dining evenly split the last quarter of the pie,” Dobson said. “When all deal suppliers were added, salons and services deals added 10 percent each to the mix, while dental deals (3 percent) and hotel deals (5 percent) rounded out the categories. Who knew that people looking for social shopping deals were looking for an athletic workout and liked to meet in spas, followed by a good meal and a visit to an attraction?”

According to The Dealmap, more than 50 percent of deals searched for nationwide by consumers are related to dining, followed by shopping at 20 percent, while attractions, bars, spas, travel and “things to do” to ranked in the single digits. On mobile devices the search profile is somewhat different, with dining at 40 percent, shopping at 30 percent, spas and travel each at 12 percent, “things to do” at 4 percent (a 5-percent loss compared to deal-search in general), and bars at a measly 1 percent (a 3-percent drop compared to deal-search in general), Dobson said.

“I am not sure how others perceive the message that can be found in the numbers above, but I think it might be hard to find a long-term growth business here. Google acquired The Dealmap because Google needs to buttress its local advertising empire, but clearly this is a small-potatoes business,” Dobson said. “Yes, I understand that Groupon walked away from a $6-billion-dollar offer from Google, but I suspect that they already regret their bristliness during the negotiations. I guess this shows that just because you can market deals, does not mean that you know how to negotiate one for yourself.”

What’s the Big Deal for LBS?

Dobson said that the big deal may be for the LBS industry. “It appears to me that the concept of ‘location’ is in the process of occupying its rightful place in a variety of industries that are clearly location-centric, and were location-centric before any of us thought of using the term location-based services to describe those business services that had a location component,” he said. “Perhaps the only thing that has changed for these industries is that the consumerization of GPS and the inclusion of its functionality in phones, laptops, PNDs, and other navigation devices have allowed these businesses to pinpoint the location of consumers and provide relevant services to mobile users.”

While The Dealmap certainly fits within Dobson’s notion of LBS, he suspects that the company sees itself in the deal-distribution business and has forward integrated into location services to expand its deal-distribution capacity. “Google almost certainly did not acquire The Dealmap because the company had a new, unique, and proprietary location technology. Instead, they acquired The Dealmap for the company’s distribution strength (its distribution network and deal-distribution applications) and their knowledge of how Groupon and Living Social operate,” he said. “It seems to me that the one trend that continues in LBS is that service businesses require strong distribution channels and few companies in this space have capabilities in this respect. For this reason, the action in LBS will continue to be acquisitions by companies who already have the distribution, but need the know-how that will allow them to leverage location as a method of increasing their distribution capability. In short, ours is a market segment in which companies need to innovate, out-perform, and pray that they get noticed by the industry leaders in other market segments.”

There are no potential Google or Facebook success stories in our midst, Dobson said “Our task is to build location engines, use them to solve common but ubiquitous problems involving location — and hope that our efforts get us to the finish line before anyone else,” he said.

Mozilla encourages Firefox 3.5 users to install newer Firefox

admin — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 16:17:06 +0000

Mozilla is planning to shunt 12 million users, who are still surfing the web on its aged Firefox 3.5 browser, over to a more recent version. “We need a plan to obsolete [sic] Firefox 3.5 as we can’t support it into perpetuity,” said Mozilla.

“We have been frustrated with our efforts to move users off of old releases and are worried too many people do not upgrade and are on vulnerable and unsupported versions of Firefox.” Ideally the open source outfit wants to see all its users upgrade to the current version of its browser – Firefox 4.0.1. However, many people still connect to the internet via computers that were released in the pre-iPad age.

Besides from that, Mozilla has committed to continuing to support Firefox 3.6, allowing older machines, such as Power PC Macs, to be able to connect to the interwebulator via that version of the browser.

To get the message across to Firefox 3.5 holdouts, Mozilla plans to issue a warning to all such users telling them they are running an out-of-date browser that is no longer supported against the threat of online attacks.

The message will be displayed through Google’s default search page starting tomorrow.

“At the same time we also put a big warning on all Mozilla web properties, pointing them [users] to the new version to download,” it said.

Anyone with automatic updates switched on will have Firefox 3.6.18 pushed out to them on 21 June, the same day Firefox 5 is expected to be released.

Mozilla released Firefox 3.5 in June 2009 six months later than scheduled.

Google Chrome OS does not need security ?

admin — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 16:04:31 +0000

A leading security researcher has warned that Google risks repeating Apple’s mistakes on security with its new Chrome OS.

Google Chrome OS is a Linux-based operating system designed to work exclusively with web applications. Chrome netbooks running the new OS will be available from Google’s partners Samsung and Acer from June. In a launch announcement, Google boasted of an end to patching and anti-virus updates woes.

Chromebooks have many layers of security built in so there is no anti-virus software to buy and maintain. Even more importantly, you won’t spend hours fighting your computer to set it up and keep it up to date.

Rik Ferguson, a security consultant at Trend Micro, criticised this line as marketing rhetoric. Google risks repeating the security mistakes of Apple, he warns.

Security features of Chrome OS include process sandboxing (so any app is unable to interfere with other apps on a system), automatic updating and a reversion to the last known good state if any problems are detected. This latter feature is possible because user files are stored in the cloud (and encrypted), with only system files held locally.

In addition, every application in Chrome OS will run inside the browser, with only (sandboxes) browser plug-ins running locally.

However this sterile environment is unlikely to last long, not least because Google has created a a Software Development Kit that allows the creation of Chrome “native apps”, according to Ferguson, who reckons this open the door towards the creation of malware.

Sandboxing technology ought to prevent any bad apps that are created getting out of their play pen. But Ferguson warns that sandboxing technology is no panacea for security woes.

“Exploits that break out of sandboxing have already been demonstrated for Internet Explorer, for Java, for Google Android and of course for the Chrome browser (to name but a few), while the Google sandbox is effective, it is not impenetrable and to rely on it for 100 per cent security would be short-sighted,” he said.

Rebooting laptops and storing data in the cloud is just “moving the goalposts” for scammers, Ferguson further argues. Instead of stealing data on a compromised device, the motivation will shift towards swiping authentication keys. “If I can infect you for one session and steal your keys, well then I’ll get what I can while I’m in there and then continue accessing your stuff in the cloud; after all I’ve got your keys now, I don’t need your PC anymore,” Ferguson writes.

Ferguson praises Google for its engineering work but questions its apparent suggestion that switching OSes is a “silver bullet” capable of killing off the modern myriad of security woes. He draws a comparison between Google’s claim that Chrome needs no anti-virus and similar claims in the past by Apple.

General comparison Firefox vs Internet Explorer

admin — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 15:19:34 +0000

Most of Firebird’s advantages are MSIE’s disadvantages, and vice-versa. This article will look at some of the advantages and disadvantages of Firefox in relation to MSIE.

Advantages – Security is often cited as the primary reason for users switching from MSIE to Firefox. Security is of utmost importance for software that interacts with remote computers, in an era of high security risk activities such as online banking.

Firefox has fewer security holes and a tighter schedule of disclosing them. The enhanced security in Firefox is due to a multitude of factors the system’s inclusion of more source code reviewers and a better bug reporting system and exclusion of VBScript/ActiveX, often the source of vulnerabilities.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has been clamoring for years to try to clamp down on the MSIE security holes. It acquired an anti-spyware product, which it released under the banner of Microsoft AntiSpyware. It also promises its new Windows Vista platform will be more secure. However, Microsoft’s track record to date has done little to boost the confidence of today’s user.

Standards compliance – Firefox has vaulted ahead of MSIE with improved support for standard web protocols, such as its superior stylesheet compatibility. Since MSIE had a leading marketshare, the company had less interest in conforming to web standards, and instead focused on proprietary protocols, with the goal of maintaining their market position. That is, the focus of Microsoft was to try to convert as much of its userbase to writing webpages and web applications that required a proprietary MSIE-approach, so that down the road, users would be less able to move off a Microsoft platform.

As a result, Microsoft neglected for years to improve support for basic open standards. For example, transparent PNG graphics did not work all the way through to MSIE version 6.

Multiple operating system platforms – Firefox is available for users who runs Windows (Windows 98 through to Windows XP), Mac OS X, all the leading versions of Linux, as well as some lesser-used operating systems. In comparison, Microsoft has dropped development for Mac, and other non-Windows systems. Furthermore, Microsoft has ceased new development even on their own versions of Windows, making the new MSIE only available to users who have a license for Windows XP.

Firefox also has a similar user interface among the different operating platforms. For deployments that have a mix of operating platforms (such as Linux for the techs, Macs for the graphic designers, and Windows for the accounts department), moving to Firefox for everyone thus brings technical support costs down.

Time-saving browser innovations Internet communication and interaction is a core component for most modern businesses. Efficient use of web browser time translates to increased profits, so innovations to help workers do their tasks faster are welcomed. Firefox leads MSIE in this regard, with out-of-the-box features such as integrated Google search in the toolbar, placing the find-within-page box at the bottom of the browser window so as not to obscure the text, and so on.

Disadvantages Retraining – Any switch of software incurs a retraining cost. However, a switch from MSIE to Firefox requires only a mild amount of retraining. The switch from MSIE to Firefox is designed to be easy, with proper import of bookmarks and other settings. Browser interfaces are becoming standard, so understanding how to get up and running is not usually a problem. There are some only minor adjustments. For example, “Internet Files” in MSIE is called “Cache” in Firefox. One can use a downloaded MSIE theme so that the Firefox user interface even more closely resembles that of MSIE.

Incomplete migration – In a business with Windows computers, if the switch from MSIE to Firefox is incomplete, it can cost more to offer technical support for both browsers. This argument would only apply to shops whose Windows computers are all Windows XP. Since the new MSIE is only available for Windows XP, if there are different Windows versions (such as Windows NT or 2000), then the technical support team already needs to support different types of MSIE browsers. Another consideration, however, is that even an incomplete switch from MSIE to Firefox could result in less technical support, since the Firefox users would be less likely to need help with fixing their computer after an MSIE-related security breach.

Firefox Aurora releases Version 6

admin — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 15:14:53 +0000

I’m probably not the only user who thinks that the increase in Firefox builds has made it difficulty to keep up to date with the latest features and improvements. Just like Google Chrome, it has gotten to a point where I’m less interested in keeping track of the development progress. The main reason for that is that it requires more work to stay up to date with development of all different channels.

Sometimes however it is still worth taking a look at a specific new version. The Aurora build of Firefox has jumped to version 6 yesterday and it comes with a big list of improvements over previous versions of the web browser.

The one that has been talked about the most up to this point is a new data management window which can be opened by entering about:permissions in the Firefox address bar.

It can be used to control the access that individual websites have. This includes permissions to cookies, password and offline storage or location based information.

A link to Mozilla’s Plugin Check page has been added to the plugin tab of the Firefox add-on manager to give users a direct option to check for plugin updates in the browser.

Firefox users who make use of Panorama to group tabs benefit from faster startup times by “allowing power Panorama users to load saved tab groups only when using Panorama”.

Web developers can now access a Web Developer menu under the aurora menu, or Tools menu if the old menubar is displayed in the Firefox 6 browser.

Here they have access to a new tool called Scratchpad which they can use to build and test JavaScript snippets in the browser.

Additional support for HTML5 elements have been added, which improve the HTML5 Test score.

Firefox users who are already running Aurora should receive update notifications soon. Users who do not want to wait can check for new updates from the Help > About Aurora menu.

Users who do not run Aurora yet can download the latest release manually from the Future of Firefox website.

Remove Add-On On Uninstallation

admin — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 15:11:18 +0000

One of the biggest issues that I personally have with Firefox, and that for a very long time, is the fact that add-on preferences are not deleted when the add-on that has written them to the config is uninstalled in the browser. This means that the config file grows over time. Up until now I have deleted obsolete entries in the Firefox preferences manually, but an automated, or even semi-automated, solution would be more than welcome, considering that I install and uninstall many add-ons every month.

The new Firefox add-on Preferences Cleaner seems to offer that functionality. The description is unfortunately in Russian, the translation gives hints about the functionality.

The extension adds an entry to the Tools menu of the browser. A click on the entry Clear Preferences there opens the window that you see on the screenshot above.

The window lists all installed Firefox add-ons, with an option to hide disabled add-ons. You can enable the deletion of preferences of specific extensions by default. If you do, the preferences are automatically removed from the Firefox configuration when the extension is uninstalled.

You can alternatively switch to the uninstalled extensions tabs which lists uninstalled add-ons and their remaining preferences.

This tab can be used to remove those preferences from the Firefox configuration. Keep in mind that only preferences set in the Firefox add-on’s installation files will be listed here. Configuration entries that have been added after add-on installation are not listed here.

For that, you need to click on the Loose button at the top. This opens a new screen that lists all custom preferences. Those do not have to be obsolete, and some may be needed to run the web browser. You can use the listing to identify preferences of uninstalled add-ons, and delete those preferences.

Preferences are deleted by highlighting one or multiple of them in the window and pressing the Delete key on the keyboard or clicking on the delete button in the program interface.

Preferences can be exported and imported, which can act as a backup. It is suggested to export preferences before you delete them to be able to restore them at a later point, for instance if the deletion rendered an installed add-on useless.

Preferences Cleaner for Firefox is a step in the right direction. The add-on could use a help file or at least tooltips to guide first time users and provide them with explanations when needed.

The add-on is however a must have add-on for Firefox users who often install and uninstall add-ons in the web browser.

Beta Firefox 5 was released for better performance

admin — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 14:56:31 +0000

After the release of Firefox 4, Firefox moved to an accelerated, Chrome-like channel system, starting with the bleeding-edge Aurora version of Firefox 5. Today they’ve released the Beta version, which will let you take advantage of its performance increases in a more stable environment.

If the stable version of Firefox moved too slowly for you but Aurora is a bit too bleeding-edge, Mozilla has added a beta version in between the two that you can follow. It’s a little more polished and stable than the Nightly and Aurora channels, but let you test some of those cool new features before they’re released to everyone else. Today marks the release of the Firefox 5 beta, which includes performance and stability improvements as well as a fast channel switcher.

The channel switcher means that you don’t have to re-download Firefox if you want to change your version of Firefox—you can do it right from the About Firefox menu. If you’re running either the Aurora or Beta channel, just go to Help > About and click the “Change” button next to where it tells you what channel you’re running. From there, you can switch to the Aurora, Beta, or Stable channel any time you want. Hit the link to read more about the new version.

Benefit of google chrome usage

admin — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 17:19:35 +0000

In this article, I will tell you 2 major benefits of using Google Chrome 6.

To use this browser, all you need to do now is to download it from its official website. If you don’t have any ideas on how to find that official website, open any search engine and, type ‘download Google chrome’ into the search box of any search engine.

If you open up Google Search home page via Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer will suggest you to download this browser from its top right corner.

I am a happy Google Chrome user.

Why? I gives me faster speed when opening various web page, blogs, news, videos. I don’t mind the simple design this browser has, as long as it is fast. Let me share you 2 major benefits of using it.

Benefits #1: Launches fast, opens up website quickly.

You can compare the speed of launching this browser and Mozilla Firefox 3.6. You will see that it launches faster. Try open any website such as YouTube, Wikipedia, Facebook or Twitter.

Benefits #2: Protects you from online virus threats.

Most computer virus, runs widely via the internet. These kind of virus programmed to infect computers via Internet Explorer by default.

When you use this browser to surf the internet, it will protect you from malware infections and phishing threats by a built-in web security function.

To enable this security function, click to Options, go to ‘Under The Hood’ tab and click on a box tagged with ‘Enable phishing and malware protection’.

I cannot prevent you from using internet browser software of your choice.

All browsers has their own strength and weakness.

For Google Chrome, its weakness is in lack of usefull add-ons, minimal design, minimal function and minimal web security protection if compared to Mozilla Firefox 3.6. On the other side, Google Chrome is still a new browser that needs to be improved.

If you want to know which browser is the best among Internet Explorer 7, Mozilla Firefox 3.6 or Google Chrome, I would prefer Firefox.

If you prefer speed to read any webpage on the web, I recommend you to use Google Chrome.

Protected mode of IE has weakness

admin — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 16:49:38 +0000

Adobe Reader X and Google Chrome also potentially vulnerable

Researchers have found a chink in Internet Explorer’s ‘protected mode’ security armour that hints at trouble for other Windows apps built around the technology, including Google’s Chrome and Adobe’s new Reader X.

The principle behind Protected Mode is to limit the privileges of an application process, which first appeared with the advent of Explorer 7 on Vista. These are set by the OS for IE according to six Mandatory Integrity Control (MIC) levels, the lowest of which is applied to all apps running from untrusted zones such as the internet.
In a new paper, however, Verizon Business researchers document ways that an attacker could elevate the privileges of a process to zones where Protected Mode would not apply, such as the local intranet network (which uses UNC paths) or by spoofing the trusted sites list.

This leads to the possibility of a relatively simple attack in which malware executes as a low priority process which creates a virtual web server tied to a local software ‘loopback’ port. Although this process will also be shut out by protected mode, it would be able to point IE to a web address which appears to be in the Local Internet Zone.

By this point, the web page will be able to render at medium integrity, a potentially dangerous privilege escalation.

“By exploiting the same vulnerability a second time, arbitrary code execution can now be achieved as the same user at medium integrity. This provides full access to the user’s account and allows malware to be persisted on the client, something which was not possible from low integrity whilst in Protected Mode,” the authors note.

As the authors admit, the degree of protection offered by IE protected mode has always been ambiguous. Microsoft has made few direct claims for it, but has not downplayed its abilities either.

The weakness found by Verizon doesn’t directly affect other applications that use protected mode security, such as Adobe Reader X or Google Chrome, but it does show how such protection mechanisms will remain open to attack based on the fact that some elements of a system have to be trusted.

Adobe’s Reader X ’sandbox’ was launched recently to overcome persistent and successful attacks using crafted PDF files opened with prior versions.

In reality, the need to attack IE and Reader X using clever and stealthy attacks is low given that so many users persist in using older and even more vulnerable versions of the software.

Google strike was run from Internet Explorer by Chinese hackers

admin — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 15:03:51 +0000

Microsoft has admitted that its Internet Explorer browser was the weak link used by hackers to attack Google’s systems in China.

The world’s biggest software company today issued a security advisory and warned of a loophole that was used by Chinese hackers to attack dozens of US companies – the same attack that led Google on Tuesday to announce its plan to drop the censorship of its search engine in China.

“In a specially-crafted attack… Internet Explorer can be caused to allow remote code execution,” said Microsoft in its security alert.

The company added that it had not yet fixed the vulnerability in the world’s most popular web browser, which is used by around two thirds of internet users.

The attacks, which apparently attempted to steal personal information on Chinese dissidents and the code that runs some of Google’s critical services, also hit a number of other companies, said to include Yahoo and US defence contractor Northrop Grumman.

Microsoft confirmed the existence of the loophole after an investigation by internet security firm McAfee and information from Google and Adobe.

“As with most targeted attacks, the intruders gained access to an organisation by sending a tailored attack to one or a few targeted individuals,” said George Kurtz, McAfee’s chief technology officer, adding that the hackers would then use the Internet Explorer bug to infect the victim’s computer.

“Once the malware is downloaded and installed, it opens a back door that allows the attacker to perform reconnaissance and gain complete control over the compromised system. The attacker can now identify high value targets and start to siphon off valuable data from the company.”

The company’s admission is at odds with earlier consensus – largely based on a report from security firm iDefense – that it was Adobe’s own software that had been used for the attacks.

Earlier this week experts had suggested that a “zero-day vulnerability” – jargon for a previously unknown software loophole – had been used to exploit a “major document type”, thought to be Adobe’s PDF format. By sending an infected document to target users, iDefense suggested, the hackers had been able to compromise victim’s computers and launch further attacks.

Now, however, it appears that the strike – which analysts are now calling “Operation Aurora” – was carefully orchestrated using the hidden bug in Microsoft’s systems.

The Chinese government yesterday issued its first response to the claims by Google, saying that it was opposed to computer crime and had been the victim of cyberattacks itself in the past. However, the statement, issued by the country’s foreign ministry, also contained a veiled threat to other companies who may be considering following Google’s stand.

“China has tried creating a favorable environment for internet,” said a spokeswoman. “China welcomes international internet companies to conduct business within the country according to law. China’s law prohibits cyber crimes, including hacker attacks.”