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Social networking sites are likely to become an increasingly attractive target for fraudsters, experts have warned.

The turn of the new year is expected to see the popularity of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook continue.

However, IT security analysts say the proliferation of personal details and the availability of information on people’s date of birth, interests and phone numbers could be a way in for unscrupulous hackers.

ScanSafe has forecast that 2008 will see Web 2.0 threats top the list of the biggest security worries.

“The explosion in popularity of Web 2.0 applications has made Web 2.0 sites an increasingly rich target for cyber criminals,” the firm declared in its evaluation of the coming year.

Mary Landesman, senior security researcher at the firm, told the BBC the nature of the medium meant it could be targeted.

“The technologies that play there and the third party add-ons make it an environment that is susceptible to compromise,” she explained.

Cybercrime is said to be an industry worth more than $100 billion a year.

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The popularity of web 2.0 in the consumer marketplace will wane and die according to a UK web testing firm.

Concerns about placing online advertisements alongside “questionable content” was a primary reason for vendors to stop using the format, stated the research firm SciVisum.

“Retailers will focus on eliminating the background problems that plague their websites and affect sales,” said Deri Jones, chief executive of SciVisum.

Researchers found that a high number of users encountered problems while surfing the net, leading to a fall in user confidence levels.

Some one in three online users were found to result in more than three per cent error rates, with more than ten per cent of users having extreme inconsistencies in delivery speed.

In order for businesses to keep demand up for this type of platform, researchers concluded that firms will be forced to form stricter e-commerce operations in order to see profits.

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Google has just announced their latest upcoming application called ‘Google Knol’. It’s a tool for posting and sharing information in the form of articles. Much like Wikipedia, Google Knol just seems to be more social and focusing more on the author’s name, and of course its ‘Google’ branded. ‘Google branded’ means Knol will have more higher rank results than the Wikipedia, answers.com or other sites in search results on general topics.

Users can share, rate, suggest edit, add contents to articles. There can be more than one article on a topic from different authors, unlike Wikipedia. In Wikipedia, all aurthors edit/enhance one article per topic. Wikipedia is ‘topic centric’ where as Google Knol will be ‘author centric’.

Here’s the intro at Google’s official blog:
“The web contains an enormous amount of information, and Google has helped to make that information more easily accessible by providing pretty good search facilities. But not everything is written nor is everything well organized to make it easily discoverable. There are millions of people who possess useful knowledge that they would love to share, and there are billions of people who can benefit from it. We believe that many do not share that knowledge today simply because it is not easy enough to do that. The challenge posed to us by Larry, Sergey and Eric was to find a way to help people share their knowledge. This is our main goal.”

So is this a Wikipedia killer? In my opinion, it’s not going be an easy task for Google to takeover the popularity of Wikipedia any-time soon. They need something more jaw breaking (a feature, functionality or an idea) to do so. Well only time can tell the ‘actual’ story.. :).

More on Google’s Blog:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/encouraging-people-to-contribute.html

Constructive comments by Roger Ehrenberg, who’s not so optimistic about the success of Knol, is here:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/57457-google-knol-not-setting-the-world-on-fire.

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From now on the company produces CMS templates for Joomla! and Mambo platforms.

TemplateMonster.com, a templates provider, offers new CMS templates designed for Joomla! and Mambo systems. The company holds that offering the new CMS templates is a step long anticipated by its customers.

The company states that both of these CMS packages contain many different parts, plugins and components that are integrated especially for better functionality and customization of use. The company avers that the two are basically variations of a similar product that were developed as a result of the project’s managers’ differences of emphases.

“We’ve been planning the Mambo and Joomla! templates release for a long time and today we have realized that goal. We place very big hopes on these new product lines,” says David Braun, CEO of TemplateMonster. “Because these products are very similar, and both have high functionality as well as great popularity, we decided to launch them on the same day. The internet activity of today is trending toward people who neither have nor want programming skills or coding work. Using CMS systems today is desirable and considered by many to be a standard requirement.”

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The long-awaited new line of all-in-one iMacs has been released by the California-based computer giant Apple.

Brand new 20 and 24-inch widescreen displays encased in aluminum and glass give the machines a modern, sleek look.

Intel Core 2 Duo processors, an iSight video camera and the digital media organiser iLife 08 are all included with the machine.

Apple’s chief executive, Steve Jobs, said: ‘This new iMac is the most incredible desktop computer we’ve ever made.

‘Our new design features the innovative use of materials, including professional-grade aluminum and glass, that are highly recyclable.’

The designers built the new iMacs with an eye on cutting down desktop clutter and creating a streamlined multi-tasking tool.

A new cutting-edge keyboard is only 0.33 inches thin at the front and users have the option to buy the new wireless keyboard.

Apple has also updated some of their other lines such as the Mac Mini and the iLife & iWork software packages.

Last month saw the release of the wildly popular iPhone, which functions as a phone, mp3 player and web browser.

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Trojans have topped threat lists during the first six months of the year, according to a new report.

Security firm BitDefender Labs says that Trojans were the most popular form of malicious threat in the first half of 2007, along with mass mailers.

The Netsky worm also continued to keep its place in the top ten threat list, with all of the malware in the table accounting for two-thirds of total web viruses.

Viorel Canja, head of BitDefender Labs, called the shift from viruses to Trojans ‘an interesting trend’.

‘Although the popularity of mass mailers is slowly receding, variants are still present and pose a very real risk to computer systems used by consumers and small businesses,’ he added.

A recent report from information security services provider SecureWorks revealed that the number of hackers targeting banking institutions has soared by 81 per cent since 2006, with attackers using the Gozi, Prg and BBB Trojans in particular.

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Situated in the heart of Westbury town center, Tale of Spice-2 is a fully licensed and air conditioned luxury Indian restaurant and take-away. It is part of a chain of acclaimed contemporary Indian restaurants in Wiltshire, England.

Since the opening of the first restaurant in Trowbridge, Tale of Spice has continually achieved the highest positions for its distinctive taste in dishes and the excellence in service it has been able to maintain.

Due to popular demand, Tale of Spice-2 was launched in 2003 in Westbury by the same family, maintaining the same quality of food and standards in service.

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Situated in the heart of Trowbridge town center, Tale of Spice is a fully licensed and air conditioned luxury Indian restaurant and take-away. It is part of a chain of acclaimed contemporary Indian restaurants in Wiltshire, England.

Since the opening of Tale of Spice in Trowbridge, it has continually achieved the highest positions for its distinctive taste in dishes and the excellence in service it has been able to maintain.

Due to popular demand, Tale of Spice 2 (the second restaurant) was launched in 2003 in Westbury by the same family, maintaining the same quality of food and standards in service.

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