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Tuesday, January 31, 2012

MegaUpload's user data may soon be destroyed

One of the biggest file sharing\storage sites in the world was recently shut down because it was accused of sharing illegal files such as pirated music and software. But on the other side of the story are the people who used Megaupload to store legitimate, legal files for their own personal use.

Now that the United States government has all the Megaupload data locked down, these legitimate users may not be able to get to their files ever again. Megaupload is trying to convince the government to allow users temporary access to their shut down file servers so that they can download their files before they are gone forever.

Megaupload has received a letter from the US Attorney letting them know that the data uploaded to its servers may be destroyed before the end of the week. This decision to delete the user data is because of Megaupload's inability to pay for the servers.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

YouTube reaches 60 hours of video uploaded per minute

The ever increasingly popular online video site YouTube has reached a new milestone when it comes to how much video is being uploaded to their servers. Google has just said the YouTube users are now uploading 60 hours of videos to the site per minute which works out to be 1 hour of video uploaded per second.

Back in 2007 this number was only 6 hours of video per minute and then by 2010 it was up to 24 hours per minute uploaded. When it comes to watching videos, YouTube viewers are watching 4 billion videos per day which is up from 3 billion in May of last year. YouTube counted more than 1 trillion playbacks in 2011.

Thursday, January 19, 2012

4.5 million sign SOPA petition

Many of the main online powerhouses enacted a 24 hour blackout to create awareness of the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) which is a Congressional bill that would attempt to stop online piracy but at the same time take away many of the online freedoms we have all enjoyed for many years.

Google put out a petition that asked people show their disapproval of SOPA and its sister bill in the Senate known as PIPA. Google also said that if SOPA were to be enacted, it would be forced to shut down Youtube immediately.

The petition read "There’s no need to make American social networks, blogs and search engines censor the Internet or undermine the existing laws that have enabled the Web to thrive, creating millions of U.S. jobs. Too much is at stake -– please vote NO on PIPA and SOPA."

After 4.5 million people signed the petition, 18 senators changed their support for PIPA and now say that they oppose the measure.

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Facebook set to have 1 billion users in 2012

Online analytics firm iCrossing has projected that Facebook will reach the 1 billion user mark in August of this year. In fact they have pinpointed the day to August 12th based on their calculations. iCrossing says that Facebook growth has slowed down dramatically in the United Stated and United Kingdom but there are other countries that are taking up the slack and helping the Facebook growth continue. India as added 14 million users for a total of 36 million and Brazil has added 7 million for a total of 30 million.

If you take Facebook's estimated worth of $17.5 billion, and divide it by the current 800 million users, each Facebook user works out to be worth about $22 to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Facebook rival Google+ on the other hand has already acquired its fair share of members and may hit 400 million users by the end of 2012 which is pretty good for only being around for 18 months.

Saturday, January 07, 2012

Ramnit Worm Compromises 45,000 Facebook Accounts

According to security firm Seculert, the Ramnit worm that normally goes after financial institutions has now decided to go after Facebook users and has recently compromised over 45,000 Facebook logins. The Ramnit worm goes back to April of 2010 and is the type of malware that infects Windows executable and HTML files and steals information such as stored names and passwords.Back in July Ramnit was responsible for 17% of all new malicious software infections.

But recently, Ramnit has decided to go after Facebook's 800 million users and manged to compromise 45,000 accounts. Of these 45,000 accounts, around 69% were from U.K. users, 27% were from French users and the other 4% were from other countries. Facebook has said most of the login credentials were outdated, but it was still notifying the affected users.

"We suspect that the attackers behind Ramnit are using the stolen credentials to log-in to victims' Facebook accounts and to transmit malicious links to their friends, thereby magnifying the malware's spread even further," Seculert said.

Facebook has since warned users against clicking on suspicious links and to report any abnormal activity.

Thursday, January 05, 2012

Reinstall Windows 8 without losing your data

As you may or may not know, Windows 8 will be out soon and people are already testing out pre release versions to see all the new features. One exciting feature is that Windows 8 will let you reinstall Windows while keeping your files intact. There will be a new "refresh" option that will restore your PC back to a clean state while keeping all of your data and settings intact. This process will be completely automated so you wont need to back up your files or settings beforehand. This option will preserve your Metro applications, but not your regular desktop programs because a desktop app could be the cause of the problem requiring the reinstall.

There will also be the "reset" option that will securely remove everything from your computer including programs, settings and all data and then reinstall Windows. This will come in handy if you plan on giving the computer away or selling it and want to make sure all of your information is removed from the computer first.

Monday, January 02, 2012

Chrome web browser usage grows while IE and Firefox fall

The ever growing popularity of Google's Chrome web browser has been increasing its growth among Internet users while its competition, mainly Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox have been on a slight decline in growth. Chrome closed out 2011 with around 20% of the global market share while Internet Explorer ended up with around 52% and Firefox with almost 22%.

Just because Chrome is currently in last place doesn't mean IE and Firefox can rest easy. Internet Explorer and Firefox both lost around 2% of the market share since December 2010. Chrome on the other hand is up almost 10% since December 2010.