• The spokesperson for the company said that “a very small percentage” has been affected.
• ‘Koobface’ spreads through sending notes to friends that have been infected.
• MySpace was affected in August by a version of ‘Koobface’

As El Mundo has said this morning, the 120 million Facebook users are being targeted by a virus by the name of “Koobface” that uses the message system on the social network to infect computers and thus collect confidential information such as credit card numbers.

This is the last attack made by information processing pirates who seek to take advantage of the users of the social networking sites. “Other viruses have tried to use Facebook to spread viruses in similar ways” said Barry Schnitt, spokesperson of Facebook, in an email.

‘Koobface’ is a worm that spreads through the diverse services of the Internet such as IRC (Internet Chat Relay) or emails such as MultiSPAM. It finds the presence of archives or cookies connected with the social networking sites. In this case it finds them and alters the configuration of the browser and connects them to other sites where “malwares” will be downloaded. Schnitt indicated that “a very small percentage of users” have been affected by this virus. “This is going to increase, in relation to other threats such as (the ones that come from) emails”, declared Craig Schmugar, an investigator from McAfee.

‘Koobface’ spreads through sending notes to friends of someone that has been infected. The messages that are entitled with material such as “you look great in this new film”, where they are directed to another site where they are asked to update a copy of Flash from Adobe Systems.

If they download the software, the users will have their computers infected, and then it will lead users to contaminated sites when they try to use search engines: Google, Yahoo, MSN and Live.com, explained McAfee.

Facebook requires that the receivers of the messages inside the network will be members of this and hide data of the users that do not have accounts, explained Chris Boyd, an investigator of FaceTime Security Labs. Due to this the users tend to be a lot less distrustful of the messages that they receive on the Internet.

“The people tend to lower their guard. They believe that they have to be connected to their account so they think that there is no way that the worms or other viruses can infect them”, said Boyd. ”

The social networking site MySpace, property of News Corp, was affected in August by a version of Koobface, and the site used safety technology to delete it” according to a spokesperson of the company.

The business of private capital Facebook, told its members to delete contaminated emails and public instructions on http://www.facebook.com/security so they can clean the infected computers.

The company throws a global competition with support from big performers.

As Cinco Días assured yesterday, they are not only U2, Rolling Stones, Avril Lavigne or Britney Spears. Now Youtube believes that they can take advantage of classical music. A movement that with time could develop into Mozart, Beethoven or Bach at the first scene. The online video company from Google announced yesterday that a musical project on the internet has been put into motion that has been named the Symphonic Orchestra of Youtube.

In the movement, the company has found support from big musicians. So that there are figures such as Tan Dun, creator of the soundtrack for the film Tiger and Dragon or for the overture of the Olympic games in Beijing; the pianist Lang Lang, one of the most appeared musicians on the internet or Michael Tilson Thomas, developer of colourful music on the internet are on the stage. The project that has been launched in 14 languages is based on an open competition on the internet around the world, explained Laurence Fontinoy, director of marketing of Google in Spain. In the first stage, from yesterday until the 28th January, the participants will have to send their videos to Youtube. There will be two. In the first they will have to interpret a piece from Tan Dun (they can download this from the internet) whilst in the second they will do their own piece of classical music which they will have to choose from. The videos should last between 4 and 5 minutes and they will be assigned a category in terms of the instrument.

After this stage a panel of expert judges of the Symphonic Orchestra of London, The Philharmonic of Berlin, the symphony of San Francisco and the Symphonic orchestra of New York will choose the 200 semi finalists and their videos will be shown in an open canal of the company called Symphonic Orchestra of Youtube. After, between the 14 and 22nd of February, the community of users of Youtube will choose the finalists and their names will be published on the mentioned canal on 2nd of March. “They will be between 60 and 100″ said the executives of the company. The winners will go to New York to participate in a meeting of apprenticeship with Dun and Tilson Thomas and they will participate in a concert in Carnegie Hall in the city of skyscrapers. The rest of the selected videos will be shown on Youtube will be made into a compilation video of the best work.

It is certain that the Internet has managed to run the project. Enrique Rueda, of Real Conservatorio de Madrid said that the musicians should be familiar with the use of the internet whilst Ramón Puchades of the National Orchestra of Spain said that to be able to record the interpretation, they have the possibility of having arrangements if necessary. Puchades also said that he would be surprised “if there was no Spanish musician” given its quality. In this sense, since the company of Google indicated that only the user name will be published on Google, no one know who he is nor the place of residence.

Also, the weight of the network will have been noticed in relation of Dun with the finalists. The famous musician will provide some guides that they can rehearse with for the final concert in their own places of residence before they go to New York.

It is certain that is has been put into motion. Those responsible at Youtube have not dared to say if there will be a second edition. Perhaps it all depends on the impact and the participation. In the first attempt, they include the support of the members and the commercial brands.

Classical music, a new objective

Classical music is believed to be the new objective of Youtube, whose presence in the network is not in a minority. Clara Rivera responsible for product marketing at Google said that following the point of “Libro Blanco” of digital content, only 1% of the music on the internet is classical, “One of the objectives is to find talent” she indicated.

Youtube counts on the support, only in Spain of organizations such as “Real Conservatorio Superior” of music in Madrid, the orchestra and national choir of Spain, the symphonic orchestra of Galicia or the Big Liceu Theatre of Barcelona. Between these international organisations appears the symphonic orchestra of London, Carnegie Hall of New York, musical auditorium of San Petersburg, the symphonic orchestra of Sydney or the BBC amongst others.

As El Confidencial assured today the Internet has once again shown its greatness to be globalised and free of regulations. But it also has bad points too. We have been able to verify this by checking the grief caused by the American teenager, 19 year old Abraham K. Biggs who was incapable of adapting to those around him and who was affected by bipolar, decided to end his life. Biggs was sad news because he did a live broadcast of his death where you were able to see the large quantity of poison being consumed online at Justin TV, a portal where videos can be broadcasted live without any type of previous modification.

The witnesses of the death of the teenager are assured that he laid down on his bed after being assured that he was taking antidepressants and other anxiety pills in industrial quantities with only a webcam to accompany him. Nobody believed that Biggs could do this because he was a teenager who joked around. Nevertheless the alarms were raised hours later when the spectators saw that Abraham wasn’t breathing. Immediately the police were warned who know where the body was, they could see the images of the police entering and the death of the teenager and for a few hours everyone could see.

His parents have not delayed in announcing the insensitivity on the portal on one hand, and on the other hand the apathy of the witnesses of the death who shouldn’t have seen the death on a live broadcast. As it is usually tragically regular in these cases, the teenager warned of his intentions a day before in a forum of bodybuilders and he included the link of the website where his death would be filmed.

Before the downpour of recent criticisms, the person responsible of Justin TV Michael Seibel confirmed that a policy exists about the content of published videos and that the users are warned about the use of inappropriate videos, a system that works well and is extended on the Internet but in this case missed the seriousness of it. Fundamentally no one took his suicide seriously.

Greatness and miseries of the network live together side by side. On the one hand there were the users of Justin TV who despite being late, warned the authorities of the suicide but on the other hand messages exist that are amazed by the insensitivity and lack of humanity by seeing the death of the poor boy and in which messages can be read such as “the video is very boring”. Rest in peace.

A Canadian Spammer has been sentenced to pay a compensation of 873 Million Dollars to Facebook. However, Facebook understands that it will be extremely difficult “to see a single dollar” of the compensation.

According to diarioTI, Facebook has earned a trial against a spammer called Adam Guerbuez from Montreal, owner of the company Atlantis Blue Capital. The compensation of 873 million dollars, judged by the court is protected by the law CAN-SPAM (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act) of 2003.

Guerguez acquired the access codes from users of Facebook using their accounts to distribute large quantities of unsolicited email, offering medicines and sexual products. The accused was not present at the court and was not represented by a lawyer.

The security director of Facebook, Max Kelly declared that it is difficult to know how the judgement will materialise in court. “We will try to achieve what we can but we are convinced that this sanction will have a strong and dissuasive record for those that abuse the services of Facebook”, declared Kelly.

As Banda Ancha told yesterday in its blog, finally the videoblog Mobuzz has not been able to handle the financial problems that have happened in recent times and have been forced to close, according to the founder Anil de Mello, at Telecinco. From the first hour of the day the rumours about the possible closure of the company have not left the network circulation.

The owner De Mello wrote that the company will make official communication later on in the afternoon on Twitter although this still hasn’t been done. The following Thursday at FICOD, De Mello has scheduled a chat about web TV in which they will know all the details that have occurred with this start up pioneer in the country.

The messages from Twitter from its employees and the collection Alt1040- they couldn’t be more eloquent.

Enrique Dans and Martin Varsavsky with participation from the company and supported with posts, realised initially that the company could survive the wave of negative comments that finished with the moderation of comments for the first and anger for the second. In Menéame it didn’t reach the cover sheet. Others have taken it with humour but in the end it hasn’t been indifferent to anyone above all after the viral marketing that has accompanied the petition. A short opening has been preceded by closure for lack of official confirmation.

The first live broadcast of the new service from YouTube took place this Saturday. Taking into account the participation of all of the people that achieved fame thanks to the community of video exchange according to the collection from other means, according to El Mundo.

They passed by and they gave a show from Fred Figgelhorn who told a number of subscribers the story of YouTube from the Obama girl to Brandon Hardesty who takes charge of reconstructing films.

In short, everyone has seen how it has changed through the exchange of videos. For example, Juan Mann, one of the “stars” of YouTube, declared that “one week we were washing plates in Sydney and the following week we were on the Oprah Winfrey show”.

The company has defined the event as a “celebration of the vibrant communities that exist on the page and includes “vloggers”, creators, athletes and famous musicians”
According to TechCrunch, the act can cost around 21.200 euros and requires the help of Akamai. Moreover, it says around 700.000 spectators can attend.

Among the Anglosaxons complaints in Tokyo arose quickly where they were watching the show. It was supposed to start at 3 Japanese time. It is already 7.56 and the only thing they have watched is clips from the artists.

•    Detect copies of articles on the Internet that have been deleted
•    There are print screens of the published texts on Espasa.com and tests in the cache of Google.

Incredible but true. The editorial web page that published the most famous encyclopaedia in Spanish has been caught plagiarising texts from Wikipedia as El Mundo says today. This includes opening a site which shows the plagiarism on the website of Espasa.com

The accused part of the blogosphere. The blog GaedDal is echoed from the report of the main author of the article about Baltasar Gracián in the online encyclopaedia by José Manuel Moreno. Moreno whose nickname is “Escarlati” wrote an email to those responsible at Espasa.com and explained the license of Wikipedia (that between other things, they are obligated to extract the texts of the same publishing also under the license GNU Free Documentation License and the copyright of Espasa.com are incompatible).

In spite of the disappearance of Baltasar Gracián’s profile and other profiles on Espasa.com, the news has been extended in the network; print screens also exist that shows some plagiarisms and you can read them in the cache of Google.

Wikipedia has been authorised entrance about these plagiarisms and it shows until this moment, copies of the biographies of Voltaire, Albert Boadella, Dámaso Alonso, Giovanni Boccacio, Joan Manuel Gisbert, Azorín and Arcadi Espada.

Editorial sources of Espasa have assured that they have received a notification by email from Wikipedia that the copy of the profile of Baltasar Gracian will be back in place on the website.

“We delay the withdrawal for 45 minutes whilst others are checking it”, commented the sources. Since, Espasa has stated that they entrust the new design of the page with an external company.

The newly elected American president Barack Obama announced that every week he will be directing the citizens with video messages on Youtube.

As Diario Ti commented today as part of its mission to introduce technological tools in the government, Barack Obama announces that weekly he will publish messages to his citizens on Youtube.

The speeches to the people are not an invention of Obama, for various years there has been a custom of the American president to make a weekly speech on the radio for the citizens. However, Obama will make the same message but more compatible with the times, recorded on video and published on Youtube.

The decision to use Youtube as a canal of frequent and lively communication with the American citizens is because it is a technology praised by Obama. Between these things, he has incorporated a text messaging service, Facebook and Twitter in his presidential campaign.

Whilst he waits for his move to the White House, the elected president has already started transmitting the weekly speeches onto video of the democrats. The speeches are also published on the website Change.gov

Obama wants more participation thanks to the net.

The next tenant of White House would have to bring with them their passion for the internet. Barak Obama wants to promote the participation of the net between the government directly to the citizens.

The Internet has been a strategic element in the campaign of Barack Obama, so much for the recruitment of volunteers as well as the diffusion of messages and videos. He has expressed his enthusiasm without concealing new technology. Now it remains to see how the internet will be integrated into his exercise.

Following the questions, “are the team of Obama going to use a large database that has been formed during the electoral campaign to obtain support from the government?” questioned Julie Germany, director of the democracy and internet institute at the George Washington university.

“For example, we could send messages or try to call groups that are influenced by the members of congress about what will work in administration” he explained.

Mica Sifry, founder of Techpresident.com, a blog about politics and the internet confirmed that Obama will find involvement from the citizens on the internet because it is interesting. “The people are more motivated to support the order of the president if they think it is his own agenda” assured Sifry who believes that Obama is going to realise the more he leaves to the supporters, the more power he will have.”

Thus the change that has already been put into motion in Change.gov, an open site for the participation on the net during the process of transition between the term of office of Bush and of Obama. Obama will take possession of the presidency of EEUU on the 20th January next year.

The site invites its users to share their vision of the future of the country and not forgetting to ask those who participate in various dates that are enlarging the date base that managed to collaborate the elected president.

Craig Newmark, founder of the popular news site Craigslist.com and consultant of Obama for new technologies,says the use of the internet can help make the government more open and receptive.

Newmark recalls that in New York and San Francisco there is a program called 311, a customer service for the local governments. It is the matter of the telephone and that one can call if there is any problem with the local administration. Newmark proposes to extend this program to the whole government in the United States.

Powerful instrument

The ex director of the Internet services of White House, David Almacy, assured that the internet is a “powerful instrument” for the president of the United States and in particular ” in order to communicate the agenda of the president”

“The Internet is a spokesperson open 7 days a week and 24 hours a day”, ” whilst we sleep, everything is available for those that are looking for legislation on the subject of energy or information about the war against terrorism or the conflict of Iraq.”

Nevertheless, Almacy who promoted the site Whitehouse.gov during his two years in White House showed that the administration of Obama will have a limited margin to manoeuvre the use of the internet, such as the impossibility to use “cookies” and the use of psychology in a wary public.

Source: http://www.elmundo.es/navegante/2008/11/10/tecnologia/1226322287.html

The mobile editions of the main social networks show the importance of acquiring navigation from mobile phones. Facebook, the best social network worldwide has confirmed today its first official blog: the 5 million mobile users at the beginning of the year are now already 15 million.

This growth has far exceeded in its growths in its group: following Comscore, the number of visitors on Facebook was only 52 million in June 2007 and 132 million in June 2008 which represents a 153% annual increase. The group of social networks increased by 25% in this period, more than double than the total audience of the internet.

According to the creator of Facebook, the shared content of users of social networks has duplicated every year. It is the new law from Zuckerberg that reflects the accelerated pace of rapid growth than that of power of calculation according to the law of Moore which is duplicated every two years.

The network is becoming more social each time and the social networks are becoming more mobile each time.

Source: http://www.canalpda.com/2008/11/12/8051-facebook+triplica+su+trafico+movil+menos+ano