E buzz - 10 June 2010

BITAG doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, as far as spoken acronyms go, but the Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group (also goes by TAG, for short) is looking to make (radio) waves. Facilitated by former FCC Chief Technologist (and University of Colorado at Boulder Adjunct Professor) Dale Hatfield, the group aims to "develop consensus on broadband network management practices and other related technical issues that can affect users' experience," which largely leads to addressing technical issues and making suggestions to policymakers. The group runs the gamut of major players in the broadband industry, including AT&T, Cisco, Comcast, DISH, EchoStar, Google, Intel, Level 3,Microsoft, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon. 

BP can’t control its oil leak, and it’s also having a rough time with image control.

The company responsible for spewing oil in the Gulf of Mexico is attracting more of the wrong kind of attention by purchasing several red-hot search terms — including “oil spill” — on Google, Bing and Yahoo’s search engines in an attempt to ensure prominent placement of a link to a sponsored link touting the company’s cleanup efforts.On the advertised site, workers in bright yellow boots clean a relatively untainted beach in the sun in front of rolling blue waves, as a not-oily sea bird struts past. Other photos depict a different reality.

The security breach has potentially exposed the details of thousands of senior military officers, political advisers, media executives and powerful businessmen who own an Apple iPad, leaving them vulnerable to spam marketing and malicious hacking, according to technology industry website Gawker.Film mogul Harvey Weinstein, Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, and Rahm Emanuel, chief of staff at the White House, are all believed to have been caught up in the expose, carried out by a firm called Goatse Security. The security group took advantage of a vulnerability in AT&T's security systems to get hold of the data. AT&T was informed of the vulnerability and has since closed the loophole, reports Gawker. It is thought that some elements of the data list were shared with unknown third parties before the flaw was patched, leading to fears that some user accounts have been compromised.

Culture secretary Jeremy Hunt's announcement Tuesday that the government will push ahead with plans to accelerate the UK's broadband infrastructure has met with a generally positive reaction. Hunt said that he may consider legislation that would force infrastructure providers to open up their assets in order to drive broadband deployment and tackle the digital divide. Antony Walker, chief executive of the Broadband Stakeholders Group, praised Hunt for outlining the government's plans for broadband and giving the industry a clear goal."The indication that the government wants to get next-generation access into hard-to-reach areas is positive, as is the announcement that they are looking to run a number of trials on how this could best be achieved," he said.

It was described as the "Twitter revolution", but almost a year on fromIran's disputed presidential elections, during which the use of social media by the opposition movement made headlines around the world, such claims prompt wry smiles from seasoned observers.Carried away by the enthusiasm of the protests, tens of thousands of Twitter users across the world switched their locations to Tehran in an attempt to confuse Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's henchmen. The US state department official who persuaded Twitter to delay a technical upgrade of its software so that it didn't occur during a protest was described as the "man who saved Iran". And a former aide to George Bush even suggested awarding Twitter the Nobel peace prize for its role in the Iran crisis. 

Sony has launched four 3D games, with Wipeout HD, Super Stardust HD, Pain, and a demo of MotorStorm Pacific Rift now available to download from the PlayStation network. Of course, you will need a 3D TV with special 3D glasses to appreciate the 3D versions of these PlayStation classics, but the availability of the first 'proper' 3D games on PSN is a fundamental marking point in Sony's shift-to-3D strategy. Sony issued a firmware update for the PS3 last month, readying it for the launch of the first 3D games on PSN and Sony's first 3D-ready Bravias have also recently gone on sale. PS3 owners will be able to buy the entire four games in the first 3D batch for £23.99. A drop in the ocean really, if you've just shelled out on a 3D TV to play them on!

A networking equipment malfunction has disrupted Twitter, causing the microblogging site to become unavailable to users for hours on Wednesday and forcing company engineers to shut down key features to perform the repairs. The technical problems have also affected third-party applications that use Twitter APIs (application programming interfaces). Twitter started displaying its notorious "fail whale" error page to its site visitors late Wednesday morning U.S. Eastern Time, saying its system was overtaxed. The company acknowledged the problem around noon in its Twitter Status blog, and over the next 90 minutes or so it posted several updates, alerting users about the performance problems and about features, such as its search engine, that it was disabling to fix the issues. 

Apple has apparently banned mobile ad networks, such as Google’s AdMob, from collecting information like a person’s location to provide more relevant advertising. The move prompted AdMob’s CEO Omar Hamoui to write a blog post this morning saying Apple is being anti-competitive: “The terms hurt both large and small developers by severely limiting their choice of how best to make money. And because advertising funds a huge number of free and low cost apps, these terms are bad for consumers as well.”

Financial institutions are investing heavily in information security in light of a growing number of threats and increased regulatory pressure.Deloitte's 2010 Financial Services Global Security Study found that the security practices of global financial institutions are focusing primarily on identity and access management tools (IAM) and data loss prevention. Accordingly, security budgets have been boosted, with 70 per cent of UK financial institutions having increased their information security budgets over the past 12 months, compared with 56 per cent globally. Mike Maddison, head of Deloitte's security practice, said: “Financial institutions are facing a battle on two fronts in their efforts to protect consumers' financial assets and data. The threat landscape has evolved; on one side they are tackling the growing sophistication of targeted attacks by criminal gangs and on the other recognising the increasingly expensive secure perimeter is no protection from internal threats.

LinkedIn has revealed that its user base has grown to over 70 million worldwide, four million of whom are based in the UK. The business social networking site said that the number of UK users had shot up in the past nine months by one million, and that one new member joins every second. LinkedIn estimated that a third of all UK professionals are registered on the site. Kevin Eyres, managing director of LinkedIn Europe, suggested that social networking is increasingly important for professionals as it is becoming the accepted way to represent themselves as an individual."UK professionals from all industries are adopting LinkedIn with accelerating speed. Driving this growth is the increasing realisation that an online professional profile is the best way to present yourself publicly because of the opportunities that come your way," he said.