Phishing’s verizon security online

NEW YORK,Oct. 1 /PRNewswire/– As the nation observes Cyber Security
Awareness Month in October, Internet users can take advantage of
security tools from Verizon – many without charge – to assess their
vulnerability to Internet-based threats and to keep their children
safe online.

With industry estimates of more than a million viruses stalking the
unprotected computers of Internet users, the need for adequate
protection from these and other threats has never been greater.
Verizon Security Advisor provides consumers with a fast and simple way
of determining their level of risk and follows up with tips and
instructions on how to stay out of trouble.

“Recent data collected by Verizon indicates that up to 65 percent of
PC owners have inadequate or no online security software protection,”
said Peter Castleton, executive director for Verizon corporate
marketing. “This number is stunning given the level of discussion and
warnings about these cyber threats in both the public and private
sector in recent years.”

Through a fast and simple three-step process, Castleton said, Verizon
Security Advisor provides an instant diagnosis of a PC’s
security status and detects whether essential anti-virus, anti-spyware
and personal firewall protection is in place. Launched earlier this
year, Verizon Security Advisor has nearly 2 million subscribers who
further benefit from free monthly security tips and tutorials as part
of the award-winning software’s ongoing risk assessment.

Verizon also offers consumers free parental controls and has launched
a Parental Control Center offering tips and tools for parents on how
to protect their children when they’re online. The Parental
Control Center features simple downloading of the parental-control
software and tutorials on subjects such as Social Networking and Safe
Surfing for Kids. Links are available to Web sites for organizations
like WiredSafety, the largest cybersafety organization, and the
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s Cyber
Tipline. The center is available at .

In addition to the free security tools and software, Verizon also
offers consumers a comprehensive suite of security products for a
monthly fee of $5.99 that can be added to a customer’s monthly
Verizon bill. Customers who sign up online get the first month free.

Earlier this year, Verizon announced that it had added online fraud
protection and a PC tuneup tool to the Verizon Internet Security
Suite, complementing an already powerful lineup of protection
features.

Anti-virus — Helps protect against known malicious viruses, worms and
Trojans by detecting them, removing them and cleaning the affected
files. The service runs in the background and blocks incoming virus
attacks and related threats, including e-mail. Updates occur
automatically every three hours.

Anti-spyware — Offers powerful, up-to-date protection that
automatically detects and eliminates a broad range of the spyware and
tracking software that inappropriately tracks personal information and
is widely responsible for degrading PC performance and online access.
This service acts as a preventive step against the installation of
hidden programs in a customer’s system and can detect and remove
more than 60,000 kinds of spyware.

Firewall — Acts as a shield to automatically block unauthorized
intrusions, malicious hackers and other hostile attempts to access
customers’ computers. The Firewall is an easy-to-use, yet
powerful defense for both dial-up and high-speed connections.

Fraud Protection — Helps protect users from online fraud by alerting
them when they attempt to access a suspected “phishing” Web site.
Phishing sites are sites that pretend to represent legitimate
companies in order to trick the user into providing personal and
financial information such as bank account numbers and passwords.

Parental controls — Allows consumers to monitor and manage Internet
usage by determining the types of content and specific sites that may
be accessed. Parents can also define appropriate Internet usage and
schedules, and block access to non-permitted Internet Web sites.

PC Tune-Up — Can defragment the computer’s hard disks and
delete unnecessary files from the computer, allowing the computer to
run more efficiently. These important tasks can be scheduled to run
automatically or by the user at any time.

Pop-up/ad blocker — Helps ensure a browsing session that is faster
and less cluttered by blocking online ads such as pop-ups, pop-unders,
banners, animations and tile ads.

Privacy manager — Scans all outgoing communications for sensitive or
identifying information to help prevent its release without user
consent. It also provides control over cookies and how much
information Web sites record about browsing habits. And it has a
cleanup utility feature that allows users to automatically remove
traces of data left behind by Internet browsers and other programs.

Content management — Enables small-business customers to increase
employee productivity by controlling the time of day and day of week
for Internet access as well as ensuring users do not receive or have
access to sites not intended for them.

Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ), headquartered in New York, is
a leader in delivering broadband and other wireline and wireless
communication innovations to mass market, business, government and
wholesale customers. Verizon Wireless operates America’s most
reliable wireless network, serving nearly 69 million customers
nationwide. Verizon’s Wireline operations include Verizon
Business, which delivers innovative and seamless business solutions to
customers around the world, and Verizon Telecom, which brings
customers the benefits of converged communications, information and
entertainment services over the nation’s most advanced fiber-
optic network. A Dow 30 company, Verizon employs a diverse workforce
of more than 228,600 and last year generated consolidated operating
revenues of $93.5 billion. For more information, visit .

VERIZON’S ONLINE NEWS CENTER: Verizon news releases, executive
speeches and biographies, media contacts, high-quality video and
images, and other information are available at Verizon’s News
Center on the World Wide Web at . To receive news releases by e-mail,
visit the News Center and register for customized automatic delivery
of Verizon news releases.

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The leading hotels of the world italy communities awareness private

Awareness, Inc. Hosts Webinar With Communispace on the Business
Benefits of Using Private and Public Web 2.0 Communities Together

WALTHAM, MA — 09/11/08 — Awareness, Inc., the leader in enterprise
social media, today announced a new webinar they will be hosting along
with Communispace, the creator of online customer communities for more
than 100 of the world’s leading brands, about how both public and
private online communities are fueling innovation and accelerating
growth. The webinar, “Public, private or both – Communities work!”
will take place on Thursday, October 2 at 2:00 pm EDT. To register for
the webinar, visit here.
This Web-based discussion will be an interactive and informative
conversation between Eric Schurr, vice president of marketing for
Awareness, and Debi Kleiman, Communispace’s director of product
marketing, addressing how to use public and private communities and
how the two models can work together to generate real business
benefits.

— The differences between public and a private communities — what
purpose each one serves and which to execute based on your business
objectives.

— How the combination of both public and private communities can work
for organizations to accomplish business goals.

— How to take your social media marketing one step further based on
this model using our best practices in building, monitoring and
maintaining online communities.

Awareness helps companies build and operate branded Web 2.0
communities. These online communities let customers, prospects,
employees and partners connect with each other and share content. At
the core of the Awareness solution is an on-demand social media
platform that combines the full range of Web 2.0 technologies —
blogs, wikis, discussion groups, social networking, podcasts, RSS,
tagging, photos, videos, mapping, etc. — with security, control, and
content moderation. Awareness builds these features into complete
communities for companies, or customers use the Awareness API and
widgets to integrate Web 2.0 technologies into their own web
properties. Major corporations such as McDonald’s, Kodak, the New York
Times Company, Northwestern Mutual and Procter & Gamble use Awareness
to build brand loyalty, generate revenue, drive new forms of
marketing, improve collaboration, encourage knowledge-sharing and
build a “corporate memory.” Find out more at .

Communispace Corporation is the leader in building, managing and
facilitating private branded communities that deliver the voice of the
customer and enable businesses to generate continuous insights, drive
faster innovation, and drive revenue. Founded in 1999, the company has
created more than 300 customer communities with a 90%+ client
retention rate, for industry leaders such as Kraft, Hewlett-Packard,
Charles Schwab, Hallmark, Unilever, GlaxoSmithKline and Hilton Hotels.
Headquartered in Watertown, Massachusetts, the company has offices in
New York, San Francisco, London, Chicago, Austin, Atlanta and San
Remo, Italy.

Search people isearch in who is googling your name

SAN DIEGO, CA — Stalking your friends, former coworkers and exes has
gotten exponentially easier with a new web site unveiled Tuesday.

Intelius demonstrated its next-generation people search directory, ,
at the DEMOfall 2008 convention. By simply entering a person’s name in
iSearch’s search field, you’ll be able to find all sorts of
information related to the person — from colleagues to relatives,
employment history, schools attended and so on.

Of course, iSearch doesn’t magically pull this information out of thin
air. It depends on what your search “target” has disclosed publicly
online somewhere. ISearch simply does a thorough scanning of the web
and collects and displays all that information in one entry for you.

Intelius’s CEO Naveen Jain explained that the older form of people
search (e.g., Googling around, resorting to the White Pages or
following people home) just isn’t up to standards in light of the
social networking phenomenon. He said iSearch will benefit those
looking to reconnect with former coworkers or keep in touch with
family members.

The site’s fully functional, so — test it on your friends or maybe
the child you abandoned five years ago. Whoa. Apparently my son is in
jail for attempting to rob a bank! Oops.

Travel tripit voice in mail.com’

I am not a happy traveler. I have friends who treat travel as a great
adventure and love every minute of their experiences, but not I. For
me travel is a means to an end, something to be endured.

There was a time – back in the 1980’s – when travel was still
reasonably civilized but now we have to tolerate endless queues, get
crappy in-flight service (certain airlines now plan to even charge for
pillows!), and if we’re really lucky, have the TSA treat us like
criminals, confiscate our laptops on a whim, and demand that we
surrender our shampoo.

That said, I have just found one small but brilliant light in this
vale of gloom that actually does make travel less painful. It is a
free service called that consolidates your itineraries, adds
destination weather, maps and directions, allows you to share your
travel plans with others, and adds a measure of social networking for
good luck. It becomes, in effect, your personal travel assistant.

You can start to use TripIt by either registering online or by simply
sending the service an itinerary from any of the major travel vendors
such as airlines, car rental companies, and hotels. If you start by
mailing an itinerary, TripIt sets up an account for you immediately,
responds with an e-mail that includes a link to complete your
registration (this is, by the way, a very clever technique), and
parses the itinerary into its own internal format.

Here’s where things get really clever: When you send other
itineraries, TripIt figures out the dates and locations (the company
calls the software that does this job “The Itinerator”)
and merges them into a combined itinerary.

TripIt then adds detail such as the predicted weather in each
location, links to the airlines you booked on for flight status and
online check-in, and provides travel guide information for your
destinations.

TripIt also provides a bookmarklet, which allows you to go to any Web
page, select content, and save it to one of your itineraries.

Through TripIt you can access your accounts on Gmail, AOL, Hotmail,
LinkedIn, mail.com, and Yahoo to discover which of your contacts are
using TripIt and invite those who aren’t to use the service.
When contacts agree to link with you, you can see each other’s
travel plans and TripIt notifies you when you are both in the same
locale (these are called “closeness alerts”).

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Google’s web open internet

European Telecommunications Commissioner Viviane Reding won glowing
praise for her vision of the Internet 3.0 Monday from Vint Cerf, one
of the creators of the Web and now vice president and chief Internet
evangelist.

Reding launched a on the next generation of the Internet Monday,
laying down what she sees as its essential elements and calling on
Europe to lead the way to get there.

“Web 3.0 means seamless ‘anytime, anywhere’ business, entertainment
and social networking over fast reliable and secure networks. It
means the end of the divide between mobile and fixed lines. It signals
a tenfold quantum leap in the scale of the digital universe by 2015,”
she said in a statement.

At the same time the European Commission unveiled a , outlining the
main steps Europe must take to respond to the next wave of what it
dubs the “information revolution.”

Trends leading to Internet 3.0 include the boom in social networking,
the shift to online business services, nomadic services based on GPS
and TV and the growth of smart tags using RFID, the report found.

It concluded that Europe’s focus on open and pro-competitive telecom
networks and its emphasis on online privacy and security make it
“well placed to exploit these trends.”

Cerf said in a blog to be published Monday that he shares Reding’s
vision, with its focus on free and open networks and the need for
open standards. However, instead of seeing Europe in the driving seat
of change, he said the continent is well positioned to keep up with
other parts of the world. The text of the blog was shared with the IDG
News Service by Google, in advance of the blog’s posting on the Web.

“For Europe to keep up in the global online race, it needs to sprint
ahead powered by an openness recipe encompassing a neutral network,
users rights, and open standards. I’m delighted to see that Europe’s
policymakers stress the successful ingredients to promoting a robust,
healthy Internet,” he said.

The report accompanying the launch of the consultation “makes a
compelling case for open standards,” Cerf said.

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Google’s lively space google’s

In an interview with Gamesindustry.biz, Kevin Hanna — creative
director on Google’s Lively — discusses the nascent virtual world’s
transition to a proper online gaming platform.

The interview centers around a point I’ve wrestled with myself: what,
pray tell, is the point of this Lively thing anyhow? With so many
virtual worlds and social networking apparatuses already clogging up
the intertubes, why does Google’s foray into the field, a , merit
attention?

Hanna’s answer is typical Google: Its aim is to revolutionize the
space, and to make the application so ubiquitous that everyone and
their dog will have a Lively persona. Taking the form of an invisible
plug-in, the ideal evolution of Lively would be seamlessly integrated
with your browser, providing a three-dimensional space to explore,
chat, and ultimately play a few games in.

Will it work? Since it first launched back in July, I’ve fired up
Lively exactly twice. As it stands, there really isn’t much to draw my
attention to the space. But toss in a few games, and content creation
tools for the general public (not to mention support for Macs, or even
Google’s own browser, Chrome), and Lively could at the very least
become an interesting diversion. Besides, where else can I be a pig
and watch YouTube videos?

I will make the obvious observation that you can be a pig and watch
YouTube videos in Second Life also. As well as doing roughly a million
things that you *can’t* do in Lively… 🙂