This one’s going to come up time and time again – and I believe has already been an issue in Europe – companies buying pay per click ads on search engines, using keywords relating to competitors.

“Stickybeek said the Trading Post had used a sponsored link to the Stickybeek name on the Google website, ensuring that a link to the Trading Post’s autotrader website appeared next to the results of a search for the term Stickybeek.”

Presumably Trading Post bought keywords like ‘Stickbeek’.

Google lost a court action in France earlier this year. Google accepted ads from a travel company, who bought keywords relating to rival travel companies.

“Under French law, the practice of responding to an Internet search for one company’s products with information about those of another manufacturer is considered akin to counterfeiting. “

http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/03/17/HNgooglefranceadwords_1.html

At the same time as I was reading about Mastercard’s woes with their card numbers, this story was on the Financial Times. The British Government is saying that nearly 300 government departments and businesses are under constant sophisticated electronic attack, and have been for several months.

“We have never seen anything like this in terms of the industrial scale of this series of attacks,” said Roger Cumming, director of NISCC, which protects critical infrastructure from electronic threats.

“This is not a few hackers sitting in their bedrooms trying to steal bank account details from individuals. This is aimed at organisations, targeted at gaining information and is extremely well organised and well structured.”

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/0ebfd236-ddc5-11d9-a42f-00000e2511c8.html

In what could be the largest data security breach to date, MasterCard International on Friday said information on more than 40 million credit cards may have been stolen.

This is a biggie, and it appears to be just one in a series of large incidents in recent times:

“In past months, data leaks have been reported by Bank of America and Wachovia, data brokers ChoicePoint and LexisNexis, and the University of California at Berkeley and Stanford University. “

http://news.com.com/MasterCard+breach+hits+40+million+accounts/2100-1029_3-5751886.html

Wikis, blogs and RSS feeds are relatively simple tools that will have a huge impact on the way people — and companies — communicate and do business. So how is the Internet changing? How can companies seek to understand the technological effects of these changes? And what cultural adaptations should companies make to capture value from these new tools?

Terry Cutler takes a hard look at cultural maestro Richard Florida’s new book.

“I find Florida’s treatment of North Asia rather superficial which suggests that one should be fairly cautious about rushing too quickly to proclaim this as the new general theory of innovation and competitiveness.”

http://www.artshub.com.au/ahau1/news/news.asp?Id=74474

Must remember to blog off my Crackberry more often.

Just saw this on tv, looks like fun:

http://glastonburygames.com

The Commonwealth Bank launched its new online banking service on the weekend. Apparently:

“The site also includes a number of security enhancements, but the bank has shied away from launching the site with dual factor authentication.”

If you believe reports in today’s crikey.com.au these security enhancements extended to stopping a large portion of the users from logging in at all. Apparently the login window was blocked by popup blockers in peoples’ web browsers.

Crikey’s bulletin says:

“The problem was anyone who with a pop-up blocker installed was unable to log into the new Netbank on Friday. Why? Because the login button on the new Netbank website was set up in such a way that a pop-up-blocking program was triggered by trying to logon. No matter how many times you clicked on the login button, the login screen was blocked by Internet Explorer’s pop-up blocker.”

“The problem was fixed on Saturday morning with a new version of the login button which is pop-up blocker friendly. Pop-up blockers are installed by default on firefox and new versions of internet explorer. The google toolbar also has a built-in pop-up blocker. You have to wonder where the CBA’s developers have been for the past year because that’s when pop-up blocking programs have become more common.”

I really like this story. Smart, effective use of integrated technology for practical outcomes.  A programmer has created a web site which integrates real estate advertisements from craigslist, with Google’s mapping system. (If you haven’t played with Google Maps, please do, it’s seriously cool).

The site is http://www.housingmaps.com/

Here’s the story on cNet.

I’ve been eying off the new Foxtel IQ hard disk recorder/digital tv box. Mainly because I keep forgetting when my favourite programs are on. After missing Battlestar Galactica yet again I checked out the IQ web site – and had a fit when I discovered IQ would cost me $500 to install, and that’s the rate if you are already a Foxtel digital subscriber.

It’s also a pretty limited offering – basically it’s a harddisk recorder pretending to be a video recorder. Sure, it has a couple of neat tricks – it can record a couple of things at once, it can do a bit of time shifting, so you can ‘pause’ a live program then come back later and pick up.

But it’s nothing on the Tivo in the USA for example, which learns what you like. Tell it your interested in Alfred Hitchcock and it will automatically chase down relevant programs and record them.

However, I reckon all of this is a short term thing. Charles Wright has a good pieceon his Bleeding Edge site highlighting the blurred line between TV, computers and video recorders. We’re rapidly approaching the era of the networked home, where you have a centralised media systems hooked to tv, internet and other communication channels, and distributing content around your home.

There’s some big companies playing hardball with this technology, including Microsoft with its Windows Media Centre, and Intel with its East Fork project. Plus independent producers – have a look at the Home Media Centre from D1.

It makes me wonder how much of a time window Foxtel has. As the general public becomes more educated about networked homes, and the big players bring out accessible, consumer-oriented and priced products, it’ll render Foxtel’s IQ box old technology very quickly. I certainly wouldn’t buy it. I’d rather put the $500 towards a second hand PC running an open source software like MythTv.

Telstra mobile phones were blacked out 28 April. It started at 10am after a power failure and a cut in a cable. But according to newspaper reports, “The company only became aware of the problem about 1.30pm but fixed it by 2pm. “. It only affected mobiles registered with the particular exchange in Sydney. Bit of a worry when it takes them 3 hours to realise part of their mobile phone network wasn’t working.