Map YOUR World

Ever wanted to correct the Google Maps view of your neighborhood? Now you can.

This week Google announced the launch of Google Map Maker, see http://mapmaker.google.com. Google Map Maker allows users to add personal content to an existing map of over 160 countries. The additional content allows the map to be more complete and relevant to you and other users.

Using Google Map Maker you can add or edit features like roads, businesses, parks, schools and more. You can also you can visually mark locations and add detailed information about these locations using Google Map Maker tools (see below). Once you content has been submitted it may be edited by other users or moderators or even published in...

Google Lat Long Blog

When Free isn’t Free

Google has been slowly lowering the number of users a business can have on the free version of Google Apps, the conglomeration of online applications like Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Docs, that many business use in place of desktop productivity tools.

In August of 2006 when the service was first launched it was "free to organizations of all shapes and sizes" (as long as all sizes meant less than 200). The number of free users has continued to shrink and is now down to 50. Above that and an organization has to pay the $50/user per year for the premium version.

Clearly Google has every right to charge for its services, but I wonder how many organizations of say 100 users would have invested the time and energy embedding their suite of tools if they knew that it would...

Tech Crunch

Get Emeshed

Microsoft's Live Mesh is pretty cool. The service allows you to create a virtual desktop on the web that can be synched up with your various computers or devices.

Once synched, you can access those files or even applications anywhere you can connect to your Live Mesh account. The virtual desktop support allows you to access your remote machines similarly to remote desktop and you can even use a mobile browser to access your account.

I must not be the only one that thinks it is cool because Live Mesh was the winner of the Best Technology Innovation/Achievement at the Crunchies award show, January 9th.

It would be interesting to see just how secure Live Mesh is. The service uses SAML tickets and https during sessions, but I still don't think I will be synching any...

Mesh.com

Well Yes, Mr. President …I would Like to be the Ambassador to Barbados

Ok maybe not. 33 high profile Twitter accounts, ranging from President-Elect Barak Obama to Fox News to Britney Spears, were hacked using the company's own support tools.

This comes on the heels of an incident in which Twitter accounts were used to launch Phishing attacks. The compromised celebrity accounts were used to send offensive (or humorous, depending on your point of view) messages about the sender.

According to the company's blog, the compromised accounts were locked down shortly after the compromise, but the question remains...how in the heck did hackers get access to Twitter's support tools. This is a reminder to users...just because an application is on the web does not mean it is secure.

A compromised Twitter account may not be that big of a deal, but...

Computer World

Free & ubiquitous? How about costly & spotty?

You may not have heard, but the FCC and Congress have been scheming on a plan. No, we're not talking about more ways to give big corporations control of the radio or TV. This time, it's a good plan - Free Wi-Fi Broadband for Rural Areas. But our outgoing President? He doesn't like the idea too much.

First some background: New parts of the wireless spectrum are being auctioned off next year and Congress & the FCC would like for the winners to set aside a quarter of the space for a "no-fee service to rural areas that don't have broadband access." The speeds would be a downstream of about 700Kbps

Okay, I'll say it - that sounds really awesome, actually. My mother lives in the middle of nowhere Arkansas and even though she has what they call DSL, she's lucky if she...

FastCompany

AIM Blast Kicks Chat Up a Notch

For the people who need to get a message out to a whole group of people at once, AOL Instant Messenger has just come out with AIM Blast to reach whomever you need, in bulk and without a separate chat room.

Perfect for family, co-workers or a large entourage, you can set up and edit groups via blast.aim.com. AOL says this works with third-party AIM clients but those who use Meebo may have some problems.

To get started, group participants will get invited via IM and they can accept or decline from there. To keep track of everyone, individual screen names appear before their messages. You can either set chat dynamics as well by letting every one chat together or read-only with messages coming only from you.

That kind of deflates a little of the sense of chat community...

Download Squad

Facebook, A Worm’s Best Friend?

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into Facebook, the Koobface worm returns. Version 28 (and you thought rabbits were prolific) of the worm spreads via a message from a Facebook friend that includes a link to what looks like a video.

After being downloaded on a PC, the worm will send information to a remote server. The information sent may contain log in information which then allows an attacker to impersonate a legitimate Facebook user. To complete the cycle, the worm will then sent similar messages to the friends of the infected user.

Facebook has been hit by several rouge applications and worms recently, prompting some security experts to quip that as an attack platform, it has come of age. All this in spite of an application verification service which...

Cnet.com