Beware Net’s baddies

Special Correspondent

Bangalore: The so-called social networking sites on the Internet — Orkut, MySpace, YouTube, etc, — where lay users share their likes, dislikes, hobbies and habits with thousands of likeminded people, many of them unknown, have a downside: the Net’s baddies now seem to have made such sites the focus of their attacks, using techniques like phishing, a type of email fraud which aims at stealing a person’s confidential information, even his total identity.

The latest Internet Security Threat Report, released by security management specialist Symantec, holds out a special warning for India-based fans of social networking on the Net, who number between 5 and 6 million and spend anything from 15 to 75 per cent of all spare time in this activity. Such sites are easy to spoof, leading trusting lay users to share personal information with bogus operators, the report says. In effect, cyber criminals have moved subtly from targeting your computers with worms and viruses, to targeting YOU.

“Attackers look for the weakest link — and right now that is social networking,” says Prabhat Singh, Symantec’s Director, Security Response in India.

Source: http://www.hindu.com/2008/04/27/stories/2008042755951200.htm

Caught in the Net

The addiction to online chatting has been greatly influenced by the proliferation of umerous ‘friend’ sites on the Internet, says Ria BanerjeeA common phrase attached to every end of a conversation nowadays goes like “when are you online?” or “ come online someday and we’ll talk”. The question here arises that what is this “online” attraction that has affected everybody? Well, basically this can be termed as “netmeeting”or what we, in our Y2K generation language call as chatting on the Internet.

Though the process of chatting was curtailed by a core group of elders just a few years back, but rapid advances in the booming IT field has ensured that the Net is now accessible to everyone - from eight to eighty.The reduced price of computers along with the presence of huge number of IT companies with their ISPs i.e. internet service providers have enabled every home to be in contact with www (world wide web). From teens to adults, everybody seems to be addicted to it - and chatting has become an essential part of life. Now friends are not whom we meet everyday or with whom we hang out for “phuchkas”…they are the ones we talk with everyday on the Net.The addiction to online chatting has been greatly influenced by the proliferation of numerous ‘friend’ sites on the Internet.

These sites are committed to providing users an online meeting place where they can socialise and make friends with people across the world. Truly, the world is now a global village and one can chat with anyone anywhere in the world with access to the Net, irrespective of the location. People can also create their own friends group here - they can find companions with whom they share the similar interests. Some recognised websites of this field are yahoo messenger, google talk, and last but not the least Orkut. Rediffbol is pretty prominent in our country nowadays. Orkut is really the “king” of all friend sites that can be found on the Internet. It is owned by the enormously famous Google group and is the most effective of all the friend sites. Orkut is very active in connecting people throughout the world.

All one has to do is to have a profile in orkut and the best part is that it is absolutely free and doesn’t cost a single paisa. The profile contains different questions that have to be filled up by the user. They are generally questions that define the character of the users - what type of a person they are. The profile is based on absolutely general topics like name, profession, hobbies, etc. Pictures can also be put up in the profile - an album can also be created. Complements or legends can also be credited to friends; for instance friends can talk online by scrapping each other on their respective scrapbooks. Another feature of Orkut is that it enables the users to create communities or join already existing communities corresponding to their own interests, like one can join the community of “ ice cream lovers” or anything else under the wide blue sky. Coming to the downside of this king site is that it is rather slow and nothing else in this world can be more boring than slow chatting.

The user has to wait patiently hand on the chin to get the reply of a friend on the other side. The second drawback of this site is that one cannot have conference chatting in orkut that is provided by yahoo messenger, google talk, rediffbol etc. Also the Internet calls can be placed here. And sms to mobiles can also be sent to catch up with those friends who are not online. Along with this, one has the facility of video chatting using a web cam where people can actually see each other live on the computer.However, chatting online has its adverse effects also. Children tend to neglect their studies in order to chat online with their friends. They are so interested and busy with their computers that they lose contact with the azure blue sky, the lush green grass, the beauty of open air… and no longer enjoy themselves in the lap of nature, which till a few years back was the place for a child’s enjoyment.

Even then, we should not relate it all only with children or young adults but also to real adults who remain hooked to the Internet for long hours, completely forgetting about their phone bills and Internet bills. Yet, we enjoy chatting a lot and spend long hours on the Internet because it has its positive aspects also…everything has its positive as well as negative sides, but the choices are ours and ours alone.Coordinator, St John’s Diocesan

Friend Connect: knocking down the walls

By: Eve Dmochowska
As the Internet's content grows at an exponential rate, the major problem of content creators is attracting eyeballs to their sites. Social networks and social media have eased the problem somewhat, by allowing a user to promote good content using Digg/Muti, StumbleUpon or even Facebook. But these methods still rely on others actually visiting Digg, or Muti, and interacting with the content. Google's latest offering, Friend Connect, attempts to offer a solution.Friend Connect allows any site owner to turn his site into a mini-social network, by cleverly using the already-established friend connections on bigger networks such as Orkut or hi5. "Users can interact with any of their friends anywhere they go on Web, and with any app." So says David Glazer, director of engineering at Google.

How it worksThis is how it works:
A site owner decides to add social networking features to his small website.
He chooses what kind of features this social network should have (member registrations, members' gallery, reviews or many others) and puts these widgets, provided by Google, on his website.

Anyone who visits the site and joins the new mini-network, can meet and interact with the other new members. Most important, any visitor can immediately interact with his existing friends from other social networks (such as Google's Orkut, Plaxo, hi5 and more).
In other words, the visitor will be able to interact with friends from other networks, without leaving the small site.

People who discover new websites that use Friend Connect can now bring their friends to the site, instead of taking the site to their friends. They can publish details of their activity on the small site on their main social network profile. Also, they can immediately see which of their friends are already members of the new website and interact with them from with that application.Although in limited release, Friend Connect is already being used by some websites. A good example is www.ingridmichaelson.com which uses the features of Friend Connect to publicise Ingrid's music. As Google explains:"Fans who visit Ingrid's site can connect with their friends without having to leave the site. Visitors will be able to see comments by friends from their social networks, add music to their profiles, see who is attending concerts, and enjoy other features of the iLike application, all at Ingrid's website. With Google Friend Connect, people will be able to enjoy their favorite features with their friends on any website across the web."

No separate login

An important feature of Friend Connect is that users will not have a separate login for each website. Google rather uses OpenID, oAuth and OpenSocial, which are the emerging technologies that are paving the way to a "wall-free" Internet.Google does not have a global social network hub (although Orkut is very popular in some regions, like Brazil). But, very cleverly, it will now be able to use the "99% of the web that is not socially networked" and create a means to allow people to connect anywhere. This, I think, is very similar to their content strategy: although Google itself does not own any content creating mechanism, it is still able to use the others' content to sells ads through adsense. A very clever, and very effective, model.The success of Friend Connect will rely on its ability to integrate the big social networks into the model. Already Facebook has announced that it is pulling out because of privacy concerns, although it might consider rejoining if these concerns are addressed.Friend Connect is the third big recent announcement of intent to create a more open web (MySpace and Facebook also announced their plans). Whatever the outcome and success of these ventures will be, it is increasingly clear that we are moving toward a boundry-less web, which will rely on content portability as the foundation.The good news is that worthy content will be increasingly easily propagated. The bad news is that more work, more planning and more strategy will be required by corporate entities to ensure that they stay ahead of the online pack. Whether or not you or your clients' corporate sites are part of the new media space, be sure that allowing your visitors to engage and interact will soon be a requirement and not just a feature

More by Eve Dmochowska
Friend Connect: knocking down the walls - 16 May 2008
Further new media marketing learnings - 4 Apr 2008
Next big thing is here – mobile ads - 2 Apr 2008
Learnings about new media marketing - 31 Mar 2008
Stormhoek calls on social media power – again - 6 Mar 2008
Source: http://www.bizcommunity.com/Article/196/16/24564.html

Google previews Friend Connect

Stephen Shankland CNET News.com
Published: 13 May 2008 16:53 BST

Google has unveiled a preview of Friend Connect, a way to add social features to a website without programming.
David Glazer, director of engineering at Google, described Friend Connect as plumbing for the rest of the web. Website owners will be able to use the hosted application to allow interactions with visitors from social-networking sites such as Facebook and Orkut, by copying and pasting snippets of code into their site.

"The web is getting better by getting more social. We've baked social features into the infrastructure of the web and it is not tied to any particular site," Glazer said. "Users can interact with any of their friends anywhere they go on web and with any app."
Demonstrations of Google's Friend Connect service seemed to be generally well received on Monday night during the company's third Campfire One event at its headquarters in Mountain View, California. At previous such events, debuts have included two other significant, developer-orientated software technologies, OpenSocial and App Engine.

Programme manager Mussie Shore gave the central demonstration, sprucing up a guacamole lovers' site with the ability to let users join as members, comment, post photos, rate recipes and spread word of those activities to contacts on existing social-networking sites LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Orkut or hi5.

Google Friend Connect employs several more or less standard networking technologies: OpenSocial as a foundation for richer web applications; OpenID to handle login chores; and OAuth to let users approve the grafting of new branches onto their existing social networks, such as Facebook. It's yet another option in the complicated and fast-changing set of alliances and standards efforts in the social-networking domain.

Attendees at Campfire One generally waxed positive about Friend Connect. Don MacAskill, chief executive of photo-sharing site SmugMug, said he'd be interested in trying out the offering.
In his demo, Shore picked some social applications from an online catalogue; tweaked minor parameters, such as background colour; clicked a button to generate a few lines of JavaScript; copied it into his web page; and exercised the new features on the revamped website.
Credit: Friend Connect gets a warm reception at Google Campfire One from CNET News.com