“The proportion of young children ‘sexting’ is shocking.”
A survey has found that there is an increase in the number of children in UK taking pornographic images of themselves and swapping them with friends via text messages or the internet. Of the children surveyed , 40% of 11 to 14-year-olds admitted to having used their mobile phones or computer to send pictures of themselves or receive naked or topless images of friends.
Continue reading… “Survey: 40% of Children in the UK Sexting”
The scale of the shut down is unprecedented.
The world’s most prolific source of spam emails has been shut down in a series of coordinated raids by Microsoft and US federal authorities. The Rustock botnet, an international network of virus-infected computers, had for years generated billions of emails per day, promoting unlicensed online pharmacies and cut-price impotence pills.
When traversing the web, most site visitors will stay on a page 250% longer when there’s embedded media, Sean Creeley tells me. This stat is based on findings from a Google AdWords test he ran last year.
Creeley is the founder of Y Combinator startup Embedly; Embedly’s mission is to make it painstakingly easy for publishers and application developers to add that embedded media and better engage their web users.
“The idea is to engage the user where they are,” says Creeley. “We really want to get the user where they live, instead of making them try to jump through hoops to view multimedia content.”
Continue reading… “Make Any Content on the Web Embeddable With Embedly”
Less than three years after its founding, bankers are telling Groupon it could IPO at an astounding $25 billion valuation — greater than Google’s valuation when it first hit the public markets. We took a look at the lightning fast right that took Groupon to its current valuations.
Continue reading… “Groupon Could Go From $0 to $25 Billion Valuation”
Facebook is the new frontier for fraud.
Forget those phishing emails that attempt to get your credit card or bank sign-in information. When crooks want to know how to get into your bank account, they post a message on Facebook. These messages appear so innocuous and so appropriate in the Facebook setting that you are likely to not only get conned, but pass on the scam.
Continue reading… “Biggest Security Threats on Facebook”
At age 15, most normal people are going to high school, learning to drive, not listening to their parents, and doing things that they’ll later tell their kids not to do. Josh Buckley is not a normal teenager. At 15, he was selling his first company for just over six figures.
Today, the 18-year-old entrepreneur and angel investor has partnered with 17-year-old engineer Tyler Diaz to co-found MinoMonsters, a social game in which players collect and battle pet monsters.
Continue reading… “Youngest Y Combinator Founders Launch MinoMonsters, The Pokemon Of Social Games”
This year marks the 40th anniversary of Creeper, the world’s first computer virus. From Creeper to Stuxnet, the last four decades saw the number of malware instances boom from 1,300 in 1990, to 50,000 in 2000, to over 200 million in 2010.
Besides sheer quantity, viruses, which were originally used as academic proof of concepts, quickly turned into geek pranks, then evolved into cybercriminal tools. By 2005, the virus scene had been monetized, and virtually all viruses were developed with the sole purpose of making money via more or less complex business models…
Continue reading… “40th Anniversary Of The Computer Virus”
Media Piracy in Emerging Economies, an academic report on pricing and copyright infringement in poor countries, comes to the conclusion that high media prices (as measured against the average wage in poor countries) are responsible for piracy — that is, when you control for social attitudes towards copying, enforcement differences, and so on, the largest predictor of whether a country will have rampant copyright infringement is whether the media in that country is priced high relative to peoples’ earning power.
To make their point, the authors have released the report under a provocative “Consumer’s Dilemma license” that charges escalating rates depending on whether your IP address is in a rich or poor country.
Continue reading… “Poor Countries Have More Piracy Because Media Costs Too Much — Report”
The internet gives patients and caregivers access not only to information, but also to each other.
Many Americans turn to friends and family for support and advice when they have a health problem. This report shows how people’s networks are expanding to include online peers, particularly in the crucible of rare disease. Health professionals remain the central source of information for most Americans, but “peer-to-peer healthcare” is a significant supplement.
Continue reading… “Peer-to-Peer Healthcare Widespread in U.S: Report”
Anyone who thought that social media was going to usher in a utopian era of communication without borders is going to have their faith badly shaken by a new study from Cornell University. On Twitter, it seems, there are already at least two walled-off nations: happy people and unhappy people.
And never the twain shall tweet.
Continue reading… “Is Twitter Dividing the Happy From the Unhappy?”
Name: Learnable
Quick Pitch: Learnable allows anyone to create and charge for online courses.
Genius Idea: Many schools have started to take online education seriously. By 2006, 66% of postsecondary learning institutions included in federal financial aid programs were already reporting that they offered some form of Internet learning, and a 2009 report from the U.S. Department of education found that those students who studied in online learning environments performed modelstly better than peers who were receiving face-to-face instruction.
This is very much along the lines of what Futurist Thomas Frey predicted in his 2007 paper on the Future of Education.
It’s great news for people who are looking to work toward a college degree, but there are few affordable parallels for people who just want to pick up a skill. Where does one go for affordable online lessons on homepage design? Javascript programming? Guitar? the Irish Whistle?
Continue reading… “Get Paid to Teach Anything With New Online Education Platform”
Ads placed on long-tail sites had a significant lift in clickthrough rate compared with ads on larger web properties.
Many advertisers stick to the top sites on the web when planning an online campaign, but overlooking less-trafficked sites could be a mistake.
Continue reading… “Advertisers Missing Opportunities by Overlooking the Power of Long Tail Websites”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.