Digital Trends
There’s no denying that Apple’s App Store has been wildly popular amongst iPhone and iPod touch users—“Shaking Baby” applications aside—and that Microsoft, RIM, Palm, Nokia, and others are all looking to emulate Apple’s success with application stores of their own. Just to underscore how far they have to catch up, however, Apple has announced that customers have downloaded over 1 billion programs from its App Store since it launched a little over nine months ago.
MySpace can not only claim to be the world’s second-largest social networking site with 130 million users worldwide, it now holds a much more dubious distinction as well: former online playground for 90,000 sex offenders. The site quietly slipped the statistics to Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper earlier this week after axing the profiles in question to comply with its own policy of barring such former criminals from using the service.
Cable giant Comcast has very quietly launched a pilot program at 100 New Jersey Transit railway stations offering Wi-Fi service to rail commuters. The company hasn’t informed local users about the service, and has described the Wi-Fi offering as a “beta” pilot program that’s more of an experiment than a service offering. Still, if the program succeeds Comcast broadband subscribers might find the company offers them roving Wi-Fi access at key public locations as part of their existing service plan&mash;and that might be a great way to attract and retain customers.
Computer maker Dell has agreed to pay some $3.35 million to settle 34 states’ allegations that the company’s warranty, financing, and rebate offers were deceptive and misled consumers. The agreement has Dell paying $1.5 million into a restitution account; impacted consumers will be able to submit claims for compensation. The other $1.85 million will go towards the states’ legal costs.
“More than the money, this agreement provides profoundly important business practice reforms,” said Connecticut attorney general Richard Blumenthal, in a statement. “No more bait-and-switch financing—offers touting zero-interest that become surprise high-interest charges or astounding late penalties. Our strong coalition of states will closely monitor and enforce this agreement, which has been reached with Dell’s cooperation.”
San Francisco-based Craigslist, the popular Internet classified ads site with listings in 50 countries, has agreed to crack down on ads for prostitution after signing a pact with 40 states.
Although the company says that its terms of service forbid the posting of such ads, it’s implementing new terms. Now, anyone advertising in the site’s Erotic Services section will have to pay a fee – most ads on Craigslist are free – using a valid credit card and offer a working phone number. Any that violate the terms will be removed and the fees given to charity.
Telecommunications operator AT&T has announced it will begin selling its U-verse broadband Internet and digital video service through retailers Circuit City and Walmart beginning this month. The offerings will be available in more than 600 retail locations in and near neighborhoods where U-verse services are available: right now, that includes regions of Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas, and Wisconsin, although AT&T plans to expand the offering to other locations in the future.
In February the Bank of New York Mellon lost a number of unencrypted tapes containing details of customers, including names, address, Social Security numbers and birth dates. At the time it said 4.5 million customers has been affected, and in May Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell announced a probe into the data breach.
Now, according to Reuters, the bank has admitted the real figure of those involved in 12.5 million, making it the largest US data breach this year.
In a statement, Gov. Rell said:
“The vast dimensions of this data breach affect not only hundreds of thousands of individuals and businesses in Connecticut, but millions across our nation.”
Michael Dolan and five accomplices pounded untold hundreds of thousands of AOL users with fraudulent messages and phishing scams for between 2002 and 2006, pulling in more than $400,000 from at least 250 victims. Now, the 24-year-old Connecticut man has been sentenced to seven years in prison for his actions, along with three years of supervised release.
Dolan plead guilty to running the phishing scheme nearly a year ago. According to prosecutors, Dolan and his accomplices managed to infect thousands of AOL users’ systems with fake greeting-card malware that prevented them from logging into AOL unless they entered credit card and bank account info, along with other personal information. Dolan and his pals also spammed AOL users with notices claiming to be from AOL’s billing department, claiming that users needed to re-send their credit card and billing information.
The Free Press—which runs the Save the Internet campaign in favor of network neutrality—has accused cable provider Comcast of hiring people to fill the hearing room at the Harvard Law School where the FCC yesterday conducted a hearing looking into complaints Comcast blocks traffic from peer-to-peer file sharing applications. At the hearing, the FCC acknowledged that ISPs have a right to engage in reasonable network management, but that those practices must be transparent to consumers—and if the ISPs didn’t open up about it, the FCC would force them to do so.
CNN has reported that Connecticut will begin offering virtual high school classes this month. State governor M. Jodi Rell announced the start of the CTVirtual Learning Center, which will take a double-pronged approach to learning. One focus will be to help those with failing grades, enabling them to make up their grades and void summerschool. The other will be to make more widespread the offer of elective courses which might not be available in all state schools, such as biotechnology and international business. However,the program is a supplement to school, not a replacement. "We want to use online courses to increase access to high quality content so that every student in Connecticut will have accessto the courses they need when they need them," Rell said. The program will be available free to all state schools districts.
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