Daily Internet Digest

No email or PM yet from your family member or business partner in India or the Middle East? Don’t worry, they’re not evading you or anything like that. They’re having a small problem: they have been disconnected from the World Wide Web; and it’s not because of some strict government crackdown or terrorist activity, but rather because of two damaged undersea cables in the Mediterranean.

There was disruption to 70% of the nationwide network in Egypt, and India suffered up to 60% disruption.
UK firms such as British Airways have told the BBC that call centres have been affected by the outage.
Industry experts said it could take up to one week to repair the damaged cables and resume full service.
International telephone calls, which have also been affected, are being rerouted to work around the problem.

Reports are saying that the internet connection will be up within a week or so.

Source

Sometimes, it will be a hard job for marketers to evaluate what signal is from voice for the huge volume of information on the internet on the topic social media. Visiting sites such as MySpace, YouTube, FaceBook, and Flicker to mention can irresistible. When your going to speak with most social experts you might encountered words such as conversation, transparency, and the social graph.

I adore Grammar Girl ! It�s a great podcast site for amateur and professional writers. Grammar Girl, which is created by writer and entrepreneur, Mignon Fogarty, offers short, simple, and easy-to-listen to tips regarding grammar and writing. Personally, I love three things about Grammar Girl. One, it offers advice without sounding preachy and condescending. Two, there are transcripts available for every episode. Three, the layout is warm and trendy so that it appeals to browsers of both sexes and varying ages.

I guess most people agree with me since this podcast has also received the following awards:

2007 Winner Best Education Podcast � Podcast Awards
2007 Winner Favorite Audio Program � Podcast Peer Awards
2006 Winner Best Education Podcast � Podcast Peer Awards

Thanks to gamers from all over and l33t-speak (that�s hacker language for the laymen out there) shout — “w00t!” — has just been named as the “Word of the Year” by the Merriam-Webster Online Web Site. According to the Merriam-Webster Web site, the word �w00t!� (spelled with two zero�s instead of two letter O�s) is an acronym for �We owned the other team,� but is mainly used as an interjection to express joy, most especially in the case of triumph.

Such as other coded languages, l33t-speak was developed for exclusivity so as to make it harder to detect hackers� online conversations. And as the nature of speakers of coded languages, despite the popularity of “w00t!,� I�m sure that these guys have moved on and have coined another term to substitute for it. But I�m sure that whatever that new term is, it would eventually get out of its exclusivity and may even be the next catch phrase of 2008.

Source: Yahoo! News

Have you ever gone through the difficult, not to mention sluggish, process of suing somebody whether it may be about divorce or medical malpractice?

A newly established Californian website called SueEasy promises “instant” justice to your legal qualms. The website is said to be paired with lawyers and litigants thus, alarming some of the seasoned lawyers present in the country. Most of them question the quality of lawyers working for the website.

Some also are concerned about the people’s responsibility when it comes to suing someone. They said that since suing is now more “accessible” to just about everyone, then most likely, there are some who might abuse the system.

Photo taken from http://www.sueeasy.com/

Yep, those bloody pirates have struck again! But the British police were right to save the day as they conducted a dawn raid in Cardiff, Welsh and arrested three people suspected of involvement in Internet-based music and film piracy rings. Two men (one of which is the ring leader) and a woman were said to be part of the biggest suppliers of pirated music and films in Britain, earning about 3,000 pounds (6,173 $) a month. Now I understand how these cyber thieves find the piracy business a lucrative one. Too bad it�s considered illegal and unethical. But piracy is not going to end unless people stop buying from them. Just some food for thought, folks.

Source: Reuters

Poor old television has just lost to the Internet according to a survey released by the European Interactive Advertising Association (EIAA). Apparently, a majority of the 7,000 survey participants in 10 European go online between five and seven days a week. Only 77 percent watch television just as often with 48 percent saying that their TV consumption has been reduced because of the Internet. A European teen spends an average of 11.9 hours of Internet time every week. 32 percent of the respondents cite the e-mail as particularly indispensable. Participating countries were Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain and Sweden.

I wonder what the results will be like in the rest of the world. I guess it must be the same. I myself don�t even watch TV anymore. And if I do access my TV, it�s to watch DVD�s. Ask me about the recent TV commercials and I won�t be able to answer you. I even get my news over the Internet.

Source: Yahoo! News

Consumersearch.com has released the top five anti-virus programs available on the internet as of January 2008. The list are as follows:

1. Kaspersky Anti-Virus 7.0 (estimated cost to buy around $40.00)
2. ESET NOD32 (estimated cost to buy around $40.00)
3. AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition 7.5 (free to download from their official website)
4. Panda Internet Security 2008 (estimated cost to buy around $40.00)
5. Norton Anti-Virus 2008 (estimated cost to buy around $40.00)

However, these sites also have online virus scanners (except for AVG) if you only wish to use the program once or you wouldn’t wish to buy their product (utilitarian purposes!). Their online scanners are as follows:

1. Kaspersky online lab
2. ESET NOD32 online scanner
3. NO AVG ONLINE SCANNER
4. Panda online scanner
5. Norton online scanner (Symantec’s online scanner, makers of Norton)

Photo taken from http://www.worldofstock.com

Face-to-face transactions over the internet may be limited only with the webcam (that is, if you consider this as face-to-face). Some believe that there is really no way a person can trace his/her online friend’s location, so it may seem to be easy (but not necessarily true) for fraudsters to lie about their real location (useful for anti internet scam too!).

Say goodbye to internet frauds since IP addresses are traceable. An IP address is a unique address, normally composed of four sets of numbers separated by three dots (i.e. 127.0.0.1). It works just like a house address since no IP addresses are alike.

Although IP addresses too change every time a person goes offline (through disabling the internet connection or turning off the router for LAN and WiFi etc.) and going online again, there will never be a time that your IP address will be exactly the same as another’s.

How to easily obtain the person’s real location through their IP address:
1. Go to http://www.ip-adress.com/ipaddresstolocation.
2. There is a tiny box (beside the “Lookup this IP or website” button) and type in the person’s IP address.
3. Click the said button and viola! The country origin of the said IP address is revealed.

Photo taken from http://www.cartoonstock.com

The internet nowadays is the best playground for business. Millions of people worldwide have access to it and since we live in an audio-visual culture, online markets have induced opportunity seekers with different splashes (programs made with Macromedia Flash), creative writing (such as excellently written ads) and videos to encourage them of venturing into their business.

Unfortunately, since the internet is an “all access” medium, many abuse it and many scams are continuously prevalent. If you have seen a “too-good-to-be-true” website, offering a relatively large paycheck for a “good-for-nothing” job (sites that offer “work from home and earn $50,000.00 per month while doing nothing!”), then might as well check the history of the said website.

How to do it:
1. Type in your address bar: http://whois.domaintools.com/
2. Affix the web address of the suspected website (i.e. if the website is http://www.website.info, then affix website.info AFTER THE SLASH).
3. You should now be able to see the history of the website, complete with the registrant’s name, how many other domains the registrant owns and how many times the said website has changed their domain name over a period of time).

Photo taken from http://theshadeswriter.wordpress.com