IRS Workers Charged For Snooping

Five workers at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) return processing center in Fresno, California, were charged with computer fraud and unauthorized access to tax return information on Monday for allegedly peeking at taxpayers' files for their own purposes. "The IRS has a method for looking for unauthorized access, and it keeps audit trails, and occasionally it will pump out information about who's done what," says assistant U.S. attorney Mark McKoen. The number of such incidents is apparently on the rise, or the IRS is getting better at sniffing out the perpetrators as there were 430 known cases in 1998, and 521 last year. In these recent charges 13 taxpayers were compromised with each worker allegedly peeking at one to four tax returns, the incidents are from 2005 through 2007. Wired's Threat Level blog suggests "The age of some of the incidents suggests the Inspector General's office is breaking out new algorithms to find anomalies in audit trails going back years."

New Spider Species Named After Canadian Rocker

East Carolina University biologist Jason Bond is a Neil Young fan. So much so that when he discovered a new species of trapdoor spider last year in Alabama he named the species Myrmekiaphila neilyoungi. "I really enjoy his music," Bond explained in a press release, "and have had a great appreciation of him as an activist for peace and justice." Wired's Listening Post Blog has the story here.

Google Aims To Be Hub Of Social Networks

Google has announced a new service, "Friend Connect" with the intent on being at the heart of social networking. "Google Friend Connect is about being the 'long tail' of sites becoming more social. Many sites aren't explicitly social and don't necessarily want to be social networks, but they still benefit from letting their visitors interact with each other. That used to be hard." said Google's director of engineering David Glazer in a call with reporters. With Friend Connect, any website owner can add a bit of google's code to their site and get social features running right away without any programming. Features such as invitations to member's gallery, message walls, and reviews. "Social networking is going mainstream. It used to be proprietary, but now it's going to be open and baked into the infrastructure of the net, not just one site or one source," says Mr Glazer. The BBC has more here.

RIM, RBC and Thomson Reuters Create $150 Million BlackBerry Partners Fund

Research in Motion (RIM), Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), and Thomson Reuters have announced the creation of a $150 Million venture capital fund, to invest in mobile applications and services for the BlackBerry and other mobile platforms. "The mobile world has evolved well beyond phone calls and simple messaging to require more empowering and liberating solutions that connect people to everything that matters most to them, wherever and whenever they want," said Jim Balsillie, Co-CEO, Research In Motion. "RIM, RBC and Thomson Reuters share the common belief that mobile applications and services will propel the industry forward and the BlackBerry Partners Fund is being formed to help fuel innovation and activity in the mobile ecosystem." John Albright, Managing Partner of JLA Ventures who will co-manage the fund says "Whether it's access to corporate data or the latest craze in mobile entertainment, we want to fund companies that are forerunners in driving adoption and further enriching the mobile experience."

Sneak Peak At Gears of War 2

Here's a sneak peak at the highly anticipated sequel, Xbox 360 only title - Gears of War II. Enjoy!

Disk Drive Data Recovered From Columbia Disaster

A Minnesota data recovery company, Kroll Ontrack, has been able to recover 95% of the data recorded on a disk drive that fell from the sky when the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated in 2003. The drive's metal and plastic elements where scorched and the seal on the side that keeps dirt and dust out had melted. The company was fortunate that the drive was not full and the spinning metal platters that store the data were not warped. It turns out that because the computer housing the disk was running DOS and not a more modern operating system, the data was not scattered across the platters but rather bunched together and while they where not entirely intact most of the data was recoverable. The disk contained information from a scientific experiment, much of which had already been sent back to earth when the disaster took place, but the recovery of the missing data has enabled researchers to publish their findings. Amazing! CNN has the story here.

Levi Strauss Goes Viral On YouTube

Who says that Levi's aren't cool anymore? The company has struck quite an audience online with this viral YouTube video:


Ouch! Let's just say better these guys than me... I think I'll stick to one leg at a time the rest of the sane people.

Apple Settles Class Action Suit In Canada Over iPod Battery Life

A class action lawsuit filed against Apple Inc. in Montreal and Toronto has been settled with an offer to Canadian owners of 1st, 2nd, or 3rd generation iPods purchased before before June 24, 2004. The settlement awards $100,000 in legal costs and a $45 per owner rebate at Apple Canada's online store, with the exception of iTunes content. The suits were brought on by owners who claimed Apple overstated the battery life of the devices, claiming 8 hours when in practice they were averaging about 3 hours.

One down, and one to go, as the CBC explains, "The company is still facing another lawsuit in Canada regarding iPods, filed by Montreal student David Bitton last year, over the device's memory. Bitton said his iPod Nano has only 7.45 gigabytes of memory, rather than eight GB, as advertised by Apple. His lawyer is seeking class-action status and is asking for a full refund, or a 7.5-per-cent refund of the device's $220 purchase price and $75 in damages." The cost of the battery issue is estimated to be $3.6 million if all 80,000 owners apply and receive the rebate.

Firefox Plugin Infects Vietnamese Users Machines

Mozilla is increasing it's efforts to scrutinize user submitted plugins after it had discovered that a Vietnamese language pack on its official add-on page had been infected for months with rogue code. In mid-February the user submitted add-on passed Mozilla's scrutiny because the virus's signature was unknown at the time of testing. According to Wired's Threat Level blog "On Tuesday, a user named Hai-Nam Nguyen reported that anti-virus programs detected the Xorer Trojan inside the add-on. Firefox admins quickly confirmed the presence of the Trojan's code and removed the file the same day." It is unknown how many users actually installed the plugin but Mozilla says 16,667 people had downloaded the add-on since November 2007. The organization now intends to scan all of the user submitted add-ons each time virus definitions are updated, that seems a bit more proactive...

Facebook Agrees To Measures Aimed At Keeping Young Users Safe

Facebook has reached an agreement with the attorneys general of 49 states to institute a broad set of principles intended to protect young users from predators and inappropriate material online. Users under the age of 18 will be required to acknowledge reading Facebook's safety tips at sign up and the site will also display a prominent “report abuse” icon devised by the attorney general of New Jersey. Facebook will be closely monitoring users who drastically change their age on their accounts and has promised to take down offensive material within 24 hours of it's discovery. Facebook is said to be working on profiling technology to help it determine when someone is not telling the truth about their age. “We envision this as an ongoing process. We purposely built into this agreement the opportunity to raise and address new issues,” Connecticut attorney general, Richard Blumenthal said. “If we see a problem they’ll hear from us.” New York Times article here.