Nigerian scam tops list of decade’s online cons

We’ve all received e-mails from deposed Nigerian princes asking for help in getting lots of money out of their country. But that’s just one of several scams that made Panda Security’s list of the most frequent online cons of a decade.

As 2010 starts to wind down, the security vendor on Thursday unveiled its rankings of the most widespread Internet scams from the past 10 years. Though the cons themselves may vary, the pattern is typically the same, according to Panda. Cybercriminals initially contact their victims through e-mail or a social network, asking them to respond back by e-mail, phone, fax, or some other means. The crooks will then try to gain the trust of anyone who swallows the bait, eventually finding some excuse to request money.

The seven scams ranked by Panda included the Nigerian con at the top followed by a variety of other favorites.

Nigerian scam: As the first type of scam to show up online, the Nigerian con is still popular among swindlers. You’re promised some type of reward or share of the profits to help get a large chunk of money out of a country, typically Nigeria. You’re first asked to pay an initial sum to help with bank fees. But of course, once you’ve sent that money, the crook takes a hike.

Lotteries: A play on the Nigerian scam, you receive an e-mail announcing that you’ve won the lottery. But you need to pay some upfront costs to cover bank fees and other expenses, money that you, naturally, never see again.

The girlfriend ploy: A beautiful Russian woman wants to fly to your country to meet you. Because of some last-minute snafu, she needs you to send her money to cover airfare. But after the money is wired, she disappears, along with the cash.

Job offers: You get a job offer from a foreign company where you can work from home and earn thousands of dollars by putting in just a few hours each day. Sounds like a cushy gig. But if you accept the offer, you’re asked for your bank account information, which the crooks use to store money stolen from other accounts, thereby tagging you as an unwitting accomplice in their crime.

Facebook/Hotmail: The bad guys grab your log-in credentials to Facebook, Hotmail, or another service and change your password so that you can no longer access it. Then they send a message to all your friends claiming that you’ve just been robbed while on vacation and need money wired over to pay off the hotel bill.

Compensation: A recent sequel to the Nigerian scam, this clever con sends you an e-mail claiming that a fund has been set up to reimburse victims of the Nigerian hoax, and that you may be one of the lucky victims. But to receive your compensation, you naturally have to kick in an advance fee of $1,000.

The mistake: In this popular scam, the crooks contact you if you’re selling a house, car, or other pricey item. They offer to pay right away by check. But they send you more money than you wanted and ask you to refund the difference. The check you got bounces, and you’ve lost whatever cash you sent them.

“As with all the classic scams that predate the Internet, many of the numerous users that fall for these tricks and lose their money are reticent to report the crime,” Luis Corrons, technical director of PandaLabs, said in a statement. “If recovering the stolen money was difficult in the old days, it is even harder now because criminals’ tracks are often lost across the Web. The best defense is to learn how to identify these scams and avoid taking the bait.”

Source : cnet

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Tools for Social SEO

The changing nature of social media marketing and optimization create the need for tools whether for research, marketing and promotion or analytics. Here are 11 social media and SEO tools you might find useful

• howsociable.com Social visibility score
• knowem.com Profile building tool
• Social Media for Firefox — Build a powerful social profile on social news & bookmarking sites
• semrush.com Find competitor organic search rankings
• Google Insights Keyword demand trends
• Page Inlink Analyzer Analyze inbound links, their Delicious bookmarks & keyword tags
• majesticseo.com Historical back-link tracking
• trackur.com Social media monitoring
• socialmention.com Real-time social search & scoring, social keyword research
• bit.ly Search friendly URL shortening with analytics
• analytics.postrank.com Track social engagement with combined Google & social analytics

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Google Acquires Like.com Visual Search and Image Comparision Engine

Google has officially acquired the visual search engine and this was even confirmed by the company’s CEO and founder Munjal Shah via Like.com’s homepage

Google Acquires Like.com Visual Search and Image Comparision Engine

Though the terms of the deal were not really divulged, you can bet it’s a big one.

Maybe around $100 million up? Regardless though, Shah will remain with Like.com and work on visual search and cross-matching in e-commerce for the search giant.

However, it remains unclear yet on what part of Like.com that Google is after.

But you can bet it has something to do with the visual search methodology, something that could be added or maybe even perked up in favor of Google.com.

And as surfers and online users, we can only wait and see. But from the looks of it, a visual search methodology service or add-on to the existing Google functionalities should offer some excitement if you think about it.

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The Physical Book will Be dead in 5 years – Nicholas Negroponte

At the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe, CA, CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo sat down with a panel including Bill Joy, Kevin Kelly, Nicholas Negroponte, and ?Willie Smits. The topic was basically the future of technology. And Negroponte had the most interesting (or at least the most controversial) thing to say.

The physical book is dead, according to Negroponte. He said he realizes that’s going to be hard for a lot of people to accept. But you just have to think about film and music. In the 1980s, the writing was on the wall that physical film was going to die, even though companies like Kodak were in denial. He then asked people to think about their youth with music. It was all physical then. Now everything has changed.

By “dead,” he of course doesn’t mean completely dead. But he means that digital books are going to replace physical books as the dominant form. His argument is related to his One Laptop per Child Foundation. On those laptops, he can include hundreds or thousands of books. If you think about trying to ship that many physical books to the emerging world for each child, it would be impossible, he reasons.

“People will say ‘no, no, no’ — of course you like your libraries,” Negroponte said. But he cited the report that sales of books for the Kindle recently surpassed sales of hardcover books.

“It’s happening. It not happening in 10 years. It’s happening in 5 years,” he said.

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Family makes over N15 million from Youtube Video

The 2 minute video above made the DeVore family 150 grand – $100,000 from YouTube – in 18 short months?

Within 4 days of posting “David after Dentist” on YouTube, the video had received over 3 million views. As of mid-2010, more than 64 million people have seen it and 94 thousand people have left comments.

With traffic like that comes money — money that can change everything.

Posting this crazy little video on YouTube has changed their lives completely. David’s dad quit his real estate job to market t-shirts and stickers featuring their son’s now famous post-dental surgery lines, “Is this real life?” and “Is this going to be forever?“.

They created an online store to make money by selling T-shirts of their son’s quotes, and have really been selling. Not to mention Adsense Ads that Youtube overlays on popular Videos.

Why not go ahead and make a viral video; something funny, witty or interesting that people would want to pass on to friends and family to watch.

If you’ll excuse me, I’ve to go make a Viral Video. $100, 000! Over N10 million naira! Chei!

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Twitter makes it easy to find who to follow with new feature

Twitter has just released a new feature that makes it easier to find people to follow; yep, that’s right, a copy of facebook’s friend finder feature! Guess its payback time…

Here’s the official statement from the twitter blog:

With more than a hundred million users on Twitter, there are sure to be at least dozens of accounts out there that will reflect your interests. The trouble is finding all of them. Today we’re beginning to roll out a simple, but powerful new feature to help address that — “Suggestions for You”. The algorithms in this feature, built by our user relevance team, suggest people you don’t currently follow that you may find interesting. The suggestions are based on several factors, including people you follow and the people they follow. You’ll see these suggestions on Twitter.com and the Find People section. If you like a suggestion, click “follow”; if you don’t, click “hide,” and we’ll try not to suggest that user again.

In addition, you will begin to see recommendations for similar users when you view another account’s profile. If you’re interested in a particular user, you might be interested in these other accounts as well.

All these features will be available for developers, too. We will be launching an API so third parties can provide these suggestion features in your favorite desktop, mobile, and web applications, too.

This should make it easier for people to enjoy twittering especially new users.

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Web Trends Nigeria partners Mobile Money Africa for Mobifest2010

Tagged: Reaching the M-Generation. It’s a two-day event targeted at mobile application development and innovations. The event will bring together thought-leaders in mobile technology industry. The event aligns with our continuous effort to seek and showcase development and innovation in the Nigerian technology space, hence our interest in supporting this event.

The focus of the event;

• Independent mobile application developers / vendors.
• Device manufacturers.
• Content providers.
• Integrators and Aggregators.
• SMS services providers.
• Location based services.

Speakers

• Idaresit Abasiama: FaceBook local partner -WildFusion Nig Ltd.
• Akin Naptal – MobileWorld
• Tim Akinbo – Timobjects Nigeria.
• Paulette Erijo – Letche tech Ltd
• Yomi Adegboye – Mobility Nigeria.
• Bimbo Adewole – MobileCV Nigeria.
• Onanuga Tosin – Mobilexectera
• Goke Akinboro – Cellullant Nigeria.
• Jide Akindele – MMIT
• Dayo Adefila – Insight communications Ltd
• Femi Adeagbo – SaveMy Contacts
• Chika Nwobi – MTECH
• Samuel Legunsen – Sony digital EU.
• Kofi Oroh – Mobitronics Nigeria Ltd

Other Event line up is;

Developers Hub

Developers’ hub is an “event within an event” at Mobifest 2010 that will present a unique opportunity to tap into local resources that is available in Nigeria and connect with young innovative players that are striving to enter the mobile applications market.
The developers’ hub Showcase at Mobifest is an area on the show floor dedicated to young innovators demonstrating and displaying their innovative mobile applications.

Who should attend?

Marketing and communication agencies that needs to understand the growing importance of mobile applications to their industry.
Financial, Insurance Institutions and Micro finance Banks seeking for cost effective mobile Banking and financial solutions.
Religious,NGO and Government agencies seeking new innovative channels to engage the citizens.
Application developers interested in staying current on the latest developments from the largest platforms.
Content providers seeking new, directed networking opportunities.
Operators who want to find that next cutting edge app that will help attract and retain customers.
Device makers and platform owners trying to recruit the best app developers.

Mobifest 2010, will be the largest event focused exclusively on the mobile applications ecosystem and will attracts thousands of mobile product enthusiasts looking to discover the latest developments and hottest products for different industry segments.

If you have an innovation you are currently working on, try to package it better as Nokia and Samsung will be available on ground to demo your products for possible investment/sponsorship.

Date: 17^th – 18^th August 2010
Venue: University of Lagos Auditorium, Akoka Yaba, Lagos.

So what are you waiting for, thick your calendar and get ready for the day!

Read more here

Join the Facebook page here.

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NEWS: Facebook to Announce 500 million users…Yahoo Releases 2nd QTR results

Yahoo has released its second quarter earnings report with a 2% increase in revenue. You can view all the Stats here.

Also, reports have it that Facebook will announce it has reached 500 million users this week! This is massive. Half a billion people on Facebook? Wow!

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CopyCats! Google Copies Bing in Image Search Revamp…Literally.

Google yesterday revamped its Image Search service, in a way that seems like a copy and paste of Bing’s Image search service. In the new Google Image Search, Only Images are shown, and you do not have to click to go to different pages, you can scroll down the page to at least a viewing of 1,000 images!

In its blog announcement, here’s what Google had to say;

When you think about “information,” what probably comes to mind are streams of words and numbers. Google’s pretty good at organizing these types of information, but consider all the things you can’t express with words: what does it look like in the middle of a sandstorm? What are some great examples of Art Nouveau architecture? Should I consider wedding cupcakes instead of a traditional cake?

This is why we built Google Images in 2001. We realized that for many searches, the best answer wasn’t text—it was an image or a set of images. The service has grown quite a bit since then. In 2001, we indexed around 250 million images. By 2005, we had indexed over 1 billion. And today, we have an index of over 10 billion images.

It’s not just about quantity, though. Over the past decade we’ve been baking deep computer science into Google Images to make it even faster and easier for you to find precisely the right images. We not only finds images for pretty much anything you type in; we can also instantly pull out images of clip art, line drawings, faces and even colors.

Here’s what’s new in this refreshed design of Google Images:

• Dense tiled layout designed to make it easy to look at lots of images at once. We want to get the app out of the way so you can find what you’re really looking for.
• Instant scrolling between pages, without letting you get lost in the images. You can now get up to 1,000 images, all in one scrolling page. And we’ll show small, unobtrusive page numbers so you don’t lose track of where you are.
• Larger thumbnail previews on the results page, designed for modern browsers and high-res screens.
• A hover pane that appears when you mouse over a given thumbnail image, giving you a larger preview, more info about the image and other image-specific features such as “Similar images.”
• Once you click on an image, you’re taken to a new landing page that displays a large image in context, with the website it’s hosted on visible right behind it. Click anywhere outside the image, and you’re right in the original page where you can learn more about the source and context.
• Optimized keyboard navigation for faster scrolling through many pages, taking advantage of standard web keyboard shortcuts such as Page Up / Page Down. It’s all about getting you to the info you need quickly, so you can get on with actually building that treehouse or buying those flowers.

Google also launched a new ad format called Image Search Ads. These ads appear only on Google Images, and they let you include a thumbnail image alongside your lines of text.

You can read the full announcement here: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/ooh-ahh-google-images-presents-nicer.html

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Microsoft extends Windows XP downgrade rights until 2020

A day before Microsoft dropped support for Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), it announced on Monday that people running some versions of Windows 7 can “downgrade” to the aged operating system for up to 10 years. [CNET]

The move is highly unusual. In the past, Microsoft has terminated downgrade rights — which let customers replace a newer version of Windows with an older edition without paying for two copies — within months of introducing a new OS. [CNET]

Monday’s announcement was the second Windows XP downgrade rights extension. Microsoft originally limited Windows 7-to-Windows XP downgrades to six months after Windows 7’s release, but backtracked in June 2009 after an analyst with Gartner Research called the plan a “real mess.” [CNET]

On Monday, Microsoft again changed its mind. Users running Windows 7 Professional or Ultimate will now be able to downgrade to Windows XP Professional throughout the entire lifecycle of Windows 7.

“Our business customers have told us that the removing end-user downgrade rights to Windows XP Professional could be confusing,” said Microsoft spokesman Brandon LeBlanc, in an entry on the company blog.

Windows 7 Professional won’t be fully retired until January 2020; the Ultimate edition will be put out to pasture five years earlier, in January 2015. [CNET]

Although Microsoft said it made the change to simplify the work in tracking licensing rights for PCs, the continued popularity of Windows XP may have had something to do with it. At the Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC), which opened Monday in Washington D.C., a company executive acknowledged that 74% of business computers still run XP. [CNET]

The downgrade rights are available only from OEM copies of Windows 7, those that are pre-installed by computer makers.

The change impacts only consumers and businesses that don’t subscribe to Software Assurance (SA) — Microsoft’s annuity-like upgrade guarantee program — or those who purchase Windows through volume-licensing plans. Those companies already had downgrade rights from any edition, including Windows 7, to any previous version going as far back as Windows 95.

Other deadlines that Microsoft had previously scheduled for Windows remain in place. Computer manufacturers must stop installing Windows XP Home on netbooks as of Oct. 22, 2010, and they may sell PCs with Vista pre-installed only through Oct. 22, 2011.

Computer makers are also slated to stop offering factory-installs of XP Professional downgrades on PCs with Windows 7 Professional licenses after Oct. 22, 2010. That means Windows users who want to downgrade a Windows 7 system to XP must do it themselves starting Oct. 23 of this year.

On Tuesday, Microsoft will supply the last-ever updates for Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), the 2004 upgrade that was superseded four years later by XP SP3. [CNET]

I am glad we XP adddicts can still use our OS in peace.

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