Email From America
TechForward is a new Californian company that takes the guilt out of regular upgrading and adds a green gloss.
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Tuned In
Two California residents distribute 450 solar-powered, durable “Lifeline Radios” to selected villagers in Kenya as part of their work with the Freeplay Foundation.
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Where Old Gadgets Go To Breathe New Life
This week I took a look at some options for people who want to get rid of old electronics, one way or another. The good news is that there are a handful of Web sites that make it easy to do this -- and some of them may even pay you for your old products. Some sites, like Gazelle.com and VenJuvo.com, offer cash for your items and/or will recycle products. Another site, TechForward.com, lets people pay a fee to "lock in" a value for how much the site promises to pay for the product in the future.

Operation Overload
Fans say mind-mapping software can give them a single view of all the aspects of a project. It gives an "air-traffic controller view of what you're doing," says William R. Miller, a controller for the information-technology group at a unit of Nationwide Financial Services Inc., the Columbus, Ohio, insurer. He uses the MindManager mind-mapping software from San Francisco-based Mindjet Corp. MindManager can also help in organizing all the information that collects around a project, by attaching emails, documents and other files to items on the map.

Urban Revolution Hits Silicon Valley Capital
Silicon Valley's capital city San Jose is undergoing an urban development revolution calculated to keep it as the thriving heart of a region renowned for technological innovation. The city is working to reverse a trend in which promising startups take root in suburbs and neighboring cities such as Mountain View, Sunnyvale, and Cupertino -- the homes of Google, Yahoo and Apple respectively.

Schools Eye Startup's PC-Sharing Tech
In just over a year, NComputing's technology has made its way into many U.S. organizations, including 200,000 workstations in American schools, largely on word of mouth. That was the case in Baltimore public schools, where Bert Ross, manager of the teacher support system, heard about NComputing through a colleague. Baltimore schools have lots of old PCs that don't work - but plenty of surplus keyboards and monitors that work fine. NComputing's technology allowed Ross to take that gear out closets and put it back in service, turning 200 PCs into 800 workstations in an initial test. Now, with a $40,000 grant, he plans to do the same to obtain another 800 seats.

Hackers Can Now Deliver Viruses via Web Ads
Web ads are becoming a delivery system of choice for hackers seeking to distribute viruses over the Internet. Clicking on ads that appear in the sponsored-link results section of Web-search engines can also be very dangerous. Web-security firm McAfee Inc. found in May that 6.9% of sponsored links led to suspicious sites that might have automatically downloaded malicious software.

Just Give Them What They Want, Already
Historically, information-technology departments have dictated what technology employees get to use. But workers have started to take matters into their own hands, sneaking consumer products and applications into the workplace as they find that these tools can make them more productive. One such technology at Dow is Mind Manager, a brainstorming-and-collaboration program that a few R&D teams started to use without the IT department’s permission. Dow’s process-improvement team that evaluates new technology later decided the program had wider applicability; Dow now supports its use throughout the organization, says Kevin McCarron, the team’s technology leader.

Entrepreneurship:
The All in the Family Edition
Today, you can outsource everything from your payroll to your secretarial help. If you're thinking of having someone else handle your information technology, Douglas J. Erwin, chairman and chief executive of the privately held company, The Planet, which says it has more than 22,000 small- and medium-size businesses as clients and 2.8 million Web sites worldwide, answers three frequently asked questions: How much? Is it seamless? Is there a rule of thumb to follow that says, if I am under $X in revenues and/or Y # of employees, I should outsource. If I am over either number could I handle it myself?

New CIO role: Spot disruptive technologies and help develop new products
A new survey of 181 high-tech industry strategists finds that while most respondents say their companies are able to identify market-altering change, only 25% believe they can anticipate such changes. In an interview, John Ciacchella, a principal with Deloitte Consulting LLP and leader of its technology industry group, said CIOs can play several roles to help strategic planners. The study, "Competition at the Crossroads: Strategic Planning and Action in Disruptive Markets," was conducted by the Business Performance Management (BPM) Forum and Deloitte Consulting’s Technology, Media and Telecommunications group.

A Lesson in Technology Sharing
A Redwood City company has devised a way to make one desktop PC run up to seven workstations -- each with its own keyboard, monitor and mouse -- by sharing a single microprocessor. The Xtenda card being sold by nComputing turns a desktop PC into the equivalent of a mainframe computer -- then lets seven people at seven desks use one PC as if everyone had their own processors. Stephen Dukker, chief executive of privately held nComputing, likened the Xtenda technology to the 1960s and '70s concept of time-share computing: using a powerful, central computer to drive many "thin clients" -- industry slang for keyboards and monitors without their own microprocessor.

AT&T data services exec leaves for mobile startup
The former head of AT&T Inc.'s wireless data services division, Jim Ryan, said on Friday he will become chief executive of privately held mobile messaging company Mobile Campus. One of Ryan's first tasks at Mobile Campus, which sends text message alerts and promotions to university students, will be to work on raising between $5 million to $20 million in venture capital.

Abundance of features frustrates users
Customers worldwide are frustrated with increasingly complex handsets, poorly written manuals, inadequate explanations by salespeople and rising service costs, according to a February survey by a unit of the Chief Marketing Officers Council. Many of the cameras, keyboards, music players and other features in cellphones go unused. "In many cases, handsets today are overly engineered," said Brian T. Regan, the council's senior vice president in charge of the Global Mobile Mindset Audit. The biggest complaint among 15,000 customers the council surveyed was that their cellphones had too many functions they didn't use. About 17% of U.S. customers and 16% worldwide said the number of features was baffling.

Study: Music, Tech Search Terms Riskiest
Search terms related to music and technology are most likely to return sites with spyware and other malicious code, a new study finds. Some 42 percent of the results using the term "screensavers," for example, led to sites flagged with a "red" warning or a cautionary "yellow" by McAfee Inc.'s SiteAdvisor service. Other keywords McAfee deemed risky include names of file-sharing software - "BearShare," "LimeWire" and "Kazaa." In many cases, the programs come bundled with adware and toolbars McAfee considers unwanted, according to McAfee's "The State of Search Engine Safety" report, scheduled for release Monday. Nonetheless, McAfee found it slightly safer to use search engines overall. Although about 4 percent of search results lead to sites deemed risky, that's down from 5 percent a year ago.

Online Tunes Are More Risky Than Web Porn
A study scheduled to be released today found that about 9% of adult sites that turned up high in search-engine rankings had such PC-damaging problems or annoyances as spyware, adware and spam associated with them. Yet searching for digital music was twice as risky — more than 19% of the sites produced by such queries were risky for computer users, according to the study by McAfee Inc., a Santa Clara, Calif.-based company that makes computer-security software. Other risky searches included those for electronic gadgets and for background "wallpaper" to decorate computer screens.

Report Shows 7 Percent of Sponsored Links Dangerous
The second annual State of Search Engine Safety report from McAfee Inc. , found that roughly 4 percent of the most popular search results link to "risky" Web sites. That's a broad category of online pages that can offer Web searchers more than they bargained for. The results were a marginal improvement over last year's data, which pegged the level of risky search results at 5 percent. The study was meant to highlight McAfee's free SiteAdvisor tool. The free add-on for the Firefox and Internet Explorer browsers tries to give Web surfers a bit more intelligence about the safety of following links returned by the Web's top five search engines.

Computers: Hackers are finding new ways to booby-trap Web pages
A free program from McAfee called SiteAdvisor does exactly what its title suggests. Installing as a plug-in to your Web browser, it displays a small icon next to every link returned by most popular search engines. A green check means the site is OK, while red signifies risky downloads and a question mark means an unrated site. Based on its own research and reports from thousands of users, McAfee now returns ratings for most of the sites my searches turn up on Google, Yahoo and MSN. An upgraded version of SiteAdvisor, available for $19.95, adds ratings to links in e-mails and other features. But the free version works quite well. Visit www.siteadvisor.com.

Who Needs a Laptop with MojoPac in your Pocket
I almost always travel with a laptop but now that I have my mojo going, I might just leave it home next time I hit the road. By "mojo," I mean MojoPac from Santa Clara-based RingCube Technologies. The virtual MojoPac PC won't have any of your own applications until you install them on the external device just as if you were installing them on a new PC. You must, of course, also copy any data files you need using either Windows Explorer or the file transfer software that comes with MojoPac.

New Study Shows Hyped Role of Chief Marketing Officer Needs Better Definition, More Substance and Strategic Leadership
According to the CMO Council, title inflation, unrealistic expectations, flawed hiring practices, talent deficiencies, and lack of requisite business and strategic leadership skills are big contributors to the limited shelf life of CMOs. The Council's research also points to the fact that 50 percent of executive searches are to replace incumbent CMOs who are primarily hired to fix broken marketing organizations, not drive business value.

University Considering Text Message Notifications
The push for text message notification has increased following the Virginia Tech shootings. Mobile Campus, an Austin, Texas, company offering text message service to campuses, offered Wednesday to give emergency notification systems free to colleges that ask for them and that have another form of service with the company. "There are many circumstances in which rapid communication can save lives, from weather-related incidents, to terrorist attacks, riots, police actions, rape, robbery and fire," said George Tingo, president of Mobile Campus, in a release.

Texting When There's Trouble
Mobile Campus -- which provides text-message services to more than a dozen customers, including the University of Texas -- offers its services free of charge on the condition that the universities allow the company to send two promotional text messages per day to students who subscribe to their services. They received an overwhelming number of inquiries after the Virginia Tech shootings. At Virginia Tech, emergency communications on Monday included email but not cellphone text messages. Amid questions about whether Virginia Tech administrators should have more quickly closed campus and canceled classes, what is clear is that the university lacks any means of immediately alerting its roughly 33,000 students, faculty and staff to an emergency.

SMBs Still Hesitating on Hosted IT
The Planet's Kahan stated that the research showed that outsourcing SMBs "are more aggressive" in their use of cutting edge technologies like software as a service and they experience fewer security breeches.
But another industry analyst, Richard Ptak, disputed the automatic equation of outsourcing with innovative technology adoption in SMB. The principal for Ptak, Noel & Associates stressed that outsourcers are essentially "volume providers of services" and thus are more likely to be hosting technology that is commoditized, standardized and generally not customized.

On S.A. Campuses, a Sense of Solidarity
Texas' largest college campus, with 50,000 students, now has the capability to set off a siren warning all students to take cover, said Robert Dahlstrom, chief of police at UT-Austin. In addition, he said, nearly 9,000 students subscribe to a free commercial service called Mobile Campus and can receive security alerts even if overtaxed cell phone signals shut down. "A concern for every law enforcement official in the nation right now is copycats," Dahlstrom said. "It's a known thing that sometimes that happens. You just have to be in a heightened state in case it does."

Virginia Shooting Shows Need for Safety Awareness on College Campuses
Though more than 1,000 miles separate the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus from Virginia Tech, UNL students and faculty members felt shock as well. University Police said they have made plans for a response to similar emergencies. Capt. Carl Oestmann of University Police said the department is prepared for situations such as this. “It takes a combination of all of the systems to work together," he said. Solheim said Mobile Campus, a service ASUN has looked into investing in, could be a beneficial contact tool for the university in such emergency situations as the shootings at Virginia Tech. The service would allow UNL to send text messages to students. Though some might find the service expensive, it could be worth it, he said.

Texas Campuses Take a Second Look at Security Plans
Still, at UT on Monday, the police chief ordered his security officers to be more vigilant. "A concern for every law enforcement official in the nation right now is copycats," said Robert Dahlstrom, chief of campus police. "It's a known thing that sometimes that happens. You just have to be in a heightened state in case it does." And unlike on that scorching August day in 1966, the university now could set off a siren warning its 50,000 students to take cover, he said. Plus, nearly 9,000 students subscribe free to a commercial service called Mobile Campus, and they can receive security alerts even when overused cell phone signals shut down, he said.

PGP Creates New Channel Partner Program
PGP has launched a new channel partner program that will replace its existing partner program as the company begins to migrate partners from the old to the new. PGP, probably most well-known for its data and e-mail encryption technologies, focuses on a centrally-managed security platform rather than a siloed security environment, said John Dasher, director of product management at PGP. The company has been doing encryption for nearly 20 years, and it recently crossed the $100 million booking threshold. According to Dasher, PGP's technologies are used in most enterprises, including 95 per cent of the Fortune 100 and nearly 85 per cent of the Global 100 companies.

Company Interview: Shan Appajodu - RingCube Technologies
Today, we have tens of thousands of users using MojoPac on a variety of devices, ranging from simple thumb drives to iPods to cell phones, and at this time, the majority of them are consumers because our current offering is for consumers. As I mentioned, we are actually developing more sophisticated features such as security and integration with other enterprise technologies for enterprise use. This will be launched in Q2 2007.

Figuratively Speaking by John MacIntyre
Rank of Tokelau, a tiny island of coral reef formations a few hundred miles north of Western Samoa, on the list of the most dangerous destinations, according to "Mapping the Mal Web," McAfee SiteAdvisor's study on the safest and most dangerous online destinations.

Stay Safe with Free Security Software
The bad guys are out to get you. They want to gain access to your computer and steal your information. Or they want to add your computer to their zombie networks. But there is software that will help protect your machine. And it won't cost you a dime. Malicious websites are proliferating. They spread spyware, Trojans and viruses. Some will download malware without any interaction. Others attack your machine with malicious scripts. It helps to know if a site is safe before you visit it. McAfee SiteAdvisor and GeoTrust's TrustWatch are two browser add-ins that will help.

Sip by Sip, Tasting His Way to the Top
After being named the top sommelier in Austria four times since 2002 and the best in America earlier this year by the American Sommelier Association, 35-year-old Sohm is one of 46 candidates due to arrive on the Greek island of Rhodes next month to compete for the International Association of Sommeliers' top prize. He has adapted German author Vera Birkenbihl's strategies for memory training and improvement, and he uses Mindjet Corp.'s MindManager software to create "mind maps" that help him visualize the links among wines, regions, soils and more.

Most Dangerous Internet Sites
Online security is a nightmare these days, with all the viruses, phishing, drive-by downloads, pop-ups, and other malware out there. How bad is it? The Bad Guys blog was struck by an intriguing study this month by SiteAdvisor, the Web security firm owned by McAfee. Researchers set out to chart the Internet's worst "domains"-those suffixes you find at the end of Web addresses, such as those by country (.br for Brazil) and generic (.com or .org). Called Mapping the Mal Web, their report looked at 265 top level domains (TLDs) worldwide and came up with some telling numbers..

V.C.'s Welcome in San Jose, Study Finds
Venture funding in San Jose, Calif., during 2006 totaled about $616.4 million, up 27.4 percent from the previous year, according to a report released Monday. The report, from VentureDeal and the Business Performance Management Forum, said San Jose’s venture financing growth was more than double the national average.

DigitalPersona Adds Remote Client Support to Its Enterprise Products
DigitalPersona Inc. says since its Pro 4.1 software is built on the Active Directory infrastructure it provides stronger access security to systems and applications than the standard password.

Cell phones pushing way into GPS market
Yet the mobile phone faces one obstacle: Most people think their phones already do too much, and they barely use any of the extra features. A global survey from a trade group called the CMO Council's Forum to Advance the Mobile Experience found the top problem with phones is that they have too many functions. On the other hand, half of all European respondents and about a quarter of the Americans said finding a location with their phone was important.

Cell phone users want basics, survey finds
Manufacturers have become so enamored of cool features — including cameras, recording devices and video-streaming capabilities — that they have lost sight of the fact that many consumers just want good voice reception, according to a survey by the Forum to Advance the Mobile Experience, or FAME. "Function fatigue" was the No. 1 complaint of mobile phone users, according to the survey of 15,000 consumers in 37 countries.

Cisco's New Security Target: Consumers
Linksys rival D-Link already sells a $99 security device. However, the D-Link "SecureSpot" is not a router or gateway, instead it sits in-between a router and a cable modem. D-Link partnered with McAfee for many of the features, which include antivirus and spyware blocking. "Security is top of mind for consumers and it does make sense for us as networking vendors to offer solutions," said Daniel Kelley, D-Link's director of marketing.

Cellphone Users Complain About 'Function Fatigue'
Manufacturers have become so enamored of cool features — including cameras, recording devices and video-streaming capabilities — that they have lost sight of the fact that many consumers just want good voice reception, according to a survey by the Forum to Advance the Mobile Experience (FAME)."There are too many product features that consumers don't use, or don't know how to use, and it frustrates them," says Dave Murray, FAME director. His organization is an arm of the Chief Marketing Officer Council, which represents more than 3,000 marketing officials worldwide.

Tech Notebook: No safety, even at security gathering
Americans are lagging behind countries like Argentina, Brazil and India when it comes to buying and using high-end mobile phones, according to a mobile phone study being released today at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona.This may not shock anyone who watches the mobile industry, but for others it may be news: When it comes to mobile video, text messaging, sending e-mails and even banking while using a cell phone, the United States ranked poorly compared to most North American, Asian, Eastern European and Latin American counties. "We're last in the world in every one of these categories,'' Dave Murray, director of the Chief Marketing Officer Council's forum to advance the mobile experience. The study, organized by the council, interviewed about 15,000 cell phone users in 37 countries.

Internet Security Forces Gather RSA Conference Draws Teams to Fight Organized Hackers
Ordinarily you would protect data by setting up firewalls in the network that protects your PC. That becomes a problem, though, when you are dealing with mobile devices.
"The industry has been trying to harden the perimeter with wireless networks, but with smart phones, you really don't have a perimeter any more," said Dunkelberger at PGP. "We say you have to defend the data -- encrypt the data, secure the data, make sure all business records are not exposed to criminals."

Internet security forces gather RSA conference draws teams to fight organized hackers
"The industry has been trying to harden the perimeter with wireless networks, but with smart phones, you really don't have a perimeter any more," said Dunkelberger at PGP. "We say you have to defend the data -- encrypt the data, secure the data, make sure all business records are not exposed to criminals."

As 'Crimeware' Flourishes, Usual Safeguards Aren't Safe Enough
A McAfee study found that 4.4% of search engine results lead to risky sites, meaning that U.S. consumers click through about 270 million potentially dangerous sites a month. If you enter your e-mail address of person data at some, you may get spam or worse. Some sites host spyware that tries to secretly load itself onto your computer.

The Planet hatches managed services plan for SMBs
A Houston-based hosting company, The Planet, recently launched a managed services plan, backed by a service-level agreement ( SLA) for managed services customers. The company says it has redefined its monthly IT infrastructure offerings with a three-tiered service model, each with network-based security and around-the-clock technical support.

Herb Might Fight Against Alzheimer’s, Study Finds
The nutritional supplement huperzine A is one those Chinese remedies that has found its way onto the shelves of American health food stores. It's billed as kind of a miracle brain herb, something that will improve memory and intelligence and fight the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease.

Study: 4 Percent of Search Results Lead to Spyware, Other Threats, Higher for Keyword Ads
Ben Edelman, a security expert who serves as an adviser to security software vendor McAfee Inc., said that although the overall riskiness of search engines declined 12 percent since May, some 4.4 percent of results still lead to sites flagged with a "red" warning or a cautionary "yellow" by McAfee's SiteAdvisor service.

Holiday greetings from cyberthieves; Online scam artists send e-cards to get unsuspecting users to click on links, disclose personal information, and download potentially dangerous software
… There's only one problem: Some of the e-mails saying that you have an e-greeting card from a friend or family member may instead be from a scam artist intent on obtaining your Social Security number, credit card data or even brokerage account information.
"People like receiving greeting cards this time of year, and they are likely to click on these greetings" if they are in their e-mail inbox, said Stu Elefant, senior product manager for McAfee Inc., an Internet security firm that markets products that detect unsafe Web sites or e-mail. "There is more cybercrime because peoples' defenses are down. They are in a more trusting mood, thanks to the holidays, and they are looking online for bargains." …

Neuro-Hitech To Acquire Q-RNA For $10.8M In Stock Publicly traded biopharmaceutical company Neuro-Hitech Inc. will acquire Alzheimer's therapy developer Q-RNA Inc. for $10.8 million in stock. Under the terms of the deal, Q-RNA shareholders will receive 1.8 million shares of Neuro-Hitech shares, which closed Friday on the Over-the-Counter Bulletin Board at $6 per share. Q-RNA shareholders will also receive warrants to purchase up to 700,000 Neuro-Hitech shares at an exercise price of $13 per share and warrants to purchase up to an additional 700,000 at an exercise price of $18 a share. …

Line On Phishing Scams: We're Getting In Deeper; Study finds folks losing more money than before to these Web site ruses
Anti-phishing toolbars and browser plug-ins have been around for a while and are increasingly built into security suites such as McAfee's new SiteAdvisor Plus and Symantec's Norton Confidential.
"You're looking at three things with any anti-phishing toolbar: blacklisting, whitelisting and heuristics," said Shane Keats, a McAfee market strategist.
Blacklists are known bad sites, while white lists are known to be OK. Heuristics are problem-solving software rules used to make judgments about sites in a gray area.

Latest security software tries to block attack by blocking visits to problem sites
McAfee likened its approach to the defense team in a soccer match. Only when users pass that first line of defense would traditional security products -- the goalie -- kick in by trying to detect a malicious program by its characteristics or its behavior.
"We think it's a great complement, an early defense," said Kelly Ford, McAfee's marketing director. He described the traditional security measures as "heavy artillery."

UNC Testing Herbal Healing
Hinsdale and her mother, Marion Hinsdale, decided to be part of a different kind of experiment -- this one funded by the government. Marion Hinsdale, who lives with her daughter and son-in-law in Chapel Hill, signed up at UNC Hospitals to participate in a national clinical trial that hopes to determine whether an extract of a plant called Chinese club moss is a safe and effective treatment for Alzheimer's disease and other types of dementia. The remedy, widely used in China as a treatment for cognitive disorders, is already on the shelves of many stores that sell nutritional supplements.

Study to Find Whether Chinese Plant Can Help Alzheimer's Patients
… Patients in the trial receive either a placebo or dose of Huperzine A _ an alkaloid extracted from the plant _ that is larger than what's currently available in stores. After the placebo-controlled phase, all patients take doses of Huperzine A for eight weeks and have the option to continue taking it if they believe its helping...

New Court Rules Push Better Data Retention
Over 40% of those polled said it can take their company more than a week to dig up certain e-mails. And 36% of respondents said their firms have no firm policies for electronic records management. Business Performance Management Forum conducted the survey for compliance software maker AXS-One. (AXO) It came out in September.

Hope Against Alzheimer’s: Capital Region doctors to hold clinical trials of Chinese herb.
Can a compound derived from a Chinese club moss herbal plant improve brain function in some Alzheimer’s patients? That’s a question that U.S. researchers are hoping to answer as they recruit patients for a clinical trial on the compound, called huperzine A, from 28 sites across the country. With funding from the National Institute of Health and Neuro-Hitech, Dr. Paul S. Aisen, professor of neurology at Georgetown University Medical Center, has started the first United States controlled study on the benefits of huperzine A in people with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease.

Are You Looking for Song Lyrics or Looking for Trouble?
… Why target seemingly innocuous lyrics sites? It may be as simple as a popularity contest. Lyrics sites get nearly 23 million searches performed each month.
Last week I wrote about the research that McAfee did on kids' screensavers. I looked at the insidious practice of creating screensaver downloads that carry all sorts of PC intrusions.
McAfee performed a series of tests to see how safe lyrics sites were. It used this year's televised MTV Video Music awards and searched for lyrics from the songs of the nominated artists coupled with the word "lyrics." Next, it used its SiteAdvisor technology to test the site for safety and then color-coded the dangerousness of the sites: red for high, yellow for medium, and green for safe. …

Email at Risk? Cover it with Encryption
To help ease concerns that someone else is reading, there's PGP (Pretty Good Privacy), a set of security and encryption algorithms developed by Phil Zimmermann, a former anti-nuclear activist who designed the protocol to ensure privacy within early online bulletin board systems as well as in sensitive files. PGP ( http://www.pgp.com/ ) has survived and evolved since its inception in 1991, becoming the encryption method of choice with a full corporation behind its development.

Forbes

• Accoona
• Kosmix
• Snap
• Pixsy
• Argali White & Yellow
• Blurb
• Seamless Web
• McAfee SiteAdvisor

50 Coolest Websites WEB DEFENSE
McAfee SiteAdvisor
… Here you'll find a free downloadable application that, once installed inside your own Web browser (it works with FireFox and Internet Explorer), aims to keep you out of trouble — or, to be precise, stop you from clicking through to websites where spyware, worms, and other cyber threats lurk. The program attaches tiny color-coded icons to links that appear on a list of search returns — a green check means it's safe to proceed, a red X means it's not; a yellow icon indicates nuisances such as spam or pop-ups. Why would you need this? Because simply clicking through to a suspect site can wreak havoc on a PC, and risky sites comprise a growing portion of search returns. …

Two New Services Try to Warn You About Sleazy Sites
… Some might regard SiteAdvisor's filters as too aggressive, but, unlike Scandoo, it gives a detailed explanation for each rating. The explanations I saw made sense. For the free iPods site SiteAdvisor flagged, it explained: "After entering our e-mail address on this site, we received 11 e-mails per week. They were very spammy." It even showed some test emails. Both services are very helpful. You might want to use Scandoo if you're concerned about offensive content. But for flagging malicious software and invasive advertising, SiteAdvisor is more comprehensive and tougher.

It's Here; It's There; It's Spyware
… Meanwhile, SiteAdvisor, the Web safety service recently acquired by the security firm McAfee, reported this week that search engines offered little protection from dangerous sites (siteadvisor.com). This includes paid and unpaid search results. In fact, SiteAdvisor found, sponsored results on average contain two to four times the number of malicious sites as do regular results.
Some of the most popular kinds of searches lead Internet users to dangerous sites, SiteAdvisor reported. Often, the sites offer downloads like file-sharing software and screensavers that contain malicious programs. Up to 72 percent of the results from keywords like "Bearshare" or "screensaver" lead to sites that pose a risk. …

Warning on search engine safety: Some net searches are leading users to websites that expose them to spam, spyware and other dangerous downloads, reveals a report.
… The results returned for each search term were then analyzed using the Site Advisor security tool. Once installed this piece of software warns users when they browse websites known to be dangerous.
The most benign of the pages that Site Advisor flags up try to change browser settings (to redirect people to ad sites) and the most dangerous deluge users with spam or bundle adware and spyware in with download. …

Hemispherx Biopharma Inc. said laboratory tests showed that its immune-system drugs Ampligen and Alferon may strengthen the power of existing treatments against avian influenza. The shares rose 11 percent. The experimental Ampligen drug boosted the effectiveness of Roche Holding AG's Tamiflu and GlaxoSmithKline Plc's Relenza antivirals in laboratory testing and in mice, Philadelphia-based Hemispherx said today in a statement. The company also said an oral form of Alferon, when tested in healthy humans, stimulated genes that play a role in building the body's defense system. Alferon is approved as an injectable treatment for genital warts. ...

"John Paul did this effectively, and his organization was over a billion Catholics," Zamani says...