LimeWire Not as Popular as Recent Reports Suggest

Today several news sources again reported that 36.4% of all PCs have Limewire installed. The reports are based on a press release published by Digital Music News, who misinterpreted their own data. The acual install base is less than 18%, 17.92 to be exact.

Ars Technica published an article in which they quote the press release from Digital Music News, and report that one third of all PCs have Limewire installed. This article was later picked up by Digg, Slashdot and several other news sources. However, as we have reported before, this figure is incorrect.

It turns out that Digital Music News report is based on data which was collected by PC Pitstop. Unfortunately Digital Music News has trouble interpreting their own data. They claim in their press release that it is 36.4%, but that is the market share compared to other P2P clients. This means that on all PCs that have a P2P client installed, 36.4% installed Limewire

The actual install base of Limewire is less than 18%, still impressive, but not even close to one third of all PCs. Nevertheless, LimeWire is still the P2P application that is installed on most desktop computers. In comparison, with an install rate of more than 5% on Windows PCs worldwide, uTorrent is now by far the most popular BitTorrent client.

TorrentFreak contacted Digital Music News’s Paul Resnikoff two weeks ago about this issue and he told us: “I think you’ve definitely caught an error in our reporting. We’ll be issuing corrections on this. Thanks for the assistance.” So far, the initial reports haven’t been corrected, and this blunder is published as fact over and over again.

For those who are interested, here you can find the raw data where the report is based on.

Oprah on YouTube

On today’s episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show, the woman who should adopt me will have YouTube founders and billionaires Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. Alongside Oprah, they will help her create her own channel on YouTube. Harpo Productions president, Tim Bennett, said:

It provides another platform for people online to communicate with us and share in some of the one-of-a-kind experiences that occur behind the scenes at The Oprah Winfrey Show.

Sheeettt, I’m definitely gonna tune in for that! If you wanna read more, go here.

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Mozilla Firefox 3.0 Now On Beta

Mozilla Corp. has unveiled the latest update to Firefox 3.0 to beta.

Gran Paradiso also called as Alpha 6 of Firefox 3.0 includes an upgraded SQLite engine— the database that serves as the back end storage for places, a new history and bookmark manager. Other Alpha 6 upgrades include improved cookie performance; support for site-specific preferences, such as text size; and enhancements of the add-on and download tools.

"Gran Paradiso Alpha 6 is intended for Web developers and the Mozilla testing community only, with regular end users strongly advised to stick with the stable Firefox 2 for now," the company-hosted mozillaZine site said.

Mozilla plans to release the first public version of Firefox 3.0 Beta 1 on July 31. According to the updated rollout schedule, Beta 2 will appear in September, and the final release is due sometime before the end of the year. Firefox 3.0 is available for download from the mozilla website. (source: Indo-SDA)

Asia Blogging: Place for Asia & Indonesian Blogger

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Yahoo Releases Critical Security Patch for IM

Yahoo has issued a critical security patch for Messenger to address zero-day exploits that take advantage of vulnerabilities in its Webcam ActiveX controls.

The exploits to instant messaging surfaced Wednesday, less than 24 hours after the vulnerabilities were first reported to Yahoo by eEye Digital Security.

Messenger users' computers could be at risk if they visit malicious Web sites or view other malicious HTML code. The attackers could then exploit security flaws in the Yahoo Webcam ActiveX control, a software package that is downloaded with Messenger.

eEye Digital Security discovered the flaw and reported it to Yahoo earlier this week. eEye gave the problem its highest risk rating; fellow security company Secunia did the same, labeling it "extremely critical." Yahoo issued the patch in an update on Thursday.

Yahoo's advisory on the problem states that anyone using a version of Messenger obtained before Friday should download the update.

In December, Yahoo issued a "highly critical" update to address another ActiveX security flaw in Messenger. The vulnerability was found in the ActiveX control for Yahoo's services suite, which could be exploited to launch a buffer overflow attack. (Source: News.com)

Google Buys Internet News Delivery Firm FeedBurner

Google announced Friday that it bought FeedBurner, a firm specializing in delivering podcasts, weblogs, news and advertising to Internet browsers. Chicago-based FeedBurner is a "web feed" firm that lets online publishers constantly send updated news, commentary and other content directly to readers with tools such as Really Simple Syndication (RSS).

"We're constantly looking for ways to identify and offer new tools for content creators and website publishers," Google vice president of product management Susan Wojcicki said in a posting on the California firm's website. "Likewise, we constantly aim to give AdWords advertisers broader distribution to an even wider audience of users. For these reasons, we're very pleased to tell you that we've just acquired FeedBurner."

Financial terms of the deal were not immediately disclosed. According to some reports Google was to pay 100 million dollars for FeedBurner, which was launched in 2004.

Microsoft vs Google?

This is funny picture - Who said Microsoft in cold war with Google?

Alleged Aussie software pirates raided

Old-fashioned software piracy -- the kind that uses actual media rather than peer-to-peer networks -- is alive and well down under, it seems. Two brothers in Ballina on the NSW North Coast have been raided by police, who seized 5,000 CDs and DVDs featuring pirated software, games and music.

News of the bust came from a not-entirely-surprising source -- Microsoft, a vehement prosecutor of software pirates. The company's Windows and Office products were amongst those allegedly being duplicated. (No word on whether Vista was included, though given its lacklustre sales to date, we have our doubts.)

Allegedly, the criminally-minded pair were enjoying the beach lifestyle while selling their warez online. "Operators in a regional town, such as Ballina, can now impact honest resellers across Australia," MS Australia IP director Vanessa Hutley observed in a comma-laden statement from Microsoft.

While this afforded the brothers a relaxing lifestyle, that approach also made it easier for investigators from the Interactive Entertainment Association of Australia (IEAA) and Music Industry Piracy Investigation (MIPI) to make some covert purchases and then bust the duplicator who were apparently not aware that WHOIS exists, allowing anyone to see the original registrant of a website domain name.

We'll be hearing much more on the subject of piracy next week, when the Business Software Association releases its annual figures on global software piracy (which works roughly like this: estimate how many people have pirated software, multiply it by retail product price and scream a lot).

However, it seems clear that for many users, there's no ethical challenges involved in using pirated software.

At a packed seminar designed to spruik Adobe's Creative Suite 3 in Melbourne this morning, I overheard one attendee musing over a survey question asking where their Adobe software was purchased: "Can I just put that I downloaded it through LimeWire?"

If customers can happily show up to a free seminar for tips on using their illegitimate products, then clearly there's a lot of work to do. (Source: APCmag)

China Government Want to Control Internet

State Department, lawmakers challenge China's Net controls / Congressional panel to hear testimony from tech giants. Chinese youths crowd an internet cafe in Beijing, where the government controls what they view online. Associated Press photo by Greg Baker.

Google’s Future Plans

Last week brought us news regarding Google’s future plans for their online application suite. At the Web 2.0 Expo CEO Eric Schmidt said Google will release a PowerPoint-type presentation application, slated for this summer. Then, VP Douglas Merrill announced on the official Google blog that the company has acquired videoconferencing software from a Swedish startup.

What else is in the works? Phil Sim of Squash makes some guesses after his participation in a survey of Google Apps Premier users. In that survey, Google explored his interest in a variety of applications. Beyond the basics already included in the suite, Google asked about project and contact management, file storage, and online discussion groups, suggesting they are thinking of incorporating these into their suite.

Combining this information, we can make some guesses at what you might find in Google Apps in the future.

1. Presentation. Through their acquisition of Tonic Systems, Google will offer an alternative to Microsoft’s PowerPoint, as well as to the many web-based presentation systems under development. That category includes SlideShare, Zoho Show, Thumbstacks, and Spresent.

2. Project management. Watch out, 37Signals: the survey Phil completed suggests that project management is on Google’s to do list, something that would likely compete directly with 37Signals’ popular Basecamp service.

3. Contact management. Gmail’s automatic creation of contacts from emails works really nicely. If you use Google Apps for your Domain, you can already share contacts across users. It’d be great to also see some Highrise-like capabilities — taking notes, tracking interactions, and managing tasks related to people you’re working with.

4. File storage and sharing. We regularly cover online file storage and sharing apps here at Web Worker Daily because it’s a core step in managing your online work. Google Blogoscoped ponders how it might look and work.

5. Online discussion groups. Google Groups already exists but it’s not tied into Google Apps. I’d like to see a unification under the Google Reader interface where you could browse your mail, RSS feeds, and relevant discussion groups all in one quick keyboard-accessible screen.

6. Wiki. Google acquired JotSpot on Halloween of 2006 and immediately closed it to new sign-ups. News has been sparse, but in January the JotSpot developers announced an upgrade for existing customers and said it will be the last version produced before migration to Google’s infrastructure. Perhaps Google will combine project management with the JotSpot wiki capabilities — wikis provide a reasonable alternative to dedicated project management apps for some teams.

7. Video chat. Google announced its acquisition of Swedish start-up Marratech’s video conferencing software, suggesting that they intend to use it internally only. No one would be surprised if Google incorporated it into the Google Talk client to support video chat, though.

8. Web meetings. Marratech offers capabilities beyond videoconferencing to include e-meetings and collaborative whiteboards along the lines of what WebEx is known for. Here’s hoping if they do offer web-based real-time meetings that it works better than WebEx.

Source: Web Worker Daily

Lindsay Lohan Hacked - MySpace, Gmail and BlackBerry

An unknown hacker has allegedly managed to hack into Lindsay Lohan's MySpace, Gmail, and BlackBerry accounts, and has been posting her private emails, pictures, and MySpace messages on the Net. The hacker also plans to launch a website in the next few days featuring more of the hacked data.

The emails, between Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Shanna Moakler, and supposed lesbian girlfriend, Samantha Ronson (aka Sam Young), and Satvros Niarchos, Paris' ex, range from the mundane, to the vitriolic. The messages between Lindsay and Paris, if they are genuine, are particularly hateful, with Lindsay bitching out Paris for being so buddy-buddy with Perez Hilton. (Source: Egotastic)

Google Buys Video Conferencing Software

Google Inc. has bought video conferencing software from Marratech AB, a Stockholm-based vendor, and hired the engineers involved with the software, a Google spokesman said Friday.

For now, Google plans to use the software internally, as a tool for its employees, the spokesman said, declining to speculate whether Google might later try to market the technology or integrate it into one of its commercial products.

Marratech will continue to operate independently, supporting its customers and resellers following the software's acquisition, it said on Thursday. However, the software now belongs to Google, so Marratech will not be able to market it anymore, the Google spokesman said.

With its cross-platform conferencing software, Marratech lets people do audio and video conferencing, application sharing and instant messaging. The client software runs on Windows 2000 or XP, Mac OS X 10.4, or versions of Linux including Mandriva 10.2, Suse 9.1 or Fedora Core 2, and requires a Pentium III or G4 processor running at 1GHz or faster. There is also a server component, Marratech Manager.

Marratech says it is cheaper for companies to buy its server-based system than to use Web-based conferencing services that charge by the minute. The company could be talking about services like that of WebEx Communications Inc., bought last month by Cisco Systems Inc. for US$3.2 billion. (Source: PC World)