What are Internet filters?

Internet filters are software tools that can help monitor web content viewed on a particular computer or network. In the case of family safety settings, Internet filters can also help parents manage whom kids can communicate with or how long kids can use the computer.
How setting Internet filters can help
• Parents, guardians, or school administrators can protect kids from viewing inappropriate material as well as identify which websites kids can visit.
• Parents and guardians can block sites by content type or only allow access to certain sites.
• You can prevent unwanted, explicit sexual content from appearing in your search results.
• Businesses can block websites or programs that they don't want their employees to use at work.
Internet filters can warn you about and block you from suspicious websites that might be fraudulent (also known as phishing filters).
• Internet filters can keep spam out of your inbox (also known as spam filters)

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Unprecedented domain seizure shutters 84,000 sites

The federal government's unprecedented practice of confiscating internet domain names in secret court proceedings took a new and ominous turn last week when it resulted in the closure of as many as 84,000 website addresses.
The power grab came last Friday, when the mooo.com, an address a service called Free DNS used to resolve more than user 84,000 websites was unceremoniously suspended at the registrar level. Sites that relied on mooo.com soon displayed a banner that said the domain name had been seized by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the main investigative arm of the US Department of Homeland Security. The banner went on to include this creepy nugget:
“Advertisement, distribution, transportation, receipt, and possession of child pornography constitute federal crimes that carry penalties for first time offenders of up to 30 years in federal prison, a $250,000 fine, forfeiture and restitution.”
Speculation has abounded ever since that mooo.com was one of almost a dozen domains confiscated under Operation Protect Our Children, in which the government obtained a secret court order to seize addresses allegedly involved in child pornography without first giving the owners a chance to defend themselves before a judge.
By Sunday evening, mooo.com was restored, but by then the damage was done. Not only had 84,000 websites been silenced for 72 hours (a term lawyers call prior restraint) with no legal authority, but it was going to take another day or so for the world's domain name servers to reflect the change in tables most people use to access the sites. Condemnation of the move by ICE, which is overseen by Director John Morton, was swift and scathing.
“Mr. Morton, with all due respect: 'fuck off,' one affected website operator wrote. “Pulling a total domain, sweeping up innocent people along the way, feeling that you don't have to comply with due process of law and indicating that you don't give a damn is wrong. It's not as wrong as child pornography or counterfeiting, but it's still wrong.”
Department of Homeland Security officials didn't respond to an email and phone calls seeking comment.
Lawyers and civil libertarians say the act was unprecedented and a naked affront to Free Speech guarantees at the heart of the US Constitution.
“You don't take down speech unless you have some sort of justification for it, and that's why, over and over, courts have said if you're going to take down a website, or take down speech anywhere, that take-down has to be narrowly tailored to a specific objective,” Corynne McSherry, intellectual property director for Electronic Frontier Foundation, told The Register. “This is basic constitutional law.”
Operation Protect Our Children comes on the heels of a separate ICE initiative dubbed Operation in our Sites, which seizes domain names for websites accused of offering pirated or counterfeited content or products. Like last week's operation, it didn't afford any prior notice to the owners, many of whom are located outside US borders.
The latest initiative came about the same time US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton criticized the Egyptian government for pulling the plug on the internet. The irony hasn't been lost on critics.
“Our government has gone rogue on us,” Eric Goldman, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law said. “Our government is going into court with half-baked facts and half-baked legal theories and shutting down operations. This is exactly what we thought the government couldn't do. I'm scratching my head why we aren’t' grabbing the pitchforks.

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The Top 5 Reasons to Buy a Tablet

Apple iPad, Samsung Galaxy Tab, Motorola Xoom--tablet PCs are flooding the market. But does anybody need one? We give you five reasons why a tablet is a useful tool.
As one new tablet PC announcement after another surfaces these days, you may be asking yourself, "What does a tablet give me that I don't already get out of my computer or smartphone?"
Initially I had purchased the device to browse my massive library of digital comic books, but soon I found it useful for other, more-practical tasks. I started taking the iPad to meetings and using it to do quick Web searches, and it became my preferred way to read and respond to e-mail.
With the Motorola Xoom and other Honeycomb-powered tablets in the works, and with HP announcing its Web OS-based TouchPad, consumers will have a much bigger pool of devices to choose from. Although a tablet may not totally replace your PC anytime soon, using one has its benefits. Here are my top five.
Portability
Next to ordinary computers, tablets by design are comparatively lightweight and relatively easy to carry around. Many of them may still be too heavy to hold in one hand, but they're great in your lap or on a surface. Reaching for a tablet to browse the Web during TV commercials is much easier than getting up, going to your desk, and booting up your computer. Even laptops, which are supposed to be mobile devices, can take a while to start, and they often get uncomfortably hot after a short period of use.
As for using a smartphone, you do have easy access and instant-on, but it's nice to be able to view an entire Web page as opposed to the mobile site or an oddly rendered version on a smartphone's much smaller screen. Plus, there's something about being able to hold a Web page more naturally in your hand, as opposed to staring at it on a laptop screen or monitor. It makes you feel like the future is here.
Productivity
I don't expect anyone to type out a proposal using a tablet's virtual keyboard. However, a tablet in the workplace can be quite helpful for handling basic tasks, like checking e-mail or managing schedules. Here at work, I use a stand to hold my iPad up next to my monitor so that I can use it as a second screen. I leave the Mail app open, which lets me quickly see if I have new messages. For meetings you can jot down notes and download any relevant documents you may need to reference, into the tablet. That way, you won't have to shuffle through a pile of papers searching for a specific chart or diagram.
Students may also find the iPad useful, particularly if you have to carry several books on a day-to-day basis. If those books are offered digitally, you may save some money (and possibly your back) just by packing them into a tablet that also can double as a laptop.

Entertainment
Tablets are great for entertainment. Since a tablet is basically just a large screen, it's a stellar device for watching movies and TV shows. When you're trying to watch an epic movie like Inception, a 3.5-inch screen just doesn't cut it. With services such as Netflix and Hulu Plus, you don't even have to fill your tablet's internal memory with video files; instead, you can stream entire libraries of material directly to your device.
You can also find games to add to your fun. I think I've sunk more hours into Angry Birds than I have into any other game I currently own. Having touch-based controls on a tablet forces developers to get creative, leading to truly unusual gaming.
Adaptability
Games are not the only thing you can download into your tablet. One of the beautiful things about tablets is that most of them--the ones worth the money you've paid, at least--have some sort of marketplace where you can purchase additional apps to give your device a whole new level of functionality. Love to read the news and stay on top of current events? Download a few news apps. Love to tweet and spend all day on Facebook? Grab some social networking apps to stay in contact with friends.
Although it's true that you can customize your computer as well, installing apps on a tablet is a much cleaner and simpler process. You don't have to deal with product keys or registration codes, and most apps download and install in seconds. Tablets also are a good tool for road warriors who need the functionality that their phone lacks but who don't want the size and weight of a laptop or netbook to slow them down.
Battery Life
One of the reasons I prefer carrying around a tablet as opposed to a laptop is the superior battery life you get from a tablet. My laptop can go for only about 2.5 hours before I have to plug it in, whereas one can get almost a full day's use out of a Samsung Galaxy Tab or an iPad. Even HTC Droid Incredible smartphone needs to be plugged in at least twice a day, more if I've been browsing the Web with it. Having to carry a charger as well as a laptop (not to mention trying to find an available electrical socket) gets to be inconvenient.

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Nokia head swaps Microsoft shares for own firm: report

Nokia chief executive and former Microsoft executive Stephen Elop, who has sealed a tie up deal with the US giant, this week swapped all of his Microsoft shares for Nokia stock, reports said Friday.
"On Thursday, Elop bought 150,000 Nokia shares for one million euros ($1.35 million)," financial daily Kauppalehti reported, adding that this was the first time Elop had bought Nokia stock.
Elop's dearth of Nokia shares has raised some eyebrows, but he told reporters ahead of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last week that insider trading rules had long prohibited him from selling Microsoft or buying Nokia stock earlier, as negotiations were underway with Microsoft on a strategic partnership.
"As soon as I'm clear of the legal restrictions, of course I'll get rid of the rest of my Microsoft shares," he told reporters on Sunday.
Elop, a Canadian, left Microsoft for Nokia last September, becoming the first non-Finn to captain the world's largest mobile phone maker.
"He might want to send a clear message that he's now part of another company," Pohjola Bank analyst Hannu Rauhala told AFP Friday, adding that owning so many shares ties Nokia's leadership to the company's overall performance.
"If it goes well, they win, and if it goes poorly then they lose," Rauhala pointed out.
Last Friday, Elop said that Nokia, which has been hard-hit by harsh competition from Apple and Google, would dramatically shift its strategy and abandon its own smartphone platforms to adopt Microsoft Phone.
The strategic shift was prefaced by an internal memo that leaked to media, in which Elop said Nokia was "standing on a burning platform" surrounded by a "blazing fire" of competition.
Nokia's share price plummeted more than 20 percent after the announcement, falling earlier this week to its lowest level since 1998, allowing Elop to buy his shares at a deep discount.
"I was legally prohibited from buying in Nokia until all of this news was out," he insisted on February 13.
The move to ditch Symbian for Microsoft is seen as immensely unpopular in Finland, amid fears of massive layoffs and a brain-drain of developer talent from Helsinki to Silicon Valley as a result.
Finnish media lambasted the move, with some reports accusing Elop of masterminding a Microsoft takeover of Nokia - speculation that was fuelled by the fact that Elop until Thursday had significant holdings in Microsoft and few-to-none in Nokia.
News agency STT called it a "total surrender" while financial paper Kauppalehti quoted a Finnish analyst predicting Microsoft would buy Nokia outright, with Elop acting as a Trojan horse.
The purchase makes Elop the third largest shareholder among Nokia's leadership, behind board chairman Jorma Ollila and executive vice president Mary McDowell.

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Microsoft will not pursue keyword trade mark users in US

Microsoft will no longer investigate complaints that words used to trigger search adverts constitute trade mark infringement in the US. The change to its search advert policy in the US mirrors Google's existing policy.
The rules governing search adverts in the UK remain unchanged and forbid the use of keywords in a way that infringes trade mark law.
Keywords are terms which companies bid on so that their adverts appear when users of search engines search for that word or phrase. Trade mark owners have sought to have courts rule that one company using another's trade mark as an ad trigger breaches trade mark law.
Those companies have been largely unsuccessful. A number of US lawsuits have failed, and in a case involving Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy (LVMH), the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled that trade mark rights are only infringed by ads that cause confusion about the identity of the advertiser.
Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University School of Law in the US, reported the change to Microsoft's US policies for its adCenter search ads system.
"Starting March 3, 2011, adCenter will no longer review trademark keyword complaints. However, adCenter will continue to investigate brand owner complaints related to trademark use in ad text," said an email from Microsoft, according to Goldman.
Microsoft's policy for the US states that it will still investigate complaints about the misuse of trade marked terms in the text of an advert.
The company's UK policy says that it will still look into UK instances of trade mark use in keywords.
"You may not bid on as a keyword, or use in the content of your ads, any term whose use would infringe the trademark of any third party or otherwise be unlawful or in violation of the rights of any third party," it said.
The European Parliament recently adopted a resolution calling for search engine companies to be prevented from allowing one company to bid on keywords that were trade marked by another company.
"[The Commission should] modify the limited liability regime for information society services in order to make the sale by search engines of registered brand names as advertising keywords subject to prior authorisation from the owner of the brand name in question," said the Parliament resolution.

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Google Social Search Improves, Still Has Major Hole

Google announced that it has updated its own social search. Google social search results will now appear mixed throughout the organic results, as opposed to just at the bottom, as they have done in the past.

It's a good move, as I believe that often times, results from people you know is a big factor in relevancy. It's easy to ignore such results when they're at the bottom of the page. Still, missing from the mix is Facebook, however. Since most of your social activity and your real friend connections are most likely occurring on Facebook, this is a pretty big hole in the social search experience. According to recent estimates, Facebook has about 600 million users.

Google says you'll see updates from Blogger, Twitter, Flickr, and "publicly available sites". LinkedIn is also shown in a screenshot.

Unfortunately, I can't see the available accounts in the settings yet. Google says they're just starting to roll the feature out, and we'll see it in the coming week.

According to Matt McGee at Search Engine Land, you won't even see public Facebook Page results. Google's Mike Cassidy told him, however, "This is just the beginning, and we're going to be doing much more to improve the comprehensiveness of Google Social Search." He also has a graphic that seems to indicate Google will include YouTube, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Quora, Delicious, and Digg as well. "

Greplin still has some advantages over Google as far as social search (Greplin results could be awesome, mixed in with Google's results). Adding other Google services to the mix would be helpful (and more Greplin-like). Why not include Google Reader, Docs, Picasa Web Albums, Gmail, etc.?

Google has added some elements to its social search though - apart from just mixing the results in. They've added notes and links people have shared on Twitter and other sites (before, they just showed results people created and linked through Google profiles). They've also given more control over how you connect accounts. In addition to simply adding an account to your Google profile, you can add an account privately, just so you can get the results in search.

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Google Chrome 10 beta - Faster JavaScript, GPU acceleration, and more!

Google has just released Chrome 10 beta (10.0.648.82 for all you perfectionists) and it brings with it a whole slew of new things to play with.
Google has just released Chrome 10 beta (10.0.648.82 for all you perfectionists) and it brings with it a whole slew of new things to play with.
First off, there’s a significant JavaScript performance boost thanks to the updated V8 engine. According to Google, this version of the V8 engine offers a 66% performance advantage over the current stable release. That alone is pretty impressive.

This beta also adds GPU acceleration for video. For those running video in full-screen mode this can mean a decrease in CPU usage of as much as 80%. A good thing for those living off battery.
Another new feature is that the browser setting page now opens in a tab of its own rather than in a separate window. A small change but one that makes a lot of sense. There’s also a handy search box to allow you to find the specific setting you are looking for. Might not be needed by geeks, but dead handy for everyone else (Hey, Microsoft! Here’s a setting that would be really handy for IE users … fire up those photocopiers!).
Syncing now includes saved passwords, along with bookmarks, preferences, themes and extensions. Synced passwords can be encrypted with a separate passphrase.
Download Google Chrome beta 10 here.

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Champions shaping up for browser battles

Google on Friday released a revved-up version of Chrome as rivals Microsoft and Mozilla beefed up their own champions for the competitive Internet browsing software arena.
In keeping with the arrival of the lunar year of the rabbit, Google product managers Jeff Chang and Li Chan touted the latest test version of Chrome as "quick as a bunny."
The latest Chrome release came a week after Microsoft fielded an Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) "release candidate" boasting improvements in speed, security, privacy, and website graphics capabilities.
IE9 had been downloaded more than two million times as of Friday, according to Ryan Gavin, the senior director of the IE team.
"We are especially excited to see the number of partners and developers embracing IE9 and taking advantage of the performance capabilities," Gavin said in a blog post.
Mozilla last week released a test version of its Firefox 4 web browser with enhancements that included a "Do Not Track" feature people could use to signal websites that they don't want their online activities recorded.
"We've continued our work to improve performance and stability, while also implementing a 'Do Not Track' privacy feature to provide more control over online behavioral tracking," Mozilla said.
Firefox debuted in 2004 as an innovative, communally crafted open-source browser released as an option to Internet Explorer.
Google last month released extension software for its Chrome browser that lets users opt out of being tracked by a growing set of companies adopting industry privacy standards regarding online advertising.
"Keep My Opt-Outs" lets people opt out of having snippets of code referred to as "cookies" installed on their computers to track online behavior for the purpose of targeting ads.
Microsoft "Tracking Protection" was built into IE9, but users need to be savvy enough to activate the feature and create lists of the third-party websites that they do not want to track their behavior.
Internet Explorer is the most widely used Web browser in the United States followed by Firefox, Chrome and Apple's Safari.

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Apple iPhone nano? Try iPhone budget

Remember all that chatter about how Apple was cooking up the iPhone nano as a way to target the masses? The New York Times has thrown ice water on the concept.
Instead of the iPhone nano it’s more like the iPhone budget. The Times reports that Apple is looking to keep the same iPhone form factor, but make a more inexpensive model. The idea is to make something for prepaid plans abroad where phones aren’t subsidized.
On Sunday, the Wall Street Journal said Apple has prototypes for a smaller iPhone. I liked the idea given that phones are creeping up to the size of tablets. The Times says the iPhone nano is bunk—at least for now. Among the key points:
• Apple is focused on the iPhone 5.
• There are no immediate plans for a smaller iPhone.
• A smaller phone wouldn’t be cheaper to make and could be harder to operate.
• And developers may have to rewrite apps and Apple wants to avoid that scenario.
That latter point is notable. Notice how the more dominant an ecosystem becomes the more important reverse compatibility becomes.
Also: Could an ‘iPhone nano’ work?
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes noted on Monday that he had his doubts about whether Apple could make an iPhone nano work. He said:
First off, I’m not convinced that this rumor is anything more than just that - an attention-seeking rumor. I’ve been hearing rumors about an ‘iPhone nano’ for some time now, and after the iPad, a device which is four times as big as the iPhone, there’s a certain poetry to the idea of a device half the size of the iPhone. But we need more than poetry to make this rumor work.
Apple is interested in using voice commands to better operate the phone. Voice control is one area where Android is strong—voice search, texting and navigation works well. Apple is also planning a free version of Mobile Me because consumers haven’t shown much interest in paying for it.

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5 Ways of Making Money with Facebook

Facebook has an audience that has surpassed 500 million recently, and have re-designed all rules of engagement with customers. In this articles we will briefly expose 5 ways of tapping into this market where people spend more than 700 billion minutes every month. Would you like to get a piece of that?

Make Money on Facebook by Developing an Application
All you need is a good idea and you might be our next internet entrepreneur. You don’t have to be fluent with any software languages like PHP or Javascript. You can find tons of programmers you can hire to do your dirty work. It’s true, you really could be the next big buzz! Farmville is an application that was introduced recently, and now has been downloaded over 110 million times.
Selling Products in The Facebook Marketplace
Facebook has a marketplace that is excellent for business. If you’ve grown tired of the ones that came before, like Craigslist and Ebay, then check out this virtual mall for marketing your products. It has everything from books to baby clothes and is well worth putting some of your own products on.
Facebook Ads
On Facebook, you’re provided with a self-serve system offering highly targeted advertising. You’ll find this available both for CPM basis, which is ‘cost per 1000′, and a CPC basis, which is cost per click. With such a huge audience and an unlimited ad inventory, it can also insert ads into highly specific demographics. Any advertising space on here is pure gold. Smart media buyers all buy their ads and sell their traffic using ad networks.
Become An Expert in Facebook Marketing
This new world called Facebook is a marketing tool way beyond many thousands of marketers out there. If you understand how Facebook works, then why not try offering your services to other agencies and companies, both large and small? Just like Google changed how search engines advertised, now Facebook is using social networking to dive ahead into the future. You can really help people out with your product, and make yourself some serious money at the same time. Doesn’t get any better than that.
Make Money With Market Research
Facebook gives you massive focus groups, just waiting to voice their opinions.Audiences are easily targeted and easily accessed on Facebook’s arena. Just the time it takes to complete surveys is reduced to just a fraction of other well known methods. If your bag is market research, then you need to give some careful consideration to the way social media can boost your business in a way that no other can. Get ready for the future of the industry of consumer opinions.

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