Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Monday, March 12, 2012

Online Retailers are Cutting Spam, and Here's Why [Spam]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5892401/online-retailers-are-cutting-spam-and-heres-why

Online Retailers are Cutting Spam, and Here's Why For years, we've all been used to inboxes bursting at the seams with promotional email. But increasingly disgruntled recipients are starting to make their voices heard, and as a result online retailers are beginning to cut the amount of junk mail they send.

A report in the Wall Street Journal suggests that the change of heart—which might currently be difficult for consumers to notice—could change our inboxes for good. According to the report, the amount of e-commerce spam sent out by the top 100 online retailers has shot up by 87 per cent since 2007, and some companies now manage to send out over 500 emails a year to each of their customers. But that's changing, reports the Wall Street Journal:

...there are signs of customer burnout. A study of its retail clients by email marketing firm Harte-Hanks found that since 2007, the rates at which recipients open retail emails and click on links have declined. In the first six months of 2007, consumers opened 19% of the retail emails they received and clicked through to the website 3.9% of the time. By the first half of 2011, those numbers shrank to 12.5% and 2.8%, respectively.

Some retailers are finding that sending fewer emails can pay off. Since cutting back its volume, Nicole Miller has seen the rate at which customers "unsubscribe"-or request to stop receiving emails-drop, and the percentage of recipients who open the emails has grown from 15% to 40%, according to Andrea Marron, director of digital strategy at the company. Meanwhile, the percentage of online sales that began with an email has grown to 17% from 10%.

Interestingly, unsubscribe rates have hardly changed since 2007, which means that on some level—even if we bitch and moan about them—we don't seem to mind being flooded with promos enough to actually do anything about them. [Wall Street Journal]

Steve Jobs Was Smacked Down by CBS CEO Over Apple TV [Apple]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5892405/steve-jobs-was-smacked-down-by-cbs-ceo-over-apple-tv

Steve Jobs Was Smacked Down by CBS CEO Over Apple TV Speaking at a conference in LA on Saturday, CBS CEO Leslie Moonves explained how Steve Jobs approached him with a pitch for an Apple subscription content service. Moonves, however, wasn't convinced, and he decided to turn Jobs away.

While many rumors point to the idea of Apple launching a subscription TV service before the end of this year, the journey hasn't been an easy one. During a meeting around a year ago, Moonves recalls:

"I told Steve, 'You know more than me about 99 percent of things but I know more about the television business.' "

Moonves went on to turn down Jobs' pitch, according to The Hollywood Reporter, arguing that the deal could disrupt CBS's existing revenue streams. The Reporter goes on to explains how Jobs, in characteristic fashion, "strongly disagreed with [the] assessment."

At the same conference, however, Moonves also mentioned that he was happy about the benefits that content deals with Netflix and Amazon bought the company. Bad luck, Apple. [The Hollywood Reporter]

How Secure Are NASA's Servers? [Nasa]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5892408/how-secure-are-nasas-servers

We expect—or at least hope—that large government agencies put a lot of effort into the security of computing. If anything you'd expect NASA to lead the pack, but a new report suggests that there are a few holes it could do with plugging—quickly.

A report by Motherboard explains that of NASA's annual $1.5 billion IT spend, about $58 million goes on security. But that doesn't stop it getting hacked.

In 2011, NASA was the victim of 47 individual advanced persistent threat (APT) attacks, 13 of which successfully compromised its computers. APT attacks are particularity sophisticated and as a result are usually carried out by well-funded organizations, and one of the hacks was successful enough to capture credentials for over 150 employees, including access codes to sensitive information.

Compared to some organizations, that's minor. But this is NASA; a paragon of technological advancement. So what gives?

Firstly, incomplete security. This is an organization with a lot of computers, and it's hard to keep track of what's going on. Motherboard claims that NASA reported 5,408 computer security incidents including the installation of malicious software and unauthorized access to its systems in 2010 and 2011. It also struggles to keep track of computers that are being thrown out, and managed to lose ten computers that hadn't been properly wiped from one center in 2010.

But the single biggest problem? Mobility. It's the rise of laptops and tablets among NASA employees that is making the task so difficult for their IT department. In recent years, NASA has seen plenty of lost portable devices. In March 2011, Motherboard reports, "an unencrypted NASA notebook computer was stolen and with it was lost the algorithms used to command and control the International Space Station." Whoops. Added to that, only 1 per cent of all of NASA's laptops are encrypted.

The problem is, NASA is a unique amalgam of researchers, academics and governmental employees. It's an odd melting pot, where people from different backgrounds aren't necessarily on the same page when it comes to security. Maybe it's time that changed. [Motherboard; Image: cogdogblog]

Switched On: The iPad's landscape orientation

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/03/11/switched-on-the-ipads-landscape-orientation/

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

The two major classes of tablet seeking to grab a share of the iPad's market have in many ways been driven by operating system advances. Windows 8 will bring the new Metro user interface and ARM support to allow what has historically been the more powerful PC class to scale down. Android 4.0 unifies the platform's tablet and smartphone operating systems, encouraging it to take better advantage of the larger screen capabilities and scale up.

Indeed, the full potential of the new iPad won't be known until the release of iOS 6 to fuel Apple's historically tight pairing of hardware and software; that other shoe will likely drop at its developer conference in June. Despite the lack of a new operating system or form factor, the third-generation iPad and its now price-reduced predecessor have set the stage for how Apple plans to defend against Android and Windows tablets.

Continue reading Switched On: The iPad's landscape orientation

Switched On: The iPad's landscape orientation originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 11 Mar 2012 22:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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IBM's Holey Optochip transmits 1Tbps of data, is named awesomely

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/03/12/ibms-holey-optochip-transmits-1tbps-of-data-is-named-awesomely/

Be honest: was there any doubt whatsoever that something called a "Holey Optochip" would be anything short of mind-blowing? No. None. The whiz-kids over at IBM have somehow managed to transmit a staggering 1Tbps of data over a new optical chip, with the fresh prototype showing promise for ultra-high interconnect bandwidth to power future supercomputer and data center applications. For those who'd rather not deal with esoteric descriptions, that's around 500 HD movies being transferred each second, and it's enough to transfer the entire U.S. Library of Congress web archive in just 60 minutes. Needless to say, it's light pulses taking charge here, and researchers are currently hunting for ways to make use of optical signals within standard low-cost, high-volume chip manufacturing techniques. Getting the feeling that your own personal supercomputer is just a year or two away? Hate to burst your bubble, but IBM's been touting similar achievements since at least 2008. Actually, scratch that -- where there's hope, there's Holey.

IBM's Holey Optochip transmits 1Tbps of data, is named awesomely originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 12 Mar 2012 00:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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