Google Street View in Google Maps is a good service to explore just about any location.

Most of Street View is focused on landmarks and roads that are accessible to Google with its Street View car. Now Google has officially introduced its Street View trike, which is aimed at photographing pedestrian only locations.

The Street View trike is a bicycle with three wheels, a mounted camera and a specially decorated unit with imaging and GPS technology.

Google is inviting users to give it suggestions of places they would like to see added to Street View that are off the beaten path. Locations can be nominated within six categories:

• Parks & Trails
• University Campuses
• Theme Parks & Zoos
• Pedestrian Malls (ie: outdoor shopping areas, boardwalks)
• Landmarks
• Sports Venues (ie: golf courses, racing tracks, stadium grounds)

Nominations will be open until October 28 and can be submitted here. Google will go through all the suggestions and allow the public to cast their final votes on a winner from each category for the Street view trike to visit.

Google sites ranked as the most visited Internet property globally with 854 million unique visitors in July, an increase of 18 percent during the past year.

Google usage is more common in certain global markets than others. In July, 29. 8 percent of total time spent online in Brazil was spent on Google sites, with India only slightly lower at 28.9 percent. The next highest global market was Ireland at 15.9 percent.

“It’s interesting that the dynamics of Google usage would be so similar in Brazil and India given that the two markets are on opposite sides of the world and quite different culturally from one another,” said Alex Banks, managing director of comScore Latin America. “As it turns out, there are interesting similarities between Brazil and India as emerging Internet markets.

Google’s prevalence in these markets can perhaps best be explained by the fact that the time at which these markets really began to develop and flourish was around the same time that Google was becoming a major player in the search landscape. As a result, Google became the dominant Internet brand in these markets and its success appears to have bled from search into other areas of the web like social networking.”

In Brazil, Google sites account for 88.4 percent of all searches conducted, and had a commanding share of time spent in social networking with Orkut (68.2%), maps with Google Maps (63.9%), multimedia with YouTube (82.9%). Google also had nearly half of all time spent in the blogs category with Blogger (47.6%) and email with Gmail (46.8%).

In India, Google sites accounted for 88.4 percent of all searches conducted, and had commanding share of time spent in social networking with Orkut (68.2%), Google Maps (63.9%), multimedia with YouTube (82.8%). It also had nearly half of the time spent in the blogs category with Blogger (47.6%) and email with Gmail (46.8%).

High-definition televisions (HDTVs) and home networks were two of the fastest-growing consumer technologies in 2008. Over the next five years, 39 million U.S. households will get their first high-definition set and more than 30 million homes will add network connectivity. Forty-four percent of U.S. households have a laptop, and the average American family owns two personal computers.

While media consumption among all Americans is split evenly between new and traditional media, on average, consumers younger than 40 spend almost 2 hours a week more with new media they do with traditional media.

Four in five U.S. households now have a mobile phone and families with older children have nearly three mobile phones per household, the most of any age segment. Eight percent of consumers own a smartphone.

“The Internet pervades all aspects of Americans’ lives, from how we shop and buy, how we communicate, how we entertain ourselves, and how we seek out information to how we manage our personal relationships,” said Charles S. Golvin, Forrester Research Principal Analyst.

“While today these digital activities are constrained to the home and the office, in the next several years consumers will increasingly rely on a ubiquitous Net that is instantaneously accessible on a wide variety of devices, from mobile phones to laptops to new form factors such as eReaders.”

Forty-three percent of U.S. companies surveyed had investigated an email-based leak of confidential information in the past year. Nearly a third of them, 31 percent, fired an employee for violation email policies in the same period.

Eighteen percent had investigated a data loss event via a blog or message board in the past 12 months. Seventeen percent disciplined an employee for violating blog or message board policies, while nearly nine percent fired an employee for such a violation.

Social networks are also creating problems for companies with 17 percent reporting some type of privacy breach and eight percent firing an employee for such an action.

As the global economic recession forced many US companies to downsize and reduce spending, the results of Proofpoint‘s survey show that those actions have often put them at greater risk for several reasons:

• 18 percent of US companies investigated a suspected leak or theft of confidential or proprietary information associated with an employee leaving the company (e.g., through voluntary or involuntary termination) in the past 12 months.
• 42 percent of respondents say that increasing numbers of layoffs at their organizations in the past 12 months have created an increased risk of data leakage. 47 percent of respondents report that layoffs of IT staff have negatively impacted their organization’s ability to protect confidential, proprietary and sensitive information in the past 12 months.
• 50 percent of respondents say that budget constraints have negatively impacted their organization’s ability to protect confidential, proprietary or sensitive information in the past 12 months.

The United States continues to be the leader in spam, relaying 15 percent of the world’s spam messages, according to a recent report from Sophos that examines the top 12 spamming countries.

The United Kingdom has disappeared from the “Dirty Dozen” for the first time in two years, coming in at 14^th overall, and sending 2.1 percent of the globe’s spam.

Brazil has seen the biggest increase in spam, jumping from fourth to second place since last quarter. The country is now the source of 10.2 percent of spam emails, compared to 4.3 percent during the same period last year.

The top 12 spam relaying countries for January to March 2009 are as follows:

1. United States 15.8%
2. Brazil 10.2%
3. China (incl Hong Kong) 7.7%
4. India 5.1%
5. Turkey 4.1%
6. South Korea 3.8%
6. Russia 3.8%
8. Spain 3.0%
9. Argentina 2.8%
10. Poland 2.6%
10. Colombia 2.6%
12. Italy 2.3%

“The U.S. has gone some way towards reducing levels of spam since last quarter, when the country relayed almost a fifth of all the spam messages,” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.

“What’s less encouraging is that Brazil has shot up the ranks. It’s no secret that the country has long been associated with cybercrime – in particular the spread of banking Trojans – however, a surge like this could also be a by-product of China’s slip down the charts. In any case, it’s certainly a trend to keep a close eye on.”

Spam accounts for 97 percent of all email received by business email servers, putting both a strain on resources and wasting a huge amount of time to lost productivity.

“Of course, the real cause of the spam problem is that not everyone will automatically delete these emails on sight,” continued Cluley.

“People out there must be buying products from spam, after all – the criminals behind the botnets would soon give up if they weren’t making any money out of it. Computer users should know by now that buying from spam is contributing to the problem, as well as putting their personal information into the hands of criminals – everyone should pledge to never ever buy via spam.”

]]> http://www.money007.com/2009/06/top-12-spam-countries/feed/ 0 http://www.money007.com/2009/05/microsoft-set-to-launch-new-search-service-bing/ http://www.money007.com/2009/05/microsoft-set-to-launch-new-search-service-bing/#comments Fri, 29 May 2009 19:26:48 +0000 Mike Sachoff http://www.money007.com/?p=106

Microsoft has previewed its new search engine called Bing, formerly known as Kumo and is set to launch it on Wednesday June 3.

Microsoft calls Bing a “Decision Engine” that initially will focus on four key vertical areas: making a purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition and finding a local business.

Microsoft says it developed Bing as a tool to help people more easily navigate through the “information overload” that has come to characterize many of today’s search experiences.

A comScore study focused on search engines found that as many as 30 percent of searches are abandoned without a satisfactory result. The study also found that about two-thirds of the remaining searches required a refinement or requery on the search results page.

“Today, search engines do a decent job of helping people navigate the Web and find information, but they don’t do a very good job of enabling people to use the information they find,” said Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO.

“When we set out to build Bing, we grounded ourselves in a deep understanding of how people really want to use the Web. Bing is an important first step forward in our long-term effort to deliver innovations in search that enable people to find information quickly and use the information they’ve found to accomplish tasks and make smart decisions.”

Online retail sales in the U.S. may have reached the bottom for 2009, but a return to double-digit growth of previous years is unlikely with the current economy, according to comScore.

In a Webinar about the online economy in the first quarter of this year, comScore compared zero growth with a 3 percent drop in the holiday fourth quarter.

“Although online retail spending growth was flat in the first quarter, this does represent a slight improvement over the disappointing fourth quarter,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni.

“These results would appear to indicate that the economy is finally exhibiting some signs of stability, and with consumer confidence beginning to improve, I’m optimistic that the online channel is poised for a return to positive growth in the second half of 2009.”

Concerns over unemployment, consumers continuing to save and slightly higher gas prices are still slowing online retail sales, which continue to do better than traditional retail stores.

Understandably, job security was the main economic concern named by respondents from all income levels, with mid-to low-income earners equally worried about prices.

Still, flat online retail sales performed better than an 8 percent decrease in first quarter retail sales.

“Clearly, ecommerce is picking up market share,” Fulgoni said. “If (retailers) can focus on ecommerce, that’s where the dollars seem to be shifting in retail.”

Sears Holdings has announced the launch of social networking sites MySears and MyKmart.

MySears and MyKmart allow users to share their insights, experiences and product reviews by creating a dialogue between the retailers and their customers through discussion forums, blog entries, ratings, reviews, polls and surveys.

Users can create a profile, upload photos, share experiences and connect with others. Users help Sears and Kmart as well as fellow customers by writing product reviews, participating in discussions and contributing ideas.

An “Ideas” feature allows users to contribute recommendations, which are then commented on by other members and considered for implementation by Sears Holdings’ management. Nearly all content on MySears and MyKmart will be written by customers.

“The MySears and MyKmart social networking communities offer customers a highly-versatile venue to connect with other like-minded individuals and get informed advice on their purchases,” said Rob Harles, vice president, Community, Sears Holdings.

“In addition, it gives them the platform to have their voices heard and help us make vital improvements to our stores and services.”

The volume of conversations about the epidemic is already nearly ten times those surrounding the salmonella and peanut butter scares from earlier this winter.

The increased conversations around swine flu on Twitter, where swine flu found its way into nearly 2 percent of all tweets, are indicative of the spike in conversations around the Web.

As updates emerge hourly (the swine flu Wikipedia page was updated 60 times between 10am and 11am) response to the spread of the virus, the Centers For Disease control acted quickly, updating their homepage and creating a special section solely for updates and information on swine flu that includes key facts, related items and the ability to share/post the page to social bookmarking and social networking sites.

Buzz activity about the CDC mirrors closely the buzz surrounding both health scares.

The growth was fueled by banks’ aggressive customer acquisition strategies and heightened financial interest among online banking customers wanting to keep a closer eye on their personal finances.

After several years of particularly strong growth in the use of online banking at the top 10 banks, the second half of 2007 showed the first signs of softness as sequential quarterly growth rates fell below 1 percent, but then recovered somewhat in 2008 as banks became more aggressive in their online banking customer acquisition efforts.

When asked about their satisfaction with their financial institutions, the percentage of respondents indicating they were highly satisfied with their banks (down 1%) and credit card issuers (down 3%) declined marginally compared to 2008 and were at least as high as the levels seen in 2007. The decline was more among brokerage firms, which saw their highly satisfied customers decline from 70 percent of respondents in 2008 to 58 percent in 2009.

“Given the performance of the financial markets in the past year, it’s not surprising that brokerage customers with declining balances would not be as satisfied as last year,” said Marc Trudeau, comScore senior director.

“It’s interesting that a negative halo effect was not seen with respect to banks and credit card issuers, perhaps because of the reliability of services and the outreach they provided during a time of financial strain for many customers.”

More than 60 percent of online banking customers expressed interest in free identity theft services, while free credit score monitoring appealed to 52 percent. Around 37 percent of respondents showed a strong interest in online personal financial management tools, with half indicating they were willing to pay a modest monthly fee for the services.

“That customers are asking for more services to help them manage their personal finances during these economically-challenging times is a positive sign for banks,” added Trudeau.

“It’s clear that most customers are paying close attention to their personal finances, and, consequently, for the banks that step up and provide customers with the tools they’re requesting, it’s an opportunity to both cultivate and solidify customer relationships and to potentially drive incremental revenue as well.”