Does Your Life Need a Bail Out? Put the Net in Charge!

March 10th 2009

“It’s your right to arrange Chen Xiao’s life, and it’s my obligation to serve you…”. Chen Xiao has had a tough year. Blizzards covered her home town in China, her area was devastated by an earthquake.  Her best friends divorced and her clothing store failed. What’s an entrepreneur to do?  Rent your life to the […]

Wikileaks Cracks NATO Code: Finds Afghan Secrets

March 9th 2009

Wikileaks discovered that NATO’s communications briefs were all encrypted with the same easy-to-guess password: “progress.”  Even military-strength encryption is useless if the password can be guessed by anyone reading a campaign poster. One document, “NATO in Afghanistan: Master Narrative,” is a 30-page guide to the “story” NATO representatives are to tell, and what details should […]

US Cyber Defense is a Mess: British and French Fleets Infected by Computer Virus

March 8th 2009

Last week, the Telegraph reported that French fighter planes were grounded because they were unable to download mission data from ships infected with the Conficker virus. The same article notes that most of the British fleet was also infected. Microsoft has offered a bounty of $250,000 for the arrest of what appears to be an […]

Filmmaker to Get ‘Bionic’ Eyesocket Camera

March 7th 2009

Documentary filmmaker Rob Spence is planning to outfit his prosthetic eye with a tiny wireless camera. His “EyeBorg Project” is intended to raise awareness of surveillance society in general, and of Toronto specifically, which is infested by 12,000 such cameras. According to his press release: In order for the project to be successful the smallest, […]

New Tool Watches for Image and Logo Misuse: Protects Copyrights and Trademarks Online

March 6th 2009

Over the next few weeks UsefulArts.US will be featuring some exciting new tools you can use to protect your online intellectual property.  Anyone can describe the online risks to copyright and trademark holders, but if you read these posts you’ll find some exciting new ways to protect your assets, often with free services. Searching and […]

Jim Sokolove 2.0: PR & Web Signal New “Sokolove Law” Brand

March 5th 2009

Sokolove Law: Both Entrance and Exit In January the Law Office of James Sokolove turned the media spotlight on itself. It issued a press release that Mr. Sokolove was making media appearances on a local rock station and PBS. Then there was the long-format feature in Boston Magazine, with the tag line “They’ve also created […]

Google, Gambling, Gay XBOX & More Online Law “News”

March 4th 2009

Will Obama Break Google Up? Stop laughing. Christine Varney, Obama’s pick to head Justice’s anti-trust unit, describes Google as “quickly gathering market power in what I would call an online computing environment in the clouds”…“When all our enterprises move to computing in the clouds and there is a single firm that is offering a comprehensive […]

RIAA Update: The Death Star Goes Boom

March 3rd 2009

According to music business blog Hypebot, there are massive lay-offs at the RIAA. The place is going boom! “It is about 90-100+ people across the US and global offices – anti-piracy, coordinated IFPI/BPI etc – trust me it’s a bloodbath… (Major label heads) Hands, Morris are squeezing the ____ out of these guys after the […]

Important: FCC Signals Intent to Regulate Internet “in the public interest”

March 3rd 2009

Mark the date. This announcement is the start of an effort by the FCC to regulate both Internet operations and content just as the Commission does in broadcast channels.  After an earlier effort to regulate bloggers as lobbyists failed, this appears to set the stage for another attempt for regulation of Internet content. In a […]

Estimated Value of Top Blogs Surprisingly Resiliant

March 2nd 2009

Any way you read the data, the exercise of blog valuation done by 24/7 Wall St. casts a new light on changes in advertising, the involvement of founding owners, and changing tastes. Admittedly, these are estimates of value, which, absent an actual buyer, is at best informed conjecture. OK, its one blogger spouting off about the […]