Monday, December 07, 2009
The hidden costs of identity theft
Debra Guenterberg doesn't have to go to a horror movie to get spooked. She says she's been living a nightmare for the past 13 years.
The Wisconsin woman says she's been stalked by two phantoms. Two men stole her name and her husband's Social Security number. They used the information to obtain credit cards, buy cars and three homes.
Like many horror movie villains, the bad guys keep coming back. Thirteen years after the men stole their names, the Guenterbergs are still being turned down for credit because of the damage done by the men, she says.
Friday, December 04, 2009
Nationwide balloon-hunt contest tests online networking
The DARPA Network Challenge calls on groups to pinpoint the locations of 10 red weather balloons scattered around the country -- with a $40,000 prize going to the first team to find them all. DARPA, which stands for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is the U.S. military's research arm.
This year's contest is designed to test the the way social networking, crowdsourcing or lesser-known Web-based techniques can help accomplish a large-scale, time-critical task.
Thursday, December 03, 2009
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
Racist Obama image shines light on Web searching
Google placed an ad near the image, apologizing for its offensive nature. But the company resisted calls to scrub the image from its database, saying its role as a neutral tool for searching the Web means having to live with the results, whether it likes them or not.
"We have a bias toward free expression," Google spokesman Scott Rubin told CNN. "That means that some ugly things will show up."
Tuesday, December 01, 2009
Activist's Web site, tweets put new face on homelessness
"I was sitting by the Chinese theater with my iguana, surrounded by Asian tourists, with my head down, thinking, 'How am I going to get out of this?' " said Horvath, whose nickname was the "Lizard Man of Hollywood Boulevard."
Last month, Horvath returned to Hollywood Boulevard, this time as a featured speaker at the 140 Characters Conference, a Twitter-inspired gathering attended by movers and shakers in social media. Horvath told the audience how he uses an arsenal of social networking sites -- Twitter, Facebook, Whrrl, MySpace, YouTube, Vimeo and Flickr -- to illuminate the plight of the nation's homeless.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Friday, November 27, 2009
An e-reader shortage for the holidays?
It seemed like this was going to be the holiday shopping season of the e-reader.
But that was before Barnes & Noble told customers it had run short on pre-orders of its new electronic book reader, the Nook. That device was poised to be a big holiday competitor to the more-established Amazon Kindle.
Barnes & Noble says customers who pre-order the Nook now won't get the device until the week of January 4 - after the holiday shopping season. A limited number of the devices will be available for sale in some of the "highest volume" Barnes & Noble stores.
In an e-mail, spokeswoman Mary Ellen Keating said early sales of the Nook beat the bookseller's expectations.