Trimming your Search Engine Listings

It happens to everyone at some point. You feel you're coming down with something; there's a rash somewhere; or you get strange stabs of pain; whatever it is, you first instinct is usually to fire Google up to see what kind of information you can gather about your symptoms. So you type in a few short words trying to sum up your symptoms into a search query and you hit Enter. A fraction of a second later, you're looking at the first dozen or so search engine listings that Google has come up with. The only problem is, that you are painfully aware of how after the first dozen, there are literally hundreds of thousands of other results that you'll never be able to get to. While Google is quite good at making sure that the first few search results are usually relevant, often, for searches involving obscure material, the first page may not cut it. And that's especially so if you have the misfortune of having your search query call up content farm material. For health-related advice, you usually get simplistic 500-word articles that tell you that you probably need more vitamins C. How do you get past all the garbage that comes up, and get to the ones that matter?

Google may be very good with common searches. With obscure ones, it usually has a hard time coming up a totally meaningful set of search engine listings. Meaningful search results aren't just about an algorithm that can tell what makes sense, apart from what doesn't. They also happen to be about getting around the efforts of thousands of talented experts who work to game the algorithm. They call it search engine optimization - a way to not let the search engine algorithm do the best job it can. Being able to get meaningful search engine listings usually comes down to who has the upper hand of two parties who battle it out - the SEO experts or the search engine programmers. Both keep tweaking their technique till the cows come home trying to achieve whatever it is they wish.

Google estimates that the Internet is now 1 trillion web pages (not websites) large. There are all these creators of these webpages trying to game one or two of the top search engines. And the search engines need to stay on top of what all those millions of SEO experts are doing to try to bring some order into it all.

To succeed where Google and Bing seem to have failed somewhat, a new search engine called Blekko is trying a new tack. Even if there are 1 trillion pages on the web, experts estimate that at best, there could be a couple of hundred million webpages that are actually visited by people. The rest just sit there hoping to fool people into visiting them once or twice. The idea that Blekko has is that they could get volunteers to manually look through the Internet and identify websites that could be useful to people. And then, when people search on Blekko, they'll only see results from those pages. They won't see anything from the whole Internet. It'll kind of be a Huffington Post way to search. It could work.

How to Block Websites that are Unwholesome, on Gaming Consoles and Phones

What is it that really takes entertainment technology forward - VCRs, DVDs, cable, 3D, Internet - what is the kind of consumer demand that really fuels the need for change and leaps forward in technological innovation? No, it isn't the soaring human spirit that does it. It's porn, pure and simple. If it weren't for powerful demand for accessible porn, none of these entertainment media devices would ever have made it to the mainstream, media experts claim. As wonderful as all of that might be for spinoff benefits, as a parent, you certainly do experience a degree of anxiety over keeping your child away from porn. It happens to be more difficult today than ever before now that it's accessible on Internet connected gaming consoles and any smartphone. You’ve learned how to block websites like that with child monitoring software on the computer. What do you do with all these new devices that allow access? How to block websites on those?

While completely blocking websites on cell phones and gaming consoles can be extremely tricky, you certainly can easily make a few changes to make sure that your child doesn't accidentally stumble on something even if he isn't actually looking for it.

You don't even need a smartphone to access the Internet - any underachieving feature phone will allow a reasonable amount of Internet access. The problem with phones of course is that they are used outside of the home. It can be very difficult to monitor what goes on on a phone's Internet browser. Now certainly, your child isn’t going to accept a phone that doesn't access the Internet. That would brand him a loser in his school. What you could do instead is to apply with the carrier, Verizon, AT&T or anyone else, to activate content filtering on your child’s phone. This only works for feature phones though and not for smart phones. On smart phones, you'll have to get a browser like the K9 browser that allows parental restrictions. And in case your child tries to install another browser, you have to turn that facility off in the Restrictions menu.

On both the Sony PlayStation 3 and the Wii, you can just switch the browser off altogether.  You don’t have to worry about how that could cripple the machines in their gaming abilities. The browsers are just incidental add-ons. If you don't want to do that, on the PlayStation 3, you get to subscribe to Trend Micro's parental blocking service that costs $20 a year.

Is Amazon feeling Heat from the Competition? The Kindle is finally open to Free Online Library Books

For years, if you wanted to read free online library books, you had to choose something other than a Kindle - your laptop, your smartphone, a Nook, or the Sony reader. Librarians around the country now though, will no longer have to use the well-rehearsed consolation tone in which they inform disappointed library members that the Kindle never was open to library books. In a statement that reverses Amazon’s express policy in the matter, the company has said that from now on, all free online library books are going to run on the Kindle. That would include the 10,000 or more public libraries there are in the country.

The Kindle, a product so famous that for the most part has come to be synonymous for the e-book reader device itself, has baffled fans all over the country, forever, with its library book ban. Everyone's always been trying to find some kind of hack that will allow them to use library books on their Kindle. Perhaps what changed Amazon's mind was how tech writers have been writing the Kindle's obituary ever since the iPad 2 came out.

Of course, this doesn't crumble all the barriers there are to accessing free e-books. Lots of publishers are extremely uncomfortable having their books becoming borrowable. They try to impose the strictest of conditions on libraries - the way they do when they say that an e-book sold to a library expires in one year. But that sounds positively generous compared to what some other publishers feel. Simon & Schuster and Macmillan have completely boycotted public libraries altogether.

Perhaps it was inevitable that Amazon opened themselves up to free online library books. They were beginning to lose market share to the Barnes & Noble’s Nook. That device has color, it has an open platform and it has a technology partnership with e-book software giant Adobe.

Amazon is designed has quite a bit of flexibility and thoughtfulness into its new Kindle library book program. To begin with, the Kindle’s WhisperSync technology that allows you to highlight passages and write annotations in the margins, works on these library books too. You can be safe in the knowledge that you won't be pulled up for vandalism. When you check the book out later at any time in the future, you'll find that Kindle has kept track of your annotations for you. Should you ever decide to buy that same book, Kindle will remember your annotations then too.

Keeping you Good Name in a Time of Websites that find Information about People

We may not intentionally place personal details about ourselves on the Internet for strangers to find; but place them there, we do - descriptive accounts of our dates, anecdotes about our job interviews, our opinions about movies and vacation spots, our troubles with our spouses - we put them all on Facebook and ask all our "friends" what they think; and we invite them to share their lives with us in similar fashion. There are all kinds of people out there whose job it is to find information about people - businesses that wish to employ people, marketers who wish to do a bit of research on the cheap, potential romantic partners, potential stalkers - social networking and everything else we do to to share our lives on the Internet present a rich field of information to anyone with an agenda. What are you supposed to do?

To begin with, how do you find out what information about you is available online? When someone out there tries find information about people like you, what is the aggregate of all that they can see about you on the Internet? That's where a website like Spokeo comes in. Key in your name, and and right away, the search engine calls up all the estimates it can find of where you live, who you are, all the pictures it can possibly find about you, your address and everything else. You can get all of this for free at many of these websites; sometimes, you are asked for a donation. Some of these search functions even make it possible for you to find out information about a person's political affiliations, their vacation preferences and everything else. It goes through all the Facebook comments that public or blog posts to do with you. Companies can easily use this kind of information to deny person a job, insurance coverage or a loan.

A lot of what people find in wiki eaks is usually embarrassing stuff that one world leader has had the misfortune of being on record saying about another. Come to think of it, that's the kind of information that these people-finder services dredge for. And they can be very successful. One of the first places you go to to clear up your good name would be all the online dating sites that you no longer use that have a great deal of personal information that you at one time must have volunteered. Some of these places can have outdated policies on privacy and can easily have leaked stuff about you.

To reclaim your life, should probably start out by deleting all revealing information about you on Facebook. Make sure your privacy settings make your details available only to your closest friends and make sure that you deactivate any unused accounts at any social networking site that you are a member of. If there's stuff about you on someone else's website or social networking account, you have no choice but to ask them. Sometimes, you have to speak to the people-finding websites to have your details removed.

To find information about people on the Internet isn't any big deal anymore. Perhaps prevention is the only good way to deal with this problem. Make sure that you aren't ever careless about what you type in on your computer keyboard.

Spy Tools for the Smartphone to Help Suspicious Romantic Partners

Technologies certainly makes snooping easier. Not long ago, an American company got into trouble and was all over the news for how it placed concealed cameras in all of its toilet stalls to try to check if employees did drugs. Businesses certainly take a close look at every website you visit while you're at a work terminal; that's a given. Now that everyone has a little computer in their pockets that they call a smartphone, jealous romantic partners have it particularly easy finding a way to snoop on one another. Spy tools aren't really today's news. They've been around for a while, far longer than high-tech smartphones, certainly, and people have become used to them - eavesdropping devices and so on. But every once in a while, a new product comes along that takes a situation people know and expect, and that moves it up to a whole new level. That's what the ePhone Tracker, a smartphone app from Retina Software, does.

Of course, the moment you hear of what the ePhone Tracker can do, you're going to be outraged for certain. This app is something you install on a phone that you wish to snoop on. In fact, it wouldn't be far-fetched to call this, actual spyware - spyware installed by a trusted person. The function it performs is pretty straightforward - once the app is installed on the phone of the person (that one is close enough to presumably that one has access to their phone) it keeps track of every phone call and text message on the phone and sends detailed transcriptions through e-mail to anyone the installer chooses. Spy tools like this would be no use of course if the owner of the phone could just take a look at their list of apps and find it. The app however, installs in some kind of stealth mode. The owner of the phone will have no idea that it is there, keeping an eye out for everything they say - to rat on them. The phone's owner may feel quite safe in deleting the phone's entire history; simple track-covering actions of this kind can make no difference to the ePhone Tracker, however. It has a copy of the phone's history all by itself. And oh, as some wife stalkers will undoubtedly be pleased to know, the app records every move the owner of the phone makes - through GPS - and sends that to the snooper as well.

Spy tools such as these could turn a person's phone into a grand peep-hole into their lives. There is practically nothing they do with or without their phone that they can keep a secret from whoever chooses to spy on them. Contact lists, e-mails - everything becomes an open book. Retina software believes that they aren't doing something to empower stalker. They say that statistics tell us that when people believe that they are being cheated on, usually, the facts bear their suspicions out. They just feel that their spy tools are a kind of social service. A social service that costs $50 for a year's subscription. The product apparently has robust user interest. It doesn't speak well for society that it does, does it?

A New Virus That Masquerades As Mackintosh Antivirus Software

A new malware attack for computers connected to the Internet isn't really news. There is one every minute. But only when it's for Windows computers is it not news – Windows computers have famously had nearly half a million pieces of malware designed for them. When someone designs malware especially for Apple computers, it certainly is news. The Mac has tried to push as its selling point it's low profile to malware designers. Apple has always said that the company, with its 12% market share, just doesn't present as interesting a target to malware designers. Apparently, someone just thought that designing stuff to take the Mac down could win him a bit of attention. The malware in question is especially remarkable for the fact that it masquerades as a version of the MacDefender Macintosh antivirus software. Mac users who try to download the popular MacDefender Macintosh antivirus software end up often with the pirate version that brings up a load of viruses with it.

So what exactly do people do wrong to actually become infected? Apparently, Mac users have mostly been targeted by the malware through the course of a search through Google Images. The malware apparently just downloads itself as you browse through images. You also need to be using Safari. As you go about the Internet, minding your own business, the Safari browser suddenly displays a message that your computer has been infected. It offers the rogue MacDefender macintosh antivirus software as the remedy for it. Macintosh users, who aren't really used to the deviousness that malware makers use to get past their defenses (Windows users would never fall for that one), readily believe in what they're being told.

The reason the creators of this virus have chosen to masquerade as the popular Macintosh antivirus software is probably that the Safari browser is by default set to automatically install trusted software. Since MacDefender is a trusted software company, it just gets right past the gate. The good part is, that this virus, clever as it is, isn't really that malicious. It just keeps asking you for payment and for your credit card number. To remove it is pretty simple.

To stop the program from running, you probably want to go to the Activity Monitor and disable everything that's named MacDefender. Search Launch Agents and Launch Daemons for any mention of MacDefender; look at your Library and StartUp items as well. Once you're done, you can then drag the MacDefender program from the Applications folder to the Trash. You can also search for MacDefender with Spotlight and delete everything you find. If you don't have the virus yet, make sure that you make it difficult for the virus to enter your computer in the first place. You need to open Safari, go to Preferences and under the General tab, take the checkmark out of the "Open 'safe' files after downloading." Box.

When a Google People Search Turns Up Unpleasant Information

Back in March, Google caused quite an uproar altering its algorithm in a major way to make sure that content farms and other low-quality websites don't make it to the top of your search results. They even tried to put control into the hands of the searching public by giving them the power to block results from specific websites when they searched. While all that is just excellent, what does Google do to put power into the hands of the consumer when it comes to search results about himself? If you were to perform a Google people search on yourself and find upsetting information, how come you can't do anything about it? Unless you can prove to Google that there's something illegal or unethical about how that information comes to present something about yourself, there is very little that you can get Google to do.

If you are unhappy in any way about what your own name turns up, if you feel that the results don't represent you accurately, there is very little that you can do, usually, short of setting up a few websites about yourself that will bring the right kind of information to the top. There are business people out there who have endless trouble with this kind of thing – Google destroying any chances they have at success. They may, for instance, have had an old consumer file a lawsuit against them 10 years ago. Since that happens to be quite an interesting morsel of information, anytime Google receives a search about them, that lawsuit might turn right up. Even if it isn't really relevant. The trick lies in trying to find out what you can do about it.

When something on a Google people search is unflattering or really unfair and inconvenient, you could try to contact the webmaster of the website that has the information up. While this can work for the individual webmaster, if anything about you appears on a large and popular website, you could have quite a time convincing the webmasters to even talk to you. Should you succeed though, you would need to do a thorough job to the remove the URL from Google's index.

If you don't really succeed in convincing the webmaster to do this nice thing for you, which, if you think about it, is the likely scenario, Google asks you to do something rather unusual. You need to open a couple of blogs or websites about yourself so that Google people search finds the best information about you in a place that you designed yourself. The other offending websites will be pushed rather low in the top 10.

If nothing seems to work, a drastic step could work - you could need to change your name so that your name is no longer associated with things that Google has information on you about.

Take Care With Your Account Info

The Internet has opened the world up for many people. You can now find more information than you could possibly manage, and many people have found employment and spouses through online activities. Old friends are reconnecting, and missing people can be found. Any advice you need on anything is out there as long as you know how to search it out. On the other hand, there is a darker side to the Internet. It has opened up a whole new world for thieves, con artists, and swindlers. This is why no matter how much or how little you do online, you have to guard your account info.

You wouldn't think to share things with a stranger on the street that you may leave open to the public online. Are your social network pages open? Do you really want strangers to know when you shower or that your home will be empty because you are going on vacation? One step in keeping your account info safe is to keep a tight seal on social networking pages. Think about the security questions you answer to secure your bank account. These things often include your mom's maiden name, the name of your first pet and other personal tidbits. If you leave your Facebook open to the public, thieves can get most of this right from your page. Your account info is at risk.

Along the same lines, your account info is protected by those questions, so change the questions. You often have the option of writing your own questions or picking from a long list. Choose questions that are not commonly used and for goodness sake, make up your answers. You don't have to answer these truthfully as long as you can remember what you put for your answer. Designate a notebook to keep in your home with all of your passwords and answers to your questions. If you answer the questions with wrong responses, no one can use such things to access your account info, but you can look up what you put down if you get locked out.

Passwords are still essential online to protect your account info for email, banking, Paypal, and your social network pages. Don't make the mistake of using passwords that are easy to remember, refer to members of your family or your hobbies, and certainly don't use the same password twice. You have to use words that mean nothing to you personally, and you have to put random numbers in your passwords. This requires you to keep notes on all passwords, but your financial security is at stake. Random, impersonal passwords with numbers and characters (if possible) go a long way to guard your account info.

Lastly, you can protect your account info by being very careful about links you click on. If your friend posts a video on your news feed on Facebook, and you are pretty sure they would never do such a thing, don't click. If you get an email asking you to sign into your bank account or Paypal account, don't do it. Call the company on the phone about the issue mentioned, or at the very least open up a new browser window and type in the address you know for the homepages of the service or business. Never click the link or your account info will be compromised. Con artists and scammers pray on the optimistic and the dreamer – so learn to be a bit pessimistic online, and remember that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

The Google Search Tool goes Social

It was about more than a year ago that Google first began to try to acknowledge the wealth of information there was on the social networks in its search results. When you used the Google search tool to search for anything, your results page would show you links from people on Facebook that you knew and you would see results from other social networks like Twitter as well. But that was a year ago. Today, Google is taking the biggest step it has ever taken in trying to make its search more social.

The Google search tool, to most people, is their window to the web. For the most part, they know where they go on the web only because of the options Google presents to them. But still, people are beginning to accept that social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter can have some pretty important ideas for them too. For things like ideas on what books to read, for where to go for the holidays, or where to buy stuff cheaper, people find Facebook and Twitter to be far more rewarding than a simple web search. Asking their social networking friends for recommendations, they'll have their questions interpreted far better than a search engine ever could, trying to pick relevant information out of the Internet.

Starting now, your standard Google search is going to include information of the kind you would find on a social network. Actually, Google's search results have done some kind of social networking search ever since the year 2009. Back then, you could create a Google profile for yourself, and connect it to your Twitter account or your LinkedIn account. That way, when you tried to search while logged in into Google, the bottom of the search results page would show any kind of results from your social networking friends as well. The problem was that not that many people went to the trouble of creating a Google profile and searching from within their accounts. And anyway, no one ever found it all that useful. If you wanted to visit the Bahamas, what were the chances that someone you knew on Twitter or LinkedIn had been there?

Now, search for anything and the Google search tool will give you posts that everyone you know on the web on nearly every social network has posted. And it'll be a right at the top of your search results, and not just a footnote. You'll also see if there is a friend you have on a social network who happens to have posted a link that's relevant. It doesn't have to be material that they've written. If they like a link that's relevant, you'll hear about it. Think about it - if there is an article on a subject that you are searching for that a friend of yours has approved of, wouldn't you be more likely to read it? In fact, that's what the Huffington Post does.

There's just one little problem to all of this. The new social networking results that Google intends to show you will only be presented to you if it's in the public domain. Since most Facebook posts are private, Google will have no access to those.

Rethinking Internet Security at a Time when Hackers think Nothing of Hacking into YouTube

How do you know that surfing the Internet is getting more risky by the day? You know, when the website of Matt Cutts, search engine guru, and Google genius, has a warning attached to it on Google that it may have been compromised. This happened a few days ago, as people searching for the Google head's website found out. It's happening to thousands of websites that haven't secured themselves properly; hackers and criminals take control of these websites and try to attack anyone who visits then. Google hates to be directing its searchers to websites that may harm them. And so, these days, you see a new kind of internet warning on certain websites. It says “this site may be compromised”; and it's a warning that means that Google believes that some intruder may have taken control of the website. And this is on top of the warning that Google gives you when it is completely positive that there is a website that is distributing viruses.

You would be surprised at how far criminals can go to make an attack possible. They will for instance, design a website and maintain it for months until antivirus Internet security packages and search engines around the world begin to recognize that website is legitimate. After maintaining that website for many months and getting a clean chit from the Internet security packages and the search engines, one fine day (usually a Sunday when there are no tech staff at work who can fix anyone's computers or recognize an attack), they will put lots of viruses on the website. The website then will only stay up for that one day and try to infect whoever comes by on that day. The criminal will then take that website down and start with an all-new website.

So how far have these criminals succeeded in infecting websites and commandeering them? So far, they've been very successful. In fact, 75% of all phishing attacks on the Internet come from legitimate websites that have been taken over. They just look for websites that seem to have poor defenses. They know that on reputed websites, people feel safe enough to use the same login name and password as they do for their banks and credit cards. They know that once they get a few login credentials from a reputed website, they'll have at least one or two that will open bank and Facebook accounts. And once they get on Facebook, they'll tap all of a person's friends and try to get some financial information out of them. Websites like YouTube and Bebo are under particular attack.On Bebo for instance, not long ago, users came up against a very well-done animated page that looked completely official. It directed them to enter their financial details in a form it provided.

Anti Virus Protection that your Internet Provider takes Care Of

So far, getting anti virus protection has always been something that's been left to you, the private citizen trying to protect his interests with a product chosen from among dozens on the market. But now, there's a new trend that appears to be starting up - with at least one player to begin with. Comcast, the cable TV and Internet service provider is starting to roll out nationally, a service that will monitor your connection for you for any activity that matches the profile of what botnets do. A botnet is a kind of malware that is placed on hundreds of computers connected to the Internet. They are controlled by one entity at a remote location that bids them to do all kinds of undesirable things - like sending spam mails abroad.

Should this worry you? Since regular antivirus protection keeps an eye on your computer by completely keeping your hard drive under its control, does this mean that you're going to have Comcast snooping into your hard drive? Not exactly. And even if the company tried, it couldn't get away with it. This plan is different. Botnets are was most dangerous threats on the Internet today. It can be very difficult for an individual to catch a single bot on a single computer. Because they are designed to kind of change form rapidly so as to evade detection by regular anti virus protection. They're not exactly viruses. Viruses are supposed to just attack your computer, bring on a certain kind of damage to your computer and to propagate. Botnets aren't designed to do any one thing. An infection just places one invisibly on your computer, and it keeps in touch over the Internet with the designer who made it. The designer can manipulate to do his bidding. It's pretty science-fiction like stuff.

At first, Internet service providers like Comcast tried to battle the problem by giving their subscribers free antivirus. But regular anti virus protection didn't really succeed in tackling the problem, so frequently do bots change to evade detection. So, now they want to try to protect you - on the network level. When the Comcast central server sees that there is a certain kind of behavior coming in from all kinds of customer computers, it'll be able to spot a pattern and raise an alarm. There are other things it can do too. If a botnet tries to take over a customer's computer to be able to turn it into a spam-sending machine, the server will be able to notice that there is an unusual amount of e-mail activity there. And it will be able to shut it down.

So what will Comcast do once it finds out that your computer is infected by a bot? They'll charge you $100 to clean your system up.