Summer Break

I won't be blogging over summer break. E-Commerce Update will resume in August. Enjoy your summer. - Carolyn

Teaching About Web Includes Troublesome Parts

Two hot topics of concern for educators and parents are "concerns about how their children are acting online toward friends and rivals, and what impression their online profiles might create in the minds of college admissions officers or future employers." A group called Common Sense Media has put together lessons for students on online behavior. The classes are based on “ethical fault lines”: identity (how do you present yourself online?); privacy (the world can see everything you write); ownership (plagiarism, reproducing creative work); credibility (legitimate sources of information); and community (interacting with others)." See Teaching About Web Includes Troublesome Parts.

How Privacy Vanishes Online

How much information about you is floating around online? Social media encourages users to share information about themselves. The pool of personal information revealed in sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr can be assembled with data mining to form a "social signature" - a picture of that person's identity. See How Privacy Vanishes Online.

Adobe CS5 Released

Adobe released the CS5 versions of Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Flash, and other programs on Monday. If you have a spare 61 minutes, you can watch the launch event video here.

Getting Older Without Getting Old

Facebook has attracted over 400 million users. A recent NYT article suggests Facebook will stay popular for some time due in part to the network effect. As we studied in ECM 210, the value of an online network increases as new members join. The size of the Facebook membership attracts new products and services from third party developers, which benefits all members. See Getting Older Without Getting Old.

4 Wiseguys Indicted for Gobbling Up Choice Concert Tix

Another reason all the good seats are gone - Wiseguy Tickets. Charges against the California company allege that the company "controlled thousands of Internet and email addresses, telephone numbers, and credit card accounts to make it appear that thousands of individual consumers were buying seats." Wiseguy was able to defeat the Captcha technology that is supposed to require a human eye to solve it. They resold the tickets at a profit to other ticket resellers. See 4 Wiseguys Indicted for Gobbling Up Choice Concert Tix.

Malicious Software Infects Corporate Computers

It seems like this story, or a variation of this story, appears about once a week A computer security firm has discovered some mal-ware (malicious software) that has infected over 2,500 corporations around the world. As the NYT article explains, "The malicious program, or botnet, can commandeer the operating systems of both residential and corporate computing systems via the Internet. Such botnets are used by computer criminals for a range of illicit activities, including sending e-mail spam, and stealing digital documents and passwords from infected computers. In many cases they install so-called “keystroke loggers” to capture personal information." See Malicious Software Infects Corporate Computers. Then go update your security software!