Internet

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has taken control of two bank accounts belonging to a company that exchanged US dollars for the 'Bitcoin' virtual currency. The department claims the accounts had not been properly registered with financial ... regulators. Bitcoin is not issued by any real-world financial institution. Instead, each unit of currency is represented by a unique piece of code generated by an algorithm. Whenever somebody makes a payment using Bitcoins, the details of the transaction are shared using a peer-to-peer network, similar to they way some users share music and video ... (view more)

Facebook has banned an application that allowed users take a one in six chance of destroying their account. However, critics say the social networking site hasn't established any clear rules about such apps. The application has the eye-catching name ... "Social Roulette." Inspired by the deadly pistol game Russian Roulette, it involves the player spinning a virtual revolver cylinder with one of the six chambers loaded -- in this case, with a Facebook logo rather than a bullet. App Deletes Facebook Account Info The resulting death isn't physical but virtual: if the odds are not in your favor, the ... (view more)

Facebook has a new solution for people who are having trouble accessing their accounts: if you sign up for the site's 'Trusted Contacts' feature, you can log in with a little help from your friends. The system is designed for people who've forgotten ... their password and is an alternative to existing security measures that involve answering questions and awaiting a confirmation email. Using the feature you can designate between three and five people from your Facebook friends list as Trusted Contacts. If and when you are unable to access your account and trigger the feature, Facebook will send a ... (view more)

Facebook has posted a staggering revenue increase for the first quarter of 2013. Helping the firm rake in the cash: the successful implementation of mobile applications and advertisements. According to reports, Facebook's total revenue jumped to ... almost $1.5 billion for the quarter ending March 31, 2013. That's an increase of almost 40 per cent from the same period last year, when revenue was just over $1 billion. Advertising Drives Revenue Growth The company says that its advertising revenue accounted for $1.25 billion of that total sum. This means the firm's ad work represents 85 per cent of ... (view more)

Twenty years ago this week the World Wide Web's technology became publicly available. To mark the event, the first-ever website has been recreated and republished. The web began at CERN, a research facility for particle physics in Switzerland. In ... recent years it has become well known for housing the Large Hadron Collider instrument used to hunt down the Higgs Boson, a previously undetected particle that could help explain how the universe works. Back in 1989 Tim Berners-Lee, one of the people working at CERN, came up with the idea of the web as a way to make it easier for researchers to share ... (view more)

Amazon plans to broadcast pilot episodes for 14 new television shows, with viewers deciding which programs deserve to become a full-length series. The pilots will air free-of-charge on Amazon.com in the United States. In the United Kingdom, viewers ... can watch the content on 'Lovefilm'. Although you'll need to register an account to see the shows, you won't need to have a paid subscription to Amazon Prime or Lovefilm to watch these episodes. Although Amazon will be asking for feedback, it isn't simply having a "winner takes all" vote to decide a winner. Instead, it will look at responses and ... (view more)

Twitter has announced it will run personalised advertisements based on what an individual user is writing about. It's an attractive proposition for advertisers but may come across as creepy to users of the social media service. Most Twitter ads are ... based on the people a user follows and the types of messages that users retweet (or share with other users). (Source; pcworld.com ) The new advertising model will go beyond that and incorporate technologies from two popular ad-funded web giants. Like Facebook, Twitter ads can now be targeted to people of a particular gender, living in a particular ... (view more)

Italian researchers have uncovered a thriving underground market where people peddle fake Twitter accounts. The goal: to promote business ventures. According to Andrea Stroppa and Carlo De Micheli, two security personnel working on the study, ... illegitimate businesses and rogue individuals are selling dubious Twitter accounts to pad corporate and entertainment pages. The study concluded that there are more than two dozen services currently plying this trade. Together, these services are responsible for more than 20 million fake Twitter followers that re-tweet information and perform other ... (view more)

Chances are you've never told your Facebook friends which brand of toilet cleaner you use. But if you buy a bottle at the grocery store, you might see an ad for it the next time you log in to Facebook. The social networking company has announced ... deals with four companies to supply data to make Facebook advertisements more relevant. This means that, for the first time ever, the ads you see on the site won't be based on your activity on the social networking site. The four companies collect data in a variety of ways. Two maintain a database of purchasing activities in retail stores. Another ... (view more)

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has agreed to pay Amazon $600 million over the next ten years. However, the CIA isn't purchasing books or DVDs -- instead, it's buying access to Amazon's massive, private data system. The deal is with Amazon's ... Web Services department, which already offers cloud computing to individuals and businesses. Cloud computing doesn't simply mean offering online storage, but also online data processing. The Amazon cloud service works on a pay-as-you-go basis. This makes it ideal for organizations that need data processed intermittently rather than all the time. ... (view more)