Provided Courtesy Of:   Figuring out who was behind the hack of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia requires some digital forensic skills and an insight into the mindset of those who were trying to get at CRU's files at the time.

Analysis by the Guardian and digital forensics experts suggests that an outside hacker gained access to a server at the UEA which held backups of CRU emails and a collection of staff documents. It also suggests the access occurred over a period of days, if not weeks, and was carried out from a computer based on the east coast of north America.

The release of hacked emails and documents came just months after climate change sceptics had filed more than 50 freedom of information requests querying the CRU's refusal to release of raw data and program code during the summer.

Egged on by a group of sceptical bloggers, the requests almost all began with the words “I hereby make a EIR/FoI request in respect to any confidentiality agreements restricting transmission of CRUTEM data to non-academics involing the following countries.” Others sought “a copy of any digital version of the CRUTEM station data set that has been sent from CRU to Peter Webster and/or any other person at Georgia Tech”. All were refused under FoI exemptions because of commercial confidentiality.

Into that silence came the release of the archived “zip” file by someone with clear hacking skills: first they grabbed the files, then they broke into the RealClimate blog to upload the archive and prepare a draft post; then, when that was thwarted, they uploaded it to a Russian website, and posted links to it on climate sceptics' blogs using web servers located in S/> [...]

Fri Feb 19, 2010 00:00 am

In an attempt to give our readers some real world application of all this social media theory swirling about we will be occasionally speaking with some real people who do the real work. How about that? Today we look at social media and the sports world.

Regular readers of this blog know that I am a bit of a sports fan. I say a bit because I am no longer playing any fantasy leagues etc so I am not a sports fanatic. I am primarily a New York area sports fan but not the usual kind (Giants, Mets, Devils. I could care less about the NBA). People in that area are pretty passionate about their sports and that’s how I learned to be a fan.

Now times have changed considerably. It is difficult for the everyday fan to afford attending actual games (especially if a family is involved). As a result the connection to sports is changing and social media is creating a whole new channel for the fans to interact and be a part of the action that they may not get at the stadium or the ballpark.

Pat Coyle of Coyle Media has been involved in the social side of sports for quite a while now. Pat has worked as the Director of Marketing for the Indianapolis Colts and helped create MyColts.net, which is an active online community for the fans of the NFL franchise. I talked to Pat about this and other social media projects he has underway.

Frank: Since most people in the social media industry came from somewhere else what is your background?

Pat: I have always had an interest in ways technology impacts human communication. I am a Chicago native came out of a direct marketing and sales career to be the Director of marketing for the Colts. I left to start a company and returned to the Colts after five years to be the Director of Digital Business for four years. Coyle Media, my consultancy to the s/> [...]

Tue Jan 12, 2010 14:00 pm

Microsoft announced today that Bing is just now supporting query history in its Autosuggest feature. In other words, if you have your search history enabled, Bing will incorporate past queries you've made into the suggestions.

"You are in full control of your query history," the Bing Team stresses.  "We know your privacy is very important to you.  You can turn History on or off at any time or selectively remove any portion of your search history using the Manage History option.  You will see both of these choices every time you use Autosuggest."

"Many search tasks span multiple search sessions even days or weeks," Bing says. "In fact, 44% of non-navigational search sessions last longer than 1 week!  Perhaps you need to research the purchase of a new automobile.  You might use Bing to find a retail location and to further research online – over many days – to make the best decisions on your big ticket purchase.  With history support in Autosuggest, you can restart a previous search session by typing a few characters to see your previous queries and start researching right where you left off.  We know from our testing that this makes you more effective at your longer search tasks."

The suggestions that are based on your search history are listed in purple, to stand out from the other blue suggestions.

If you carry a Web-enabled phone and you like to eat, chances are it's happened to you. You're out. You're hungry. You want to check out a new restaurant nearby, or perhaps you're visiting another city. You pull out your phone to search for a restaurant. Even if you use a fancy, location-based app like Yelp or UrbanSpoon, you still want to see what's on the menu. So you click through to the restaurant's site, and... nothing. Turns out, the restaurant owner paid some kid who knew Flash to built a slick website for them five years ago that has no chance of loading on the BlackBerrys and iPhones of today.

Sponsor

EnterChompStack. Like other tools we've covered, ChompStack is a Web-based, WYSIWYG tool for building mobile websites, but one that was designed for restaurant owners specifically. Much like the desktop Web before it, the mobile Web continues to explode, but not every restaurateur has the resources to hire a developer to build them a mobile-friendly site.

Recognizing these realities, ChompStack CEO Steven Wei set out to build a product he could market to restaurant owners and take the heavy lifting out of building mobile Websites for an industry that can't afford to miss out on mobile opportunities.

From one simple back-end interface, ChompStack customers can manage menus, pricing information, promotional deals, locations an/> [...]

Mon Jul 19, 2010 22:00 pm