Digital Zone 210: The New Cap King

Posted by Patrick Wiscombe on June 1, 2010 under Tech Podcasts | Be the First to Comment

In this edition of the Digital Zone, we talked about:

Facebook reined in
Google releases the top 1000 websites
Apple surpasses Microsoft’s market cap
Walmart selling iPhone 3GS for $97
A Foxconn employee jumps to his death
Microsoft’s ‘Tag’
Scammers catch their own virus

According to a Pew Internet & American Life Project, the study found that young people are most likely to limit their personal information online — and the least likely to trust free online services ranging from Facebook to LinkedIn and MySpace. The study shows that this generation, accused of sharing too much information online, is actually leading the pack in online privacy. Social networkers ages 18 to 29 were the most likely to change the privacy settings on their profiles to limit what they share with others online. The percentage who did so was 71 percent, compared with just 55 percent of the 50- to 64-year-old bracket. Meanwhile, about two-thirds of all social networkers who were surveyed said they’ve tightened security settings. About half of young people in that 18-29 bracket have deleted comments that others have made on their profile, compared with just 29 percent of those ages 30 to 49 and 26 percent of 50- to 64-year-olds. The numbers were similar when it came to social networkers who removed their names from photos that were tagged to identify them. When asked how much they can trust social networking sites, 28 percent of the youngest adults surveyed said “never.”

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Google has released a list of the top 1000 websites in the world, raking the Facebook social networking site as the leading site based on the number of unique users. According to Google’s AdPlanner stats, Facebook scores more than 540 million unique visitors per month. Facebook not only has the most unique visitors in Google’s stats, but also the most page views per month, a whopping 570 billion views, ahead of other properties like Craigslist (#49) with 14 billion views. The AdPlanner list does not contain any figures for most of Google’s own properties, like YouTube, Gmail, News, or Search, but gives an interesting insight into which top Websites do not serve advertising. Wikipedia (#4) and Mozilla (#10) are the only two Websites in Google’s top 10 not to display advertising. A noteworthy entry on the 18th spot in the AdPlanner rankings is Twitter (#18), with 98 million unique visitors per month, which doesn’t serve ads. Destinations portals such as Yahoo.com (#2), MSN.com (#5), Baidu (#8), Sina.com.cn (#11) and 163.com (#15) are also high on the list, probably due to the fact that many people use these sites as their home page. Search engines also occupy several top places in the AdPlanner list (excluding Google’s own Search). Live.com (#2) has over 370 million uniques per month, Bing.com (#13) with 110 million, and Ask.com (#20) with 88 million.
Blogging is also high on Google’s list, with Blogspot (Blogger) situated in the 7th place with 230 million uniques, and WordPress.com in the 12th spot with 120 million uniques. Several news sources made it into the top 100 as well: Cnet.com ranks as #35, BBC.co.uk on #43, CNN.com at #64, and NYTimes.com on #83. Other entries worth noting among Google’s top 1000 websites are Microsoft.com (#6), Adobe.com (#14), Amazon.com (#22), eBay.com (#24), Apple.com (#27) and Hotmail.com (#30).

Apple surpassed Microsoft last week, in terms of market value, and now trails only Exxon Mobil and PetroChina in market capitalization. Apple’s market capitalization at the close of trading on Wall Street last Thursday was 230.53 billion dollars compared with 227.86 billion dollars for Microsoft. Apple’s annual net profit, however, continues to trail that of Microsoft — 5.7 billion dollars compared with 14.6 billion dollars last year.

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Wal-Mart is offering the iPhone 3GS for $97 price for the 16GB and Apple has removed the “select” button from the iPhone 3G in the Apple Store.

A 10th employee from Foxconn, the maker of the iPhone, jumped to his death last week just hours after the company’s chairman promised to make life better for employees. Apple and other clients have said they are investigating working conditions at Foxconn, which has some 420,000 employees. Workers live inside the factory complex in round-the-clock shifts. The company is training about 100 mental health counselors and installing 1.5 million square meters of netting.

Microsoft’s mobile barcode technology, Tag, is available for download. What is Tag? When a user points a mobile code camera on a barcode the Tag client will interpret the code, and link to a variety of content. Basically, Tag links directly to a Web page and can also be used to dial a phone number. The Tag client will be available for Android, BlackBerry, the iPhone, Symbian and PalmOS. A Java-based version, which would open the door for running the application on cheaper phones, is under development, as well. More than 1 billion tags have been printed since Tag was launched about 18 months ago, according to Microsoft. Future plans for the technology include advanced reporting and analytics and real-time location services.

Three men have been indicted in connection with a Ukraine-based fraud scheme which tricked Internet users into believing their computers were infected and collected some 100 million dollars. Internet users in more than 60 countries purchased more than one million bogus software products, according to the Justice Department. They are accused of placing fake advertisements on legitimate company websites which led Internet users to falsely believe that their computers had been infected with a virus or had critical errors. The Internet users were then induced to buy software products with names such as “ErrorSafe” and “DriveCleaner” to fix the purported problems, paying online by credit card to bank accounts in Europe. Each count of wire fraud carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.

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PODCAST SPONSOR: The Digital Zone is sponsored by Network Solutions.

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