PC & IT 02 (Nov 08 - Mar 10)

[mojo_]

I have Yahoo mail among my mail accounts. I just sent an email there and it seems to be working fine.

Last year, for a few days my Yahoo mail was not arriving. I didn't know until I was chatting with GR because I had used it then for receiving alerts from huatopedia... and discovered GR had the same problem. <POP server for receiving mail not working>

About a month ago, the problem changed to one where my sent mails were not going out... and there were no alerts back. I only found out after chatting with a friend and he asked me why I had not responded to his email. This problem again lasted for a few days. <SMTP server for sending mail not working>

Nowadays I only use my Yahoo mail account for receiving spam...

No wonder Yahoo is trying to sell itself off..

[winston]

Thanks mojo for the kind reply & comments. Take care, Winston

[iam802]

Check your spam box as well.

Sometimes, emails just got filtered into the SPAM box.

[winston]

Thanks 802...

===========================

It's Good to Know: The FDA Crackdown on Pay-Per-Click Ads

Pharmaceutical companies dominate the organic search results on Google and other search engines for prescription-drug-related keywords. But they also buy a lot of pay-per-click (PPC) ads (the paid spots that appear at the top and to the right of the organic results). And now Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulators are cracking down on those ads.

The FDA contends that the content of the PPC ads often violates their rules in three ways:-
(1) It mentions the condition a drug is for, but not the risks.
(2) It includes only the brand name, not the full pharmaceutical name of the drug.
(3) It doesn't give details about the limitations of the drug.

Pharmaceutical companies claim they are following the rules because when Web surfers click on their PPC links, the landing pages contain all the appropriate warnings and disclaimers. And they fear that stripping the ads as suggested by the FDA will decrease response. But the FDA insists that all ads must follow the rules, regardless of format.

As they say, you can't fight City Hall. So the drug companies have withdrawn their PPC ads for tweaking to make them adhere to the FDA rules. They aren't willing to abandon that lucrative marketing space.

(Source: clickZ)

[winston]

It's Good to Know: The Emergency E-Mail Stop

Ever hit the Send button and instantly regret saying what you said... notice you forgot to attach a document... realize you hit Reply All instead of Reply?

Now you can take it back. If you have Gmail, that is. And if you react quickly.

Simply go to Settings in Gmail and turn on the Undo Send feature under the Labs tab. From then on you'll get an Undo link in sent mail confirmation messages. If you click Undo within five seconds - we said you had to be quick - the e-mail won't be sent. Disaster averted.

(Source: Gmail)

[winston]

It's Fun to Know: The Volcano That Twitters

For weeks, the Alaska Volcano Observatory has been monitoring the first eruption of Mount Redoubt in 20 years - and they've been keeping the volcano-crazy public informed through live streaming video from webcams.

But that's not all. For the folks who seem to need even more than a front-row seat to the action... enter Twitter. Onsite experts have been using the social networking platform to send messages about "significant" events (explosions, steam emissions, and rising ash clouds) to about 6,000 followers, many of whom have relatives living in the volcano's shadow.

(Source: CNN)

[winston]

It's Good to Know: Mining Your Social Networking Profile

When you signed up for Facebook or MySpace, you may have thought that nobody outside of your friends and family would be interested in your profile. But specialty companies are increasingly "mining" your social networking activities for in-depth marketing data they can sell. They search for posts, comments, and other tidbits from your profile that detail your favorite movies or TV shows, products, music, etc.

One company, Colligent, sells data to the music industry that is used to help determine which demographics buy music from certain artists. And they've recently signed up clients from other industries.

(Source: Wired)

[winston]

Kylin operating system 'impenetrable to US intelligence'

China has installed a secure operating system known as ''Kylin'' on government and military computers designed to be impenetrable to US military and intelligence agencies, The Washington Times reported.

Kylin's existence was disclosed to Congress during recent hearings that included new details on how Beijing is preparing to wage cyberwarfare with Washington.

Kevin Coleman, a private security specialist who discussed Kylin during the April 30 hearing of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, said its deployment is significant because it has ''hardened'' key Chinese servers.

Coleman said Kylin has been under development since 2001 and the first computers to use it are government and military servers converted beginning in 2007.

''This action also made our offensive cybercapabilities ineffective against them, given the cyberweapons were designed to be used against Linux, UNIX and Windows,'' he said.

Coleman said state or state-affiliated entities are on a wartime footing in seeking electronic information from the US government, contractors and industrial computer networks.

Beijing has also developed a secure microprocessor that, unlike US-made chips, is known to be hardened against external access by a hacker or automated malicious software, he said.

''If you add a hardened microchip and a hardened operating system, that makes a really good solid platform for defending infrastructure,'' he said.

''In the cyberarena, China is playing chess while we're playing checkers,'' Coleman said, adding that China is equal to the United States and Russia in military cyberwarfare.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

[winston]

It's Good to Know: The New Google?
Ever wondered what the weather was like on the day you were born? How about what it cost for the U.S. to put a man on the moon?

Using the usual online and offline research resources, you could spend hours to find the answers to questions like those - if you could do it at all.

Enter Wolfram Alpha, a new search engine created by Dr. Stephen Wolfram that's about to be launched. Instead of giving you a long list of Web pages (a la Google), it's intended to provide specific, accurate answers to any question you might pose by combing and "intelligently" cross-referencing sources it finds on the Internet and in private databases.

(Source: The Independent)

[winston]

Does anybody out there use Yahoo Mail ?

I cant seem to be able to sign in for a while ...