Accessing the internet from smart phones and mobile devices is changing the game. While we have been watching for this development for some time, it appears that the necessary technical infrastructure is finally matching up with an audience in the marketplace. The mobil web is about to explode; is your web site 'mobile ready'?

The Nielsen Company today reported that mobile Internet extends the audience reach of many leading Internet sites by an average of 13 percent over home PC traffic alone. For some categories, such as weather and entertainment, the extended reach can be even greater. Nielsen's data show that for many Internet publishers, mobile Internet increases the overall size of their audience.

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This report explores the ethical dilemma encountered by researchers who successfully cracked one of the largest and most prolific robot spam networks on the internet. What do you do when you successfully manage to take over an evil spam empire; do you just turn it off? What do you become liable for if your "good deeds" have unintended consequences?

Researchers seize control of one of the world's largest spam-spewing botnets, but there is disagreement about what should happen next. Researchers at TippingPoint Technologies' Digital Vaccine Laboratories have found a way to infiltrate and seize control of one of the world's largest spam-spewing botnets, a breakthrough that has ignited an intense debate over the ethics of "cleaning" infected computers.

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Identity theft is a hot topic these days. If we are to believe the special reports on the evening news, Identity theft is reaching epidemic proportions. So companies that offer "Credit Monitoring Services" have become all the rage. After watching too many of their TV commercials, I tried going to the FreeCreditReport.com site, only to find that they only provide a free credit report if you sign up for Experian's (not free) monitoring service. The FTC is currently investigating this company's practices, and the fact that their well promoted site is uncomfortably close to AnnualCreditReport.com, which actually does provide free credit reports. It never fails, there's always a scammer trying to "help" us in our hour of need.

All of which begs the question: Are these services worth the cost, and more to the point, do they actually protect you from identity theft? "Our position is that for most consumers -- and by most, we mean well over 99.9% of the people in the country -- they are not," says PRC's Stephens. "If you're talking about spending upwards of $100 per year, we don't think that the typical benefit a consumer is going to derive is worth the cost."

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This is the reason you are seeing such an increase in the amount of spam you are receiving. The botnets are getting bigger and more effective with each passing month.

The prodigious Srizbi botnet has continued to grow and now accounts for up to 50% of the spam being filtered by one security company... Srizbi is now the biggest single menace on the Internet, dwarfing even the feared and mysterious Storm... Having compromised 300,000 PCs around the world, it was now sending out an estimated 60 billion spam e-mails per day on "watches, pens, male enlargement pills"... Srizbi is the single greatest spam threat we have ever seen. At its peak, the highly publicized Storm botnet only accounted for 20% of spam. Srizbi now produces more spam than all the other botnets combined.

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Are you infected with Srizbi?

Are you seeing a lot of messages in your in box that are titled "Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender"?

You're not alone. The global mail system is awash with these messages. But what you probably find most alarming about this situation, is the fact that all of these "bounce" messages, that keep coming to your mailbox, say that they were originally 'sent' by YOU! And you know this is impossible.

These "bounce" messages are an artifact of a massive on-going spam attack that involves literally millions of people all over the internet. The Signal mail system is sending this mail "back" to you because it thinks you sent it, and it has no way of knowing that you did not.

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Google is at it again. This time they're layering global news items on top of their magnificent Google Earth application. Bucky Fuller would have loved this; he predicted just such an interface to global data in 1962 with his fantastic Geoscope concept in his book Education Automation. This idea sounded impossibly far out in 1962, but Google is actually doing it! Google is building the Geoscope!

This brings some new meaning to the idea of local news: Google has added a new layer to Google Earth that shows Google News related to the area shown on the screen. The search company announced the addition on its Lat Long blog about geographic matters. Google Earth now can show Google News.

"By spatially locating the Google News' constantly updating index of stories from more than 4,500 news sources, Google Earth now shows an ever-changing world of human activity as chronicled by reporters worldwide,"

Read the Google Earth mashup story at CNET

Bucky Fuller describing the Geoscope in 1962:

"This giant sphere is a miniature earth. Its entire exterior and interior surfaces will be covered with closely-packed electric bulbs, each with variable intensity controls. The lighting of the bulbs is scanningly controlled through an electric computer...

All world data would be dynamically viewable and picturable and relayable by radio to all the world, so that common consideration in a most educated manner of all world problems by all world people would become a practical event."

Education Automation - R. Buckminster Fuller, 1962

Here's an excellent tutorial from our friends at EBay that could save you a whole lot of time, money and grief. Make no mistake, the spoofers are getting trickier than you can imagine, and they are more persistent than ever. This is serious stuff... pay attention.

Spoof emails can be a major problem for unsuspecting Internet users. Claiming to be sent by well-known companies, these emails ask consumers to reply with personal information, such as their credit card number, social security number or account password.

These deceptive emails are called "Spoof Emails" because they fake the appearance of a popular Web site or company in an attempt to commit identity theft. Also known as "hoax" or "phishing" emails, this practice is occurring more and more frequently throughout the online world.

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