Trevor Floyd

The European Commission has ordered all makers of portable music players to add a default volume setting of around 80 decibels (dB) and a health warning to all new devices within the next two years. The current maximum volume level permitted for portable devices of 100 dB in the European Union remains unchanged, the Commission said in a statement. It is also calling on standards bodies to change industrywide technical safety standards for mobile devices to include the 80 dB default setting.

An estimated 10 percent of music player owners in Europe (up to 25 million people) risk going deaf by listening to music at volumes of up to 120 dB - - roughly the volume of a jet airliner taking off - for an hour or more each day on a regular basis, consumer rights commissioner Meglana Kuneva said in a press conference Monday. Eighty dB is roughly the volume of road traffic."It's easy to push up the volume on your MP3 player to damagingly loud levels, especially on busy streets or public transport," Kuneva said, adding that young people especially "have no idea they can be putting their hearing at risk."The new standard default setting on devices won't prevent users from overriding the default settings and pumping up the volume, but there will be clear warnings so they know the risks they are taking, Kuneva said. You can safely listen to music at 80 dB for up to 40 hours a week without harming your ears, a study conducted for the Commission concluded. The industry said it supported the move but it warned the Commission not to try to prescribe universal volume levels for all users. Bridget Cosgrave, director general of the trade group Digital Europe, added that music players are only one part of the problem of hearing loss, but the industry would cooperate in the European initiative, "to best serve consumer interests" she said. It urged the Commission and standardization bodies to match the wishes of users with safety considerations when they set the default level.

Digital Europe called for global harmonization of the standards to be applied in Europe. "Unharmonised requirements would undermine credibility and confuse users, potentially exposing themselves to inappropriate volume of noise," the trade group said in a statement. Kuneva warned firms that she won't tolerate their failure to observe the new standards. "Regardless how big the company, no matter how reputable, I will take action," the commissioner said. And it warned the Commission against setting "overly stringent regulations", pointing out that this would drive sales of products to countries with more relaxed regulation.

Criminals have poisoned major search engines for terms related to the new MMS capability of Apple's iPhone, and are using the results to steer users to fake Windows security software downloads, a researcher said today. "Up to the top six results for search phrases about iPhone and SMS are poisoned," said Stephan Chenette, the manager of security research at Websense. "This obviously has to do with the iPhone's new MMS feature," he added, referring to the launch last Friday by AT&T of its Multimedia Message Service for the popular iPhone. "The hosts involved were registered just three or four days ago," Chenette said. When users click on one of the poisoned search results, they're redirected to a malicious site promoting "scareware," the term used to describe phony security software that claims a PC is heavily infected. Late Friday morning, Pacific time, AT&T fired up its MMS service , one of the most long-awaited features for the iPhone. The software duns users with bogus pop-up warnings until they fork over up to $50 for the useless program.

Attackers poison search results by creating massive numbers of useless Web sites on the bots they control, or by using previously-hijacked sites. It's all too easy for cyber criminals to poison search results with links to malware or other malicious content, said Chenette. "They have millions of bots at their fingertips," he said, "and with that control, they can sway the results of any search engine at any time." This campaign, however, was clearly aimed to coincide with AT&T's launch of MMS for the iPhone. "People want to know how to use [MMS], how to send multiple pictures at the same time, things like that," said Chenette. Those sites are all packed with credible content, news and headlines in many cases, that has been copied from legitimate sites. When the search engines' spiders crawl the Internet, and index the fake and real sites that have the landing page URL, their algorithms are essentially tricked into pushing it to the top of any search result for the key phrases in the stolen content. "The botnets give them much more power this way than if, say, they were just using them for spam," he added. All such sites point to a single "landing page" URL, which in turn sends users to a number of different, and often shifting, servers hosting malware, in this case Windows scareware.

The only defense is to be wary of what's clicked in a search result. "This isn't going away, it's too successful of a tactic," said Chenette. "[Attackers] are taking the way that engines are populating their results and using it to their advantage. In February, for example, they used Google's own Trends, a tool that highlights the most popular searches of the past hour, to dupe users into clicking on rogue security software downloads. There's nothing search engines can really do about it unless they redesigned how they create results from the ground up." As Chenette hinted, this is far from the first time that scareware makers have poisoned search results to shill their worthless software.

Security vendor PandaLabs has discovered an online service offering to help those so inclined to hack into any Facebook account they choose for a price: $100. However, those who sign up for the service could find themselves becoming the victims instead, PandaLabs warned today. Users of the service are required to first register with the site and then provide an ID of the Facebook account they want hacked, said Luis Corrons, technical director of PandaLabs. The Facebook hacking service, which is delivered via a professional looking Web site, was discovered by PandaLabs earlier this week. Users who enter the ID and click on a "Hack it" button are then presented with the username of the owner of the Facebook account.

But to actually get the password, the user is then required to send $100 via Western Union to an individual in Kirovohrad, Ukraine. They then have the option to "Start Facebook hacking." Those who follow the instructions are eventually told that the hack was successful and a password for the account was retrieved. It's not clear whether sending the money will yield any login and passwords, Corrons said. The site contains an FAQ section, which claims the site has been in business for more than four years. But the way the site has been designed and the ease with which a potential client can interact with it lends it a certain degree of credibility, he said. The site even provides a link to a Webmoney account that in fact does appear to be four years old, Corrons said.

At least as of the last time PandaLabs inspected the site, it was not downloading or distributing any malware and seems to have been set up purely to scam those seeking to gain illegal access to Facebook accounts, Corrons said. However the domain itself appears to have been registered by someone in Moscow only a couple of days ago, he said. "We've been looking at it and we are 99.9% sure it is a ruse," to get people to pay up money in exchange for what they think will be legitimate Facebook credentials, he said. Those who do fall for the scam are unlikely to go to law enforcement to report it, he noted.

Development of HTML 5, the highly touted upgrade to the language of the Web, is progressing but still faces obstacles, including lack of a standard video codec, said an official of the World Wide Web Consortium at a gathering on Tuesday. W3C officials also provided updates on efforts in the mobile widget and IPv6 adoption spaces. [ HTML 5 could be a killer of both Flash and Silverlight. ] "[HTML 5 presents] the next generation of being able to interact or do more with your Web applications," Le Hegaret said.  HTML 5 would be supported within browsers and by application developers. Featuring video capabilities and support for offline applications and the SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) specification, HTML 5 is set to move to a candidate recommendation phase in by the end of 2010. That phase would last two years before a final adoption could occur, said Philippe Le Hegaret, W3C interaction domain leader, during a press briefing at the W3C Technical Plenary/Advisory Committee meeting in Santa Clara, Calif. Challenges, however, include the lack of a video codec in HTML 5. "The underlying issue is finding a video format which is royalty-free," said Le Hegaret. "So far, we haven't been able to provide one video format that can satisfy everyone." MPEG-4 and Ogg have not met the royalty-free criteria, Le Hegaret explained.

HTML 5's multimedia capabilities could give developers less reason to deploy proprietary technologies like Microsoft Silverlight or Adobe Flash, Le Hegaret acknowledged. Fallback options could include having a developer, for example, define a page to work in the Safari and Firefox browsers and then provide two video formats, he said. But Le Hegaret said those technologies would remain a step ahead of HTML 5 in technical development. Le Hegaret also touted SVG, which provides a language for describing two-dimensional graphics and graphical applications in XML. "What we're going to see is Web applications becoming much nicer with the arrival of SVG on the Web," he said. Work also is being done in the accessibility space, with HTML 5 to link to the WAI-ARIA (Web Accessibility Initiative Accessible Rich Internet Applications) suite, to make Web content accessible to people with disabilities.

But Microsoft's lack of support for SVG in the Internet Explorer browser remains "the elephant in the room," Le Hegaret said. Although noting Microsoft has not released its plans for the Internet Explorer 9  browser, Le Hegaret said to expect good news from the company on the SVG front. "They're not discussing publicly yet what are their plans," he said. Microsoft, however, has been a co-chair of the HTML working group and has several employees at the WC3 event, he said. W3C Director Tim Berners-Lee lauded HTML 5 efforts. "I think [the specification] is great," he said. With its mobile widgets initiative, efforts are afoot to address fragmentation in developing applications for the mobile space, said David Rogers, director of external relations for OMTP (Open Mobile Terminal Platform). Widgets are small Web applications considered ideal for mobile device-independence. "We have a problem in the mobile industry. But he added there is to work to do on the specification and that it must be made to work on the Web in a secure way.

We have an issue with fragmentation," Rogers said. Rogers's presentation featured a Vodaphone mobile phone built by Samsung and featuring a development framework based on the W3C widget standard. Technologies are being developed to address fragmentation, such as the W3C Widgets 1.0 specification and OMTP Bondi, Rogers noted.  By coming to the W3C, interested parties can define what a widget is and find areas of agreement, said Rogers. The device ran the Limo OS. In the IPv6 arena, Leslie Daigle, chief Internet technology officer for the Internet Society, said the last allocation of IPv4 addresses to an ISP is predicted to occur in February 2013. "The cupboard is definitely running bare.  On the other hand, there are lots of IPv6 addresses," she said. Major ISPs and content providers, however, are including IPv6 in current deployments . "It's also becoming clear that wireless broadband is going to be a major component  of IPv6 deployment," Daigle said.

IPv6 was defined a decade ago but there have not been enough deployments, she said. IPv6 deployments have been lacking, however, because of a belief that there is no business case for it, she said. Follow the latest developments in application development at InfoWorld.com. This story, "HTML 5 progresses despite challenges," was originally published at InfoWorld.com.

Like the Internet? If so, please take a moment to thank today's three Nobel prizewinners for their discoveries. Own a digital camera? The three American scientists, honored today with the 2009 Physics prize, helped give us modern telecommunications-including the Internet-and digital photography.

Sad it took 40 years to honor these great men-their work was done during the 1960's-but good health has smiled upon all three, now in their 70's and 80's. (Nobels are not awarded posthumously). Charles Kao, who also holds British citizenship, is being honored for his work helping to develop fiber optics, the oh-so-slender glass pipelines than carry digital data-converted into pulses of colored light-around the world. Fiber optic cable makes the high-speed communications possible, while charge-coupled devices (CCDs) are the cornerstone of digital photography. Born in 1933, Kao was in England when he invented a method to dramatically improve the purity of the glass used to construct the fibers. Dr. Boyle also holds Canadian citizenship. The other half of the $1.4 million prize was won by Willard Boyle, 85, and George Smith, 79, for their invention of the CCD, made at AT&T Bell Laboratories in 1969. CCDs are based on the photoelectric effect, which itself won a Nobel for Albert Einstein. Read about the science being honored in this New York Times story.

In honoring these three today, perhaps we can also honor all those who make our technology-based lives possible. Many other people played a part in making these Nobel-winning discoveries a part of daily life. Better, we can recommit ourselves to supporting basic science and research-hard thinking-that is so out-of-fashion in much of society today. You and I are direct beneficiaries of the work the Nobel committee has chosen to honor today. (The ceremony will be held Dec. 10 in Stockholm). Let's honor these scientists by supporting math and science education and, perhaps, in another 40 years we'll be honoring a new generation of American scientists for their life-changing achievements. At a time when we need more answers than ever before, we should be concerned about how many people are capable of asking the questions and putting what they discover to use for the good of everyone. David Coursey tweets as @techinciter and can be contacted via his Web page.

Just hours after Yahoo announced a planned implementation of Facebook Connect on its network of sites, Google announced that you can now use your Twitter credentials to register on Google Friend Connect sites. This could end up being a hard fought battle, because there's one major reason one-stop online identity is becoming important as we enter 2010, and that reason is paywalls. 2010: Year of the micropayment 2009 may have been the height of Google's power as the champion of the open and free Web, but the mantra "information wants to be free" may start to change in 2010 to "information wants a small fee." The signs are everywhere. Friend Connect and Facebook Connect are both a means to quickly register for a site or service that requires a login, and it's likely no coincidence they announced competing deals on the same day. Forget Rupert Murdoch's ludicrous comments about pulling News Corp's news sites from Google's Index.

Murdoch isn't the only one either. What's more likely, and what the News Corp Chairman has stated on several occasions, is that all of his company's news sites-including The New York Post, The Wall Street Journal and The Times in London-will erect paywalls by next summer. The New York Times Company CEO Janet Robinson has said there is a "high probability" the Times will put up a paywall again. There are even rumors that Hulu may be considering some kind of pay service. Magazine publishers like Conde Nast and Time Inc. are also busy creating online formats for touchscreen devices that will entice people to pay for digital versions of their magazines. So in all likelihood, paywalls are coming back.

During the Web's early days in the 1990's numerous sites wanted you to sign up for an account with a unique login and password. Nickel-and-dimed to death But this idea of having you pay for every single site and service they use online has been tried before. Many of these sites were also asking you to pay small amounts for access to their content-typically anywhere from two to ten dollars a month. It was such a pain to have to constantly remember logins and fork over your credit card information all the time, so most people didn't. Over time paywalls fell, the Web became more open and business models started crumbling. But all those little payments could add up if you bought too many of them, and very few were offering one-time payment schemes. But things may change with resurrected paywall schemes, and that's where these unified logins like Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect could come in handy.

In May, TechCrunch's MG Siegler came across an option to pay with his Facebook account on a Facebook application from GroupCard. Your Digital Wallet is already here Paying with Facebook is already underway according to several reports. Then in June, Inside Facebook reported that Facebook had lured a Google Checkout executive to help Facebook develop the social network's growing payment platform. If paywalls, micropayments, and subscriptions are coming back to the Web in force, then a digital wallet that you can take with you to any site and pay for items using one-click access will be a critical component for success. Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect could easily be linked to Google Checkout and Facebook's payment platform making it easier to pay for things online.

These identities would become even more useful if they could be used across most online retailers as well. Google and Facebook aren't alone; other major contenders looking to be your wallet include PayPal and Amazon. That's why a war over how you choose your online identity could become increasingly important moving into next year. None of these services are universal methods of payment yet (although PayPal is probably the closest), which means the market is wide open for some of these companies to dominate the digital wallet. Connect with Ian on Twitter (@ianpaul). So the question is: who will you trust with your money?

In the days leading up to NASA's crashing of two halves of a space probe into the moon, doubters turned to the Internet to express fears that the lunar bombing would have negative effects on the Earth. In a quest to find out if there's water on the moon , NASA sent two separated halves of a spacecraft crashing into a permanently dark crater on the south pole of the moon this morning. Scientists and astronomers were quick to step forward to refute any rumors and quell concerns, but rumors are still circulating online. The crashes were meant to send up a huge debris plume that could be measured and analyzed for evidence of water ice hiding in the cold, dark crater.

But detractors were quick to post online warnings about possible negative effects of the experiment. With NASA still hopeful to one day create a viable human outpost on the moon , it would be helpful for anyone there to find water rather than haul it up from Earth. Amy Ephron, an author and screenwriter, wrote an article for the Huffington Post earlier this week, questioning NASA for taking the risks associated with sending two spacecraft crashing into the surface of the moon. "Who did the risk assessment? Ephron was far from alone in her concerns. I mean, what if something goes wrong?" asked Ephron. "I could say something scientifically lame and ask, 'What if it gets thrown off its axis?' or something funny and suggest something (that I actually sort of believe), like, 'What if it somehow throws off the astrology?' Or that we're not risking - as we have the earth with continued experiments of this kind - sending the solar system out of balance. The Chicago Surrealist Movement posted an online petition , which was signed by 560 people, calling for NASA to halt the bombing of the moon.

Faith Vilas, director of the MMT Observatory , said she's been amazed by such negative reactions to the mission. And people against the LCROSS mission started their own Twitter presence with @helpsavethemoon . While some people said they felt NASA's plan was simply too aggressive an attack on the Earth's orbiter, some claimed that the impacts would change the Earth's tides, throw the moon off its axis or even affect women's menstrual cycles. There's simply no danger, she added. "The moon is impacted by nature and meteors all the time," said Vilas. "Nature has done much more damage to the moon than we just did. What we did was nothing. We were not likely to have any effect on the moon at all.

We didn't have much of an impact at all." Bruce Betts, director of projects at The Planetary Society , said in an email to Computerworld that this morning's crashes will have no negative impact on the moon or the Earth. "The spacecraft are far too tiny compared to the moon, in fact, to have any significant effect on the moon's orbit or dynamics," he added. "The impact might be likened to a gnat hitting the windshield of a truck."