Trevor Floyd

One unmistakable trend at this year's DEMOfall show is the number of Web sites and applications that rely to some degree on crowdsourcing. 13 hot products from DEMOfall '09 Crowdsourcing – a buzzword loosely defined as giving large crowds of users the ability to collaboratively create or change content on Web sites or applications – was made popular by open-source encyclopedia Wikipedia and has since become a staple of Web 2.0 applications. So why does crowdsourcing have such an appeal for developers? "With all due respect it's because developers are lazy," laughs Micello founder and CEO Ankit Agarwal. "When I crowdsource it means that I don't have to do the work to get data myself." But crowdsourcing does have perks beyond getting other people to do your work for you. Among the new crowdsourcing technologies to debut at DEMO this fall are Article One Partners' AOP Patent Studies, an open-source enterprise service that employs an online community of patent advisors to research patent claims; Waze, a mobile application that can be used to update traffic conditions in real time; TrafficTalk, a mobile application that is similar to Waze but also lets users provide traffic updates simply using their voice rather than typing into their mobile phone; Micello, a mobile app that aims to be the Google Maps of indoor spaces; and Answers.com, a Web site that combines established reference resources and crowdsourcing to create a comprehensive information database.

Some crowdsourcing developers say if you can create an application that meets a common need and gives people a real stake for getting involved, then it can go a long way toward growing your product's popularity. It's a shared pain of being frustrated by traffic jams and the like, but our goal is to resolve that pain and to minimize the wait during commutes." Greenfield says that while larger crowds are obviously better for an application such as TrafficTalk, the application can be relatively successful even if only two people who trust each other are using it. TrafficTalk founder Larry Greenfield, whose product is still currently in its alpha testing phase, says that he has found fertile crowdsourcing ground in the form of frustrated commuters during tests he has run of his software. "For us, crowdsourcing has to create a sense of community among our users," he says. "There has to be something that binds people together. After all, he notes, if one friend who shares a commute route with another friend can notify that friend of a traffic accident using TrafficTalk, the application will have served its purpose. Demo's biggest stars of all time Answers.com, on the other hand, is a Web site that really does require massive participation if it is to meet its lofty goal of becoming a central hub for people seeking answers to their queries.

Even so, he says the application needs around a dozen or so people to really reach its potential. Right now, the Web site lets users ask questions whose answers are partially provided by information culled from licensed professional encyclopedias and dictionaries and partially provided by user-generated Wiki-style content. This past August, for instance, Answers.com got around 45 million unique visitors. "Crowdsourcing for us really starts to work when you get to a certain scale," he explains. "Right now we get 45,000 new questions asked each day and then about one third of those are answered every day. Answers Corp. founder and CEO Robert Rosenschein says that as the Wiki portion of the Web site has grown over the past year, participation has snowballed to the point where the company doesn't have to work as hard to promote itself. Those answers are the most valuable thing we have even though some are more detailed and some less so… When you start to get that sort of scale it just sort of happens.

As Rosenschein acknowledges, crowdsourced answers are far more likely to contain factual errors than are answers taken from professional sources. The more new questions you get, the more new answers you get." Of course, the paradox of success is that the more popular your crowdsourcing site is, the more likely it will become the target of vandals. This is why, he says, it's so important to foster a tight community that takes pride in keeping the site accurate and will work quickly to clean up any vandalism. Because the service uses its online community to research the validity of patent claims – a time-consuming task if there ever was one – it pays money to users who are the first to come up with a correct solution to whether a patent is valid or not. For AOP Patent Studies, developing a sense of community is also important, but it's not the only incentive it uses to push its users toward greater accuracy.

It basically works like this: a company comes to AOP Patent Studies and pays them to look into a patent claim. The first two people to get results get paid a portion of the money. The Web site then throws the case to its online community for research. Still, Article One Partners CEO Cheryl Milone thinks that monetary incentive can't help your crowdsourcing site if you don't first develop a strong sense of cooperation among users. "There really has to be a sense of camaraderie and loyalty," she says. "Whether people are brought to the site because they know a lot about a particular technology or because they feel strongly that the patent system needs to be strengthened, it's the feedback they get from the community that keeps them coming back and is in itself compensation for their efforts."

Fake security software "SpywareGuard" and "AntiVirus" are said to be the top two scareware programs out of about 250 fake security programs detected, according to a Symantec report. According to the Symantec report: "There are two prevalent ways in which rogue security software can be installed on a user's computer; either it is downloaded and installed manually by a user after he or she has been tricked into delivering the software as legitimate, or it is knowingly installed onto a user's computer, such as when a user visits a malicious Web site designed to automatically download and install illegitimate applications." Some scams even return e-mail messages to the victim with a receipt for purchase that includes a serial number and a valid functioning customer-service phone number. Symantec examined evidence of what it could detect online for a six-month period, how it was propagating, and what fake security software programs were costing, says Mark Fossi, editor of the report. "Sometimes it's sold as a complete security suite," he said, adding, "it mostly does nothing." Rogue security software is often called scareware because these fake antivirus and registry cleaners can convince the victim to purchase based on flagging screens warning them about threats that don't exist outside the scareware itself.

Distribution networks are rampant in which "affiliates" earn money to ensure the rogue security software is circulated, such as Traffic. Affiliates are paid 55 cents for each U.S. computer, 52 cents for a U.K. computer, 5 cents for Norway or Mexico, but only a penny in many other countries. Coverter.biz, where affiliates are paid based on numbers of computers they manage to get malware on to enable the sale of fake security software. SpywareGuard2008, said to be made by Pandora Software, was called the most prevalent rogue security software for the time period investigated, and its price started at $49.95. Customers often pay for scareware with credit cards, and the report notes, "Since the payment services used are often legitimate, there is constant threat that the payment services provider will discover that its service is used for fraud." But "scammers also benefit from phishing personal information for users who register rogue applications." This could include the credit card number and payment details that can be sold into the underground economy for further abuse. About half the servers for scareware are in the United States, the report says, with Germany holding 11% and Ukraine 5%. Other countries are said to include Canada, the United Kingdom, China, Turkey, Netherlands, Italy and Russia, making it very global in scope.

Internet-enabled TV sets could see wider adoption in the next few years as viewers get comfortable with the idea of running widgets on TV screens, according to a study released by Ernst & Young on Thursday. TV widgets are designed to pull selective content from the Internet to complement TV watching. Widgets - or mini-applications - are already being used in devices like mobile phones and computers to run light applications, and those applications could reach TV sets, the analyst firm said in the study. For example, users can view weather information on TV or buy products advertised on TV from online stores.

Web-connected TV shipments could total less than 500,000 in 2009, but top 6 million by 2013, E&Y said in the study, citing statistics from Parks Associates. Many consumers consider it an "appealing" idea to mesh TV with information from the Internet, according to the study. Widgets could also be the glue that brings together Internet and TV content. Many Web sites and technology companies are developing an ecosystem to bring content from the Internet and TV together. Broadcast TV is already competing with the Web for viewership, and widgets could facilitate content searches through both mediums, giving more entertainment options to viewers. Myspace.com, for example, has developed a widget that blends TV with its social-networking offerings.

Users don't need to rely on a browser to access MySpace content. TV watchers could exchange e-mail messages or browse photos on MySpace by activating a widget at the bottom of the TV screen. TVs and chips, for instance, are also being developed to build Web-enabled TVs. Sony, Samsung and LG have said select flat-panel high-definition TV models would be able to run widgets or download movies from online entertainment services like Netflix. Intel is also working with companies like CBS and Cinemanow to bring widgets to TVs. Web-enabled TV has struggled over the past 15 years since Time Warner Cable launched the iTV service in Orlando, E&Y said. Intel last week announced the CE4100 media processor, which enables the use of Internet and multimedia applications on TVs, Intel said.

Ever since, it has seen many iterations, with companies like AOL, BSkyB, RespondTV, Hewlett-Packard and Apple trying to bring the Internet to TV through devices like set-top boxes or adapters. Widgets for TV use also need to be adopted by television programming and cable operators. The success of widgets depends on applications that users will want to have on their TVs. For example, one-click access to on-demand content from online movie stores is well-suited for widgets. The operators will look to monetize widgets by developing an ad sales model around it, which could face some challenges, the study found. Conflicting advertising could also appear on a TV screen and widget at the same time, which could affect ad sales models.

For example, viewers could migrate their attention from TV shows to widgets, which could affect the ratings of a program.

Apple again used its software update tool to push a program that was previously not installed on a PC, according to Computerworld tests early Monday. Apple's Software Update for Windows - a utility most often installed on PCs when users download iTunes - was offering something called "iPhone Configuration Utility" to Windows users, even to machines that have never connected to an iPhone. Later in the day, however, Apple removed the software from the update list. Popular Windows blogger Ed Bott first reported on ZDNet that the tool was included in new updates.

The tool, chimed in Simon Bisson of itexpertmag.com , is actually an enterprise-grade tool for network administrators, who use it to create and deploy device profiles so users can securely connect to a company's Exchange mail servers. Computerworld confirmed that the 22MB download was offered to PCs, including those running Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) and Vista SP2, that had never been used to synchronize an iPhone. According to Bisson , the iPhone Configuration Utility also adds the open-source Apache Web server software to the PC. "The thing with that iPhone config utility is that it's an enterprise tool for building device profiles. Apple has been criticized in the past for using its software updating service to push unwanted software. It's not for consumers!" Bisson said on Twitter. Last year, for example, the company came under fire for offering Safari for Windows to users who had not installed the application, going so far as to pre-check the program so that users who simply accepted the default downloads received the browser.

Later, Apple quietly changed Software Update so that Safari was unchecked, requiring users to explicitly request the browser. John Lilly, the CEO of Mozilla, the open-source developer responsible for Firefox, said Apple's tactic "undermines the Internet" because updates are traditionally used to patch or fix existing software, not install new programs. By 3:30 p.m. ET, Apple Software Update had dropped the iPhone Configuration Utility as a potential update to the same PCs that earlier had indicated the tool should be downloaded. Apple did not immediately respond to questions about why the iPhone utility had been offered, and whether the company had erred in listing it as an update for Windows users.

India's auction of 3G and WiMax licenses is now scheduled to be held in December, according to a notice on the Web site of the country's Department of Telecommunications. Bidding for 3G licenses will start Dec 7, with the WiMax auction scheduled to start two days after the 3G auction is complete, according to the notice. The auction was originally scheduled for January of this year, but was postponed after disagreement within the government on the minimum cost of the licenses. Both Indian and foreign companies are allowed to bid for the licenses, but foreign companies will have to set up joint ventures with Indian investors to run services in the country.

The Ministry of Communications will license four slots for 3G in each of India's 22 service areas, with a fifth slot reserved for two government-run telecommunications companies. A group of ministers, set up to resolve the dispute over pricing the licenses, has named Indian rupees 250 billion (US$5 billion) as the minimum revenue from the auction of the 3G and WiMax licenses in the country, India's Minister of Communications, A. Raja said last month. A telecommunications company bidding for 3G licenses in all 22 circles will have to pay at least Indian rupees 35 billion, according to the new minimum pricing proposed by the Indian government. Two companies, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd., were allotted 3G spectrum ahead of the auction, and have started offering services. By the pricing announced last year, they would have to pay about rupees 20 billion.

The government said last year that these companies would have to pay license fees equal to the highest bid in each service area. The final date for applications from bidders is Nov 13.

The kick-off for Texas Governor Rick Perry's 2010 re-election campaign was marred Tuesday by a Web site outage that staffers are now calling a denial-of-service attack. Perry was deliberately interrupted by a denial-of-service attack, preventing countless users from logging in to view the Governor's remarks," the Perry campaign said in a note posted to its Web site. "This planned and coordinated attack was political sabotage, and we are working to identify those responsible for this illegal activity." Before the site crashed, more than 22,000 visitors were able to access the event, the Perry campaign said. Perry had invited supporters to visit his campaign Web site at 11:30 a.m. Central time on Tuesday to attend a 10-minute online rally billed as "Talkin' Texas." Instead, site visitors were rebuffed with a computer error message. "Today's 'Talkin' Texas' Webcast by Gov.

But according to local coverage of the incident, the outage did not entirely resemble a distributed denial-of-service attack, (DDoS) which renders the server extremely slow or inaccessible to most visitors. Although he is not familiar with the particulars of Tuesday's outage, Trend Micro security researcher Rick Ferguson said that the Drupal message appeared to indicate that the Perry server was misconfigured rather than attacked via DDoS. Drupal would not have been accessible during a successful DDoS attack, he said via instant message. "If it was a DDoS, you'd never even get to the main page." According to a report in the Houston Chronicle, however, the Perry campaign's Internet service provider said that it was hit by what's known as a SYN Flood DDoS attack. Instead, Austin's KXAN reported that the site displayed the message "Unable to connect to database server," generated by the Drupal content-management platform. Politicians are often quick to blame hackers for technical glitches. An investigation into the matter found that Lieberman's server had failed because it was overutilized and misconfigured. During the 2006 Connecticut Democratic Senate primary Joseph Lieberman blamed a Web outage on an attack by supporters of his opponent, Ned Lamont.

Perry replaced former Texas governor George W. Bush, following his presidential election in 2000. He is seeking his third full term as governor.