claytongunshow.com

For my part, I bought rafeneedleman.com ages ago (I don’t update it anymore). I’m also holding the .com domain names of my wife and son in reserve, just in case. These personal .coms don’t t have the functionality of the services I discuss here but perhaps that points to a workable alternate business model: Provide contact and aggregation features that people like me can use from domains they already have.

See also: .name.

I would not be surprised if both of these sites also became OpenID authenticators (Chi.mp already is). It’s convenient for users. Chi.mp founder Tony Haile’s vision for Chi.mp’s utility is quite similar to the promise of OpenID and to the concepts in DiSo and the Social Graph API, emerging protocols for sharing social network data between sites.

Two domain-based identity sites will be in the media this this week: Telnic’s .tel, which launches at DemoFall, and Chi.mp, whose team will be holding court across the street from the TechCrunch50 conference in San Francisco on Monday and Tuesday (clever strategy, that). I think these two companies make a trend, but I’m not convinced it’s a long-lived one.

The simple concept behind both companies is this: You’ll get your own name in a domain, a .tel or .mp, and then use it as a hub for your online identities and content. The sites will offer some blend of a business card function, like Plaxo, and personal feed aggregaton, like Friendfeed. The pitch from both is similar: Instead of sending people to a page that’s heavily branded by someone else (for example, Facebook), you can give out your domain. Keep that updated with your contact info, and then as long as people know your domain, they’ll have a way to reach you.

Chi.mp is a free service.

While I think the idea of using a top-level domain with a vanity URL as personal calling card is a gimmick — unless there’s only one TLD, which there clearly won’t be — the idea that every person can have a permanent location on the Net that’s about who they are and not what they do does make some sense. And maybe we need that destitation to not be a social site like Facebook. Maybe it needs to be, basically, unsocial. My site, by me, for you — under my control. Social site profiles do allow that, but they don’t feel the same. But it’s also quite possible that the subtle difference between appearing to own a site and owning a slice of another site isn’t enough to sustain this new idea.

The paid .tel product will allow its subscribers to control which networks their contacts reach them on, if I understand the preview info I saw correctly. Telnic also has a plan in place to allow people to claim their name — a critical function, since there can be only one BobSmith.tel.

Sophos explained in blog post on Thursday that visitors to the malicious porn site are told they have to download an ActiveX component to view the videos. Instead, a Trojan, dubbed OSX/Jahlavc, gets downloaded.

Security experts have discovered two new attacks targeting
Mac users, a new version of a worm and a Trojan hidden inside a porn site.

(Credit:
Paretologic)

On Tuesday, Paretologic warned about a porn site that was downloading malware that targets both the PC and the Mac. Mac users get redirected to the pagemac.php page, which downloads a QuickTime.dmg file, the blog post says.

An Apple spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

This is the message visitors to the porn site get which tricks them into installing an ActiveX object to watch a video but instead downloads a Trojan. This screenshot shows a Windows machine, but the malware targets Macs too.

Antivirus firm Sophos on Wednesday discovered a new version of the Mac OS X Tored worm, according to a Sophos blog post.

“As we’ve demonstrated before, and as we’ll no doubt explain again, the Mac malware threat is real,” writes Sophos security researcher Graham Cluley. “Hackers are deliberately planting malicious code on Web sites, and using social engineering tricks to fool you into installing it onto your computer.”

After Woz’s demise on ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars,” the tech world continues its search for a reality TV breakthrough.

They were distraught that, even when challenged, she thought the dish was good.

You see, the judges, led by the bald, lip-twitching Tom Colicchio (he of New York’s Craft restaurant), weren’t merely upset that she had prepared something that a bankrupt British public school might offer its pupils during a power outage.

Mistry’s reactions lay somewhere between blase and Buddhist. But she had already proved that she was incapable of shucking clams.
Now here she was shirking criticism.

That was the interesting claim made by Preeti Mistry, the 33-year-old executive chef with Google’s Bon Appetit management company. She made her declaration on the latest episode of Bravo TV’s “Top Chef,” in which she was a contestant.

When all around her blanched at the blandness, Mistry was unbowed. So for her stubborn myopia, she had to hear the words that lead so many young chefs to tears, recriminations, Xanax and a job at the Outback Steakhouse: “Please pack your knives and go.”

Was.

Regretfully, this was not the finest advertisement for the Google brand. Nor for the Google canteen.

For Mistry was removed by the judges after serving a paltry pasta salad to the brave and hungry airmen and women at Nellis Air Force Base.

It is a troubling situation, one that should surely be discussed at the highest levels.

September 11, 2001, gave many people pause for thought. But how many can say that such a dark day made them want to cook?

Twitter was down for hours on Thursday during the attack, and LiveJournal suffered an outage. Facebook, and Google–whose Blogger, Google Sites, and YouTube were also affected–were able to fend it off.

The DDoS attacks came on the eve of the one-year anniversary of a significant military clash between Russia and Georgia, which have had an ongoing conflict. In the 2008 South Ossetia war that began on August 7, 2008, Georgia attempted to retake control of South Ossetia and Russia launched air strikes against Georgia.

“Maybe it was carried out by ordinary hackers but I’m certain the order came from the Russian government,” he is quoted as saying. His LiveJournal account was attacked last year, as well, according to the report.

The Cyxymu accounts were back up on Friday on Twitter and Facebook (where he’s a fan of John McCain), but his LiveJournal account appeared to still be inaccessible though a cached version was available on Google. His YouTube account, meanwhile, never went down.

The Georgian blogger whose Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube accounts were targeted in denial-of-service attacks on Thursday, says he thinks Russia’s federal security service is behind it.

The blogger behind the Cyxymu accounts is blaming Russia for the attacks.

Whoever was behind the attack may also be responsible for a spam e-mail campaign launched before the DDoS attack and targeting the blogger’s accounts. In that attack e-mails were sent out that looked like they came from the blogger and included hyperlinks to his accounts on the targeted sites. A Facebook spokesman and others said that a spam attack would not have been effective enough to cause a DoS outage.

“When the war started in South Ossetia last year I couldn’t avoid being drawn into politics,” the blogger said.

Because of the difficulty in tracing distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks back to the source, unless someone takes credit for the attack or brags about it to online associates, it’s nearly impossible to determine exactly who was responsible.

The targeted Cyxymu account was back up on Twitter on Friday.

“This hackers was from Russian KGB,” the blogger, who uses “Cyxymu” on his accounts, wrote in a tweet early on Friday, adding later: “My twitter is online! Thank you all for support after ciber attack from Russia!”

Cyxymu is identified as a 34-year-old economics lecturer named Georgy from Tblisi, Georgia, by The Guardian. His blog postings are critical of Russia’s dealings with the Caucasus region and his screen name is a Latinized version of the spelling of Sukhumi, the capital of Abkhazia, a breakaway Georgian republic.

(Credit: Twitter)

On his Blogger account the Georgian posted a copy of a Russian language news article in which he himself says the spam attack did not cause the DDoS attacks.

(Credit: Twitter)

The Georgian government is investigating potential links between its citizen and the attacks, and there are suspicions that the attack came from Russia, Shota Utiashvili, head of the Department of Information and Analysis at the Ministry of the Interior, told CNN.

According to Thursday’s Bloomberg story, which cited unspecified “communications” between the two executives, Colligan in August 2007 said that Jobs’ proposal was ill-considered. Jobs was worried about losing key Apple employees to Palm and said “we must do whatever we can to stop this,” reported Bloomberg.

Two years ago, Palm’s then CEO, Ed Colligan, rejected a proposal from Apple chief Steve Jobs to promise not to hire each other’s employees, according to Bloomberg News.

A number of top figures at Palm once worked at Apple. Two months before the August 2007 communications cited by Bloomberg, Palm had announced that former Apple CFO Fred Anderson would be joining its board of directors and that Jon Rubenstein, who retired as head of Apple’s iPod division in 2005, would join as executive chairman of the board.

In August, former Apple staffer Jeff Zwerner became Palm’s brand design chief. Other Apple execs who have jumped ship to Palm in recent months include Senior VP of Product Development Mike Bell and PR head Lynn Fox.

Tensions often run high between tech companies over executives moving between potential competitors. Apple last year got into a high-profile scrape with IBM over its hiring of Mark Papermaster from Big Blue.

“Your proposal that we agree that neither company will hire the other’s employees, regardless of the individual’s desires, is not only wrong, it is likely illegal,” Colligan told Jobs, according to the communications reviewed by Bloomberg.

The Bloomberg story comes as the Justice Department is reportedly checking into possible hiring collusion among leading technology companies.

There’s no love lost of late between the companies, with the Palm Pre a new up-and-comer for smartphone market share against the Apple iPhone. The two have most recently been squabbling over the Pre’s compatibility with iTunes.

In June of this year, Palm named Rubenstein as its CEO, replacing Colligan.

Rene Palomino, who is listed as Gonzalez’s attorney within Friday’s plea agreement, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

The agreement also resolves 2008 charges pending against Gonzalez in federal court in New York for hacking the computer network of Dave & Buster’s restaurant chain.

Under the plea agreement filed with the U.S. Attorneys Office in Boston, Gonzalez would serve a sentence of 15 to 25 years after pleading guilty by September 11 to charges of conspiracy, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and money laundering (PDF).

Gonzalez, who is already in jail, would also have to forfeit a range of possessions, such as almost $3 million in cash, his Miami condominium, a 2006 BMW, several computers, and three Rolex watches.

Albert Gonzalez, the alleged ringleader of one of the largest known identity theft cases in U.S. history, has agreed to plead guilty to all 19 counts of related charges against him, according to court documents filed Friday.

A former federal government informant, Gonzalez was also recently indicted in New Jersey, along with two unnamed Russian men, on charges of hacking into Heartland Payment Systems, as well as systems for 7-Eleven, the Hannaford Brothers supermarket chain, and two unnamed corporate victims. They also allegedly stole data related to more than 130 million credit and debit cards. This is considered to be one of the biggest data breach cases in U.S. history.

Gonzalez, 28, of Miami, was accused in August 2008 of helping steal millions of credit card and debit card numbers from major U.S. retail chains. Among the retailers hacked were TJX Companies (owner of T.J.Maxx), BJ’s Wholesale Club, OfficeMax, Boston Market, Barnes & Noble, Sports Authority, Forever21, and DSW.

Instead of giving away secrets of planned products, the idea is to get feedback on concepts, such as whether a new type of car will fly with customers, using images and videos to illustrate the company’s ideas.

The emphasis of the discussions was intentionally on product and designs that company executives hope will drive revenue now that GM has slashed costs and restructured through bankruptcy.

(Credit:
GM)

Rand said that providing an inside look of GM designers’ work is not meant to replace auto shows or building models of concept cars. But getting feedback from fans and foes will allow designers to cycle through concepts more quickly.

GM on Tuesday unveiled a blog Web site called The Lab that it hopes will give the struggling auto giant a bead on customer preferences. It’s part social-marketing campaign and part product research, company executives said here on Tuesday.

GM’s Rand said that The Lab site will allow GM to share designs that it doesn’t now. But, it clearly needs to temper some of that openness so as not to give away trade secrets. During media tours of GM’s design studios on Tuesday, journalists were barred from carrying cameras.

“The way we used to do research through (customer) clinics is cumbersome and expensive,” he said.

In another sign of GM trying to better understand American consumers, GM’s top executives, including CEO Fritz Henderson and his staff, met for a full day with consumers on Monday, many of whom do not own GM vehicles.

GM is also seeking to spiff up its corporate image with consumers, using social media of all sorts to get out its message. The media event, for example, was Webcast and open to questions from the public, while communications specialists used Twitter to answer questions online during the day.

“We’re going to be walking the line, quite frankly. We’re trying to be more transparent, but at the same time we’re somewhat protective because it’s intellectual property,” Rand said.

“We want to use this to show where the company is headed, but there are limitations–we’re not going to show concepts of cars that will come out next year,” said Dave Rand, the director of design at GM’s Tech Center, one of its main research centers. “The ideas we’ll show will tend to be further out and not be as rigid.”

Work for you? A digital model of a bare-bones car shown on GM's new site for communicating design ideas with customers.

The Lab is set up to be like a social-networking site where people have a profile and log in. People can rate designs and provide comments. There will also be a way to opt in and provide demographic information in exchange for access to new designs, company executives said.

Currying favor with customers

GM discussed The Lab with a handful of journalists at a media and analyst day hosted by the company’s top management where the company gave a glimpse of its lineup over the next two years.

WARREN, Mich.–Got an opinion about how General Motors designs its cars and trucks? Let them know.

The first three projects hosted on The Lab are for a bare necessities compact car, a bare necessity truck, and an Eco Initiative to better understand the interests of “green” buyers.

You still think your unsigned band’s good enough to be in that slim line? Remember that these figures include CDs released by well-established artists like Bob Dylan and new artists who are the lucky recipients of massive publicity pushes by major labels.

What about 10,000 discs? If you’re just starting out, making over $100,000 from CD sales sounds like a dream. Of course, you have to split that money among the band members, and anybody else who gets a cut, like the producer and manager. And if you’re signed to a label, you might already be that deep into the hole for your advance and recording expenses, so forget about royalties and just hope they’ll pay you an advance for the next one. At 10,000 copies, you’re probably getting a little radio play somewhere, so you might earn a few small paychecks from publishing royalties, and if you’ve got a good live act and are willing to tour endlessly, you might be able to sell more tickets than CDs over the course of a year. So perhaps 10,000 is the low-end baseline for making a living playing music.

(Credit: Mike Dillon, via Wikimedia Commons)

Of the new titles released last year, almost 99 percent of them didn’t sell enough copies to let their creators earn a living from CD sales, and almost 95 percent of them didn’t sell enough copies to cover the most basic expenses involved in their recording.

Once upon a time, there were these things called record stores…

For an unknown band just starting out? Better polish those chops and gas up the van, then get ready to live on ramen noodles for a couple years. And don’t worry about devaluing your recordings by selling them cheap or giving them away–worry about getting enough fans to hear them so they’ll be interested in coming to your shows, and dragging a few friends with them.

Flash forward 20 years, and it’s harder than ever for artists to make a living selling CDs. According to a report in the Chicago Tribune, a speaker at the Future of Music Coalition gave a breakdown of album numbers that will be particularly shocking to young independent bands who hoped they’d be able to make a living selling discs. More than 115,000 new albums were released in the U.S. last year. Of those, 110 sold more than 250,000 copies in the U.S. last year–that’s not such a surprise, as big stars have always been rare. But only 1,500 titles cracked the 10,000 mark, and fewer than 6,000 sold a paltry 1,000 copies.

Back in the late 1980s when Jane’s Addiction was in its prime, I saw an interview where front man Perry Farrell was asked about sales figures for their albums. His response: “If I wanted to sell records, I’d work in a record store.” He knew that the key to success was touring, which the band did almost incessantly for about three years.

To give you some idea what 1,000 copies means, that used to be the standard manufacturing run for self-produced CDs. Indie bands imagined that they would use a hundred or so discs for publicity–sending them to radio stations and reviewers, for instance–and then sell the rest to local fans and on tour. Selling 900 CDs at $12 a pop would gross almost $11,000, which would be enough to cover low-budget recording and manufacturing expenses and perhaps buy some new guitar pedals and drumheads. Nobody makes a living selling 1,000 CDs. (Nowadays, bands can order reasonably priced smaller runs from companies like Disc Makers, and even use manufacturing-on-demand from services like Audiolife and Amazon’s CreateSpace.)

Deltacloud

I spent the first half of this week in Las Vegas at a nontech trade show, and missed both VMworld and the Red Hat Summit. However, watching and reading from afar, I noticed two major themes in discussion around both cloud computing and virtualization: cloud interoperability and the lack of application management tools.

(Credit: Red Hat)

Cloud application management isn’t so much about workloads as it is the ability to move applications and associated data from cloud to cloud and system to system with no interference. This new realm of internal-external systems management opens up a world of opportunities but faces some significant speed bumps.

Cloud interoperability–the ability to abstract the programmatic differences from one cloud to another–is a key to adoption. If we assume that some percentage of private compute clouds will be based on virtualization, and we know that a large percentage of public clouds already are, then the ability to move among virtual machines is a critical function in this regard.

Regardless, there is a cloud management opportunity, with open-source projects like Puppet, as well as Red Hat’s new release of Network Satellite 5.3. While neither is cloud-specific, applications that support large-scale infrastructure management are perhaps the first step in harnessing the computing power inside and attached to your data center.

Arguments for and against the cloud are starting to calm down a bit, and most people agree that the cloud is somewhere in your future, if not in your present.

Red Hat is obviously taking interoperability seriously, with Thursday’s launch of Deltacloud, a new open-source project “designed to enable an ecosystem of developers, tools, scripts, and applications that can interoperate across the public and private clouds.”

Arguments for and against the cloud are starting to calm down a bit–and most agree that the cloud is somewhere in your future. The discussion should really be around how to deal with a mix of on-premise and on-demand, a combination that is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.

Let’s remember that right now, there is a difference between managing applications that are in your own data center and managing those at a cloud provider. Missing here are new management tools that cross borders in a seamless manner and don’t discriminate against different hypervisors or application platforms.

I noted last week that Amazon’s announcement of virtual private clouds presents a challenge for many cloud-oriented start-ups. The issue is that Amazon calls the shots on the cloud and VMware on virtualization. And while both companies have done fairly well by their users (let’s say better than we would expect from Microsoft or Oracle), innovation is stuck within their respective ways of doing things.

Follow me on Twitter @daveofdoom.

Instead of arguing semantics of application development and delivery, the discussion should really be around how to deal with a mix of on-premise and on-demand, a combination that is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.

I’ll have a ton more to say in a follow-up post, including a bunch more pictures and some video interviews, but I wanted to share a few initial thoughts before hopping a plane to the Seattle area, where I will be working for the rest of the week.

The data center itself is housed in an unmarked warehouse in one of the Chicago area’s many industrial districts. (The software maker didn’t want the exact location disclosed.)

Microsoft's Chicago data center offers a merge of old and new techniques. The ground floor features sealed containers with tightly packed racks of servers, while the second floor houses more traditional server rooms.

Right now, only about a dozen of the 56 container spots are filled, but Microsoft executives said they expect that to change quickly. The software maker expects to eventually spend up to $500 million filling up the Chicago site with gear.

“It’s a lot about location, location, location,” Josefsberg said.

The site was originally slated to open months earlier, but Microsoft delayed things due to the economy. Eventually, though, it decided to move forward.

“Investing in these uncertain economic times is always a tough choice,” said Arne Josefsberg, general manager of infrastructure services Microsoft’s data center operations. But, he added, “We take a very long-term approach to the business.

But, for all its strategic import, the ground floor of the Chicago plant looks more like a truck parking lot than a traditional data center. In each parking spot, though, Microsoft can drop off a container packed with up to 2,000 servers.

(Credit:
Microsoft)

Microsoft picked the spot because of its convenient spot close to cheap and abundant power as well as the fact it sits atop a major Internet connection point that houses major east-west and north-south fiber routes.

CHICAGO–On most days it takes the right access badge and a biometric scan to make it inside the doors of Microsoft’s massive data center. But on Wednesday, the company allowed a group of reporters, customers, and partners to tour the 700,000 square foot facility.

The data center, along with another just-opened facility in Dublin, Ireland and existing centers in San Antonio and Quincy, Wash., serve as the guts behind Microsoft’s online ambitions, from Bing to Hotmail to Windows Azure.