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Webby Awards Lists the Millennium's Top 10 Web Moments

With the decade coming to a close in less than two months, expect to see plenty of "Best of" lists. It's awful fun to think back on marquee moments from years past, especially when those moments occurred on our beloved Internet. Plus, it's shocking to recall just how much the Web has changed since the start of the millennium. In that spirit, the Webby Awards has released its list of "The Ten Most Influential Internet Moments of the Decade."

The moments, which are listed in chronological order, begin with Craigslist's 2000 expansion from a San Francisco exclusive service to the largest free classifieds site on the Web. From there, Napster met its demise in 2001, the same year Wikipedia launched and changed the way we got information. A few years later, in 2006, online video became cooler than sliced bread thanks to YouTube. Shortly thereafter, Facebook became open to non-college students in 2006 (much to our chagrin), and Twitter started its climb to the top of the social networking ladder.

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Scientists Find RFID 'Fingerprint' That Could Prevent Counterfeiting

Radio frequency identification tags (RFID), which appear in items like credit cards and passports, have long been susceptible to hackers looking to steal personal information. Still, RFID tags are used in many ways -- from tracking a shipment of clothes to automatically opening a doggie door. But a breakthrough from a group of University of Arkansas scientists might just ease the minds of those who worry these devices aren't secure enough. The discovery hasn't much to do with the devices themselves, but the way in which they are read.

According to Physorg.com, Professors Dale R. Thompson and Jai Di discovered that each RFID tag has a "fingerprint." Essentially, each tag has a unique power response at different radio frequencies -- even for tags of the same make and model. With preexisting physical characteristics in mind, scientists can interpret an electronic "fingerprint" to each tag. Using those fingerprints as a key would make the devices harder to hack and counterfeit.

With RFID being used more and more by government agencies and private businesses, it's comforting to know that somebody is thinking about security. Maybe now we can stop wrapping our credit cards in aluminum foil. It's a good thing this news broke before we let paranoia take over. [From: Physorg.com, via Engadget]

Depressed Woman's Facebook Pics Ruin Her Insurance Benefits

Canadian Woman Has Benefits Cut Off Because of Facebook
It seems that placing privacy settings on your social networking profile isn't enough to keep snoops away. Nathalie Blanchard, of Quebec, Canada, learned that lesson when her long-term, sick-leave benefits were stripped from her because of photos on her Facebook account.

For the past year and a half, Blanchard had been on leave from her job at IBM as the result of being diagnosed with serious clinical depression. Since the diagnosis, she had been collecting a monthly check from Manulife, her insurance firm. But after Manulife investigators discovered photos on her private Facebook page that showed her out partying with friends at a bar and vacationing on sunny beaches, the company decided to cut off benefits. The insurer considered the photos evidence that Blanchard was no longer depressed, according to a report by the CBC.

Blanchard told the CBC that she was only following doctors' orders and trying to have fun through nights out and short getaways. She added that while she might have been happy in the moment, her issues with depression persisted. Manulife, for its part, told the news outlet that it "would not deny or terminate a valid claim solely based on information published on websites such as Facebook," but the company did not cite any other reasons for revoking her claim.

Since Blanchard's profile is private, it seems that Manulife would have had to resort to hacking or deception in order to gain access to the photos. Regardless of what you think about Blanchard's taking leave for a year and a half for feeling sad, that would represent a clear violation of trust and privacy. [From: CBC]

Chrome OS, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Cloud

Chrome OS: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Cloud
Yesterday, Google finally took the cover off Chrome OS and, in so doing, gave a bunch of foamy-mouthed tech journalists an idea of what to expect once consumers are able to get their hands on it late next year. There weren't many surprises in the announcement. Chrome OS is a tweaked Chrome browser running on top of a streamlined version of Linux -- exactly what most were expecting. We can already play games, watch movies, create spreadsheets, and send IMs -- all without leaving the comfort of any number of browsers. Chrome OS just seeks to remove the middle man.

The highly customized version of Linux is designed to run on Google-certified hardware. By specifying what components can comprise a Chrome OS netbook, Google is able to strip away many "unessential" parts of the OS, making it boot and run faster. Even in this early stage (a year away from release), it only takes 10 seconds to go from pressing the power button to browsing the Web. There are some trade-offs to this design, however. Chrome OS will not support traditional hard drives, meaning you can forget about keeping your giant music collection on one of these babies. Instead, it will only feature smaller, faster, solid-state drives (SSD) and rely on the cloud to store documents and photos. It will, however, recognize and open whatever USB drives and cameras are plugged into it.

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'Twilight' Content Leaves Scammers Thirsting for Your (Digital) Blood

Malware Makers Cash-In on 'Twilight' Craze
As per usual, malware purveyors are hopping on the latest fad in order to lure unsuspecting Web surfers into their dens of digital evil. And what are the kids talking about right now? Well, 'Twilight,' of course.

With the new installment of the teen vampire saga set to hit theaters Friday, Web searches for interviews with cast members, for bootleg copies of the film, and for other content related to 'The Twilight Saga: New Moon' have sky-rocketed. Using this buzz to their advantage, makers of viruses, trojans, and spyware are embedding malicious code in fake movie files and video streams, and posting the nefarious results.

Phrases such as "Watch New Moon Full Movie," "streamviewer," and "Stephenie Meyer at 365Multimedia.com" are quite often used as bait to lure users to these sites. There, scare tactics like pop-ups warning of virus infection will try to get you to click a link that installs phony anti-virus software. Links to content on 365Multimedia.com should immediately trigger alarms since, as Yahoo! points out, the site doesn't actually host interviews or media; it simply serves up screen savers and desktop backgrounds (though the malicious links don't actually head to 365Multimedia.com, anyway).

The best way to protect yourself from such scams is to only visit trusted sites. If you're looking for interviews and they're hosted by a site that's not familiar to you (e.g., not YouTube, or Hulu, or, hey, AOL), then don't follow the link. It's better to be safe than sorry. [From: CNN and Yahoo!]

Kidrobot Founder Talks Butts, Bunnies, and His Empire of Vinyl Art

Paul Budnitz has amazingly sent young adults scrambling after collectible vinyl figures as if they were children after toys. And toys, in essence, those figures are, but not in the child-friendly sense of the word. (In fact, Budnitz points out that his company's products often come armed with cigarettes and machine guns.) Kidrobot, which Budnitz conceived while collecting figurines during a ...

Facebook Sued Over Scam Ads, Oprah Rumors Spark Twitter Frenzy

Highlights from this morning's other big tech headlines.... It was only a matter of time before all of those irritating and ridiculous games got Facebook in trouble. The social networking site has reportedly been named in a $5 million class-action lawsuit, together with gaming firm Zynga, for allowing scam ads to appear during games like 'Mafia Wars' and 'Farmville.' [From: Business ...

Twitter Now Asks, "What's Happening?"

What's in a question? Twitter has long asked its users, "What are you doing?" This, of course, gave rise to the ubiquity of the status update, as people took Twitter's inquiry so literally that they would write about the most banal goings on -- from buying coffee to using the bathroom. But as Twitter's user base has grown exponentially, so have the style and content of tweets. Of late, ...

The Daily Engadget: Win 7 Selling Strongly, California Mandates Greener HDTVs

Our friends over at Engadget obsessively cover everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics, which is why we compile this daily roundup of their top stuff (or, at least, what we think is tops). For more details on any of these stories, click on the Engadget links in each story below. California Mandates Energy Efficiency Improvements by 2011 Those heat waves rising from the back of ...

Microsoft Previews Internet Explorer 9, Looks Like a Contender

With Chrome chugging along toward version 4.0 and Firefox 3.6 just around the corner, Microsoft is in danger of falling even further behind in the browser wars. The boys in Redmond released Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) earlier this year, and while it was an improvement over IE7, we were generally disappointed with its stability. Plus, it still was far behind its competitors in raw speed. Turns ...

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