Happy New Year to all our readers.

This week we take a look at a new study that has revealed that Wikipedia contributors are "disagreeable and closed to new ideas", the British government encouraging police hacking, and some of the latest goings-on in the world of open source.

Plus: Facebook had a great holiday season, becoming the third most visited site on the web. And Britney Spears has become the latest victim of hackers. Read on to find out more.

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Hazel Butters
CEO
Prompt Communications

Wikipediens are fed up with the real world, research reveals

By Dave Wilby

You might understandably think that contributors to Wikipedia, the phenomenonally successful collaborative online encyclopaedia, would be a philanthropic, community-spirited bunch, sharing their time and expertise free of charge for the greater good. Wrong, according to new research conducted by a team of psychologists from the Sammy Ofer School of Communication.

As revealed in New Scientist, the team led by Yair Amichai-Hamburger discovered that 69 Israeli contributors to Wikipedia were "disagreeable and closed to new ideas" when compared to a sample of 70 non-contributing students matched for age and intensity of internet use. The profiling was achieved through a questionnaire method called Real-Me which examines whether individuals prefer to express themselves online or in the real world. Amichai-Hamburger concluded that the majority of 'Wikipedians' felt the internet to be "a more meaningful place to them".

Scott Caplan of the University of Delaware in Newark, told New Scientist that he believed heavy users of sites such as Digg and Twitter would also display similar characteristics. He said: "People who prefer online social behaviour tend to have higher levels of social anxiety and lower social skills."

The next targets for Amichai-Hamburger and his team are Facebook users. An essential community of open, communicative, upwardly-mobile, socially aware bright sparks, or just a bunch of narcissistic neurotics? Watch this space!

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EMC buys SourceLabs to bolster open source credentials

By James Gerber

This week, EMC became the latest major corporation to buy an open source vendor, with the acquisition of SourceLabs. SourceLabs is an open source start-up based in Seattle. Founded in 2004, the company operates Swik.net, a news and information repository on open source that, according to the company, has 1.1 million unique visitors per month. The company also sells subscriptions for enterprise support, maintenance, and upgrades for open source software. Its customers included some big names like Fidelity and Merrill Lynch and from the very start it focused on large enterprises.

EMC will likely use SourceLabs for its new subsidiary Decho (short for 'Digital Echo') which is focused on personal storage. SourceLabs' technology will likely be the management center of Decho's online backup service.

The price that EMC paid was undisclosed. However, I would be surprised if it was at a big discount. SourceLabs has been going through financial troubles for a year and a half, as noted by a former VP in a blog comment. According to him, the company was "going out gracefully" and "they weren't a big hit as a business."

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Facebook sets new record over Christmas

By Laura Beynon

Hitwise, an internet research company that analyses over one million websites worldwide, has revealed that Facebook accounted for one in every 22 online visits on Christmas day. This makes it the second most visited site over the Christmas period.

Facebook wasn't the only ones celebrating. Google was the most visited site and YouTube was third. The figures demonstrate that Facebook is more popular than ever with an overall market share of 4.65%.

Robin Goad from Hitwise said: "A lot of that extra traffic was down to people using social networking sites to get in touch with friends and family over the holidays instead of more traditional phone calls or cards. Christmas is always a busy time for social networking sites, but the increase this year was higher than expected."

One possible explanation for this could be that people are using Facebook to save themselves money in the credit crunch. Perhaps Mr Amichai-Hamburger's study into the site will prove us to be right.

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Government cybercrime strategy 'encourages' police hacking

By Kathryn Cave

Fresh meat for conspiracy theorists everywhere: the BBC reported this week that The Home Office has quietly signed up to an EU strategy that "encourages" police hacking of personal computers. The hacking, known as 'remote searching', allows police or MI5 officers, based externally, to covertly examine the hard drive of any personal computer in a home, office or hotel room. In a statement, the Council of the European Union said: "the new strategy encourages [the police and the private sector] to...resort to remote searches."

The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 already allows these measures to "prevent or detect serious crime" under British law. But naturally there are fears that this new Brussels edict will make police intrusion more widespread. The Home Office assured that the EU agreement would not affect police behaviour and was not legally binding. While the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) reported to The Times that police already carried out 194 clandestine searches last year and that intrusive surveillance is closely regulated under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act.

This does not pacify human rights organisations however, who are horrified by the measures. Shami Chakrabarti, director of human rights group Liberty, said she would challenge the legal basis of the move. "These are very intrusive powers - as intrusive as someone busting down your door and coming into your home. The public will want this to be controlled by new legislation and judicial authorisation. Without those safeguards it's a devastating blow to any notion of personal privacy."

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Tweet me baby one more time...

By Ellie Turner

Britney Spears has become the latest celebrity to have her Twitter account hacked into. The rotters broke into her account earlier this week, as well as those of Barack Obama and CNN broadcaster Rick Sanchez, and left an offensive message.

Micro-blogging site Twitter allows users to post messages of 140 characters, enabling them to share their thoughts as well as photos and documents.

Twitter and Facebook have recently both been stung by phishing attacks, and this latest breach is making people question the security around such sites. Graham Cluley, senior consultant with security firm Sophos said: '"It appears that Twitter's systems were potentially exposing everybody's accounts to the dangers of being taken over by hackers - it's just that they chose some high profile accounts to abuse with their defacements."

These 'high profile' people are taking advantage of the social media boom that has occurred over the last few years, but this is giving hackers the opportunity to access the accounts and leave rather crude or embarrassing remarks, which are supposedly written by the celebrity. A link for free petrol from the soon-to-be American president appeared at the end of last year, for example.

Twitter has had to put its thousands of users back at ease about using the service and any account that has been hacked will be cleaned by the brains at Twitter. "We immediately locked down the accounts and investigated the issue and we'll only put the tools back when they are safe and secure," a spokesperson said.

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09 January 2009

Welcome

Technology News

Wikipediens are fed up with the real world, research reveals

EMC buys SourceLabs to bolster open source credentials

Facebook sets new record over Christmas

Government cybercrime strategy 'encourages' police hacking

Tweet me baby one more time...

Media News

US

UK

Tech Totals

Website of the Week

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US

By Melanie Hesketh

The Wall Street Journal Online has ceased operation of its Business Technology blog. Originally launched in July 2007, the blog had broadened its technology coverage in the past several months. The WSJ Online has added a new blog, Digits, in its place.

John Hazard recently left his position as news editor at eWeek and will join the Ladders as news editor. A replacement has not yet been named at eWeek.

Jennifer Schenker recently left BusinessWeek, where she served as a Paris correspondent covering technology. A replacement has not been named.

Ziff Davis, a long-time player in games magazine and website publishing has closed long running consumer magazine EGM, and sold its web properties to UGO Entertainment. EGM had been published for 20 years and dozens of staff have been laid off as a result of the closure.

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UK

By Melanie Hesketh

Moriana Media Group is launching a mobile industry website, What's New in Mobile in February 2009. Edited by Laurence Marchini, former editor of Electronics Express and Electronicstalk, What's New in Mobile will cover all new products in the mobile communications arena "from chipsets to handsets - and beyond".

What Laptop editor, Michael Browne, has left the Future Publishing title after nine years. Browne has been replaced by deputy editor Alex Bentley. What Laptop is a monthly title that acts as a buyers guide for portable technology such as laptop computers and PDAs.

Jason Deans has been appointed editor at MediaGuardian, the Guardian's online resource for media news and analysis.

The Guardian is moving premises this month from its old offices in Farringdon to Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. The relocation started last week and should be completed in about three weeks. Sports staff on the Guardian, the Observer and guardian.co.uk have already moved and the rest of the editorial team is expected to be in the new offices this week.

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By Melanie Hesketh

CES 2009

700 Number of exhibitors at this year's CES (Consumer Electronic Show) in Las Vegas

22,000 Number of hotel rooms in Las Vegas

0.3% Amount of consumer spending is down this year (in US)

$189 Pricepoint of some of the world's least expensive notebooks exhibited at CES

1 Number of mobile phones made out of recycled water bottles launched at CES

Source: Reuters

By Dave Wilby

Wikipedia Mobile

Are you one of the many individuals that Mr Amichai-Hamburger now believes to be "disagreeable and closed to new ideas" (see news item above)? Perhaps you just like the comfort of using Wikipedia as a largely reliable, occasionally amusingly flawed second brain even while you're out and about in wider society?

Well, now you can get Wikipedia-d up even on the move. Boffins at Comoki have developed a perfect port of the community edited encyclopaedia for you pocket. If you have an Apple iPhone, don't even think about using the fully blown version of Wikipedia on your small screen - simply point Safari at this new perfectly formed mini version and get all the multilingual, multimedia, searchable content you love to disagree with in neatly cropped gulp-sized chunks.