Coming soon to an airport near you, less time spent in security lines? That’s the hope for frequent fliers as Registered Traveler’s Clear security program (www.flyclear.com) is now cleared to be used in airports across the U.S.

“Clear members are pre-screened and provided with a high-tech card which allows them to access designated airport security fast lanes nationwide. Clear members pass through airport security faster, with more predictability and less hassle,” says Clear’s website. Read the rest of this entry »

Terry Childs, the 43-ear-old disgruntled San Francisco network administrator who hijacked the city’s network by withholding the its pass codes, has given them to San Francisco’s mayor, Gavin Newsom, after having refused to reveal them for more than a week. Without the codes, city administrators would have had to reconfigure the network, a time-consuming and costly process.

The codes gave Childs exclusive access to the City’s FiberWAN network, which carries around 60 percent of the government’s network, including the law enforcement, payroll, officials’ e-mails, and jail-booking records; the network could still run, but only Childs could configure it. He also apparently “booby trapped” the system, so that key files would have been destroyed had the system been shut down or lost power. A system shutdown had been scheduled for Saturday, July 19, for routine maintenance. Read the rest of this entry »

Google [GOOG] Wednesday launched another site that’s like an already existing one, Knol. In essence it’s Wikipedia, the difference being that its authors are credited as opposed to anonymous. So it’s About.com, then.

The idea is like Wikipedia combined with an ad-driven blog. Right now, there’s mostly medical articles, so it looks like Knol will work more like About.com – more often than not, you’ll get to a Knol article through a topic search instead of going in through the homepage. This could work for Knol, although brevity is part of what makes About.com’s articles appealing. This could also work against Knol, as it puts it in direct competition with Wikipedia’s Medpedia, whose preview launched today, created under the aegis of Harvard, Stanford, UC Berkeley, and Michigan’s medical schools. Tough competition if Knol stays mainly medical. Read the rest of this entry »

The internet security website Matasano accidentally posted on Monday details of a potentially dangerous internet flaw; it was quickly taken down, but not before being found and circulated by hackers, who believe that writing an exploit to attack the bug will be easy and are ready to benefit from it. According to Wired Magazine’s security and privacy blog “Threat Level,” “[h]ackers are furiously working on an exploit to attack the vulnerability. HD Moore, creator of the Metasploit hacking tool, says one should be available by the end of the day.”

The flaw is in the DNS, Domain Name Service, often called the “internet phone book,” which translates URLs from text-based (www.atelier-us.com, for example) into numerical IP addresses. The exploit makes tying malicious IP addresses to legitimate URLs much easier. Attacks could potentially hijack users to create sites that imitate legit ones, which will download malware to users’ computers or steal information entered into a dummy site. This has been called “phishing without email.” Read the rest of this entry »

Does anyone know how many times Twitter’s been down since their launch? nearly 200 times?

A survey released last week by Goldman Sachs & Co. reports that IT jobs will drop in 2009. The survey reveals potentially dramatic cutbacks for both in-house and contract employees.

The number of respondents reporting that they would be cutting in-house staffers has risen drastically from last October’s 0%, jumping to 11% in the June 2008 survey. The number peaked in April at 15%, so it remains to be seen where this trend is going. These numbers are in line with Goldman Sachs’ 2007 predictions. Read the rest of this entry »

Most viral marketing on YouTube tends towards pomo chic or the cynical, like an extension of “America’s Funniest Home Videos” hosted by a Mission hipster. But Matt Harding’s “Dancing Man” videos – underwritten by the gum company, Stride – are a reminder that simple is not always stupid, that beauty and innocence are not always naïve. Now, after dancing his way across the world and becoming one of the most-viewed YouTube stars, Harding is committing his efforts to charity, raising money for laptops for children in Rwanda.

According to Reuters, Harding, “met United Nations officials this month and talked to the sponsor of his video, Stride, about raising money to buy and donate laptops to the poor in Rwanda where he danced with locals and plans to go to teach them himself.” Read the rest of this entry »

The judge hearing the “YouTube Divorce” has ruled against Tricia Walsh-Smith, the woman who famously posted brutal – and loopy – rants about her soon-to-be ex-husband on her YouTube account, finding the videos “cruel and unusual treatment.”

In the first video (see below), posted in April, Walsh-Smith mocks her husband for their sexless marriage, calls up his assistant and asks what to do with her husband’s stash of Viagra and condoms, gives us a tour of her Upper East Side apartment, and, as an added bonus, does her own Tarot reading. Walsh-Smith’s rant had over 3 million viewers on the video sharing website. Read the rest of this entry »

In an interview with the BBC, Steven Prentice, analyst for the information technology research and advisory firm Gartner, says that the mouse will largely be replaced with other means of interface within the next five years. The mouse’s place will be taken by technology developed for entertainment, video games, and computer access for the disabled.

“You’ve got Panasonic showing forward facing video in the home entertainment environment. Instead of using a conventional remote control you hold up your hand and it recognises you have done that,” Prentice says in the article. Read the rest of this entry »

Apple [AAPL]’s campaign for the iPhone 3G is “Twice as fast. Half the Price.” Both claims should come with caveats. While the symmetry of the slogan is nice, Apple’s so-far-successful attempt to market the iPhone 3G to more mainstream users is, to some, less-than-truthful. Apple’s ad fails to tell the full story about pricing or the speed. Read the rest of this entry »