Hack attempts caught during Singapore Internet test voting

Hack attempts caught during Singapore Internet test voting
By Erwin Oliva
INQUIRER.net
Last updated 06:11pm (Mla time) 09/18/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- (UPDATE) Commission on Elections (Comelec) commissioner Florentino Tuason Jr. presented Tuesday results of the "non-binding" Internet voting it conducted in Singapore this year, a spokesperson said.

"Commissioner Tuason reported on the outcome of Internet voting to the technical advisory council," said James Jimenez, Comelec spokesperson, in a telephone interview.

Highlights of the report include hacking attempts that were discovered during the mock Internet voting election that was conducted for 20 days, said Jimenez.

According to Comelec's report, a total of 4,055 "serious hacking attacks" were experienced over the 20-day voting period.

“All attempts failed to break the system, thus proving the security and resiliency of the internet voting platform,” Comelec said.

Tuason is in charge of overseas absentee voting. The Comelec conducted the Internet test vote in Singapore from July 20 to August 8, 2007. An estimated 15,000 overseas Filipino workers are based in Singapore.

A copy of Tuason's report revealed that more than 300 people voted during the Internet test vote.

The report said the satisfaction level of those who tried the system was at the "high 90s."

It also said that the Internet voting system suffered downtimes due to "power interruptions and communication link interruptions."

Some of the results of the Internet voting are now available in Comelec's website.

Simulating the May 2007 mid-term elections, the voters were asked to choose 12 senators from among 37 national heroes, and one party-list group from 93 bands, the Comelec said.

Benigno Aquino topped the list of senatoriables during the Internet test vote, while Mother Earth and M.Y.M.P. tied for top positions for the simulated party-list vote.

The Comelec gave away two laptops, mobile phones, and iPhones in an electronic raffle to people who participated in the Internet voting.

Philippine call center puts up affiliate in US

Philippine call center puts up affiliate in US
By Ronnel Domingo
Inquirer
Last updated 04:12am (Mla time) 09/19/2007

A homegrown call center operator said Tuesday it had put up an affiliate in the United States in preparation for expansion of its operations in the US market.

Gary Manansala, general manager of WinSource Solutions Inc., said the company had established WinSource Solutions USA Inc. initially to serve as a marketing arm in the United States.

WinSource USA will eventually be the focal point of our US-based initiatives,” Manansala said.

When asked why the company is expanding to the United States when foreign call center firms are putting up their operations here to take advantage of lower costs, Manansala said the objective was to tap markets rather than to minimize costs.

“There is still a large part of the outsourcing market in the US that is untapped, but many of the potential clients preferred dealing with a US company,” he said.

WinSource Solutions operates a 300-seat call center at the Robinsons Cybergate Center in Mandaluyong City, mainly offering customer support.

“WinSource Solutions is looking to leverage on the operations of WinSource USA for further expansion of its operations in North America in the foreseeable future,” Manansala said. “A core objective for WinSource USA is to facilitate the acquisition of a US-based call center.”

Cash reward for Facebook programs

Cash reward for Facebook programs

Founder wants more innovative programs for Facebook

Software developers will be offered up to $250,000 (£125,000) to develop applications for popular social network Facebook, the site's founder has said.

Mark Zuckerberg announced incentives to firms and individuals who create "innovative and disruptive programs".

There are already around 4,000 of the small programs available on the website.

They include music and digital gifts, games of scrabble and fortune cookies.

The fbFund grants, announced at the TechCrunch40 conference in San Francisco, will come out of a $10m pot gathered by Facebook's primary backers Accel Capital and The Founders Fund.

"With just a little bit of capital, a company can grow to hundreds of thousands of users," Mr Zuckerberg said.

Growth spurt

We're doing this at Facebook to support the ecosystem and help it grow Mark Zuckerberg

Applications - small programs that can be embedded in a user's profile page - have exploded on Facebook in the last four months since the social network allowed outside developers to write programs for the site.

Popular applications include the scrabble game Scrabulous, and the music-sharing service iLike.com.

These applications have added to the popularity of Facebook.

The firm says it now has 41 million active users, whilst some estimates suggest that the site now accounts for 1% of all web traffic.

Mr Zuckerberg said he hopes the new scheme, known as the fbFund, will help continue that growth.

"We're doing this at Facebook to support the ecosystem and help it grow," he said.

The awards will be determined by a panel that includes Mr Zuckerberg, PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and Accel's Jim Breyer.

"Any application developer can submit their application and a little business proposal to us," said Mr Zuckerberg.

"If we think the project is good we will give a grant for somewhere between $25,000 to $250,000."

The only restriction is that companies must not have taken any venture capital money previously.

Any firm that wins money will not have to give up equity to the fund.

Instead, it asks that they are given first chance to invest in any successful company that sprouts as a result of the grant scheme.

"This is a grant to help these companies get off the ground," said Mr Zuckerberg.

Virtual worlds open up to blind

Virtual worlds open up to blind

By Geoff Adams-Spink Age & disability correspondent, BBC News website

IBM is establishing a presence in virtual worlds

Online virtual worlds could soon be accessible to blind people thanks to research by students at IBM in Ireland.

Some estimates predict that 80% of active internet users will be using a virtual world in four years' time.

The company said that it is keen to ensure that blind people are not excluded from an environment that sighted people will take for granted.

The students have designed an audio equivalent of the virtual world using 3D sound to create a sense of space.

They were working as part of the company's Extreme Blue research initiative which brings groups of students together for 12 weeks to solve problem set by senior researchers.

The project - called Accessibility In Virtual Worlds - is what the company describes as "a proof of concept" at this stage, but it will be passed on to IBM's Human Ability and Accessibility Centre in Texas for further development.

For their work the Irish team decided to use the Active Worlds online environment rather than the more popular Second Life (which has almost 9.5m accounts) because it allowed them more flexibility.

Active Worlds is a collection of user-made virtual worlds that people can visit via a web browser plug-in. Like many other virtual spaces they let people make many of the artefacts, including buildings, found in them.

Audible cues

The research team exploited this ability to tinker with objects in the online world to make it more hospitable to the blind.

"When the user comes into the world, the items are described as well as their positions," explained Colm O'Brien, one of the team of four researchers who worked on the project.

"There is also sound attached - for example, if there's a tree nearby you will hear a rustling of leaves," said Mr O'Brien.

The work also developed tools which uses text to speech software that reads out any chat from fellow avatars in the virtual world that appears in a text box.

Characters in the virtual world can have a "sonar" attached to them so that the user gets audible cues to alert them to when they are approaching, from which direction and how near they are.

A number of blind mentors have given advice and feedback to the team - one in IBM's Dublin lab and two based at IBM's research centre in Texas.

The students have also liaised with the National Council for the Blind of Ireland on their work.

As well as proving that the idea is feasible, the team has made a number of recommendations about accessibility standards for virtual worlds which should help the developers of the future.

"IBM believes that virtual worlds are going to be the next big evolution of the web and if this happens...it's not right for blind people to be missing out on what the rest of us have available," said Mr O'Brien

O2 wins iPhone contract in the UK

The iPhone was launched in the US on 29 June

Mobile phone operator O2, owned by Spain's Telefonica, has won the exclusive contract to sell Apple's much-hyped iPhone in the UK.

The phones will be sold in O2, Carphone Warehouse and Apple stores from 9 November costing £269 including VAT.

"We are coming to the UK and wanted to pick the best carrier and that is O2," Apple chief executive Steve Jobs said at a news conference in London.

Users will get free use of 7,500 wi-fi hotspots giving faster internet access.

Given the high price that customers will face, will the iPhone prove such a great deal? Can iPhone woo UK buyers?

It has not yet been announced on what terms O2 won the contract.

Customers have to sign up for an 18-month contract on a tariff of £35, £45 or £55 a month, all of which will include unlimited mobile data usage.

Price cut

The iPhone is a mobile phone handset with a touch-sensitive screen, combined with a built-in iPod media player and wireless media browser. However, unlike most modern phones the iPhone can not use high-speed 3G networks.

Instead, it will run on Edge, which works on the existing networks and is much slower than 3G.

The iPhone was launched with great fanfare in the United States on 29 June.

They flew off the shelves at first, but last week Apple cut the price of the eight gigabyte version of the iPhone in the US from $599 (£300) to $399 (£200).

The price-cut sparked concern that sales were slowing, although Apple then announced that it had sold one million iPhones ahead of its target date of end of September.