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Collaborative antispam plan draws criticism

Escalating the war on spam, a California company wants to let thousands of users collaborate to disable the Web sites spammers use to sell their wares.

A leading antispam advocate, however, criticized Blue Security Inc.'s Blue Frog initiative as being no more than a denial-of-service attack, the technique hackers use to effectively shut down a Web site by overwhelming it with fake traffic.

"It's the worst kind of vigilante approach," said John Levine, a board member with the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail. "Deliberate attacks against people's Web sites are illegal."

Eran Reshef, Blue Security's founder and chief executive, denied any wrongdoing, saying Blue Frog was merely empowering users to collectively make complaints they otherwise would have sent individually.

Here's how the technique works: When users add e-mail addresses to a "do-not-spam" list, Blue Security creates additional addresses, known as honeypots, designed to do nothing but attract spam.

If a honeypot receives spam, Blue Security tries to warn the spammer. Then it triggers the Blue Frog software on a user's computer to send a complaint automatically.

Thousands complaining at once will knock out a Web site and thus encourage spammers to stop sending e-mail to the "do-not-spam" list.

Reshef acknowledges that the technique works only if enough users - say, 100,000 - join. The program is initially free, but Reshef said Blue Security might eventually charge new users.

Upcoming Web versions of Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune will let fans do more than sit on the couch and shout answers at their televisions.

Players will be able to compete against others online for cash, trips and other prizes - starting next month with Wheel of Fortune, followed by Jeopardy later this year.

Existing video game versions let you play only against computerized opponents. The new offering from WorldWinner Inc. of Newton, Mass., and Sony Pictures Digital sets up contests between real people.

There will be free versions, but players will have to pay for a shot at cash and prizes. The cost per game will average about $1 but some may be as high as $10, WorldWinner spokeswoman Allison Rynak said.

The company also plans progressive tournaments, with higher jackpots depending on the number of contestants and duration of the game. WorldWinner gets a 20 percent slice of the jackpot.

If one consideration has kept the tablet PC from becoming a popular household item, it's that few hardware manufacturers have designed one that's actually handy around the house. A cross between a souped-up PDA, tablet PC and handheld gaming device, the Pepper Pad from Pepper Computer tries to fill that void. It begs to be held in your hands while you loaf on the couch.

This 2-pound, $800 computer, available for now only from Amazon.com, features an 8.4-inch touch-screen, a 20-gigabyte hard drive, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, built-in speakers and an infrared port that allows it to be used as a universal remote. Instead of a traditional keyboard, there are backlit push-button keypads on both sides of the screen.

The Pepper Pad is compatible with many home peripherals: It has a USB port, a slot for memory cards and jacks for headphones, microphones and external display screens. In keeping with its Linux operating system, it comes loaded with Mozilla's Web browser.

Perhaps the pad's only shortcomings are its mediocre 256 megabytes of RAM and pedestrian 624-megahertz Intel processor.

Podcasting and RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds may be the latest craze in high-tech circles, but the general public is largely unfamiliar with the Internet terms.

A study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project also finds that Internet users aren't all that familiar with "phishing," either.

Seventy percent of Internet users have never heard of phishing or aren't sure that it refers to e-mail scams that try to trick users into revealing sensitive information by masquerading as a legitimate bank or credit card issuer.

Eighty-seven percent are unfamiliar with podcasting, which lets everyday users distribute audio files over the Internet for playback any time on computers or digital music players.

And 91 percent do not know about Really Simple Syndication, or RSS, a technology chiefly used to pull summaries of new entries on news sites and Web journals.

"When you look at the adoption of anything, once a critical mass of people are in the know, they assume that everybody else around them are as aware as they are," said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew project.

He called the results of the study, based on random telephone interviews with 1,336 Internet users, "a sobering reality check."

Co-founders of the Podcast Network say most of their shows are being heard on computers and not on portable digital players. Cameron Reilly and Mick Stanic seconded statements from Adam Curry of Podshow.com that as much as 90 percent of their listeners are streaming files or saving them to desktops for later listening. "ITunes has done wonders for us, but it's only 10 percent of our user base," Reilly said.

He made his comments during a podcast (www.thepodcastnetwork.com)

The 4-month-old Podcast Network is based in Canberra, Australia, and has launched 30 weekly shows. Stanic and Reilly said it has served up more than 500,000 show downloads, more than 200,000 in June alone. TPN now has about 57,000 weekly subscribers living in more than 25 countries.

Vacation? What vacation? According to a survey by Harris Interactive, 34 percent of the respondents say they have taken a notebook computer on vacation and 51 percent are likely to do so in the future. The top activities are personal e-mail (72 percent), entertainment (56 percent) such as movies, music and games, obtaining trip information (45 percent) and, naturally, checking work e-mail (43 percent). The survey was commissioned by the Intel Corp.

Blinkx.tv, the audio and video search site, has launched a free service that delivers radio and TV programming to your PC, automatically. Users can create a customized search to scour 30 channels of programming from sources such as Reuters, Bloomberg, Fox News, MSNBC and even podcasts. When content matches, a Really Simple Syndication, or RSS, feed alert is created and the content can be delivered automatically to the PC.

Readers with questions and comments about tech news of the day can submit them to Times personal technology editor Dave Gussow at the Times' Talkback site (www.sptimes.com/talkback)

[Last modified July 22, 2005, 10:30:57]