SK’s Technology & Social Blog

A simple search query has exposed Google Voice mail messages (audio and transcript) for anyone to see and hear.

As first reported here, a user entering “site:https://www.google.com/voice/fm/*” into the Google search bar discovered random voice mail messages belonging to random Google Voice accounts.

Clicking on each revealed not only the audio file and transcript of the call, but it also listed the callers name and phone number as it would if you were checking your own Google Voice voice mail.

I was able to replicate the issue and listen to several voice mail messages, including some legitimate ones with potentially sensitive information.

Information Week says that if Gmail’s growth continues at the same rate, we could see Gmail’s user share overtake Hotmail by the end of the year — an impressive feat.

Between December 2007 and December 2008, Gmail’s number of unique monthly visitors in the United States grew 43%, from 20.8 million to 29.6 million, according to ComScore. Windows Live Hotmail lost 5% of its unique monthly visitors during this period, falling from 45.7 million to 43.5 million.

Google still has a long way to go to catch up to

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Someone at Google is having a very bad start to their weekend. Google’s VP of Search Products Marissa Mayer has just responded to the issue today that marked all Google results with the warning “This site may harm your computer” and advised users not to visit them.

The problem, she says, was simple human error: when importing the malware list from StopBadware.org, the URL ‘/’ was unintentionally added, meaning that every website would be included. The explanation in full:

If you did a Google search between 6:30 a.m. PST and 7:25 a.m. PST this morning, you likely saw that the message “This site may harm your computer” accompanied each and every search result. This was clearly an error, and we are very sorry for the inconvenience caused to our users.

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I just about had a heart attack this morning when my SEO ranking software said none of my pages were in Google anymore!!!

You may have disappeared from Google, been listed as a malware site or at least looked like you got banned from Google results.

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I still haven’t tried the Windows 7 beta, but everywhere I look I see more and more people speaking very positively about it (Dave Freeman positively shines with happiness talking about it). Truth be told, I’m not very interested in operating systems these days: the overwhelming majority of things I use my computers for are done through my web browser, so the OS is becoming less and less relevant to me. However according to some, Windows 7 will put the final nail in the coffin of desktop Linux.

Nick Farrell, over at the Inquirer, makes the bold claim that Windows 7 is enough to kill

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Looking for the coolest jobs in IT? A new survey of information technology and network security specialists suggests that the place to look is on the front lines of cyberspace — and that the variety of work is greater than many might suspect.

The survey was conducted by the SANS Institute, the IT security training and research organization. The results will be published later this year in the form of an information booklet aimed at interesting students to consider a career in IT security.

The institute asked information security practitioners in government and non-government positions to describe their jobs and the most interesting aspects about working in them. It also asked security specialists to select which jobs they thought were “very cool.”

The top-ranking “coolest” IT security jobs according to government security employees:

1. Information security crime investigator/forensics expert.
Why it’s cool: “The thrill of the hunt! You never encounter the same crime twice!”

2. System, network and/or Web penetration tester.
Why it’s cool: “You can be a hacker, but do it legally and get paid a lot of money!” “The power to understand how systems can be (more…)

APPLE INC Co-founder and chief executive Steve Jobs sent a letter to employees saying he was taking medical leave until June to focus on his health. The cancer survivor had recently said his weight loss was caused by hormone deficiency. Apple’s shares plunged by 7 percent.

So this was the big news in all leading news papers of the world. But why I covering this news in my blog as usually I do not cover up front stories here. The oblivious reason for me to include this news here is that I love this kid Steve Jobs. He is truly a great guy.

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How long do you think it will take Google to corner a full 3/4 of the search market? According to the latest Hitwise report - Not Long! Does April or May sound too conservative?

That is the estimation of and on my own rough estimate, not Hitwise’s. The metrics firm says Google searches accounted for 72.07 percent of all US searches in December, which reflects 14 percent increase over 2007. By January 2010, we may be wondering how far off 90 percent is.

Yahoo, which had one tough 2008, dropped three percent from the previous December, grabbing 17.79 percent; MSN bled down to

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Let’s get down and discuss some stats about blogging. Statistics published by Technorati were interesting and encouraging for bloggers. Good news, blogsphere has maximum readership. Look at the figures.

comScore MediaMetrix (Aug. 2008)

• Blogs: 77.7 million unique visitors in the US
• Facebook: 41.0 million
• MySpace 75.1 million
• Total internet audience 188.9 million

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Microsoft has begun testing some Web-based Office applications that will be delivered through Office Live Workspace, its online adjunct to Microsoft Office, and give the company a closer rival to online application suites such as Google Docs.

Microsoft will begin a public beta test of what it calls the “Office Web applications” later this year. They will allow users to create and edit new documents online from within a Web browser, said Justin Hutchinson, group product manager for Microsoft’s Office Client division, in an interview at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

That’s a significant change from the capabilities in the beta of Live Workspace available today, which requires users to create documents using a copy of Office on their PC and then save them to the Web, where they can then be shared with friends and colleagues.
Launched last March, Live Workspace marked the first tentative steps by Microsoft to put its lucrative Office franchise on the Web. More than 1.5 million people have signed up for the beta since it was released, said Michael Schultz, director of product management and marketing for Office Live Small Business.

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