Microsoft defends opening Hotmail account of blogger in espionage case

Company says it cracked open the Hotmail account of an unnamed blogger involved in a Windows 8 espionage case in part because he was selling Windows Server activation keys.

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Microsoft: We have the right to search your Hotmail account (updated)

An ex-Microsoft employee was recently arrested for allegedly leaking company secrets, all because Redmond found evidence against him in his contact's Hotmail account. Hold on, is it even legal for the company to go through someone's account without permission? Well, according to Microsoft, it sure is -- in fact, Hotmail's Terms of Service apparently states that the company can "access or disclose information about you" for a number of reasons. Since Microsoft's actions are quite dubious, it was forced to defend itself (read the full statement after the break) when news of the arrest broke. The company says that while its ToS (which people don't usually read) clearly states that it has the right to look through a user's account, it does so "only in the most exceptional circumstances."

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Samsung's Kid Store for Samsung Galaxy S5 won't let junior wipe out your bank account

The Kids Mode that we earlier told you about for the Samsung Galaxy S5, will include apps allowing kids to draw, record their voices, snap pictures and sing karaoke. But there also is a special Kids Store that gives the young ones a chance to load more fun and games on a Galaxy S5. One thing that Samsung wanted to prevent was situations where junior would figure out a password and start making in-app purchasers that wipe out the family bank account.

To prevent the sort of in-app purchasing that has seen Apple get into trouble, the Kids Store will include some paid apps without any in-app options. This way, Mom and Dad know just exactly how much they are spending to pacify junior for a few hours. A special PIN number will need to be punched in when purchasing a paid app from the Kids Store. The apps will be listed in categories including Special, Learning, Play and Story. The PIN number also controls what phone numbers the kids will be able to call.

Kids Mode is for those 10 years of age or younger, and those who have seen it say that it is colorful and cartoonish, which should help it do the job that it is intended to do. That is, to keep kids away from things on the Samsung Galaxy S5 that they shouldn't be messing with, whether accidentally or on purpose.



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Overstock’s Bitcoin Purchases Account For Less Than 1% Of Revenue, But It’s Growing

Since Overstock.com started to accept Bitcoin as a purchase currency, the company has received a good press for its efforts to support the nascent cryptocurrency. Working with Coinbase to process Bitcoin, Overstock.com announced that it crossed the million-dollar sale mark in the currency earlier this month.

A report out this morning better details how Overstock.com is faring with Bitcoin now that the novelty of its acceptance of the digital payment method has cooled. After the day one sales number, according to Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne, Bitcoin has settled in the “$20k to $30k” range, and is “gradually increasing from there.”

Let’s use the $30,000 sum, given that the company is seeing a ramp in the numbers, and if we are going to predict revenue we might as well give ourselves some room to wiggle. Let’s find out if Bitcoin is moving the needle for the company.

For calendar 2013, Overstock.com had revenue of $1.304 billion. Given that the company’s revenue is quite seasonal, we don’t want to use a fourth-quarter number to compare current Bitcoin sales run rates. So let’s take the quarterly average for the company as a starting point. That gives us a 90-day figure of $326 million, or $3.6 million per day.

$30,000 next to $3.6 million is a very small drop in the bucket. In fact, it works out to 0.83 percent. After the Sturm und Drang of the Bitcoin integration, the dollar amount is somewhat minor.

Now, its early days for both Bitcoin itself and even Overstock.com’s integration thereof, so don’t take the above as indicative of failure. More that the network for Bitcoin purchases remains modest, despite Bitcoin itself having a very high market cap.

I’ve been looking at Bitcoin volume for some time. Food for thought: Total Bitcoin in circulation is worth $7.9 billion. In the past 24 hours, Bitcoin had volume of only $18.5 million. That’s about 0.23 percent daily turnover. Picking a random stock, say, Groupon, we see that its volume as a percentage of its similar market cap is 3.7 percent daily. That’s about 16 times as much as Bitcoin sees. I think this is the impact of having around half of all Bitcoin owned by fewer than 1,000 people.

That wealth concentration means that the number of people who have enough Bitcoin to purchase items at Overstock.com is smaller than you might expect. That said, the larger Bitcoin network — so far as I can tell — is growing daily. So, expect to see Overstock.com move six figures a day in Bitcoin sales by the holiday season.

IMAGE BY FLICKR USER MARCEL GRIEDER UNDER CC BY 2.0 LICENSE (IMAGE HAS BEEN CROPPED) 

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Glitch Is Causing Thousands Of Emails To Be Sent To One Man’s Hotmail Account

David S. Peck is getting a lot of emails. In a glitch possibly related to the massive Gmail outage underway right now, there’s an odd bug in Google search which is pointing users directly to his personal email address. The address appears in a “Compose” window that pops up when the top search result for Gmail is clicked. Yes, it’s bizarre. Very, very bizarre.

Several of us at TechCrunch have been able to duplicate this bug, first brought to our attention by a tipster. Given whatever is going on with Gmail right now, your mileage, as they say, may vary. 

To reproduce the bug, first search for keyword “gmail” on Google. The top organic search result says “Gmail – Email from Google,” and beneath that are two other sub-links, one that says “Email” on the left, and the other which reads “Gmail – Google.” Click the one on the left (where the text reads “10

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How To Avoid Getting Your Adsense Account Terminated

Google, being the undisputable leader in search engines from then until now, is placing a high importance on the quality and relevancy of its search engines. Most especially now that the company is public property. In order to keep the shareholders and users of its engines happy, the quality of the returned results are given extreme importance.



For this same reason, doing the wrong things in the Adsense and other forms of advertisements, whether intentionally or unintentionally, will result in a severe penalty, may get you banned and even have your account terminated. Nothing like a good action taken to keep wrongdoers from doing the same things over again.



So for those who are thinking of getting a career in Adsense, do not just think of the strategies you will be using to generate more earnings. Consider some things first before you actually get involved.



Hidden texts. Filling your advertisement page with texts to small to read, has the same color as the background and using css for the sole purpose of loading them with rich keywords content and copy will earn you a penalty award that is given to those who are hiding links.



Page cloaking. There is a common practice of using browser or bot sniffers to serve the bots of a different page other than the page your visitors will see. Loading a page with a bot that a human user will never see is a definite no-no. This is tricking them to click on something that you want but they may not want to go to.



Multiple submissions. Submitting multiple copies of your domain and pages is another thing to stay away from. For example, trying to submit a URL of an Adsense as two separate URLs is the same as inviting trouble and even termination. Likewise, this is a reason to avoid auto submitters for those who are receiving submissions. Better check first if your domain is submitted already an a certain search engine before you try to submit to it again. If you see it there, then move on. No point contemplating whether to try and submit there again.



Link farms. Be wary of who and what are you linking your Adsense to. The search engines know that you cannot control your links in. But you can certainly control what you link to. Link farming has always been a rotten apple in the eyes of search engines, especially Google. That is reason enough to try and avoid them. Having a link higher than 100 on a single page will classify you as a link farm so try and not to make them higher than that.



Page rank for sale. If you have been online for quite some time, you will notice that there are some sites selling their PR links or trading them with other sites. If you are doing this, expect a ban anytime in the future. It is okay to sell ads or gain the link. But doing it on direct advertisement of your page rank is a way to get on search engines bad side.



Doorways. This is similar to cloaking pages. The common practice of a page loaded with choice keyword ads aimed at redirecting visitors to another user-friendly page is a big issue among search engines. There are many seo firms offering this kind of services. Now that you know what they actually are, try to avoid them at all costs.



Multiple domains having the same content. In case you are not aware of it, search engines look at domains IPs, registry dates and many others. Having multiple domains having the same exact content is not something you can hide from them. The same goes with content multiplied many times on separate pages, sub domains and forwarding multiple domains to the same content.



Many of the above techniques apply to most search engines and is not entirely for Google only. By having a mind set that you are building your Adsense together with your pages for the human users and not for bots, you can be assured of the great things for your ads and sites.



Not to mention avoiding the wrath of the search engines and getting your Adsense and site account terminated altogether.

Loop Upgrades Its Mobile Survey App, Adds A Pro Account For $99 A Year

Loop, a startup that makes it easy and quick for retailers to collect feedback from customers, has released version 2.0 of its iOS app. The most important change probably isn’t a product feature, but the fact that Loop is ready to start charging.

With Loop (which I tried out in May), it’s easy for business to put together a survey with a few questions, and then to display that survey on an iPad that they hand to the customer while they’re still in the store. As a result, co-founder and CEO Rajit Marwah said consumers are much more likely to respond than they would to, say, an email survey (though businesses also get a survey link that they can share via email, Facebook, Twitter, or anywhere else). The mobile app also allows businesses to see real-time results.

Marwah said that since launch, Loop has been used by more than 10,000 businesses to collect more than 500,000 responses. During that time, he has also been testing pricing in “11 currencies” and settled on a price of $99 a year for Loop’s pro product. He argued that’s a “disruptive” price compared to someone like SurveyMonkey, which charges between $204 and $780 annually for its paid plans.

Like SurveyMonkey, Loop is using a freemium model — there’s a free version, but businesses have to pay to use more devices, to collect more responses, and to receive customer support. During the tests, Marwah said he found that Loop had three times the conversion rate of “typical” freemium products, and that the low price was “more than offset” by the fact that more people are buying.

The company says other new features in the app include a redesign for iOS 7, the ability to conduct surveys from an iPhone, and the ability to include a page highlighting the business before starting the survey, and easier survey creation. Interested businesses can download the app here.

Loop received seed funding from Archimedes Labs, an incubator whose chief product officer Keith Teare also co-founded TechCrunch.

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You can now tweet O2 for account information thanks to #Tweetserve

Here's an interesting, if somewhat unusual, approach to helping customers: European mobile service provider O2 is rolling out a "Tweetserve" program to provide assistance to users on Twitter. Once you've followed

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Mailbox for iOS now handles your iCloud or Yahoo email account

Mailbox has only handled Gmail since launch, but compulsive email checkers finally have a few more account options thanks to an update. The iOS app now supports both iCloud addresses (including me.com and mac.com) as well as Yahoo, with prioritization and push notifications intact. The upgrade also introduces background syncing, which should save iOS 7 users the trouble of downloading all their new mail at once. Those who've been waiting for expanded support to try Mailbox can give it a spin today at the source link.

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Via: Mailbox Blog, The Next Web

Source: App Store

Tags: .mac, app, email, icloud, ios, mailbox, me.com, minipost, mobilepostcross, mobilepostmini, smartphone, yahoo Next: Tech sector CEOs meet with Obama and Biden to demand NSA reform .fyre .fyre-comment-divider

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