Cleveland Clinic Collaborates with Google

Cleveland Clinic Pilots New Google Offering to Provide Patients Broader Access to Their Medical Records
Cleveland Clinic, a world-class academic medical institution and leader in health information technology, today announced a collaboration with Google, the world's leading Internet search company, to pilot features and services of a new health offering from Google. The Google offering, not yet publicly available, will assist providers like Cleveland Clinic to create a new kind of healthcare experience that puts the patient in charge of his or her own health information.

Today, more than 100,000 Cleveland Clinic patients benefit from Cleveland Clinic's electronic personal health record (PHR) system called eCleveland Clinic MyChart(R). The pilot, an invitation-only opportunity offered to a group of Cleveland Clinic PHR users, plans to enroll between 1,500 and 10,000 patients. It will test secure exchange of patient medical record data such as prescriptions, conditions and allergies between their Cleveland Clinic PHR to a secure Google profile in a live clinical delivery setting. The ultimate goal of this patient-centered and controlled model is to give patients the ability to interact with multiple physicians, healthcare service providers and pharmacies.

Microsoft Proposes Acquisition of Yahoo! for $31 per Share

Transaction valued at approximately $44.6 billion in cash and stock; Provides 62 percent premium to current trading price for Yahoo! shareholders; Combined entity to create a more competitive company while providing superior value to shareholders and better choice and innovation for customers and partners

Microsoft Corp. today announced that it has made a proposal to the Yahoo! Inc. Board of Directors to acquire all the outstanding shares of Yahoo! common stock for per share consideration of $31 representing a total equity value of approximately $44.6 billion. Microsoft's proposal would allow the Yahoo! shareholders to elect to receive cash or a fixed number of shares of Microsoft common stock, with the total consideration payable to Yahoo! shareholders consisting of one-half cash and one-half Microsoft common stock. The offer represents a 62 percent premium above the closing price of Yahoo! common stock on Jan.31, 2008.

"We have great respect for Yahoo!, and together we can offer an increasingly exciting set of solutions for consumers, publishers and advertisers while becoming better positioned to compete in the online services market," said Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer of Microsoft. "We believe our combination will deliver superior value to our respective shareholders and better choice and innovation to our customers and industry partners."

Google Embellishes iPhone Apps

by Cassimir Medford

Just ten days before its much-anticipated first bid in the United States 700 MHz spectrum auction, Google on Monday underscored its advocacy of open mobile networks by upgrading its iPhone applications interface little more than a month after its initial release.

The Mountain View, California-based search giant, a strong proponent of unfettered access to mobile networks for independent application developers, appears to be demonstrating the benefits of its quest by its unusually rapid iPhone upgrade cycle.

Apple's iPhone is one of the few devices on the U.S. market to be opened up to application developers. The U.S. mobile phone market has been dominated by carriers that tightly control what applications are installed on the phones.

Many application developers, led by Google, prefer an open access model akin to the Internet, where developers of legitimate commercial applications do not have to seek the specific blessing of the carriers to gain access to their subscribers.

"This rapid upgrade cycle certainly helps Google drive home its point that open networks improve the flexibility and functionality of mobile devices," said Joe Nordgaard, director of wireless consulting firm Spectral Advantage.

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YouTube Continues to Lead U.S. Online Video Market With 28 Percent Market Share, According to comScore Video Metrix

Nearly 2 in 5 U.S. Internet Users Watched a YouTube Video in September

comScore a leader in measuring the digital world, today released its comScore Video
Metrix report for September 2007, revealing that nearly 75 percent of U.S.
Internet users watched a video online (including both streaming video and
progressive downloads), averaging three hours of video per person during
the month. Google Sites, which includes YouTube.com, topped the September
rankings with both the most unique video viewers and most videos viewed.

Google Continues to Lead Online Video Market

September saw Americans view more than 9 billion videos online, with
Google Sites once again ranking as the top U.S. video property with 2.6
billion videos viewed (28.3 percent share of videos), 2.5 billion of which
occurred at YouTube.com (27.6 percent). Fox Interactive Media ranked second
with 387 million (4.2 percent), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 381 million
(4.1 percent) and Viacom Digital with 304 million (3.3 percent).

For information on other digital products and services visit Broadband National.

Google stock rises

Shares in the search engine giant Google rose past $700 yesterday, a rise of more than $100 in less than one month.

Much of the performance is based on investors' enthusiasm for Google's expansion into the mobile wireless market. This will make it possible for Google to deliver advertisements to people's mobile devices, which could prove extremely lucrative.

Scott Kessler, an analyst at Standard & Poor's, told the International Herald Tribune: "One of the reasons that Google has been such a success story is not only because it has taken market share from its competitors, but also to some extent it has created new opportunities and new markets." Now Google's stock is up among the rarefied atmosphere of the top five companies in the US, including Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway.

Google's founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page both now have an estimated fortune of $20 billion each.

Google to use Nielsen results

Google is to sharpen its strategy with access to information from Nielsen, it has been reported.

Google will pay Nielsen for access to its data so that it can see which demographic watches certain TV shows. Nielsen, based in New York, measures age, marital status, gender and other factors and is the universally-accepted benchmark for gauging viewer figures. The overall goal of Google in buying the Nielsen information is to more specifically target its television advertisements.

Michael Steib, director for television ads at Google, told the NY Times: "We want to bring all the advantages that we see in online advertising - like more accountability, a better sense of the audience, better tools to optimize a campaign - and bring them to television to make TV advertising more effective." Nielsen ratings first started being used in the 1940s and since then have become the most important factor in gauging advertising rates and content. For more information on digital products and services visit www.broadbandnational.com

Yahoo! set to acquire Zimbra

The internet giant Yahoo! is to purchase the email company Zimbra, it has been announced.

Yahoo! will pay $350 million in cash for the company, a move which is part of efforts to open new sources of revenue and continue competing with rivals Microsoft and Google. Zimbra sells hosting services and email software to major businesses, internet providers and other organizations.

Jerry Yang, Yahoo!'s cofounder and chief executive said: "Zimbra's tremendous talent and innovative technology will help to extend our core mail offerings, further strengthening our strong leadership position in this space." Only two weeks ago Yahoo! purchased the internet advertising company BlueLithium for $300 million. The company is currently in a race with Microsoft and Google to acquire as much of the highly lucrative internet advertising industry as possible.

Currently regulators are examining Google's purchase of the internet ad company DoubleClick earlier this year for $3.1 billion.

Google plans search service

Internet search giant Google is to debut a new mobile search service that will let users search for ringtones, games and other content online, reports the Wall Street Journal.

The move is part of a wider effort by the company to invest more heavily in the wireless sector and challenge companies such as Verizon Wireless and AT&T. Though Google already has a mobile version of its popular web search, the company now plans to become a mobile access point for all internet content.

Seattle-based Medio, which currently runs a similar service for T-Mobile and Verizon, is another company that could be threatened by the new service. Google also unveiled at the beginning of this week a new service that will allow small and medium-sized companies to offer customers a search function on their websites. Dubbed Google Custom Search Business Edition, the product will cost $100 per year and will not require the businesses to display Google advertisements.

For more information on digital product6s and services visit www.dsldance.com

Google acquires online security firm

Google has announced that it has acquired Postini, a provider of security and compliance solutions for business and other users around the world.

The deal is said to be worth $625 million and will see Postini, which provides services to over 35,000 businesses, become a subsidiary of Google. The company's message security and encryption services can be used to help protect a company's email and other web-based communication systems.

Commenting on the agreement, Eric Schmidt, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Google, said: "With this transaction, we're reinforcing our commitment to delivering compelling hosted applications to businesses of all sizes." Using Postini's expertise, Google's hosting applications can help to "streamline" information security mandates for its client organizations, he added. Postini claims that its security technology helps to block more than one billion spam emails and processes two billion connections every day.

For information on other digital products and services visit www.dsldance.com

Search Results Can Be Risky

The results of Internet searches are exposing users to malware, according to a recent report from the software security company McAfee.

At least four percent of all search results could lead users to websites that could download malware, the study found. However, the study also found that the number of such results with malware fell one percent on last year's results.

Most likely to contain websites with malware are the sponsored search results purchased by their owners which appear at the top of a page. The author of the study, Ben Edelman, told vnunet.com: "The search engines could do more. "These advertisers rely completely on search engines, so the search engines are uniquely positioned to kill these businesses."

In the study, Mr. Edelman analyzed the initial 50 results from 2,300 of the most popular keywords on Yahoo! Google, AOL, MSN and Ask.com. Meanwhile, levels of malware have climbed over the last year at a greater rate than in the years before, a recent report has found. In their most recent report, IBM's Internet security systems researchers detected over 7,200 weaknesses, most of which could be exploited by attackers.

Spyware programs are sometimes installed as Trojan horses of one sort or another. They differ in that their creators present themselves openly as businesses, for instance by selling advertising space on the pop-ups created by the malware, states Mark Weibel EVP of Marketing for Broadband National Inc. who operates the industries leading comparative shopping website for digital products and services. “Most such programs present the user with an end-user license agreement which purportedly protects the creator from prosecution under computer contaminant laws. However, spyware EULAs have not yet been upheld in court.”

For more information on digital products and services visit www.dsldance.com

Europe Beats U.S. On Internet Usage

Europe Beats U.S. On Internet Usage

During April, average European usage of the Internet beat out usage by Americans, according to the Internet data company comScore.

An average of 122 million Europeans over the age of 15 used the internet daily during April, the comScore figures showed. This is in contrast to the average of 114 million Americans who used it every day during the same period.

The countries with the largest proportions of their populations on the Internet at any one time, was Denmark with 68 percent and Holland with 83 percent. However, as a whole, Internet penetration in Europe stood at 40 percent, compared to 66 percent in the US. The most visited website in 13 out of the 16 countries was, perhaps unsurprisingly, Google, most often followed by Microsoft.

Included in the survey was Russia, which was the last of countries ranked for internet penetration, with only 11 percent. What ahttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifre described by the company as "massive" databases are maintained by comScore to monitor the different ways that the internet is used.

For more information on broadband and other digital products and services visit www.broadbandnational.com or www.dsldance.com

Google Includes Security Software In Pack

Google Includes Security Software In Pack

Now the search engine giant Google has included the Norton Security Scan in its free pack of useful software, called Google Pack.

The Norton Security Scan is a user-friendly security tool that allows users to scan their PCs for viruses and spyware. In addition, the security software is able to remove all the viruses, trojans and malware, which it detects on a PC.

Rowan Trollope, vice president of the engineering consumer business unit at Symantec, said: "Offering Norton Security Scan through the Google Pack is the perfect way to reach the everyday Internet home user. "Our goal is to provide Internet users everywhere with a powerful and easy-to-use tool to help them evaluate, and understand threats that may reside on their PCs."

Meanwhile, weblogs on Google's Blogger.com page are being used in phishing attacks and to spread malware, according to a recent report. The site may have been chosen by cyber-criminals due to its popularity in search-engines, the research from Internet security firm Fortinet stated.

"Security continues to be at the forefront of Internet users concerns," states Mark Weibel, EVP of Marketing for Broadband National Inc. who operates the Internets leading comparative shopping website for digital products. "Norton has long been one of the leaders in security and is a terrific compliment to Googles suite of offerings."

For more information on digital products and services visit www.dsldance.com

Google Warns Of Drive-by Downloads

Google Warns Of Drive-by Downloads

Internet sites which contain malware that can infect a PC are becoming increasingly prevalent, the internet search giant Google has warned.

A full one in ten web pages is capable of launching a "drive-by download", meaning that it could place malware onto a PC. Using such software, hackers can steal sensitive information and infect PCs, Google cautioned. Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at the security company Sophos, said: "They [hackers] used to spread malware by email attachment. What they do now is spam out URLs.

"You cannot protect users by restricting what sites they go to. You need to start protecting your web access, as well as your email gateway." Such malware present on websites is becoming "a considerable problem" for both businesses and personal users, Mr Cluley added. Meanwhile, companies have been warned to be aware of a worm which inhabits removable drives like floppy disks and USB sticks.

Sophos has stated that the W32/SillyFD-AA copies itself onto removable drives and then infiltrates the computers they are subsequently hooked up to.