trends

Don't say we didn't tell you so. The 2008 Cadillac CTS, which we awarded an Editors' Choice barely three weeks ago, has won Motor Trend's Car of the Year award for 2007. The redesigned Caddy beat out competition from the 2008 Audi TT, the Volvo C30, the Scion xD, and the new Honda Accord to take the laurels.

In the press release that brought us the news today (heaven forbid that subscribers of the magazine actually have to wait to get their January issue of the mag to find out) Motor Trend's editor made special mention … Read more

David Armano from Critical Mass will moderate a panel on "Always in Beta: How Big Business Can Benefit from 'Little' Innovation" at the Forrester Consumer Forum (October 10 to 13). Here's a quick synopsis: "Innovation isn't limited to R & rooms anymore. The Web 2.0 movement--powered by start-ups such as Twitter, Malhalo and even YouTube, has proven that innovation often happens in iterations. Build, launch, tweak, measure, repeat. Digital experiences seem to be 'always in beta'--learning and evolving along the way."

The fact that the Forrester Consumer Forum dedicates a panel to … Read more

As Trend Micro releases an upgrade to their PC-Cillin Web security product, they've renamed it Internet Security 2008.

It's a bit less glib and reflects the way in which malware attacks have proven to have serious, life-altering consequences in the real world. CNET's Rob Vamosi has given the trialware five stars, and it's hard to argue that Trend Micro doesn't offer a comprehensive suite of tools to keep you safe.

However, user complaints about previous versions indicate mixed reviews. Some loved PC-Cillin, others felt that the cure was worse than the disease. Take a look … Read more

There are several ways to make educated guesses about upcoming events. The first is to the analyst's approach, which requires keeping track of trends, and looking at past history. The second, slightly more intensive way to do it is to compile evidence, and other people's opinions, to figure out what's happening next on an aggregate level: be it a video game plotline, political action, or strategic move by a company. ZiiTrend is a new site that falls somewhere in the middle, putting the wisdom of the crowds to work in a system that lets users test out … Read more

Each month, I get a fun little e-mail from Nielsen/NetRatings, the online division of the big-name metrics firm, with some tracking numbers for unique visitors at social media sites--namely, social networks, blogs, and video-sharing sites. They're pretty anecdotal as far as traffic metrics go, but it's still fun to see who's losing and who's gaining--you know, like sports. And each month, I eagerly open the e-mail (no, really) to see if there are any juicy surprises in store. This month's version, which includes numbers for August (percentage growth from August 2006 to August 2007, … Read more

In my last posting about DropMyRights, I used the Trend Micro Transaction Guard utility as an example of a Java applet installing software while running inside a restricted instance of Firefox.

Transaction Guard was only used to illustrate a point, the reference was not an endorsement of the product, which I have hardly any experience with. Since writing the last posting, I have tried to use Transaction Guard many times from three different Windows XP machines over the space of two days. Not once have I been able to install it. It consistently fails with the "network connection not … Read more

Clearly, social-networking metrics are the new black. It seems like just about everyone wants to know whether Facebook will pass MySpace--or whether there are any trendy, fast-moving start-ups that you ought to be monitoring so that you can start up a profile and amass a healthy friends list before it gets too trendy.

Last month, ComScore released numbers pertaining to social networking's worldwide growth. Now, Nielsen/NetRatings' PR team has released its latest set of figures that track how quickly the top social-networking sites are growing. The results are divided into three different categories of social media: social … Read more

Expanding on its consumer-software-as-a-service efforts, Trend Micro announced on Sunday SecureCloud for small and midsize businesses and the enterprise market. The idea is to provide clients with a range of services without requiring them to install software.

Services available include e-mail reputation, e-mail hosting, and botnet ID service. The latter will allow ISPs to filter command and control messages sent by customer's compromised machines. One feature on the site is an IP reputation search; type in an IP address and Trend Micro will tell you whether the address can be trusted.

At present only two servers in the U.… Read more

My father's Motorola E815 from Verizon is suffering chronic SMS, or text message, spam. At first, the unwanted messages trickled in--religious messages with pictures of saints one time, pharmaceutical marketing another. Then the spam rate escalated. After one spammy text message yesterday and two this morning, Dad decided he wanted out.

"Out" in his case, and in the case of most North American mobile phone users, is as much about the phone bill as it is receiving unwanted texts. Service providers like Verizon and T-Mobile charge for inbound and outbound SMS activity, either per message, generally 10 cents to 15 cents per outgoing text message, or as part of a larger service, usually between $5 and $10 more per month depending on the plan. Data downloads cost extra too, so spam texts with image attachments ratchet up the bill. "This was becoming an expensive habit," says Dad.

The kicker, of course, is that it's not his habit.… Read more