If you receive an e-mail offering a download of Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2, delete it. A new virus is spreading all over the web. The e-mail includes a convincing graphic that looks like it could really be from Microsoft, and the virus is delivered when recipients click on the included link. The e-mails carry the subject line "Internet Explorer 7 Downloads" and appear to come from admin@microsoft.com. They include a blue, Microsoft-style graphic offering a download of IE 7 beta 2. Clicking the graphic will download an executable file called IE 7.exe. The file is actually a new virus called Virus.Win32.Grum. Security experts are still trying to analyze the virus, which may affect your registry, mail contact list or steal personal information from your computer.

The world's first comunity for gamers made by gamers opened its doors yesterday. GamePN is about all games, all guilds, all clans and alliances, the players themselves create the content and manage the website. While it's not bound to any publishers and therefore is independent of any managers goodwill GamePN could be the home for thousands or millions of players. After one day there have already signed up around 1000 people from all over the world and formed over 350 public and private groups.
So if you are looking for a community to share your thoughts give it a try, it might be worth it.

Park Associates, a Dallas based market research firm, recently preformed a survey of internet subscription in U.S. households. It was discovered that approximately 29%, or 31 million households, do not currently have internet access and do not plan on subscribing to any service within the next twelve months. The majority sited that they saw little reason to subscribe to the internet; feeling it would not add any value to their daily lives. The next largest reason was cost. Many felt they could not afford the cost required to purchase a computer, and/or subscribe to an ISP.

Source: cnn.com

Nintendo's online gaming service for the Wii will be provided by Fox Interactive Media's GameSpy, a name already familiar to most online PC gamers. Nintendo WiFi, the online service for the Nintendo DS, already uses GameSpy, and this move shows that Nintendo doesn't want to fall behind to Sony and Microsoft in online gameplay. Although there are not yet any online games for the Wii, Pokémon Battle Revolution will change this when it is released on June 25th. "This partnership will expand our wireless community of players on Nintendo WiFi Connection," said Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime. "Millions of Nintendo DS users have already logged on using GameSpy's technology, and now Wii owners will be able to do the same in a fun and easy-to-use environment."

'Pobody is nerfect!' and like so it isn't the English PC Gamer Magazin. Something went horribly wrong when printing their latest issue. An article about Enemy Territory Quake Wars simply was replaced by another one which was then printed twice. To apologize they are hosting the missing article as a downloadable PDF file. Quite a neat gesture if you ask me.

Senior industry executives have revealed that Sony is planning its latest online service for the new PS3, Playstation Home, for this autumn. PS Home is intended to improve upon the current offerings from Microsoft and Nintendo, letting players create online identities to record various achievements in different games, and unlocking a number of 'prizes' for gamers. Phil Harrison (Sony's president of worldwide studios) is expected to give an official announcement later today at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. The Playstation Network used by the PS3 at the moment has often been criticised compared to Microsoft's Xbox Live service, but Sony will be hoping to get back on a par with Microsoft once Playstation Home is launched.

Update: anyone wishing to read more about this service should view this DailyTech article.

That's right, according to market analysis firm IDC, the world made a whopping 161 billion gigabytes (161 exabytes) of data just last year. This figure comes from a massive digital roll call of everything that was posted on the internet, including music, movies, IM's, Emails, and pornography. However, this figure may be a bit overblown. The study made the generous assumption that all the data was copied three times, and also included "analog" things such as radio broadcasts in their byte count. Regardless, that is still a lot of data.

Or, that's what the The Porn Talk is calling their latest anti-pornography campaign. The Porn Talk appears to be a parent activist group aimed at helping parents talk to their kids about porn. They seem to have taken the ability of the Wii to access the internet a wee bit too far. Their latest campaign's goal is to teach parents how to protect their children from the pornography that can be accessed using the Nintendo Wii. While the Nintendo Wii already has plenty of safety features put in place programmed to do just that, The Porn Talk claims that it simply isn't enough.

The solution lies in parents getting the facts and then talking to their children about expectations for online activity... The Wii is an amazing console and tons of fun but parents need good info on how to keep kids safe.

A recent survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project has revealed that 34% of internet users in America have used wireless networking to access online material, with 27% of users accessing the net outside their own homes. The survey has also shown that 20% of users have wireless networks at home, which has doubled from last year. This is the result of more shops and public areas offering wireless services (and even entire cities) and increased consumer awareness - one interesting discovery is that wireless internet users check their emails more than those with wired connections.

I guess we all are at least a little bit interested in who won this time - so here you go:

Best Motion Picture of the Year
Winner: The Departed (2006) - Graham King
Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role
Winner: Forest Whitaker for The Last King of Scotland (2006)
Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role
Winner: Helen Mirren for The Queen (2006)
Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role
Winner: Alan Arkin for Little Miss Sunshine(2006)
Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role
Winner: Jennifer Hudson for Dreamgirls (2006)
Best Achievement in Directing
Winner: Martin Scorsese for The Departed (2006)

Mozilla Firefox appears to have lost some momentum. In January, 13.7 percent of all internet users browsed using Firefox, down from 14% in December. In contrast, Apple's Safari is gaining market usage. In January, 4.7% of all browser users used Safari, up from 4.2% in December. This is most likely due to more people using Mac OS X, which could be caused by all sorts of things (creative advertising, Core 2 Duo based iMacs, etc). Microsoft's Internet Explorer still accounts for 79.8% of all internet browser use.

When Sony launches the PS3 in PAL territories on March 23rd, it will not be the same model as the one that was released in America and Japan last year. A spokesperson from Sony says "The backwards compatibility is not going to be as good as the U.S. and Japan models". This is because Sony made some changes to hardware dedicated to emulating the PS2. The hardware that was dedicated to emulating PS2 games is being used to accelerate native PS3 games. This will especially come in handy as Sony moves on to making games purely for the PS3.

The BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) is set to launch its on-demand download service later this year after receiving the initial approval form the BBC Trust. Assuming that the rest of the proposal goes to plan, viewers will be able to watch or download popular TV programmes for up to a week after they are broadcast. The application it will use is called iPlayer, which will let users chose what to download and will allow users to watch the programmes for up to 30 days after they are downloaded, or seven after they are first watched. It's not clear who this service will be available to, presumably it would be aimed at license payers but that would be difficult to enforce. Examples of programmes available for download include Planet Earth and Doctor Who.

Currently in beta, Midomi has the unique ability to "name that tune". All a user has to do is sing into a microphone and send the clip to Midomi. Clever software will then analyze the tune, and then post a list of possible songs, which the user can sample and then buy for 99 cents USD. The website has licensed over 2 million songs, has 12,000 user created songs, and is working on getting more. Users can also search for songs by song or artist title, and the system recognized misspelled words. The site is paid by advertisements, meaning that people who have not registered can search and locate songs. People who have registered can upload clips of themselves singing, and critique each other on their performances. The brilliant software behind all this was developed at Stanford. It is called the Multimodal Adaptive Recognition System, or MARS for short.

Although there is little doubt that many people already planned to use the web as a source for Windows Vista, consumers will soon be able to legally download the finished version of the operating system. When the boxed versions of Vista hit the stores on 30th January, users will also have to ability to download it via Microsoft's Windows Marketplace, although the prices will be the same as it will be in shops. The online purchases will also allow users to upgrade to a more expensive version of Vista, or buy an additional license at a reduced price. Recommend prices for the OS are $199 for Home Basic, $239 for Home Premium, $299 for Business and $399 for Ultimate.

Whilst the Pirate Bay is planning to buy its own country in an attempt to avoid the lawsuits, isoHunt is in a spot of trouble at the moment. Being one of the largest Torrenting sites, isoHunt has often come under the spotlight for its controversial activity, and after a fresh lawsuit from the music industry the site's ISP has decided to shut down the website without warning. isoHunt expects to be back online tomorrow, either by sorting the issues with its current ISP or by finding a new one. Despite Torrenting generally being seen as illegal, sites such as this have frequently argued that they are committing no crime because they do not host the files and Torrenting does have legal uses, but that doesn't stop the lawsuits.

Earlier this week, YouTube hosted some hilarious footage of Ashne Chung's Second Life character being assaulted by what seemed like a parade of virtual penises...with an emphasis on the hosted. A Digital Millenium Copyright Act complaint forced the video off YouTube, claiming that the video was infriging on copyrights that are on Chung's character. YouTube eventually fought for the rights to put the video back online, claiming that the clip arose from an innocent public CNET interview of her on Second Life. Fortunately for perverts and people looking for a good laugh, the (not safe for work) clip was put back online by friendly YouTube users. You can watch it here.

A study spanning over 10 years has figured out that procrastination is on the rise. The problems with this aren't very hard to figure out. If people are constantly distracting themselves from what needs to get done, then not only does the procrastinated project seem rushed and of poor quality, but procrastinators are making themselves fatter, more stressed, and poorer. The problems with procrastination aren't just on a personal scale. People who procrastinate on their taxes are estimated lose an estimated $400 a year. Professor Steel, who helped conduct the study, claims "That stupid game Minesweeper -- that probably has cost billions of dollars for the whole society." While some people would ask why people procrastinate in the first place, the real question should be "why not?", as distractions are as close as the start menu on most home and office computers. Over 26% of Americans admit to being chronic procrastinators.

Microsoft is continuing to develop its latest console, this time with an IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) update. Microsoft itself will not be providing the content that is available, this responsibility will instead fall upon existing providers, with AT&T rumoured to be one of these. Websites first started to report this last Saturday, but it has only just been confirmed by Microsoft, and they have not yet announced which providers will to be used. If the company chooses to allow users to record the content or uses video on demand, the rumoured 120GB hard drive now seems all the more likely. The Xbox 360 was already capable of streaming high definition video from a PC, but the console will now be capable of HD TV programmes directly through a broadband connection.

Rumours of a deal between search giant Google and internet service provider EarthLink have been around for some time, but the two companies have only just confirmed that a deal has been finalised. The agreement will "enable EarthLink to build a citywide wireless network and allow Google to provide free internet access" in San Francisco. It is estimated that one million people should benefit from this deal which ought to start rolling out in the near future, with Google hoping "to see the service go live as soon as possible." EarthLink is also planning a fee-based service, although not all the details are available about this yet. So this should be good news for most people in San Francisco, however it isn't clear if there are any downsides to this deal. If it proves to be successful, Google could well spread its wireless service to other parts of the globe.

According to researchers at the Chinese Academy of Science, Washington State University, and the University of Leuven, a new dye has been developed which could potentially see much faster internet connections. Their work shows that the dye interacts more strongly with light than any other known material, possibly even 50% better. This would mean that if it was integrated into optical based networks or internet connections it could wield much faster transfer rates, as well as giving the optical tubes a more colorful appearance. So far, no predictions have been made about when this technology can be expected to become available to consumers, but it's likely to be a few years away yet.

More people are continuing to move away from Internet Explorer as their primary browser, opting for other alternatives such as Firefox. IE started the year with 85.31% of the market, falling to 79.64% during the year. Apple's Safari managed to grow from 3% to 4.24%, but Mozilla was the biggest winner with Firefox usage growing from 9.5% to 14%. Admittedly Firefox is the only cross-platform browser, which could account for some of its success, with IE being Windows-only and Safari being Mac-only. Internet Explorer is clearly still the dominant browser, but this shows a continuing downwards trend that first became apparent during 2005.

If you were using a fully updated version of Microsoft Internet Explorer last year, with every one of the patches installed, you could still have been vulnerable to attack from known flaws for 284 last year. For at least 98 of those days, Microsoft knew about bugs which were being actively exploited by criminals without a patch available. This means that there were only 81 days during which Internet Explorer was completely safe against known problems, compared to all but nine days for Mozilla Firefox. Apparently at least ten of the critical problems had resolutions published online before Microsoft released a fix, so perhaps Internet Explorer 7 will wield more security for users. Admittedly this research does not account for unknown bugs, so both browsers are likely to truly be vulnerable at any time.

The Recording Industry Association of America has announced that it is set to sue Russian music firm Mediaservices for $1.6 trillion. Mediaservices also owns AllofMP3.com and allTunes.com and is accused of selling music illegally. Apparently the RIAA want $150,000 for each of the 11 million pirated songs. A spokesperson for AllofMP3.com claimed that the suit is unjustified because the company doesn't operate in New York and obeys Russian Copyright laws - it even pays some of its profit to the Russian equivalent of the RIAA, the Russian Organisation for Multimedia, which the RIAA argues has no right to exist. It has been no secret that the RIAA has been unhappy with Mediaservices, but this is the first real action they've taken.

Companies that are low enough to resort to sending out spam e-mails as advertising have recently really been working hard. Thanks to images in spam messages, a surge in botnets (computers that are hijacked by viruses to send out spam emails), a high availability of domains for spammers and underdeveloped spam filters, spammers have managed to increase their spam volume by 35%. This exceeds the expectations of internet analysts, and means that spammed advertisements now represent 90% of all e-mails on the internet.