Facebook over 200 million - Breaking news

NEW YORK -- As per breaking news, in less than eight months, Facebook has doubled its user base by signing up 100 million people from around the world, officially hitting 200 million

on Wednesday.

Its population is now higher than Brazil's and Japan's.

The ubiquitous online hangout, available only to college students when it opened in 2004, has been growing rapidly since opening up to anyone who wants to sign up.

But how long can that continue?

After a meteoric rise, News Corp.-owned MySpace has petered off and now has roughly 130 million active users, according to comScore Inc. Facebook could ultimately plateau as well. After all, while there more than a billion people connected to the Internet, that doesn't mean they all want to be on Facebook.

Still, even if it's inevitable that Facebook's growth will slow down at some point as the site runs out of prospects to convert, Facebook continues to change what it has to offer, meaning today's holdouts might decide later to join after all.

"What's striking to me is how Facebook has become a kind of dashboard for Internet users," said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

He said Facebook, along with MySpace and other social sites like Orkut from Google Inc. or Bebo from Time Warner Inc.'s AOL, have clearly changed the online experience for many people.

Facebook's expansion has been peppered by growing pains, from concerns about how it handles users' private information to site redesigns that irked tens of thousands.

And just last week, the company announced that finance chief Gideon Yu would be leaving, as Facebook looks for a replacement with "public company experience" - never mind that Yu had worked at Yahoo Inc. as treasurer.

On Wednesday, Palo Alto, Calif.-based Facebook also updated its display of site statistics.

According to other breaking news, more than half of its users log in to the site at least once a day, and the fastest-growing demographic is people over 35. About 70 percent of Facebook users are outside the United States (MySpace still claims to be the nation's largest social network).

For those itching to know if they are popular enough: the average user has 120 "friends" on the site.

Google Earth Map Loaded with Oceans

Breaking Esolgsmnews :

USA : From last news latest breaking stories came to know that Google recently launched a new feature in its Google Earth Map. Now if you are a regular user of Google Earth and taking this serious then you got a good news that Google now launched a new feature in its maps.Now you can also search oceans and its locations exactly where they are situated.
Scientists said that there is 28.89% dry part and 71.11% water part on this earth.Its means that before that we was just watching and searching 28.89 percent of this world even on Google Maps.But from now on anyone can search the whole part of this world and exact locations of its through Google Earth Map.
An other purpose to launch this feature by Google Earth Map team is that people would not miss
even underwater species and animals discovered till now in this world and can see their pictures.Actually launching of this software also means to facilitating search and research opportunities to find out the underwater species and animals.So from now on don't miss to watch water world.
So from now on it is sure that you are not going to miss any part of this world.Search anything you want to see as it is really located in this world or it is a blunder and out of this world. Now no one can make you fool regarding Earth Map and its locations.

Year 09 1st solar eclipse will be visible

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Yahoo-to-Scrub-Personal-Data-After-Three-Months

Yahoo said Wednesday it will anonymize most of the data it collects about people's Web searches after three months, a move that could put further pressure on competitors Google and Microsoft to do the same due to privacy concerns, reports from our live news channel.

Yahoo, which previously kept the data for 13 months, will now retain it for the least amount of time compared to its rivals.

Google said in September that it would anonymize data after nine months, down from 18 months. Microsoft keeps data for 18 months, although it said earlier this month it would reduce the period to six months if its rivals did the same.

A European Union group has recommended that search engines discard data after six months. The recommendation has been endorsed by data protection officials from the 27 countries in the European Union. Countries could eventually choose to enforce the recommendation, which will be discussed further next year.

Privacy campaigners have expressed concerns that Web users could potentially be identified on the basis of search terms and other data. An IP (Internet protocol) address can identify a person's ISP (Internet service provider) as well as their approximate geographic location. It also has been shown that a person can be identified on the basis of search terms they've entered.

Technology companies have maintained they needed to keep the data to observe how people use their search engines in order to improve their search services, such as increasing the relevancy of results.

Yahoo said it would anonymize its "user log data," although the company did not define exactly what data it collects. Other data that will be scrubbed include page views and clicks on ads.

Yahoo said it will keep some data for up to six months for security and fraud reasons, as part of some "specific and limited exceptions," it said in a statement. It may also be required to keep some data longer to meet legal obligations, it said.

Worldwide alert on Microsoft browser

According to Breaking News from our Staff Reporter : MORE than 500 million internet users around the world are at risk from a major flaw discovered in Microsoft's Internet Explorer software that can give criminals access to personal details, including banking passwords and log-ins.

Microsoft Australia said yesterday it was "working around the clock" to fix the fault in the popular internet browser, used by about 70 per cent of net users worldwide, live news channel reports.

About 2 million people, most of them outside Australia, are believed to have fallen victim to the flaw after visiting apparently safe websites, and the problem threatens to sweep the worldwide web, Britain's Daily Mail reported yesterday.

The newspaper said that hackers in China were at the centre of the cyber attack, the most serious in the history of Microsoft's operating system.

Hackers are believed to have used the technology to steal computer game passwords, which can be sold on the black market in Asia and there are fears cyber criminals will exploit the flaw to steal passwords to gain access to internet bank accounts or send out spam emails.

Experts said that users did not have to download any files for their computers to get infected made the flaw in Explorer particularly dangerous.

In a statement released yesterday, Microsoft Australia said a vulnerability had been found to affect all versions of Internet Explorer. The statement said Microsoft teams had developed an "emergency patch", due to be released at 5am today, to protect customers from the problem.

"When the patch is released people should run, not walk, to get it installed," said Trend Micro advanced threat researcher Paul Ferguson.

"This vulnerability is being actively exploited by cyber criminals and getting worse every day."

He said Trend Micro had identified about 10,000 websites that had been infected with malicious software that can be surreptitiously slipped into visitors' unprotected Internet Explorer browsers to A security adviser to Microsoft Australia, Stuart Strathdee, said he could not comment on how many Australians had been affected, but said the impact had been minimal, with only a "small number" of users directly suffering. People who had activated their automatic security update would automatically receive the "emergency patch" as soon as it is available, he said.

Those who had configured their computers not to install updates should visit the security section of the Microsoft website: www.microsoft.com.au/security to download it, he said.

Microsoft rarely issues security fixes for its software outside of its regular monthly updates. The last occasions on which the company did were in October, and earlier last year.