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The secret to Imeem's rise: More music

Imeem is starting to break away from the pack of countless music start-ups that have launched in the last two years. I hated the service when it first launched--confusing interface, unclear mission--but since then it's grown to become the third-largest social networking site on the Web with 27.7 million unique visitors--that's nearly double its traffic from last year. It's still well behind Facebook and MySpace, which are in a heated battle for top spot, but has been helped by MySpace's difficulty in launching MySpace Music, which is supposed to offer tracks from major label artists. … Read more

ConnectU founders falter in Olympic rowing heat

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the identical twins who went from a legal spat with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to a berth on the Olympic rowing team, didn't do so well in Beijing on Saturday. In the preliminary heat for their event, the men's pair (M2-), they placed fifth out of five boats.

In the 2000-meter course, the twins came in with a time of 7:13.64, behind the fourth-place Polish team with a time of 7:01.90. The top three places were taken by the French, Italian, and Canadian teams respectively.

They were in a tough … Read more

CNET News Daily Podcast: Journalist-on-journalist hacking at Black Hat

In what's being regarded as a total breach of professional ethics, three reporters from Global Security Mag were removed from the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas on Thursday after attempting to expose the username and passwords of two reporters in attendance, including a CNET News employee. The magazine was a co-sponsor of the event, but the three parties responsible were asked to leave and barred from all future events, including this weekend's DefCon. For more detail, see the accounts from CNET News' Elinor Mills and Robert Vamosi who are in Vegas now.

Listen now: Download today's podcast … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 784: Border collies are the real cowboys

In the fine tradition of subject lines that tell you nothing about the show or clue you in to the fact that this is, in fact, a tech show. But sometimes, we also like to talk about cowboys. And dogs. And extra-malicious hackers at Black Hat, Vista security "rendered useless" by same, and the low, low interest in Blu-Ray.

Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 784

Times Online: 'Fakeproof' e-passport is cloned in minutes http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article4467106.ece

How I got hacked at Black Hat http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/How-I-Got-Hacked-at-Black-Hat/ … Read more

How to watch the ConnectU founders row in the Olympics

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss have been in the press a lot recently for being "those guys who sued Facebook." As two of the three founders of ConnectU, they had accused Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg of intellectual property theft long before he was Silicon Valley's youngest billionaire. Unfortunately, courts didn't tend to side with the brothers Winklevoss, largely because the dorm-room start-up didn't have formal paperwork to prove a breach of contract.

That case has been settled (though ConnectU has contested it), and the Winklevosses--a pair of six-foot, five-inch identical twins with a penchant for wearing … Read more

Facebook's new worm turns your friends into enemies

Facebook has a worm. It was bound to happen: As the web increases in popularity, it was just a matter of time before security bad guys started targeting web applications in earnest. Recent research from IBM suggests that the pace of security vulnerabilities on the web is accelerating.

This particular worm on Facebook is highly insidious:

The worm spreads when a compromised user's account is used to send message to others with a title such as "LOL. You've been catched on hidden cam, yo:" and a link to a random URL. The linked website is a … Read more

Report: Facebook tried to buy StudiVZ

The International Herald Tribune reported on Thursday that Facebook attempted to acquire a look-alike German social network before finally suing it in a federal court last month.

StudiVZ, a German site geared toward college students, is 10 times the size of Facebook's user base in Germany. It also looks just like Facebook, with a different color scheme, which is what ticked off the site's legal team. The court complaint, which called StudiVZ "a knockoff," says "a year and a half after the debut of Facebook's Web site, (it) was built by copying the look, … Read more

Facebook responds to security warnings

Facebook security chief Max Kelly has assured members in a blog post that the social network is "fighting the good fight" when it comes to several malware attacks discovered on the site in recent days.

"We spent most of last night working on a fix for a worm, which was targeting people on Facebook and placing messages on walls urging users to view a video that pretends to be hosted on a Google or YouTube Web site," Kelly wrote. "Less than .002 percent of people on Facebook have been affected, all of whom we notified … Read more

Facebook gives developers more detailed analytics

Facebook is announcing later on Thursday a complete revamp of the analytics system it offers to developers for measuring the performance of their applications on its platform. It's more extensive than the company's recent decision to switch from publicly reporting daily use to monthly use.

It'll be officially announced on the Facebook developer blog.

The new analytics are available only to the developer who created a given application, not to Facebook's general membership of 90 million. They'll be available under a "Features" tab in the application's page, and they will index "… Read more