According to the story Mr. Huang was diving his brand new underwater camera near the Wahine Memorial between Breaker Bay and Moa Point on Wellington’s south coast when the octopus suddenly “appeared from nowhere” grabbed the camera and decided to play a bit of camera man with it (have to admit it did actually produce some amazing footage in the process as seen below) 

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Who can blame the poor guy (octopus)- I mean he’s probably watched many divers play around with this strange shiny toy and thought perhaps he’d have a go for a change 

Anyways, after a few minutes of playing cops and robbers with the octopus Mr. Huang finally caught up with it, but the obviously kleptomaniac Octopus just wouldn’t let go. It had to take the use of Huang’s spear gun to wrestle the camera free from the Octopus, and all this while the camera was still recording.

Some of us would have forgotten totally abandoned the camera.  Then again, some of us wouldn’t even be anywhere near there in the first place 

Enjoy! And hey- Don’t forget to share

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Dunbar’s number, roughly 150, is a measurement of the “cognitive limit to the number of individuals with whom any one person can maintain stable relationships”.

Dunbar derived the limit from studying social groupings in a variety of societies — from neolithic villages to modern office environments.

He found that people tended to self-organise in groups of around 150 because social cohesion begins to deteriorate as groups become larger.

Apparently, Dunbar’s number also holds true for social networking- you could have thousands of friends on Facebook, but the truth of the matter is: only about 150 of these would amount to “true” friendship.
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The interesting thing is that you can have 1,500 friends but when you actually look at traffic on sites, you see people maintain the same inner circle of around 150 people that we observe in the real world,

It then brings one to wonder if there really is any sense in having over 150 friends on Social Networking sites. Dunbar also claims that girls are more apt at keeping friends than guys;
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There is a big sex difference though … girls are much better at maintaining relationships just by talking to each other. Boys need to do physical stuff together.”

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News sources have it that a number of people have been called by scammers pretending to be from the computer software giant Microsoft or an internet service provider, some of whom have had their bank accounts emptied as a result of the con.

The ruse works by making people think that their computer has a virus. The “problem” is then fixed by a series of steps which ends with the scammers being allowed remote access to the computer.

To add insult to injury, people are also asked to provide their credit card details in order to pay a fee for the repair.

Jaclyn Clarabut, assistant editor of Which? Computing, said the magazine had received about 10 calls from around the country but it was aware that trading standards officers were also receiving some.

She thought there were only a handful of cases where people were defrauded.

“We wanted to draw attention to this before the situation gets any worse,” she said.

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Okay. I’m all for perseverance, but this is just plain ludicrous. Thinking about it now perhaps the title of this post should rather have been Google Adwords SCAM Part II- because that is exactly what this feels like- A SCAM sequel

If you’re still wondering what exactly it is I’m “jabbering” about, I take it you never read the previous Google Adwords SCAM article.

Well, guess what! I just received another Google Adwords SCAM mail (as I’m sure most of you guys probably have). This time the title of the scam email was;
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“Your AdWords Professional Account has stopped running today!”
(Click on Image below to view E-mail)

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Once can only imagine how many people fall for these scams and even worse the number of people who have lost money to these fraudsters.

HAVE YOU FALLEN PREY TO SIMILAR SCAMS IN THE PAST?

Your story just might help others. Feel free to share with the world by leaving a comment below.

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In addition to harnessing the social graph by targeting your connections’ friends, every “Friends of connection” targeted ad promoting a Page or Event includes social content about a friend’s interaction with your business, amplifying the relevancy of your ad. For example, Priya is a fan of the Nordstrom, Inc. Page. When Nordstrom, Inc. promotes their Facebook Page, they can choose to target ads to Priya’s friends by selecting the “Friends of connection” filter. Priya’s friends will receive the Nordstrom, Inc. ad with the following sentence: “Priya Gupta is a fan of this Page.” Priya’s friends are naturally more interested because Priya’s interaction with Nordstrom, Inc. is showcased directly in the ad.

For some strange reason though, Thunderbird- my default email client, warned that the message might be a SCAM .

Needless to say that I was completely shocked, because I have never known Google to send SCAM messages. As a matter of fact Google, just like many other leading web companies, frowns on SCAM.

But you see, I have come to develop a lot of confidence in Thunderbird, ever since it saved me from making a terrible mistake some years ago.

Now, the body of the message read;

We detected irregular activity on your Google AdWords Account.

Please use the link below to verify your account immediately:

https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=adwords

Sincerley, Google AdWords

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At this point, I was totally confused.  This was the first time I had ever received anything like this from Google. I then decided to investigate the matter, albeit cautiously, so I proceeded to click on the link..

What happened next left me completely and utterly stupefied- clicking on the link took me to the following  URL, and what I saw there shocked the life out of me.

http://www.google-lg.com/accounts/?ServiceLogin?service=adwords&cd=null&hl=EN&ltmpl=adwords&passive=false&ifr=false&alwf=true
&continue=https%3A%2F%2Fadwords.google.com%2Fselect%2Fgaiaauth%3Fapt%
3DNone%26ugl%3Dtrue

The landing page for that URL was so similar to the actual Google page, that it was almost impossible to notice any  discrepancy at first.

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At this point, as you can imagine, I didn’t know what to think anymore.

Had it not been for the fact that trusty old Thunderbird warned me about the impending doom, I just might have fallen for this SCAM hook, line and sinker.

A closer look at the URL in the address bar revealed all I needed to know about this fraudulent move. Let’s do a very simple comparison;

First of all, the original Google Adwords login URL;

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Next, the pseudo Google Adwords URL;

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1. The first thing you’ll notice is that the domain name “google-lg.com” as seen above is completely different from the “google.com” domain we have all come to be so acquainted with
2. Secondly, the original Google Adwords login page at http://adwords.google.com/ is built over the Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS)- basically a combination of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol with the SSL/TLS protocol to provide encryption over a secure login interface

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In a bid to try to determine the source of this SCAM, and be absolutely certain of my assertions; I  went on to do a whois lookup on the pseudo domain. The results only went to allay my fears;

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Surprise (not so) Surprise! The domain name was actually created this morning

Have you fallen for a similar scam in the past, or maybe you received the same email I did. Share your thoughts below.

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Turns out Drew began blaming everything on cancer- “Lost keys, wallet, Phillies losing.   Sixers picking a bad coach. Twitter going down and/or being slow.”

On a lighthearted and optimistic note, Drew setup a website where he invited everyone to
Blame Anything on Drew’s cancer

Why? “Because you have to beat up on Cancer to win… and you can help out.”

I’ll find a nice company or a few who will match each unique person on Twitter who blames something on my cancer using the hashtag #BlameDrewsCancer, with a dollar that will go to the American Cancer Society and Make a Wish Foundation.

Drew’s later started a campaign to raise money for Lance Armstrong’s LiveStrong Foundation, “auctioning the Twitter name @drew to the highest bidder”.

Drew’s story took a dramatically new twist when Celebrity TV presenter Drew Carey bid $25,000 for the name, saying he will donate $1 million to  LIVESTRONG if he gets 1 million followers by midnight on December 31, 2009.

He has also said that even if he doesn’t reach the million dollar mark, he will still donate $1 for every Twitter follower he gets by the end of 2009.

Drew (Olanoff) has since launched a website to promote the campaign to reach the million dollar mark.

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I just followed @DrewFromTV.  Join me and let us help Drew reach the Million Dollar mark and raise $1,000,000 for LIVESTRONG.

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A new study has revealed that online social networks Leak Personal Information to Third-Party Tracking Sites, thereby putting Social Network Users “at Risk of Having Their Identity Linked With Their Browsing Behavior”.

According to the study, co-authored by Craig E. Wills- a researcher at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) – the practices of many popular social networking sites typically make users’ personal information available to companies that track Web users’ browsing habits and allow them to link anonymous browsing habits to specific people.

When you sign up with a social networking site, you are assigned a unique identifier. This is a string of numbers or characters that points to your profile. We found that when social networking sites pass information to tracking sites about your activities, they often include this unique identifier. So now a tracking site not only has a profile of your Web browsing activities, it can link that profile to the personal information you post on the social networking site. Now your browsing profile is not just of somebody, it is of you.

Like most commercial websites, online social networks use third-party tracking sites, called aggregators, to learn about the browsing habits of their visitors. Cookies are maintained by a Web browser and contain information that enable tracking sites to build profiles of the websites visited by a user. Each time the user visits a new website, the tracking site can review those cookies and serve up ads that might appeal to the user.

Though research aren’t exactly sure what tracking sites do with the unique identifiers that social networks transmit to them, there is still “a significant risk of having one’s identity linked to an inaccurate or misleading browsing profile”, especially in a case where the same computer is shared by various users. Even more worrisome is the fact that;

Once someone is in possession of your unique identifier, there is so much they can learn about you”

The new study was released on the 24th of August, and presented recently in Barcelona at the Workshop on Online Social Networks. You can veiw the full study here

Do you feel threatened or concerned by the thought of your personal information being Leaked. Leave a Comment below and let the world know.