The future of the internet is moving closer to scenes in Minority report, as Norway tests contextual advertising for mobile TV.

The trial involves at least two TV channels, and will serve ads according to what viewers watch.

The move is being labelled as “proof of concept” on an advertising ideal, that envisages a future where individuals can be served ads wherever they are.

This is especially the case where local services or products may wish to target potential customers passing by.

The vision is reminiscent of a scene from the film Minority Report, starring Tom Cruise, which involves personalised adverting - such as from Lexus - holographically projected at him as he walks along a corridor.

Whether or not this specific Norwegian trial succeeds, the one thing you can bet on is that it won’t be the last.

A report by the FSA to the government states phishing scams have increased over 8000%.

The figures relate to phishing scams recorded between January and June for 2005 and 2006 - which were tallied as 312 and 5,059.

However, while the banking trade body Apacs has tried to put the increase down the increased detection, the likelihood is that we really are seeing a much bigger volume - as many internet users could attest.

The figures also only cover reported phishing emails - but many phishing attacks are never reported.

The FSA also refused to name the most common targets - which are almost certainly Paypal, followed second by eBay.

A combination of US and UK banks are also frequently targeted.

Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer 7 recently introduced anti-phishing features to help surfers, with the Firefox version being particularly effective at drawing user attention to potential phishing sites.

IE7, on the other hand, frequently pulls up false positives on websites using shared security certificates - something webmasters will notice whenever they try to login to website admin panels such as CPanel.

Overall, the FSA report makes one thing clear - phishing is a recognised industry that is not going away anytime soon.

However, the increased vigilance of online service provides and anti-phishing tools means that internet users are increasingly better protected.

Forrester has begun a damage limitation exercise, to distance itself from media reports about the fall in iTunes sales.

A Forrester Research report on a sample of credit card transactions had stated “that iTunes sales had dropped in the first six months of this year”.

Journalists used the information in concert with Nielsen data to determine a claim of a 65% fall in iTunes sales over the year.

The resulting story then fell into confusion as different analysts stepped in with conflicting reports on the revenue strength of iTunes.

While Forrester were keen to originally report that the study “tarnished” the iTunes story, they are now belittling their study as “a simple little report” and accusing UK media of being unreasonable in covering it.

It’s fair to say that reports on samples need to be statistically relevant, but the Forrester report - which originally intended to slate Apple’s success in it - was always going to be picked up by media somewhere.

Additionally, for a report apparently of little statistical value, it’s interesting that Forrester’s continue to sell the 14 page document for $249.

The bottom line is that Forrester’s have cocked up.

They attempted to diminish Apple’s standing by concluding that 20 iTune sales per iPod was poor performance, but their attempted criticism blew up in their faces.

The resulting fracas wiped over $2 billion from Apple’s share price, and now leaves Forrester’s desperately trying to pin the blame elsewhere.

In the meantime, as some “outfit called the Register” pointed out, Forrester’s just aren’t sure how to spin the story anymore, variously declaring that growth has either slowed or levelled off, in contrast to its own study.

In the meantime, the lesson to be learned is for analysts to be more careful on what they actually report - because media may just quote them on that.

Microsoft has secured an agreement with PC manufacturers to add a change at the BIOS level to improve security in Windows Vista.

Microsoft’s Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) feature could make automated, large-scale attacks significantly more difficult.

ASLR relies on Data Execution Prevention (DEP), another new Vista security feature, in order to function fully. DEP is also known as No Execute (NX). PC manufacturers have the ability to disable DEP at the BIOS level, and may choose to do this if they are concerned about application compatibility.

Now, however, all major PC makers have agreed to enable DEP by default.

ASLR involves arranging the positions of certain data areas, such as the position of libraries, heap and stack, randomly in a process’s address space. This means that security attacks, which rely on these components having predictable target addresses, have a low chance of success when ASLR is in place.

ASLR has been used previously in the OpenBSD Unix variant and the PaX and Exec Shield security patches for Linux. Most newer PC processors support DEP. However, DEP is currently switched off in Internet Explorer by default because it can make plug-ins fail.

Security researcher, Hendrik Weimer, has reported that anti-virus software could be bypassed by exploiting MIME encoding.

MIME - Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions - is used to code mail so that it can be read by SMTP - Simple Mail Transport Protocol.

According to Hendrik, malware could exploit the way MIME is encoded in such a way that security applications would consistently fail to detect it.

It’s not the first time MIME has been fingered as a security risk - as long ago as 2004, concerns were raised by security consultancy Corsaire, who found ambiguities in MIME that required significant patching.

However, it remains to be seen whether security developers will be able to patch the latest issues with MIME - before malware writers are able to exploit it.

Media coverage of a reported fall in iTunes sales has raised controversy, with Apple claiming no such fall exists.

The controversy followed the publications of details from a confidential study conducted by Josh Bernoff, for the Forrester Group, which tracked a sample number of online transactions at the iTunes store.

The conclusion was that iTunes revenues had fallen 65% over the year.

However, after the story was reported, Apple apparently countered the claims - but refused to provide any sales or revenue details.

To complicate matters, analyst group Piper Jaffray has now stepped in to report that sales had actually increased.

The overall situation is simply one of confusion - with different analysts groups using different sets of conflicting data - and Apple refusing to clarify matters with facts.

Ultimately, we’ll have to wait until Apple sees fit to release sales and revenues figures for iTunes before the issue can be resolved.

In the meantime, media sources continue to report on the original Forrester story, much to the chagrin of Apple fans.

Yahoo! and IBM have teamed up to deliver a free enterprise search application for SME’s.

The IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition will apply IBM’s search technology but use an interface from Yahoo!.

The aim is to undercut products from rival companies such as Microsoft and Oracle, by delivering it for free to companies unwilling or unable to spend $30,000 on IBM’s high-end Omnifind software.

The new product may not be so powerful, but Yahoo is almost certainly hoping to leverage the software to help get more search and enterprise users into Yahoo!, especially as the product aims to link to Yahoo! online resources.

Just how effective the strategy may be remains to be seen, though.

Expectations that Apple may announce an iPhone in January may be dashed.

Suggestions and rumours that Apple were going to launch an “iPhone” with Motorola - a mobile device merging phone and iPod technology - have been alive for years.

Speculation became heightened that the long-awaited device would see a launch at this coming January’s MacWorld Expo.

This was encouraged by Apple’s demonstration of iTV in September - a home theatre content streaming device - and patent application in August for a combined music player/phone combo.

However, market analysts think Apple fans are losing touch with reality.

CIBC World Markets doesn’t believe we’ll see an iPhone until nearer the middle of 2007, and other analysts agree.

Compounding the problem is that according to a Forrester’s Research, sales from Apple’s iTunes online store have tanked over 2006, losing 65% of overall revenue due to declining sales.

So while Apple may not be in a hurry to acknowledge an iPhone is coming, they will need to get their act together to regain momentum in the digital entertainment market.

The big danger is, any iPhone will deliver too little too late in the face of rampant expectation.

ADDED: Update the to story here: iTunes fall raises controversy

IBM have developed a memory chip that is 500 times faster than Flash memory.

It also uses only one half the power to write it as well.

The results were achieved using Phase Memory, which developers at IBM, Macronix and Qimonda, hope will be the successor to Flash.

Additional storage is going to be a prime requisite in multi-media rich mobile applications, and IBM think they’re onto a winner here.

The Phase Memory cell requires a complex semi-conductor alloy, which was developed using mathmatical models to track the predicted behaviour of phase memory cells.

However, much as though we all applaud them for the current advance, the big test comes not just from having working applications in consumer technology.

It also comes from manufacturers opting to use it in the first place.

Toshiba and SanDisk have already invested $2.6 billion in a join Flash memory development plant, and Intel and Samsung are also chasing successors.

May the best chip win.

Microsoft has added VoIP to the list of applications to be supported by its Office Communications Server 2007.

It represents the latest in a string of core enterprise applications to be added to the server, such as audio & video webconferencing, plus support for applications from non-Microsoft companies, such as Siemens, NEC, Nortel, and Avaya.

A beta version has already been seen to around 2500 IT staff for testing, and will allow them to integrate VoIP into Office 2007 applications, such as Word and Outlook, simply by clicking on a name.

The idea is to increase business productivity by increasing the ease of communications within the workplace.

While the business dream is a fully-integrated multi-media office to increase efficiency, we may yet find a lot of it is simply used for chatter.

Next staff won’t have to simply have to forward Joke of the Day emails to the rest of the office - they’ll soon be able to tell it, too. :)

Research in Motion (RIM) - the company behind the iconic Blackberry - is taking Samsung to court after the rival company released rival products, branded with “black” in their name.

Proceedings were filed after Samsung released two products targeted at the same high-end markets as the Blackberry.

The BlackJack, and Black Carbon, are both smart phones released by Samsung.

However, RIM contends that the use of “black” in their name is a wilful attempt to try and confuse the well-known Blackberry brand with Samsung’s own newer products.

Well, let’s just see if consumers could become possibly confused - below, 3 different series of Blackberry, and 1 Blackjack:

Hmmm…

The University of California, Los Angeles, has sent out warnings to nearly 1 million students and staff that their personal details may be in the hands of criminal gangs.

It comes after the discovery that the UCLA’s central database had been hacked into since October 2005 - and the intrusion wasn’t discovered until the end of November this year.

It is unknown just how much information may have been used - but as the database contained Social Security numbers, dates of birth, home addresses, and other contact details, the potential seriousness for those concerned cannot be underestimated.

So far the scale of the issue makes it the single largest security breach on a higher education institution to date.

The UCLA is keen to promote the seriousness with which it is treating the issue, and online security in general.

However, university computers in the USA are commonly hijacked and used as Open Proxies by malicious users, often to send email spam.

A key complaint for this is that university IT staff try to keep their servers more open for use than would normally be acceptable in professional business networks.

Overall, the warning is clear - where any significant storage of personal and confidential information occurs, significant security measures are required. And that includes constant security monitoring.

Israeli start-up, Yoggie Security Systems, is releasing a device to to provide corporate level security protection for laptops.

The Gatekeeper is a credit card-sized device that can easily interface with any laptop, without the apparent need for updates, software installs or similar.

Configued for Windows XP users at present, it promises to provide the following security protections:

• firewall
• VPN client
• anti-virus
• anti-spyware
• anti-phishing
• four proxy systems
• intrusion detection
• intrusion prevention
• security engine

Yoggie also states that the device will not require manual management, and will adapt to security threats as they happen.

Overall, this may read like a promo piece, but it really does sound like a great all-in-one security solution for a laptop device.

For those of us who find themselves using their laptop a lot for work purposes, it could provide a powerful solution - presuming the company’s claims are justified.

UK inflation ballooned to 2.7% in November, from 2.4% the previous month.

The figures - reported by the ONS - show inflation at its highest rate for almost a decade.

The rise continues against a backdrop of repeated inflationary warnings through the year, coupled with an every weakening global economy.

The latest news increases speculation that the Bank of England will raise interest rates early in November 2007.

Overall, the news isn’t entirely surprising - we’re still coming down from a peak in oil prices that helped drive inflationary pressures.

However, even when warning signs became apparent over the previous 12 months, the Bank of England has been repeatedly slow to respond.

Instead it has been seen to opt for a “boom and bust” cycle to squeeze as much as it can from the UK economy, rather than apply a more sensible and balanced cap on growth.

This is especially in the case of property prices, which have been allowed to unecessarily spiral out of control.

While many warnings have been sounded over the past couple of years about a potential recession, it’s worth reminding ourselves that this still remains a very real possibility in the near future.

The US Nasdaq exchange has launched a hostile takeover bid for the London Stock Exchange (LSE).

It comes after more than a year of takeover offers and merger propositions from a range of companies, along with two previously rejected offers from the Nasdaq.

At present, the LSE is advising shareholders against Nasdaq’s hostile offer of £12.43/share, stating that this undervalues the company.

Whatever the outcome of this, one thing remains certain - the London Stock Exchange is considered a prize acquisition that few corporations can afford to buy.

The Nasdaq bid required a $5 billion loan to make, but even that may not be enough for one of the hottest properties in the equities market.

Penalty charges applied by banks may be illegal.

Currently, the six major UK banks generate around £4.5 billion through penalty charges.

However, under the 1999 Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations Act, penalty charges may only cover administrative costs, and not be for profit.

At present, no major bank will provide an actual administrative cost figure for penalty charges, and none have contested claims of charging for profit in the courts.

The issue has recently seen exposure by the BBC’s Money Programme, which covered the story of law student Stephen Hone, who was successfully able to claim back £840 in penalties charged by the Abbey through the small claims court.

The Office of Fair Trading is currently investigating the issue of bank penalty charges.

Overall, I think few people will be surprised by the suggestion that UK banks have been profiting from penalty charges, so the outcome of the OFT investigation should certainly be interesting.

In an interview with Google business product manager, Shuman Ghosemajumder, finds that invalid clicks detected by Google were less than 2% of total..

This means that Google currently detects that on average, around 2% of clicks purchased by Adwords advertisers as potentially fraudulent, and therefore invalidated before the advertiser even sees them.

The interview also showed that Google has four levels of fraud detection:

1. Search & Adsense filters
2. Adsense flagging system
3. Manual review
4. Requested investigations

where the first two are automated procedures, and the last two performed by Google Staff.

While there’s a lot of contention over the figures - after all, Google cannot state how much clickfraud they can’t detect - it does provide further transparency on the PPC process.

This is important because a key concern of advertisers is that search engines are not being transparent enough about how they handle clickfraud.

However, while PPC fraud still offers lucrative incentives for organised groups, especially via botnets, advertisers should always remain aware that there could still be fraud problems.

Therefore it remains a point of common sense that business owners with a large PPC spend should apply strategies and tools that may help not simply clickfraud, but also their PPC spend.

The story of the battle over Sex.com continues.

The domain was originally registered by Gary Kremen in 1994. However, in 1995, Stephen Michael Cohen hacked the computer system for domain registrations, moved it to himself, and then proceeded to make millions each year from the sale.

Kremen was only finally able to get it awarded back to himself in 2001 - whereupon Cohen ran off to Mexico, before being dragged back to the US in 2005.

However, now the situation is that although Cohen was ordered to pay $65 million to Kremen, nothing has been paid.

In fact, remarkably, Cohen says he’s suffered amnesia and can’t remember where he put the cash. Aside from the fact it’s distributed among shell companies and bank accounts around the world.

Unable to hold him punitively for contempt, Cohen has now been released by US court authorities, in order to locate the money - and ordered to return to a court hearing in the US on February 26th to hand the $65 million over.

Coincidentally, on the day of Cohen’s release, his Mexican lawyer - possibly the only other man alive who may know where some of it is stashed - survived an assassination attempt.

Meanwhile, Kremen has sold up from Sex.com to recover his $65 million - but whether Cohen has memory enough left to remember to return to hand it over remains an unwritten chapter in an otherwise remarkable story.

An argument among XML developers has seen a splinter group reject W3C Schemas for the Relax NG standard.

Main criticisms raised of the W3C schema focus on coding difficulties, and potential interoperability problems.

Proponents of RELAX NG - which stands for REgular LAnguage for XML Next Generation - point out that it is already a recognised ISO Standard: ISO/IEC 19757, Part 2.

Already some developers have already been coding XML in Relax NG, before compiling to W3C Schemas.

Overall, while this may seem like distant debate, the actual coding platform for XML is an important issue.

XML formats - especially RSS and Atom - are becoming an increasingly common part of computing, especially for communications between websites.

And with Microsoft and linux providing increasing support for XML between computing platforms, the debate as to which XML standard is followed could have widespread repurcussions far into the future of modern computing.

However, as pointed out elsewhere, the core issue deciding the matter isn’t which set of schemas developers are happy with - as much as which standard business is going to support.

Linux users have voiced concerns about Novell’s planned support for Open XML in Open Office.

Since Novell signed an agreement with Microsoft, there has been a general perception that Novell have sold out.

The main accusation from vocal critics is that the agreement simply turns Novell - and their Linux Suse products - into a way in which to funnel open source users into Microsoft’s proprietary systems.

The recent announcement by Novell that they will be releasing a new edition of Open Office - and provide support for Microsoft’s Open XML - has helped amplify these criticisms. This is especially as Microsoft apparently have no plans to support ODF and OOXML in Microsoft Office - even though both are used in Open Office.

However, despite this, other Linux users simply ask what’s so wrong with supporting OpenXML. After all, isn’t cross-platform compatibility to be embraced?

Overall, it shows the high degree of distrust of Microsoft Corp, but it remains to be seen what the advantages of the Novell-Microsoft relationship are by its fruits, rather than disadvantages through speculation.