Posted by
Shokhi Shah
at
3:17 AM
.
SAN FRANCISCO, May 7 — Photobucket, a four-year-old, rapidly growing Web company, is in advanced talks to be acquired by Fox Interactive Media, a division of the News Corporation, a person briefed on the negotiations said Monday.
Photobucket allows its users to store photos and videos and then easily drop them into their pages on prominent sites like Facebook, eBay and particularly MySpace, which is also owned by the News Corporation.
The deal is not yet complete, but the parties have ironed out major issues and are focusing on finer points, according to this person, who said the price could be as high as $300 million. The person asked not to be further identified because of the sensitivity of the talks.
Representatives of MySpace, Fox Interactive Media and Photobucket all declined to comment.
News of the discussions was first reported earlier Monday on a Silicon Valley blog, Valleywag. Photobucket said last month that it had hired Lehman Brothers to explore a possible sale of the company.
Photobucket, which has offices in Denver and San Francisco, has catapulted over older sites to become the largest and fastest-growing photo-sharing service on the Web. Unlike rival photo sites such as Kodak Gallery, Shutterfly and Flickr, which is owned by Yahoo, Photobucket positioned itself as a tool for people using sites like MySpace, rather than a place to get prints made or to interact with other photographers.
The company has had the kind of booming growth that make larger media companies envious. A year ago, it said it had 14 million members. On its Web site on Monday, Photobucket cited 41 million users.
The site is free for basic use, but charges $25 a year for a premium subscription that includes extra storage space and the ability to store videos more than five minutes long. It also displays advertisements to users when they manage their accounts.
The company already has a symbiotic, if sensitive, relationship with MySpace. According to the research firm Hitwise, for the week ended Saturday, 60 percent of Photobucket traffic came from MySpace users who had placed their photos and videos on Photobucket. It was also the third-largest destination for people leaving MySpace, after Google and Yahoo.
“There’s clearly a synergy between these two sites,” says Bill Tancer, general manager of global research at Hitwise.
That close relationship has made MySpace uncomfortable in the past.
Last month, MySpace blocked slide shows and videos stored on Photobucket, saying the company was violating its terms of service by embedding its own advertisements in the media files. After a week of discussions, the two companies resolved their differences and MySpace removed the block.
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Posted by
Shokhi Shah
at
3:17 AM
.
Hundreds of inaccurate patient records have been created every day due to a fault on the controversial new NHS computer system, it has been claimed.
The problem affects patients in Greater Manchester who have hospital appointments booked via the online system.
NHS Connecting for Health, which is overseeing the £12.4 billion upgrade of the patient records system, stressed the fault would have no impact on patient care.
An article in Computer Weekly magazine revealed the problem arose after computer experts installed a software upgrade.
This caused the computer to automatically create a new blank patient record without checking if one already exists raising fears doctors may be presented with the wrong information.
A spokesman for NHS Connecting for Health said the problem was expected to be fixed in the next few weeks.
He said: "Although comprehensive testing is undertaken prior to the upgrades taking place, it is not unusual for these kinds of upgrades to identify teething problems in the early stages following implementation.
"We estimate that around 400 duplicate patient records might have been created each day. However, the system is being continually monitored throughout each day and where a duplicate is identified data is being merged to form one single record for each patient."
He added: "Prior to the application of the permanent fix, an interim solution has been put in place to identify the duplicate records and correct them. This has now been put in place with the full agreement of those organisations affected and will have minimal impact on the users of the system and no impact on the delivery of patient care."
Among the places affected by the problem are the University Hospital of South Manchester Foundation Trust and PCT Clinical Assessment Centres in Greater Manchester.
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Posted by
Shokhi Shah
at
3:15 AM
.
Yesterday, I wrote about how the FBI is warning us that personal details can be stolen (i-jacked) when using public computers. This occurs using crimeware, previously installed on a public computer, logs the keys you are stroking and sends the information (electronically) to criminals.
It can be dangerous to look at any of your online financial information on these (public access) machines.
When writing about this phenomenon, I remembered that even using your personal computer at a public place with a wireless connection can expose a person's personal and sometimes, financial details.
Just the other day, Martin Bosworth, over at Consumer Affairs, wrote an excellent piece covering this danger, where he stated:
Sending unencrypted information over any unfamiliar network can turn your computer into an open book -- with pages full of your personal information.
Many of these connections are appear to be legitimate connections because they are spoofed (camouflaged to appear as if they are a trusted connection).
Spoofing a connection, or site isn't very hard to do. They simply copy and transpose pictures and statements (words) from legitimate sites to their own. The Artists Against website has a portal, where you can see fake websites that are up and running on the Internet, here.
Martin's article contains some excellent tips on how to navigate the murky waters of public hot spots, safely.
They can be viewed, here.
Interestingly enough, wireless technology, isn't only used to compromise individuals. In the recent TJX data breach, where some are saying 200 million records were stolen since 2003, reports are saying the data was stolen, using wireless technology.
It's being reported that this was accomplished from a car with a laptop. Driving around with a laptop, using other people's wireless connections, is sometimes referred to as "war-driving," which is my new word for the day.
Joseph Pereira (Wall Street Journal) wrote about this (courtesy of the Northwest Florida Daily News), here.
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