Anti Virus Protection From Your Internet Service Provider

Getting anti virus protection has always been something that’s been left to you, the private citizen trying to protect his interests with a product chosen from among dozens on the market. But now, there’s a new trend that appears to be starting up – with at least one player to begin with. Comcast, the cable TV and Internet service provider is starting to roll out nationally, a service that will monitor your connection for you for any activity that matches the profile of what botnets do. A botnet is a kind of malware that is placed on hundreds of computers connected to the Internet. They are controlled by one entity at a remote location that bids them to do all kinds of undesirable things – like sending spam mails abroad.

Should this worry you? Since regular antivirus protection keeps an eye on your computer by completely keeping your hard drive under its control, does this mean that you’re going to have Comcast snooping into your hard drive? Not exactly. And even if the company tried, it couldn’t get away with it. This plan is different. Botnets are was most dangerous threats on the Internet today. It can be very difficult for an individual to catch a single bot on a single computer. Because they are designed to kind of change form rapidly so as to evade detection by regular anti virus protection. They’re not exactly viruses. Viruses are supposed to just attack your computer, bring on a certain kind of damage to your computer and to propagate. Botnets aren’t designed to do any one thing. An infection just places one invisibly on your computer, and it keeps in touch over the Internet with the designer who made it. The designer can manipulate to do his bidding. It’s pretty science-fiction like stuff.

At first, Internet service providers like Comcast tried to battle the problem by giving their subscribers free antivirus. But regular anti virus protection didn’t really succeed in tackling the problem, so frequently do bots change to evade detection. So, now they want to try to protect you – on the network level. When the Comcast central server sees that there is a certain kind of behavior coming in from all kinds of customer computers, it’ll be able to spot a pattern and raise an alarm. There are other things it can do too. If a botnet tries to take over a customer’s computer to be able to turn it into a spam-sending machine, the server will be able to notice that there is an unusual amount of e-mail activity there. And it will be able to shut it down.

So what will Comcast do once it finds out that your computer is infected by a bot? They’ll charge you $100 to clean your system up.

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iSurabaya.net: Directory Service from Surabaya

Indonesia has some service related to location with various concepts. For those with LBS there are Yahoo! Koprol, Bouncity, Tasterous, and some directory service such as BandungReview.com, Urbanesia and many more. For Yogyakarta there are PersonaFlag and T4nya.

Now in Surabaya there is a directory service focusing on data and location map with location reviews. iSurabaya, the Surabaya’s directory service that not only provides location information but also allow users to give reviews about the location. From my first experience, this service has a quite unique and appealing UI but the UX needs more improvement in order to support first time user.

You can search for many places in Surabaya by typing the keyword or viewing the available categories. The search result will be displayed in form of map that will explain the location you are looking for. Registered user only can search places in Surabaya and its surrounding areas and give reviews but not able to add their own important places.

“Adding-place feature can only be accessed by the shop owner, not a user. It is ‘suggest place’ to be precise. We are going to conduct a survey since many shops in Surabaya opens and closes quickly. We need surveyor to gain a detail data such as opening hour, payment method, price, whether it is a halal food or not, etc (for a restaurant)”, the co-founder of iSurabaya, Johan Sugiono explained to DailySocial via YM.

Adding-places feature in iSurabaya by using the surveyor is the same with Kurator from Koprol but it has some T4nya.com elements for supporting location search in Surabaya. On their homepage, iSurabaya gives you the information that this application will be available for Android, BlackBerry, and iOS. Johan also points that the application for Android, Blackberry and iOS has just finished their development and now is on their bug-fixing stage. From its official blog, iSurabaya explain that they has release the mobile web version that can be accessed through featured phone.

iSurabaya is really helpful in locating places when you are living or just visiting this city. But I still found some bugs while trying it. Actually it is a common thing since iSurabaya has not officially launched and still on its beta version. iSurabaya obviously needs input from DailySocial reader who has tried this service. Therefore you may post your command about iSurabaya on this article.

You may visit iSurabaya official blog or Facebook Page or follow their official twitter @isurabayadotnet to observe the upcoming progress of this application.

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Waiting for Startup and Service in Music Segment to Continue Growing

In my opinion, the growth of music industry should be in line with the internet development. Both music and internet have been very close companies for a writer and music listener who always connected to the cyber world. So how to fulfill this two areas of enjoyment at once, especially using Indonesia’s local application and web-based service?

I see that music segment in the internet is still managed by telco – provider – label, focusing in music download and online music store (RBT – full track). On the other hand, there are also some media with music content, including the news of the musicians themselves. Some other segments are supplement for their printed version.

Other than those types may have the amount increased such as startups or another independent media. There are many media outside the mainstream that covers many sidestream music growths such as Musikator, YesNoWave, Deathrockstar, MusicBandung, GeekBible. YesNoWave has become an online music distributor or netlabel. Other examples of netlabel are Invasi Records, Reload Your Stereo, Stone Well Sound Records, Inmyroom Records, Hujan! Rekords, Mindblasting and StoneAgeRecords. This means there are enough recources for music content.

Netlabel for me is quite interesting especially in adding various musical colors. Netlabel provides media for “room” musician, home recording or sidestream musician who need free distribution channel for their music. This type of free download can be an alternative for spreading music and a solution for piracy issue. Some band may provide their music to be consumed for free through free download.

Talking about music will also speak about label and mainstream musician. If it is related with the internet, it obviously has something to do with piracy. Few weeks ago there was movement called Heal Our Music, together with the Ministry of Communication and Information (Depkominfo) in order to block the access to sites that provide pirated mp3 download. Also the government plan to block 4shared for their illegal music download activity. Even though I myself disliking it, the first plan could be a good start as far as they block the right website and no further plan (for the second plan, I totally disagree).

Mainstream industry, business, piracy, they will all connected to the music license. So how can the startups or anyone else develop the music-based service? There are some service have tried to provide this, both for mainstream and sidestream, for example there are ToneHighWay, Gamelan, NyanyiYuk and Musikkamu.com which softlaunched last month. Also there are some other service filling the music segment.

In the overseas area there are Last.fm, TheSixtyOne.com, Spotify or Turntable.com, etc. Some of these application not available in Indonesia.

Music industry needs refreshment as well as their listeners music taste. This can be an opportunity for startup or any other developers to create service, either in website or music mobile application. This off course would not be easy especially to cooperate with music label and music industry. But I see another opportunity such as a music player with sidestream band collection just like ToneHighWay, where in this case we must put more attention on the music or song collection. We can also add some social elements to connect with the other listeners so playing song can be more exciting, or some facilities such as music player for free download music since there are many musicians allow their music to be downloaded freely.

I also think that music industry – the musicians, labels, or another related party – needs some renewal for their business development strategy. Still they have to maintain their music quality and provide spaces for any kind of music.

This may end up like a classic causality dilemma between chicken and egg, who will start first? The labels, musician, developers, startups or the music lovers who want new ways in enjoying music? One thing for sure is that the opportunity in music segment is as popular as the book segment, comics, and social element.

Note: This is not a complete article with detail discussion about music and internet. There are still much additional information about some applicable service that allows combination between music and internet. You may write down your comments on the space below. This article is not about the illegal download and site-blocking. Those issues may be discussed in other articles.

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