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It’s sort of like toppings. Piling sausage, mushrooms, peppers, and bacon on top of a crappy slice of plain pizza does not make it a good slice of pizza. But a great slice of no-frills tomato pie? Absolutely priceless.

Domino’s, meanwhile, has revved up its online ordering system so that if you order a pizza you can track it on Facebook and Twitter, among other things.

So what I mean to say is that I appreciate good pizza, and I don’t give a hoot if the ordering process is spiced up with Twitter coupons, Facebook Connect tracking updates, a Ustream feed in the kitchen where it’s made, or GPS chips to track it on Google Latitude. Social media does not make your food taste better, and as I recall from the last time I had some, both Domino’s and Pizza Hut could use a leg up in the quality department.

I smell a trend, and it smells like greasy pepperoni: Pizza chains Domino’s and Pizza Hut both put out announcements on Thursday concerning their new social-media publicity strategies. In other words, there are new ways to bring the habit of stuffing one’s face with mediocre pizza into one’s ever-increasingly digital lifestyle.

Pizza Hut, for one, will be giving away free orders of “Stuffed Pizza Rolls” (Did you just hear that little cry? It was my arteries screaming for mercy at the mere thought of this) on July 4 to its Facebook fans and Twitter followers via a promotional code. This is, the pizza chain has said, to commemorate the milestone of one million Facebook fans as well as the hiring of its official “Twintern,” an intern whose official job is to maintain the @pizzahut Twitter account.

(Credit:
Andrew Mager)

Let me be clear about this. I live in New York, where we are very serious about the quality of our pizza. In fact, in this city if you make gross pizza you pretty much have to give it away for free, and not just as part of a one-day Twitter gimmick. Case in point: Crocodile Lounge, a bar on East 14th St. where if you buy a beer, they give you a voucher for free pizza. That is the truth, assuming you can elbow your way past the inebriated frat boys in order to reach the pizza pickup station in the back of the bar. Trust me, nobody would eat that pizza if it weren’t free.

Critics already say we’re hooked up to Facebook and Twitter as though they were feeding tubes, so I guess it’s appropriate. But all in all, neither campaign is as clever as that time that Burger King promised a free Whopper to people who could prove that they had deleted ten people from their Facebook friends list. (Facebook got mad and disbanded the campaign.)

The lone moderate patch affects Windows Office and could enable information disclosure if exploited.

Among the critical patches one each affects Windows, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Host Integration Server, and Microsoft Excel. All four could enable remote code execution if exploited.

On Thursday, Microsoft announced four security bulletins for next week. The announcement is intended as a heads-up for IT departments before Patch Tuesday. Four fixes are considered critical, six important, and one is moderate as ranked by the software giant.

Starting this month, Microsoft is sharing the technical details of new vulnerabilities to give software developers a catch to update affected products before the public announcement. And on Tuesday, Microsoft is expected to provide with each bulletin an “exploitability index” to help system administrators prioritize the patches.

Of the important patches, all six affect Windows, and could enable remote code execution or elevation of privilege if exploited.

Updated 4:50 p.m. PDT with Google comment.

Officials at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission are wondering if there was any improper conduct behind the online release last weekend of a 6-year-old news story that lead to a 75 percent drop in the stock of United Airlines on Monday, according to The Wall Street Journal
(subscription required).

The SEC has opened a “preliminary inquiry” into the online distribution of a Chicago Tribune article from 2002 about United Airlines’ bankruptcy filing, people familiar with the matter said.

The Tribune Co. said in a statement on Wednesday that it believes a single visit to the archived story on the site of its South Florida Sun-Sentinel newspaper during a low-traffic time period resulted in the computer system displaying it under a tab titled “Popular Stories Business: Most Viewed.”

The article was then picked up by Google News and displayed with no indicate of the original date of publishing. It was later distributed by Bloomberg.

Google’s automated search agent “Googlebot” misclassified the article because it is unable to differentiate between breaking news and frequently viewed stories on the newspaper Web sites, the Tribune said, adding that it had asked Google to stop crawling its sites month ago, but the process had continued.

Asked for comment, Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker said: “The claim that the Tribune Company asked Google to stop crawling its newspaper Web sites is untrue.”

Google’s crawler had no reason to suspect that the article was old, according to a Google News blog that was first posted on Monday and updated on Wednesday. “The article failed to include a standard newspaper article dateline, but the Sun-Sentinel page had a fresh date above the article on the top of the page of “September 7, 2008″ (Eastern),” it said.

This is the latest in a series of false market rumors. The SEC brought a case earlier this year against a short-seller who allegedly spread false information about a pending takeover, and is also investigating short-selling of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers stock, according to the Journal.

John Reed Stark, head of the SEC’s office of Internet enforcement, declined to comment on whether the agency is investigating the posting about United Airlines, which emerged from bankruptcy in 2006.

“Anytime anyone spreads false information over radio, TV, Internet message boards, or chat rooms about a public company that will raise questions as to whether someone is committing securities fraud,” he told the paper.

In case you forgot the names of all four Monkees, WikiFM automatically puts artist bio information side-by-side with your Last.FM player.

(Credit: WikiFM)

Ever catch yourself hearing a new band on Last.fm, then popping open a new browser tab to look them up? WikiFM saves you a step by creating a two-frame page that keeps your Last.fm online radio player on one side, and an automatically populated Wikipedia biography page in the other.

The advantage of viewing Wikipedia’s artist biographies over Last.fm’s puny artist pages is the sheer depth of information (Tom Jones was born in Pontypridd, Wales?). The WikiFM page layout isn’t the most elegant treatment we’ve seen (we’ve got FoxyTunes for that), but sometimes a blunt tool is all you need.

The Last.fm player embedded in the WikiFM’s left browser pane lets you plug in any Last.fm username or call up an artist, tag, group, or specific Last.fm page of your choice. If you give it a try, come back and fill us in on a random band factoid in the comments section.

(via Listening Post)

I finally got my hands on a MacBook Air. Though I’m sure I’m repeating what some others have said already, I needed to state one thing before I do a more extensive evaluation: this unbelievably thin notebook is rock solid.

NOTE: This is not an official CNET review. And is not by any means a full review. Just a quick first-look. Official CNET product review is here.

One of the concerns I had–and I’m sure I’m not alone–is whether a notebook this thin will be flimsy and overly delicate. The answer is a resounding no. It feels more solid in my hands than the rugged, well-built, 1.6-inch-thick HP Compaq nc8000 I have used for many years (since 2003).

2003 HP business notebook and MacBook Air

(Credit:
Brooke Crothers)

The reason for this is the Air’s aluminum construction and light weight. In other words, when you pick up the Air, you sense an almost perfect balance of sturdiness and weight–despite the fact that the Air exceeds the dimensions of a typical, more-compact subnotebook.

Update: One other quick impression. No excessive heat to speak of. Another challenge for designers of ultra-thin notebooks is how to effectively dissipate the heat that is generated by the core electronics, including the main processor, the graphics silicon, and hard drive. Apple has succeeded admirably. Admittedly, I am using the solid state drive (flash memory) version of the Air so there’s no hard drive heat to worry about and I don’t play games (some gamers have cited heat issues). Impressive nonetheless. More later.

My former co-worker, Aaron Newton, is launching this week the product he quit CNET to build: Iminta (as in, “I’m inta,” get it?). It’s a service that aggregates all your social network feeds into one place, so your buddies can more easily keep track of what you’re doing online, and vice versa.

Since Aaron’s a buddy, I can’t give this product a fair review (see TechCrunch for an opinion on the service itself). However, I did want to point out that Iminta has a cool thing going for it: you can put your followers in groups and specify which group sees what. For example, if you don’t want your family to see all your Del.icio.us updates, you can remove that info from your family feed.

Variable privacy: You control who can see what.

When I covered Yahoo’s centralized geolocation data service, Fire Eagle, I noted that it had a similar feature: You can let different followers see your data in different resolutions. For example, you could let your family know what town you’re in but not precisely where, while making you exact location visible to you co-workers, but only during work hours.

Iminta puts your pals' social activities into one ginormous feed.

Facebook and other social sites that let you group contacts have crude versions of variable privacy.

I really like the idea of variable resolution for social feeds. Maybe that’s because, as an old guy (as opposed to a gen-MySpace guy), I think privacy matters and that it’s not an all-or-nothing concept.

I don’t think any system has yet made variable privacy manageable. However, it’s a new idea, so I wouldn’t expect it yet. But if the idea of the implicit social network takes off (see Delver and my take on self-building social sites), we are going to desperately need variable privacy.

See also: Profilactic and Plaxo.

Brightcove, the maker of online-video tools, released its new Brightcove 3 video publishing platform on Monday.

Some of what the new package offers is improved work flow for media companies, a video player that is easier to customize and greater bandwidth delivery, the company said in a statement.

Among the companies using Brightcove 3 are Showtime, Lifetime and FearNet. The platform serves 135 million visitors per month.

StumbleUpon’s new link shortening site called Su.pr made its public (yet private) launch today. Similar to Bit.ly, it shortens URLs and lets users track where they end up, along with stats on who’s clicked on them. It also brings along StumbleUpon’s software-free toolbar which lets users hop to both recommended and random links.

However, the real appeal of Su.pr is that it gives each shortened URL the potential for greatness. URLs can be seeded not only to Twitter and Facebook, but also into StumbleUpon’s content pool where they can be discovered and promoted by its users. Just like Digg’s much loved and hated URL shortening service, this system brings the promise of a longtail from your link showing up as a related item. But in Su.pr’s case, the goal isn’t to get on the front page as much as it is to become a site that users are recommended to visit, or discover through organic ratings.

Su.pr lets you post links at a later date if you don't feel like shortening something right away. You can also track activity on links after you've shared them with the public.

(Credit:
CNET)

Compared to Bit.ly, Su.pr’s stats tracking tools are a little more basic. It doesn’t grab things like metadata from the URL’s source site, or pick up all the places where the link has been re-posted. Although it shows you how many times your link has been re-tweeted on Twitter, and given a rated review on StumbleUpon. It also breaks down traffic sources into two sets of data. One is for the people who click on the link from outside of StumbleUpon. The other is for organic traffic from the site.

In my brief test of the service earlier today, all of my traffic came from outside sources. But if you’re a heavy StumbleUpon user with lots of friends on the service, this can be a good way to figure out where those clicks are coming from.

Su.pr has also got some really smart tools for publishers. The first is a way to publish shortened URLs at a later date and time. So say I have a story that’s going up in two hours. I can grab that URL before it’s live, shorten it, and set it to post to Twitter, Facebook, and StumbleUpon the second it goes live.

Soon it will also let publishers use the shortening service while maintaining domain branding. So instead of using su.pr/XXX, I could set it up to use cnet.com/XXX. It will also be able to be inserted into your site’s code, so that each URL you link to is automatically shortened. It does this while maintaining a special domain re-direct that allows search engines to pick up on those source links, even though they’ve been shortened.

When released, these extra features will set Su.pr apart from the rest of the pack. In the meantime, it’s a pretty snappy URL shortener that, like the DiggBar, makes it easy to share links with what is potentially a very large audience with little effort.

If you’re interested in using Su.pr ahead of when it opens up to everyone, you can sign up using the invite code suprww. There are only 250, so get ‘em while they’re hot.

Apple’s recent announcement of the
iPhone application software development kit is drawing criticism from Net neutrality activists. While the company has previously angered many for its practice of bricking unlocked phones, it is now being accused of anticompetitive behavior.

Could Apple take Comcast’s place as the poster child for the Save The Internet movement? Furthermore, by blocking competing Web browser
Firefox, could Apple draw Microsoft-like antitrust lawsuits?

Control

Thursday, Apple released its eagerly awaited iPhone software development kit. Putting an end to hopes of user choice, Apple has declared that the only way for users to install applications will be through its App Store via the iPhone or iTunes. If the company doesn’t like an application, it will be removed from the store, with no other way for a user to install it.

In a Q and A session with reporters, CEO Steve Jobs was asked if voice applications such as Skype will be permitted. Jobs replied by saying that VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) will be allowed when the iPhone is using a WiFi connection, but forbidden over AT&T’s cellular data network. How this will be enforced remains unclear. At the very least, Apple can blacklist from iTunes any application that doesn’t play nice over AT&T’s network.

In addition to the anti-VoIP rules, Apple seems to have also set its sights on the Firefox Web browser. Deep in the legal agreement for developers, Apple states:

“No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple’s Published APIs and builtin interpreter(s)…An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise.”

As a member of the Firefox development team has already noted, this is a big deal.

Both the Firefox and Opera Web browsers, which compete with Apple’s pre-installed
Safari browser, are forbidden as they support hundreds of user-created add-ons. Furthermore, the Web browsers support Javascript, which is a key component of most Web 2.0 content. Javascript is an interpreted programming language, and thus forbidden as per Apple’s terms of service.

Also banned from the iPhone: programming languages Ruby, Python, Perl, and Java. Quake, the video game engine ported to practically every platform (including Google’s Android), as well as Microsoft’s Word, Excel, and .NET are also persona non grata.

Sun announced last week that it is readying a version of Java for the iPhone. Once the restrictive iPhone license was pointed out, Eric Klein, the vice president of Java marketing at Sun, backpedaled somewhat on his own personal blog, writing that “I’ll leave those (legal) questions to another forum, but we really do want to deliver a JVM if at all possible.” This alone should make for an interesting fight, as Sun is no stranger to filing antitrust complaints.

Net neutrality complaints

Apple’s blocking of Skype and other voice applications raises the same Net neutrality issues as Comcast’s blocking of BitTorrent. Critics have argued that Comcast does this because the P2P video apps compete with the cable giant’s own video programming.

Apple is now engaging in a similar practice, blocking any VoIP application that competes with the voice services offered by AT&T–the company with which Apple signed an exclusive five-year contract.

The company will be unable to borrow Comcast’s line, and claim that the restriction is “reasonable network management.” After all, watching a couple YouTube videos eats up far more data than a VoIP call.

This is not the first time that a company has attempted to block VoIP traffic to protect its own business model. Madison River Communications, a North Carolina ISP was fined and forced to change its behavior by the FCC when it started blocking VoIP providers like Vonage in 2005.

Paging Congressman Markey

Apple’s sexy iPhone has attracted the attention of those in power before. Congressman Ed Markey (D-Mass.) held up an iPhone during a congressional hearing last year, before he sharply criticized the practice of locking such devices to a specific carrier’s network.

Just a couple weeks ago, Markey introduced the Wireless Consumer Protection and Community Broadband Empowerment Act of 2008, which would require wireless carriers to sell unlocked phones without contracts for reasonable prices. In introducing the bill, Markey clearly had the iPhone in mind.

Markey’s other well-publicized cause is Net neutrality. The congressman spoke at the Comcast/BitTorrent FCC hearing just a couple weeks ago. He has previously held hearings on the subject, and introduced legislation in February to stop ISP data favoritism.

With Apple’s recent adoption of Comcast-style filtering, Markey can combine two of his passions: wireless phones rules and Net neutrality regulation.

Antitrust

Microsoft’s bundling of Internet Explorer back in the late ’90s led to major antitrust lawsuits brought by Department of Justice and 20 different states. While consumers were free to install Netscape and other competing browsers, it was the preferential treatment of its own browser that lead to legal problems for Microsoft.

Apple is now engaged in an even more egregious practice. It bundles the Safari browser with its iPhone, it makes it impossible for consumers to remove the browser, and the company now forbids competing companies from making their browsers available to the millions of iPhone users. Firefox has over 40 percent market share in some European countries, but it forbidden from making a version for the iPhone platform.

If Apple doesn’t rapidly backtrack on its anti-Firefox and VoIP rules, I predict that it will soon be looking at investigations from multiple government agencies, both here in the U.S. and EU. The FCC and Congress will most likely look into the Net neutrality complaints, while the European antitrust regulators will probably take a keen interest in the Firefox issues. This would, of course, not be the first time that the Europeans have investigated Apple’s iTunes store for dirty tricks.

Disclosure: I worked for Apple as a summer intern in 2005. While I love Markey’s positions on Net Neutrality, he did publicly call for my arrest back in 2006. He changed his mind two days later.

The United Kingdom has the most surveillance cameras per capita in the world. With the recent news that CCTV cameras do not actually deter crime, how can the local town councils justify the massive surveillance program? By going after pooping dogs.

In a recent interview with The Guardian, the head of the Metropolitan Police’s Visual Images Office explained the failings of CCTV:

“Billions of pounds has been spent on it, but no thought has gone into how the police are going to use the images and how they will be used in court. It’s been an utter fiasco: only 3 percent of crimes were solved by CCTV. There’s no fear of CCTV. Why don’t people fear it? (They think) the cameras are not working.”

Conjuring up the bogeymen of terrorists, online pedophiles and cybercriminals, the U.K. passed a comprehensive surveillance law, The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, in 2000. The law allows “the interception of communications, carrying out of surveillance, and the use of covert human intelligence sources” to help prevent crime, including terrorism.

Recent reports in the U.K. media indicate that the laws are being used for everything but terrorism investigations:

Derby City Council, Bolton, Gateshead, and Hartlepool used surveillance to investigate dog fouling. Bolton Council also used the act to investigate littering. The London borough of Kensington and Chelsea conducted surveillance on the misuse of a disabled parking pass. Liverpool City Council used Ripa to identify a false claim for damages. Conwy Council used the law to spy on a person who was working while off sick.

Privacy activists were, unsurprisingly, up in arms. Shami Chakrabarti, director of human rights group Liberty, told the BBC that “you don’t use a sledgehammer to crack a nut, nor targeted surveillance to stop a litter bug.” Liberty and other groups have called for a complete review of the law and its unplanned uses.

Is this surprising? Not really. Just as we’ve seen in the U.S., once law enforcement and intelligence agencies are given new unchecked powers, abuse tends to happen. The more secretive and unchecked the powers, the more widespread the abuse. (See: Warrantless wiretapping, detainee torture, COINTELPRO, The CIA’s Operation Chaos.)

Thanks to Dizzy Thinks for the tip.