Chances are good that someone on your shopping list is pining for an iPhone for the holiday season. If you know of such a person, then we’ve got a surprise Black Friday deal for you. AT&T is offering refurbished 16GB iPhone 3Gs for $49 for new customers. That’s the shipped price, and they’re even waiving the activation fee, normally $35.

The refurbished units have the same warranty as new units so you don’t have to worry about getting someone junk. As an owner of a refurbished 3G I can attest to the quality of the devices.

Of course a two-year contract with AT&T’s iPhone plan is required, but anyone who’s asking for an iPhone probably already knows this. Currently, the 16GB black is out of stock, but the 16GB in white is still available.

by Matt Hickey

news.cnet.com

Google’s gobbling up another advertising company, the search giant has announced. Google will acquire Teracent, a Silicon Valley startup specializing in “intelligent display advertising.” Yep — that means more online ads customized specifically for your visit.Teracent, of course, is far from Google’s first foray into the online advertising world; as most people who use the Web can’t help but know, Google-served ads are practically everywhere these days. Here’s an overall look at Google’s ad-related acquisitions and how they play into your online life.

Teracent: Google’s Display-Advertising Acquisition

Reading the way Google describes Teracent, it’s not hard to understand how it’ll fit into the company’s advertising ecosystem. “Teracent’s technology can pick and choose from literally thousands of creative elements of a display ad in real-time — tweaking images, products, messages or colors,” Google’s official blog posting explains. “These elements can be optimized depending on factors like geographic location, language, the content of the website, the time of day or the past performance of different ads.”Teracent’s technology is expected to become available to advertisers using Google’s Content Network and DoubleClick program. Yahoo, incidentally, announced an advertising partnership with Teracent earlier this year. There’s no word yet how the Google acquisition could affect that relationship (though “badly” might be a logical guess).

Google’s Past Ad Acquisitions

The Teracent acquisition comes just two weeks after Google announced it was buying mobile advertising provider AdMob — a deal worth a whopping $750 million in stock. AdMob focuses primarily on display ads and mobile application ads. Translation: Get ready to see a whole lot of Google-powered advertising on your mobile phone.

Prior to AdMob, Google’s ad-related acquisitions had revolved around the Web and even the airwaves. (Some say the G-gang is also aiming for in-brain advertising, though I’m pretty sure those rumors are unfounded.) So what are some of the other noteworthy purchases, and how have they affected you? Time for the quick tour:

• DoubleClick: Bought for $3.1 billion in 2007, DoubleClick delivered a massive network of advertisers into Google’s already-strong advertising system. You can thank DoubleClick for all the Google-run display and rich-media ads around the Net — prior to DC’s entry, those had been a relatively small part of Google’s advertising empire.

• AdScape: In-game advertising firm AdScape entered the Google domain in March of 2007, drawing speculation of massive Google-led virtual worlds on the way. To its credit, Google did launch Lively last summer. It took only a matter of months, however, for the service — which, by some accounts, had turned largely into a virtual teenage groping ground — to get shut down.

What’s AdScape doing now? Good question. It’s somewhere in Google’s advertising empire, just presumably in a quiet corner. One day, though, the big G’s targeted advertising may pop up in a game near you.

• dMarc Broadcasting: Even further down on the list of not-quite-so-successful ad attempts is dMarc Broadcasting, bought by Google in January of 2006. The company was meant to help Google get into radio advertising, and it did — for a short while.

Earlier this year, the Google radio ad idea died, effectively sending dMarc to the gDump and Google ads off of America’s airwaves.

• Applied Semantics: Ah, the one that started it all. Google grabbed Applied Semantics in 2003, marking the beginning of the AdSense program and Google’s status as a serious advertising player. You know all those little text ads that pop up on Google searches and on countless other Web sites? You can thank Applied Semantics for getting that ball rolling and providing the foundation for the various Google ads we see today.

Google Acquisitions: The Next Steps

So who’s next on Google’s acquisition wish list? Possibly Microsoft or Digg, if you buy into these satirical suggestions (I wouldn’t advise it).

In reality, though, the one safe prediction to make is that we’ll see plenty more Google purchases soon, and odds are, it won’t be long before one of them brings another new twist to the company’s massive ad network. If you want anything more specific, well, you can try Googling it — but I somehow doubt you’ll find the answer.

JR Raphael

www.pcworld.com

Microsoft Monday night issued a security advisory that provides customers with guidance and workarounds for dealing with a zero-day exploit aimed at Internet Explorer.

Earlier in the day, the company said it was investigating the incident which emerged over the weekend when someone published the exploit code to the Bugtraq mailing list. By Monday night, Microsoft switched gears and issued the advisory. There have not been any active exploits of the vulnerability reported so far.

Microsoft released Security Advisory 977981, which includes workarounds for an issue that exposes a flaw in Cascading Style Sheets that could allow for remote code execution. Vulnerabilities that allow remote-code execution generally result in patches rated as critical by Microsoft.

The advisory confirmed the vulnerability affects IE 6 on Windows 2000 Service Pack 4, and IE 6 and IE 7 on supported editions of XP, Vista, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008. Microsoft’s said users running IE 7 on Vista can configure the browser to run in Protected Mode to limit the impact of the vulnerability. It also recommended setting the Internet zone security setting to “High” to protect against the exploit. The “High” setting will disable JavaScript, which currently is the only confirmed attack mode.

Microsoft said IE 5.01 Service Pack 4 and IE 8 on all supported versions of Windows are not affected.

For an attack to work, the hacker would first have to get his victim to visit a Web site that hosted the exploit code. This could be a malicious Web site set up by the hacker himself or it could be a site that allows users to upload content.

Another way cyber criminals have launched this type of attack, however, is by hacking into legitimate Web sites. Earlier this week, for example citizen’s band radio vendor Cobra Electronics disclosed that it had been hacked in June, most likely by a professional hacker who had used the site to download malware to customers.

Microsoft did not say whether it would patch the flaw during its next regularly scheduled set of security updates, due Dec. 8.

by John Fontana

www.pcworld.com

Data Robotics, makers of the popular Drobo ( Macworld rated 4 out of 5 mice ) “storage robot,” is expanding its product line with two devices, the Drobo S and the Drobo Elite.

The new Drobo S and Drobo Elite models offer more storage, faster performance, and added security to an already impressive line. The new devices also put Drobo in a new market for the company, small business.

The new Drobo S offers huge capacity and speed upgrades over the current Drobo model. The Drobo S sports an additional drive bay over the current Drobo, offering five drive bays for up to 10TB of storage (using five 2TB drives). Additionally, the Drobo S has eSATA connectivity to supplement the two FireWire 800 ports and a USB 2.0 port.

Data Robotics claims that the Drobo S is 50 percent faster than the current four drive Drobo while offering 90 percent of the performance of the Drobo Pro, the high-end Drobo model launched last April. Data Robotics claims that during tests, the new Drobo S achieved speeds averaging around 80 megabytes per second–blazing speeds if proven accurate.

But perhaps the most impressive new feature of the new Drobo S is its data security features. According to Mark Fuccio, Senior Director of Products and Markets at Data Robotics, the Drobo S offers a “Data scrubbing” feature that enables the drive to read every block of data and repair any data corruption it finds. This self-healing ability will hopefully assuage the fears of IT professionals and small business owners who need to keep their data readable and secure. To that end, the added dual drive redundancy feature of the Drobo S provides even more reliability to the Drobo unit. “If two drives fail, you’re still covered,” explains Fuccio. You can turn on or off this feature through Drobo Dashboard.

The second new product, the Drobo Elite, offers multi-host support with LUN affinity for consolidating storage across multiple servers. Data Robotics claims the new dual gigabit ethernet ports “offer best-in-class performance.” According to Fuccio, it’s designed for multiple workstations that are using the Drobo at the same time. The press materials boast it’s the “most straightforward iSCSI SAN management ever.”

The Drobo Elite has a faster processor than the Drobo Pro and offers an eight drive capacity with single or dual drive redundancy. This means the Drobo Elite can have a storage capacity of up to 16TB. You can create smart volumes that will expand as your storage needs do. According to the press materials, it’s possible to have up to 255 smart volumes. When you create a volume with a specific capacity in mind, Fuccio explains that storage is not actually allocated to a volume until it’s written to it. Thus, you can get space back if your expectations for how much space you’ll be using doesn’t meet with reality. According to Fuccio, through the progression of their line, Data Robotics has been “removing limitations of traditional RAID” configurations, effectively empowering users to have more control over their data.

Practically speaking, this means multiple workstations can have ownership over data via the Drobo Elite. If you have five machines in your workplace, you can configure your Drobo Elite to assign a volume for each machine. Each volume will mount locally on their desktop, ensuring individuals have control over their own data while still centrally storing it.

The Drobo S without drives is priced at $799; populated with five 2TB drives, it’s $1799. The Drobo Elite in its base configuration will sell for $3499; populated with eight 2TB drives, it’s $5899.

Data Robotics’ Drobo has proven to be a hit among creative professionals and IT managers. With the company selling over 85,000 units in two years of sales, the consumer base for the product has proven to be robust and diverse.

by Chris Holt

www.pcworld.com

Klausner Technologies, a company with 25 patents related to visual voicemail technology, filed a lawsuit charging Motorola and Research In Motion with infringing its patents.

The suit follows others the company has filed against a long list of companies including Google, LG Electronics, Cox Communications, Apple, Verizon, Vonage and Qwest. Verizon, Apple, AT&T, eBay and Sprint Nextel are among 24 companies that now license the technology from Klausner.

Klausner charges Motorola with using its patents without permission in the new Cliq phone, which runs the Android operating system.

Klausner also says RIM is using its patents without permission in the 3G BlackBerry Bold 9700 phone. Other BlackBerry models offer visual voicemail also, but they are covered under licenses granted to mobile operators, Klausner said.

The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, seeks damages and an injunction against continued use of the patents. It accuses both Motorola and RIM of infringing on two Klausner patents.

Visual voicemail, popularized in the iPhone, lets users view a list of their voicemail messages and choose which to listen to.

Motorola and RIM did not immediately respond to a request for comment by press time.

by Nancy Gohring

www.pcworld.com