| More DroidDream Details Emerge: It was Building a Mobile Botnet New details have emerged regarding the purpose behind the DroidDream malware that was found in over 50 applications in the Android Market last week. After a brief investigation, Google opted to use its "remote kill switch" this weekend to wipe the vicious apps off end users' mobile phones. Google also promised that going forward, it was "adding a number of measures to help prevent malicious applications using similar exploits from being distributed through the Android Market" in the future. But how dangerous was DroidDream, after all? What was it up to? And was it able to inflect any real damage to end users' devices before it was removed?
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Skype for Windows to Start Displaying Ads The popular VOIP service Skype will start displaying advertising in its Home tab beginning this week. The company has just announced the change, insisting that "the Skype experience is our first priority." The move to bring advertising to the Skype environment comes as the telephony company makes its move for a planned IPO this year. While Skype has an estimated 177 million active users, only around 8.1 million are paying subscribers. The addition of advertising will give the company another revenue stream.
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Google Responds to Android Malware with Remote App Removal Last Tuesday, news broke that over 50 applications in the Android Market were found to contain malware that could be exploited to gain root control over a phone and steal sensitive data. Google removed the applications from the market but offered no public comment about the issue, and so questions remained about what would happen to the 50,000 some-odd apps that had already been downloaded. On Saturday evening, Google announced that it had initiated the "remote application removal feature," that allowed it to wipe the malicious apps from infected Android devices without any additional action on the part of users.
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The MicroInterns: Middle-Schoolers Visit TechStars, Get a Lesson in Startup Life Although we talk a lot about preparing students to face the needs of the global economy, it's not clear we're doing enough to teach kids about entrepreneurship and to expose them to careers that involve building a company - not just working for one. When we do talk about entrepreneurship and education, it's often in terms of college-age, not younger students. If you need convincing that it's never too soon to start exposing students to entrepreneurship, then I recommend you meet the MicroInterns. They're a group of middle-schoolers from Sts. Philip and James School in St. James, New York. With their technology teacher George Haines, the MicroInterns took a trip to the Big Apple two weeks ago for the first of what will hopefully be a series of hands-on learning experiences about entrepreneurship and startup life. There, they spent the day at TechStars' newly-opened New York City office.
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Cartoon: Edge Cases Hard to believe it's already been a year since I posted my farewell to Internet Explorer 6. (By "farewell" I meant "Just frickin' die already.") My post was prompted by the announcement that support was ending for IE6 on Google Apps; since then, IE6's decline has accelerated, dwindling into low-single-digit percentages of browser visits (if that) on most of the sites I manage. And this week, the latest heavyweight jumped on the let's-kill-IE6 bandwagon: Microsoft, which launched the Internet Explorer 6 Countdown site. It sets a target of reducing IE6 usage to less than 1% worldwide.
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Check Out the Companies That Make ReadWriteWeb Possible Our readers know ReadWriteWeb as the blog that's ahead of the technology curve. Our sponsors know us as that, too. Once a week we introduce our sponsors to our readers and let them know a little more about who they are and what they do. You can say thanks to the companies that make ReadWriteWeb happen by tweeting them (see the link below each sponsor) or following them using our Twitter list. Interested in being a ReadWriteWeb sponsor? Our readers are smart, tech-savvy decision makers; 40% have a graduate degree or PhD, and over 45% play a key role in information technology purchasing decisions. More than 1 million people on Twitter follow us to stay abreast of the latest Web technology trends from around the globe. To find out more about our sponsor packages, visit our advertising page or email our COO.
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