Inform offers ' auto-categorizing ' News Search System

Heavy news consumers -- junkies to less sympathetic friends -- have access to thousands of free sources and millions of stories, as Web search, aggregation and syndication tools grow more powerful.

But, despite the sophistication of news reading tools, the search for relevance remains a disjointed, cumbersome affair, lacking in context and often ending in information overload.

On Monday, closely held New York start-up Inform Technologies LLC is set to introduce a context-rich Web news and blog commentary search system that offers automated links to related stories based on the users' reading history.

Inform tags and scores the elements of each article, making them far more searchable than keyword-based news search offered by Google News or the summary searches of a story's first paragraph offered by RSS (Really Simple Syndication) services.

What distinguishes Inform is how it combs through databases to determine key concepts such as topics, industries, people, places and companies mentioned in the story. These key concepts enable it to offer links to closely related articles or ideas.

Inform, located at http://www.inform.com/, aims to provide a publisher-friendly framework that reinforces brands. Inform displays news articles within a central frame lined with links to other sections of the publication, giving the reader the feeling of reading an actual newspaper. Above the story and on the right side, Inform links to related concepts.

The front page is selected by editors. But search beyond the initial page and news is located using computer search algorithms, similar to the way Google News works. Users can use the system anonymously or sign on for deeper personalization.

The system can find relationships between a particular search and related concepts. A search for "Ivory Coast" also returns news on "Cote d'Ivoire," the proper name of the francophone country. Articles concerned with terrorism don't always use the term, Goldman noted.

The system works behind the scenes and needs none of the complex search terms subscribers to premium news databases such as LexisNexis and Factiva must use. LexisNexis is a unit of Reed Elsevier NV. Factiva is a joint venture of Dow Jones & Co. Inc. and Reuters Group Plc.

"We are trying to bring that type of power to users for free," said Goldman, an ex-Lehman Brothers investment banker.

Inform plans to count on targeted advertising revenue tied to consumer's news preferences. Eventually, it wants to offer enhanced services that include subscriptions, pay-per-view articles, archived news and merchandise sales, officials said.

Inform Technologies has 55 employees, half of whom are based in India. These workers have set up a list of nearly 1,000 Web-based news sources and 100 top blogs and are adding several new sources to the system each day, they said.

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Yahoo-Backed Alliance to Open Web Library

Internet powerhouse Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) is setting out to build a vast online library of copyrighted books that pleases publishers — something rival Google Inc. hasn't been able to achieve.

The Open Content Alliance, a project that Yahoo is backing with several other partners, plans to provide digital versions of books, academic papers, video and audio. Much of the material will consist of copyrighted material voluntarily submitted by publishers and authors, said David Mandelbrot, Yahoo's vice president of search content.

Other participants in the alliance announced Monday include Adobe Systems Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., the Internet Archive, O'Reilly Media Inc., the University of California and the University of Toronto.

Although Yahoo will power the search engine located at http://www.opencontentalliance.org, all the content will be made available so it can be indexed by all the other major search engines, including Google's.

The alliance won't include any copyrighted material unless it receives the explicit permission of a publisher or author. That restriction means the alliance is bound to be missing much of the material available in brick-and-mortar libraries.

In an effort to be as comprehensive as possible, Google plans to index millions of copyrighted books from three major university libraries — Harvard, Stanford and Michigan — unless the copyright holder notifies the company by Nov. 1 about which volumes should be excluded from the search engine index.
http://www.opencontentalliance.org

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Windows Security Tips

It's no fun to go into the Windows Task Manager (Ctrl-Alt-Delete) and discover that a bunch of mysterious processes are running on your PC. You may ask yourself how much of this stuff you actually want running. Or more seriously, if anything running on your machine is doing harm.
Even if you run a firewall, use up-to-date antivirus and anti-spyware scanners, and maintain strict download discipline, you can still end up with the latest and meanest infectious agents in your PC. Antivirus and other security tools need frequent and detailed updates to work effectively; they can't block a piece of malware that they haven't seen before.

Safety First

First, and most important, remember this is your PC's operating system you're dealing with, so don't leap into your system files, deleting things willy-nilly as soon as you suspect trouble. If you blow it, you may render Windows unbootable.

Second, cover your behind at every step. System Restore (in
Windows XP and Me) can safely return you to the point just before you crashed. Click Start, Programs (All Programs in XP), Accessories, System Tools, System Restore, select "Create a restore point," and step through the wizard. Make a new restore point before each change.

You may also need to make your system files visible. Open Explorer or any folder window, and click Tools, Folder Options, View. Click "Show hidden files and folders," and make sure that both "Hide extensions for known file types" and "Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)" are unchecked. Click Yes if you see any Windows warnings. (More on warnings later.) Run your up-to-date antivirus and anti-spyware apps. Delete a file only if you strongly believe it's part of a malware infestation.

Find Out What's Running

Now you're ready to determine what programs and services are currently running on your PC. Windows' Task Manager can't authenticate each of your running apps, so download and install a copy of the free Process Explorer from Sysinternals. Process Explorer is the sumo wrestler of Task Manager replacements: It may not look pretty, but it's dependable and very effective. And it does its job for free.

With Process Explorer, you can select any process and see the dynamic link libraries that the program uses. DLLs are executable functions or data used by Windows programs--including malware. You can also find out the hard-drive location of every running program.

Any processes running from the Temp folder should raise a red flag. Spyware tends to install itself in and run from such out-of-the-way nooks as the Temp folder. Likewise, if a running process points to a DLL in the Temp folder, be wary. The only occasion when something should be running from the Temp folder is when you are installing an application that uses an installer program such as InstallShield. In addition to Explorer.exe, Windows XP users will likely find other processes running, including smss.exe, winlogon.exe, services.exe, alg.exe, and lsass.exe. All of these are critical Windows files. Don't delete any of them.

Identify Mystery Processes

You likely have several other Windows program files running in addition to these OS files, including ones for applications and services running in the background, and drivers for your hardware. These files normally start up when Windows does. Examine the Description, Company Name, and Command Line information for each process. You should be able to identify most of the programs associated with processes as software you installed or that was preinstalled on your PC.

Follow these steps to identify all of your running services and background apps. The tricky part comes when something you find doesn't identify itself and doesn't seem to serve a purpose. That's when it's time to look to the Internet for answers.

If I suspect a DLL might be bogus, the first place I check is Microsoft's DLL Help Database, which lets me search for information about a DLL by name. If I suspect a file may be connected to spyware, I'll dig around in Computer Associates' Spyware Information Center. Another great resource is the Pest Encyclopedia at the PestPatrol Center for Pest Research, which provides information about more than 27,000 forms of malware.

If I can't tell whether a file is legitimate, I check the Task List Programs pages at AnswersThatWork.com for info about legitimate software as well as spyware and viruses. Tools such as WinPatrol and Uniblue's WinTasks 5 Professional offer insight into whether a program or DLL is malware. Both offer an online database containing information about thousands of DLLs and apps you might encounter, though WinTasks also can "blacklist" specific processes so that they can't run again.

If you hunt for malware on a regular basis, Neuber Software's Security Task Manager lets you evaluate every executable, driver, or DLL, whether or not it's running.

You can't always trust the first few results when you research an unknown file on the Web. Even if a hundred small sites post data about a suspected piece of malware, one page on a Microsoft site that explains the legitimate use of the file can trump those analyses. The more you find out about a file before you search online, the less likely it is that you'll kill a legitimate program or DLL.
source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ttpcworld/122619;_ylt=AkmmkaODGODK7U_DoB__zvYjtBAF;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

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