Green: News

Thursday, 23 June 2011

The British Library & Google To Make 250,000 Books Free Online [News]

class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/google_logo_300.jpg" alt="" />Google announced on Monday that it is soon to begin digitizing 250,000 books from class="vt-p" href="http://www.bl.uk">The British Library, making them free to view online. The works, which span 170 years of history, will be carefully selected historical out-of-copyright publications, with Google responsible for handling and scanning costs.

Once complete, users will be able to peruse the collection on class="vt-p" href="http://books.google.com">Google Books and The British Library’s website, with Google providing downloadable versions and the ability to conduct full text searches. The materials include pamphlets, books and periodicals from 1700-1870 in a variety of European languages.

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Chief Executive of The British Library, Dame Lynne Brindley said in class="vt-p" href="http://pressandpolicy.bl.uk/Press-Releases/The-British-Library-and-Google-to-make-250-000-books-available-to-all-4fc.aspx">a press release:

In the nineteenth century it was an ambition of our predecessors to give everybody access to as much of the world’s information as possible, to ensure that knowledge was not restricted to those who could afford private libraries. We are delighted to be partnering with Google on this project and through this partnership believe that we are building on this proud tradition of giving access to anyone, anywhere and at any time.

Over the process of the digitization, around 40 million pages will have to be scanned. Unsurprisingly, we’ve had no sniff of an estimated completion date.

Source: class="vt-p" rel="nofollow" href="http://pressandpolicy.bl.uk/Press-Releases/The-British-Library-and-Google-to-make-250-000-books-available-to-all-4fc.aspx">The British Library/>/>Need Assistance? Ask questions to MakeUseOf staff and thousands of other readers on href="http://www.makeuseof.dev/answers/" target="_blank" >MakeUseOf Answers!

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Dropbox Accidently Drops Passwords For Four Hours [News]

class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/dropboxsecuritythumb.jpg" alt="" />class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/online-storage/">Online storage service class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-applications-dropbox/">Dropbox recently confirmed that an error made it possible for users to access accounts without the correct password. All a user needed to know was the email address tied to the account he or she wanted to access, as any password – including a blank one – would allow access. The security flaw was introduced at 1:54 PM pacific daylight time and was live for nearly four hours before being patched at 5:46 PM. According to Dropbox, the problem was introduced into the authentication system during a code update.

The company stated that only 1% of its accounts were accessed during the security vulnerability’s window and that an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the error is now underway. Although the 1% figure doesn’t sound serious, Dropbox has about 25 million users, so this means that about 250,000 accounts were accessed while the issue was live.

class="aligncenter" style="border:1px solid black" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/dropboxsecuritybug1.jpg" alt="" width="570" height="307" />

Flaws of this nature are a serious problem for Dropbox, as the service is used by many organizations (including MakeUseOf) to share information related to ongoing projects. The service has come under fire in recent months for a number of security related issues, including class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/dropbox-accused-lying-users-data-security-news/">misleading statements about file encryption that eventually class="vt-p" href="http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/228018/dropbox_drops_the_ball_on_data_security.html">resulted in a formal complaint by the FTC.

There are a couple of things you can check to make sure that your Dropbox account was not compromised during those critical 4 hours.

First of all, check class="vt-p" href="http://www.dropbox.com/events">this page which goes into detail about all the recent activity in your Dropbox account. It will show you if someone has removed or added any files to your account without your knowledge and permission, as well as if any of your files were shared with anyone.
class="vt-p" href="http://www.dropbox.com/account">This page shows all the computers and mobile devices which are currently linked to your account. See a computer or device you don’t recognize? Or has one of your computers or mobile devices been removed? Then someone has probably accessed your account. Boot them off and change your password immediately.

Source: class="vt-p" href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20072755-281/dropbox-confirms-security-glitch-no-password-required/">CNET

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