Brian King

Technology can help mitigate the new dangers presented by online dating and the "hook-up" culture of today's youth, as well as the long-present threat of sexual misconduct by trusted authority figures, according to three companies presenting at the DEMO conference on Tuesday. Date Check requires users to input the name or phone number of the man or woman in question. One of the companies, Date Check , lets people do quick background checks on potential dates and mates from their mobile phones. "Look up before you hook up," said John Arnold, executive vice-president of Intelius Inc. , which is offering the service. Date Check will then search Intelius' vast database and rate the person on a number of factors, including: After digesting that information, users can rate the potential mate on a scale of one to five kisses.

Another Web site, GelatoDating.com , also lets people check out their prospective dates beforehand. Date Check is even more necessary today because of the popularity of online dating, and today's mobile populace, Arnold said. "I do love it," Anu Shukla, founder and CEO for Offerpal Media, Inc., said during an on-stage interview at DEMO following Date Check's presentation. "I could see giving it to all of my dating friends or nieces." The app runs on the iPhone now, and will come to Android and BlackBerry smartphones next month. Gelato aggregates all of the online activity of a person - blog posts, Tweets, FaceBook posts, and other things that can be found manually via Google - into an easy to read "lifestream," says Gelato's founder, Steve Odom. Gelato lets people sign up and control their "lifestream" profile. This lets users "get away from static dating site profiles, to something more authentic," Odom said. They can limit which FaceBook status updates are displayed by Gelato, as well as which Tweets.

It costs $8 per school employee, Origer said. A third company, MicroAssist Inc., is debuting an e-learning service called EthicsEd. It is a training curriculum on topic such as online sexual misconduct that is sold to school administrators and designed to be viewed by school teachers and youth coaches. "It helps the schools protect the children," said Chuck Origer, vice-president of business development at MicroAssist.

Shortly after European regulators opened an antitrust probe into Oracle's pending acquisition of Sun Microsystems, SAP CEO Léo Apotheker wrote Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, asking for a meeting to discuss the merger and "other open issues" between the vendors, according to a Wall Street Journal editorial published late Thursday. The letter was sent Sept. 15 and consisted of the following brief statement, according to the Journal: "As you know, we have significant concerns about Oracle's proposed takeover of Sun. SAP spokesman James Dever confirmed on Friday that Apotheker had written Ellison "seeking a dialogue," but declined to provide a copy of the letter. We renew our invitation to meet to attempt to resolve our concerns and other open issues between our companies.

Oracle has said its damages could top US$1 billion. Please let us know if and when you would like to meet." The WSJ's editorial referred to speculation that the European Commission is blocking the Sun acquisition due to lobbying efforts by SAP. It also noted that one major "open issue" between the companies is the intellectual property lawsuit Oracle filed against SAP in connection with TomorrowNow, a now-shuttered subsidiary of SAP that provided third-party support for Oracle applications. Meanwhile, the timing of Apotheker's letter implies that he "either believed, or wanted Oracle to believe, that he could smooth the merger review if he so desired," the editorial alleged. Meanwhile, the European Commission is reportedly planning to issue a formal "statement of objections" against the merger. The insinuations raised by the WSJ are baseless, according to Dever. "I disagree with the assumptions and inferences that were made," he said. "It certainly overstates what SAP can and is able to do." "The fact is we have a deep relationship with Oracle that goes beyond a lawsuit," including many mutual customers, Dever added. "We're partners as well as competitors." An Oracle spokeswoman didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. If that happens, Oracle plans to mount a vigorous offensive campaign with the aid of senior US political officials, IDG News Service reported this week.

Twitter warned users Tuesday of a new phishing scam on the social networking site. The message reads, "hi. this you on here?" and includes a link to a fake Web site designed to look like a Twitter log-in page. It's the latest in a series of scams that have plagued the site over the past year, designed to trick victims into giving up their user names and passwords. "We've seen a few phishing attempts today, if you've received a strange DM and it takes you to a Twitter login page, don't do it!," Twitter wrote on its Spam message page.

After entering a user name and password, victims enter an empty blogspot page belonging to someone named NetMeg99. Neither of these pages appears to include any type of attack code, but both should be considered untrustworthy, according to Sophos Technology Consultant Graham Cluley. "It seems like this was a straightforward phishing campaign, rather than an attempt - at this stage at least - to spread virally," he said via email. Once a user has been phished by the attack, the criminals are then able to direct message all of the victim's contacts with the phishing spam. "These sort of things have been happening for over a year on Twitter," Cluley said in an interview. Victims get these direct messages only from people they follow on Twitter, so they seem more believable than other types of spam. Hacked Twitter accounts are a great launching pad for more attacks, Cluley said. "We don't know precisely what they're going to do in this case, but often they will send spam messages to advertise a particular site." Because about a third of users have the same passwords for all of their online activity, criminals can also use the same log-in information to try to get into other Web services such as Gmail or Yahoo, Cluley said. "If you've fallen for one of these traps, don't just change your Twitter password; change your password on every Web site you use," Cluley siad. "Use non-dictionary words and use something that's hard to guess." The Twitter attack comes as Facebook users are also under siege. When victims try to open an attachment that supposedly contains their new password, they end up running a Trojan horse program, called Bredolab, that then installs unwanted software on their PCs.

Security researchers say that a spam botnet is has sent out hundreds of thousands of fake password reset messages.

Starting in 2012, users of certain GPS devices will no longer get traffic updates, weather reports and other data because Microsoft is discontinuing its MSN Direct service. That program was the first to use the MSN Direct service to send information like news headlines, stock quotes, weather and traffic information to special wristwatches. Microsoft has posted a notice on its MSN Direct Web site informing users that the service will be available only until Jan. 1, 2012. MSN Direct is most often associated with Microsoft's Smart Watch program.

MSN Direct uses FM radio frequencies to deliver the data. GPS makers Garmin and Pioneer sell a range of units that can receive MSN Direct data. But Microsoft says that there are better ways to send such information today. "Leveraging unused FM radio spectrum to broadcast data represented a step forward in 2004, however, many choices today including WiFi, cellular, FM RDS [Radio Data System] and other digital networks are now readily available and are continuing to grow in popularity," according to the MSN Direct Web site. "Despite good initial MSN Direct adoption, these alternatives have significantly reduced demand for MSN Direct service." After it launched the watch program, Microsoft began marketing the MSN Direct service to other devices, including GPS units, weather stations and even coffee makers. Garmin did not immediately reply to a request for comment about whether it will try to replace the MSN Direct information service. Bill Gates, Microsoft's founder, seemed to be a big fan of the watches, launching the program at the Consumer Electronics Show. Microsoft said that products that support the service will continue to be available "for some time." Some people may be able to return a device because of the impending end of service, however. "If service beyond 01/01/2012 is a concern, please see your retailer for information on device returns," Microsoft wrote on the Web site.

In 2004 after MSN Direct first launched, a Microsoft executive said there were thousands of people subscribing to it for their watches. However, the Smart Watch never really took off.

Windows 7 officially ships on Thursday, which means end users and administrators running Windows XP (and to a lesser extent, Windows Vista) have some interesting decisions to make. Win 7 performance is better than Windows XP SP3 and Vista SP2, but only if you run 64-bit Win 7. One potential gotcha: Much of the performance gains are reliant on having up-to-date 64-bit hardware drivers and components. Test of Windows 7 To help you make those tough choices, here are 10 things you need to know, based on our hands-on testing of Windows 7. 1. Windows 7 is faster. That may mean buying new hardware, as older hardware may not have the necessary components and updated drivers. 2. Buy Microsoft's Desktop Option Pack.

MDOP contains important components, such as Microsoft's Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (DaRT), which helps users and support personnel deal with catastrophic machine failures. It's only $10 a seat, and well worth it. There's also Advanced Group Policy Management, which allows for active and "pushed" policies to users and groups. And there's Asset Inventory Service, which tallies software inventories for both compliance and provisioning purposes. This feature can prevent damage from zero-day failures and fine-tunes policies for system admins.

Other MDOP components address application and desktop virtualization. 3. Win 7 offers a clean start There's a school of thought that says, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." In other words, why not stick with good old XP? Our answer is that where Windows on the desktop is needed, Win 7 is the way to go. The user interface has improved dramatically with Win 7, we found that it's Microsoft's best behaving operating system since Windows 2000, and migrating to a fresh environment rids machines of the clutter that has built up over the years. 3. Upgrading from XP on the same hardware will be tricky If you're considering upgrading from XP to Win 7 on the same machine, Microsoft doesn't directly support this, and recommends that a fresh installation be made on new hardware. Win 7 has the inherent architectural changes that secured XP, but it also doesn't have the estimated 1,300 patches (including Microsoft Office patches) that XP SP3 has. Any attempt to upgrade will move the directory structure known as Documents and Settings into the new, Unix-like 'user' directory structure, and registry settings for Win 7 will break many applications. Win 7 also needs at least 5GB of extra space to perform an in-place upgrade from XP temporarily.

Many applications will need post-Win 7 upgrade adjustments, or even re-installation. Of course, it is possible to upgrade. It's good but not infallible, we found, especially when upgrading from XP 64-bit editions. We tried it and found that upgrading a single machine from XP could take up to two hours. 5. Consider Windows Upgrade Advisor Microsoft is offering a beta free download of an upgrade tester called the Windows Upgrade Advisor. Because it's beta, some of its foibles may be fixed by the time it's offered as a production app. But, of course, the Laplink software isn't free, so that's an additional expense and an additional complication that you would be adding to the equation. 7. Check for hardware compatibility Fresh Win 7 installations on new hardware will likely be successful if the hardware has Vista support, as most Vista drivers can be used successfully in lieu of Win 7 drivers, and drivers are the biggest portion of compatibility - unless running XP is desired.

It's installed, examines a machine, and annotates a list of what will and won't work in an upgrade from XP and Vista editions. (However, Microsoft makes clear on its Web site that Upgrade Advisor is recommended only for Vista users and that XP users should buy new hardware.) 6. Another option: Third-party upgrade tools Third-party tools like Laplink Software's PC-Mover Windows 7 Upgrade Assistant allow you to upgrade from XP to Win 7 on the same hardware. Remember that a 64-bit installation is what we recommend, and the drivers need to be 64-bit to gain best performance. Some vendors, such as HP, have Win 7-specific information on compatibility, while others have promised Win 7-specific drivers — especially for 64-bit kernel use. 8. User Access Controls are much improved Underneath the surface of Win 7 is a reformed kernel that's similar to Vista's in construction. A trip to a hardware vendor's Web site to explore it for specific machine drivers is worth the effort. Userspace is now separate from kernel space in strong ways, a policy that shocked and rocked the world at the advent of Windows XP SP2, and was then manically manifested in Vista's User Access Controls (UAC). The UAC was designed to isolate bad behavior from viruses/malware from the basic components of the system and apps running above userspace. This same protection can be found in Win 7, but it won't drive you as ballistic as the constant nervous messaging to the user found in Windows Vista.

This isolation alone stopped many forms of badware. By comparison, it's calm and its UAC messaging can be largely disabled. 9. Virtualization allows XP on Win 7 If you buy Windows 7 64-bit Professional version and higher, then XP can be run on Win 7 in a virtual machine. XP must still be secured separately in this configuration as though it were 'stand-alone'. 10. Go for 64-bit We can find no reason to recommend running Win 7 on existing 32-bit hardware as the 32-bit version of Win 7 has little performance advantage over Vista or XP in our comparative tests. That's if you have a V/VT-compatible CPU in your machine and you remember to add additional memory (a gigabyte will often do) for running an XP session. The 64-bit version, however, can be much faster.

He can be reached at thenherson@extremelabs.com. Henderson is principal researcher at Extreme Labs, Inc.