SpeedPlexer Blog

As news of Michael Jackson’s death began to spread with internet speed last week, the huge numbers of people looking for information about the pop star overloaded several Web sites and services.

AIM, the instant messaging service operated by AOL, even collapsed for about 40 minutes during the hoopla, though they later said they were doing a scheduled update. The company called the day “a seminal moment in Internet history.  We’ve never seen anything like it in terms of scope or depth.”

Twitter had thousands of real-time tweets about Michael Jackson every minute. “We saw more than double the normal tweets per second the moment the news broke — the biggest increase since the US presidential election (and Twitter has grown tremendously since then),” one of Twitter’s co-founders, Biz Stone, told The New York Times Bits blog.

Many were braced for something similar on Tuesday, when the memorial and tribute service was held in Los Angeles to celebrate the pop icon. But while the event drew millions of fans and spectators, both online and off, this time the Internet didn’t crack under the strain. Phew.

Traffic to news sites supported by Akamai peaked at 3.9 million visitors a minute at the start of the memorial service before sharply dropping off, suggesting that people were sticking with the live video streams rather than surfing around. By comparison, on June 25, when word began to circulate of Mr. Jackson’s hospitalization and death, Akamai said that traffic to news Web sites topped out at 4.2 million visitors a minute.

But the inauguration of President Obama in January still had more viewers, when the total live video streams topped out at more than 7 million. So now we know that on the internet, a new President still has more draw than a mourned king.

Google recently released their quarterly spam trend update, which showed a continued rise from last quarter in spam levels and in types of spam, with new players and techniques showing up in cyberspace, allowing junk e-mail and the like to proliferate with internet speed.

Spam volumes dropped by 70% last November when a major spammer was taken down, but the void was filled within four months. Then on June 4, another large ISP spam source was said to have been dismantled, causing a 30% drop.  Since then, spammers have already made back  14% of that volume.

They’ve noticed a return to older spam techniques lately too.

One simple “newsletter” with malevolent links and images inserted into the content unleashed 50% of a typical day’s spam volume in just two hours’ time with Google’s Postini filters detecting more than 11,000 variants.

One of the other trends they’re watching closely is the sudden popularity of “image spam” – a form of spam that rose to prominence in 2007, before most anti-spam filters learned how to block it. The large file size of an image spam can place a heavy load on an email network and they can also include malicious links or content.

June was also an active month for viruses sent as email attachments, otherwise known as “payload viruses.” Volumes rose to their highest level in almost two years as spammers returned to yet another tried-and-true technique to expand their botnets.

Google message security and archiving team member, Amanda Kleha, theorized, “there may be some new players entering the spam game, following the McColo and 3FN takedowns, and these new players are opening with some well-tested techniques. Either way, we’re watching this trend and will share insights as we gain them in the weeks and months ahead.”

Have you heard of FriendFeed yet?  It’s a service that creates a news feed incorporating all the  networks you belong to–Facebook, Digg, Last.fm ,etc…– personalizing the data feed with info from each of the sites.  The number of social networking sites they support is staggering. 

Tech Crunch tells us, “[e]ver since its redesign a few months ago, FriendFeed has been one of the standard-bearers of the real-time web. That’s because while a lot of sites claim to be real-time, FriendFeed is one of the few that actually updates continuously as data comes in. Starting today, any search you do will also get that same real-time treatment.”

Entering any query into FriendFeed’s search box brings up a constantly updating stream of items related to it. It works for advanced searches too, but perhaps best of all, it also searches through comments left below items. These results can then even be embedded in other blogs.

Right now FriendFeed is possibly the most compelling way to do real-time searches of hugely popular services like Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Digg, various blogs — and all the comments related to those. But thus far, FriendFeed has shied away from any business model. They’ve given hints of what may be to come with its “Shameless Self-Promotion” banners, but a paid search model would seem to be an obvious choice.

And according to Tech Crunch, FriendFeed still has a few more things in store, including tracking for topics  (it already has it for people and groups). “We’re also working on allowing you to subscribe to saved searches, add them to your friend lists, and even get notifications based on search keywords. So stay tuned,” writes Jim Norris, a co-founder who like his other co-founders, came from Google.

Checking your internet speed can ensure you your real-time updates are truly instantaneous!

There is no doubt that a fast web browser can significantly boost your cable internet speed. There are various components of internet speed that you need to look into when you are selecting a web browser. For instance, certain browsers may have a fast start-up time, while others may be adept in rendering images comparatively fast.

Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and Apple Safari are considered some of the fastest web browsers that are available today. Among these, Microsoft Internet Explorer has the fastest start-up time. The new version (Version 7) even supports tabbed browsing, which is truly efficient in managing a number of open web pages simultaneously.

Opera, on the other hand, is written in an optimized machine language, and it enables even older computers to achieve a faster internet speed. Apple’s Safari browser, which was originally designed for the Macintosh OS, is now available for Windows platform. It is widely regarded as the world’s fastest browser, which integrates open standards and a powerful web engine, but it uses up a lot of RAM to provide faster internet speed.

There is also Mozilla Firefox, which is probably the most popular web browser at the moment, and its USP offers excellent speed. Besides loading web pages faster, Firefox also offers users a faster internet download speed, and it contains features such as one-click bookmarking, pop-up blocker, and a smart location bar. They all add up to enhance your cable internet speed.

It is a good idea to try all of them and decide which one runs fastest on your computer. It is also important to frequently update your browser, since it is a proven way to increase your cable internet speed.

In a search for “free legal music downloads” it was difficult finding anything truly user-friendly and attractive. The first result was Spiral Frog.com, which linked to MyMojo.com and didn’t offer much in the way of explanation. EMusic.com was the second result, but upon going to the site, you can see the free music is incentive to take a paid membership.  The third result was a site offering reviews on sites to download music legally. Their number one editor’s choice was MP3 Download Net, followed by Rhapsody, Flickr Music, Napster and Music Platinum.

Napster explains “You may play any particular song up to three (3) times, after which you will need to subscribe to Napster or purchase the song to play it in full again. In addition, you may only play an aggregate of twenty-five Streams in any given month. To buy a song or subscribe, you need to download our player software.”

Last.fm offers internet radio. Their FAQ tells us, “Last.fm is a music service that lets you discover new music you like, based on the music you already listen to. You can either listen to all sorts of radio stations – on the website or with our Last.fm Scrobbler (desktop player) – or to previews in either full-length or as 30 second samples….”  Although they caution that in certain countries the radio feature is a subscriber service only.

Of course, perhaps the best way to obtain music without the fear of fines is to pay for them on sites like iTunes. Many of the above and previously mentioned services offer free trials, so it may be worth it to find the service that works best for your musical needs to deliver your favorite tunes with internet speed.