Google search results are 5 times safer than Bing's

by Daniel Ionescu


Bing just got served a piece of its own Scroogle pie, after an independent study found that Microsoft’s search engine delivers malware-infested websites in its results at nearly five times the rate of Google.

Researchers at the AV-Test security institute in Germany spent 18 months investigating more than 40 million websites delivered as search engine results in order to gauge which search sites include pages infected by malware or phishing attacks. Its findings [PDF] are flattering for Google, but not so much for Bing.

According to the study, out of 20 million websites provided by Google and Bing in equal part, 272 Google results contained malware, while Bing delivered almost five times as many infected websites: 1285 poisoned pages. In the overall ranking, however, Russian search engine Yandex delivered the most malware results, almost ten times more than Google.

“If we factor in the fact that Google processes around 2 to 3 billion search requests every day, however, it becomes clear that hundreds of thousands of infected websites are delivered to users on a daily basis,” Markus Selinger from AV-Test concluded in the report, which found a total of 5000 potential pieces of malware throughout the testing period.


AV-Test security

Protecting your searches

It sounds like a lot of malware is lurking in search engine results, but in context, the numbers might not be that significant. Based on the figures from AV-Test, if out of 10,921,207 Google results 272 are malware, this means just 0.0025 percent of Google results may be compromised. Considering that Google processes billions of searches daily, the number of users exposed increases exponentially—but your search engine's filter is not your only line of defense.

Browsers also provide a level of security to search engine results, as all major browsers are equipped with a phishing and malware site blacklist filter. NSS Labs regularly compares the phishing protection in browsers, and found the average rate of phishing site detection is above 90 percent for Firefox, with Chrome peaking at 94 percent, followed by Internet Explorer 10 with 92 percent, and Safari at 91 percent.

Aside from your browser, using a good antivirus program will also help keep your computer safe from phishing and malware. Similar to how NSS Labs tests browser security, AV-Test inspects all the available antivirus solutions and measures how well they protect users, as well as performance and usability. You can view the latest test results here, which indicate antivirus software averages a 92.5 percent detection rate.

The key, which AV-Test also points out, is to keep your browser and antivirus software of choice up to date as well, as many of the vulnerabilities detected normally target outdated browsers, add-ons and extensions.

Culled from PC World

How you can make millions gathering waste in Lagos

By Cosmas Omegoh

For those who earnestly want to be millionaires, Lagos is the preferred destination. Many residents of the city may find this strange to believe.

But again, the message has been handed out: You can become a millionaire easily just by packing waste! Indeed, it’s now easy to become very rich by merely gathering pure water sachets, plastic bottles and other ‘useless’ items. Those items that many in Lagos ignorantly cast aside are increasingly becoming money-spinners to many of the city’s folks.

The Lagos State Waste Management Authority (LAWMA) is dishing out cool cash to many who now gather waste at streets corners, accumulate them and bring them forth for sale. Daily Sun gathered that this thriving business has been on for quite a while without many knowing it. Those who were actively involved in it were being passed off as unserious scavengers.

But not anymore, as many are now going into the business. This came to the open recently when the Department of Geography, University of Lagos, and LAWMA collaborated to stage a national conference on recycling, with the theme, Recycling: A Succour to Climate Change.

Present on that day was the Head of Department of Geography, Professor Samuel Iyiola Oni, who was the event’s convener. Also there was Mrs. A A Jijoho-Ogun, LAWMA’s General Manager, Administration, who represented the Managing Director, Mr. Ola Oresanya.

There was also Mrs. Juliana Guwan, Director, Marine Environment of Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety (NIMASA), who represented the, Director General, Zikade Patrick Akpobolokemi. Both women presented papers on the theme of the conference. One Professor Taiwo represented the Lagos State Transport Authority (LAMATA), just as there were representations from aviation and other sectors of the economy. Various agencies and private individuals with strong interest in the environment were in attendance.

And from the UNILAG community, there were Professors L.O. Oyekunle, HOD, Chemical Engineering; Nwokoma, Dean of Social Sciences; Nwachukwu, Dean of Sciences; Solomon Akinboye, HOD, Political Science, Ademola Omojola; Dr. Olayinka Coker of the health services and many more. Apart from the students of the institution, primary and secondary school students, who were interested in the environment also attended. The event held at Julius Berger Hall in the institution.

Various speakers jolted everyone with the telling truth that every passing day, emerging facts show that humans, more than ever before, are under severe threat of the environment.

The environment is blazing with anger because humans have continued to violate it. Many people keep hurting the earth without knowing how. Such people are unfazed that, the motor tyres, the bush and the wastes they burn, those vehicles speeding down the highways, leaving thick, black smoke on their trail are slowly and steadily eroding a blanket which shields the fury of the sun from the earth.

Consequently, the earth is increasingly being heated up. Huge ice sheets, which for ages were lying at the north and south poles, are now melting and releasing huge volumes of water into the oceans.

The conference noted that experts are shouting themselves hoax, warning that every bad environmental practice has been contributing to global warming and everyone needs to work hard to save the earth.

But unfortunately, only few people are listening. The other clear message was that those sachets of pure water and other refuse that many Nigerians gleefully dump indiscriminately, especially in the urban areas, all have huge potentials to harm. Both the Federal and state governments have been warning that such wastes block drainage channels. And once the rains come down pouring in heavy sheets, flood waters are obstructed by the accumulated rubbish, leaving everyone and every property at risk. In Lagos and other urban communities in the country for instance, the impacts of flood in the recent past were quite devastating.

So, in a move to stave off this ugly development, Lagos State government through LAWMA launched its Buy-Back Project. Men, women and children are all in it. In this project, LAWMA buys one kilogramme of nylon bags for N30, one kilogramme of papers for N5 while one kilogramme of plastic bottles goes for N25. Many are scrambling to key into the business. Mrs Jijoho-Ogun disclosed that LAWMA wanted many more people to join the emerging trade by either going to their offices or calling their toll-free lines for inquiry. “With this, we are working for a cleaner environment,” she said.

“We are encouraging more people in various communities to join so that we can leave the city free of waste. We are not asking our distinguished professors to leave their academics and join the Buy-Back Project, but they can contributing in various ways to help us realise this,” she added. She also told the audience what LAWMA had been doing and the strategies it had been employing to realise a better Lagos.

According to her, some organisations in Lagos including LAWMA, have been buying and recycling some of the rubbish generated in the city to make nylon plastic bags and other products and urged residents to patronise the PSP operators within their areas. In her presentation, Mrs Guwan described recycling as “the process of converting waste or discarded materials into new usable products for the benefit of humanity.”

She noted that the process could reduce environmental degradation through air, water and land pollution, adding that “it has been identified as a modern waste reduction strategy across the globe. She recalled that long before now, the slogan was “waste to waste, but now it is waste to wealth.”

While recounting the strategies her agency had been using to combat climate change, she said recycling was important and urged Nigerians to endeavour to put their waste in the right places for proper disposal. Dr Coker recalled that anytime waste was left in the open, it decomposes and emits methane gases, carbon dioxide and carbon mono oxide. She said the impact of global warming leaves everyone with medical condition such as rashes, stoke as well as psychological problems.

Speaker after speaker, including Professor Taiwo Oyekunle commended the Department of Geography for the initiative, stating that the event was engaging as it was illuminating.

In his response, Professor Oni recalled that the consequences of climate change had been unprecedented in recent times on the Nigerian society, hence the move to consider ways to mitigate the dangers of the phenomenon. Dr Emmanuel Ege, a lecturer in the department of Geography told Daily Sun that the conference “was in line with global best practices whereby universities are involved in investigations into things that have to do with climate change and recycling is one of them,” adding that it was the responsibility of university to show the way through research and investigations.

He said the conference was simply timely. He regretted that waste was still indiscriminately being dumped in the urban areas and said the conference would come up with recommendations that would define the phenomenon in the university and the country.

LAWMA Contact Details:

LAWMA Headquarters
Iddo - Yard, Ijora, Lagos
018538601 07063033310
info@lawma.gov.ng
Toll Free Lines: 5577, 07055893400, 07080601020

Source: Daily Sun

TIPS FOR CREATING AND LAUNCHING AN EBOOK PUBLISHING BUSINESS

Here are some of my top tips for creating and launching an eBook , so you can
take the confusion out of the process and start writing!

• Write and hire an editor. The first step when creating your eBook is to
simply sit down and write it. Decide on the problem you’ll help your audience
solve, then write in a voice similar to how you blog, conversationally, not stiff.
The length of the completed document depends on your topic, audience and
writing style; write until you’ve covered all the important information, then
trim the excess.

Hiring an editor will help you tighten up the content — and if you want to be
perceived as a professional, don’t skip this step. Eat the costs, because you’re
going to make good money off this eBook anyhow, right?

• Choose a format. You want your PDF eBook to look appealing on both an ereader
and a computer screen. So don’t think in terms of oldschool
book formats. Favour easy to read, large font and plenty of visually friendly white
space. Notice the details in eBooks by other writers — the appearance of their header
and footer, the location of page numbers, etc. — and incorporate those effective
presentations into your own work.

• Decide on a price and platform. Because this is a relatively new medium,
there’s no magic formula for figuring out how to price your work. While prices
vary, informational eguides often cost more than traditional books. It’s not
unusual to see them priced at $19, $29, $49 or more. Research your niche, ask
for feedback and settle on what feels right.

From there, decide whether you’ll sell your eBook straight from your website or
use a distributor like Amazon.com or Smashwords.com. If you sell from your own site, you keep all the profits, which sound pretty great, right? The challenge is that you’ll need a decentsized platform to do this successfully.
If you use Amazon or Smashwords , you’ll cast a wider net, but they’ll take a cut of your sales. That means the decision comes down to a few factors: the size of your audience, how much you’re selling your eBook for and how you feel about sharing the
proceeds.

• Consider PayPal and E-junkie if you sell your eBook yourself. If you opt to sell your book straight from your own site or blog rather than use a distributor, consider using PayPal (www.paypal.com) and E-junkie (www.e-junkie.com) to make the e-commerce process automatic. E-junkie costs only $5/month initially, routes your sales through PayPal and sends your eBook to buyers automatically. It also offers an affiliate option, which lets other bloggers earn a commission for selling your products. At least 33 percent commission is standard, and many authors offer 50 percent.

Besides PayPal, you can also use any one of the following payment processors with E-junkie. If you like you can combine E-junkie with one or more payment processors to offer buyers a choice of checkout methods. The payment processors you can use with E-junkie besides PayPal are:

- Google Checkout - https://checkout.google.com/


- 2CheckOut - www.2checkout.com (Buy Now buttons only, not for cart checkouts)
- ClickBank - www.clickbank.com (Buy Now buttons only, not for cart checkouts)
- TrialPay - www.trialpay.com

Payment processors act as a "middleman" where the buyer actually pays the payment processor, and then the payment processor pays you.

E-junkie, on the other hand, provides shopping cart and buy now buttons to let you sell downloads and tangible goods on your website, blog, eBay, MySpace, Google Base, CraigsList and other websites using PayPal Payments Standard, PayPal Payments Advanced, PayPal Payments Pro, PayPal Payflow Pro, Google Checkout, Authorize.Net, TrialPay, ClickBank and 2CheckOut.

For merchants selling downloads, E-junkie automates and secures the digital delivery of files and codes. If you are selling tangible goods, E-junkie automates the shipping calculation and inventory management. Their shopping cart has a built in sales tax, VAT, packaging and shipping cost calculator.

With E-junkie you can sell ebooks, sell mp3 tracks and albums, sell software, icons, fonts, artwork, phone cards, event tickets, cds, posters, books, t-shirts and almost everything else you want to sell.

E-junkie has no transaction limit, no bandwidth limit, no setup fee and no transaction fee.

• Promote! Once your eBook is written, formatted and ready to see the world,
it’s time to create a promotion plan . Approach bloggers with big platforms and
ask for reviews, Q&As or guest posts, keeping in mind that you’ll have to
actually write the guest posts you promise.

Use your network! Keep track of the people you pitch and their responses in a
Google Doc. If you do this properly, you’ll be able to remember everyone who’s
helping spread the word about your book and thank them accordingly.

• Offer prelaunch discounts and bonuses. If you have a solid email list, offer
your subscribers a discount to show your appreciation for their support and
make some sales in the process. And give people who purchase your eBook a
little something extra that they’re not expecting, like a discount on another
product from you or an affiliate. It’s always a good idea to sweeten the pot,
right?

Writing and launching an eBook may seem like a daunting process, but it
doesn’t have to be. If you know the rights steps to take throughout the process,
you’ll get your book out into the world in no time – and make some money while
you’re at it.