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Google has been crowned the ‘king of malware’ by security company Barracuda Networks, linking to twice as much malware as search rivals Bing, Yahoo and Twitter combined.

According to the company, an analysis of 25,000 trending topics across 5.5 million search results [PDF], Google accounted for 69 percent of all malware found, with Yahoo at 18 percent, Bing (which supplies Yahoo search) at 12 percent, and Twitter on 1 percent.

As for the trend topics that drive malware in search results, the gap between one appearing on Twitter and in search results varied from 1.2 days on Google to 4.3 days in Bing, and 4.8 days on Yahoo. This suggests that one reason for Google’s popularity in the malware stakes is simply is responsiveness in picking up on these trending subjects. Malware embedded in search simply follows this.

The other is perhaps its outright popularity. According to a recent comScore analysis, 62.6 percent of all US search traffic is on Google’s site, well ahead of yahoo’s 18.9 percent and Bing’s 12.7 percent.

Interestingly, Barracuda’s malware percentages line up almost exactly with these market share numbers, which suggests that this might be the dominant factor.

Barracuda also has some more fascinating data on Twitter, a company whose fortunes it has analysed in forensic detail in the past.

The Twitter ‘crime rate’ was 2.38 percent in June 2010, says Barracuda, based on its analysis of 25 million sample accounts, including those that show irregular behaviour patterns. This rate is the number of accounts that end up being suspended in any given period, and has risen after months of low or falling crime falls.

The company also reckons that only 29 percent of Twitter users are ‘true’ Twitter users, which is to say that they actively participate and follow others or have their own followers. In general, activity levels are still rising, which increases the attractiveness of the service to criminals.

As of June 2010, many as 15.8 percent of Twitter accounts have no followers, but this is still substantially down on June 2009, when the number was 30 percent. Most users have few followers, with 36.3 percent having between one and four. One percent exceed 1,000 followers.

One interesting statistic is the relationship between the number of tweets made and the number of followers that user attracts. Attracting users does require tweeting but users who tweet too often seem to put off followers. ‘Noisy’ tweeters appear to quickly plateau in terms of followers.

All contents copyright 1995-2010 Network World, Inc. http://www.networkworld.com

The government has given the go-ahead to an auction of the 800MHz and 2.6GHz radio spectrums that will allow mobile networks to offer 4G LTE (Long Term Evolution) services.

The auction, which will be overseen by Ofcom, is expected to take place at the end of 2011.

“We want the UK market to remain at the fore of delivering services like the iPad and smartphones but they need the networks to continue to improve and increase services,” said Communications Minister Ed Vaizey.

“Under our plans, our mobile industry will have access to the 21st Century infrastructure it needs to give UK consumers the latest technologies and even better coverage for broadband on their mobile phones.”

Ofcom can now begin setting out guidelines to ensure all operators are treated equally and the auction does not harm competition in the market.

All contents copyright 1995-2010 Network World, Inc. http://www.networkworld.com

Foursquare, the popular location-based social networking service where users “check-in” to earn points, unlock badges and become “Mayors” of their most frequented establishments has undergone some significant changes in recent days.

The changes, made both behind the scenes and to the Foursquare.com desktop user interface, were meant mostly to help the company handle its rapidly growing user base–Foursquare currently has more than 2 million registered users and upwards of one million check-ins daily. Additionally, the changes were designed to alter the way Foursquare users find specific locations to “unlock” hidden badges and make it more difficult to determine those specific venues. And some are simply meant to crack down on folks who feel the need to check in all over the place without actually visiting venues, a.k.a., “cheaters.”

I was curious about the new Foursquare tweaks, so I asked the company’s PR Manager Erin Gleason for details. What follows are specifics from Gleason regarding the ongoing changes and their impact on “Foursquarers.”

Ongoing Infrastructure Enhancements

Foursquare is growing by leaps and bounds, and if the $20 million in VC funding the company secured last month is any sign of what’s to come, that growth will only continue. Of course, that’s a good thing for the company and its users. But it also means scaling the service to keep up with demand.

So Foursquare has been doing some major infrastructure work. Gleason wouldn’t get into specifics, but it’s likely the company has been adding servers and expanding databases to ensure it can keep up with users’ check-ins. (Foursquare recently hit a 100 million check-in milestone.) During the past month or so, the company has announced scheduled downtime multiple times via Twitter and other outlets, most recently last Sunday, July 25.

Unfortunately, the infrastructure changes were more extensive than just a few random nights’ work, and as such, some valuable Foursquare features were disabled for weeks. Which leads to my next section.

Foursquare Tag Search Down But Not Out

Due to the ongoing back-end enhancements, Foursquare decided to disable its desktop-based Foursquare.com “tag search” feature a few weeks ago, but as of today, tag search is reactivated, according to Gleason. (Note: Though tag-search was disabled, users could still add tags and unlock badges.)

Until very recently, searching for venues tagged with specific words or phrase was one of the most effective ways to find, and hopefully unlock, specific badges. Back in May I wrote an in-depth tutorial on how to use tag search to locate hard-to-find badges, but due to some of the new changes, that advice is now somewhat off base.

You can still search for specific tags and types of venues on Foursquare.com. But the majority of tags that signify a badge can be unlocked at a venue are now hidden, Gleason says.

Foursquare Badges More Difficult to Find, Unlock

Foursquare is trying to make it harder to find and unlock badges.

“The majority of our badges are not tied to user-added tags, and many of the tags related to badge unlocks are now hidden,” Gleason told me. “[W]e believe it’s more fun for users to discover how to unlock badges by exploring new venues.”

Many of the newest Foursquare badges are also “sponsored,” i.e. companies pay to tie their brands to the badges, and those badges are typically unlocked at venues recommended by the sponsoring organizations. For example, the Independent Film Channel has a sponsored badge, called “Slightly Off,” that can be unlocked by checking into three venues listed on its Foursquare.com page.

You can’t really locate sponsored badges using tag search, because the “hidden tags” don’t show up when you look for them. That means you have to follow a badge-sponsor and repeatedly visit their Foursquare.com page for hints at recommend venues that will unlock badges. And that’s probably just how Foursquare wants it. Companies pay for sponsored badges, so it makes sense for Foursquare to investigate new ways to entice users into visiting those companies’ pages.

So now the easiest way to find and unlock most of these sponsored badges is not to search for tags, but to visit the sponsor pages and hope to find recommended venues in your area. (Keeping a close eye on a few Foursquare badges lists isn’t a bad idea, either. Find quality lists here, here and here.)

Cracking Down on Foursquare Cheaters

Back in April, Foursquare instituted some changes to its check-in system to reduce misuse of the service by people who check-in to venues without actually being there, in hopes of unlocking badges, earning points or becoming Mayors of popular establishments. (Read specifics about those changes here.)

However, the changes had some unintended effects: Legitimate Foursquare users received error messages telling them they were too far away from their intended venues, and they wouldn’t receive points or unlock badges, even when they were in the correct locations.

For a couple of weeks in April, I got the dreaded Foursquare error messages very frequently, even though I was always right where I said I was. But over the past month, I’ve only seen the “cheaters warning” screen once or twice. According to Gleason, that’s due to a number of improvements made to the system to “reduce false positives.”

“We present a user with the warning message if we detect repeated suspicious check-ins,” Gleason says. “We look at several factors, such as distance from a venue, distance between venues visited, and timing of check-ins, to determine whether or not a check-in is legitimate.”

My experience over the past month does indeed seem to suggest some major progress has been made since the anti-cheating features were first introduced last spring.

How to Unlock the Foursquare Groupie Badge

“Discovering how to unlock badges is part of the fun of Foursquare, so we don’t typically like to state how badges can be earned,” Gleason says.

Lucky for you, I do like to show others how to get Foursquare badges.

Here’s a quick tip on how to unlock the Foursquare “Groupie” badge, which was originally unlocked at South by Southwest 2010, from any Internet-connected PC–no check-in required. You made it all the way to end of this post, you deserve it.

Surf on over to Foursquare.com via PC and log in to your account. Then jump over to Foursquare.com/bizcard, and select the following six cards: JetSetter (airplane logo); Super Mayor (crown logo); Pizzaiolo (pizza logo); Local (flag with a star); Player Please! (heart logo); and Newbie (trophy with a star).

Voila! The Groupie badge will be added to your badge collection.

For more on Foursquare, read my tips on reducing privacy risks associated with location-based social networks.

All contents copyright 1995-2010 Network World, Inc. http://www.networkworld.com

Motorola has announced two new forthcoming clamshells launching on Boost Mobile next month on the 11th in the Rambler and now available online and retailers in the Bali.  The Rambler features a QWERTY keyboard with 1.3 megapixel camera, speakerphone, microSDHC expansion slot and Bluetooth with stereo audio support while the Bali has a nearly identical featureset with a standard dialpad and front-mounted touch-sensitive media player controls for $149.99.

Best Buy is beefing up its recently launched wireless broadband service in a deal with 4G provider Clearwire.

Through its Best Buy Connect service, which debuted just a few weeks ago, the electronics retailer plans to offer customers a new 4G tier starting in 2011. The company says Connect network coverage is currently available in “dozens of cities” across the United States, with a further expansion in the offing.

“This agreement paves the way to providing one-stop shopping and support for mobile broadband as more people become more connected across all kinds of devices,” said Jed Stillman, vice president of Best Buy Connect, in a statement. “We believe consumers will appreciate the added advantage of relying on Best Buy Connect for both 3G and 4G mobile broadband services beginning next year.”

With the deal, the companies said, Best Buy becomes the first major wholesaler to join the Clearwire 4G uber-network after Clearwire’s strategic investors, which include Comcast, Sprint, Google, Time Warner Cable, and Intel Capital.

Clearwire is building a 4G network across the U.S. using the WiMax wireless technology and expects the network to reach 120 million people by the end of the year, about three to four times as many as it’s serving at the moment. It’s got a head start, but rival providers such as Verizon Wireless, which is using the LTE technology, are working furiously to launch their own 4G networks.

Charges for Best Buy Connect’s current 3G service range from $30 to $60 per month.

Jonathan Skillings is managing editor of CNET News, based in the Boston bureau. He’s been with CNET since 2000, after a decade in tech journalism at the IDG News Service, PC Week, and an AS/400 magazine. He’s also been a soldier and a schoolteacher. E-mail Jon.

Clearwire has announced a new wholesale agreement with Best Buy whereby the electronics retailer will offer WiMax service under its recently launched Connect mobile broadband service in 2011. No immediate word was given regarding pricing or specific availability of hardware and service, as Clearwire currently covers 43 markets served by Best Buy.

Best Buy launched its current Connect mobile broadband service for Gobi modem equipped netbooks earlier this month.

Nintendo reported its first quarterly loss in two years amid sluggish consumer demand and the effects of the rising yen.

(Credit: Nintendo)

For the first quarter, ended June 30, the gaming company took a net loss of 25.2 billion yen ($289 million), compared with a profit of 42.3 billion yen in the year-ago quarter. Sales dove 25.6 percent to 188.6 billion yen versus 253.4 billion yen in the prior year’s first quarter.

Nintendo attributed the downfall to a variety of a factors.

For the quarter, the company sold only 3.15 million units of its DS game console, down from 6 million a year ago as fewer software titles squashed demand for the DS. Lower prices of the console in Japan and Europe also took a toll on revenue. Nintendo is looking for higher demand and better results when its new 3DS debuts later this year or early in 2011.

One bright spot was the Wii. Thanks to lower prices, the company’s flagship console continued to enjoy rising sales as gamers scooped up 3.04 million units for the quarter, up from 2.2 million in the prior year’s quarter.

But demand for the games themselves was not as bright. Though certain titles such as Pokemon Heart Gold Version and Tomodachi Collection did well, a lack of exciting new titles dampened overall software sales. For the quarter, Nintendo sold 22.4 million games for the DS, compared with 29 million a year ago, and 28 million for the Wii, versus 31 million in the prior year’s first quarter.

Finally, the rise in the value of the yen and the accompanying fall in the euro and the dollar also hurt the company’s sales and earnings overeas.

For the full fiscal year ending next March, Nintendo is looking to sell 18 million more Wii consoles and 30 million DS units, which includes sales of the upcoming 3DS. The company is also hoping to turn a profit of 200 billion yen, a decline of 12.5 percent from a year ago, on sales of 1.4 trillion yen.

Lance Whitney wears a few different technology hats–journalist, Web developer, and software trainer. He’s a contributing editor for Microsoft TechNet Magazine and writes for other computer publications and Web sites. You can follow Lance on Twitter at @lancewhit. Lance is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and he is not an employee of CNET.

Adobe and Microsoft are now working together to give security companies a direct line into their bug-fixing efforts.

By year’s end, Adobe will start using the Microsoft Active Protections Program (MAPP) to share details on its latest patches, according to Brad Arkin, Adobe’s director of product security and privacy. “The MAPP program is the gold standard for how the software vendors should be sharing information about product vulnerabilities prior to shipping security updates,” he said.

Adobe initially wanted to reproduce MAPP, but soon realised that it would take a lot of work to build a program similar to Microsoft’s, which was piloted two years ago. Arkin’s team began discussions with Microsoft, at first in hopes of picking up some tips. “Eventually, together, we came to the conclusion that it would be a lot more fun to work together on this rather than Microsoft helping us to reinvent the wheel,” he said.

Typically, whenever a major patch is released, hackers quickly begin to analyse the patch to see what flaws were fixed. They then rush to work out attacks that would exploit the vulnerability on unpatched products.

Adobe has been hit hard in the past two years by hackers who have found bug after bug in the company’s products. This often means hard work for security companies, who must scramble to add detection for these attacks.

It’s become so bad that one security company, SourceFire, is holding an exclusive Adobe Hater’s Ball on Wednesday here at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas.

The Ball is really a tongue-in-cheek joke, modelled on comedian Dave Chappelle’s Playa Hater’s Ball.

“My guys have a love-hate relationship with the guys over at Adobe,” said SourceFire Director Matt Watchinski. “Every time a vulnerability comes out of their stuff, we have to jump.”

Arkin said he and other Adobe researchers will be at the event.

With Adobe jointing the MAPP program, however, security companies like SourceFire should do less scrambling.

MAPP gives them early notice on upcoming patches — typically about 48 hours — so they have more time to build attack detection into their security systems. About 65 security companies participate in MAPP. All of them will soon start getting the Adobe data.

This is the first time that Microsoft has extended the MAPP program to cover another company’s products, said Dave Forstrom, a director with Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing group.

However, it may not be the last. Forstrom didn’t rule out the possibility that other software vendors could also jump on board.

(Follow Robert on Twitter at @bobmcmillan. Robert’s email address is robert_mcmillan@idg.com)

Note: The Skinny blog is written by Rick Smith, editor and co-founder of Local Tech Wire and business editor of WRAL.com.

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. – If you are among the Luddites who don’t believe 3-D technology is going to affect the way you do business, then don’t plan on being briefed about the future by a world leader in the field on Wednesday.

However, if you believe 3-D will affect everything from website design to e-mail, e-commerce to education and more then register today for Local Tech Wire’s next Executive Exchange event on July 28.

Today’s the last day to sign up to hear from Dr. Julian Lombardi, a professor at Duke and one of the world’s foremost pioneers in transforming 3-D from business fantasy to reality.

The topic is the “Immersive Internet,” and Dr. Lombardi will be discussing how today’s flat Internet will be transformed into a virtual, interactive world not just for entertainment and games but for conducting business, training, and much, much more.

While 3-D movies are all the rage and 3-D videogames are coming to the smallest, portable devices, 3-D business is largely unexplored outside of some virtual experiments. Dr. Lombardi was among the first to create an environment in which shopping became more than click-and-buy.

The event at Bay 7 in the American Tobacco complex in Durham begins with registration at 11:30 a.m. and lunch. Dr. Lombardi will speak at noon and will then participate in a Q&A session.

Registration closes today.

Dr. Lombardi is filling in for fellow Duke Professor Dr. Tony O’Driscoll, who is unable to speak due to an unexpected conflict.

Dr. Lombardi founded and serviced as chief creative officer at VIOS, a venture-backed 3-D software technology firm. VIOS created one of the first online virtual worlds.

He currently is assistant vice president with Duke’s Office of Information Technology and is a research scholar with the Duke ISIS [Information Science plus Information Studies] program.

Additionally, he is an adjunct faculty member in Duke’s Department of Computer Science.

In 2002-2005, Dr. Lombardi managed an educational software R&D program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

His current research is focused on the design of computational systems that support deep collaboration and resource sharing across very large numbers of users. The research program to develop open source tools for constructing, accessing, and sharing hyperlinked virtual workspaces for research and education has received major support from the Japanese National Institute of Communications Technology (NICT), the National Science Foundation, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Dr. Lombardi also teaches about virtual worlds at Duke.

Local Tech Wire

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. – Social networking giant Facebook could soon face another giant in a different realm as a rival – search engine kingpin Google.

According to a report in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal, Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) is talking with several social game developers to provide content for a new social networking service that it has in development.

The Journal cited “people familiar with the matter” as its sources.

Google reportedly has talked with Playdom, which operates a studio in Chapel Hill, N.C. and on Tuesday was bought by Disney, as well as Electronic Arts’ Playfish as well as Zynga Game Network. Google recently invested in Zynga, the Journal noted.

“Google’s push into social games represents the latest attempt by the Web-search leader to capture users and advertising dollars that are increasingly flowing to social networking, an area dominated by Facebook, Twitter Inc. and others,” the Journal said.

Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt would not confirm the development of a social networking service, the Journal said. However, it also quoted him as saying that “the world doesn’t need a copy of the same thing” when asked if a Google service could resemble Facebook.

For the full report, read here.