Tag Archives: AOL

The Phisher Commuter

By | November 23, 2011

My colleague Lee Gomes writes in WSJ.com in his  Portals column (a few days old, this, sorry; but it is free) about phishers, and what they’re really like, quoting a guy called Christopher Abad, a researcher for Cloudmark: Mr. Abad himself is just 23 years old, but he has spent much of the past 10 years… Read More »

Skype Me And A Return To Innocence

By | November 23, 2011

Great piece today in The New York Times: ‘Internet Phone Service Creating Chatty Network’ on the openness of Skype users using the SkypeMe function to chat, and be chatted to, by strangers with only a nice chat in mind: Skype users report unsolicited contacts every day, and contrary to such experiences with phone and e-mail,… Read More »

Dialer Scams And Heads In The Sand

By | November 24, 2011

I can’t help feeling that telephone companies and Internet Service Providers are in real danger of legal action if they don’t tackle the problem of modem dialing. This NBC5 story from Chicago quotes a local woman as complaining about a series of weird calls to her phone company, SBC. The answer: “They didn’t know too… Read More »

The Ugly Instant Messenger

By | November 24, 2011

I’m a big fan of Trillian, the IM aggregator, but I had to download and install AIM, AOL’s Instant Messenger last night for an abortive video conference. Sheesh, what a monster it is (AIM, not the conference). Do AOL and the other biggies still not get it? For sure, Trillian is something of a parasite.… Read More »

Sending SMS From A Computer

By | November 24, 2011

Here’s a list of some of the available ‘PC to SMS’ services, courtesy of Russell Beattie. My own offerings: Both Yahoo and ICQ chat offer some kind of SMS service, but I’ve found them to be somewhat unreliable. This is less to do with them and more to do with the end provider, but in… Read More »