Anonymous victim in Twitter hacking spree 2013

Anyone who’s ever had their website hacked and defaced by hacker collective Anonymous can have a good laugh at their expense, because it looks as though they aren’t immune to security breaches either. BBC News reports that Anonymous this week “has suffered an embarrassing breach, as one of its popular Twitter feeds is taken over by rival hacktivists.” The Anonymous Twitter hack follows other high-profile Twitter hacks that have occurred over the past few days, including the Twitter accounts for both Burger King and Jeep. Graham Cluley, a senior consultant at security firm Sophos, tells BBC News that the hacks likely resulted from poor password practices, such as either using weak passwords or using the same password across multiple different accounts across the web.

Aside from the How to Date a White Woman books and gadget deals on Amazon, there are plenty of funny products that can be found on the site, including, but not limited to, a $39,995 Relaxman Relaxation Capsule, The 2009-2014 Outlook for Wood Toilet Seats in Greater China, and more. However, if you really do need tips on how to date a white woman, the product page can be viewed here. Continue reading to see the

e-banking-bank_of_america

Bank of America announced today that it will start offering an online-exclusive checking account called “eBanking”, which also comes attached with an $8.95/month fee “if customers want paper statements or access to tellers for routine statements.” You can open one of these accounts online, at a branch, or even through the phone. Continue reading to see an earnings preview.

Customers must also use ATMs to check balances and for deposits and withdrawals, or they’ll be charged the $8.95 fee.

Jul 15, 2010 — Bank of America (BAC) is due with its Q2 results in the pre-market session on Friday, July 16, and analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expect the company to report income of $0.22 per share on revenue of $29.8 billion.

BAC just favors a reversal pattern in its earnings-driven movement between its pre-market reports and the following regular session, posting four such moves compared to three instances for widening moves.

Giant online retailer Amazon.com has agreed to buy irreverent “snarky” site Woot, which sells one thing at a time and makes fun of its customers and itself. Woot has been a wholesaler to Amazon, and CEO Matt Rutledge said without exclusive deals, the business model would be “stupid.” Amazon has been Woot’s sole outside investor.
Amazon.com, which sells practically everything, has agreed to buy Woot, an online discount retailer that offers only one product at a time. “Today,” Woot CEO Matt Rutledge wrote in an open letter, “is a big day in Woot history” because “I woke up to find Jeff Bezos the Mighty had seized our magic sword.” The terms of the agreement were not announced.

The company, which Rutledge said earns “a living on snarky commentary and junk,” started in July 2004 as an employee store and marketing test site for an electronics distributor. Based in Carrolton, Texas, Woot also owns several specialty sites, including wine.woot.com and shirt.woot.com. The site, which defines itself as “an online store and community that focuses on selling cool stuff cheap,” has about 2.75 million registered users.

‘The Way We Always Have’

Rutledge said the company plans to “continue to run Woot the way we have always run Woot — with a wall of ideas and a dartboard.” He added that, organizationally, it will be as if one person is added to the organizational hierarchy, “except that one will just happen to be a billion-dollar company that could buy and sell each and every one of you like you were office Relevant Products/Services furniture.”

The main Woot site specializes in electronics products, a single one of which is offered until the supply is exhausted, or until midnight central time, at which point it’s replaced. If an item sells out before midnight, no new item appears until midnight.

Woot is also a wholesaler to Amazon and others, which gives it access to exclusive arrangements. Rutledge has told news media that, without exclusive deals, “the whole construct of this business model is rather stupid.”

In July last year, Amazon bought online shoe and apparel retailer Zappos.com for $847 million, and in January 2008 it purchased audio-book retailer Audible for $300 million. Amazon had been Woot’s sole outside investor.

‘No Guarantees’

Some retail-industry observers have noted that Amazon and Woot represent opposite ends of buying motivation. Some people browse Amazon, but mostly buyers are looking for a particular item, while Woot is the kind of site one visits to see if the daily special is something you didn’t know you couldn’t live without.

In addition, Amazon has been careful to cultivate the image of a highly responsive, infinitely huge store, while Woot is a small and irreverent shop that often makes fun of itself and its customers. “We offer no guarantees, we allow no back orders, and we have no waiting/notification lists,” it says on its web site. “Too bad.”

In a FAQ on its site about whether a customer Relevant Products/Services can talk to a live person, the site says no, because it’s busy getting new products and shipping orders. To get product answers, it recommends Googling for a manufacturer’s site, as well as a “dating service Relevant Products/Services, Magic 8 Ball, or Ouija board for general life solutions.”

Google recently announced that it made an offer to buy travel search software firm ITA Software. ITA provides the airline flight information used by Google’s search competitors. The deal is valued at $700 million making it less expensive than Google’s purchase of AdMob for $750 million.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt expects that there will be a delay in completing the deal due to significant review of the deal by antitrust regulators. Schmidt said, “We expect this will go through.”

Dailytechnology.us reports that ITA Software was founded by scientists from MIT and is used by airlines to maximize sales of seats on flights and by travel agents online to find suitable flights. ITA software makes it money from selling its software, but Google will undoubtedly add advertising to the mix once the deal is final.

BusinessWeek quotes Schmidt from a conference call about the deal stating, “Search is even more important today than ever. In looking at travel, and airline travel in particular, I think you can see that airline travel and search are a perfect opportunity for more innovation, more investment, more interesting products.”

According to BusinessWeek, the deal will help Google fight Microsoft and Kayak.com in the lucrative travel market that generated $88.4 billion in sales last year and it will be an all cash transaction. Forrester Research analyst Henry Harteveldt said, “It’s [ITA purchase] a smart move. You are dealing with a product that has very low loyalty or preference among travelers. It’s led by scheduling and the price of the airline ticket.”

Gold Prices 24K in PakistanRs. 58,400 (Per Tola)
Silver Prices in PakistanRs. 921.42 (Per Tola)

Microsoft Windows NT joins Xbox team 2012

Dave Cutler, who has been called the “father of Windows NT” has joined Microsoft’s Xbox team. “Dave is one of our brightest minds and is currently working on projects that will help advance our goals in the consumer space as we continue to grow the Xbox from a game-centric console to a complete home entertainment device,” a Microsoft spokesperson told ZDNET‘s Mary Jo Foley, who confirmed the move recently. Reportedly, Cutler will be tasked with taking Xbox “beyond a gaming platform” which could mean Cutler will work on creating the rumored Xbox 720 set-top box experience. In July, we exclusively reported that Microsoft will unveil the Xbox 720 during the E3 trade show later this year.

Market reverses early close plan Karachi stock

Pakistan’s main stock exchange in Karachi will close at the usual 3:30 p.m. local time on Tuesday, reversing an earlier decision to close at noon because of floods in Pakistan’s commercial capital, an exchange official said.

“There has been some increase in attendance and though volumes are still pretty low, we have decided for the convenience of investors that the market will close as normal,” Nadeem Naqvi, managing director of the Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) told Reuters.

“However, the trades done today will be merged with those of  tomorrow and hence will be settled tomorrow,” he said.

Naqvi had earlier said that the market will close at noon due to a lack of volume and negligible attendance of members.

Floods triggered by monsoon rains have crippled Pakistan’s biggest city and commercial hub of Karachi on Tuesday, with few people able to make it to work or school, officials said.

The benchmark KSE 100-share index was up 0.63 percent by noon on volume of just over 11 million shares.

Rs.3.5 billion damaged About 2.7 million cotton bales worth

About 2.7 million cotton bales worth Rs.3.5 billion were destroyed during recent flash floods in Sindh province as about 23 cotton growing districts of the province were badly affected due to torrential rains.

Cotton Development Commissioner, Khalid Abdullah told APP here on Wednesday that cotton crop was grown in 23 districts across the province.

Out of these cotton growing districts in the province, seven districts produced 80 per cent of the total crop production and about 74 per cent of the total output was damaged due to recent flash floods in the province, he added.

“Recent damage was bigger than last year’s floods when about 2.4 million cotton bales were destroyed across the cotton growing areas in the country. This time 2.7 million bales were damaged alone in Sindh province,” he added.

Abdullah further said that cotton crop was also affected in Punjab where about standing crop over 50,000 acres was damaged due to recent heavy rains.

But, he said that Punjab has surpassed its sowing targets by 100,000 acres during the current cotton crop sowing season which would help to minimize the total out-put loss in the province.

Besides cotton crop other cash crops including sugarcane, onion and green chillies were also badly affected due to floods in these areas, he added.

It may be recalled that the country has set the targets to produce about 15 million cotton bales during the year 2011-12.