Tweet URLs may be tiny, but they can also be dangerous

With tweets on Twitter limited to only 140 characters, many Twitterers economize by shrinking lengthy URLs for embedded links, with help from Web sites that specialize in such shrinkage. Now, at least one such site has been hacked.

URL-shortening site Cligs last month sent more than 2 million Web addresses to an entirely different destination. Phishers are also taking advantage of the trust users have in TinyURL Web addresses by using them to mask malicious destinations.

But easy solutions are available, PC Magazine points out. You can easily decode those cryptic URLs by pasting them into—what else—a URL lengthener. One such tool: Untiny. Just cut and paste the shortened URL into the box, and you’ll get the original address. Make sure it’s legit, click, and you’re good to go.

In other Twitter news, the site announced it was suspending accounts infected with a form of the Koobface virus. The suspended sites were sending out “bogus tweets” when the user logged in. The tweets included TinyURLs that sent users to Koobface malware sites. —Donna Tapellini

More movies from Internet-connected TVs

Vizio recently announced its first Internet-enabled LCD TVs which will be able to stream content from Netflix. (Click to enlarge.)
[ Photo courtesy of: Netflix.com ]

Internet-connected TVs were somewhat of a novelty last year, when the few sets available offered mostly basic news feeds, but they’ve rapidly become big news. Several major TV brands now have sets offering access to countless thousands of movies and videos on Netflix, Amazon Video on Demand, and YouTube, plus weather, stock updates, financial news, photo-sharing sites, and other content accessible through Yahoo widgets.

Sony, which already had a deal making Amazon’s 40,000-plus videos instantly available through its Internet-enabled Bravia sets, just announced that viewers will be able to access Netflix content (some 12,000 titles strong) starting this fall. A few weeks ago, Vizio announced that its first Internet-enabled sets, due out this fall, will offer content from Netflix, Amazon, Vudu, and more. Panasonic added Amazon to its list of partners a few months back. Meanwhile, LG has deals with Netflix and YouTube, among others. Samsung has a number of partners, including YouTube, but as yet hasn’t announced a deal with a major movie provider for its Internet-connected TVs. (Samsung Blu-ray players, like those from LG, can stream Netflix movies.)

We’re getting more and more of these TVs in our labs and will be testing their connectivity and other features down the road. In the meantime, if you’ve been using any of these sets and services, let us know what you think about them. —Eileen McCooey

The Netbook Net Widens

The netbook market continues to get a boost from a variety of sources, not least of which was Google’s announcement that it will launch an operating system on netbooks in the second half of 2010. Google Chrome OS, says Google, will be a speedy and lightweight operating system, with little user interface, that will get people on the Web “in a few seconds.”

Meanwhile, Sony released its first family of netbooks, further swelling the number of brands. The W series’ pricing starts at $500, a premium price for a netbook, but typical of Sony’s laptop pricing. The 10.1-inch netbook uses an Atom 280 processor, and has 1GB of RAM and a 160GB hard drive. To see how Sony laptops fare compared to others, see our laptop Ratings (available to subscribers).

Is $500 out of your budget range? How about a 99-cent netbook? Sprint and Best Buy have announced that they’ll offer the Compaq Mini 110c-1040DX netbook to consumers, normally sold at Best Buy for $389, for that little. Of course, there’s a catch: You must sign up for a 2-year Sprint mobile broadband contract, the latest in a line of contract netbook offers. In our most recent Ratings of cell-phone providers (subscribers only), Sprint was among the lowest ranked in cell-phone service and among the worst for customer service.

BBB sees rise in Pay-to-Tweet scams

A warning to all you job hunters out there: The Better Business Bureau reports a spike in the work at home, get-rich-quick schemes being offered through the social-networking site Twitter.

The scams are similar to the classic Web and e-mail offers. Sites claim you can make loads of money, with little effort, and no experience, as long as you pay for an informative CD—as featured on the fill-in-the-blank nationally syndicated television show—that will reveal the mystery of making thousands of dollars a month.

According to the BBB, the purported offers being posted by companies on Twitter promise to pay users hundreds of dollars a day to be professional “Tweeters”—the name for a person who uses Twitter. “‘Make Money With Twitter’ schemes may sound risk-free but bear many red flags,” according to the BBB.

Why electronics stores "suck"

How can brick-and-mortar consumer electronics stores serve customers better? Let Gilbert Fiorentino, an executive at Systemax (which now owns the Circuit City brand name), count the ways.
[ Photo courtesy of Ed Yourdon (Under Creative Commons) ]

The shopping experience at walk-in electronics stores "sucks," according to a keynote speech at the recent Consumer Electronics Association conference in New York.

No, that messenger wasn't me or someone else from Consumer Reports, talking about how our Ratings of places to buy computers and other major electronics items (available to subscribers) reveal that satisfaction with brick-and-mortar stores lags behind that for online retailers.

Instead, the observation came from someone with firsthand knowledge of electronics retailing: The relatively-new owner of CompUSA's stores and Web site and of the TigerDirect.com and newly-relaunched CircuitCity.com Web sites, too.

In the most colorful presentation at the CEA Line Shows event, Gilbert Fiorentino, the Chief Executive (Technology Products Group) of Systemax, the parent company for CompUSA, said he took over the ailing chain last year determined to improve the experience of shopping for electronics in a store.

"Go into a typical electronics store," he says, "and can you see the product manual? No. Can you find out how many HDMI inputs the TV set has? No, not unless it's on the little card on the shelf in front—and someone hasn't taken that for themselves. Can I even use the TV? No, someone stole the remote control, too."

Cell-phone exclusivity: Not good for consumers, say critics

Is it fair that if a consumer wants a particular model cell phone—an Apple iPhone 3G S or a Palm Pre, say—they must use the wireless service provider chosen exclusively by that phone's manufacturer? A U.S. Senate committee has asked the FCC to investigate the matter of cellphone handset exclusivity.
[ stock photo courtesy of: Ben Shafer ]

With the iPhone 3G S launching Friday, available exclusively from AT&T, and the Palm Pre having just launched, available exclusively from Sprint, it's a good week to ask: Is having particular mobile phone handsets available from only one carrier a good thing for consumers?

Maybe not, according to four senators who sent a letter yesterday to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commissioner Michael Copps to review the exclusive arrangements between wireless carriers and cell phone manufacturers. Advocates, including Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, are also weighing in against such deals.

The bipartisan group—comprising Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.), Chairman of the Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet, along with Senators Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), all members of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation—today asked the FCC to "examine this issue carefully and act expeditiously should you find that exclusivity agreements unfairly restrict consumer choice or adversely impact competition in the commercial wireless marketplace."

Also, in remarks prepared for delivery later today to another congressional committee—the Senate Judiciary Committee—Joel Kelsey, a policy analyst with Consumers Union, says that handset exclusivity agreements "artificially limit consumer choice, restrict device innovation, and lead to higher prices." In addition, countering industry arguments that such exclusivity arrangements are an essential feature of the cell-phone marketplace, Kelsey points out that "handset manufacturers in Asia and Europe are able to sell 70-80 percent of...phones independent of exclusive deals."

More later on Kelsey's remarks to the committee on another hot-button consumer issue with cell phones: The uniformly—some say suspiciously so—high price of sending text messages.

Meantime, the Commerce Committee holds a hearing later this week on cell-phone exclusivity. —Paul Reynolds

Palm Pre will work with iTunes, may have AT&T and Verizon availability

The hotly anticipated Palm Pre smart phone will be an even-more formidable alternative to Apple's iPhone, if some new reports prove true.

Where the iPhone is available from AT&T, it appears the Pre won't long be shackled only to Sprint, its exclusive carrier when the phone launches on June 6—and the lowest-scoring carrier in our Ratings of cellphone service, available to subscribers. Word has it that both Verizon and AT&T may offer the Pre in a matter of months.

Also, Palm announced the Pre will also work fairly seamlessly with iTunes, one of the apps that make the iPhone so successful as a multimedia phone. This is an unusual development, given Apple’s traditional reluctance to make its software compatible with that of others. At a demo this week, Fortune reports, the Pre was shown successfully syncing with iTunes. —Mike Gikas

Cable users confused about DTV transition

[Image: Sigurd Decroos]

Some cable subscribers are under the impression that they need to buy a digital TV converter box or they'll lose certain channels they now get in analog—all because of the DTV transition.

That's not the case, but an incident related by our friends at the Consumerist shows there's a lot of confusion here. Folks worried about losing analog cable channels need a digital cable TV box, not a DTV converter box, and the reason they need one is because their cable company has decided to drop some analog channels for business reasons—not because the government told them to do that. (Lest every cable subscriber reading this blog panic, let me reassure you that most cable users don't have to do anything to keep getting the stations they now get.)

The changes in a cable company's channel lineup have nothing to do with the DTV transition, though some cable TV companies' ads might seem to suggest that. A DTV converter box works only with an antenna to pull in free over-the-air TV programming, the major networks and a few other channels. You need a converter for any TV (or VCR) that doesn't have a built-in digital ATSC tuner. You have to buy one from a store such as Radio Shack or an online retailer.

Save the U.S. Global Positioning System – with a global tax?

An image of the Global Positioning System III satellite built by Lockheed Martin. [Image: Lockheed Martin]

A recent U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report warns the constellation of space-based GPS satellites—the heart and soul of the Global Positioning System—could be in danger of failing. The U.S. Air Force, which is responsible for GPS operations and maintenance, “has struggled to successfully build [new] GPS satellites within cost and schedule goals,” says the GAO report. Among its conclusions, the GAO warns:

"...as old satellites begin to fail, the overall GPS constellation will fall below the number of satellites required to provide the level of GPS service that the U.S. government commits to. Such a gap in capability could have wide-ranging impacts on all GPS users, though there are measures the Air Force and others can take..."

Only 24 of the 31 GPS satellites are needed to fulfill commercial (civilian) and military navigation needs. But could seven satellites failing before the Air Force can launch new, improved GPS satellites? And given the $1.5 billion cost of the GPS III satellite launch program, Nicholas Thompson over at Wired has an intriguing proposition: Tax GPS to Save GPS.

Sound off: What do you think? Would some sort of global GPS tax be helpful? (Consider that anyone in the world can freely use GPS, a system developed, funded and maintained solely by the U.S. government—and U.S. taxpayers.)

Or would it be harmful? Feel free to use the comment section below! —Paul Eng

Dueling netbooks: AT&T vs. Verizon

HP Mini 1151nr

AT&T and Verizon are now both selling netbooks cellphone-style—that is, at a deep discount in exchange for a two-year service commitment, in this case to data service on a 3G data network. I've been using two of the first such netbooks: the $100 Acer Aspire One from AT&T and the $199 HP Mini 1151NR, from Verizon. Both cost up to $200 less than the non-carrier version of the unit.

Here's my take on these units, admittedly based on limited casual use: Like all netbooks, both make compromises for compactness and light weight. Yet I also found both offer fairly fast, widespread access to a 3G network without the fuss of installing a wireless card—which not all non-carrier netbooks even accept. (As an alternative, you can connect a non-carrier netbook to 3G by using a so-called dongle that plugs into, and dangles from, a USB port.)

The Acer, which has a 9-in. display, is the least expensive of five 3G netbooks and laptops being offered by AT&T, which this week expanded to nationwide sales of the units after pilot programs in Philadelphia and Atlanta. Verizon's HP netbook, the only one the carrier currently offers, has a 10-in. display and is also available nationwide.