How Hackers Could Exploit Federal Government Shutdown

Thepossible government shutdown scheduled for March 4, 2011could trigger a cyberwar emergency. If non-essential government employees end up being furloughed in early March, the federal government's computer systems will be run by a shortlist of critical-need employees.

One major problem: The federal government's list of critical-need computer security employees has not been updated in over 15 years.

According to the influential Nextgov website, the government's emergency call-up IT security listwas last updated in 1995, ahead of the last federal government shutdown.

 

"In 1995, we already had that decided,"said Hord Tipton, a former Interior Department chief information officer who was Bureau of Land Management assistant director for resource use and protection during the shutdown that lasted from Dec. 16, 1995, to Jan. 6, 1996."If they haven't done it, there's going to be a mad scramble, and there's going to be a hole in the system."

 

In the 1990s at Interior, the vital systems included those that monitored volcano and earthquake activity.

"You've got a week to do this,"said Tipton, now executive director of the International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium, an association that certifies cybersecurity specialists."If you haven't, you'd better get cracking. In this day and age, I would be surprised if they haven't.”

While government agencies are indeed scrambling to put together lists of emergency security employees to fight potential hacker attacks from China and elsewhere, there's one problem. The federal government works at the speed of bureaucracy.

Implementing lists of last-minute essential personnel to stay on staff during a shutdown requires considerable office jujitsu and cross-agency coordination. With only five working days remaining before the potential shutdown, there is a strong likelihood of a lapse in the federal government's network security infrastructure.

All federal agencies are required to have emergency plans with lists of critical-need personnel. However, these emergency plans often lie unchanged for years and are written by individuals with little knowledge of security or IT needs.

Meanwhile, furloughed federal employees with time on their hands have another problem. If the government shuts down,all office BlackBerrys could shut down too. A little-known piece of legislation called the Antideficiency Act prohibits federal agencies from accepting voluntary work to be done during government shutdowns. The law's vague wording empowers individual agencies to block access to BlackBerrys or to sanction users who access them in a shutdown.

The government shutdown will result in ahost of inconveniences, including the loss of veterans' health care and support services and the shuttering of non-emergency consular services abroad.

{Image via Flickr userrpongsaj}

For more stories like this, follow@fastcompany on Twitter. Email Neal Ungerleider, the author of this article,here.

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Wikipedia Goes Royal

Wikipedia and Versailles have established full diplomatic relations. Wikimedia France, which promotes Wikipedia in that country, is sending an employee to be the"resident Wikipedian"at the renowned opulent palace outside of Paris, historically a royal playground, now a tourist destination and custodian of cultural patrimony. Benoit Evellin's job will be to facilitate contacts between people who write Wikipedia articles and teams at the Chateau de Versailles, which have been trying to digitally distribute its informational resources for some time.

SaidEvellin in a release,"It's a great honour for me to be received in this symbol of the history of France. Versailles has always been a place of innovation: so it's normal that it remains so in the digital age."

Is Wikipedia giving up its scrappy, free-for-all, independent style here? Probably not. On the one hand, it would be bad if Wikipedia simply became a PR arm for Versailles or any other institution. (There's an irony here: Some have hystorically credited encyclopedias withbringing on the French Revolution.) On the other hand, Versailles is now more a museum than anything else, and who knows Versailles better than the people at Versailles?

There's a game some people like to play on Wikipedia: choose a frivolous entry (Pokemon: The Movie 2000) and a serious one (William Shakespeare). Compare the word count. Marvel at humanity's appetite for the inane. In the cosmic battle against junk knowledge, Wikipedia's alliance with institutions is probably on the side of the good.

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{Image: Flickr usersarah_ackerman}

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China Blocks Access to LinkedIn

Users in China are reporting that access to LinkedIn has been blocked throughout the country. By all indications, it seems that the popular career networking site has run afoul of the country's infamousGreat Firewall.

According to LinkedIn's Hani Durzy, the company is aware of a blockage in China and is"currently in the process of investigating the situation further."

The shutdown follows days of calls for a"Jasmine Revolution"in China, on the model of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions. Access to Twitter and Facebook has been blocked throughout China for some time; Chinese internet users seeking to use Twitter have been forced to access the site through difficult-to-use Virtual Private Networks (VPNs).

However, Chinese dissidents have another way of accessing Twitter...LinkedIn.

Use of LinkedIn, which is fully integrated with Twitter, was by far the easiest way to access Twitter in China. Messages can be easily read and posted through Twitter via LinkedIn.

One Chinese Twitter user who accesses both Twitter and LinkedIn through a proxyposted photos to Twitpicthat seem to confirm a Chinese LinkedIn outage.

Adding credence to the LinkedIn-shutdown-to-block-Twitter strategy is the news that the Chinese government hasstarted censoring the name of U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsmanfrom search results on the wildly popular homegrown Twitter/Tumblr clones Sina Weibo/QQ Weibo. Weibo means“microblog” in Chinese.

Huntsman faces widespread charges in China of support for the Jasmine Revolutionafter a citizen journalist spotted him watching a pro-democracy protestfrom within a crowd this past Sunday. Like any good American abroad, Huntsman was standing outside a McDonald's.

According toThe Wall Street Journal, Chinese dissidentshave been disseminating calls to protest and organizing eventsvia LinkedIn.

Reuters notes that the LinkedIn outagecould hurt the firm's chances at an IPO:

If the disruption for LinkedIn is permanent in China, it could hurt the company's prospects at an IPO as a ban would exclude the company from the world's largest Internet market--about 450 million users and growing.

 

"It certainly would be a negative in terms of the company's future growth and profitability,"said Jay Ritter, a professor of finance at the University of Florida.

"This is something where investors would take it into account and be willing to pay a little lower price per share."

Luckily for LinkedIn, China's Internet censors are notoriously fickle: Sites blip on and off the Great Firewall frequently, with no prior warning.

Related:Fast Company's Anya Kamenetz recentlyinterviewed LinkedIn CEO Reid Hoffman. Read more about the social networking site as part of ourMost Innovative Companies of 2011project.

For more stories like this, follow@fastcompany on Twitter. Email Neal Ungerleider, the author of this article,here.

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Are Live NBA, NFL Games Coming to YouTube?

Google is in negotiations with the NBA and NHL to stream games live via YouTube, reportsBloomberg. According to Gautam Anand, Google's director of content partnerships for Asia Pacific, the company is in talks"with most pro sports leagues,"and hopes to deliver more live sports content during the second half of this year.

"It's fair to say that there will be a lot more appealing sports content you'll see on youTube,"Anand told Bloomberg."We have ongoing conversations with pretty much everyone."

Such partnerships could help boost viewership and ad revenue, and give YouTube a reputation for professional content. The video-sharing service is best known for amateur or user-generated content--like, say, videos of dogs skateboarding--and lags behind competitors Netflix and Hulu, which feature movies and TV shows.

InFast Company's recentprofile of Google's video service, some suggested it was this lack of professional content that was keeping YouTube from profitability, though revenues have increased sevenfold since 2007.

And deals with the NBA and NHL could give YouTube access to content neither Hulu nor Netflix have: live streaming television. YouTube, which runs ads on videos more than 3 billion times per week, has made a name for itself as a destination for live content, from presidential addresses to Arcade Fire concerts. Adding pro sports to the mix would only bolster that image. Right now, sports leagues like the NBA and NHL do have channels on YouTube, but they feature mostly short clips of content re-purposed from TV.

Live-streams of full games will certainly be more interesting to watch than recaps of the day's top dunks and hockey fights. Right?

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NASA's Glory Satellite to Study Climate-Changing Aerosols

NASA continues its transformation this week from space exploration agency to Earth-monitoring organization with the launch ofGlory, a satellite that will monitor aerosols (tiny airborne particles) released by tailpipes, smokestacks, volcanoes, forest fires, and even desert winds.

Aerosols can cause both cooling and warming of the Earth's climate--bright-colored aerosols (i.e. sulfates and sea salt aerosols) reflect the sun's radiation back into space and cause cooling, while dark aerosols (i.e. black carbon) absorb light and cause the climate to warm. Aerosols also trigger cloud creation, and can affect everything from cloud brightness and reflectivity to precipitation.

It's important, then, to keep track of these particles; figuring out where they are allows us to both keep track of climate change and potentially modify its course.

NASA's Glory satellite will take care of the monitoring part of the equation with the Aerosol Polarimetry Sensor (APS), a device that can suss out the different types of aerosols by measuring the polarization of light affected by by both aerosols and clouds. As NASA explains on itswebsite,"much like forensic scientists might study the details of blood droplets at a crime scene to reconstruct what happened, climatologists using Glory data will look to the polarization state of scattered light to work backwards and deduce the type of aerosol that must have scattered it."

Eventually, the data may better allow us togeoengineerthe climate, potentially staving off catastrophic climate change.

Follow Fast Company onTwitter.Ariel Schwartz can be reached byemail.

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Fluorescent Tattoo Alert! MIT's Latest Trick for Embedded Medical Sensors

MIT is exploringembedded microworm biomedical sensors that detect medical conditions. And reading them could be as simple as shining a light on the skin and seeing the microworm tattoos glow.

A number ofresearch effortsare underway to exploit micro-particle technology to sense medical conditions, but though there are significant benefits to the technology the actual design of the system is problematic--nanoparticle and microparticle sensors can be swept away from where they're supposed to be by normal body processes. Enter MIT and Northeastern University with a new variety of microparticle sensor that's shaped like a long narrow tube--hence microworm--that is better at staying put in tissue and provides a greater surface area for chemical reactions. They're also so small that the body is effectively unaware of  their presence, and there are fewer of the rejection issues that can occur with larger embedded sensing devices.

Microworms are made in an intriguingly familiar way, all the more intersting because it all happens at such a small scale: A thick layer of pure aluminum oxide is etched to create millions of tiny pores in it, then a new layer of material is deposited on the oxide using chemical vapor deposition (one technology used in chip manufacturing). The new deposit finds its way into the tiny pores, coating the walls of each little tube with a shallow layer, and then the oxide is dissolved--leaving the new layer behind as millions of microscopic tubes. By filling the tubes with smart materials, and capping the tubes to trap these inside, all sorts of clever medical systems could be created--including next-generation drug delivery systems and biomedical sensors.

Researcher Karen Gleason notes that successful trials have been carried out by filling the tubes with a material that reacts to salt and injecting them beneath the skin of mice, but this is just the very early stages of the technology. Since the microworms are quite good at staying where they're required--for example near a blood vessel--once injected, it should be possible to treat the worms to detect blood glucose levels: Diabetes sufferers may then merely have to illuminate their skin with a UV light and see if their injected microworm"tattoo"glows, indicating low or high glucose levels. 

If the technology is swiftly perfected, and proves to be as useful as the early trials suggest it may be, it could enable super-swift diagnosis of a range of medical conditions. We may even see diagnosis in near real-time--by medical professionals, or even patients themselves, which reduces the reliance on central blood testing facilities and speeds up the time taken to work out what's going on with a patient's systems. 

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Cricket World Cup

The biggest upset for the Cricket World Cup may have happened before the 43-day-long tournament even begins. Following concerns over security, Pakistan was stripped of its status as a host country in April 2009 and told it would have to host its home games in neighboring India. The Pakistan team threatened to withdraw, but after its opening matches were rescheduled to take place in Sri Lanka, the team decided not to skip the spotlight. And this year, it'll be a big one: ESPN Star is broadcasting the games in 220 countries as part of a $1.1 billion deal.-- JEREMY GORDON

sat, february 19
FEUD
Cricket World Cup

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Global Warming-Resistant Biofuel: Agave

The same delightful plant that fuels regrettable spring break decisions could also be a major source of energy in the 21st century.New researchreveals that the agave plant has comparably higher energy yields than corn and, even more intriguing, becomes more productive as climate change increases CO2 levels."Agave is not only an exciting new bioenergy crop, but its economically and environmentally sustainable production could prove to successfully stimulate economies in Africa, Australia, and Mexico, if political and legislative challenges are overcome,”reportsScienceDaily.

Moreover, unlikethe price increasesof corn due to ethanol use, margarita addicts may not need to fear a spike in tequila prices, as the biofuel could be harvested in parallel with agave’s food products. “Abandoned Agave plantations in Mexico and Africa that previously supported the natural fiber market could be reclaimed as bioenergy cropland,” thereport continues.

This is especially exciting given the instability in climate caused by global warming."Rainfall will probably be more variable in the future. This is not problem formost agaves,"writeslead author, E. Garcia-Moya, Professor of Botany at the Colegio de Postgraduados en Ciencias Agricolas in Texcoco, Mexico.

So, in the near future, agave could entertain your guests, sweeten your iced tea, and power the designated driver to take eco-friendly partiers back home.

Follow Gregory Ferenstein onTwitteroremailhim.

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iFive: Canada Hacked, Obama Meets Jobs and Schmidt, Apple Controls Touchscreen Supply, Google Music, North Korea's Digital News

Did you seeJeopardy!? No? Unlucky you--you missed a moment that may be pivotal in computer history: IBM's Watson trounced his two human competitors on the finale of the Quiz show, winning $77,000. Watson-like tech isgoing to be partof your future, folks. On with the news:

1. Canada's governmenthas been hacked, with the attack traced back to computers in China. The Finance Department and Treasury board were big targets, along with PCs of"key"government officials--forcing the Canadians to disconnect key resources from the Net to prevent data being sent back to the hackers. According to the Canadian Broadcasting Association the government is refusing to reveal the extent of the damage.

2. Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt and Mark Zuckerberg willmeet with President Obamatonight in San Francisco, along with other business leaders including GE's CEO Jeffrey Immelt. The intention is to discuss the"shared goal of promoting American innovation,"according to the White House, along with discussing Obama's"commitment to new investments in research development, education and clean energy."

3. Apple'ssnagged about 60%of the world's supply of touchpanel displays according to component makers, squeezing its competitors hopes of producing tablets and smartphones in large numbers--particularly where those firms aren't first-rate names. Supply shortages in touchscreens were behind delays for a global roll-out of the iPad in 2010, but Apple's seized enough supply to avoid this in 2011.

4. Motorola's CEO Sanjay Jhamay have slipped plansfor Google's Music service, a competitor to iTunes, when speaking about his company's upcoming Xoom tablet. Jha corrected himself, but indicated video and"music services"areavailable in Android. This adds a new spin to long-standing rumors about Google's music plans, and suggests it could use Android tablets as a lever into the digital music industry--something it's not managed yet 

5. The digital newspaper revolution has a surprising new member: North Korea's ruling party daily paper Rodun Sinmun has launched an online version atwww.rodong.rep.kp. It's the next step in a very new experiment at embracing online tech, including recent Twitter and YouTube accounts for the North's government. What's it publishing? Typical"news,"referencing party events and propaganda.

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Dump Out Your Junk Drawer: EcoATM to Expand Electronics Recycling Kiosks

Recycling old electronics is often just enough of a hassle to keep dead phones and iPods lingering in junk drawers for years on end. EcoATM, a company that makes electronics recycling kiosks, wants to change that. And now the startup has received $14.4 million in a Series A funding round led by Coinstar and Claremont Creek Ventures to bring its kiosks to a gas station or supermarket near you.

EcoATMuses electronics diagnostics, artificial intelligence, and machine vision to scan devices, wipe personal data, and stick them into an on-site bin. Users are offered the choice of a coupon, gift card, cash, or charitable contribution for their old electronics. And unlike with Coinstar, there isn't a processing fee. The company's website explains:

ecoATM shops worldwide channels for the best prices we can find for each individual phone model. Because we deal with dozens of buyers all over the world, we generally find better pricing than individual consumers can find on their own. In a sense, an ecoATM acts as an“eBay-in-a-box” without the added hassle to the consumer of listing, packaging, shipping cost, potential return, etc, of eBay or other online methods.

So far, EcoATM only has kiosks in 11 locations throughout the U.S., including the Nebraska Furniture Mart in Omaha, Microsoft's corporate campus in Redmond, Wash., and the Westfield Horton Plaza shopping mall in San Diego, Calif. The new cash infusion will allow the company to better identify and assess electronic devices deposited into kiosks--and to spread the kiosks to even more locations.

"EcoATM's systems must quickly learn and then accurately identify thousands of different models of phones and other devices and then precisely assess any cosmetic or internal damage in order for the system to work,"said Chairman and CEO Tom Tullie in a statement."This requires us to continually push the boundaries on a unique combination of artificial intelligence and non-traditional machine vision technology."

EcoATM claims that it has already collected thousands of cell phones, laptops, digital cameras, GPS systems, and more in its existing kiosks. If the company can keep that momentum going with a larger rollout, it has the potential to become the go-to spot to ditch dead devices.

Follow Fast Company onTwitter.Ariel Schwartz can be reached byemail.

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iPad Faces Cheap, Powerful Competition From Asia

HuaweiandHTC, big-name manufacturers in Asia, have just revealed their entries in the Tablet Wars against Apple's iPad.

Apple's iPad is still king of the tablet hill, despite a swift-growing army of competitors led chiefly by Samsung. But two Asian firms that we've heard lots about recently have just revealed their iPad challengers and we, and possibly Apple, should take some note because both firms have leveraged their considerable mobile device expertise to make something rather interesting.

HTC's Flyer

HTC's tabletis a 7-inch unit with a"super LCD"touchscreen, sporting Android 2.4 and powered by a 1.5 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU. Its aluminum unibody design borrows unashamedly from Apple's design ethic, and at just under 7.7 inches long, 0.5 inches deep and weighing just under a pound it's a diminutive challenger for the iPad that seems to pack more processing punch.

Inside there's 1GB of operating RAM, a 5-megapixel camera on the rear, front-facing 1.3-megapixel unit for video conferencing, and all the usual Wi-Fi, 3G, and Bluetooth connectivity options.

But it's HTC'sSense UIand Scribe apps that you should pay attention to. HTC's Sense has been impressing the smartphone industry as an attractive, powerful UI layer on top of bog-standard Android, and it's had a revamp for HTC's entry into the tablet game. One feature that's particularly tablet-friendly is the carousel selector for quick app selection.

HTC's also building in pen-support to the Flyer, with HTC's bundled Scribe system, so you can take notes, draw pictures and diagrams and so forth on the tablet more accurately than is possible with your finger. To complete the student-friendly image, there's also a"Timemark"app that lets you record audio clips and then sync them in time to your written notes--it sounds perfect for lectures. There's also HTC's new Watch service for streaming HD movies, along with support for OnLive's cloud-based gaming system.

In other words, HTC is aiming this beast at students who don't want to ferry around a bigger, heavier iPad, and loading it up with apps that'll boost their studying as well as playtime. The catch must be the price, you're thinking--but you're wrong. Estimates pin the launch price at around€500 (around $670), which is comparable to Apple's current 3G-enabled iPad price.

Huawei's Ideos Slim S7

On the other end of the scale the oft-overlooked (but secretly pretty successful) firmHuaweihasrevealedits Android tablet, and it's a different proposition even though at first it looks similar.

The S7 is another 7-inch Android device, this time running Android 2.2 Froyo on its 480 by 800 pixel capacitative multitouch screen. It's a"next-generation"device, according to Huawei, which is"now more streamlined for easier portability"; reports indicate it's less than half an inch deep. It too has 720p HD video playback, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and 3G connectivity but some indications suggest the S7 can also place phone calls, a trick few of its peers can carry off.

The main trick behind the S7, however, is its price: It's due in April for"under $300."

At this price the device is likely to turn a few heads, as long as it looks and feels like a valuable tablet--something that should be possible since Huawei's behind many of those resilient USB 3-G mobile internet sticks we're all familiar with.

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Baked In: Fashion Site Polyvore Taps an Army of Anna Wintours

About the"Baked In"series: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg likes to say that social dynamics are going to work their way into every industry, and the companies of the future will be the ones that bake them in from the beginning, rather than slapping them on as an afterthought. This series takes a look at companies that are discovering new opportunities by using social components in the foundations of their businesses.

A small coterie of designers and editors in New York, Paris, London, and Milan, have traditionally clutched the reins of power in the fashion world--they dream up what the rest of us should be wearing, and many of us abide. But the Internet has slowly pried free their grip, first with fashion bloggers who gained influence when they developed meaningful followings of their own, and now with sites like Polyvore, which shifts the power of taste-making from the runways to the masses--who in turn are starting to influence the runways.

Polyvore is one of a new generation of online businesses in a number of industries that is placing"social"at the center of their strategies. By building experiences that, from the get-go, enable regular folks to connect with each other, the businesses are creating entirely new types of value, often upending traditional industries in the process.

At its core, Polyvore is simply a place where anyone can mix and match existing fashion items to create and publish new looks or mood boards. Through a proprietary technology, visitors can drag-and-drop images of blouses, skirts, shoes, purses and jewelry onto a digital canvas to create those looks. The images are taken from an enormous catalog of items, most of which are already available in stores, and many of which can be bought online. (Occasionally, Polyvore users get to help design something entirely new). The end result, Polyvore's vice president of product Jess Lee tellsFast Company, is"an infinitely browse-able and shop-able fashion magazine."

But it's more than that. The site is also one giant fashion coffee klatch. Visitors can comment on and“Like” each other’s sets. They can ask for advice and get ideas of what to pair with items they already own. They can make friends and connect to each other, Facebook-style. They create groups of their favorite Polyvorians, and even subscribe to those whose tastes they want to follow.

Designers and brands have taken notice. Just as they have traditionally worked with fashion magazines to showcase their wares, some brands are getting involved in Polyvore. But not simply as one more place to toss up some ads. Instead, the savviest are beginning to work directly with the Polyvore community, to cull and curate, in much the same way they’ve worked with traditional fashion editors.

Michael Kors, for example, sponsoreda contestin which Polyvore members could compete to design the best look using at least two items from his Holiday 2010 collection. Almost 3,000 people submitted entries, and the winner was featured in a Kors video showcasing the designer’s upcoming spring collection.

But the real win for Kors was engagement among fans. Individual Polyvorians created over 33,000 sets using items from Kors' collection, and Kors' clothes garnered almost 31,000 comments and over 300,000"Likes."

Luxury handbag and accessory designer Rebecca Minkoff has taken the engagement piece a step further. Minkoff also sponsoreda contest, but this one to design a new version of her iconic Morning After Clutch. The winning piece (pictured above)--which Minkoff selected herself--is now making its way into the real world. It will be featured in Minkoff's runway show at New York Fashion Week today, and Saks Fifth Avenue has signed up to carry it exclusively."We're constantly exploring non-traditional media strategies to maximize our presence,"Minkoff tellsFast Company."Collaborating alongside Polyvore was a no brainer."

All of which points to how Polyvore is introducing new dynamics into the fashion industry. Lee says there will always be a place for theHarper's Bazaars andVogues of the world."The reason why the editors are at the top is that they have a great eye, and they really are experts. But the brands that excel in the fashion industry of the future will be the ones that engage in the new channels. If you want to participate in this new medium, you have to build a following of fans who do the talking for you,"Lee says.

And as designers increasingly discover how fashion-savvy many Polyvorians actually are, Lee says she expects them to use the site--both its members and its analytics about what members are looking at and playing with--to make decisions on everything from what to produce, to how to merchandise their goods, and even to do inventory planning.

Not bad for a four-year-old company that has 2 million registered users and 6.5 million monthly visitors. And that wasn’t even started by a tech-savvy editor in New York or a fashionista in Phoenix. Just the opposite. Polyvore was the brainchild of a senior engineer at Yahoo, Pasha Sadri, who discovered the allure of mixing and matching while playing with a piece of software he'd built himself to explore differentschemes for a house redesign.

"He would always get sucked into using the prototype,"says Lee."That’s when he knew he was on to something."Sadri quickly realized that a tool to help people remodel their homes--an activity people perform rarely--wasn’t as attractive a business opportunity as one aimed at something people do every day. Which is how he hit upon fashion.

And though the intention might simply have been to create a place for fashion enthusiasts to play, the end result has been a democratizing of the industry."You don’t have to be in New York anymore,"Lee says."If you’re in Iowa or Idaho, you can still have a voice."

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E.B. Boyd is FastCompany.com's Silicon Valley reporter.Email.

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Pandora, Innovative Internet Radio Station, Files For $100M IPO

Internet radio company Pandora today filed a registration statement for its initial public offering and hope to earn a reported $100 million.

Rumors have been bubbling for months over an IPO for the 80-million strong streaming music service. Asked recently, founder andChief Strategy Officer Tim Westergrendeclined to comment one way or another about whether his company ended 2010 with a profit of an estimated $100 million (the company ended 2009 with a $50 million profit)."It's all going in the right direction,"Westergren toldFast Company. 

Under his direction, the company has grown significantly, and now represents the vast majority of market share for Internet radio, and well as holding more than a 2% share of all radio listening.

A spokesperson for Pandora declined to comment further beyond the S-1 filing statement. In that filing, Pandora goes into the risks related to their business model:

Internet radio is an emerging market, and if we are unable to increase the number of listeners and listener hours or to convince advertisers of the benefits of our advertising products, our business and future prospects will be harmed.

We have aggressive plans to increase the number of listeners who use the Pandora service on mobile devices; however, the market for advertising on mobile devices, such as smartphones, is immature, and if we are unable to increase revenue from advertising that targets our listeners who use mobile devices, our results of operations will be materially adversely affected.

We face many competitive challenges, any of which could adversely affect our prospects, results of operations and financial condition.

Those who own copyrights in musical works are vigilant in protecting their rights and the licensing structure that we operate under may change or cease to exist, either of which could result in a material increase in our content acquisition expenses.

Our ability to increase the number of our listeners will depend in part on our ability to establish and maintain relationships with makers of connected devices, our ability to make our technologies compatible with their platforms and consumer acceptance of the products that integrate our service.

Our business and prospects depend on the strength of our brand and failure to maintain and enhance our brand would harm our ability to expand our base of listeners, advertisers and other partners and may require us to increase our marketing expenses, which would adversely affect our results of operations.

Stay tuned for more news on the subject.

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iFive: Chinese Web Spying, Twitter on Sale at $10 Billion?, iPad 3 Rumors, Nokia-Microsoft Phones, Designer Dolls-Up"Square"

On this day inhistoryin 1962 Gary Powers, captured pilot of the revolutionary U-2 spy-plane, was exchanged by the USSR for a Soviet spy who'd been caught in the U.S. Two year's later on this day Bob Dylan's iconic"The Times They Are A-Changin'"album was released, and in 2005 North Korea publicly boasted, for the first time, about its nuclear weapons. Now, on with the news:

1. More spying news, from China:Reports suggestmajor Western energy firms have been the target of a"coordinated, covert and targeted"web attack, intended to reveal business secrets to the China-based hackers. The"Night Dragon"attacks are ongoing, and include major oil companies. The attacks seem similar in skill and reach to the attacks that targeted Google and U.S. government sites.

2. Twitter, darling of the social media world, may be making its biggest fiscal play yet:According tosources who've spoken to theWall Street Journal, Twitter's holding"low level"acquisition talks with interested parties. The all-important cash figure is reported to be in the $8 billion to $10 billion range, which tells you what a success Twitter's become--and swiftly.

3. Apple's iPad 2--the tablet all others will be compared with in 2011--hasn't arrived yet, but the press is already awash withrumors about the iPad 3. Premature? Not as much as you may think: Rumors hint that some of the improvements debated for use in the iPad 2 will be delayed until a next-gen refresh that will arrive in September. Some of the arguments make sense, and it's a way for Apple to entirely own the market.

4. There are louder and louder hints that Nokia and Microsoft are close to a deal to bring Windows software to Nokia smartphones in a bid to jump-start Nokia's ailing business. This time it'sBloomberg(with theNew York Timesalso chiming in) who's spoken to insiders with the right kind of knowledge, and we're now fairly sure that at a press event tomorrow CEO Stephen Elop will reveal the news.

5. Designer Vivienne Tam haspartnered withJack Dorsey's company to snazz up his neat iPhone credit-card reader peripheral"Square."Though Tam hasahistoryof working with electronic gadgets, it strikes us as an odd target, as it's hardly a mass-sales gizmo. Maybe it's an attempt to inject some excitement into Square before the coming wave of wireless NFC smartphone payments arrives?

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GE, EPA Team Up to Keep Appliances Out of Landfills

It's bad enough to fill up landfills with recyclable food packaging, but it's even worse when people start piling on the remains of hulking appliances. That's why GE partnered with the Environmental Protection Agency this week to work on refrigeration appliance recycling best practices. It doesn't sound sexy, but GE estimates that its new recycling technology could cut refrigerator landfill waste by 85%. Note: Nine million refrigerators are disposed of in the U.S. each year.

As it stands, 90% of used refrigerators in the U.S. are shredded for metal, with the remaining 10% of foam and other materials going to the landfill. But GE is working with the Appliance Recycling Centers of America (ARCA) to recover 95% of insulating foam found in refrigerators. The company is the first in the U.S. to use ARCA's process, which automatically captures toxins and greenhouse gases (chlorofluorocarbons, hydro chlorofluorocarbons, hydrofluorocarbons, and cyclopentane) from insulating foam that would otherwise leak into the atmosphere.

As part of the partnership, GE will offer up used appliances from six surrounding states to ARCA Advanced Processing's regional recycling center in Pennsylvania."The potential of this technology is tremendous,"said Brian Conners, President and COO of ARCA Advanced Processing, in a statement."If the foam from the 9 million refrigerators disposed of annually in the U.S. were processed through this recycling technology, the greenhouse gas emissions avoided would be equivalent to the annual CO2 emissions of more than 2.4 million cars on U.S. roads."

Follow Fast Company onTwitter.Ariel Schwartz can be reached byemail.

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With"Real" Page Numbers at Last, Kindle Goes Book-Club Friendly

A softwareupdatefor Kindle is bringing features that really ought to have been around from the beginning: real page numbers that match what's in hard-copy versions of books, a public notes feature that lets you share your thoughts with the world, and an end-of-book section that lets you share messages about the book with your social network. Taken together, the update makes the Kindle more user-friendly for the book club set--whether meeting up in person or online.

The most sorely needed function was the real page numbers, which come as a relief to users who complained they couldn't read along with others in book club or in class. For Amazon not to have included this feature to begin with seems symptomatic of a sort of over-reaching optimism that accompanied the Kindle's initial release: Since e-books were the future, there was no need to make accommodations to an obsolete hard-copy past. But since hard-copy books are still around (and owners of Kindles do still deign to speak with those who visit the library), the more forward-thinking option is to integrate these communities by allowing them to be literally on the same page.

Eager Kindlers can download a preview version of the softwarehere.

FollowFast Companyon Twitter.

{Image: Flickr userGoXunuReviews}

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Apple Rumor Round-Up: iPad 2, Personal Wi-Fi Hotspots, New iOS All In-Bound

The Apple rumors are beginning to swirl thick and fast, which usually prefaces a launch--even if the rumors aren't always an accurate predictor of the actual event.

iPad 2 screen

Earlier this week the guys at9to5Mac.comscored a scoopwhen they landed access to what may be the iPad 2's LCD screen, via a device repair service that acquires parts from China. It reveals that the iPad 2's screen is exactly the same size--9.7 inches of viewable area--but that the bezel of the unit has been shrunk slightly, probably thanks to technological advances. It's also lighter and thinner (by around a millimeter) than the current iPad screen, all of which would allow the iPad to to be thinner, with a smaller bezel and a less deeply curved back, exactly as the many rumors about iPad 2's shape have suggested.

No word yet on whether the screen is exactly the same resolution as the current iPad's, or whether it's had a boost to match the iPhone 4's retina-busting powers--but the rumors have backed away from this suggestion a bit anyway.

iPad 2"leak"

Reuterscaused a news fuss this morning, at least in the tech press, with a story saying one of their reporters spotted an iPad 2 at yesterday'slaunch of The Daily newspaper appin New York. It was being sported by one of the official participants, who went as far as confirming it was real and that it would have both front- and rear-facing cameras.

The story's been met with skepticism online, but thanks to the Gizmodo iPhone 4 affair, we know that Apple does test its devices in the wild. We also suspect that Apple's clamped down on such"leaks"in the wake of Gizmodo's leak of the iPhone 4.

Apple to upgrade mobile OS, with subscriptions, in two weeks?

Daring Fireball'sJohn Gruber, commenting on the News Corp.DailyiPad newspaper appnotesthat theDaily'slong-anticipated subscription model requires API code hooks that"aren't in iOS 4.2,"which is the current release version. Gruber notes that the Daily is free for two weeks, courtesy of Verizon's generosity...but this time frame could also match up with the arrival of a fresh version of Apple's mobile operating system.

In other words, iOS 4.3 may arrive in two weeks' time, bringing all the right code to support in-app periodical subscriptions.

Could this also indicate Apple will reveal the new iPad in just two weeks time? That would make for a nicely rounded-out event, and it would leave Apple free to do an independent news release at the end of February to trumpet its stellar Verizon iPhone sales.

Personal Wi-Fi hotspots for everyone

New York Timestech reporter David Poguejust publisheda review of the Verizon version of the iPhone 4--along with a number of other reviewers. But after mentioning the Verizon version's neat"personal hotspot"powers, which distinguish it from the iPhone's powers on every other network, Pogue says"Many other app phones have it-- AT&T’s iPhone gets it on Feb. 13--but Apple’s execution is especially nice."

Is Pogue letting slip some inside info he's heard?

New iPad features: HD video, 3-megapixel camera, monitor connection

Fresh trawling through the most recent developer release of iOShas turned up a few nuggetsof information on what specs the next iPad may have.

According to this thinking, the next iPad will include an approximately 3-megapixel camera (the iPhone 3GS uses a 3.2-megapixel unit), which is capable of recording video in 720p format. There're also hooks for a digital compass and the DisplayPort protocol--the current connector technology Apple employs on its MacBook lineup to connect to high-resolution displays like monitors.

Want more Apple speculation? Follow Fast Company onTwitter.

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iFive: Egypt Online Again, Bing Copies Google, Google's Hotpot Goes Global, Smartphone Market Wars, E-Book Price Fixes

It'sGroundhog Day, folks...so let's hope the little furry guy in Punxsutawney predicts an early Spring, and an end to the snowpocalypse that's blanketing the U.S. at the moment. On with the news:

1. After days of being disconnected, there areemerging reportsthat the Internet is accessible again in Egypt. It's not clear if it's all ISPs under a government mandate, or whether a unilateral decision was made, but it'll be welcome news to people inside the nation trying to coordinate protests, and those outside trying to track events or missing loved ones. Google exec Wael Ghonimis stillon this missing list.

2. A huge spat is erupting between Google and Bing, after Googleconducted a honeypot searchphrase"sting"operation and discovered that Bing is apparently copying the search behavior of Google (by monitoring what people search for on Google then eventually click) to improve its own search relevancy. The debate about whether it's illegal, immoral, or just normal practice is exploding right now.

3. Meanwhile Google is trying to steal business from a whole army of competitors, with a roll-out ofGoogle Hotpotall round the world. It's a local recommendation engine"based on your tastes and those of your friends."It's arrived on Google.com when accessed from a desktop machine, and has rolled out to smartphones--Android and iPhones alike--where it'll be a blow to competitor apps like AroundMe, or Yelp.

4. Which smartphone is leading the U.S. mobile market? According tonew Nielsen datait's none of 'em! The iPhone, Android OS, and RIM BlackBerrys are all tied with approximately 27% of the market each (with the remainder shared out between PalmOS, Windows Phone 7, and Windows Mobile). In December 2010 Nielsen also found that 31% of Americans owned a smartphone--a figure that's only going to rise.

5. With perfect timing (as Apple and News Corp. try to reinvent the newspaper on the iPadlater today) the U.K.'s Office of Fair Trading islaunchingan investigation into e-book price fixing, following a"significant number"of complaints from Brits angry that their digital books cost almost the same on different services, and as much as their paper books. Will the government smack Apple and Amazon on the hand for bad behavior? Watch this space for developments.

To read more news on this, and similar stuff, keep up with my updates by following me,Kit Eaton, on Twitter.

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