Spam and phishing have been ongoing problems at Twitter for some time, and tonight the company announced that it is stepping up its efforts to stop them with some new features, described as being able to “detect, intercept, and prevent the spread of bad links.”

In a blog post, Twitter writes that the protection works by “routing all links submitted to Twitter through this new service … even if a bad link is already sent out in an email notification and somebody clicks on it, we’ll be able keep that user safe.”

How exactly they do that, we’re not sure, but Twitter notes that you’ll start seeing short links using its own “twt.tl” URL shortener in direct messages and email notifications. As users who have been victimized by phishing scams (and those annoyed by the constant barrage of dodgy DMs) can likely attest, it’s a feature whose time has most certainly come.

Tags: phishing, security, twitter

Twitter has just announced that it is launching a new anti-phishing feature that allows Twitter’s Trust and Safety team to monitor all links submitted through the service for potentially malicious attacks. Part of the new feature will involve the use of Twitter’s link shortener twt.tl, which may now start popping up in some of your emails and direct messages.

At this point, it’s not really clear which links are being converted to Twitter’s twt.tl shortened links. We just ran a test at the TC office with two different links: one for an article on GigaOm, and another for a bit.ly link that pointed to a page on Google Buzz. The links I received on my Twitter client were both unchanged, but both were converted to twt.tl links in our Email notifications (obviously neither of them had malicious content).

From the Twitter blog:

Today, we’re launching a new service to protect users that strikes a major blow against phishing and other deceitful attacks. By routing all links submitted to Twitter through this new service, we can detect, intercept, and prevent the spread of bad links across all of Twitter. Even if a bad link is already sent out in an email notification and somebody clicks on it, we’ll be able keep that user safe.

Since these attacks occur primarily on Direct Messages and email notifications about Direct Messages, this is where we have focused our initial efforts. For the most part, you will not notice this feature because it works behind the scenes but you may notice links shortened to twt.tl in Direct Messages and email notifications.

Image via ToastyKen

Today at the Google’s Campfire One event at the company’s headquarters in Mountain View the Internet search giant is launching its new app store for business, known as the Google Apps Marketplace.

Last week, we broke the story that Google Apps Marketplace would launch today, reporting that it would be an app store integrated within Google Apps that would allow third-party developers to sell software directly to Google’s business consumers.

Now, with developers gathered at the Googleplex, we’re about to learn how Google Apps Marketplace works and, more importantly, which apps are going to be available at launch.

My live notes from the event are below:

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Google Apps Marketplace: The Details

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- Note: you can watch the live stream of Google Campfire One on the Google Developers YouTube Channel.

- Vic Gundotra, Google’s Vice President of Engineering, has just started speaking

- Vic is talking about feedback it’s received from its business customers. Google believes that business apps should be run in the cloud. One problem: to use multiple business apps, you need to log into multiple websites, which can be messy and a security threat.

- Google Apps Marketplace announced.

- Details: $100 flat fee, no matter the amount of apps you launch. 20% revenue share. This is an important number, as most app stores charge 30% revenue share, especially Apple’s iPhone app store.

- Over 50 partners for Google Apps, including Aviary, Expensify, Intuit, and others.

- Now Google is talking about the technical details of how to get your app added into the Google Apps interface.

- Google’s diving into secure data access via OAuth. Google’s clearly thought about how to make sure that information that apps need is received from users, but that apps don’t take more information than they need.

- Google has brought up a developer, Ryan, to demo some of the code to integrate his app with Google Apps Marketplace. It’s a “Hello World” type of app.

- If you go to http://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/, you’ll see the store’s future splash page.

- Intuit is demoing. They’re the people behind Quickbooks and showing off their Intuit Online Payroll app within Google Apps.

- They’re showing of integrations of Intuit’s payroll system within Google Calendar. Logging in via Google Apps seems intuitive.

- New demo: Scott from Atlassin is demoing Jira Studio. The dashboard they’ve built with Google Apps integration is very impressive. Screenshots coming.

- “Fingertip access” to Google Talk. It has Google Docs integration, and is available today. It’s a very killer apps for development management and issue tracking.

- Another demo: Manymoon.

- The key themes seem to be A) how easy it is to code integration with Google Apps, and B) How many nifty things you can do linked to Google Apps. Google Calendar will definitely benefit from these apps.

- Everything will be available tonight for purchase

- Last demo of the night: Ryan from Appirio, a cloud solution provider. It’s a tool for managing your team’s cloud applications, such as Salesforce. It’s meant to transition enterprise into the cloud more effectively.

- One interesting demo: you can trigger actions within your email with Appirio. You can, for example, get information on customers right from within your email (it’s embedded!). The embeds are called Gmail contextual gadgets, and they are really nifty.

- Example: Customers emails you saying that a project is behind schedule. With Appirio, you can access from Gmail the projects that are open with the customer vis PS Connect. It’ll show budget, the status of the project, end dates, and notes.

- Google’s David Glazer (Engineering Director) is closing the campfire session.

- The President of Google’s Enterprise division is on stage. Security, compatibility, simplicity, and more are possible through cloud apps, which is why Google has bet so heavily on it for enterprise.

- 25 million active users of Google Apps. And apparently once companies of 20,000+ employees switch to Google Apps, they don’t switch back.

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Reviews: Aviary, Gmail, Google, Google Docs, google talk

Tags: app store, Campfire One, developers, Expensify, Google, Google App Store, google apps, Google Apps Marketplace, Google Campfire One, trending

Back in October we wrote about Appboy, a social network for mobile app developers and users. Since launching, Appboy has continued to evolve into a community for both developers and users to find and rate apps, as well as submit ideas for new mobile applications. Appboy has just rolled out a big update to its site which improves the design, adds stronger integration with Facebook and Twitter, and makes it easy to keep up with what your favorite app developers are doing. The site has also launched a new companion iPhone application and started a new partnership with Best Buy Mobile.

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New Look and Feel

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The Appboy Profile pages have been given a total facelift. Now, in addition to displaying your user activity and favorite apps, users can link their Twitter accounts with Appboy and auto-publish any #appboy tweets directly to their Appboy page.

For users, this feature might not get a ton of play, but for app developers it becomes a pretty handy way of keeping your Appboy profile up-to-date with little fuss.

Users can also now login with either Twitter or Facebook Connect. We really like that Appboy has embraced other social networks instead of trying to force users to keep everything in the Appboy garden.

You can also now follow other users, which is especially helpful when you want to keep up with what’s happening with your favorite app or app idea.

The App Pages have also received a new coat of paint, with an easy way to vote “Love It” or “Hate It” on an app’s page. Comments and reviews can now be viewed separately, which is nice when you just want to distill one group or the other. Plus, users can now add related links, videos and reviews to an app page which can help provide better context.

User reviews are also now ratable — Digg style — which allows the most helpful reviews to appear higher on the list.

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iPhone App

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In addition to a new website design, Appboy now has its own iPhone app. The free app gives users all the functionality of the website right on the iPhone. That’s really nice, especially when you are looking for a new app or want to leave a review for something you just purchased. Sure, the App Store works for that too, but what is nice about Appboy is that it is a community.

Check out these screenshots to see the app in action. As you can see, the interface matches the website and it’s very easy to get around and rate or learn about apps and app ideas.

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Best Buy Mobile Partnership

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One of the most unique features of Appboy is that it isn’t focused on just one platform; it’s focused on mobile apps in general. So whether you have an Android device, an iPhone, a BlackBerry or a Palm Pre, you can find, rate and suggest ideas for new apps.

Best Buy just launched a new mobile site, Best Buy Mobile, and Appboy powers the Apps section for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry. The top 10 apps from each platform are fed into Best Buy’s site and those apps come directly from the Appboy community.

This is a pretty big step, considering the relative age of the site, and we think it’s because Appboy has shown itself as being committed to the mobile community as a whole.

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Looking Good

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Appboy continues to be a great resource for developers and users wanting to connect and share what’s cool and what sucks in the mobile app space. The new iPhone app is a really nice addition to the site and we hope that the Best Buy partnership will bring even more users into the community.

How do you find out about new mobile applications? Let us know!

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Reviews: Android, Digg, Twitter

Tags: android, appboy, apple, apps, iphone, iphone apps, mobile apps

Andrew Wilkinson of MetaLab has just written a blog post accusing Mozilla of plagiarizing the design of its FlightDeck editor. To make matters worse, Wilkinson says that MetaLab actually bid on creating the design for FlightDeck months ago, but was turned down by Mozilla.

While Wilkinson is understandably upset, at this point,it looks like the plagiarized image is just a mockup on the Mozilla wiki — not the actual product (though it’s obviously still in bad taste). We’ve reached out to Mozilla for a comment. You can see a screenshot comparison from Wilkinson’s blog post below.

Update: Here’s a comment from Mozilla, stating that the copy-and-paste design was a proof of concept:

Mozilla is now aware of a post by MetaLab that shows a Mozilla developer copying prior design work. The mockups they cite were an early proof of concept created by cut-and-paste, never final designs. Mozilla respects the hard work of all designers and at no time meant to plagiarize original content. The in-progress designs for the Jetpack SDK’s IDE are available here and following initial sign-off on the proof of concept, the IDE was developed entirely independent of MetaLabs’ work.

On its wiki, Mozilla describes FlightDeck as a tool to “enable the community to rapidly, collaboratively develop both extensions that utilize the Jetpack framework and Jetpack Capabilities crucial to the expansion of the Jetpack framework’s core.“

Google’s call for medium-sized cities to pilot its high-speed broadband network has attracted the marketing wit of another locale: Greenville, South Carolina.

Citizens of Greenville have launched the “We Are Feeling Lucky” campaign –- an obvious play on Google’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” button — an effort that will culminate in citizens trying to form “the world’s first and longest human Google chain.” Glowsticks will apparently be involved in the event, scheduled to take place on the evening of March 20.

The site makes heavy use of Google products and services — likely not a coincidence — in getting its message across. There’s also a social media component, with “We Are Feeling Lucky” having a YouTube channel featuring citizen videos, a Facebook event for the “Google on Main” event and a Twitter hashtag: #LuckyGVL. Here’s one of the YouTube clips featuring a variety of Greenville residents:

While citizens work to spread the message and draw Google’s attention, a formal proposal from the city is in the works to be submitted to Google by the March 26 deadline.

Greenville joins a growing list of cities that are getting creative in hopes of landing Google’s fiber. Topeka, Kansas, drew headlines when it unofficially renamed itself Google, Kansas. Duluth, Minnesota, went viral (to the degree a video about a public infrastructure proposal can) with a YouTube video. Columbia, Missouri, has 5,000+ fans of a Facebook Page supporting Google Fiber in their town.

When Google announced its plan to launch the fiber network test, the company made it clear to us that it has no plans to become an ISP. Nonetheless, it appears that lots of cities would be more than happy to serve as the test bed for its vision of a faster Internet, which its claims will have speeds of up to 100x typical connections.

Which campaign for Google Fiber has been your favorite so far? Let us know in the comments.

Tags: Google, google fiber

If you’ve been active on Twitter over the last 24 hours, you may have noticed a few more Twt.tl URL’s popping up.

In case you’re unaware, Twt.tl is Twitter’s own URL shortener and has been used sparingly to combat phishing attacks and to protect its users. Today the company is renewing its efforts to combat these attacks by sending virtually all URLs sent via direct messages or email through a filtering system.

In a blog post the company says:

“By routing all links submitted to Twitter through this new service, we can detect, intercept, and prevent the spread of bad links across all of Twitter. Even if a bad link is already sent out in an email notification and somebody clicks on it, we’ll be able keep that user safe.”

This will mean all harmless URLs, you will reach without concern, but any URLs Twitter consider’s unsafe you will see a warning page.

The Twt.tl URL was first announced in 2008 but only now, after the frequent phishing attacks on its users will it be put to full effect. Whether we’ll see this replace bit.ly as Twitter’s default URL shortener, we’ll have to wait and see.

Twitter has just announced that to protect people from scams, links in direct messages and sent via email will be shortened using its own URL shortener. It’s a welcome move. Still, I was curious about any impacts this might have for good marketers who are not trying to scam people. Good news, on [...]

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Federal prosecutors accused Colleen R. LaRose, who called herself “JihadJane,” of linking up online with militants overseas, culminating in an alleged murder plot.

Psychologists often use inventive and resourceful ways to investigate and understand how our minds operate, and why we do the things we do. But in certain instances, the research topics that pop up in the field are just plain weird. Check out the top ten oddball psychlogy studies ever explored.

See a few below:

The ‘Don’t Stand so Close to Me’ study

Middlemist, Knowles and Matter (1976) designed an experiment to test how the speed and flow of men’s urination in a public lavatory was affected by invasions of personal space.

The ‘Empathy Causes Facial Similarity Between Couples to Increase Over Time’ study

Would you believe that people who live with each other for 25 years actually develop similar facial features? I don’t just mean that people tend to choose partners who resemble them, rather that over time together couple’s features actually converge. It’s weird, but there’s evidence for it from a singular study carried out by the noted psychologist Robert Zajonc and colleagues.

The ‘Does Semen Have Antidepressant Properties?’ study

If there was ever research guaranteed to make women suspicious of male researcher’s motivations it’s this one. This study tests the idea that prostaglandins, a component of semen, may actually be useful in treating depression.

See all ten wacky but fascinating tests at PsyBlog.

More on psychology.

Photo credit: Fotolia

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The social networking site plans to roll out features next month that will give its 400 million users the option of sharing their location with friends as part of their news feeds.

Star Wars… Who could have missed this monumental series of movies that made boys out of men and every girl wishing they were Princess Leia? Our imaginations were stirred into believing we could actually use the force to our own advantage. The three prequel movies were as successful as anyone could have imagined, but still the hard core fans were a bit disappointed that things were too over acted and animated. Well, there’s always something isn’t it?

I remember having a friend in my class who was a space freak. He watched every hard core space movie from Alien to Star Wars. His belief in the Star Wars movies went so far that he managed to break his arm. Yeah, I am not kidding. On his way home from school one day he thought it would be a great idea to switch hands on the handle bars of his bicycle and he even closed his eyes and called out the words “Feel The Force”. I think you can calculate quite easy what happened next. Of course he fell off and broke his right arm. It goes to show how much movies can influence us.

Knitting has never gotten that “cool” factor associated with it, not even close. But it seems that is all about to change with what I am about to show you. Lucy Ravenscar has outdone herself creating these highly sought after Amigurumi Mini Star Wars Characters. When I saw them, I just went into a deep cryogenic stasis taking a flight back in time. She has totally redefined knitting and has, in an instant, become one of my heroes.

The prices vary from $3-$30 and you can be sure that they are going to make your desk look nothing less than impressive. If you want to get some, just go to her Etsy website and order. I tell you, this is an opportunity you don’t want to miss!

Bennett routinely takes in nearly twice as much contributions from out of state than from within Utah. In the 2006 cycle, 63% of his contributions came from outside Utah. In the 2008 cycle, 62% came from out of state. So far in the 2010 cycle, 68% of his donations came from outside Utah. Overall, the Washington DC metro area is his second highest source of contributions, second only to the Salt Lake City area.

For more, go here. Nice contributions from Citigroup, Bob.

Later this week, thousands of ironic t-shirts will be arriving in Austin for the 16th annual South By Southwest Interactive festival.

At about this time, it’s traditional for tech publications to publish handy guides to “surviving SXSWi” – packed with useful advice that’s basically interchangeable with that for any other festival since the beginning of time.

“Drink plenty of water!” “Prepare for some late nights!” “Plan ahead to make sure you don’t miss anything!” “Pack sturdy shoes!” “Always use a condom!”. Useful advice for SXSWi, certainly, but also applicable for Oktoberfest, Glastonbury, Woodstock and the ancient Roman festival of Lupercalia (although for the latter, replace ’shoes’ with ’sandals’ and ‘condom’ with ’sprig of silphium’).

This year, though, I decided to use my experience of past SXSWi’s to produce something more useful. A very specific and completely foolproof guide on surviving this year’s event. And here it is…

Tip One: Don’t go to South by Southwest Interactive.

I’m serious. It sucked last year, and it’s going to suck again this year. You’re kidding yourself if you think otherwise. The idea that SXSWi is a conference – or even a festival – for people doing interesting and useful things in technology is a fallacy. In reality, it’s just a non-stop orgy of bullshit fanboyism – a chance for people with stickers on their laptops to go and add more stickers to their laptops; an opportunity for sweaty dorks in Diggnation t-shirts to line up for two hours in the hope of getting Alex Albrecht to – I dunno – sign their laptop, I suppose, or maybe give them another freaking sticker. Even the parties – which are basically the only reason to go – are horrible: the free bars runs out too soon, and they’re always rammed with the kind of people who you could be forgiven for assuming have never been inside licenced premises before.

“But Pure Volume at 2am is pretty awesome!”

No it isn’t. You were just drunk. You’d lined up for three months to get in with your stupid plastic entry tag and you had to convince yourself that the experience was worthwhile because the only alternative was to kill yourself. Free vodka Red Bulls are not worth the hassle. Take your lead from the pros: buy a couple of bottles of vodka and a case of Red Bull and host your own party in your hotel room. Except you can’t, can you? Because you’re sharing with your friend Dan and he has to be up early for the “Google Hackathon”.

“But we’re launching a new app, and it’s going to be awesome.”

No it isn’t. But I completely understand why you think it will be. With all those fanboys in one place, where better than ‘South by’ to launch your awesome new location-based app?

Two years ago, Twitter was the undisputed hit of the festival. Everyone was using it – to find parties, to silently heckle panels, to do all the things that one can do with Twitter. Last year those same people were so desperate to find the new Twitter that they mistakenly handed that crown to Foursquare on the basis that a relatively small number of Web 2.0 scenesters used it to find out where their friends were partying. And yet, despite that auspicious start, and a shit-ton of publicity since, Foursquare has failed to capture the imagination of even most early adopters, particularly those outside of San Francisco and New York. Foursquare was resolutely not last year’s Twitter. Last year’s Twitter was Twitter.

That won’t, however, stop a billion start-ups blowing their entire launch budget on flying their whole team – armed with sacks of flyers and amusing stick-on bugs and branded candy and more fucking stickers – to Texas, confident in the knowledge that their app (with its stupid cutesy name) will be the hit of the festival. It won’t be. It will just be yet another location-based app sloshing about in a sea of location-based apps that may be temporarily useful while a thousand early adopters are crammed into an area of less than one square mile. The moment the festival is over, you’ll be dead.

Instead, this year’s hot location-based app will be… Twitter. You’re welcome. Call me Nostradamus.

Last year, while in Austin, I wrote a column for the Guardian talking about the awfulness of the event, saying..

“None of this is surprising, of course, as it all fits neatly into what social media has taught us – that the moment a service or community gets too big, too mainstream or too commercialised, the early adopters declare it “over” and move on to the next cool, niche thing. And it’s why I really hope that next year one or two of those early adopters will organise – and I mean that in the loosest sense – a user-generated unofficial fringe conference to sit alongside the main event. Ideally it will be a bit nerdier and more businessy, and a lot more fun, than SXSW and will have plenty of space for unofficial “core conversations” and a great product launch or two.”

Sadly, unless it’s a very well kept secret, there’s no such rival event and this year’s SXSWi will be more of the same bullshit. And for that reason, I’m totally serious when I say that you shouldn’t go. Instead – while your rivals are distracted in Texas, pissing their money up the wall and ejaculating over their laptop stickers during yet another Evan Williams keynote – you should use the time instead to stay at home and work on building your start-up.

Your liver will thank you, your investors will thank you, and most importantly so will millions of real-world users who really want you to create something new and innovative rather than being sucked into the hype and churning our just a better, prettier Twitter-meets-Gowalla clone for the approbation of your peers.

Yeah?

Yeah.

I’m moderating the “Unsexy & Profitable: Making $$ Without Hype” panel on Saturday at 3:30pm in Hilton A/B.

See you in Austin.

(Photo of Gary Vaynerchuk and Kathy Sierra by Randy Stewart)

If you missed it, the video of Glenn Beck's interview with former Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) is priceless.

Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) "is putting some muscle behind his independent image by twice voting against his own party and questioning the use of the filibuster," CNN reports.

Brown took to the Senate floor "to announce he would vote for cloture, or to end a Republican filibuster, on a bill extending unemployment benefits and tax credits. This, despite the fact he opposes the bill and technically the filibuster helped his cause."

Said Brown: "I have very serious concerns about the overall cost of the bill, but my vote for cloture signals that I believe we need to keep the process moving."

Dear MoveOn members (and fellow progressive types),

Today and tomorrow, MoveOn members have been asked to vote on a very important question: "Should MoveOn support or oppose the final health care bill if it looks like the plan recently proposed by President Obama?"

This is a major decision, both for MoveOn members and the progressive movement generally. And it's about an issue I've spent a lot of time on this year as a grassroots mobilizer at Organizing for America. So I'm writing this open letter now to explain why I'll vote "yes" -- and to urge my fellow MoveOn members to do the same.

I should also explain that for several years I had the honor of serving as a senior campaigner on MoveOn's staff.

Back when I was sending out "Dear MoveOn member," emails, we threw ourselves fully into campaigns to simply preserve a flawed status quo from the latest right-wing threat. (The Alito nomination, Social Security privatization, the Iraq War... you name it.) But we knew that before we could really start making our country better than we found it, we'd have to stop George W. Bush from making it considerably worse. So we made a simple, powerful choice: Take the times as they are, fight like hell, and do the most good we can.

After 10 years of fighting epic battles to ward off harm, we now finally have the opportunity to make things better -- much better -- in the daily lives of millions of struggling Americans.

I know one of those Americans quite well - Malka Brandzel, my mother.

I got into politics because as a child I saw an insurance company cut off her group health insurance plan without warning or reason. For years I watched my single mother suffer through denial after denial due to her increasingly expensive and crippling "pre-existing conditions." I knew then, as now, that her problem was caused by a broken system, and only fixing that system could help her and the millions of others caught in the same cruel trap.

And that's exactly what we're finally poised to do.

The President's latest proposal for health reform would create the greatest single extension of affordable medical care in our nation's history - offering high quality coverage (and tax credits for those who need help paying for it) to 31 million uninsured Americans.

At the same time, decades of insurance company bullying -- pre-existing conditions, arbitrary cancellations, denials, and premium hikes -- would be gone forever. In fact, these new protections represent one of the greatest transfers of power from corporations to consumers in the history of our democracy. It's no wonder that if we win, it will be very much over the fiercest opposition of America's strongest corporate lobbyists.

In short, this proposal means massive gains in the physical, emotional, and economic well being of working- and middle-class families, combined with a historic power shift from corporations to people. And if that doesn't add up to a progressive cause worth fighting for, I don't know what does.

Of course the only reason we even have to ask this question is that, as we all know, after a year of negotiations the final proposal doesn't contain every idea that progressives, or the President, had initially wanted. President Obama long said he preferred a public insurance option, for example, and many of us strongly agree.

But the question we progressives must ask is whether we are more likely to complete the march if we take this giant step forward now, or if we stay on the sidelines to watch the progress we've made stumble and fail?

Can you realistically imagine a time when we'll have larger majorities or more political momentum than we've had this year? And the last time we abandoned health reform, the failure to deliver ushered in a devastating era of hard-right dominance in Washington. We had to fight for 16 years just to get back to this point. How long are we willing to wait for our next chance?

For me, the answer is simple. My mother, like so many others, would see her life transformed if the President's health reform proposal becomes law. And she's been waiting a long time without the care she requires. She's one of the millions who simply don't have the luxury of waiting for 'next time'.

Today, we find ourselves facing a literally priceless opportunity to make our country considerably better - more just; more humane; more progressive - than we found it.

It's an opportunity we earned together through years of hard work in dark times. And the possibilities now within our grasp are so much brighter because grassroots progressives have worked all year to show that Americans deserve and demand leadership that does what's right.

So here's my advice on the road ahead: Let's back this proposal, and make change happen.

Let's make the same simple, powerful choice that got us this far: take the times as we find them, fight like hell, and do the most good we can.

Thanks for all that you do,

Ben Brandzel served as Advocacy Director at MoveOn.org from 2004-2006, and currently serves as Director of New Media Campaigns and Fundraising at Organizing for America. The views expressed above are his alone and do not reflect those of either organization.

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