Subatra Suppiah

"The Internet has finally taken on the characteristics of the Wild West where no one is to be trusted," said Sukhdev Singh, senior security consultant and regional X-Force expert, IBM Internet security systems, IBM ASEAN.

He was referring to the results of the tech giant's X-Force 2009 Mid-Year Trend and Risk Report. The report found that there has been a 508 per cent increase in the number of new malicious Web links discovered in the first half of this year. This problem is no longer limited to malicious domains or untrusted websites. The report notes an increase in malicious content on trusted sites, including popular search engines, blogs, bulletin boards, personal websites, online magazines and mainstream news sites.

The start of February saw Internet spam levels rise to as high as 79.5 percent of all e-mail messages due to a spike in botnet activity and spammers leveraging the financial crisis and Valentine's Day, according to MessageLabs.

This is despite the fact that spam levels declined by 1.3 per cent to an average of 73.3 percent for the same month, states the February 2009 MessageLabs Intelligence Report.

Graphic: Diego AguirreGlobal Internet spam levels rose 4.9 per cent in January this year since December 2008 to 74.6 per cent, according to the MessageLabs Intelligence Report. This is the proportion of e-mail that was blocked as spam by the tech firm's e-mail protect services.

Levels were close to those experienced before Internet service provider McColo was taken down in November 2008, said MessageLabs, which is now part of Symantec. MessageLabs Intelligence is a source of data and analysis for messaging security issues, trends and statistics.

Current economic conditions are set to drive uptake of video telepresence in the next three years, with the travel industry losing out, according to Gartner. The analyst firm predicts that high-definition-based video meeting solutions will replace 2.1 million airline seats annually, costing the travel and hospitality industry US$3.5 billion per year. This is one of the firm's top 10 predictions for the year.

"The challenge of the current economic conditions demands that every organisation revisit the need for face-to-face meetings," said Gartner research director Robin Simpson.

The Asia-Pacific's 3G subscriber base is expected to top 564 million by 2013, according to analyst firm Frost & Sullivan.

This accounts for about 18.2 percent of all mobile users.

Graphic: Diego AguirreThe year 2008 has seen another record of explosive growth in the amount of malicious software (malware) on the Internet, according to F-Secure.

F-Secure protects consumers and businesses against computer viruses and other threats from the Internet and mobile networks.

Artwork: Chip TaylorEighty-one per cent of worldwide online videos are viewed using Adobe Flash technology, making it the number one format for video on the Web. This is according to the independent research firm comScore.

Adobe Flash Player software is already installed on 98 per cent of Internet-connected desktops and a growing number of mobile devices. The company has just released two key components of the Adobe Flash Platform.

Traffic to the international edition of CNN.com increased 789 percent on the United States' presidential election day, November 5, as compared to the same day the previous week, according to the US news network.

Live video streams on CNN.com Live, the Internet's only multistream, live video news service jumped 2,750 percent.

The economy and the U.S. presidential election played a big role in spam messages last month, according to the State of Spam report from security software company Symantec.

The recent economic bailout package and interest rate cuts in the United States have opened the door for spammers to step up their attacks.

Worldwide IT spending will grow 2.6 percent year-on-year in 2009, according to a newly revised forecast from IDC. This is down from the analyst firm's pre-crisis forecast of 5.9 percent growth.

In the United States, IT spending is expected to decline to 0.9 percent in 2009, much lower than the 4.2 percent growth forecast in August.

Video conferencing markets will see their most significant volume growth, increasing from US$923 million in 2007 to US$1.88 billion in 2012, predicts consulting firm Ovum.

The largest growth rate will be in desktop video, said analyst Lucy Hipperson.

A seamless convergent multimedia solution will allow sailing fans all over the world to follow the most dramatic moments of the 2008-09 Volvo Ocean Race live and direct.

Viewers can follow the action either via their mobile phone, the Web, or via IPTV in Ericsson's customer pavilion at each port stop. The race starts today in Alicante, Spain, and ends in late June next year in St Petersburg, Russia. There are 10 legs in the race which takes sailors to 11 ports around the world.