In an effort to battle security threats Paypal announced today that it will block "unsafe browsers" from using its services. It is trying to step up its anti-phishing efforts. Older web browsers are considered unsafe because the lack many security features the newer browsers have. Paypal said it was "an alarming fact that there is a significant set of users who use very old and vulnerable browsers such as Internet Explorer 4". Some users were still using Internet Explorer 3 (a browser more than 10 years old).

The federal government is starting to realize the real threats of botnets around the world. U.S. homeland security secretary Michael Chertoff speaking at the RSA conference said that the US government has launched a cyber security "Manhattan Project."

The US is realizing that online attacks can be a form of "devastating warfare", and equivalent in damage to "physical destruction of the worst kind."

In what looks like a last ditch effort to fend of Microsoft's bid Yahoo is close to announcing a deal that with Google that would carry search advertising from Google Inc. as part of a test that could lead to a broader partnership.

According to the WSJ Online it will be a two week test limited to no more than 3% of US traffic of Yahoo's Web search results. The test will allow the two sides to evaluate the revenue potential of a broader search ad outsourcing arrangement.

Online ad spending is due to out pace TV ad spending in the UK by the end of '09 according to a study by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), the UK online advertising trade body, in conjunction with PricewaterhouseCoopers and the World Advertising Research Centre.

Bloggers take note: "Blogging can kill". The NYTimes posted an article about the high stress world of professional bloggers. It cited two recent deaths of well known bloggers. Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger on technology, dead at 60 from a heart attack and Marc Orchant dead at 50 from a massive coronary. A third, Om Malik, 41, survived a heart attack last year.

A new study shows that men are more prone to Internet fraud than women. IC3 received 206,884 complaints of online crimes during 2007. Their findings show that men lost $1.67 to every $1 lost by women in online fraud. This is a $40 million increase in reported losses to law enforcement when compared to 2006.

Yahoo! has become the first big search portal to allow users to search the web with their mobile phone using only their voice. The service is called Yahoo! oneSearch. It is currently available for BlackBerry Curves, Pearls and 8800 series phones. No mention of the iPhone yet, but they do plan on supporting other vendors soon.

Some high profile employees seem to be itching to get out of Google. The image of Google being "a utopian place to work" as Craig Silverstein, director of technology, (and Employee #1 at the company) said in an interview with CNBC, seems to be waning.

Some recent announcements make it clear that the utopian atmosphere may be fading. Just within the last few months we've seen their vice president of engineering, Douglas Merrill, VP for global sales and operations, Sheryl Sandberg, and their CFO George Reyes step down. (see a more comprehensive list in Appendix A)

A new survey from Forrester Research asked 50,000 large enterprise employees which browser they use on a daily basis. They found that over the course of 2007, Internet Explorer's overall market share in the enterprise decreased by 10%. During that same period they saw Firefox's share almost doubled from 9.8% to 18%.

The survey also showed that most companies are using the 6-year-old Internet Explorer 6. Only 23.4% of companies officially used IE7 as their standard browser.

The WSJ seems to put to rest the idea that Microsoft will sweeten its $44.6 billion offer to buy Yahoo! Microsoft feels that it can wait and is prepare to hunker down and battle till the end. They feel amid the turbulent economic times that their offer is more than fair.

Anybody catch this yesterday? Gmail announced a new tool on March 31st that went live today.

If you login to your gmail account today you'll see "New Feature; GMail Custom Time".

The new feature allow you to to adjust the time of any email you send to the past. The email appears in the proper chronological order in your recipient's inbox.

According to google it works by "utilizing an e-flux capacitor" to resolve issues of causality (see Grandfather Paradox).

The following is a list of the 100 oldest registered .com domains.

See if your favorites are here:

Rank -- Date Created -- Domain name

1. 15-Mar-1985 SYMBOLICS.COM
2. 24-Apr-1985 BBN.COM
3. 24-May-1985 THINK.COM
4. 11-Jul-1985 MCC.COM
5. 30-Sep-1985 DEC.COM
6. 07-Nov-1985 NORTHROP.COM
7. 09-Jan-1986 XEROX.COM
8. 17-Jan-1986 SRI.COM
9. 03-Mar-1986 HP.COM
10. 05-Mar-1986 BELLCORE.COM
11= 19-Mar-1986 IBM.COM
11= 19-Mar-1986 SUN.COM
13= 25-Mar-1986 INTEL.COM
13= 25-Mar-1986 TI.COM

Verisign will be increasing the wholesale price of .com domains from $6.42 to $6.86 and .net from $3.85 to $4.23. They are using the maximum 7% increase allowed under Verisign's contract with ICANN which runs through 2012.

You can bet registrars will be passing on the cost to consumers. The new prices are scheduled to take effect in October.

Maryland is looking to pass a law that would make surfing the Internet on someone else's wireless connection, without permission, a crime under a bill sponsored by LeRoy E. Myers Jr.

He told the House Judiciary Committee that one of his neighbors, after buying a new laptop computer, got onto the Internet, thinking it was going through his own cable connection when in reality he was logged in to Myers' home Internet hookup.

Being able to monitor web traffic to your sites is very important. You want to be able to gather metrics like where are users are being referred from, how long users stay on your site, what ads are working or not. Being able to gather statistics helps you find out what types of things are working and helps you adapt and build content users enjoy.

There are several very expensive web statistics packages that do a great job, but there are also plenty of free tools out there that do very well.

Here we've compiled a list of some of favorites: