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I photoshopped this.

Twitter users who read and write using the twitter.com website got a nasty surprise this morning: a JavaScript exploit was causing their accounts to retweet spam and porn, just by dragging their cursor over a link (or in some cases, anywhere on the Twitter.com screen).

Gizmodo has the skinny:

The exploit takes advantage of the Javascript function onMouseOver, enticing users with colorful blocks of text”rainbow tweets”and then retweeting those messages automatically when the block is moused over. In some cases the links launch pop up windows, in others users are being directed to spam and porn sites. Update: Commenter RawheaD points out that one variant turns the whole browser window into a MouseOver area, so putting your mouse anywhere in the window will trigger a retweet.

It seems as though at least most users who read and post with clients using the Twitter API were unaffected — that is, apart from reading a bunch of garbage, linky tweets and retweets from their friends. The mobile version of the website appears to be okay, too.

This reinforces my longstanding belief that web browsers’ only legitimate use on the desktop is for viewing and watching porn; client applications, whether on a personal computer or a mobile device, are ideally suited for consuming and exchanging information.

All I’m saying is, if you’re going to buggy, information-hungry websites called things like “twitter.com,” you deserve what you get. Although, on the other hand, employees who are allowed (or professionally compelled) to read Twitter now have a perfect excuse: “No, I wasn’t trying to look at porn at work. Must be another Twitter hack.” Let’s hope the next hack redirects users to fantasy football sites.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

You will not be surprised that the porn industry is all over the iPhone 4 like a bad case of the clap. The latest business opportunity is, almost inevitably, FaceTime, although it probably won’t actually be called Face Time.

Over in the UK, the ever-accurate Daily Mail reports that “video-sex chat services [...] are hiring workers through internet adverts.” These services would connect you one-on-one with the sex-worker of your choice.

It’s a great idea. Because FaceTime in Wi-Fi only, you won’t be surprised at the end of the month by huge and scary charges on your phone-bill. Another advantage is that, because it won’t work over 3G, it’s unlikely that the person on the plane next to you will be indulging. A phone would also seem to be the perfect place for this most personal kind of entertainment. As Quentin Boyer of adult production company Pink Visual told the Mail “A phone is such an intimate thing, you usually don’t lend it out or have someone else use it.” At least not without cleaning it first, we hope.

It’s often said that the porn industry drives technical innovation, but it might be more accurate to say that it is the ultimate early-adopter. People scoffed at the idea of smut on cellphones until the iPhone made it easy to browse the web and the number of mobile porn sites took off. And the iPad, a device ridiculed for its lack of Adobe’s Flash plugin, has seen adult video sites rushing to re-encode their catalogs in the iPad-friendly Quicktime format. Pushing sex over video chat has been pointless until now but, as the number of customers with easy video-calling explodes, so will the business opportunities.

Being the sensationalist rag that it is, the Mail veers off into talk of the dangers to kids (“children and sexual predators are often ahead of parents when comes to technology”) and tries to make a case that Apple somehow doesn’t like adult material on its devices (ridiculous, as Safari on the iPad is probably the best porn browser on the planet). But the best point in the article is made by adult actress Teagan Presley, who highlights a technical shortcoming of the face-to-face nature of video calls.

“You can have the phone on your face, or other body parts,” says Presley, “but not both at the same time.”

Now Apple iPhone 4 users can make video calls to X-rated stars with Face Time [Daily Mail]

Photo: Joe Loong/Flickr

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Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews