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Even with new management, Excite can’t seem to shake its troubled past. Subscribers had a hard time accessing their personal Excite email accounts starting last weekend, apparently because the transition to new ownership and all its related rejiggering isn’t going so smoothly. The portal and search-engine side of the now-defunct Excite@Home broadband provider was acquired by sweepstakes portal iWon. The new owners retained users’ IDs and passwords, but got rid of most other account settings, including email remaining on the servers at the time of the ownership changeover. According to the company, it experienced a “massive failure” that left an undisclosed percentage of its three to four million Excite email accounts inaccessible. As of yesterday, Excite says email service has been restored.
New virus types can infect Flash files
Hacker-types are ever innovative. For the first time, they have developed a new kind of virus that can infect files in the Macromedia Flash format. And the virus is starting to make its way through inboxes as part of an infected attachment in the form of a Flash movie. The virus is called SWF/LFM-926, according to antivirus experts, and it arrives in a message from an anonymous sender. As with any virus, it infects the computer when it gets opened. If the recipient clicks on the attachment, it shows a message saying “Loading.Flash.Movie” and displays a cartoon number puzzle. The virus isn’t rated as being a huge threat and doesn’t do much in the way of damage to infected machines. All the same, its advent represents yet another way to wreak havoc on networks and personal computers.
Internet casino being named for Sammy Davis Jr.
The Rat Pack was known for hanging around casinos. It’s fitting, then, that a soon-to-be-launched online casino will be named after entertainer and Rat Pack member Sammy Davis Jr. The new casino will be based in the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu. The site, which will be hosted by Australia’s Trans-Global Interactive, will cater to online gamblers in Asia, primarily because some legal restrictions remain elsewhere against the use of casino sites. But a second online casino will offer goodies for Sammy Davis Jr. fans in the U.S.: Stateside card sharks will be able to rack up points that they can exchange for Sammy Davis Jr. memorabilia.
Revived Media Grok wants subscription money
Proving that a second wind may be on its way to the web, or that some people never learn, spunky media watchdog newsletter Media Grok has come back under the new moniker "Media Unspun." Two things are different this time: one, the new edition is not backed by previous publisher and now-defunct-property The Industry Standard. Two, the current incarnation will only offer content for free, weekly, until it switches to daily publication on March 11. Then it will cost $39.95 for previous Grokkers and $50 for everyone else for a year's subscription. Publisher Jimmy Guterman has said readership must return to the six-figure range for the venture to succeed. He asserts that enough people have already signed up so that, if the rate continues, the newsletter will have no problem maintaining itself.
January 10, 2002 © 2002 Media Life
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