Yahoo!Tech has an interesting article on the mysterious criteria used by Apple’s App store to approve or reject an application, and on a movement “growing within the developer community” to persuade Apple to use a more open and transparent application process for new iPhone apps.

The International Herald Tribune has a great piece on emerging technologies that aim for “the Web’s hidden depths.”  The article points out that “

[b]eyond [the] trillion of pages [currently indexed by Google] lies an even vaster Web of hidden data: financial information, shopping catalogs, flight schedules, medical research and all kinds of other material stored in databases that remain largely invisible to search engines.”  If search engines could find this kind of information, then it would be much easier for users to get answers to common questions such as “What is the best fare from New York to London next Tuesday?”

Irish newspaper The Post reveals that “Irish internet users are to be blocked from accessing music swapping websites, as internet service providers bow to pressure from the music industry. Eircom, the country’s biggest internet provider, is to start blocking its internet customers from accessing music swapping.  The country’s other internet providers have been told by the Irish Recorded Music Association (Irma) to follow suit or face legal action. If the music industry is successful, Ireland will become the first European country to completely block access to hundreds of file-sharing websites.” 

SecurityFocus warns that “online criminals have begun targeting victims' computers using crafted PDF files that attack a previously unknown flaw in Adobe's Acrobat document software.  The attack — which appears to have been first noticed by Symantec, the owner of SecurityFocus — does not appear to be widespread, the security firm stated in an advisory. Adobe confirmed the vulnerability and committed to releasing a fix for the issue by March 11.”

EWeek.com reports that “[a] study of people who left or lost their jobs in 2008 found close to 60 percent kept corporate data after leaving. The survey, performed by the Ponemon Institute and sponsored by Symantec, included more than 900 responses and found that many of those who took the data did so by stealing paper documents and hard files.  […]   The most commonly stolen pieces of information were e-mail lists and non-financial business information, taken by 65 and 45 percent, respectively, of the respondents who took something. Thirty-nine percent admitted taking customer information such as contact lists.”