Night at the New York Public Library

As part of its centennial celebration, 500 lucky participants were allowed to spend the night in the New York Public Library on Fifth Ave.

NEW YORK--The New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue turns 100 years old on Monday. As part of the centennial celebration, 500 people spent the night in the library's Stephen A. Schwarzman Building on Friday finding clues as part of a scavenger hunt designed by game developer Jane McGonigal and collectively writing a 600-page book in a single night.

And even though no inanimate objects came to life when the doors were locked at 8 p.m., a lot was accomplished in a single night.

"We did it," McGonigal shouted as the sun rose over Manhattan around 5:30 a.m. Saturday. "We wrote a book that will be kept in the permanent collection of the New York Public Library...Some people spend their whole lives trying to achieve this goal. And you did it one night!"

McGonigal, author of "Reality is Broken" and developer of several alternate-reality games, spent the past six months designing the game for Friday night's hunt.

The object of the game, which is called "Find the Future," is to locate 100 "artifacts" that have been selected from the libraries archives and use the information unlocked with each object to write about the future. As part of Friday night's scavenger hunt, McGonigal tasked the 500 participants with collectively writing and publishing a 600-page book based on these artifacts that would be bound on-site by a bookbinder using a medieval technique of sewing pages of the book together. Once the book was put together, participants were expected to sign it, and the book would be entered into the library's permanent collection.

Five hundred people gathered at the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue to participate in the "Find the Future" game.

(Credit: CNET/Marguerite Reardon)

While the group managed to complete all 100 "quests" and write all 100 chapters of the book, they fell short of having the book bound. Technical printing snafus prevented the bookbinder from getting the job completed by morning. Still, McGonigal, who views her games as sources of inspiration for participants, said the main goals of the evening had been achieved.

"This night has been a success," she told me around 2 a.m. before any pages of the book had actually been printed. "I can judge that by the looks on people's faces. They are smiling and high-fiving each other. They have looks of curiosity on their faces."

She explained that writing the book in one night was a way to give people something tangible that would offer them a life-long connection to the New York Public Library. But she said the bigger goal was getting the participants to think about the future and to connect with each other.

"Tonight is supposed to serve as a spring board for the rest of their lives," she said. "My hope is that people are transformed by the experience as they come here and are challenged to think of big ideas about the future."

The hunt itself required participants to use a mobile app downloaded onto their smartphones to find the objects in the library. And then using a QR reader, they were able to use their smartphones to discover additional information about the objects that they would use to fulfill their other task of the evening: writing the 600-page book that was due by the end of the night.

Each object was supposed to make up a chapter of the book, so participants, who were divided into squads of about seven people, were tasked with selecting an object and chapter to write about.

McGonigal said the overnight aspect of the game was inspired by the novel, "From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler," which chronicles the adventures of a brother and sister who run away from home to live in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan.

The idea behind the hunt was to find a way to highlight some of the treasures in the library's archive, such as the stuffed animals that inspired A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh stories, Charles Dickens' letter opener--made from the paw of his beloved cat; and an original copy of the Declaration of Independence.

"When the Library asked me to create a game, I knew I had to come up with a really good idea," she said. "So I thought, 'Hey wouldn't it be cool to have people stay over all night at the library.'"

Janet Namkung checked her smartphone for clues in the map room of the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue as part of the "Find the Future" game designed by Jane McGonigal.
(Credit: CNET/Marguerite Reardon)

Getting started
At 7:45 p.m. on Friday, the downstairs lobby of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building on Bryant Park was filled with 500 of the most creative and interesting contestants selected by McGonigal and her team based on the answers they wrote to the question: "How do you want to make history and change the world?"

I was immediately drawn to a couple standing just a few feet away from me dressed in costume that looked as if they were characters who had just jumped out of the Ben Stiller movie, "Night at the Museum."

Riley Roam and Kenny Mickey, a married couple from West Palm Beach, Fla., own, operate and perform in the children's theater troupe Page Turner Adventures. They were dressed in the characters they perform for their shows. Roam was decked out in a felt hat, vest and riding jodhpurs as Page Turner, a "storyologist" who is a cross between Mary Poppins and Amelia Earhart. Mickey, a former Ringling Bros. clown, was dressed as her bumbling assistant, wearing coveralls, a cap turned backward, and goggles.

While Roam and Mickey came as a set to the Find the Future game, most of the other participants came on their own. One participant--Ana from New York City--who didn't want her last name used, said she and a friend had each applied hoping to participate in the night's activities together. But her friend wasn't accepted.

Ana joined Roam and Mickey along with three other new team members: TJ Morris a graphic designer from New York City; Janet Namkung, a college student from Wayne, NJ; and Lucia Chan, an educational book publisher also from New York City.

The first couple hours of the evening were spent trying to figure out the details of the game, which were somewhat murky. While everyone knew the overall objective, which was to find objects and then write about them, exactly how many objects they needed to find and write about was somewhat unclear. Also, to ensure that groups didn't duplicate efforts, there was a somewhat chaotic sign up process for claiming objects or chapters of the book to write.

But by 10 p.m., two hours after the game had begun and one hour before the first set of chapters were due, the group was on its first quest: the search for the stuffed animals that inspired "Winnie-the-Pooh." In the next couple of hours, the group completed several quests. Namkung, the chosen team leader, was busy scanning QR codes.

Kenny Mickey and Riley Roam came to the "Find the Future" hunt at the New York Public Library in dressed as "storyologists."

(Credit: CNET/Marguerite Reardon)

And finally, the group chose an artifact on which to base its chapter. And they sat down to write. The artifact they wrote about was a copy of a New York City policeman's rule book from 1850. As a group, they wrote about what they envisioned a policeman's future rule book might contain.

Keeping it social
Another important element of the live quest on Friday night was to facilitate social connections between game participants. To ensure that people mixed with other gamers, McGonigal used each participant's answer to the question "How do you want to make history and change the world?"

McGonigals' team copied these messages on individual postcards signed by "The Future" and addressed to each game participant. The postcards were hidden in the stacks of the library, and when people took the guided tour through the library's closed book stacks below the main reading room of the library, they were told to choose one postcard, which they would deliver to its owner.

All night, people roamed the halls and massive reading rooms of the library calling out names looking for their postcard's owner. It felt like a massive college orientation exercise. Some people posted messages on Facebook. And sent Tweets on Twitter to find the person who had written their postcards.

Mickey went to Facebook and used his postcard owner's own profile picture as a mug shot that he used to go around the group asking, "Has anyone seen this woman?" At around 2:30 a.m., he eventually found her, after another participant on Twitter tweeted: "@c_gonzalez someone's looking for you - the guy in the goofy goggles! maybe he has your future? #findthefuture"

McGonigal said that this social aspect of bringing strangers together as part of the collective experience of the game was as important as the quests and completing the book.

"I want people to make connections that will stay with them long after they leave here," she said. "This should be a night that people never forget and that they will be able to reflect on for the rest of their lives."

By 6 a.m. as each group lined up to sign their names to blank pages that will eventually be bound into the book that they wrote together, there were hugs, smiles on exhausted faces, and exchanges of e-mail addresses, Twitter handles, and Facebook contacts. Whether any of the 500 people gathered there was transformed by the night's events is difficult to say.

Namkung said she hopes to have a reunion with her "Find the Future" teammates one day. She also said she plans to keep in touch with the person who found her postcard from the future. A day after the hunt, she said she and her "future finder" had already been texting.

The library is keeping the "artifacts" on display throughout this year, and McGonigal said she designed the game so visitors to the library could do the hunt on their own and upload their own chapters online. Namkung said that even though her team was not able to find all 100 artifacts on Friday night, she plans to return to the library this summer with her younger sister to "finish the journey."

And of course of she said she'll never forget being able to spend the entire night in the New York Public Library.

"I've been telling my friends a lot about my experience," she wrote in a Facebook message to me the day after the hunt. "And they think that it was so cool that we were able to roam around the library without the congestion and almost feeling that it was like home. I am so glad that I was able to be a part of this experience and also to meet great people, including you!"

(Credit: CNET/Marguerite Reardon)

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Sony Hit Again With Two Hacks

An intruder has apparently broken into So-net, an ISP subsidiary of Sony, and stolen about $1,200 worth of virtual tokens.

So-net disclosed the compromise in an alert (written in Japanese) on its home page on Thursday.

Meanwhile, security firm F-Secure today disclosed that it has also discovered a phishing site that's hosted on a Sony server in Thailand.

"Basically this means that Sony has been hacked, again," Mikko Hypponen, F-Secure's chief research officer, noted in the blog post. "Although in this case the server is probably not very important," he added.

News of the latest breaches come barely a month after Sony disclosed intrusions at its PlayStation Network and Sony Entertainment Online sites that compromised data on almost 100 million account holders.

A So-net spokesman told The Wall Street Journal, which broke the story, that the breach of the ISP is unlikely connected to the previous compromises.

How bad is the mac malware scare? (FAQ)

Macintosh users are being targeted with malware that poses as an antivirus warning and tries to trick people into paying for software they don't need.

This ruse isn't new. So-called rogue antivirus has been hitting Windows machines for years. But this is the first time this type of malware has been written to target the much smaller Mac market.

This FAQ sorts through the facts to help determine how serious the issue really is.

What is the malware?
Mac Defender, also known as Mac Security and Mac Protector, is a fake antivirus program that is designed to scare people into thinking that their computers are infected with malware and that they have to pay with a credit card to clean the machine up. People get infected with the rogue antivirus programs when they happen to stumble upon Web sites hosting the malware. The malicious sites are created solely to distribute malware and they are search engine optimized so they will appear high up in search results. They use an image related to a popular news topic as bait to lure people to the site, according to Mac antivirus firm Intego, which warned about Mac Defender earlier this month. For instance, one of the sites was in the top five spots this week for searches on "DSK," or Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the French official on the International Monetary Fund who was arrested on sexual assault charges last weekend, according to Intego spokesman Peter James. The malicious sites are taken down and changed from day to day so blocking them is difficult.

How widespread is the malware?
While it's definitely not an epidemic, it does seem to be hitting the radar more than other Mac malware has in the past. Ed Bott at ZDNet reports that an AppleCare support rep told him call volume on the support line was four to five times higher than normal and most of the calls were about the malware. "It started with one call a day two weeks ago, now it's every other call. It's getting worse. And quick," the unnamed source is quoted as saying."

Bott also published what appeared to be an internal Apple document with guidance for support reps when they get calls about Mac Defender. It advises reps to not confirm or deny that the software has been installed and not attempt to remove or uninstall any malware software. Meanwhile, Bott reports that he found more than 200 separate discussion threads on discussions.apple.com about the matter, including comments from many who had been tricked into installing the malware. He offers juicy tidbits from those discussions here.

Intego said it had been contacted by a "huge number" of customers worried about the malware, and that it had collected dozens of samples of the code. "The news stories were making it worse because it makes Mac users worried and they are more convinced that the fake antivirus warning is real," Intego spokesman James said in an interview today. "It's a self perpetuating process."

Apple declined to provide comment for this story.

How does it work?
The malware has gone through several changes so depending on the version, the screens and wording may be different. An early version displayed some fake Windows screens, but later versions changed that to use an Apple-type interface. Typically, when you click on one of the malicious images you are directed to a site where JavaScript starts running and automatically downloads the program. A warning pops up saying something like, suspicious activity has been detected on the machine, or Apple Web Security has detected malware on the machine and is offering to remove it. Clicking "ok" launches what looks like a scan of the machine and then you are told that the machine is infected and clicking "ok" launches what looks like a Mac OS installer that then asks you to type in your administrator password for the computer. Doing so installs the malware and displays a process that looks like another scan of the computer and provides alerts on supposed infections. In order to clean up the infections, you are required to provide register your machine and it asks for credit card information, according to Intego.

In other versions, just visiting the site downloads a zip file to the hard drive with a name like "MacDefender" or "MacSecurity" and an extension of .mpkg. If your Mac is set up to automatically open "safe" files, a screen will offer to guide you through the installation process. Clicking "continue" will display another screen that asks for your administrative password and the application is launched. A window will display saying your machine is infected, offering the option of cleaning up the computer if you register and provide credit card information.

After installation, a menu item is added to the Mac OS X menubar. The icon looks like a small orange shield that turns red and flashes when it "finds" viruses. If you fail to "register" and provide your credit card information the malware will start to open up porn pages in your browser in an attempt to spur you to pay. The malware will re-launch every time you log into your Mac thereafter until it is removed. It also does not install a dock icon so it is not easy to close the program and you will need to end the process through the Activity Monitor before removing the malware. Intego created a video demonstration showing how the malware works.

What can I do to protect myself?
Don't visit untrusted Web sites, especially ones that could be preying on a hot news topic. Don't install programs unless they come from a reputable source. Don't supply your administrative password except when you are intentionally installing software from a trusted source. Consider changing your settings so you have two accounts, an administrative account and a regular account for regular surfing. If an installer appears mysteriously, block it from installing. Quit out of odd warnings and pop ups, particularly if the "back" or "cancel" option is not highlighted, by clicking the red dot in the upper corner of the pop-up window. Move any suspicious looking files that appear related to MacDefender from your downloads folder into trash. In Safari under "preferences" uncheck the "open safe files after downloading" box. Consider using antivirus software such as ClamX AV. Avoid providing your credit card number through an application. If you have provided your credit card information, call your financial institution immediately and have the card canceled. My colleague Seth Rosenblatt explains how to remove the malware in a blog post. And there is more information on how to protect against Mac Defender on the TUAW site and BleepingComputer.com.

Does this mean the Mac is not secure?
No. It means that criminals who used to focus on Windows machines to reach the most potential victims are now targeting Mac too. Around the same time Mac Defender first appeared, a new crimeware kit showed up on criminal underground sites that makes it easy to write botnet malware for Mac OSX, according to security blogger Brian Krebs. And yesterday, security researcher Joshua Long argued in a blog post that the Mac App Store is putting users at risk after he found outdated versions of software there, including at least one with a critical security hole.

But others, like blogger John Gruber, insist that the reports that Mac security is taking a hit are mere hype. Ars Technica's Jacqui Cheng talked to a bunch of third-party Mac support specialists who said they had not seen a noticeable spike. She also talked to some Apple Store support staffers who said the opposite, including one who said he had never had to remove a virus or malware from a Mac until this month.

Macs are not inherently more secure than Windows, says security expert Charlie Miller, who has successfully attacked Safari on the Mac in three Pwn2Own contests over the past few years. In the instance of Mac Defender, the malware requires user action and does not exploit a vulnerability in the Mac OS. In addition, Macs have built-in antivirus, although that does not appear to be protecting against Mac Defender, he added.

"There are about 10 pieces of malware that have been written for the Mac, while Microsoft says that one in 14 downloads (on PCs) is malicious," he said. "So, it's big news because it's rare."

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20064394-245.html#ixzz1MshNrcIY

Yes, Clearwire really is on the ropes

There's no doubt that Clearwire faces a cash crunch among many other challenges as it tries to build its nationwide 4G WiMax network. But will the company be able to weather the storm and stay afloat?

That's the big question that investors and Clearwire's customers are asking as the company continues to look for more funding to support its network expansion and deal with growing competition. In November, Clearwire said it might not have enough cash to keep its network running through the middle of 2011. Since then it's taken on more debt and settled a wholesale pricing dispute with Sprint Nextel, which has secured its short-term viability.

On its first quarter conference call recently, executives for the company said Clearwire has enough cash to fund its network operations for the next 12 months. But what will happen next year as Clearwire tries to compete with growing competition from other carriers, such as Verizon Wireless, which has already launched its 4G network?

In an interview with CNET, Clearwire Chief Operating Officer Erik Prusch admitted that the company faces funding challenges, but he said he's still bullish on the company's future as it sees a huge opportunity to fuel Americans' need for more wireless data services.

"Our subscriber numbers are growing rapidly and the usage stats show us that there is a desire and demand for more capacity," he said. "So we feel we are well positioned to meet those needs. We have more spectrum assets than anyone else. And we can handle more capacity than any other carrier."

He went on to say that the strategy over the next year and beyond is constantly evolving. But he said the game plan as of now is to find more investment and to increase revenue to support the needs of the network. Ultimately, he believes that Clearwire will be a profitable business.

"We do need additional funding to continue to extend our network," he said. "And we're bullish about being able to secure that funding either in by relying on our strategic investors or through new investors. We also think we can grow revenue organically by growing our revenue and becoming profitable."

Uphill battle
At this point Clearwire still has a long way to go. In the first quarter of 2010, Clearwire reported a loss of $226.96 million, or 93 cents a share, on revenue of $242 million. This was despite the fact that Clearwire added 1.8 million subscribers. The company said it's on track to end the year with 9.5 million customers. It ended 2010 with about 4 million subscribers.

Despite the fact that the company is adding customers and is increasing revenue, it's burning through a lot of cash to do it. As of March 31, Clearwire had $1.2 billion in cash, which was down from $1.74 billion at the end of December.

The company has begun to dramatically cut spending. In the first quarter of 2011 it spent about $472 million, down from $1.2 billion in the fourth quarter of 2010, according to Stifel Nicolaus analyst Christopher King.

As part of its plan to reduce costs, the company announced earlier this week that it plans to outsource the management and maintenance of its network to equipment supplier Ericsson. It's also scaling back its retail efforts. It already canceled plans for some of its own consumer-oriented retail products, such as WiMax handsets. And it canned its prepaid WiMax service offering after only a few months on the market.

Instead, Clearwire is focusing its energy on developing its wholesale business, which today consists mostly of Sprint Nextel customers.

"We are actively pacing our retail business," Prusch said. "If we had $4 billion in cash we would be going full-bore. But we don't. We have a billion and change. So we're holding back in terms of retail to put the cash to use in investing and improving relationships with wholesale customers."

As for what that means for consumers in terms of product offerings, Prusch admitted that some products will be discontinued, "because they don't hit the sweet spot." But he said the company still has a robust product line that its 1.6 million retail customers appreciate.

Prusch also said that the retail business is important to Clearwire even though it costs the company a lot of money because at this point, Clearwire is generating the bulk of its revenue from the retail customers. At the end of the first quarter, Clearwire had 6.1 million customers. Only about 20 percent of them were retail customers. But even though these retail customers only represent a small number of Cleawire's overall subscriber base, they still generate almost 75 percent of the company's revenue. In the first quarter, Clearwire reported total revenue of $242 million. Clearwire's retail business made up about $181.1 million of that total.

Wholesale to the rescue?
That said, Prusch said he expects the wholesale business to grow and increasingly account for more of Clearwire's total revenue. But that brings to light another challenge that Clearwire faces. Most of its wholesale customers come from Sprint Nextel, which owns a 54 percent stake in Clearwire and has chipped in billions of dollars in funding to keep the company afloat.

While Clearwire has similar resale relationships with its cable investors, Comcast and Time Warner Cable, the bulk of nearly 5 million wholesale customers come from Sprint.

Meanwhile, Clearwire's other two major investors, Intel and Google, don't seem as bullish on Clearwire's prospects. Google didn't kick in more cash during Clearwire's last funding round. And last week, Intel said it plans to sell 10 million shares of stock in the company. The sale is projected to be about 10 percent of Intel's stake in Clearwire.

Intel released a statement claiming that the sale is part of a plan to rebalance its equity portfolio. Intel sold off shares in the company in 2009 as well. But Intel's move hurt the company's share price and the Clearwire stock tumbled last week as investors viewed Intel's sale as a sign of waning enthusiasm for the company's prospects.

Prusch said he doesn't believe that Google's and Intel's lack of investment or other recent moves are a sign that the companies have lost confidence in Clearwire's business. He said he hopes that they will continue to invest in future rounds. He also noted that there have been improvements in terms of participation from Comcast and Time Warner on the wholesale side.

Dependency issues
Still, Craig Moffett, an equities analyst with the Wall Street firm Sanford Bernstein, who covers Sprint, has said that the interdependency that Sprint and Clearwire have upon each other is unsustainable. He recently wrote in a research note that "Clearwire is essentially an appendage of Sprint, and adjusting what are basically intra-company payments between a parent and its subsidiary are not enough to drive material changes to the business."

He went on to say that "shuffling paper between entities through transfer pricing or rights of usage or network sharing agreements does nothing to boost the revenue entering the Sprint/Clearwire ecosystem, and little to change the underlying consolidated cost structure. What matters is: Who is going to pay for Sprint's (and Clearwire's) upcoming network expansions, and what revenue exists to support it?"

As Clearwire struggles to come up with money to continue building its network and growing its business, the company will soon face stiff competition from the nation's largest wireless providers: AT&T and Verizon Wireless. Verizon launched its 4G network late last year using a technology called LTE. And AT&T is set to launch its 4G network this summer. AT&T is also in the process of buying T-Mobile USA for $39 billion, in a deal that will make it the largest wireless carrier in the U.S.

The acquisition and new networks are putting pressure on Sprint, which could make the wireless company the smallest of the national major wireless carriers.

Prusch admitted that Clearwire is dependent on Sprint and that Sprint is dependent on Clearwire. But he said there is plenty of market opportunity even with the hefty competition from Verizon Wireless and AT&T. He also said he isn't worried about the upstart LightSquared, which is using repurposed satellite spectrum to build a nationwide 4G wholesale network using LTE technology.

"If we can provide a better quality service at higher download speeds and offer more bandwidth at a better value, then I think our long-term opportunities are very good," he said. "There is plenty of money to be made in this market for Sprint and Clearwire."

But there are some naysayers in the industry who believe that Clearwire's business model is flawed. John Stankey, the head of AT&T's enterprise business, said this week at Reuters Global Technology Summit that wholesalers, such as Clearwire, can't make it on their own and must be gobbled up by other players.

"There really isn't a profitable wholesale model in wireless today," a Reuters story quoted him as saying. "Do you know one that's making money? Do you know one that's on a trajectory to make money? Do you know of one that's not in jeopardy of running out of money in the next 12 months?"

He went on to say: "If there's such a credible (wholesale) business model, is there not capital that should be attracted to it?"

Meet Clearwire's sugar daddy: Sprint Nextel
Sprint would be the most likely candidate to buy Clearwire, but Sprint's investors would likely not be able to stomach such a deal. The company is already spending billions of dollars to upgrade its network as it uses spectrum and resources from its 2005 merger with Nextel.

"Sprint doesn't really want to own Clearwire," said Roger Entner, founder of Recon Analytics. "In fact, they've gone to great lengths not to own them. They'd rather have that network and its finances on someone else's books."

Even if Sprint doesn't buy Clearwire, the company's are so dependent on each other, Sprint will likely continue to invest in Clearwire. And there is a very good chance that the companies' will share network assets.

Prusch said Clearwire recognizes that it is crucial for the carrier to have a nationwide network that covers as much of the U.S. population as it can. But building that network is expensive. So the company is in talks with Sprint about sharing network assets as part of Sprint's new network expansion.

He also said that Clearwire will eventually move away from its WiMax technology and move toward a network that uses LTE. But he said plans are not definite and there is no timeline for such a switch.

"WiMax to date has been a very good technology choice for us," he said. "We were able to take advantage of the speed to market before LTE was even a glimmer in anyone's eye. But we recognize the ecosystem in the U.S. will be larger for LTE than WiMax, so we are conscious of that."

He said LTE technology and the ecosystem needs to mature before Clearwire can consider switching.

"We are technology agnostic," Prusch said. "We don't believe that customers buy a technology. They buy fast and reliable access to a data network."

But will the network-sharing deal and Sprint's cash be enough?

Sprint will likely face its own cash flow issues as it upgrades its network. Moffett points out that Sprint has about $6.2 billion of debt maturities between now and the end of 2013. And Clearwire's network may require as much as $6 billion in capital spending to complete the construction of the network.

If Sprint can't foot the bill, who will? That is indeed the big question yet to be answered

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