The company that runs some of the core mechanisms of the Internet, ICANN has officially been granted independence from the U.S. government. The U.S. Commerce Department signed an agreement today that declared ICANN a separate entity.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) was formed in 1998 and was underneath the Commerce Department. The decision to separate the two comes months after the European Union had made the request. They had expressed a desire for an independent ICANN, so that the Internet would have more of a global consistency.

There were a few conditions the US Commerce Department made before finalizing agreement. The first was that ICANN continue to be a non profit organization, and the second that its headquarters remain in the United States.

Reuters

According to Panda Security, from August to September the number of Malware infected PCs has increased 15 percent worldwide. Internationally the average number of PCs attacked by Malware is around 59 percent, the highest this year.

Among the top countries attacked by Malware, the US ranked number 9 on the list with 58 percent of its PCs infected. Taiwan was number 1 with 69 percent of its computers infected, and dead last (a good thing in this case) was Norway with 39 percent of its PCs infected.

Panda Labs Technical Director Luis Corrons stated “This is a clear sign that hackers are becoming more and more sophisticated.”

CNET

Electronics retailer Newegg.com is going public with an IPO (Initial Public Offering) estimated at $175 million. Within the details of the filing it is revealed that Newegg has generated profit each year since its birth in 2001, and made a total of $2.1 billion in sales in 2008.

Newegg is one of dozens of companies who are filing IPO’s right now who are hoping to raise capital. What Newegg is planning to do is include small and medium businesses within their focus, as well as expand beyond the US and China.

Newegg is well known for its customer service, and there is a growing concern as to how that could change. Although it is primarily a retailer, Newegg is very much involved in social media and hosts forums. Whether that will change as the company goes public or not remains to be seen. The company has not yet made a formal statement.

Reuters

Today Twitter has reached a milestone. The real time micro-blogging site is set to raise $100 million, which will give the company a total valuation of $1 billion. A major achievement for a company that has yet to generate revenue.

Although Twitter has been criticized for not developing a business model, its value is clear. Microsoft, Google, and Facebook have all reportedly extended offers to acquire the company, which alone speaks volumes of its potential. It currently attracts 54 million visitors a month, and receives non-stop media attention.

The investors putting up the $100 million include Insight Venture Partners, T. Rowe Price, Institutional Venture Partners, Spark Capital and Benchmark Capital.

Getting traffic and media attention has not been a problem for Twitter. The issue is how do you turn that into money? One way is to allow advertising, which Twitter will reportedly be doing in 2010. Other than that, we will have to wait and see what other plans are in the pipe line for creating revenue.

The New York Times

According to a number of reports a rare and vicious phishing scam is spreading through Twitter. It comes in the form of a DM, which links to a replica of the Twitter homepage, which you must login to. Once you supply your login info it can be used to send the same malicious DM you received to your friends.

There have been numerous worms to hit Twitter before but this is a particularly dangerous one, because it targets people through DM’s which are supposed to only be from trusted friends, and the Twitter replica page it redirects you to is very convincing.

If you receive a DM message reading “rofl this you on here,” accompanied by a video link, do not click it. If you have already been infected you can fix the problem easily by creating a new password. Twitter is currently combating the problem.

Mashable

Announced at a press conference today in New York City, Yahoo unveiled a new ad campaign aimed at re-branding itself. CEO Carol Bartz made the announcement and outlined Yahoo’s new focus with the campaign.

Yahoo will be spending over $100 million in an effort to change its image. The global re-branding will run with the tag line “”It’s Y!ou,” and will start in the U.S. next week. Its primary focus is to make the Yahoo portal feel more personal to the average user.

This news comes during an uncertain time for Yahoo. The company took some serious hits after the downturn of the economy. The re-branding effort they are undertaking is what Yahoo hopes will create a turn around.

Guardian Tech

In a move to expand their IT consulting services, Dell has purchased Perot Systems in a $3.9 billion dollar acquisition. Perot systems is an IT consulting/integrated service company founded in 1988 by Ross Perot.

Dell’s current servicing divisions will be absorbed by Perot Systems, and the current CEO, Peter Altabef will run the combined divisions. This move will give Dell more of an edge against companies like IBM that have had more of a head start in IT consulting services.

Both Dell and Perot Systems are located in Texas so the move should not be very difficult. Perot System brings in a total of $2.5 billion in revenue, which is small compared to Dell’s $61 billion. Dell may be able to bring these numbers up once they apply Perot Systems to their current enterprise customers but that remains to be decided.

TechCrunch

Ponemon Institute is an organization that conducts independent research on privacy and data protection. They recently compiled a list of the top companies that were trusted by consumers, and Facebook along with a number of other Internet entities were named in the top ten positions of the list.

There are a number of unique things about the list outlined above. One unique fact is, for first time a telecommunication company and a government operation made the top three. It is also unique that there are so many Internet services on the list, including the first appearance of Facebook who ranked number ten.

Facebook stated “We’re honored to make this top 10 list of most trusted companies for privacy for the first time.”

CNET

Image courtesy of Google

You know those little fields you have to fill out anytime you want to write a comment on a blog and or social media site? The company that provides those little fields with the squiggly text is reCAPTCHA, and the service helps immensely to help prevent spam. Today Google has announced that they have acquired reCAPTCHA but not only for the spam prevention services they provide but also to apply their technology to Google Books.

The distorted text you see in CAPTCHA text boxes are scanned from old newspapers and magazines, making them very hard for computers to recognize. It is this technology called Optical Character Recognition (OCR), that Google would like to apply to Google Books. Google stated “Improving the availability and accessibility of all the information on the Internet is really important to us, so we’re looking forward to advancing this technology with the reCAPTCHA team.”

Google also plans to use the OCR technology to their news achieves as well. The company hopes to better improve the scanning process of Google Books, and news immensely with reCAPTCHA.

Google Blog

The news of Intuit’s intention to acquire the personal finance service Mint has been known for some time but the deal was made official Sunday night. TechCrunch broke the news of the acquisition naming unknown sources. Intuit acquired Mint for a total of $170 million.

Intuit CEO Brad Smith said “This move will enhance Intuit’s position as a leading provider of consumer SaaS offerings that connect customers across desktop, online and mobile.”

Mint was started two years ago and received a warm reception. It was a CNET webware winner for 2008 as well as 2009. It also was the winner of TechCrunch 50 in 2007. The final phases of the acquisition are set to close in fourth quarter. After that Mint will become part of Intuit’s consumer group including Quicken and TurboTax.

CNET