Stories by JR Raphael

Sometimes, it seems scams are becoming almost as common as social media experts on Twitter. The latest one, unleashed Monday morning and initially noticed by tech blog Mashable, centers on a fake blog hosted at the domain twittersblogs.com. Tweets containing links to the site circulated rapidly, each featuring the message: "omg!! is it true what they wrote about you in their twit blog?"

Ads are kind of like your awkward teenage years. Think about it: When you're actually experiencing them, every second feels an angst-ridden eternity. Look back a couple decades later, though, and it's damn near impossible not to laugh.

Less than 24 hours after Michael Jackson's death, fraudsters are exploiting public interest with their attempts to spread spam and malware. Security researchers say they've observed hundreds of cases of malicious messages masquerading as information about Jackson's death. Some of them, they say, popped up within minutes of the news.

Mozilla's Firefox 3.5 Release Candidate 2 is now out in the open, meaning the long-awaited final version is likely right around the corner.

BREAKING NEWS: Your Apple iPhone is bound to break! At least, if you believe a new study by an electronics warranty company that, by pure coincidence, happens to be promoting an iPhone warranty plan on its home page right now. Breaking news? Broken news might be more like it, as far as I'm concerned.

Apple's iPhone 3G S is the talk of the tech world this week. While some folks were disappointed a cheaper iPhone didn't debut at this year's Worldwide Developers Conference, the 16GB iPhone 3G S may actually be a better deal than you'd think: The phone, according to a new analysis, costs nearly US$179 to make. It retails for US$199.

Microsoft is gaining new ground with its freshly rebranded Bing search engine, some recently released data suggests. Bing, the research finds, grew 0.8 percent during its second week online.

Ladies and gentlemen, get on your marks: The race to grab your very own Facebook URL is about to begin. Facebook will allow users to register custom usernames for the first time starting at 12:01 a.m. EDT Saturday. The usernames are bound to go fast, and if you aren't prepared, you may end up empty-handed -- or, worse yet, with a number-happy AOL-style name (think "JSmithLOLz313451").

Apple's been keeping quiet about the specs of its new iPhone 3G S, the next-generation device unveiled at Monday's Worldwide Developers Conference. We know all about the iPhone's and operating system enhancements, sure, but what's going on under the hood has remained a mystery -- at least, until now.

Microsoft's first commercial for Bing, the company's recently rebranded search engine, is officially out in the wild. The inaugural Bing ad focuses on the notion of "search overload," suggesting Internet users have been "lost in the links" while America's financial system has been collapsing.

Microsoft's Xbox is about to get a lot more social. Twitter and Facebook will soon be coming to the system, Microsoft announced Monday, bringing an interactive boost to the entertainment console.

Microsoft's planning to relaunch its Live search engine under the name "Bing," a recent report suggests.

The U.S. government says it's lost - yes, lost - an entire hard drive full of sensitive data. The external drive, stored at the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, held personal data from the Clinton era, including information about White House staff and visitors and electronic storage tapes from the Executive Office of the President.

I noticed something interesting in the Google outage and its aftermath on Thursday. Google's sites, in case you were hiding in a cave yesterday, were unreachable around the world for a good hour and a half. Gmail, YouTube, Google News, even the google.com home page were inaccessible to scores of people.

Craigslist has announced it's closing the doors on its "erotic services" category, marking an end to a months-long battle over illegal acts arranged through the site.