Insite Advice - News stories

Insite Advice welcomes Mary Engelbreit

2011-08-17T19:51:53+00:00

Insite Advice is proud to announce a new partnership with Mary Engelbreit, the famed St. Louis graphic artist and children's book illustrator. Over the coming weeks and months, Insite Advice will be working with Mary Engelbreit to create a more complete online presence for the company. Looking towards the future, you can expect to see more involvement in social media and a new store from Mary Engelbreit. Keep checking back to our site or Mary’s for more information.

Feel free to check out her website today!

Google could be guilty of promoting illegal drug sales

2011-07-01T15:23:10+00:00

Google has been in the news recently with a seemingly endless stream of negative press. The newest development is the FDA looking into the possibility that Google knowingly took advertising money from websites selling prescription drugs, but without prescriptions. This could be a huge hit to Google considering they have already set aside $500 million for possible penalties in this case. If Google is correct in the assumption of the cost of these fines, this would be the largest fine of its kind in US history.

Google’s AdWords program is at the center of these allegations. AdWords is a online advertising service that places search specific ads in the search engine's results. AdWords has recently been the subject of other investigations by the US Senate and the FTC over antitrust allegations.

MySpace Sold…Again

2011-06-29T20:36:49+00:00

It seems that News Corp has finally gotten rid of the profit-less MySpace. The company acquired MySpace only 6 years ago for $580 million and rumors have said the purchase price this time around was a measly $35 million to a company called Specific Media. When News Corp purchased the social network in 2005, it was the leading website. Now, Facebook is king and MySpace has fallen by the wayside.

When looking at the books from 2010, the division of News Corp that incorporates MySpace reported losses of over $575 million. The losses of MySpace specifically weren't stated.

Google will be receiving subpoenas from FTC and US Senate

2011-06-23T16:23:11+00:00

It was announced that the FTC is planning on serving Google with subpoenas over the accusations of antitrust violations. These accusations are mainly concerned with Google's search advertising program, AdWords. This is just another in a series of antitrust accusations towards the company.

On a completely separate issue, the US Senate is threatening subpoenas on the top executives and creators of Google, Larry Page and Eric Schmidt. Even though the Senate would love to have the top executives represent the company in subcommittee hearings, it is most likely that Google will be represented by its senior vice president and chief legal officer, David Drummond. Drummond has experience with the Senate hearings, testifying in front of the Senate antitrust committee twice in the past 4 years.

More information can be found here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303339904576403603764717680.html

Is more strict banking security coming?

2011-06-10T21:52:52+00:00

Earlier this week, hackers were able to access the Citigroup network and gain information on about 200,000 credit card holders in North America. This attack marks the largest direct attack on the banking industry ever. The increased potential of more attacks is changing the way that some banks are going to secure their sites. Most people that are experts in the online security field suggest that banks across North America, and the world in general, tighten their security to ward off future attacks.

Tougher security measures would slightly increase the effort of account holders to access their information, but would likely significantly lessen the possibility of attacks of this nature in the future. However, the cost of securing the sensitive data is already expensive; what would a increase in security cost us, the consumer?

China suggests that Google is attempting to create disputes between them and the US

2011-06-06T17:36:58+00:00

The official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party has announced that the recent allegations of Chinese-based hacks were politically motivated to start disputes with the United States.

Google came out last week saying that hackers from the Shandong province of Eastern China tried to compromise the Gmail accounts of some senior US officials. The attempted hackings were said to have been attempts to trick the officials to disclose their passwords.

The accusation of attacks is just the latest in a series of statements from Google and China. The rift between Google and China has been expanding ever since the company refused to censor certain search results in China.

More can be seen at:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304432304576369110123223234.html

The leader in smartphones is taking off

2011-06-06T17:26:56+00:00

Google's Android OS is still the number 1 smartphone platform in the United States. Nearly 37% of all smartphones these days are Android powered. The second place phone in the rankings is the iPhone. The phone from Apple recently passed RIM's BlackBerry for the second spot in the rankings. The BlackBerry platform use has dropped 12% in the past months even though there has been an increase of over 13% in the overall smartphone market.

The reason, some say, for the dominance of Android is the fact that it runs on multiple manufacturer's phones, not just one like the iPhone and BlackBerry.

Bing and Facebook, Together

2011-05-17T20:21:48+00:00

Bing and Facebook are partnering up to provide social results on search engine pages. Now when you are logged into Facebook, you will see likes and recommendations that your friends have made. You will also see where your friends live when searching for cities. You can even search on Bing for new Facebook friends with enhanced bios and images. Now we can all say that Bing has "Liked" Facebook.

You can try it out here:
social.discoverbing.com

Amazon servers cause sites to see errors

2011-04-21T19:43:54+00:00

Some servers at Amazon have been disrupted today due to apparent capacity issues. The servers were part of Amazon's cloud services that hosts websites around the world. Some of the bigger websites involved inthe server problems are Foursquare, Hoot Suite and Quora. This problem with the relatively new cloud services raises questions about the stability and reliability of this service.

Cloud services are used to kepp information accessable to people over a wide variety of devices, such as cell phones, netbooks, and tablets without having a physical storage location on the devices.

The Obama administration is looking into rising gas prices

2011-04-21T19:31:52+00:00

With the gas prices rising quickly in St. Louis and around the country, the President is looking for answers. President Obama announced a group of federal agencies to look in to the potential fraud in the oil industry. Obama as said that gas prices are soaring mainly due to speculators. The recent unrest in the Middle East is most likely to blame for and pressure on the big oil companies.

Gas prices are at the highest in the US since 2008 and are above $4.00/ gallon in a few cities like Chicago and Los Angeles