UK customers get access to Google's PowerMeter

Google's PowerMeter service made its U.K. debut on Wednesday, allowing British Gas customers to monitor their electricity usage from afar online. AlertMe has linked its system with Google's PowerMeter, which can generate graphs of electricity usage that can be viewed anywhere using a mobile phone or computer. British Gas has partnered with AlertMe, a company based in Cambridge, England, that sells hardware and a service that sends electricity consumption data over the Internet. Many utilities are working on smart-meter technology to help consumers become more aware of their electricity usage and take steps to reduce it.

Google, which announced its PowerMeter service in February, estimates that consumers can cut their energy consumption by up to 15 percent if they have more information on their consumption patterns. The U.K. government is striving to have smart meters in every home by 2020, and the U.S. plans to install up to 40 million smart meters as part of a recent economic stimulus plan. Google's PowerMeter application can be placed on a person's iGoogle home page, a page people can customize with various Google gadgets. The meter reader takes second-by-second measurements, which are then transmitted wirelessly to AlertMe's "Nano Hub," which plugs into a router. To monitor electricity, AlertMe sells a device called a "meter reader." Since U.K. power meters can be read inductively, a homeowner just needs to clip the device onto the meter, said Pilgrim Beart, AlertMe's CEO. It avoids the difficulty of installing "smart meters," which are devices designed to replace old power meters for use in conjunction with remote monitoring systems. The information is then sent to AlertMe, which has its own Web-based front end where customers can log in and view their electricity data.

AlertMe also sells a "SmartPlug" that records the energy consumption for a specific device. Customers can also opt to view the information through Google's PowerMeter. Those cost £25 (US$41) each. AlertMe's service can break it down by device. Under the current configuration, however, Google's PowerMeter will only display the total household energy consumption rather than break it down by appliance.

The data can be viewed in kilowatt hours by day, week, month or year or as the total cost of the electricity. Users can also opt for a slightly cheaper payment arrangement, with a one-year £99 subscription that includes the meter reader, transmitter and hub. AlertMe sells the hardware for £69 and charges £2.99 per month for the online service. The option to use Google PowerMeter is free. It is testing with British Gas a system that would allow homeowners to control their programmers - thermostats in the U.S. - online, Beart said.

AlertMe is already working on more advanced features that will give consumers more control over power bills. AlertMe's labs are also working on software that would be able to distinguish major appliances from one another, such as identifying the refrigerator versus the washing machine versus a kettle. That improvement means people wouldn't need the £25 SmartPlug. All of those appliances have distinct electricity patterns that can be identified using algorithms, Beart said. Overall, the data can then be used to figure out consumption patterns.

AlertMe is entirely consumer-focused and wants to make it easy to "engage people effectively and change their behavior," Beart said. The delivery of the information is important. Although AlertMe's Web front-end enables more detail for its system than Google's PowerMeter, Beart said the Google option gives people another way to look at the data. The company, first:utility, is providing free smart meters to some 30,000 U.K. customers. Separately on Tuesday, Google announced it had reached its first agreement with a U.K. utility to use its PowerMeter.

Starting next month, those customers will able to use Google's PowerMeter in conjunction with those meters. For its PowerMeter program, Google said it has secured agreements with two device companies and 10 utilities in five countries, wrote Ka-Ping Yee, a software engineer, and Jens Redmer, of Google's business development, on a company blog.

Verizon CTO: 'We told you so' about FiOS

Verizon CTO Dick Lynch has a simple message to anyone who doubted his company's wisdom in building out a fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network: We were right, you were wrong. Lynch put particular emphasis on chiding skeptical analysts and rival companies that tried to cast doubt upon Verizon's fiber plans. "In an attempt to maintain the status quo, our competitors did their best to create customer confusion around fiber-optic services," he said. "They claimed that their networks had been fiber for a decade, and they distributed misleading messages about the quality of FiOS. Their communications strategy was to create confusion and apathy and some people fell for it." Slideshow: Ma Bell's 25-year oddysey   Specifically, Lynch singled out a "potential customer" that told The Washington Post a few years back that "there's nothing on the Internet that requires that kind of bandwidth." Now, with the rise of YouTube, Facebook and other bandwidth-intensive Web applications, Lynch said that Verizon is having the last laugh. "With the exception of our competitors, everyone secretly hoped we would succeed," he said. "The industry experts would publicly say, 'Verizon is spending too much' or 'consumers don't need fiber.' But then they'd turn around and call us to find out how soon FiOS would be coming to their neighborhood." Verizon's FiOS services offer customers peak download speeds of 50Mbps and peak upload speeds of 20Mbps. Speaking at the FTTH Conference and Expo in Houston Tuesday, Lynch crowed about his company bringing FiOS Internet services to an estimated 3.1 million subscribers in the United States. Cable companies this year have begun ramping up their tests for faster services to compete with FiOS, as Comcast and Cablevision have started rolling out new Internet services based on the DOCSIS 3.0 standard that will offer businesses potential peak download speeds of 100Mbps.

Verizon has said in the past that it is trialing 100Mbps FiOS technology, although the company has given no timeline for when that technology might hit the market.

Spam, malware dominate online user comments, Websense reports

A staggering 95% of all "user-generated comments" for blogs, chat rooms and message boards online are spam or malicious, according to a new Websense report on security threat trends. "That's the first time we started monitoring that," says Patrick Runald, Websense senior manager for security research, about the level of spam and malware ploys carried out around blogs and chat rooms. In addition, 77% of Web sites with malicious code are said to be legitimate sites that have been compromised. "The bad guys are finding new ways for disseminating malware," Runald said. "It's getting worse." According to the Websense Security Labs report, based on data collected in part from scanning 40 million Web sites every hour, 61% of the Top 100 sites are said to either be hosting malicious content or containing a masked redirect to lure unsuspecting victims from legitimate sites to malicious ones. The Websense Security Labs "State of Internet Security Q1 – Q2 2009," which covers the period up to June of this year, also notes that the number of malicious Web sites for the period more than tripled.

Facebook, YouTube become malware magnets More than 47% of the Top 100 sites, particularly social-networking sites, such as Facebook or YouTube, support user-generated content, which the report notes is becoming a significant way to disseminate malware and conduct fraud. "On Facebook and other social-networking sites, there's an explicit sense of trust," says Runald. "That's why the bad guys are attempting to exploit it, with malware like Koobface, which could hijack your machine and send messages." In the area of cybercrime, one significant attack that took place involved criminals seizing control of the CheckFree Web site and attempting to re-direct users to a Web site hosted in Ukraine that tried to install malware on victims' computers. The report said CheckFree has more than 24 million customers and controls 70%-80% of the online bill-payment market.

Avaya wins Nortel enterprise business for $900 million

Avaya has emerged as the winning bidder for Nortel's enterprise business, reportedly beating out Siemens Enterprise Communications over the weekend. Avaya will also contribute an additional pool of $15 million for an employee retention program. The firm will pay $900 million for the unit, Nortel's Government Solutions group and DiamondWare Ltd., a Nortel-owned maker of softphones. That price is nearly twice what Avaya was initially said to be buying the enterprise business for back in July before auction bidding kicked in.

Telecom carrier Verizon, however, is expected to contest the sale on the grounds that Avaya does not plan to retain customer support contracts between Nortel and Verizon. Slideshow: The rise and fall of Nortel Avaya has sought Nortel's enterprise business in hopes of boosting its share of the enterprise telephony and unified communications markets, and getting more customers to migrate to its IP line of communications products.  The sale, expected to close later this year, is subject to court approvals in the U.S., Canada, France and Israel as well as regulatory approvals, other customary closing conditions and certain post-closing purchase price adjustments. Nortel is confident the sale will go through without any snags. "We do not expect the Verizon interaction to impact court approval or the close of this deal," said Joel Hackney, president of Nortel Enterprise Solutions. "We will continue to go forward in supporting customers." Hackney would not say whether Nortel is engaged in the negotiations between Avaya and Verizon on the future of certain customer support contracts, mentioning only that Nortel supports Verizon as a customer as well as the carrier's customers. Nortel customers hope the deal works out in their interest. "Nortel earned the trust of our user group members by delivering innovative, reliable communications solutions and ensuring high-levels of service and support, " said Victor Bohnert, Executive Director of the International Nortel Networks Users Association, in a prepared statement. "With the announcement of today's purchase by Avaya, we look forward to extending that relationship forward to serve the business communications needs of our constituency base across the globe." Nortel will seek Canadian and U.S. court approvals of the proposed sale agreement at a joint hearing on September 15, 2009. The sale close is expected late in the fourth quarter. Hackney also said there were two bidders for the enterprise unit but would not identify the second suitor. In some EMEA jurisdictions this transaction is subject to information and consultation with employee representatives.

As previously announced, Nortel does not expect that its common shareholders or the preferred shareholders of Nortel Networks Limited will receive any value from the creditor protection proceedings and expects that the proceedings will result in the cancellation of these equity interests.

Data breach hits payroll firm PayChoice

PayChoice of Moorestown, N.J., suffered an online breach that has apparently compromised its payroll-processing operations. 10 of the worst moments in network security history "PayChoice discovered a security breach in its online system on Wednesday, September 23, 2009," PayChoice CEO Robert Digby confirmed in a statement. "We are handling this incident with the highest level of attention as well as concern for our clients, software customers and the employees they serve." PayChoice today indicated it is working to provide additional information about the breach. Post writer Brian Krebs reports that the phishing attack was apparently aimed at getting into payroll and account data. According to the Washington Post, a number of PayChoice customers were subjected to an apparent phishing scam when they received an e-mail instructing them to download a Web browser plug-in in order to maintain access to PayChoice's online payroll service, onlineemployer.com.

PayChoice is said to license its online employee payroll management product to more than 240 other payroll processing firms to serve 125,000 organizations. He said licensees and payroll clients will be apprised on a daily basis, and he added they should taking "appropriate protective measures, including changing passwords and user id information." In his statement, Digby said that on Sept. 23rd, "we immediately shut down the online system and instituted fresh security measures to protect client information before starting it up again." The payroll-processing company has also engaged forensics experts to help determine the scope of the intrusion and notified federal law enforcement, according to Digby.