Google Street View soon in Bulgaria

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Bulgarian cities and towns will be visible through Google Street View as Google executives have already notified the Bulgarian authorities of their intention to launch the product for Bulgaria.

Bulgaria’s Commission for Protection of Personal Data has been visited by Google officials from offices in Ireland and the Czech Republic several days ago, Commission head Veneta Shopova has announced.

The Google representatives, Simon Miechen from Ireland and Eva Martinikova from the Czech Republic, have notified the Bulgarian authorities of their intention to photograph all cities, towns, and villages in Bulgaria in order to launch the images in their Google Street View application.

Google Street View is a technology featured in Google Maps and Google Earth that provides panoramic views from various positions along many streets in the world. It was launched on May 25, 2007, originally only in several cities in the United States, and has since gradually expanded to include more cities and rural areas worldwide, to include 27 countries at present.

The Google executives have told the Bulgarian authorities they will probably complete the task of photographing Bulgaria in two months because they need sunny weather. They plan to use Bulgarian drivers as well for their specially adapted cars that make the 360-degree images of each street.

Google has told the Bulgarian government that they no longer gather Wi-Fi data, and dim the license plate numbers and people’s faces that get in the images. Google also plans to carry out an information campaign in Bulgaria before the photographing begins.

“We cannot ban them to do that if they have obeyed the notification rules, and have gotten a registration as an administrator of personal data,” Shopova has told the Trud daily.

Google has hired a Bulgarian law office for their Google Street View work in Bulgaria but is yet to decide if it will register a firm in Bulgaria, or will work through their office in Ireland. If the latter is the case, that will force the Bulgarian Personal Data Protection Commission to refer any inspections to their counterparts in Ireland.

The Google representatives have stated that the launch of Google Street View in Bulgaria will help boost tourism.

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Google Code-In Final Statistics

Thank you to all of the participants in Google Code-In, a contest designed to introduce pre-university students from around the world to the many possibilities for participation in the open source community.

The contest was a great success with 361 students (ages 13-18) from 48 countries completing a total of 2,167 tasks during the 7 week contest period. The students completed 769 Easy tasks, 798 Medium level tasks and 600 Difficult tasks during Google Code-In. We are thrilled with the response and the quality of work completed for the contest and look forward to seeing more from these talented students in the future.

The top 10 countries with the highest number of participants were, in order: The United States, Romania, Bulgaria, The Russian Federation, India, Poland, Canada, Germany, Italy, and Australia.

We would also like to extend a huge thank you to our 20 mentoring organizations and administrators from all over the globe, who through their guidance and encouragement are introducing young coders to the numerous ways to contribute to diverse open source projects.

Please stay tuned as we announce the Google Code-In contest winners on Monday, February 14th.

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ГДБОП спря “Замунда” и “Арена”

В 00.00 ч. на 21 срещу 22 януари Главна дирекция за борба с организираната престъпност (ГДБОП) спря двата най-големи български торент сайта “Замунда” и “Арена”. Всеки, който се опита да влезе в сайтовете “Замунда” и “Арена”, бива пренасочван към швейцарски страници, пише информационна агенция “Блиц”.

Справка на “Новата журналистика” пък показа, че в zamunda.net достъпна е само първата страница, а всички останали са блокирани. В “Арена” е публикувано официалното съобщение на двата тракера. Там се казва, че зад спирането на сайтовете стои мистериозен “Съвет за защита на интелектуалната собственост”, ръководен от държавните органи.

Форумите са пълни с негативни мнения за спирането на сайтовете. Потребителите са напълно съгласни, че нарушават авторските права на кинопроизводителите, но не забравят да споменат и части от закона за интелектуалната собственост и авторското право. Там се позволява свободно използване без търговски цели в рамките на семейството.

Става ясно, че в мащабната акция участват и от “Интерпол”. Причината е, че собствениците на “Замунда” и “Арена” не са българи, а сървърите им са в други страни. Директорът на сектор “Компютърни престъпления” към ГДБОП Явор Колев още през април м. г. се закани, че спре двата торент сайта, защото осъществявали дейност по пране на пари.

През лятото ведомството на Колев спря сайта за електронни книги “Читанка”. Дни по-късно той бе възстановен. Дали това ще се случи и с торентите- предстои да разберем.

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Bulgarian Cybercrime Blogger Resurfaces After Mysterious Disappearance

Bulgarian cybercrime blogger Dancho Danchev mysteriously vanished a few weeks ago, worrying his colleagues and the Internet. He’s back! But what happened to him? According to one report, he was confined to a psychiatric hospital.

“Catching up in progress… inbox looks pretty messy” Danchev tweeted today—his first tweet since October. So, that’s a relief. Now, on to the rampant speculation: What has Danchev been up to?

Clues initially pointed to some sort of weird government trouble. Danchev’s colleagues at ZDNet published a cryptic email he’d sent to a friend. Included was a picture of what Danchev believed was a surveillance device in his bathroom, placed there by Bulgarian law enforcement who have been “building a case, trying to damage my reputation.” It looked really scary!

But, there’s probably more (or less) to the story than Danchev being disappeared by Bulgarian cops. According to the Bulgarian news site Dnevik.org, Danchev had been hospitalized in a Bulgarian psychiatric hospital since December 11th of last year. “He is now stabilized and will soon be discharged,” Dnevik wrote on Wednesday.

And, now, Danchev’s back. We’ll take this as a cautionary tale for all bloggers: Once you start seeing surveillance devices in everyday household items, it might be time to take a break and go outside.

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7 милиона SMS-а за Нова година

По Нова година са изпратени близо 7 милиона кратки текстови съобщения, съобщава един от операторите в България.

След 22 часа на 31 декември 2010 година клиентите на оператора са изпратили над 180 хиляди SMS-а.

В първия ден на 2011-та година в мрежата на телекома са изпратени новогодишни пожелания в 6 574 453 съобщения, а до 11.00 часа на 2 януари броят на SMS-ите е 207 820.

Увеличават се броят на клиентите, предпочели да поздравят близки и приятели с MMS-и.

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