When you sign up for an e-mail account at Google’s Gmail, you have to navigate past a CAPTCHA — squiggly words and letters that need to be typed into a box to prove you’re human and not an automated system looking to send spam. But in the war against spammers, CAPTCHAs are not holding up well and the latest attacks let spambots into Gmail.

CAPTCHA stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.” Typically image files, the challenge-and-response system has been fairly successful in preventing spammers from opening e-mail accounts on popular Web domains like Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail. Those accounts are prized by spammers because Web administrators can’t simply blacklist the popular domains.

Spammers have found ways to break CAPTCHAs, according to Stephan Chenette, manager of Websense Security Labs. “What we’re seeing is the technology on the hacker side has surpassed the simple CAPTCHAs,” Chenette told us. “In the public domain there are several tools available right now for everyone to use to break simple CAPTCHAs.”

Human and Computer Attacks

Chenette said organized attackers are using automated tools to sign up for Gmail and other Web-mail accounts. When the CAPTCHA image appears, it’s automatically sent off to a large and low-paid workforce, typically in another country, where a worker enters the code and sends it back so the account can be created.

This type of attack has been used against other Web-mail sites, Chenette said, but in the attacks on Gmail there’s a new wrinkle. “One of the more interesting things about the Gmail CAPTCHA breaking is that we believe that this might be happening through an automated process, which is the next step to breaking CAPTCHAs as opposed to hiring a large workforce to break them,” he said.

In fact, Chenette believes these are two-pronged attacks. The…

The outsourcing of information technology management functions by businesses has been a boon for on-demand software providers such as Salesforce.com (CRM). But the likelihood of the U.S. economy slipping into recession this year could put a snag in Salesforce’s ability to keep growing as rapidly as it has been, some analysts say.

After the market close on Feb. 27, the San Francisco-based company reported earnings under generally accepted accounting principles [GAAP] of six cents per share for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2008, vs. breakeven in fiscal 2007, on a 50 percent rise in revenue. The results for the latest quarter, which ended on Jan. 31, included about $16 million in stock-based compensation and roughly $1.3 million in amortization of purchased services related to acquisitions announced earlier.

Total revenue rose 50 percent to $216.9 million in the fourth quarter, with subscription and support sales climbing 49 percent to $196.5 million and professional services and other revenues surging 68 percent to $20.4 million.

For the full fiscal year 2008, GAAP earnings came in at 15 cents per share on a 51 percent rise in revenue from the prior year to $748.7 million.

Wall Street analysts had an average earnings estimate of four cents per share in the fourth quarter and 14 cents for the full fiscal year.

Although the broader technology sector continues to worry the market, investors embraced Salesforce. On Feb. 28, the shares jumped 17 percent to close at $61.66, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq index took another dive, ending 22.21, or 0.94 percent, lower at 2,331.57.

Salesforce, which specializes in on-demand customer relationship management [CRM] services, said it expects to earn six to seven cents per share on a GAAP basis in the first quarter of fiscal 2009 on $233 million to $235 million in revenue. It also raised its full-year profit forecast to a…

Dell Inc. executives say it’s too early to judge the success of their latest push into the consumer PC market, but the computer maker’s latest financial results show that the company still has a long way to go to restore its once golden image on Wall Street.

Dell, the world’s No. 2 PC maker, promises an aggressive cost-cutting campaign — that means more layoffs on top of the 3,200 jobs already eliminated in the past year — to boost profits.

And it is counting on growth in emerging markets to offset softness in the United States, where customers such as financial-services firms are reining in spending on technology.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if the U.S. is our slowest-growing region certainly for the next couple of quarters, given what we see going on in the economy,” said founder and Chief Executive Michael Dell.

The company said Thursday that its fourth-quarter profit dropped 6.4 percent, to $679 million (EU447.68 million) or 31 cents per share, in the quarter ended Feb. 1. That included several one-time expenses totaling 7 cents per share and gains of 4 cents per share.

Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial had predicted a profit of 36 cents per share. A year ago, Round Rock, Texas-based Dell earned $726 million (EU478.67 million), or 32 cents per share.

Sales rose 10.5 percent to $15.99 billion (EU10.54 billion), but that was below the $16.27 billion (EU10.73 billion) that analysts had expected.

Dell shares rose 10 cents to $20.97 at the open of trade Friday.

Chief Financial Officer Donald Carty said in an interview that the company had restored growth in key areas, including notebook computers — where revenue rose 24 percent — and emerging markets. Revenue was 36 percent higher in Brazil, Russia, India and China.

Dell built its business by selling computers directly to companies and consumers on the phone…

If Ask dismantled its Teoma engine, would Ask still be Ask? The simple answer to this existential question is no.

The Ask search is based on the concept of expert opinion, and there are many refinement options shown in the interface based on clustered or categorized results.

So if Teoma were shut down, we think the ability to narrow or expand searches would likely disappear — as shown in the chocolate options here.

On the other hand, it’s possible to port these algorithms elsewhere if there’s enough time for Ask engineers to prepare transitions. That means these search refinements could be layered on top of a different engine, albeit slowing down the response time.

According to PaidContent, the ad deal between Google and Ask includes “a clause allowing Google to engage more deeply with Ask’s algorithmic search.” If the algorithms from Joisy were connected inside of Google, then these functionalities live on.

Not sure what’s planned here, but we can’t take the user-interface for granted with a simple plug-in.

Having successfully completed an in-house search marketers’ salary survey in the fall (with results in January), SEMPO, the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, is conducting an online salary survey of agency-based search marketers.

The survey presents less than 30 questions and can be completed in an estimated 12 minutes. It’s open now and will run through mid March. Results of the survey will be published in connection with ad:tech San Francisco in April.