Interbrand, a brand consultancy company, has released its 11th annual ranking of the "Best Global Brands." The top three brands, in order, are Coca-Cola, IBM, and Microsoft. In the top 10, Google gained the most in terms of brand value while Nokia lost the most. For the 11th year in a row, Coca-Cola retained its top spot as the number one ranked brand on the list.
None of the top three companies changed their ranks from last year. Google, however, jumped from seventh to fourth place, stealing it from GE, which is now in fifth. McDonald's this year stayed in sixth place, like last year. Intel, meanwhile, jumped to seventh place from ninth. The Finnish Nokia, the only non-US company in the top 10, fell from fifth to eight place. Disney moved up from tenth to ninth place and HP also gained one rank, moving in to the top 10 for the first time. If you followed that closely, the top 10 list should not surprise you:
| 1 | Coca-Cola | Beverages | $70,452 |
| 2 | IBM | Business Services | $64,727 |
| 3 | Microsoft | Computer Software | $60,895 |
| 4 | Internet Services | $43,557 | |
| 5 | GE | Diversified | $42,808 |
| 6 | McDonald's | Restaurants | $33,578 |
| 7 | Intel | Electronics | $32,015 |
| 8 | Nokia | Electronics | $29,495 |
| 9 | Disney | Media | $28,731 |
| 10 | HP | Electronics | $26,867 |
The ranking lists the top 100 brands based on a unique methodology that analyzes the many ways a brand touches and benefits an organization; a brand's value is determined by the financial performance of the branded products or services, the role of brand in the purchase decision process, and the strength of the brand to continue to secure earnings for the company.
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MPAA, RIAA websites fall victim to 4chan-coordinated DDoS attack
The Pirate Bay has been taking a beating lately. After being forced to move through multiple hosting solutions and surviving harsh international copyright law litigation, the pirates could use some good news for once. That piece of good news came over the weekend in the form of a mass DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack on the MPAA and RIAA’s websites over the weekend.
According to TorrentFreak, the perpetrators of the attacks were the famed citizens of the country of 4chan, all under the unified moniker of Anonymous. 4chan, using its tried and true methods of group insurrection, distributed a flyer around the Internet describing ”Operation Payback,” in which the denizens of 4chan (and countless other users from all over the Internet) would all use a software tool called a “Low Orbit Ion Cannon” at the same to disrupt website operations at the MPAA and Friday, and the RIAA on Saturday. LOIC is a small piece of software that will fire data at a website with intent to cripple. When many are used in tandem, bad things happen to websites.
Both sites are back up and running, and many would discount the attack as meaningless treachery that will have no lasting legislative effect. However, attention mongering is definitely not outside of 4chan’s modus operandi, and they have proven time and time again that social disruption doesn’t have to have a goal to be noticed. If anything, this attack showed the anti-pirate world that they may not be as invulnerable as they think they are. Never underestimate the power of Anonymous.
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Google planning 60x faster Chrome 7 to hit back at IE9 beta
Microsoft recently released a public beta version of Internet Explorer 9. Microsoft officials showed off some impressive stats against their competitors, claiming the first and only browser to deliver full hardware acceleration of all HTML5 content.
Microsoft's bold claims are accurate but one has to remember the product is still in beta. Google on the other hand has a remarkable way of dishing out product updates with lightning speed. The web search giant is currently readying Chrome 7 which it claims will be 60 times faster than Chrome 6. 2D graphics performance and canvas acceleration is now available in trunk and canary builds of Chrome 7. "This system picks the best graphics API to use on each OS that Chromium supports: Windows XP/Vista/7, Mac OS and Linux", wrote James Robinson, Software Engineer at Google.
It's important to remember that Chrome 7 is still in the very early beta stage so this could change significantly before it's fully released. Google isn't the only other browser looking at hardware acceleration. The latest beta builds of Mozilla's Firefox also include hardware accelerated components for improved performance. It's not yet clear when Chrome 7 will be available in non-dev form but Robinson says it's coming. "With Google Chrome’s fast release cycles, we expect to be able to get these enhancements to users quickly and add new performance improvements over time."
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