Scrabulous gets a new name, other tweaks

Gameplayers on Facebook this past week resumed playing their beloved game Scrabulous, but under a new name and with slightly different rules.

Earlier in the week, Facebook shut down the game because of the threat of a lawsuit from Hasbro, the company that has the U.S. and Canadian rights to Scrabble.

Facebook estimated more than 500,000 users in North America had played the game.

Indian brothers Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, who were sued by Hasbro, re-introduced the online game under the name Wordscraper.

It’s close to the same game, with a different scoring system and uses circles instead of squares for tiles.

Facebook, meanwhile, added an “official” Scrabble game developed by Electronic Arts.

Study finds Web attacks accelerating: The bad guys who create and unleash computer attacks are churning them out and wreaking havoc faster than ever, according to industry studies.

More and more of these attacks are coming within 24 hours after a vulnerability is disclosed. That means security flaws are being exploited in Web browsers, computer operating systems and other programs before many people even have had time to learn there’s a problem, according to IBM’s latest Internet Security Systems X-Force report.

The report looked at the first six months of 2008 and reflects two growing trends in Internet-based threats.

The first is that online criminals have latched on in a big way to programs that help them automatically generate attacks based on publicly available information about vulnerabilities. In the past they apparently spent more time finding such holes themselves, but no longer find that as necessary.

The second trend is the increasing debate among security researchers over how much information should be released to the public when a new software flaw is discovered.

Researchers will release not only details of the vulnerability but also so-called “proof-of-concept” code to show the flaw is legitimate. But others say that step works in favor of the criminals in providing a guide for building a new attack.

Mixed Nuts

Tipjoy.com is a startup built around the idea of an online tip jar. Sites that sign up add a small button that allows individuals to make tiny donations. It’s designed as a way for people to offer a minimal but monetary “thank you” to sites like blogs or companies that offer a free application or tool.

The TipJoy site shows popular sites that have received a lot of tips. One site, which developed a time-management tool, has gained $143 just from tips.

You can also send any URL or e-mail a tip directly as well. As a tipper, you can choose the amount you’d like to tip by default (starting at 10 cents). Every time you click the tip button on a participating site, that amount is added to your bill.