Twitter, the popular social networking applet which allows users to answer ‘What are you doing now?’ in 140 characters or less has stopped sending SMS messages to UK users. Unable to find a mobile partner to offer better rates, they have been forced with escalating costs to stop the service all together. Twitter already capped the messages at 250 per month, but this still costs around £500 per user per year outside the US, India and Canada.

The following alternatives are available:

• m.twitter.com (http://m NULL.twitter NULL.com/) works on browser-enabled phones
• m.slandr.net (http://m NULL.slandr NULL.net/) works on browser-enabled phones
• TwitterMail (http://www NULL.twittermail NULL.com/) works on email-enabled phones
• Cellity (http://www NULL.cellity NULL.com/en/download NULL.html) works on java-enabled phones
• TwitterBerry (http://www NULL.orangatame NULL.com/products/twitterberry/) works on BlackBerry brand phones
• Twitterific (http://phobos NULL.apple NULL.com/WebObjects/MZStore NULL.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=284540316) works on iPhones

In the meantime, you can still update your twitter status by sending an SMS to +44 7624 801 423 as many times as your credit will allow.

Do you know the head of any mobile network in the UK? If they are interested in becoming a saviour, and gain plenty of extra publicity, put them in touch with Twitter to get things moving again!

Twitter is used by a number of companies wishing to keep in touch with each other, one SMS to the system will forward out to all ‘followers’ keeping each other up to date with what’s going on. Business collaborations have also been using it to keep the teams updated with current developments, and Joe Public to keep in touch with friends. We’ve yet to see any paid advertising on the platform, but the potential revenue for this would be immense, especially if the SMS service could be resumed.

Besides keeping in contact with other users, strengthening relationships and promoting themselves and their brand, users can also use Twitter to keep up to date with BBC News, what’s going on in the Big Brother house and even London Underground service updates. Twitter can be used to update status’ on several other platforms like Ecademy, Facebook and can be set to update automatically using other APIs, RSS feeds from blogs etc.

With IT taking on more roles in our finances, security is getting tighter and pushing the world’s best hackers into higher sophistication. If a virus on a single school computer is a small rash, then a DNS attack like those on presently is the HIV of the internet. According to Kaminsky 52% of DNS servers are still at risk.

A website doesn’t really have a name, facebook isn’t really at facebook.com, it’s really at  69.63.178.11, Zakomedia.com is at 79.170.40.33

These numbers (known as IP) make no sense to a human, could you imagine it printed on your business card? The domain name was born. If your house were a website, it’s longitudal and latitudal coordinates would be the IP address and the domain name would be your postal address.

So when you type ‘facebook.com’ into the address bar, your computer sends this request to your ISP’s DNS. (In my case, Virgin Media) Virgin’s DNS server has a list and checks facebook in this list to determine it’s IP. If it can’t find it, it forwards the request to the next nearest DNS and this can go on. Eventually they will come back with the correct IP and send you to the correct website.

The security flaw affects just over 1/2 of these DNS servers and would enable someone to add a false IP to a name. This means a request to ‘www.natwest.com’ could give a false IP reading and send you to another site made up to look like the original and ask you to log in with your bank details… www.natwest.com would still appear in the address bar and you would be none the wiser until every penny was drained from your account to an unnamed Swiss account holder.

The truth is that DNS owners have known about this problem for about 2 weeks and many have still done nothing about them! This puts us, the consumers at a serious risk! 52% of the world could be lead to the wrong banking site to input their details… that’s not a gamble I’m willing to take!

So without trying to scaremonger, there is a way of testing whether or not you are likely to be affected. Go to http://www.doxpara.com/ and use the ‘Check DNS’ button on the right. Ignore the messages below, but read the text which appears. It doesn’t say you ARE affected, it simply tells you if your local DNS is at risk or patched to avoid this threat. If it is at risk, avoid sending sensitive data online. (i.e. banks, logins etc.) Reading the news, weather, and checking mail with outlook or outlook express should be fine. You can resume normal activity when a new test confirms you are ok. If you’re DNS comes out with the message:

xx.xx.xx.xx has other protections above and beyond port randomization against the recently discovered DNS flaws. There is no reason to be concerned about the results seen below.

Then you can be happy and relax in the knowledge that your ISP (whether it’s BT, AOL, Virgin etc) has it’s customers in mind and is keeping you secure.