Websites

WASHINGTON - Organizing for Action, President Obama's nonprofit advocacy organization, has sought to be nimble as it ramps up a national effort to back his agenda on gun control measures and immigration reform. But it appears the group didn't move swiftly enough to protect its presence online. An arbitrator has denied the organization's effort to obtain the domain name organizingforaction.net, registered by a quick-moving computer technician in Castle Rock, Colo., on Jan. 18, when the news broke that Obama's former advisors were launching the group.

JERUSALEM -- A widespread hacker attack targeting Israeli websites caused some disruption to government, academic and private sites Sunday. The extent of the damage was unclear at midday, but officials said strategic infrastructure appeared to have largely repelled the attacks, expected to increase later in the day as Israel begins to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.  Hundreds of websites have been attacked, and more than a dozen government sites have been temporarily disabled since the attack that threatened to "erase Israel from cyber-space" began.  The attack -- dubbed and tagged #OpIsrael by hackers affiliated with the shadowy group Anonymous -- was announced in advance and described by its organizers as an act of solidarity with Palestinians in retaliation for Israel's treatment of them, as well as for Israeli settlement activity and what is perceived as disrespect for international law. Several government websites, including those of the ministries of Education, Defense and Environmental Protection, were disabled overnight, defaced with anti-Israeli messages and loud music.

Customers trying to use JPMorgan Chase's website were frustrated again by four hours of disrupted service, but there was a twist this time: The outages were caused by a technical problem with the bank's systems, not by a cyber attack. The intermittent service disruptions began a little after 9 a.m. Pacific time on Monday. The New York-based bank advised customers to use its mobile banking services while it worked "to get things up to full speed. " The site was functioning well Tuesday.

This online service gives travelers an easy way to earn airline mileage while booking a hotel stay. Name: Pointshound.com What it does: It's a global hotel booking website that entices you with airline mileage points in exchange for your business. There are more than 100,000 hotels around the world to choose from. What's hot: Free points just for the taking. There are three levels of free membership, and as your number of hotel-night stays grows, you move up to the next level, which allows you to earn even more airline miles per dollar spent.

Wells Fargo & Co.'s online banking operations have been knocked out intermittently by a cyber attack, the latest in a series of assaults since September on the websites of major U.S. banks. The website sitedown.co , which enables customers to report outages on business sites, logged more than 200 reports for the San Francisco bank Tuesday from 7:30 a.m. through 1:30 p.m.     Wells Fargo said it was targeted by a denial-of-service attack, in which a website is bombarded with so many requests that it can slow down or stop working.

Maurice R. Greenberg, who built American International Group Inc. into the world's largest insurer before his ouster in 2005, has re-emerged as one of the prime forces behind Grandparents.com, a social networking site for seniors that aims to sell them insurance. Greenberg, 87, is personally directing the website's efforts to establish deals with insurers to offer health, auto, home and life coverage, Grandparents said in a statement. The New York company competes with services offered by the nonprofit AARP.

Don't accuse Google of not knowing how to inject some fun into Web browsing. The Mountain View, Calif., company's latest experiment unveiled Thursday transforms websites into a 3-D landscape maze that users then can tilt to move a marble. More amazingly, users tilt the maze by moving around their smartphones like a game controller. "World Wide Maze," as the mini-game is called, can be accessed at chrome.com/maze when using the Chrome browser. Once there, users can launch the Chrome app on their phones and sync the two together.

Leslie Moonves has had the same morning routine for decades. "The first thing I do after getting out of the shower is pick up Daily Variety and have a cup of coffee," the CBS Corp. chief executive said. "It's a 30-year habit. " That habit is ending for Moonves and lots of other Hollywood power players, movie and television stars, producers and publicists and thousands of wannabes: Daily Variety is ceasing as a print publication after almost 80 years. Tuesday's edition is its last.

California consumers don't have easy access to actual prices for medical care, according to a national report card that gave the state a D for its dismal showing. Overall, 36 states received a D or F in the report issued Monday by two nonprofit healthcare groups that analyzed government efforts to make pricing information widely available to consumers. This issue has taken on added importance in recent years as patients shoulder a growing share of healthcare costs from higher deductibles and other insurance changes.

A trade group for the world's airlines is pushing to modernize a decades-old booking system to help speed along the latest airline trend - the sale of customized fare packages. Behind the effort is the International Air Transport Assn., the trade group for about 240 of the world's largest airlines. The group filed an application with the U.S. Department of Transportation last week to upgrade the computer system used by travel agents and online travel sites such as Orbitz and Travelocity.