Take extra care when you visit Hong Kong, China & the Philippines … or rather when you surf their respective top-level domains (TLDs), that is.

McAfee has just released its updated Mapping the Mal Web report (pdf) and it identifies the Hong Kong TLD (.hk) to be riskiest with close to 20% of its domains being tagged as being unsafe. The China (.cn) and Philippines (.ph) TLDs follow with 12% and 8% of their domains considered malicious respectively.

The safest country TLDs are Slovenia (.si), Norway (.no), Japan (.jp) and Finland (.fi) with 0.2% or less of their domains rated risky. The Singapore (.sg) TLD is also relatively safe with 0.27% sites rated risky. Among the generic TLDs, .info was the riskiest (11.7% risky sites) while predictably, .gov was exceedingly safe

McAfee assesses websites for a variety of malicious behaviors ranging from browser exploits to phishing and excessive pop-ups. Overall, the risk distribution is extremely uneven and fluid; vast portions of the web are safe, but you never know when you would unwittingly stumble into a den of online mugging. To stay safe, make sure your security tools are properly maintained and stay alert – common sense will keep you out of trouble most of the time.

Over the past decade, Google has entrenched itself as the web’s best-known brand. There can be few web users who have not used Google’s core internet search service.

But have you ever wondered exactly what resources are required behind the scenes to keep Google’s various services humming along? A Cnet blogger reports on a presentation by a Google insider that reveals some of the fascinating inner workings of Google.

Most interestingly, Google ignores conventional server vendors and largely builds its own technology using ordinary components. It apparently prefers to build reliability on the software level rather than rely on expensive high-end fault tolerant hardware.

Web users are getting more selfish – so says web usability guru Jakob Nielsen. This means that more users are quickly zeroing in on specific information on a website in order to complete a particular task and leave. The BBC online has an article summarizing Mr Nielsen’s report on web habit trends.

The bulk of web interaction is now governed by search engines. Apparently less than a quarter of users now access the specific information they want through websites’ homepages. This means that most of your real prospects are arriving through a deep link that takes them straight to a destination deep inside your site.

Are you paying enough attention these critical “below the surface” areas of your website? Are they geared to converting these “tunnel-vison” prospects into actual customers in the little time that the typical surfer will spare you?

Most small businesses still focus their efforts to driving traffic to generic, crowded homepages. As the above results point out, this is not a viable long-term strategy as web users are becoming increasingly intolerant of websites that waste their time.

The Economist website has an interesting commentary on the most recent broadband penetration ranking from the OECD (The Broadband Myth). This ranking grades the OECD countries according to various metrics for internet connectivity. Singapore regularly ranks near the top in the equivalent global broadband penetration table.

However, it is actually rather difficult to show that fast broadband connectivity is actually useful in any practical sense. In fact, the US – the most innovative country as measured by the number of internet start-ups – actually does poorly in the broadband ranking.

As the Economist report points out, the full potential of broadband is in the innovative new applications that is makes possible. In particular, broadband enhances the “participatory culture” on the internet, thus enabling new and innovative forms of productive collaboration. Unfortunately, this potential is far from being fully exploited in most fields.

The good news? This simply means that the ever improving broadband connectivity is creating promising new opportunities for imaginative enterprise. The party, apparently, has yet to begin.