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June 30th, 2009UncategorizedSimon Wiesenthal Centre: Facebook used to ‘promote hatred of Jews’: “Facebook was under increasing fire tonight for allegedly hosting pages
promoting hatred against Jews after a report found that militants and hate
groups were increasingly using social networking sites as propaganda tools
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June 29th, 2009Uncategorized
What it does
Talk about having a self-explanatory name. This new app will let you go on a sort of Twitterfied friend hunt, and follow users of the popular micro-blogging service in a specific way: a new one per day. The whole process is automatic: you begin following others automatically, and you stop doing so in the same manner.
The main page showcases the tweets of the featured twitterer, and it is updated constantly. The people who are featured are chosen at random from Twitter’s public timeline, and there is no current way of being featured on request. Maybe the team behind this project would like to consider adding some sort of feature or online contest whereby users can be featured on request. Just a thought for giving this service further outreach and appeal.
There is not a lot more to add. If you feel like embarking on a different Twitter experience, this site will hold some interest for you. It is not really an all-expenses-paid trip to Novelty Island if you get what I mean, but it will give you something different to do Twitter-wise.
In their own words
“Follow For A Day is simple. Follow a random twitter user for one day, then switch to the next. And the best part? We'll do all the work for you! Join us now!”
Why it might be a killer
It offers something new to do with Twitter, or a different way to approach it at least.
Some questions
How can this service broaden its appeal?
Link: http://www.followforaday.com
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June 28th, 2009Uncategorized
The FBI and Virginia State Police are searching for hackers who demanded that the state pay them a $10 million ransom by Thursday for the return of millions of personal pharmaceutical records they say they stole from the state’s prescription drug database.
The hackers claim to have accessed 8 million patient records and 35 million prescriptions collected by the Prescription Monitoring Program.
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June 27th, 2009Uncategorized
Portwiture gets photos from Flickr based on keywords from your latest tweets.
The photos are arranged in a grid or even displayed as a slideshow.There’s nothing much to this mashup between twitter and Flickr but it’s a good visual sight to see.
Just enter your twitter username and the photos pertaining to your tweets would be obtained from Flickr. You can also specify a particular Flickr username and the photos shared by that particular user would be grabbed. You can sort the photos based on its popularity, recency or relevance.
The mashup offers an RSS feed of the photos and displays the keyword that was used to grab the photos.
Quickie
- Displays photos from Flickr based on your latest tweets
- Mashup between Flickr and twitter
- Sort photos based on popularity, recency or relevance
- RSS feed explains why a photo was chosen
Portwiture Says
Portwiture grabs photography from Flickr that matches the content of your most recent Twitter updates. The result is a serendipitous visual representation of your Twitter profile.
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June 26th, 2009Uncategorized
Flackr strives to be your dashboard for all the breaking news on twitter.The site aggregates interesting news data from various twitter accounts and presents them to you as a continuous stream.
Basically, the site follows a set of twitter accounts belonging to various news media and tweets from such twitter accounts are displayed to you. You do not need to follow each of these accounts to receive breaking news updates on twitter anymore.
Besides, you do not need to refresh the homepage to view the latest results. About every 40 seconds the site auto refreshes to present the latest news to you. You can even choose to watch all the news on any particular topic of interest. There’s a search box to search through the various news tweets.
Quickie
- View all the latest breaking news on twitter
- Flackr combines tweets from all the major news sites
- Auto refreshes every 40 seconds
- View all the news on any particular topic of interest
Flackr Says
Flackr makes the news from Twitter accessible in dashboard form. During the 80’s and 90’s, if something happened, you would watch TV all day. Now, you can simply keep your browser open on our home page, and you’ll get news updates as they happen, almost instantly. Flackr also creates pages per event where you can track all updates of a specific news item, and watch pictures and videos as they come in.
Flackr tracks many different news sources on twitter. Instead of having to follow them all, you just follow Flackr, and we’ll filter out the hot news for you so you can concentrate on what’s important.
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June 25th, 2009UncategorizedFaced with lurid newspaper headlines and the wrath of law enforcement officials, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster has taken to the company's blog to argue that plenty of criminals have used print classifieds to find crime victim.
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June 24th, 2009UncategorizedAT&T which has publicly advocated on behalf of relatively stringent rules and opt-in requirements around behavioral targeting (BT) appears to have been working with BT firm Audience Science (formerly Revenue Science). Wendy Davis at MediaPost has written two related stories on the issue. Here’s her summary of the apparenAT&T which has publicly advocated on behalf of relatively stringent rules and opt-in requirements around behavioral targeting (BT) appears to have been working with BT firm Audience Science (formerly Revenue Science). Wendy Davis at MediaPost has written two related stories on the issue.
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June 23rd, 2009Uncategorized
The act of Googling oneself has become the digital age's premiere guilty pleasure — an activity enjoyed by all and admitted by few. The phenomenon has even been the subject of scholarly research. Last year, a team of Swiss and Australian social scientists published a study concluding that the practice of self-Googling (or "Egosurfing" as it's sometimes called) can partly be traced to a rise in narcissism in society but is also an attempt by people to identify and shape their personal online "brand." The authors of the survey no doubt returned to their cubicles and Googled themselves to see if the study was posted online.
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June 22nd, 2009Uncategorized
A recent study points out a common problem, people say that security of their private info is important and that they know the risks to their privacy, but their actions tell a different story. Ever had your social security number used as an ID number? Yeah, who’s great idea was that?
Eighty-three percent of adults in the March 2008 survey agree that ensuring the security of their personal information is a top priority. Seventy-seven percent believe they know how to properly protect their personal information, while about half (51 percent) believe they are at low risk for their personal information to be used without their permission. However, the survey’s review of 12 everyday activities reveals a startling lack of awareness over how seemingly innocuous activities, such as entering a sweepstakes or filling out a warranty card, can actually compromise the security of personal information, including a person’s name, contact details, income and credit history. In fact, more than half of U.S. adults are not aware of the risks associated with ten of the 12 potentially harmful activities – indicating a significant gap in understanding what could put people at risk for the unauthorized usage or sharing of their personal information, which can lead to greater junk mail volume, increased profiling without consent, and greater exposure to identity theft.
They define some risky behaviors as “..applying for a credit card in a retail store, applying for a bank loan or home mortgage, signing up for a supermarket discount card, donating to political campaigns, requesting information about a product/service seen online, providing personal information to a web site without reviewing its privacy policy, and enrolling in a rewards program, such as frequent flyer or hotel points programs. Non-marketing activities that increase risk, such as having a baby or getting married, were also included in the survey.“ I’ve had this just by buying a house, the data becomes “public record”, which is scary. Outside of that, if you buy something, please don’t complete and return the warranty or product registration card.
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June 21st, 2009Uncategorized
Want to call your Facebook friends via video chat? Soon enough you’ll be able to. Earlier today one of our readers sent us a link to one of Facebook’s cached JavaScript files which reveals a number of clues as to a soon to be released video chat service. There’s no way to mistake the code which is still currently accessible. There are actual notification messages including “Waiting for your friend…”, “Video call denied.”, “Incoming call:”, and “Loading video call…”
The code pretty obviously implies that Facebook is preparing to launch a video chat service. So why would Facebook be focused on launching a video chat service? To keep users on the site longer of course! Additionally, Facebook can increasingly become a central hub of communication for many of its users. What’s interesting about these new features is that they compete directly with the features within Google’s Gmail product.The only thing Facebook is missing now is an improved messaging system. Facebook’s messaging system is pretty horrible currently. As of now, navigating and archiving messages is not easy. Filtering messages is also extremely challenging. One thing that Facebook’s messaging service has above others is the ability to integrate applications as attachments.
While Facebook may not be the primary communication channel for adults, younger users have been using the site as the primary way for getting in touch with friends. In other words: email is dying. Not only will Facebook take on Google when it comes to video chat but they’ll also be competing against other web based video chat providers such as TokBox.
With all of these communication tools it’s clear that Facebook wants to become the central hub of communication on the web for its many users. The addition of video chat emphasizes this focus. Earlier this week Facebook upgraded their messaging system to take advantage of friend list filters and it appears that there will soon be a video component as well.
Whether or not this will be integrated into the existing chat system is unknown but it’s