Social Networking, Internet Lifestyle And Security News
Passionate about net neutrality? Facebook privacy issues freaking you out? Want to know more about the latest security breach? Here we'll cover the headlines that matter in our ever evolving digitally-connected lives and lifestyles around the world.
Just when you thought it was safe to tweet again, another Twitter worm has reared its ugly head. In case you were busy hunting for Easter eggs or biting the heads off chocolate bunnies this weekend, and didn't have a chance to tweet or read other folks' tweets on Twitter, the micro-blogging social-networking site was hit with no less than...
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While one study indicates that a little Internet leisure time at work can increase productivity, a second study now shows college students who regularly use social networking site Facebook have lower GPAs than those who do not. My comment, or rather question: they actually found college students who didn't use Facebook? Researcher Aryn Karpinski...
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200 million. Just let that sink in. That huge, immense number is how many Facebook members the social networking site has, and it took less than half a decade to make it happen. CEO Mark Zuckerberg proudly proclaimed that his site would meet and exceed the 200 million member mark today, and if you just so happened to finally jump in after...
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You know, Mark Cuban has an excellent point: Twitter may not have a business model just yet, but it can no longer say that no one's making money from it. Over the weekend, the eccentric and outspoken Dallas Mavericks owners (not to mention a media mogul in his free time) decided to lash out once more against NBA referees. Not that lashing...
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OnStar is General Motor's security and safety system which, if you've heard the radio ads, can do everything from get your doors unlocked if you lock your keys in the car to automatically letting OnStar reps know if you are in an accident, even if you are unconscious. According to information leaked in a recent online survey, you may soon...
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It's pretty amazing, really. While Blockbuster has withered as the world shifted from in-store DVD rentals to by-mail rentals and now to streaming rentals, Netflix has managed to keep itself relevant by staying one step ahead of the curve. Rather than pushing out its own proprietary "Netflix box," it instead created software and an API that...
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Here's a little nugget just in case you've been sleeping under a gigantic boulder over the past year: Twitter is taking over the world. As the social networking site continues to infiltrate more and more areas of our lives, YouTube has now caved and integrated a Tweeting function into its site.In the most recent wave of YouTube feature updates,...
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As Twitter continues to grow hotter and hotter, pick up more funding, get more morons fired and facilitate more political conversations, individuals that are intimately involved with the operation are desperately looking for ways to monetize it. We'd heard whispers in the past of so-called "premium accounts," but now it sounds like those could...
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Facebook has begun to respond to the criticism over the recent redesign of its home page. While it's unlikely they will make wholescale revisions (like returning to the prior version), they outlined some tweaks they are going to make in response to feedback. Live updating: Automatic updating of the stream (yes, that Twitter-like stream that's...
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Let's face it -- Twitter couldn't possibly be bigger right now. Practically everyone at SXSW is using it by the minute, it's pulling in new funds during a tight credit crunch and even a politician that was born long, long before the advent of the Internet is about to do an interview on it. Life's good in the Twitterverse, and it's about to...
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Facebook announced the new Facebook Connect for iPhone service at the SXSW Interactive conference in Austin, TX today. Facebook Connect for iPhone is now available with several participating applications. This new Connect service lets users link their apps with their Facebook profile to share data with friends, just as Facebook Connect currently...
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Making contingency plans for the possibility of becoming incapacitated or for our inevitable demise is seldom a pleasant subject to discuss or even think about. Many people often postpone or even never get around to creating a living will or a last will and testament. For those that do, their concerns are usually focused on their quality of...
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For Facebook users who might have noticed that some previously-uploaded photos were mysteriously missing from their Facebook pages, Facebook wants you to know that it is aware of the problem, it is fixing the problem right now, and perhaps most importantly: "Don't worry: Your photos are safe." Apparently, while Facebook engineers were performing...
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The Internet is a wondrous thing, but it's also made teasing and bullying, formerly restricted to schoolyards, something you can do online for all the world to see. A Long Island teenager is suing her tormentors, their parents, and Facebook over a Facebook group "calculated to hold the plaintiff up to public hatred, ridicule and disgrace."...
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So as not to give companies more excuses to kick employees to the curb in this tough economy, we've warned before about watching what you post to your social networking site. After all, MySpace photos have gotten an Oregon mayor recalled, and now a Facebook post about how boring her job was has gotten Kimberley Swann of Clacton on Sea in England...
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Facebook is doing something unheard of, announcing at a press conference on Thursday that it is giving its users the right to weigh in on changes to its policies and Terms of Service (ToS), in effect creating what some have called a virtual "Bill of Rights." You probably remember the massive explosion that happened when Facebook modified its...
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Facebook's Terms of Service (TOS) changed a couple of weeks ago, but wasn't noticed until brought to people's attention by the site Consumerist. Despite some fast tap-dancing by Facebook, the cat's out of the bag, and it's not going back in. In fact, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) is preparing a formal complaint to be sent...
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It's like a boy taking the training wheels off for the first time. Or a young lady going on her first date. Or a senior heading off to college. So far as we can tell, this is Twitter's coming of age party. Yep -- after receiving a very generous $250 million valuation late last month, the microblogging phenomenon has locked down even more capital.In...
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Pundits may suggest that now is a terrible time to solicit funding for a brilliant new idea, but we've always heard the only way to survive a recession is to innovate your way out of it. To that end, the micro-blogging phenom Twitter is seeking yet another round of funding as it looks to figure out a definitive revenue model. If you'll recall,...
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Yahoo! is taking its cue from ... well, from everyone, and adding a whole new social aspect to its site.Sure, there already was e-mail and IM and a customizable home page, but now you can display your activity on/from many of your other social sites to your Yahoo profile.There are a slew of options - photos from Picasa, SmugMug, Webshots and...
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Oops, they hacked Twitter again. Yep, in a breach totally separate from the phishing scam from last weekend, Twitter has been hacked. And not just any account, either. We're talking about the accounts of none other than the President-elect (which had been idle since the election), Britney Spears, Fox News, and a lot more.In...
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Twitority is a new alternative to Twitters own search engine, promising better search results than those achieved using Twitters methodology. Over the weekend after Christmas, Seemic CEO Loic Le Meur put up a blog post saying Twitter's search engine is insufficiently discriminating. If you're looking for the best Twitter posts on a topic,...
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