Items tagged with Facebook
According to price comparison service Confused.com, people who use social media websites such as Twitter and Facebook might have to pay a higher home insurance premium someday. Social networking services could alert criminals when users are not at home. Some social networking services even show the specific location of an individual. Darren Black, the head of home insurance at Confused.com, said: "I wouldn't be surprised if, as social media grow in popularity and more location-based applications come to fore, insurance providers consider these in their pricing of an individual's risk. We could see rises of up to 10pc for people who use these sites. Black continued, explaining "Criminals are becoming...
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Kodak announced a few new cameras at CES that are designed to provide easy sorting and uploading to popular sites such as Facebook, Flickr, Kodak Gallery, and YouTube. The most noteworthy camera among the new offerings is the Slice, which is half camera, half photo album. This 14 megapixel camera features a 3.5-inch touchscreen for image playback. The Slice also lets you tag images of people with their names using an onscreen keyboard. The KODAK SLICE Search Feature and Face Recognition lets you sort your pictures by person, place, date, or occasion. In a day where we're seeing more and more connectivity features built-in to digital cameras, one thing the Slice is lacking is built-in wireless...
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Craig "Lazie" Lynch, 28, escaped from the minimum-security Hollesley Bay Prison near the village of Woodbridge in southern England three months ago. Since then, he's been mocking police via Facebook, and he's also managed to gain a huge number of Facebook "fans." His Facebook photo isn't exactly family-friendly, so if you visit his page, be warned (it's also why we have no images of the miscreant, ourselves).In fact, Lynch has 27,000 fans at the time of this writing. Strangely, a number of posts from his fans seem positive, although a few chime in every now and then to remind people they are "cheering for" a felon. Lynch had been serving a seven-year sentence for committing a burglary with a...
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Have you ever wondered what is going to happen to all the digital traces of your life after you pass away? To be honest, most of it will probably be available, and searchable, at least until they are de-indexed by search engines. However, a new start-up called WebWill hopes to at least close off the social networking parts of your life.WebWill is a Swedish start-up. Here's how they describe themselves in a blurb on their homepage:We live an increasing amount of our lives on-line, but what happens after we are gone? What will happen to all our photos, blogs and social network accounts? Until now our digital identities have lived on without us, leaving our loved ones powerless to control them or...
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It must have been World URL Shortener Day yesterday. First came the news that Facebook has been testing a URL shortener, fb.me. Then Google announced the arrival of Goo.gl. And though it wasn't as flashy as the first two pieces of news, those paying attention saw that URL shortener powerhouse bit.ly announced a new Pro version that allows users to create custom shortened URLs. Let's face it. Some URL are so long and cumbersome that there's no way to even read it to someone over the phone or shout it across the room. When you're linking to an image on a page in a subdirectory, the URL can go on for approximately 12,000 pages, it seems. So even before Twitter, there was a call for tinyurl.com (which,...
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Uh, this is weird. If you're a judge and/or lawyer in Florida, you should probably go through and clean house on your Facebook account. If you're a judge, you're now disallowed from "friending" lawyers for fear of having some sort of bias when or if that lawyer steps into your courtroom. No, we aren't kidding.The Florida Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee has just banned all judges in the state from clicking "Confirm" on Friend Requests from lawyers, and the reason why goes a little something like this "It reasonably conveys to others the impression that these lawyer 'friends' are in a special position to influence the judge." We suppose we can kind of understand this. Those in court relying...
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Peek-a-boo! There's a decent chance that many, many more people will be "seeing you" if you aren't careful with your Facebook privacy settings, which were just recently overhauled by the powers that be. But many folks aren't exactly happy with the changes. When you think "privacy overhaul," you generally assume that the company you're dealing with is making changes to enforce stronger privacy rules and keep snoopers further away from your data. In the case of Facebook, it's actually encouraging less privacy.Granted, that makes sense when you think about what exactly Facebook is. It's a social networking site. It thrives from people being able to see other things about other people. In fact, that's...
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Shutterfly announced a new service called Wink that combines real-time sharing with photo printing. Designed for the social networking generation, Wink lets you create and share printed photostrips (2x6-inch prints) using photos from your iPhone and social network sites such as Flickr and Facebook. As part of the service, your photostrips can be delivered anywhere in the world for $2.50 including tax and shipping. According to Shutterfly, it takes only seconds to create and send a photostrip in Wink. All you have to do is choose a template, add and adjust a few photos, and send it off. You can also share completed photostrips on Facebook and Twitter. “Traditional print formats often don’t make...
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Preacher: "It's official on Facebook, it's official in my book!"We kid you not, that's the quote from a pastor who officiated a recent wedding between two obvious tech nerds. Dana Hanna, a recently married dude from Maryland, actually paused his own wedding after the pastor announced that he and his wife were now officially married in order to bust out two smartphones from his pocket. Once they were out, he and his new wife Tweeted and updated their Facebook profiles to immediately show their new status to the world. Before they even had a chance to lock lips and make it to their own reception, the world knew these two were together.His Tweet? "Standing at the altar with @TracyPage where a second...
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It's not unusual these days to see products come and go without making too much fuss in the market place. The consumer electronics realm is a tough one to make waves in, and somehow Roku has managed to captivate the industry at large and build up a respectable user base. Shortly after unveiling the Roku HD-XR, the company is now flipping the switch and putting the pressure on the software end of things. Throughout the next two weeks, Roku will be rolling out a substantial software update to Roku SD, Roku HD and Roku HD-XR boxes, giving all existing owners free access to ten new content channels. Already, users are given access to Netflix and Amazon Video on Demand, but as soon as the update hits...
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The console wars just get hotter and hotter. Sony introduced its PS3 Slim and dropped the entry price, while Nintendo cut its already-popular Wii to $199, so now it's time for Microsoft to throw yet its own wrench into the mix. Starting next week, all Xbox LIVE Gold members will get access to a whole heap of new features--features that'll transform the Xbox 360 into something much more than just a game console. Starting next week, Facebook, Twitter, Last.fm and instant on HD video from Zune will be available on Xbox 360 consoles, giving owners even more incentive to hop onto Xbox LIVE. That means that users will be able to update their Facebook status and Tweet right from the Dashboard, but it...
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The Secret Service is investigating a Facebook poll which had been posted Saturday and was taken down Monday morning after the Secret Service alerted Facebook. The poll asked "Should Obama be killed?" The responses included: yesmaybeif he cuts my health carenoYou can see an image of the now-deleted poll above. It shows that at least at one point there were over 700 votes. Here is a statement from Facebook:“The third-party application that enabled an individual user to create the offensive poll was brought to our attention this morning. It was immediately suspended while the inappropriate content could be removed by the developer and until such time as the developer institutes better procedures...
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Gaydar is a term frequently used in sitcoms (and perhaps among male friends) to denote the ability to pick out homosexuals at a glance. Silly as that may be, two MIT students, while working on a term project for an ethics and law project, appear to have stumbled onto a working form, by leveraging data gleaned from social networking sites. This is actually a serious issue, as it just emphasizes further the need to be careful on social networking sites. The students, Carter Jernigan and Behram Mistree, dubbed the 2007 project "Gaydar." They took information from Facebook involving friends a user might have on the site, and with software made used statistical analysis to make predictions based on...
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Remember the days when MySpace was THE social networking site of choice, and Facebook trailed badly? Those days are long gone, and in fact, Facebook announced on Tuesday that they have topped 300 million users. The announcement, much like what Apple has shown with similar stats for the App Store, shows that growth for Facebook is growing at a rapidly increasing rate. Facebook grew from 200 million users to 300 million in just over 5 months. It took 8 months to go from 100 million from 200 million. The initial leap to 100 million took years. Additionally, Facebook said they are already cash-flow positive. In April they told analysts and the press that know that the company expected to be "operationally...
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Touted as “the first phone with social skills,” Motorola's new CLIQ smartphone is the company’s first Android handset. The CLIQ is headed to T-Mobile in the fourth quarter, so it should be here in time for the holidays. The CLIQ will utilize MOTOBLUR, which was also announced today. MOTOBLUR is designed to sync contacts, posts, messages, photos, and much more from sources such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Gmail, work and personal e-mail, and LastFM and automatically deliver it to the home screen. Recognizing this is a lot of content, Motorola has organized this information into easy-to-manage streams that are designed to help you spend less time managing your life and more time living it. The...
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Here's a little known fact: Twitter and Facebook are erupting in popularity. Both social networks have taken the underground and mainstream worlds by storm, and everyone from your next door neighbor to your favorite celebrity is likely within reach. This new world of information can be extremely beneficial; having real-time updates to breaking news, concert listings, sports scores, weather alerts, etc. enable all of our lives to be easier. But as with anything, good devices can typically be exploited and used for ill. Stories have begun to surface that highlight the risk in disclosing all sorts of typically private information on open social networks. Experts have spotted that both Twitter and...
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Oh, Facebook. You bring us so much joy, and you help us to waste so much valuable time. But you're useful in so many ways, and you keep us connected (at arm's reach, anyway) with a vast array of high school sweethearts that we'd otherwise never even bother to look for. But can you be more than that?It's obvious that its creators think so, with the recent acquisition of FriendFeed and the testing of a Facebook Lite. But even still, is that the limit? Is there a limit? With Twitter and Facebook emerging as two potent social utilities that may actually have a future beyond their first 15 minutes of fame, one has to wonder if Facebook won't be transformed into a destination for knowledge rather than...
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Facebook is in the process of testing a simplified version of its social network service called Facebook Lite. The Lite version offers faster load times and a slimmed-down user interface with basic functionality including the ability to make comments, accept friend requests, write on walls, and view photos. Facebook Lite is similar to the mobile version of Facebook. From screen captures, we see that Facebook Lite has a single column display of Wall posts with three buttons at the top that let you write messages and post photos or videos. You’ll also find four links at the left under your profile picture: Wall, Info, Friends, and Photos and Video. Facebook Lite is designed to be accessed quickly...
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Facebook has acquired FriendFeed, a Silicon Valley company that lets Facebook members see what their friends are doing online and share content. For the time being, FriendFeed will continue to operate as normal until both teams determine longer term plans for the product. The acquisition provides Facebook with an opportunity to expand into real-time search. Because of its ability to conduct real-time search, FriendFeed has been described as a rival to Twitter. You may recall that Facebook attempted to buy Twitter last year but the deal never materialized. "Facebook and FriendFeed share a common vision of giving people tools to share and connect with their friends…. We can't wait to join the team...
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A distributed denial-of-service attack on one (yes, one) person yesterday left news media in a quandary. With no Twitter, and no Facebook either, how was the news to be obtained? Seriously, however, the outage was the result of attacks across several services aimed directly at a blogger named Cyxymu from the Eastern European country of Georgia. Max Kelly, chief security officer at Facebook, told C|Net:"It was a simultaneous attack across a number of properties targeting him to keep his (Cyxymu) voice from being heard. We're actively investigating the source of the attacks, and we hope to be able to find out the individuals involved in the back end and to take action against them, if we can."Twitter...
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Verizon's betting that more and more television viewers want to Tweet and update Facebook while watching their favorite shows, movies and sporting events. Now FiOS customers can do just that through widgets developed for Verizon's TV services.With this new addition, perhaps Comcast will have one less "don't fall for FiOS" FUD point that they can throw at unsuspecting TV viewers. Here's a quick-take look at the new interface, which can be driven from the comfort of your remote control. Verizon Twitter WidgetFrom the Twitter widget (price: free), viewers can: • Follow Tweets related to the show they're watching• Check out Tweets about the latest Trending Topics• Use...
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Do you know what happens when you sell millions upon millions of units with no signs of slowing down? A couple of things, really. First off, your investors rejoice. Secondly, the planet's most pervasive social networks wants everything to do with you. Starting this week, proud Nintendo DSi owners here in American and in Japan can access Facebook Connect right on their handheld, which is a definitely step forward in finally taking advantage of the Wi-Fi capabilities that Nintendo oftentimes downplays in its machines.Using an Internet-connected Nintendo DSi system and the Nintendo DSi Camera application, Facebook members can take pictures with either of the system’s two cameras and upload their...
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