Alert reader Joe Fernandez over at the MalwareUp forum (http://malwareup.org) sent us a tip on this one. He was checking out the scripting in a rogue security product and found a little note to the guys at ESET anti-virus company (which makes ESET NOD32 Antivirus 4 referred to below):
Cute!
“this is hilarious! lol :P :P :P Distracting Beach Babes [HQ] Length: 5:32″.If you see this video on Facebook today, do not click the link: Doing so, and downloading a linked file, will result in malware being installed on your computer.
There's a new Facebook worm out there. However, it doesn't seem to be doing anything else than posting a message to people's Facebook walls.
The message that the worm posts is
"try not to laugh xD http://www.fbhole. com/omg/allow.php?s=a&r=[random number]"
If you follow the link, you end up to a page looking like this:
The page shows a fake error message. If you click anywhere on the page, you will trigger a script that will try to post the same message to your Facebook wall. This is done with an invisible iframe that follows your mouse around - causing you to click on an invisible "publish" button. In addition of the wall message post, nothing else happens.
The worm is spreading like wildfire. To get some idea, try this public search via youropenbook.org.
The Phoenix New Times has reported that the CEO of LifeLock ID theft protection service of Tempe, Ariz., has had his identity used by rip-off artists 13 times since 2007.
CEO Todd Davis advertised his social security number publically to assure customers that his service could protect their identity. The service cost $10-15 per month.
In March we blogged the story when the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and LifeLock reached a settlement in which the company would pay $12 million – $11 million of which would be refunded to consumers – for fraud.
At that time the FTC said in its news release:
“The FTC’s complaint charged that the fraud alerts that LifeLock placed on customers’ credit files protected only against certain forms of identity theft and gave them no protection against the misuse of existing accounts, the most common type of identity theft. It also allegedly provided no protection against medical identity theft or employment identity theft, in which thieves use personal information to get medical care or apply for jobs. And even for types of identity theft for which fraud alerts are most effective, they do not provide absolute protection. They alert creditors opening new accounts to take reasonable measures to verify that the individual applying for credit actually is who he or she claims to be, but in some instances, identity thieves can thwart even reasonable precautions.
“New account fraud, the type of identity theft for which fraud alerts are most effective, comprised only 17 percent of identity theft incidents, according to an FTC survey released in 2007.”
Apparently, LifeLock can’t even protect against that!
The ID theft incidents involving Davis’s ID that were reported to police and listed in the Phoenix New Times story were:
Reported in 2007:
1. A man in Texas used Davis' ID to get a $500 loan. Davis didn't know about it until he was contacted by a collection agency.
Reported in 2008:
2. Someone in Albany, Ga., opened an AT&T wireless account. Late in 2008, a collection agency contacted Davis to recover $2,390.
Reported February 2009:
3. Verizon account opened in New York: $186 unpaid.
4. Centerpoint Energy, a utility company in Texas: $122 unpaid.
5. Credit One Bank: $573 unpaid.
6. Swiss Colony, gift-basket company: $312 unpaid.
7. USA Savings Bank credit card account opened (no balance).
8. Gap credit card account opened (no balance).
9. Bay Area Credit (collection agency): $265.
10. Associated Credit Services (collection agency): $207.
11. Associated Credit Services (collection agency): $213.
12. Enhanced Recovery Corporation (collection agency): $250.
13. Enhanced Recovery Corporation (collection agency): $381.
Phoenix New Times article here: “Cracking LifeLock: Even After a $12 Million Penalty for Deceptive Advertising, the Tempe Company Can't Be Honest About Its Identity-Theft-Protection Service”
ComputerWorld is running a Q&A piece with LifeLock Inc. CEO Todd Davis that allows him to give his side of the controversy.
Two interesting facts:
1. Davis’s take on the $12 million FTC fine: “I am passionate about what we do. [The FTC] didn't like our choice of words ... so they wanted more clarity.”
2. He says LifeLock actually has 1.7 million customers.
Story here: “LifeLock identity theft service a game changer, insists embattled CEO”
Hewlett-Packard has announced it has expanded the May 14, 2009, recall of its laptop battery packs. The company will replace the defective batteries at no cost to customers.
The notice on the HP site said “HP and the battery manufacturers believe that certain battery packs shipped in HP notebook PC products manufactured between August 2007 and May 2008 may pose a potential safety hazard to customers. The batteries can overheat, posing a fire and burn hazard.
“The affected battery packs were distributed worldwide in certain notebook PCs within the following models:"
HP Pavilion
dv2000, dv2500, dv2700
dv6000, dv6500, dv6700
dx6000, dx6500, dx6700
Compaq Presario
A900
C700
F500, F700
V3000, V3500, V3700
V6000, V6500, V6700
HP
G6000, G7000
HP Compaq
6510b, 6515b
6710b, 6710s
6715b, 6715s
HP notice here: http://bpr.hpordercenter.com/hbpr/M14.aspx
On the 2nd day at Google I/O 2010 developer event, Google has announced Android 2.2 with Flash along with Google TV, a new technology for television and Internet freaks.
Watch the Introducing Google TV video below:
If you’ve been squeezing the last bit of value out of that installation of Windows XP Service Pack 2 or are continuing to run it because of proprietary software that you’re squeezing the last bit of value out of, well, you only have two more months of squeezing. Microsoft will end support for Service Pack 2 on July 13.
Now if you can somehow upgrade to Service Pack 3, you can forget about the problem until Microsoft’s Extended Support for XP ends April 8, 2014, assuming the hard drive in that PC you bought in 2001 lasts that long. Meanwhile, I wouldn't slack off on the backups.
And, no, July 13 isn’t on a Friday.
Support for Windows XP Service Pack 2 ends on July 13, 2010
Microsoft's page on this is here.
Yesterday, the Pirate Bay went down following pressure from the RIAA, which threatened to slap TPB’s hosting provider with huge fines.
We predicted The Pirate Bay’s downfall ages ago, but it still hasn’t happened. Things have been looking grim for the file-sharing service for a while. First, there was the lawsuit from the entertainment industry that left the Pirate Bay’s team scattered and struggling to stay the course it charted for itself. Then the news that the entire service was to be sold (the sale never happened) to a Swedish Gaming Company seemed to have scattered the Pirate Bay’s fans, too.
All these storms have come and gone and the service still stands, seemingly more resilient than ever.
The Pirate Bay has switched hosts and is online again. This time the site is hosted by the Swedish Pirate Party. “We got tired of Hollywood’s cat and mouse game with the Pirate Bay so we decided to offer the site bandwidth. It is time to take the bull by the horns and stand up for what we believe is a legitimate activity,” said the Pirate Party’s Rick Falkvinge in a statement.
TPB itself was, as usual, in the mood for mocking the RIAA. Here’s the entire text of today’s message from The Pirate Bay’s blog:
“PLZ LEARN: TPB CANT BE SHUT DOWN
LOL!
AS U MITE HAS READ OR NOTICD, PEEPS ONCE AGAIN R TRYIN 2 SHUT US DOWN. DIS WILL NOT SUCCED, LOL. OURS RLY NICE WEBHOST WUZ THREATEND WIF RLY HUGE FINE, SO WE DECIDD 2 MOOV TEH SIET SO DAT THEY DIDNT GOT INTO TROUBLE, LOL. TEH DECISHUN 2 MOOV WUZ TAKEN BY US, TEH PIRATE BAY, LOL.
TEH PIRATE BAY IZ AN UNSINKABLE SHIP. IT WILL SAIL TEH INTERWEBS 4 AS LONG AS WE WANTS IT 2. REMEMBR DAT, K THX.
TPB, ONLY IN IT 4 TEH LULZ SINCE 2003″
We’ll leave it up to you to decipher the hidden message.
Google announced today that it has made a cash offer to acquire Global IP Solutions (GIPS).
A leader in the real-time VoIP processing space for both voice and video, GIPS doesn’t have any consumer-facing products; instead, it provides services that work on the backend for products like Yahoo! Messenger, Citrix and WebEx.
This is an interesting acquisition for Google, who already has a number of consumer products that could benefit from GIPS technologies. Not only does GIPS provide voice processing for VoIP calls that could potentially improve gTalk and Google Voice, GIPS also has a large focus on real-time video transmissions, both on the client and mobile side.
Our first thought when looking at this announcement was that Google could provide some really formidable competition to Skype.
In a statement to its customers, GIPS said that following the completion of the offer, Google intends to continue servicing existing GIPS customers in accordance with their contracts. At the completion of the contract, those customers will have the opportunity to transition to “new offerings developed by Google.”
That statement is equally interesting, as it positions Google to offer white label services to other companies. While Google does have some white label deals, most of what it does is more consumer or customer facing.
While the official announcement about this deal says that it is “not currently expected to require approval by competition authorities in any jurisdiction,” the fact that Google’s competitors, including Yahoo and Baidu, use GIPS technology in their respective messaging clients might mean otherwise.
Not one to rest on its laurels, the Google Chrome team is hard at work on Chrome 6. The official move to the 6.0 designation in the Chromium developer builds officially started a few days ago.
The move to a Chrome 6 branch for Chromium means that the final tweaks and polishes on Chrome 5 are almost complete. Chrome 5 is a big release — not only is it blazingly fast, it’s also going to be the first stable release for Mac and Linux users.
So what can we expect in Chrome 6? Well, not too much right now. However, Download Squad found a new addition to the latest Chromium developer nightly build: predictive pre-connections. The inclusion of predictive pre-connections means that as soon as you type in a search query in the browser, it goes ahead and opens up a connection to a search engine. Thus your data will transmit faster when you press enter.
The second area of this patch is equally cool. It “involves subresources, such as images,” the developer who submitted the patch explained. “When a navigation takes place, and we’ve seen navigations to that domain/port before, and the history-based probability that we’ll need to make a connection to a second site (host/port) is sufficiently large, then we preconnect to that second site while we are still connecting to the primary site (and before we’ve gotten content from the primary site.”
In other words, if you are searching for an image or something else that Chrome thinks you are likely to click on based on your searching history, the browser will go ahead and open up connections to the ports where the image resides. When you click on the image, the entire site will load more quickly.
You can keep an eye out on the Google Chrome Releases blog and at the Chromium project page for more information on Chrome version 6.
Right now, the words “Prince of Persia” probably make you think of muscular Jake Gyllenhaal jumping from building to building. The video game the movie is based on, however, is a remake of an ancient platform-style game with the same name, released for Apple II and later ported to PC and other platforms.
The original game now seems to be coming to the iPhone under the title Prince of Persia Retro.
Back in 1989, when the game was first released, it boasted amazing animation, mind-boggling puzzles, addictive gameplay and an incredibly eerie atmosphere. It was also quite difficult to play — one wrong step and you were severed in two or killed in some other gruesome way by one of the many traps sprinkled around the Sultan’s palace, in which the game is set.
The game was due to be released by Ubisoft on 4/29/2010, but it’s still not available in the App Store. Hopefully, it’ll appear there soon.
A Pakistani court has ordered the authorities to temporarily block Facebook due to a contest that calls for caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.
The court order follows a petition by a group called the Islamic Lawyers’ Movement, which complained that the contest was “blasphemous.” A search on Facebook reveals two sites featuring such caricatures: one supporting Kurt Westergaard, the Danish cartoonist who created the caricature of the Prophet, published in Danish newspapers in 2005.
The other group is openly calling for caricatures of Prophet Muhammad, claiming in the group descriptions that it has noble intent. From the description: “This group is for everyone, regardless of nationality, political or religious believes, who believe in and want to defend freedom of speech and the foundation of democracy wherever it is being threatened in the world!” In the photo section of the group, one can indeed find several caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.
Facebook is to remained blocked in Pakistan until May 31. Justice Ejaz Ahmed Chaudhry of the Lahore High Court ordered the department of communications to submit a written reply to the Islamic Lawyers’ Movement petition by that date. In 2008, Pakistan blocked YouTube, also because of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad that found their way onto the video-sharing site.
Canon has just released a Mac version of its popular image and document scanner, the imageFORMULA P-150M, complete with built-in support for the popular organizational service Evernote. The small scanner, which Canon calls the “Scan-tini,” lets you quickly scan documents and route them to Evernote automatically.
The scanner, which is also available for Windows, uses embedded drivers to start up and scan quickly, effectively decreasing the time it takes to initialize the device. Using what Canon calls CaptureOnTouch, documents can be routed automatically to apps like iPhoto or Evernote. This can be really useful, especially for business users who want to have a way to easily scan and upload lots of documents quickly.
The scanner is powered by USB and comes with a 20-page automatic document feeder. It can scan up to 15 pages per minute and it’s designed to fit easily into a briefcase. The suggested retail price is $295, which isn’t cheap, but well within the range of other professional portable document scanners.
If you’re a home user who wants a scanner that can easily communicate with cloud services like Evernote, check out Doxie, a compact document and photos scanner that can directly route scans to Google Docs, Flickr, Evernote, Tumblr, iPhoto, Picasa, Acrobat and more. Doxie is $129 and works on Windows and Mac.
Both the Canon P-150M and Doxie are available now. Do you use any special hardware or secret tricks to make getting your scanned documents to the cloud more efficient? Let us know!
Yesterday, Yahoo! Inc. announced it would be acquiring Associated Content Inc., and the transaction would cost the search company an estimated $100 million.
Associated Content calls itself the "People's Media Company," and is a media outlet consisting of more than 380,000 freelancers publishing news, photos, video, and other content on subjects chosen by the site.
"Combining our world-class editorial team with Associated Content's makes this a game-changer," said Carol Bartz, CEO, Yahoo! Inc. "Together, we'll create more content around what we know our users care about, and open up new and creative avenues for advertisers to engage with consumers across our network. These are important aspects of building engaging consumer experiences on Yahoo!, and one of the reasons why we're one of the most visited destinations online."
Since Yahoo signed its 10-year search agreement with Microsoft last year, effectively bowing out of the search business, the company has been working on strengthening its other properties. This acquisition is a move toward having more of its own original content, which will give advertisers more opportunities to target users.
Associated Content will continue to run as it has been, with the same staff, but new people will be added to "augment platform development, programming, content programming and customer support." Ultimately, the platform will move from being a U.S.-only entity to a global one.
Video chatting is on the rise. Yesterday, we got to take a look at Qik's mobile video chat client for the Sprint EVO 4G, and today, we get to take a look at Skype's latest development: five-way video chat.
Today, popular VoIP and chat client Skype launched a beta of Skype 5.0 for Windows, which includes a free trial of group video calling, a re-designed call view window, improved video snapshots gallery, and improved browser plugin performance.
There are a few fixes introduced with this version, but also a whole host of new bugs to deal with. The release notes for version 5.0.0.105 include a list of 87 known issues, most of which do not have workarounds yet.
We're installing the beta now, and we'll post screenshots and a review shortly.
Google today said it will stop collecting Wi-Fi network data from its Street View cars, after an investigation from the German Data Protection Authority (DPA) found the search company was also collecting personal data about user behavior on these public hotspots.
Google's Street View cars weren't only taking 360-degree images of our streets for use on Google Maps, but they were also pulling publicly broadcast SSID and MAC information from Wi-Fi hotspots.
"It's now clear that we have been mistakenly collecting samples of payload data from open (i.e. non-password-protected) WiFi networks, even though we never used that data in any Google products," Alan Eustace, Senior Vice President of Engineering and Research said today.
"So how did this happen? Quite simply, it was a mistake," Eustace said. "In 2006 an engineer working on an experimental WiFi project wrote a piece of code that sampled all categories of publicly broadcast WiFi data. A year later, when our mobile team started a project to collect basic WiFi network data like SSID information and MAC addresses using Google's Street View cars, they included that code in their software--although the project leaders did not want, and had no intention of using, payload data."
Google has since halted all of its Street View vehicles, stopped collecting Wi-Fi data altogether, and "segregated the data" it has collected. Unfortunately, it's still all in Google's servers, though. According to Eustace, "We want to delete this data as soon as possible, and are currently reaching out to regulators in the relevant countries about how to quickly dispose of it."
Google has announced the upcoming availability of the Chrome Web Store, an open marketplace similar to the Android Market or iTunes App Store that deals exclusively in Web Apps.
This store doesn't exist yet, but will open both to developers and to users "later this year."
The store will deal in the "installable Web apps," that are expected to populate both the Google Chrome browser and the forthcoming Chrome OS. They can be run currently, but require a Windows Dev channel release of Google Chrome with a special command line flag.
According to their Google Code listing, "An installed web app could be separated visually from other tabs, could integrate better with the OS, and could be granted increased permissions. This special handling of web apps is exactly what we're working on in Google Chrome...Installing a web app in Google Chrome is easy and quick, with no restart required. At its simplest, installing a web app is like creating a super-bookmark to it."
Russian-based PROXIEZ-NET, which was known to allegedly host 13 Zbot command-and-control servers has been shut down by its upstream provider DIGERNET, according to the site The New New Internet (News story on Web Host Review here: “Alleged Russian Malware Host Cut Off By Upstream Provider”)
Legitimate web sites hosted by PROXIEZ-NET many have been caught in the takedown, the Review said.
Brick House Security said the Zbot-related servers on PROXIEZ-NET were used to collect PayPal, EBay and online banking passwords stolen by key logging malware.
There's probably an interesting story behind WHY an upstream provider took down a (formerly) bullet-proof ISP that hosted criminal activity IN RUSSIA. I doubt if it will ever be made public though.
The All Facebook blog (not an official Facebook site) is reporting that Facebook’s Public Policy Director, Tim Sparapani has said the company will install privacy settings that are easier to understand and control in the next few weeks. (“Facebook Preparing To Release Simple Privacy Settings” )
The 800-pound gorilla of the social media world has been taking increasing heat recently about its sloppy attitude toward securing users personal information and privacy policy that seems to permit it to do nearly anything with users personal info..
Yesterday the Tech Herald ran a story about MySpace co-president Mike Jones announcing (Monday) simplified security settings that will be put in place on his company's site in the next few weeks.
“MySpace to simplify privacy controls for users with new changes”
“As things stand, the major levels of access are public, anyone under 18, and only friends. The change to MySpace’s privacy settings will center on “friends only”. If you currently use that setting for the majority of your account, then it will remain as is, and a single switch will change all the settings at the same time to whatever level you select. There will be no need to opt-in or opt-out of any of the settings,” Jones said.
On May 12, the New York Times ran a huge graphic that showed the complexity of Facebook’s 50 settings and 170 options that a user would need to digest in order to set up in order to control his or her privacy. (“Facebook Privacy: A Bewildering Tangle of Options”)
Funny how markets work.
You might avoid looking for photos of Miss USA Rima Fakih for a while. There is a controversy about a certain pole-dancing incident in her past that is stirring up the talk show circuits and the adolescent inside every male on the planet. It also has stirred up a massive number of SEO poisoned links to photos.
In 2007, Fakih won a "Stripper 101" contest sponsored by a Detroit radio show “Mojo in the Morning.” And, of course, she was no sooner crowned Miss USA than somebody resurrected the “Stripper 101” video. And, of course, everybody is searching for “Rima Fakih pole dancing.”
Almost none of these Google Image hits are safe:
What? I need a new codec to view it?
All righty then!
Flash, sharply rejected by Jobs and Company, has moved on to Apple's competitors, hoping for a warm welcome and the promise of a place in the mobile market. While Apple CEO Steve Jobs' recent open letter deploring Adobe's Flash managed to do little in terms of settling the argument as to who was right in the debate, it did point out many of the problems with the oft-buggy software that may indeed plague the smartphone experience.
With Flash Player 10.1 set to debut later this year and a slew of Flash alternatives moving into the forefront, the need for compatibility between third-party developers and designers has grown significantly. In 2009, Avi Greengart, the research director of consumer devices at Current Analysis, predicted that if Apple were to leave Flash out of its lineup, then it must be coming up with its own video support setup since it would end up being a disadvantage.
After Apple's public support for HTML 5 was announced, Greengart noted that "there is still enough Flash-only content on the Web that full mobile Flash support could be a short-term competitive differentiator against the iPhone. However, mobile Flash 10.1 has been repeatedly delayed...By that time, the gap may have been closed further."
Greengart's words may not have hit Adobe's front doors, but the Flash developers have officially jumped ship and embraced the rest of the mobile market. While the official release date has yet to be set, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen has promised an official launch before the end of the year, along with a plethora of Android, webOS, and Research In Motion smartphones and tablets that will be fully supported.
There have been recent reports that Adobe's employees are already testing Android 2.2 (or Froyo) with a fully functional Flash Player installed, and a video of the process has been making the rounds on the Internet. The main gripe from Jobs, as well as from Web users, is that Flash on slower systems tends to be buggy and cause crashes. In the video, speeds for both using Flash Player for videos as well as for browsing proved faster than anything either Android or mobile Flash had exhibited before.
Some reviewers are suggesting the process is nearly flawless and see Adobe as effectively proving Apple's accusations wrong. Flash 10.1 on Google's Nexus One, the phone used in the video demo, can be turned off as well as optimized to work only on Flash-enabled websites.
While Android and Adobe's partnership has been anything but secret, with Adobe's Web programmer population having all been given Froyo phones to work with, other mobile OS companies have been more than mum on the subject.
Neither RIM (BlackBerry) nor HP (webOS) has come out publicly with efforts to help move Flash 10.1 forward for mobile phones, even while both companies announced plans to support Adobe. RIM went so far as to join the Open Screen Project in 2009, a broad initiative to open up standalone applications and Web-browsing access to more than 50 industry leaders. The Open Screen Project is led by Adobe, and includes partnerships with Motorola, Nvidia, HTC and Nokia, among others.
David Wadhwani, the general manager and vice president of the Flash platform business unit at Adobe, said, "It's a natural fit for both companies [RIM and Adobe] to work together to bring Flash technology-based video and Web content to BlackBerry smartphone users."
While the respect seems to be mutual for all members of the Open Screen Project, not many have come out to publicly defend Adobe or Flash after Steve Jobs' public letter that criticized the platform.
Even so, it does not look as though Flash 10.1's omission on the iPhone -- or Windows Phone 7, for that matter -- will manage to hurt Adobe as long as all the other players stick to the plan and wait for the eventual release. As for advocates of HTML 5 in place of Flash, the coding standard is not expected to be fully developed for years to come. Adobe's 10.1 -- if released in June, as many have speculated -- will likely be able to establish a necessary lead by the time HTML 5 is widespread.
Unlike Apple's expectations for its "walled garden" of available platforms, the rest of the Internet would benefit from the availability of Flash on mobile browsing, considering that a majority of websites currently still use versions of the Flash player to support their videos -- for example, Hulu.
Even with Web polls from tech blogs like PC World and InfoWorld declaring that a larger percentage of their readers (55%) agree with Apple on the matter of Flash, the largest players are still the other platforms. If Android's Froyo, RIM's newest OS, and HP's newest tablets all support Flash, then they will still represent a large majority of the smartphone market share -- something that Apple does not seem to mind.
Facebook grew more popular than Myspace just about two years ago, and has been been enjoying steady growth while MySpace flounders trying to reinvent itself.
But the recent attention brought to Facebook's privacy issues -specifically the complaint filed with the US Federal Trade Commission by EPIC pointing out that Facebook data isn't as private as it once was- has opened a door for MySpace to jam its foot into.
The New York Times last week called Facebook's privacy settings "A bewildering tangle of options," with 50 settings menus with more than 170 options, and a privacy statement more than 1,200 words longer than the U.S. Constitution.
MySpace Co-president Mike Jones seized on this opportunity to announce its "New, simpler privacy setting."
"We want our users to know we are planning the launch of a simplified privacy setting for our user profiles. While we've had these plans in the works for some time, given the recent outcry over privacy concerns in the media, we felt it was important to unveil those plans to our users now," Jones said. "We believe users want a simpler way to control their privacy. That's why, in the coming weeks, MySpace will continue to simplify its privacy settings to create a simpler, more intuitive approach that gives users greater control over their information. Setting options will include public, friends only, or public to anyone 18 or over. In making this change, MySpace will default the setting to 'friends only' for any user who previously had any granular page setting to 'friends only.' Users can change this option with one click if they choose."
A small number of Facebook users with a disproportionately loud voice have pledged to shut down their Facebook profiles on May 31, the unofficial "Quit Facebook Day."
From the site's sub-heading that explains why users are quitting, it says: "For a lot of people, quitting Facebook revolves around privacy. This is a legitimate concern, but we also think the privacy issue is just the symptom of a larger set of issues. The cumulative effects of what Facebook does now will not play out well in the future, and we care deeply about the future of the web as an open, safe and human place. We just can't see Facebook's current direction being aligned with any positive future for the web, so we're leaving."
Maybe they can be enticed to get behind MySpace.
It seems like anyone who wants to be anybody is whacking Facebook over its loose -- or rather loosening -- privacy policies. Earlier this month, with disregard to the grammer momma taught me, Even I whacked CEO Mark Zuckerberg aside the head about Facebook privacy. As bad as pundits make out Facebook privacy to be, people can, and do, reveal plenty of information on the Web, too. Which place do they reveal more? I set out to find out in a non-scientific experiment, looking for publicly available information about one of my sisters.
I got to rethinking Facebook privacy over the weekend, after reading New York Times post "World's Largest Social Network: The Open Web" by Randall Stross. "The links on the trillion Web addresses found by Google, and within the billions of Tweets that have followed, form an incomparably vast, truly worldwide, web of recommendations, supplied by fellow humans," Stross writes. "In this sense, the open Web has a strong claim to being more 'social' than does Facebook."
I'll go further: Because of search engines' effectiveness and how many sites allow Bing-, Google- or rival-bot crawling, many people already expose lots of information -- and often without knowing. So I decided to compare Facebook to the Web. Just how much information is exposed?
Information Exposed by the Web
One of my sisters is a missionary in Central America. She is an experienced computer user -- actually works parttime for an IT support company -- keeps a blog and uses Facebook. My quest: Could I easily and quickly find as much information about her on the Web as she reveals on Facebook? I chose this sister because missionary work takes her out of the mainstream.
I Googled her name, which pulled up as top hit: the results from a New York state bike race from the early 2000s -- and a walking race from a few years earlier later on the first page. Additional race information from other years suggested that she participates in an annual event. So there is one day of the year, where I know where she will be. I then searched for her name and missionary country, finding a blog revealing her full name, confirming her husband's name (from the earlier search) and providing additional personal information and photos, which helped to identify her and her husband as the searches continued. The initial search also led to a Facebook athletic group.
Bing did better with her name, by pulling up as first hit a service called "My Life." Without registering for "My Life," I got her age, middle name and permanent US address. Another service, "ZoomInfo," revealed where she works (as corroborated by information revealed by other searches). Other race results confirmed the US address as being valid. But Bing fumbled her name and missionary country search, leading to no usable results in the first five pages.
I circled back to my sister's blog, and clicked through links to three Christian ministries -- one of them in Central America. That missionary group page had a pastor's blog that included photos of my sister (matching the likeness on her blog) and identifying her role working for the ministry as recently as 2008. Another link revealed that she is affiliated with all three ministries, provided an e-mail address and exposed her telephone number, as contained in a recent newsletter.
So, without ever using Facebook, and following the trail of search breadcrumbs, I got her full name, name of her husband, permanent US address, current location (but not physical address) in Central America, past (or possibly current) employer, names of three ministries she currently works with in Central America, e-mail address and phone number. I also identified several annual races she participates in, one which later in the search turned out to be affiliated with one of the ministries, and a Facebook group she belongs to. All of this took about 45 minutes using Bing and Google.
Even More From Facebook
What does my sister reveal on Facebook? OMG! Privacy? What is privacy? I set up a fake Facebook account (which should cancel out as I didn't verify the e-mail) and immediately searched for my sister. Since the fake account had no friends, I observed just how much personal information she exposes. Available to any Facebook account holder is a treasure trove of personal information. "[Sister's name] only shares some of her profile information with everyone," according to her profile page. Some?
Publicly available on her profile page: Name, two of her children's names, mother's name, sisters' names, her location in Central America, list of nearly 250 friends and Wall post galore. A fan page confirmes her place of parttime employment and the previously identified athletic group fan page. Wall posts reveal that she is attending a conference and where and identifies where her husband will be next month. So on and so on. My Facebook data mining took about 5 minutes. My sister has some control over what information is disclosed on Facebook. Most of the information I found in Web searches came from someone else. She really has no control over that at all.
What Facebook didn't expose, the Web searches provided. My sister's Facebook profile picture is a childhood photo, but her blog and the pastor's blog have current pics. The missionary site disclosed my sister's e-mail address and phone number. My sister tends to be guarded about her personal data, or so she thinks. For someone less guarded, I should have easily gotten more personally identifiable information -- even from just a Web search. I presume that like many Facebook users, my sister extends privileges to friends of friends. I could have gotten even more information had I friended one of her friends (Oh I was tempted!).
I'll have to ring my sister and explain that all her Wall posts are public. Perhaps because of something in my settings (I should check), I am not listed with my other siblings as being related to her. Then, again, maybe I'm disowned -- or will be after she reads this post. Perhaps my sister will forgive me, because I respected her privacy enough not to disclose her name. Perhaps. My public Facebook profile is pretty barebones right now, and nowhere do I see any public Wall posts that would reveal my sister's identity. Facebook friends probably could ferret out her name, though.
Someone tweeted about Profile Watch. I ran my suster's profile, which scored 8 out of 10. Uh-oh, meaning she doesn't reveal lots of information. Now how can that be? More surprising: Mine is a five. Facebook CEO Zuckerberg: 1.6.
So my question for you: Does Facebook reveal too much information? Hell, do Bing and Google? One way to answer: Conduct an exercise similar to mine and see how much information you can find out fast about a relative -- or even yourself -- through Web search and Facebook. Please answer the questions in comments.
I'm constantly reminded how slow email actually is.
On the homescreen of one of my smartphones, I've got the official Twitter widget and the official Facebook widget which are pretty much constantly refreshing. Likewise, my email inbox is set to refresh just as frequently. Every day, when someone sends me a message in Facebook or replies to a Tweet, the widgets tell me first, and then five minutes later I get the email alerting me again. Because of this, I have an email account just for social network updates that is overflowing with unread messages.
My fast, immediate communications have been shifted to other services, but the more heavyweight content: presentations, photos, and documents are still being sent over email.
Today, Microsoft announced it is releasing a new Windows Live Hotmail this summer to suit the "peoples' email needs as of 2010," which includes finding a way to organize all of that semi-relevant junkmail and a way to send even bigger attachments.
The new Hotmail inbox will let users organize their emails in new ways. Where the old inbox just let you sort your emails by date, sender, subject, or size, the new inbox will also let you sort them by category. These categories include: messages from contacts, social network updates, or messages from groups and mailing lists. Because social network updates and mailing list posts are sometimes unwanted, you can sort them by category and push them into folders and out of your principal inbox.
Microsoft is also tying in its SkyDrive cloud storage feature into Hotmail, letting users attach as many as 200 photos each 50MB in size to a single email. The same goes for Office documents like Word files, Excel spreadsheets or PowerPoint presentations, you can stick 10 GB of attachments to Live Hotmail email messages.
With Office documents, a bit of productivity has been folded into Hotmail. Users can open the documents in Office Live, make changes, and push them back to the original sender with all the updates.
The update this summer will also add enhanced account protection, full-session SSL, multiple email accounts, subfolders, contact management, and even more storage.
Kindle is, without a doubt, the highest profile e-reader platform running. With applications on iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, Windows, and OS X as well as its own line of e-paper Kindle devices, Amazon had an estimated 90% share of the e-book sales market last year.
Today, Amazon announced that a Kindle app will be launched on the Android mobile operating system this summer.
Like the BlackBerry app, Android users will be able to purchase Amazon e-books inside the mobile app. That functionality is noticeably absent on the iPhone and iPad versions, where users must go to the browser to download new books.
If Amazon were to include that functionality on the iPhone and iPad apps, a 30% commission for in-app purchases would have to be paid to Apple, which is not exactly the most economically feasible solution for Amazon.
But what this means is that the bevy of Android tablets coming out this year will be able to offer the full Kindle experience where the iPad will not; and as we saw last month, some Android tablets are really suitable only as e-readers. Giving these devices unfettered access to the Kindle Store's market-dominating 500,000+ e-books is a great boon to the platform.
It is worth noting, however, that this version will only be compatible with Android 1.6 and up, and that subscriptions to newspapers, magazines, and blogs will not be supported when the app is released in the next few weeks.
Last Friday, Google announced that its Street View cars had accidentally collected private data from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks while making their rounds, and the international response began in full force.
The same day, the Irish Data Protection Authority asked Google to delete all of that payload that was collected in Ireland. Yesterday, Google wrote, "We can confirm that all data identified as being from Ireland was deleted over the weekend in the presence of an independent third party. We are reaching out to Data Protection Authorities in the other relevant countries about how to dispose of the remaining data as quickly as possible."
Independent security firm iSEC Partners Inc also confirmed the deletion. Partner Alex Stamos said that Google had consolidated the Wi-Fi packet captures onto four hard drives, organized into folders corresponding to the nation of origin, and the data relevant to Ireland was then destroyed.
"I created two new encrypted volumes on separate hard drives, and copied over all of the data with the exception of the data that was identified as being captured within the Republic of Ireland," Stamos wrote on Sunday, "I then witnessed the physical destruction of the original four hard drives."
Today, however, German data security representative Johannes Caspar said this would not be enough, and that Google has until May 26 to turn over the hard drive with German data on it, so the extent of the infraction can be inspected.
Caspar told The Thuringer today that Google has to do anything it can to repair its tarnished reputation.
"Before it can, we must be granted access to all of the collected data," Caspar said. "Only then can it be clearly documented what kind of data was saved. Despite repeated demands, we've had no opportunity yet, to sift through a hard disk with all of the data."
Caspar has more meetings with Google this week in Hamburg.
Thirty-two days ago, I purchased Apple's iPad, after proclaiming that I wouldn't. A gadget like this one should be tested if repeatedly blogged about. I would have used a for-reviews loaner, but I'm on the same fraked list as Gizmodo. I bought my own. A month-or-so usage later, I agree with Tumblr and Instapaper developer Marco Arment, who asked about iPad yesterday: "What's it for, really? Logically, it doesn't make a lot of sense for most computer owners...most people will have trouble justifying the $500 entry price."
My problem is similar to Arment's: I like the iPad, but can't find a use for it. The tablet is too big to replace a cell phone and it's not functional enough to displace my laptop. I would never buy the butt-ugly Amazon Kindle or slow-as-cold-molasses Barnes and Noble Nook, yet I find iPad to be a so-so satisfactory substitute e-book reader. I managed to reread Orson Scott Card's excellent Ender's Game and am trudging through sequel Speaker for the Dead. But it's reading for convenience, not joy.
"A gadget just needs to be good at something that you need or want to do," Arment writes. Yeah exactly. He has found a few good-at-somethings, but I assert nothing that he couldn't do as well -- or better -- on a laptop. "It's the perfect living-room computer that lives on the coffee table and can be used to quickly look up a fact, find a restaurant, check mail, browse news, and play a game," he asserts. So is my smartphone, which doesn't cost $499 to $829.
The personal computer succeeded in part because it is versatile, multi-use, all-purpose device. The PC does many things fairly well. Ubiquity is why the PC is ubiquitous. But as I predicted, Apple's tablet isn't really good enough to replace PC or smartphone. Arment writes:
Accepting that the iPad isn't an all-purpose computing device is going to be a slow process for everyone, including Apple. They can't quite explain what it's for, either, which is why the launch marketing, software, and accessories are a bit scatterbrained. For instance, if you're using a hardware keyboard with the iPad very often, you'd probably be much better served by a MacBook Air.
So what is iPad good for then? Arment and I agree on something else. But in iPad's defense, I explained: "There also is UX, or user experience, which is as much emotive as it is functional...iPhone is more a joy to use [than Google Nexus One]. There's something about UI design and tactile, responsiveness of the screen that make me feel good. I can say the same about using iPad."
Arment describes using iPad as "satisfying and delightful." I totally agree. It's the main reason I have resisted selling mine. Functionally, my iPad isn't good enough at anything to justifying keeping it. But emotionally, I'm hooked. I find parting with iPad to be difficult. Sitting down to use the tablet, I suddenly get girlie giggly. It's a happy experience. If you asked me why, I would say it has something to do with the the user interface's beauty and how it responds to my touch. But that kind of intellectual evaluation just doesn't nail down why.
Yesterday, Nokia's Joe Gallo tweeted: "Can anyone explain to me why this video is funny http://bit.ly/hoXKj." Gallo referred to YouTube video "Charlie bit my finger -- again!," which has 191,352,797 views, as I write. I resisted laughing but couldn't stop on second viewing. "By that last tweet, I meant, I was cracking up and had no idea why!" Gallo later tweeted. In assessing my response to iPad, I have similar reaction. I can't put my finger on why (no pun intended) using iPad makes me happy.
There are lots worse reasons for using a product than it makes you happy, and many product designers would kill to have that kind of customer problem. "Ah, our product gives you joy even though you can't fathom a use for it, and you're going to keep it even though you've got no use for it?"
I'll use iPad for awhile longer to test the apps and to see whether this happy thing wears off. I've already had several good offers to buy the Apple tablet. But my answers have been nos. Functionally, iPad isn't for everyone, and it's probably not for most people. Too many features overlap the smartphone below and laptop above. Nevertheless, here's a question for potential buyers: How much joy can you get for $500 -- iPad's starting price? Stated another way, how much joy is worth spending $500?
I giggle every time I turn the damn thing on. Who knows? Maybe someday I'll find a real use for iPad. For now, a little joy is reason enough.
Three words sum up Microsoft's patent infringement suit against Salesforce.com: Competition by litigation. Microsoft knows plenty about competition by litigation, having been its victim through major antitrust cases on two continents. It's simply shameful action from a company which executies rightly wagged accusing fingers at litigating competitors over the years. Microsoft's "do unto them like they did unto us" approach cheapens the company. The proof is in the patents, which are hugely broad scope.
Qualifying that I am no patent attorney, I have applied layman's eyes to the patents that Microsoft alleges Salesforce.com violates. The nine patents read to me as being very broad in scope and potentially applicable to many forms of end user to computer or Web browser interactions -- or none at all. If any of these patents are enforceable, the US patent system really does need some reform.
I purposely did not read Microsoft's description of the patents and Salesforce.com's alleged violations from the 9-page patent infringement lawsuit. Instead, I looked over the actual patents, reading them as they are and looking at them in context of Salesforce.com's business, as I understand it. I see huge PR value for Microsoft in filing this lawsuit, possibly inflicting damage against a successful competitor. The patent violations are sure to create FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) about Salesforce.com's future business and may even cause some customers to look elsewhere -- ah, like Microsoft. However, I see nothing among the nine patents, based on a careful non-lawyerly review, that remotely suggests Salesforce.com has grossly violated Microsoft intellectual property rights.
Now for the nine patents:
7,251,653: "Method and system for mapping between logical data and physical data," granted July 31, 2007, describes interaction between data in columns and their storage. The patent clearly was intended for spreadsheets.
5,742,768: "System and method for providing and displaying a web page having an embedded menu," granted April 29, 1998, describes the execution of menus in a Web browser by using an applet; Java is used as an example of applet delivering an "embedded menu" class. The patent was assigned to Silicon Graphics.
5,644,737: "Method and system for stacking toolbars in a computer display," granted July 1, 1997, describes the display of stacked toolbars on computer operating systems, like Windows. Right, but Saleforce.com serves data to a Web browser. If Salesforce.com violates the patent, I have to ask: What service using toolbars on the Web doesn't?
6,263,352: "Automated web site creation using template driven generation of active server page applications," granted July 17, 2001, describes a method for merchants to use hypertext links retrieved from "Active Server Pages." Say what? When did Salesforce.com become a merchant selling goods? What? Salesforce.com uses ASP.NET -- and not licensed with Windows Server? Gosh, and I thought the service was a Linux shop. :)
6,122,558: "Aggregation of system settings into objects," granted Sept. 19, 2000, describes a method for adjusting settings in a "desktop environment." From the background of the invention section: "The Microsoft Windows, version 3.1, operating system, sold by Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash., provides a control panel that allows a user to adjust various system settings, such as the color settings for the graphical user interface." Someone explain how a patent applied to the Windows control panel applies to cloud service Salesforce.com.
6,542,164: "Timing and velocity control for displaying graphical information," granted April 1, 2003, is yet another toolbar patent. This one applies to the interaction of a cursor and "graphical objects." It's hugely broad, even though the patent claims the "limitations of the prior art are overcome by the present invention." If Salesforce.com truly has violated this patent, the question should be: "Who else hasn't?" The interaction described is a fundamental in computing systems using cursors and graphical objects. Surely, some other companies' patents overlap this one.
6,281,879: "Timing and velocity control for displaying graphical information," granted Aug. 28, 2001, is nearly identical to 6,542,164. Same arguments against the other apply to this one. Inventors are the same. The inclusion of two near-identical patents by the same inventor so stinks of competition by litigation.
5,845,077: "Method and system for identifying and obtaining computer software from a remote computer," granted Dec. 1, 1998, describes a method for distributing software updates to computers over a connection, such as Internet Service Provider. The method describes how Microsoft might use Windows Update. Last I checked -- and it has been awhile -- Salesforce.com updates server software rather than pushing updates out to remote software. Am I wrong?
5,941,947: "System and method for controlling access to data entities in a computer network," granted Aug. 24, 1999, describes the differentiating of access rights for "on-line services." From the background: "The present invention is directed generally to the problem of flexibly and efficiently controlling the access rights of a large number of users to a large number of objects or other data entities." Of the nine patents, this is the one most seemingly applicable to Salesforce.com. However, 5,941,947 specifically refers to the definition of "on-line services" contained in Microsoft patent 5,774,668. By my reading, the definition doesn't apply to cloud service Salesforce.com. Moreover, Microsoft did not include 5,774,668 in its lawsuit, which raises doubts about 5,941,947's applicability to Salesforce.com.
Hey Admins…. It’s that time again. The second Tuesday is upon us and May so far hasn’t been demanding as far as patching goes.
So far …. this month Microsoft has only issued two security announcements. MS10-030 and MS10-031. Microsoft has rated both as critical - and both could result in remote code being executed.
MS10-030 resolves an integer overflow in POP3 & IMAP mail responses to Outlook Express and Windows Mail…. MS10-031 addresses a stack memory corruption related to the way that “Visual Basic for Applications” searches for ActiveX components, when host applications provide specially crafted files to the Visual Basic runtime.
Adobe and Apple haven’t issued any security updates in May yet.
Apple’s last security update was on April 15th when they issued Security Update 2010-003 for OSX 10.5 and 10.6. ( 2010-003 addressed an issue with handling embedded fonts that could result in RCE )( see CVE-2010-1120 for more details )
Adobe’s last update was APSB10-10 on April 30th. APSB10-10 resolves issues in Photoshop CS4 (v11.0.0 ) for both Mac and Windows variants. Issues with Photoshop’s handling of specially crafted .TIFF files could lead to remote code execution ( see CVE-2010-1279 for more details ).
A variety of sources are reporting that blog hosting sites with WordPress-created sites and php-based management systems such as Zen Care eCommerce are being infected with malicious scripts.
Websites hosted by ISP DreamHost, GoDaddy, Bluehost and Media Temple have been found with the malcode, according to H-Online.com.
The malicious scripts download malcode and block Google’s Safe Browsing API from alerting users.
Story here: "Large-scale attack on WordPress"
The Sucuri Security blog has offered clean-up instructions for those with infected pages here.
With competition in the Web browser field having transitioned from cold to boiling in less than a year's time, Mozilla suddenly finds itself playing catch-up against not only Apple and Google, but Microsoft as well. In March, the organization realized it needed to completely make over Firefox 4 if it wanted to remain feature competitive against a fast-rising Google Chrome.
In a live presentation yesterday, Mozilla Firefox director Mike Beltzner admitted that his group's March roadmap, which involved an interim release of Firefox 3.7, had too many steps. Now the group has decided to straighten out its path by grafting version 3.7's main additions onto a point release Firefox 3.6.4, and shifting gears to focus on version 4.0.
"We were talking about shipping a Firefox 3.7 in the middle of the year, and shipping a Firefox 4 at the end of this year. Well, it turns out, the primary motivator for Firefox 3.7 was helping our users with frequent crashes caused by plug-ins," Beltzner told a global audience yesterday. "We've managed to do that, and we plan on shipping it to our Firefox 3.6 users in Firefox 3.6.4...What was going to be Firefox 3.7 is now going to be Firefox 3.6.4."
In research, a well-used installation of Firefox 3.6.3 has crashed an average of six times per day. Analysis of these crashes using Microsoft SysInternals tools indicates that, in at least three out of six of these cases per day, Adobe Flash appears to be the "catalyst," to borrow a phrase, for Firefox's downfall; in two cases per day, Adobe's PDF Reader is the likely cause. The plug-in architecture originally planned for version 3.7, and now being implemented in the version 3.6.4 public beta, is designed to compartmentalize plug-ins on a per-tab basis. Our tests thus far have turned up initial evidence that Flash-related crashes have been contained by the 3.6.4 beta, although we're skeptical about its ability to contain Reader crashes as well. However, we do not yet have complete statistics.
Beltzner's plan does not actually accelerate the organization's roadmap, but rather cuts out a handful of the steps required for it to reach its goal. It still wants Firefox 4 shipped by the end of this year, and to that end, Beltzner has set mid-October as a target zone for Release Candidate 1. The first betas of Firefox 4 could be ready by the end of June, which actually means -- if history is any guide -- that the first alpha releases of the product (usually intended for developer feedback only, though publicly available) would need to launch within weeks, at the latest.
"In the past, I think we haven't gotten as focused around our beta rollout as I think we should have," Beltzner conceded yesterday. "We've always aimed it at early adopters; early adopters for our betas have never been a problem. We actually have a very rich beta audience; we normally get to around three quarters of a million to a million users for our betas, which is fantastic...But they are primary early adopters. So we see ourselves getting surprised when we release a product, and mainstream users start using it in a different way."
Mainstream user feedback was critical for Microsoft Office 2010, and an extended period for that feedback was necessary in order to enable bugs that early adopters would not have found to be discovered, and also for new feature suggestions to be culminated. Perhaps Mozilla discovered this as well, which is why it's annexing more time for the Firefox 4 beta out of what used to be the 3.7 project.
"We need to make sure that our beta this time is focused both on early adopters and mainstream users, so we're getting a good spread of data," said Beltzner. From here, according to Beltzner's roadmap as of yesterday, the final Firefox 3.6.4 should be released "about the middle of next month," which translates on the calendar into next week. Mozilla has planned a 2010 Summit for the first week of July, and Beltzner wants the first Firefox 4 beta at least one week before then. The beta phase will be expanded to last over three months, with frequent public updates every two to three weeks. An API freeze is slated for mid-August, which is necessary for developers of plug-ins and other tools that interoperate with Firefox, to enable them to make their own plans. Then the UI freeze will take place in early September, so that documentation teams can take screen shots and expect them to be valid come October.
Beltzner needs differentiators that will help the new Firefox stand out solidly against Google Chrome, as well as a potentially resurgent Internet Explorer 9. He may have found some with respect to Firefox as a platform: With plug-ins already strong and with Web apps maturing into a self-sustaining industry, the browser can evolve to become more like a desktop. Chrome's architecture now enables plug-ins of a sort, but Google's penchant for minimalism at all costs makes each plug-in occupy a single icon in an address bar that quickly becomes crowded for space.
Firefox 4 will attempt to exploit that Chrome weakness by giving Web apps (ironically including Google Docs and Gmail) their own identity by way of its forthcoming "app-tabs" feature. There, online tasks can be elevated to permanent tabs in the tab bar, slimmed down to just icon size but still representing a common tool. This way CNET can be a bookmark, but Pandora can be a tool.
With Facebook becoming a "sharing center" on a scale few had predicted, and with Adobe and soon Microsoft deploying Web apps from the browser, it no longer makes sense for privacy and security policies to be relegated to "Internet zones" and "non-Internet zones" like in IE. Sensing that opportunity for differentiation, Firefox 4 will offer what Beltzner currently calls a Permissions Manager, where users set the sharing permissions that pertain to specific Web sites. As of now, it's merely a concept, which means Mozilla developers will have to work fast, now, to get a working model for Firefox 4's first alphas.
Determining that earliest part of the new roadmap will likely be the focus of the next developers' planning meeting set for later today.
Responding to questions about how he foresees Firefox 4's competitive stance against Chrome 5 and IE9, Mike Beltzner said, "We've built the Web ecosystem into the space that we've wanted it to be. [Compare] that to five or six years ago, with one player and no competition, nobody pushing each other forward. We're now in a space that's intensely competitive, and all of [us] pushing each other forward. We watch our competitors and our competitors watch us, and we are in it to win it...People who are working on Mozilla and believe in our mission should really feel that. It's no longer the case where it's all easy-win. There's hard work to be done here. We have to dig our heels in, and we have to make sure that we are the ones who are leading the charge here and keeping the Web open for users."
A new study from Carnegie Mellon University shows that analyzing data from Twitter yields the same results as conducting a public opinion poll.
We’re willing to bet it probably costs less, takes less time and annoys fewer people, as well.
A CMU team from the computer science department looked at sentiments expressed in a billion Twitter messages between 2008 and 2009. The researchers then use simple text analysis methods to filter out updates about the economy and politics and determine if the overall sentiment of the update was positive or negative. The CMU team found that people’s attitudes on consumer confidence and presidential job approval were similar to the results generated by well-reputed, telephone-conducted public opinion polls, such as those conducted by Reuters, Gallup and pollster.com.
For at least some topics, CMU Assistant Professor Noah Smith thinks this kind of passive information gathering could work. “With seven million or more messages being tweeted each day, this data stream potentially allows us to take the temperature of the population very quickly,” Smith said. “The results are noisy, as are the results of polls. Opinion pollsters have learned to compensate for these distortions, while we’re still trying to identify and understand the noise in our data. Given that, I’m excited that we get any signal at all from social media that correlates with the polls.”
The CMU researchers did notice that Twitter sentiments had much more day-to-day variation compared to data gathered from traditional polling data. To compensate, the team averaged the Twitter results over a number of days; at that point, the results were generally quite similar to polling data.
For example, on Twitter as in life, consumer confidence slumped in 2008 and started to revive last spring. And Twitter updates showed the same general decrease in presidential job performance approval through 2009 as was seen in traditional polls. There were a few discrepancies — enough that the CMU folks don’t recommend using Twitter to poll for election results just yet. Still, researchers hope that better natural language processing (NLP) techniques will make Twitter and other social media a valuable source of public opinion information in the future.
The paper is available online (use the left column to navigate to the “papers” section, and scroll down to “From Tweets to Polls: Linking Text Sentiment to Public Opinion Time Series”), for those who’d like to dig deeper.
What do you think: Could Twitter and other social media eventually replace public opinion polls? Would you rather have a researcher mining your public stream of updates for information or calling your phone to get the same information?
Despite ongoing questions about privacy, Facebook’s new social plugins continue to expand their footprint across the web, with the company announcing on Tuesday that more than 100,000 websites have now deployed them.
The plugins –- which allow websites to add Facebook-powered social features without requiring users to log in –- were announced less than a month ago at Facebook’s developer conference, and attracted more than 50,000 publishers in the first week.
Some of those publishers are now seeing big traffic gains. Facebook says that The Washington Post has seen its Facebook referral traffic climb 290%, while IMDb has doubled the number of visitors it is seeing via Facebook as users “like” movies in droves.
Certainly, numbers like that are going to keep publishers experimenting with Facebook’s new features as a way to drive more engagement and traffic to their sites. Of course, that could all change if the user backlash against instant personalization continues to grow. For now though, Facebook’s path to web domination seems to be on track, and perhaps even progressing ahead of schedule.
“What would people most like to see in 3D? Probably a naked lady.” Those are the words of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, whose magazine will soon include a centerfold playmate photographed naked and in 3D.
The 3D centerfold will appear in the June issue, which hits newsstands this Friday with 3D glasses included. The subject of the photos is 51st Playmate of the Year Hope Dworaczyk.
Consider this a grab for attention more than anything; Playboy editorial director Jimmy Jellinek was quoted by MSNBC saying, “In today’s print environment you have to create newsstand events.” The environment he’s talking about is one in which Playboy circulation has dropped almost 60% in just four years.
For Playboy the “event” is 3D. For Esquire six months ago, it was augmented reality. The magazine came with markers that you could hold up to your webcam to experience rich media on your computer to accompany the magazine’s content. Sports Illustrated did something similar with its 2010 Swimsuit Issue, asking readers to scan bar codes with their cell phones to gain access to video content.
However, rich media and video content can be delivered on the web without bar codes or augmented reality gimmicks, so these magazines are struggling to match what web publications already offer. 3D images like this are easy to do on computer displays, too — though the readers would have to pick up some physical glasses on their own.
Though the Playboy’s gimmick is obviously inspired by the increasing popularity of 3D films like Avatar, Hefner said that the appeal of 3D movies is lost on him personally.
Nevertheless, he actually commissioned a Chicago photographer to take 3D photos of naked women back in the ’50s, but he decided against running the images when he realized how expensive it would be to include 3D glasses with each copy of the magazine, MSNBC claims. This time, HBO is promoting its sexy southern vampire TV show True Blood by sponsoring the glasses.
Foursquare is moving to make the list of “Places” one sees when one loads one’s mobile app of choice more relevant.
The company announced this morning that it has recently made changes to improve its algorithms for serving up this data, taking into account things like time of day, proximity, and popularity of the venue in determining which places to show you.
This should be a welcome change for users of Foursquare. As the service has taken off in popularity, it’s also seen an increase in venues that “you are very unlikely to check into” –- Foursquare’s words for the abundance of user-created venues popping up that are only relevant to a small number of people (if anyone, “Ostrow Castle” not withstanding).
Along those lines, the service has also been working to delete duplicate venues and crack down on cheaters. Ultimately, these moves are a response to the rapid growth of the service and user behavior, some of which Foursquare probably couldn’t anticipate back when it laid the groundwork for the app.
We need a native iPad app for Facebook but until Facebook HQ gets around to making one, the next best thing has just arrived via social media aggregator sobees.
sobees for Facebook [iTunes link] is an iPad app that lets you manage your Facebook experience in a native app designed to take advantage of the iPad’s enlarged screen.
The app, which is free through the end of May, provides many of the features that Facebook fans have been looking for in an iPad app. This includes the ability to:
Check out this video which shows off the app in action:
Given the dearth of good Facebook options for the iPad, we’re glad that an app like sobees for Facebook is available. It’s a good example of how third-party tools can still offer a valuable — and sometimes superior — experiences in their own right.
We know, we know — you don’t give a damn about celebrities and what they’re tweeting about (neither do we — especially when they’re narcissistically freaking out about a Twitter bug that everyone was victim to), but when someone does something creative with these 140-character pearls of not-quite-wisdom, we’re admittedly amused. Enter, “Celebritweets Theater.”
We’re already fans of Odessa Begay’s inspired “Museum of Modern Tweets,” in which the artist composes surrealistic pictures of the strange things famous people say. “Celebritweets Theater” is basically a horse of the same color — short cartoons that tell the story behind the tweet. A dude that goes by “KCS Cougar” draws these cartoons for celebrity news site Wonderwall, and they have a rather Dr. Katz-esque vibe. I’ve embedded my favorite — which mocks Lady Gaga — below.
