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via John Constine, TechCrunch The White House wants you to hack for a better America. Last month it announced the National Day Of Civic Hacking on June 1-2 where many government agencies will liberate data for citizens across the U.S. to use to build tech that helps their communities. Twenty-seven cities have planned events where … Continue reading
via David Strreitfeld and Nicole Perlroth, The New York Times Facebook may have quelled a full-scale rebellion by quickly dumping the contentious new terms of use for Instagram, its photo-sharing service. But even as the social network furiously backpedaled, some users said Friday they were carrying through on plans to leave. Ryan Cox, a 29-year-old … Continue reading
via Declan McCullagh, CNET News Instagram said today that it has the perpetual right to sell users’ photographs without payment or notification, a dramatic policy shift that quickly sparked a public outcry. The new intellectual property policy, which takes effect on January 16, comes three months after Facebook completed its acquisition of the popular photo-sharing … Continue reading
via Paul Sloan, CNET News It may seem odd to talk about user growth for Facebook, which with 1 billion-plus members is already more than three times the size of the entire U.S. population. But much of what the company does boils down to just that: How to add the next billion users? And then … Continue reading
via David Talbot, MIT Technology Review, Mashable Google’s effort to install a blazingly fast, gigabit-per-second fiber Internet service in the two-state metropolis of Kansas City — a speed 100 times faster than the national average — is a radical new business direction for the company, and perhaps provides an unorthodox model for how to rewire … Continue reading
via John Constine, TechCrunch Facebook filters the news feed so you only see the 15% or so of stories it thinks you’ll find most interesting. But a newly discovered “All” link shows you almost everything posted by your friends and Pages you Like. Facebook confirmed to me that http://www.facebook.com/?sk=nf_all ”is an old link that allows … Continue reading
via Nicole Perlroth, The New York Times Not long after I began writing about cybersecurity, I became a paranoid caricature of my former self. It’s hard to maintain peace of mind when hackers remind me every day, all day, just how easy it is to steal my personal data. Within weeks, I set up unique, … Continue reading
via Keith Bradsher, The New York Times The Chinese government swiftly blocked access Friday morning to the English-language and Chinese-language Web sites of The New York Times from computers in mainland China in response to an article in both languages describing wealth accumulated by the family of the country’s prime minister. The authorities were also blocking … Continue reading
via Jessica Guynn, Los Angeles Times Could Facebook Inc.’s new gift service be the early Christmas present that Wall Street has been waiting for? After its disastrous debut as a public company in May, the social networking giant has come under increasing pressure from investors not just to squeeze more advertising dollars from its nearly … Continue reading
via Steve Friess, Politico Microsoft has enjoyed months of great press for its promise to make Do Not Track the default setting on its forthcoming iteration of Internet Explorer, but it has left out one important detail: Users will still be tracked. That also goes for users of Chrome, whose parent Google announced last week … Continue reading
via Somini Sengupta and Kevin J. O’Brien, The New York Times Facebook on Friday confronted a new obstacle over what to do with one of its most vital assets — pictures. The company promised European regulators that it would forgo using facial recognition software and delete the data used to identify Facebook users by their … Continue reading
via Ingrid Lunden, TechCrunch New research out from Google, working with market analysts Ipsos and Sterling Brands, puts some hard numbers behind the often-noticed trend of how people in the U.S. are using a combination of phones, tablets, computer and TVs to consume digital content. While each of these has a significant place in our … Continue reading
via Fox Van Allen, Tecca Did you know that what you say on Facebook can be used against you in a court of law? If you’re sharing something with your friends, you may as well be sharing directly with the judge and jury: A recent ruling in a U.S. federal court says that if you post … Continue reading
via Dino Grandoni, The Huffington Post Facebook has finally forgotten about that drunken night in college when you vomited on that one friend who never talked to you again. Any deleted photo from that episode, or any photo deleted by users for whatever reason, has finally been removed from the social network’s servers, it appears. … Continue reading
via Ryan Grenoble, The Huffington Post Most people view Facebook as an ideal time-waster, a way to step back from the hustle and bustle of daily life and click around idly. Need a mental breather at work? Scroll through the News Feed. Insufferable urge to gossip? There’s a relationship rumor out there, somewhere. In one … Continue reading
via Graham Cluley, Naked Security Facebook has released statistics showing that it believes there are more than 83 million fake accounts on its social network. Some 8.7% of the site’s 955 million users are believed to be bogus, according to documents that the company filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) earlier this week. … Continue reading
via Brian Stelter, The New York Times On Sunday night, MSNBC.com did something that successful Web sites almost never do: it renamed itself. The site became NBCNews.com, signifying the end of a relationship between NBC and Microsoft that dates back to the earliest days of the commercial Web. Early next year, MSNBC.com will be reborn … Continue reading
via Editorial Board, The New York Times Cellphones, e-mail, and online social networking have come to rule daily life, but Congress has done nothing to update federal privacy laws to better protect digital communication. That inattention carries a heavy price. Striking new data from wireless carriers collected by Representative Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, and … Continue reading
via Deborah Netburn, L.A. Times Google doesn’t often get political, but on the issue of rights for gay people, the company is unequivocal: “LGBT Rights Are Human Rights” it proclaims on a Web page describing its new project Legalise Love–an international campaign to promote safer conditions for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people inside and outside the … Continue reading
via Associated Press, The Washington Post If you’ve ever lied to a potential Internet date about your weight, texted your spouse that you were someplace you weren’t or emailed mom to say how much you love that ugly new sweater, you were breaking the law if you did it in Rhode Island. But state lawmakers … Continue reading
via Mary Long, Media Bistro The City of New York sent a subpoena to Twitter in February demanding it release all of Occupy Wall Street protestor Malcolm Harris’ tweets between September 15 and December 31 2011, as well as his email address and any other user information associated with his account. Well, after a lot … Continue reading
via Sam Laird, Mashable A stodgy lawyer, a deposed prince, a helpless (yet filthy rich) waif with a needy relative — their emails land in our inboxes all too often asking for a modest cash advance in exchange for a massive payday down the line. And a disproportionate number of those too-good-to-be-true missives purport to … Continue reading
via Alexis Tsotsis, TechCrunch After about a month of speculation, Facebook has finally announced its acquisition of Israeli facial recognition technology Face.com. We’ve heard from multiple sources that the acquisition price was around $100m, with others reporting that the price was between $80m-$100m. (Update: We’re now hearing from a source familiar with the matter that … Continue reading
via Jessica Hopper, NBC Rock Center When Helen and Jay Stassen’s 21-year-old son, Benjamin, committed suicide 19 months ago, he did not leave a note. If it had been 20 years ago, the Stassens might have looked through diaries, letters or other personal items in an attempt to find clues as to why he decided … Continue reading
via John Naughton, The Guardian: The Observer Earlier this year, American legal scholar Tim Wu published a sobering book: The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires. In it, he surveyed the history of the great communications technologies of the 20th century – the telephone, movies, broadcast radio and TV. And in the … Continue reading
The Brandt Standard 