When you open your e-mail inbox, what do you usually find? Your inbox might very well be full of messages from work, family, friends, as well as those notifications from your RSS feeds and whichever social networking sites you belong to.
However, in amongst all those nice little messages are usually those annoying little spam messages [...]
I was shocked when I heard there was a place which pays you for submitting your photos online. My curiosity drove me to the website and made me aware that even I could earn a little without investing too much time and effort. After all who wouldn’t like a little extra money?
I wanted to know [...]
But think of the children! It never seems to stop. Just as yet another court has ruled that the COPA law is unconstitutional, some folks in Congress are trying to bring back its sister legislation, DOPA. COPA (the Child Online Protection Act) required websites to block objectionable material. DOPA (the Deleting Online Predators Act) is much more narrowly focused, requiring schools and libraries to put in place filters that block access to social networks. Why? Well, politicians are under the false belief that this somehow stops predators.
There are just two big problems with this reasoning. First, studies have shown that the supposed “threat” of online predators has been blown way out of proportion. Most kids are not targeted by online predators on social networks, and the few who are tend to know enough to deal with them. But you won’t hear the politicians pushing DOPA say that. Instead, they claim: “as more children flock to social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, we’ve seen a corresponding increase of online sexual predators.” According to whom? Over the past few months we’ve pointed to three separate reports showing that the reports of the threat have been greatly overstated.
But, more importantly, even if predators are a threat on social networks, isn’t it a much better solution to let kids use them in schools and at libraries where there can be reasonable oversight, and where educators can teach the kids how to deal with online threats? Banning access from schools and libraries only guarantees that kids will find other ways to get to those social networks when no one’s there to watch them. And, by making it seem like it’s somehow underground, it will seem even “cooler” to make use of those sites. And, at the same time, teachers, parents and librarians won’t feel compelled to teach kids how to use those sites safely, because the use will be totally hidden from view. How is that possibly a good result?
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Not so long ago, HD camcorders were luxury gadgets sporting eyebrow-raising price tags that left most people out of the HD revolution.
Today, Toshiba has decided to make the VW Beetle of HD camcorders with the introduction of its £180 Camileo H10. This attractive little unit also comes with some decent features, that belie its bargain basement price tag.
The H10 has a 5X optical zoom and can record video in 720p HD, storing the MPEG-4 format video it captures onto SD and SDHC Cards, which are now cheap as chips. And, being MPEG-4 means it’ll be easy to upload the embarrassing moments of others to YouTube or social networking sites.
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It’s a big change in just a few years but it seems that almost 1-in-2 UK mobile phone users are accessing the Web every day while over half are checking their email.
The take-up of cheaper 3G services seems to be fueling our desire for mobile Web access, according to a Vodafone survey carried out by ICM Research and the London School of Economics (LSE).
More than 45% of respondents access Web sites every day while 62% check their mails. A further 24% are using their mobiles to access their social networking sites.
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Back in May there were a series of stories that made the rounds concerning a British girl who had her 16th birthday party at her parents pricey estate in Spain. The stories, based on the girl’s own account on the social network Bebo claimed that she had posted an invite to various social networks, and tons of people showed up and it turned into a violent drunken mess. In an age of “oh no, look at what those crazy kids are doing on social networks!” reporting, the press had a field day talking about it.
There was just one problem: much of the story was apparently made up by the girl.
Now the mother of the girl is suing six newspapers for writing the story (found via Slashdot). There are a lot of questions raised by this. The woman’s daughter spread the story herself — so if the mother has a complaint, you would think it’s with the daughter. But, at the same time, what kind of newspaper reports on something like that based on a single first-person account of the 16-year-old hosting the party, rather than getting any kind of fact check confirmation?
Still, it seems like some of the questions being drawn from this are going in the wrong direction. The article reports:
The case is expected to have far-reaching consequences for third parties who use or publish information from social networking sites. Lawyers say it could place a duty on all second-hand users to establish the truth of everything they want to republish from such sites. Mrs Hudson not only denies the allegations but accuses the newspapers of misusing information posted by her daughter on the Bebo site, saying there was no legitimate public interest in publishing material from the site. Mrs Hudson says that, because the information was inaccurate, the papers cannot rely on the defence of fair comment.
Her solicitor, David Price, said the case raised important issues of libel, privacy and copyright in relation to the unauthorised use of material taken from social networking sites.
That threatens to be quite chilling. If you can’t republish direct quotes from someone who was at an event, it would seem to be quite stifling. I recognize this is in the UK, which has much stricter libel laws, but it still sounds like it might be going too far. As for the “copyright” claim, that’s the most questionable of all. Claiming that the fact that her daughter’s own account was incorrect means that “fair comment” is no longer allowed is ridiculous. If you’re quoting someone for news purposes, the copyright issue shouldn’t depend on whether or not the person you’re quoting is lying.
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BT is in talks to buy Silicon Valley internet-phone software developer Ribbit as it looks to create a one-number web-based communications platform to take on the likes of Google and Skype in the burgeoning online telecoms market.
Ribbit, founded two years ago and based near Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, claims to be “Silicon Valley’s first phone company”. It has created software that allows programmers to design applications that tie together mobile phones, fixed-line phones and even social networking sites into a single online communications hub.
Ribbit allows any software developer to use its technology to create applications, in the same way as Google has opened up its soon to launch mobile phone operating system android and Apple has allowed other people to develop software for the iPhone.
There are a number of communications tools such as Evernote - which allows forgetful iPhone users to access their “to do” lists from their phone or computer - which are designed to integrate the mobile phone with internet-based services.
Bringing together the information stored on the web with mobile phones, a trend known as unified communications, has been mooted for many years. But the take-up of broadband and the creation of fast mobile phone networks has made it easier to achieve. Last year Google snapped up another Californian company involved in this area, called GrandCentral, for about $50m.
BT is understood to have offered as much as $55m (£28m) for Ribbit, although a deal has not yet been signed. BT refused to comment yesterday.
Ribbit’s technology has already been used by a number of third party application developers. American business communications group Salesforce.com has a Ribbit-based application that lets the company’s sales people keep track of all their calls and contacts through a single web page.
Ribbit is also testing a consumer platform called amphibian, which looks like a social networking site with a phone attached. It allows users to convert voicemail messages left on their mobile into text which can be read online, so users can search for keywords. Calls can be patched through from a mobile to a computer; not only will the caller’s number be displayed but amphibian can pull up their profile and latest postings from sites such as Flickr, LinkedIn and Twitter. Calls from other web-based telephone services such as GoogleTalk and Skype can also be accessed.
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O2 is preparing to face thousands of disappointed customers as the mobile phone company looks set to run out of the latest version of Apple’s iPhone within minutes of some of its stores opening on Friday morning.
The company is suffering from what one insider termed “Hype 2.0″ - a play on the fashionable social networking term Web 2.0 - as the new 3G version of the iPhone goes on sale in the UK and 21 other countries on Friday.
O2, Apple’s exclusive network partner in the UK, ran out of stock for pre-orders within a few hours of the phone becoming available on its website on Monday. Many customers will be expecting to be able to go into its stores when they open on Friday and buy a phone over the counter.
O2, however, warned tonight that it has only limited stock and is limiting purchases to one per customer.
“On average, we will only have a few dozen iPhone 3Gs per store (some stores more, some stores less, dependant upon store size so we expect to sell out quickly)” the company warned on its website.
O2 claims that more than 200,000 people registered an interest in the 3G iPhone while 35,000 people registered interest in the previous version of the phone before it went on sale last year.
Carphone Warehouse, the only independent retailer that will stock the phone in the UK, reckons interest in the new phone is 10 times greater than it was for the original version.
The new phone coincides with Apple’s opening up of the device so that third party application developers can create software for it. From Thursday the iTunes store will stock these applications and already there are 500 available - ranging from games and full copies of The Bible to iPhone versions of social networking sites and tools such as MySpace and Twitter.
The new 3G version of the phone is expected to be more popular in Europe than the device sold last year because it runs over the new 3G networks which European operators have rolled out over the past few years.
The 8GB version of the new phone - which can store about 2,000 songs - is free for O2 customers willing to sign up for 18 months at £45 a month, while the larger capacity 16GB phone is free for anyone on a £75-a-month deal.
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BT is in talks to buy Silicon Valley internet-phone software developer Ribbit as it looks to create a one-number web-based communications platform to take on the likes of Google and Skype in the burgeoning online telecoms market.
Ribbit, founded two years ago and based near Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, claims to be “Silicon Valley’s first phone company”. It has created software that allows programmers to design applications that tie together mobile phones, fixed-line phones and even social networking sites into a single online communications hub.
Reports in the blogosphere said that BT is spending $55m (£28m) on the company. No actual deal is understood to have yet been signed off, and BT refused to comment today.
Bringing together the information stored on the internet with mobile phones and computers, a trend known as unified communications, has been mooted for many years. But the take-up of broadband and the creation of fast mobile phone networks has made it easier to achieve. Last year Google snapped up another Californian company involved in this area, called GrandCentral, for about $50m.
Ribbit’s technology is open to any software developer to use - a model known as open source - so they can build their own applications. London-based Square Circle, for instance, has created a web-based phone application that looks like a chalkboard. American business communications group Salesforce.com, meanwhile, has a Ribbit-based application that lets a company’s sales people keep track of all their calls and contacts through a single web page and costs $25 per user per month.
Ribbit is also testing a consumer platform called Amphibian, which looks like a social networking site with a phone attached. It allows users to transcribe voicemail messages left on their mobile as text on a web page, meaning they can search for keywords in a message. Calls can be patched through from a mobile to a computer; not only will the caller’s number be displayed but Amphibian can pull up their profile and latest postings from sites such as Flickr, LinkedIn and Twitter.
Because the system is open, calls from other web-based telephony services such as GoogleTalk and Skype can also be accessed.
Google, too, is experimenting with open-source mobile communications with its Android mobile phone operating system, due to start appearing in the first generation of handsets towards the end of the year. Application developers are likely to use the platform to create unified messaging services. Apple, meanwhile, is also letting developers create applications for its iPhone device and a Ribbit service has already been created.
Ribbit has raised about $13m from venture capital firms Alsop-Louie Partners, Allegis Capital and KPG Ventures. It was co-founded by serial entrepreneur Ted Griggs who serves as chief executive, former AT&T product development head Crick Waters and two of Griggs’ colleagues from his previous company, telecoms software group Syndeo Corporation: Peter Leong and Ramani Narayan, Ribbit’s head of marketing, meanwhile, used to be head of marketing at another Californian start-up in the web telephony market called Jajah. He previously worked for Apple.
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Social networking sites are proving a good guide to socio-economic divisions in the US, reveals research.