Category Archives: Internet

Two people are dead because they unfriended woman on Facebook

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Marvin Potter, 60, (on the right), is in custody and is being charged with two counts of first degree murder. He is accused of having shot a couple that had both unfriended his 30-year-old daughter Jenelle on the social site Facebook, Johnson County Sheriff Mike Reece said Wednesday.

The problems began when Billy Payne Jr. and his girlfriend, Billie Jean Hayworth, unfriended Marvin Potter’s daughter Jenelle on Facebook. According to the police, Jenelle started to harass the couple in the time leading up the murders on January 31st. Continue reading →

Get $25 from Google for sharing your search and browsing history

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Google is about to start a new project called Screenwise, they have already set up a signup page – it’s not yet active for sign-ups though – from this page you can read about their new project where they want to get their users to agree on giving them access to their browsing and search behaviors online via a browser plugin for Google Chrome. Here is what Google says themselves:

Google is building a new panel to learn more about how everyday people use the Internet.

The new project is called Screenwise. As a panelist, you’ll add a browser extension that will share with Google the sites you visit and how you use them. What we learn from you, and others like you, will help us improve Google products and services and make a better online experience for everyone.

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Google is being sued for consolidating its Privacy Policies

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As you may remember from last week, Google announced a (rather large) change to their privacy policies and if you are a Google user you have probably noticed that they have tried to make you aware of the changes with arrows pointing to it and by redirecting you to their policy page once.

Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has filed a suit in the Washington D.C. district court claiming that the upcoming privacy changes – which are planned to take effect March 1st – will cause “irreparable injury to EPIC and the public.” EPIC claims that the change violates a settlement agreement that Google and the FTC reached last march forbidding any privacy changes without consent from the user. EPIC wants the court to issue a temporary restraining order on Google, they also ask for a preliminary injunction compelling the FTC to enforce the settlement agreement from March last year.
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Facebook Data Center in Oregon doubles the power usage in the county

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The interior of Facebook data center in Prineville, Oregon

A $210 million monster data center in Prineville, Oregon has been built by Facebook. The data center has a capacity of 28 megawatts usage, this was revealed by Facebook earlier this week together with local economic development officials. The entire power usage of the whole county of Prineville was prior to this center being built only 30 megawatt, so the consumption will be doubled with this Facebook server center.

Facebook who according to the most recent rumors are preparing for their IPO to happen very soon, have built this 300,000 square foot monster, and apparently two more are on the way according to sources in the local community.
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Yes! Your Passwords suck! Hints on creating solid passwords

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Every time that you cleverly come up with a seemingly complicated combination of letters, symbols and numbers for a password, you are not only up against creepy individual hackers, you are up against a myriad of easily obtainable super-computers! Your password has to be strong enough to hold up against these computer programs that can use infinite numbers of dictionaries from multiple languages, Wikipedia and everything in the World Fact Book to run encrypted passwords in a matter of MINUTES. Passwords like yours are probably too short, too personal or just too simple or predictable.

This article will help you to see that you need to change your password as soon as possible and  it will also give you hints on how to create ‘bulletproof’ passwords and protect yourself against the highly technologically advanced, increasingly adaptable hacker world.

Cracking weak passwords is easy! Steve Ragan, Tech Herald journalist, proved this when he used free downloadable software and a $300 off-the-shelf computer to crack over 80,000 encrypted passwords in only 5 hours.

It is very important to remember that once ONE of your passwords has been compromised, (just like 24+ million Zappos.com shoppers earlier this month), it isn’t just bad news for that one account on that one Zappos website. The hackers can have a ‘hacking party’ with access to your Facebook, Twitter, or email accounts IF you have used the same login for these other services as well. Information can be extracted from one of your accounts and used against you to access another. Continue reading →

Firefox 10 Regular and ESR is now live

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The newest version of Firefox is now available for the PC and Mac. Its newest features include a Forward button that remains hidden until you actually need it, support for full-screen APIs, and better extensions management.

The release of the extended support release (ESR) version marks the beginning of the end for Firefox’s 3.x branch which will be retired from support in April of this year.
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Google will now access and use all your personal data and browsing history

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Google has just announced a privacy policy change, it will take effect from March 1st, 2012. This seems to be the end of Google sticking to it’s long-standing promise of “don’t be evil“. The policy change was announced on the Google blog and the policy change basically means that if you are signed into your Google account using any service, Google can use the information on all their other services as well. Here’s how Google phrases it:

Our new Privacy Policy makes clear that, if you’re signed in, we may combine information you’ve provided from one service with information from other services. In short, we’ll treat you as a single user across all our products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience.

If Google chooses to take full advantage of all the possibilities in this policy change it could have a huge impact on our daily use of the internet. Just try to think about how many services you use every day are owned and run by Google. One of the biggest things could be their steady growing market share on the smartphone OS field, just imagine how many people Google can track via the GPS in their Android phones, so if Google knows that you visit golf courses a lot based on your phone GPS they can spam you with golf ads on all pages you visit that are showing Google AdSense ads (and that’s most pages nowadays). They know which apps you download on your phone, which games you play and so could tailor your search results in Google search to show results based on that also. Because Google has AdSense ads on most pages they can track your every move online, and now that they’ve opened up the door for themselves to use that information, well no one can really know the consequences, but they could be very big. Continue reading →

Google+ now supports nicknames, pseudonyms and names in other scripts

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In an announcement from Bradley Horowitz, Google’s VP of Product, it was revealed that Google+ now supports the addition of nicknames or maiden names to your Google+ profile. In addition to nicknames you can now also (finally) enter your name in another script (for example: Thai, Hebrew, Cyrillic, Japanese etc.). Both these features have been possible on Facebook for a long time, and it was always only a matter of time until Google+ adapted the idea and implemented it as well, that time has come now and they are launching the first version this week.

To update your nickname/maiden name, simply go to your profile and click Edit Profile, click on your name in big letters at the top, in the box click “More options.” and the nickname box will appear (see below screenshot).

Now your profile name will show as the following screenshot shows:

While this might be good for people who like to have a nickname, this is big news for the billions of people who’s name is in another script than the Roman alphabet.
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Ratepoint Account Permanently Closing Feb. 2

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I just received an email from Ratepoint telling me that their assets and technologies have been acquired and that means that all their accounts will close on Feb 2nd 2012. That means one weeks notice to all their customers to find an alternative before they close down completely.

For those of you that don’t know Ratepoint and what they do, then in short they offer handing of business and product reviews for your website. So for example if you have an online shop and you would like all your customers to rate your services, you can send them a link to Ratepoint and they can write a short review about their shopping experience there. It’s a fairly simple service, but it’s quite important for an online shop to show reviews hosted on a third party website, so the customers know you didn’t just make them all up yourself and added some extra stars to the reviews.

Here is the email that Ratepoint sent out to their customers today: Continue reading →