Tag: facebook
Facebook usernames, what will you christen yourself?
On Saturday morning at 5.01am UK time, Facebook usernames goes live. Users will have the chance to register a username which will develop a unique URL for their profile. Currently the URL is populated by random characters and the move will make it “easier for people to find and connect with you” according to Facebook.
As with any change that involves the social networking giant, the announcement has created a big debate online. Some users have been requesting the service for a while now, whereas some users are stringently against it.
Here’s a quick overview of some of the positive and negative impacts the move may cause:
Positive – The creation of usernames should improve shareability, which has got to be a good thing in terms of a social media. Instead of having to search for an individual’s actual name via Google or Facebook directly, users can now search by username – which has proved popular on other platforms like Twitter and MySpace.
It will also be much easier to give your Facebook details to new people you meet. You could even have it printed on a business card if you are really cool/sad.
It will also make it easier to link all of your social networking tools together – providing you use the same username for every platform you are registered with.
Negative – As with any change to Facebook, concerns are going to be raised about privacy and security. Protest groups have, not surprisingly, already been set up.
There are also major worries that people won’t be able to get their desired user names. Facebook has over 200million members, remember. That’s a lot of people competing to get usernames. There’s bound to be issues with username squatting as well, as there are with domain names currently.
The move also leads to comparisons with MySpace – a service that many people stopped using as the popularity of Facebook began to take hold. It could be argued that usernames are a bit of a backward step.
Either way, expect Facebook to freeze up at 5.01am on Saturday as the race begins. I’ll be awarding a gold star to anyone who manages to register ‘markzuckerberg’ as their username.
Read the full FAQs here.
Microsoft unveil motion sensing controller – Project Natal
Microsoft has unveiled its much rumoured motion controller at E3 along with 1080p video-streaming, facebook and twitter integration, and Premier League football as part of Microsoft’s deal with Sky.
“Project Natal” is not as many were expecting a hand-held controller but rather a motion sensing camera, like the Eye Toy, but hopefully substantially less crappy.
Steven Spielberg lumbered on stage to demo the new technology, with his avatar moving in real time as he controled the UI. Unlike the Eye Toy which wasn’t really developed with any great vigour, Microsoft seem to have gone to town with Natal and look to have created a very immersive and interactive experience.
Maybe too interactive, because in an Orwellian overstep, Microsoft have included face recognition technology which will allow you to use the meat, sinew and cartilage, on the front of your head to as your password to log in to your Live account.
But Natal isn’t just for gaming: As Microsoft start to push the Xbox 360 as the home entertainment mega-hub, you’ll be able to use Natal to flick through your films and songs and use voice recognition to issue commands.
The demo came complete with a very Wii-esque trailer of a family enjoyed the delights of Natal’s motion capture, although all the voices had been dubbed so grimly that the whole thing takes on this sort of uncanny and unnerving ambiance, like they’re trapped. It’s weird – watch it. It’s a far cry from the light-hearted japes of the Rednapp clan.
Microsoft look to have created an amazing and deeply immersive piece of kit here, but they still can’t make adverts. Not for toffees.
Watch this till the end – it’s a good advert and then in the last 10 seconds the way the light on the Natal unit switches off is so creepy!
Has no one at Microsoft seen Space Odyssey 2001? It couldn’t be more menacingly Hal-esque.
Facebookers phished in hack-attack
200 million facebookers have they’re accounts targeted by hackers. Facebook were yesterday frantically identifying compromised accounts and blocking their asses.
Infected users had their passwords ‘phished’ and then their accounts were used to spam their friend lists.
Facebook-chap, Barry Schnitt, wouldn’t say how many accounts had been compromised but confirmed those that had were being blocked.
It’s not the first time facebookers have found themselves on the sharp end of a hackers keyboard; last year the Koobface virus hit the site, tricking people into downloading it to their computers.
Security experts say the problem is that all too often passwords are all too simple, the names of pets, old school, football teams and spouses which tend to be on profile’s frontpage.
It’s lucky then that my account is private and my cat is called (shnucky[21mittens%
(Via BBC)
Facebook builds a door into the walled garden
Facebook has long been criticised for being a ‘walled garden’ where users can frolic freely with their data on the site but do absolutely nothing with it elsewhere. That should be changing this afternoon as the site opens up far more useful data to its users.
External developers will now, crucially, be able to extract real-time information from the site and use it to build services on their own websites. For example, someone could build a site that tracks ‘trending’ words in status updates and wall posts, much like Twitter’s ‘trending topics’ function.
It’s a little trickier to open up than something like Twitter, thanks to the intricate privacy settings that each user is able to set. It’s likely that at first it’ll simply take anyone out who’s got any kind of privacy set other than the default, but that’ll probably evolve over time.
(via Guardian)
Facebook voters say yes to more content control
The ballots are in, the votes have been counted and the titchy 600,000 out of 22 millions Facebook users have voted in favour of terms and conditions giving them more control over content posted on the social networking site.
The turn out was supposed to have sway if it represented a minimum of 30% of the Facebook population but it seems they underestimated the utter apathy of the internet population. Three percent managed to click an opinion. All those who couldn’t be bothered, raise your hand now. Yep, me too.
(via PC Pro)
Facebook polls users on whether they'd pay for vanity URLs
Social networking goliath Facebook is considering offering paid-for vanity URLs to users. It would mean that, for a fee, you’d be able to get Facebook.com/whateveryoulike.
The URLs might go through a bidding process, so that whoever bids the highest gets access to a particular shortcode. The site currently only offers them to selected high-profile users to encourage them to use the site more.
Most sites usually take a ‘first-come, first-served’ approach to usernames, but that’s resulted in many companies having trouble getting their trademarks because they’re being squatted on by other users. Companies that try and shift the squatters often gain intense criticism.
Would you pay for a vanity URL on Facebook? If it wasn’t too expensive, I think I might. Let us know your thoughts on Twitter – message @techdigest.
(via AllFacebook)
Facebook hits 200 million users
Today at some stage, Facebook will hit 200 million users – nearly 3% of the world’s population. It’s another massive milestone for the service, which only hit 150 million back in January. The news means that it leapfrogs Brazil to become – if it were a country – the fifth most populous country in the world.
The news has prompted boss Mark Zuckerberg to make a blog post, asking what 200 million means to you. A video’s been put together, too, which you can see here, featuring a heatmap that shows where Facebook is most accessed – proving fairly conclusively that it’s still an exclusively western phenomenon.
If you’re interested in more about Facebook, then have a read of my article the other day which discussed why we shouldn’t forget about Facebook in all our excitement over Twitter and Spotify.
OPINION: Don't forget about Facebook
With the tech world all a-twitter about, er… Twitter, and having little sexy accidents when talking about Spotify, it’s sometimes easy to forget about Facebook. In reality, Facebook is only a couple of years older than both Twitter and Spotify, and there’s still people out there who say things like “I don’t get all this Facebook malarky”.
Let’s start with the numbers. Facebook recently hit 175 million active users – if it were a country it’d be the 6th most populous in the world, between Brazil and Pakistan. More than 3 billion minutes are spent on the site every day – enough time to watch the extended edition of the Lord of the Rings trilogy 4.3 million times. Or read “War and Peace” 35,000 times.
Don’t forget that Facebook popularized the app store concept way before Apple, too. Sure, most Facebook apps are a load of old rubbish and their integration was an unmitigated disaster for the user experience (hence why they’ve mostly disappeared) but most iPhone apps are crap too. Seriously, how long does iFart sit on your phone before you delete it?
Despite being blamed for wanton destruction, Facebook even saves lives! News reached us this morning of a kid who was saved from a suicide attempt by a friend over Facebook chat. The power of having all you friends at your fingertips can stop people from doing silly things, and can rescue them when they do silly things.
So don’t forget about Facebook. Businesses – If you’re developing an Android app, stop and think – why not port this to Facebook, too? If you’re thinking of starting an ad campaign on Twitter or Spotify, remember Facebook’s userbase and think about using Facebook’s powerful ad tools to reach its bazillions of users. It’s not old hat.
The rest of you – go check in on your Facebook friends. Maybe you haven’t seen them since primary school, but that doesn’t mean you have nothing in common – on the contrary, you might have more than ever in common. Go poke that girl you ‘fancied’ when you were 13. She might even poke you back. The rest of the world is a little slower than you, mister early-adopter. Don’t forget about them.
Here’s a handy link. Click it, and spend half an hour remembering the web two years ago. You might even like it more: Facebook.
CC all your emails to Jacqui Smith, instructs protest group
The government is rather keen on the idea of creating a massive database that will store all your emails, texts, calls and internet use. It’s an idea that’s understandably raised a few eyebrows, even outside of privacy and consumer-based pressure groups. Even I’m a little alarmed about this one, despite generally not being that fussed about privacy issues.
In protest, some enterprising sorts have created a campaign called “CC all your emails to Jacqui Smith day”. On one day – June 15th – they want you to copy all your email correspondence in to [email protected], the idea being that they get so overwhelmed by a mountain of correspondence, so much of it inane and useless, that they realize it’s a rubbish idea.
Of course, it could backfire. On the FAQ section of the site under ‘is this legal?’, the organizers claim: “This is unclear. You personally are certainly at no risk from prosecution. But it is possible that if the volume of emails crashes the servers, it could be seen as a Denial of Service attack – although there is no precedent for such an attack coming from multiple people sending a small number of emails.”
There’s also a Facebook group, though as the Register points out, they’re fairly keen on keeping all your private data themselves, so you might just want to plump for the email option. Sign up on the website, right here.
“CC all your emails to Jacqui Smith day”
Prison Officer sacked after friending prisoners on Facebook
There are several no-nos to avoid when you’re a prison officer. Letting the inmates out for a picnic is one. Swapping places with the prisoners and pretending you’re in some kind of Bizarro World is another. Befriending them on Facebook is another equally stupid sounding mistake, but one that a Leicestershire prison officer was sacked over.
An investigation into Nathan Singh was initiated when he was suspected of providing mobile phones and other such banned items to inmates. He was really caught bang to right when it was discovered that amongst his Facebook friends were 13 criminals, even though they didn’t find any evidence of his alleged smuggling. He was sacked for gross misconduct as a result.
