Tag: twitter
Five ways to protect yourself on Twitter and other social media
An American gentleman by the name of Israel Hyman had his house burgled while he was away on holiday. Nothing particularly new there. However, there’s a serious suspicion that the thief had all the information he/she needed through Mr Hyman’s own posts on Twitter.
He’d tweeted that he was “preparing to head out of town” and that he had “another ten hours of driving ahead”. Combined with links to Mr Hyman’s Flickr page containing photos of his computers, bicycle and flat screen TV, all of which were geo-tagged with their location at his home address, and suddenly you’ve got a pretty good picture for a would-be criminal.
Naturally, there’s a lot of scaring the bejesus out of people in the press on this one and, quite naturally, there’s probably a few of you out there wondering whether or not it’s a good idea to be posting all sorts of bits and pieces on Twitter and other social networks. In fact, you may not be sure that it’s safe to use social media at all.
Let me allay your fears first of all by saying, it is. In the great words of the Hitchhiker’s Guide, Don’t Panic. Twitter is safe, Facebook is safe but, perfectly understandibly, there’s a few uncertainties and teething problems because, relatively speaking, it’s all rather new. Even if you’re an early adopter, the game changes slightly when you’ve got the whole world using these things, including potential burglars.
So, here are a few bits of advice that’ll keep you feeling free and uncensored on Twitter and other social networks without ending up like Mr Hyman:
1) Protect your updates
If you haven’t seen, there is an option on Twitter that means you can protect your updates so that only people you allow can see your tweets. It’s indicated by a little padlock. Any time anyone clicks to follow you, you’ll be sent an e-mail asking if that’s ok by you. You can then take the time to check out their profile, look at their Tweets and generally have a good Google of them if you like before you decide whether or not they’re kosher.
It’s really a Twitter version of the Facebook rule of thumb that states “Don’t make friends with people you don’t know” or that warning of wisdom stitched onto our hearts from a very young age – don’t talk to strangers.
2) Watch your words
Don’t write on Twitter and Facebook the kinds of information you wouldn’t shout from the rooftops anyway, eg: bank details, phone numbers, car registration, home address. It’s all fairly indelible once it’s up there and it’s quite easy to piece it all together.
On the other hand, I wouldn’t worry too much about saying what a lovely time your having on holiday or how much you’re looking forward to going or in fact just about anything else at all. If you’ve got your updates protected then you’ve vetted everyone who’s following you in the first place and, if you haven’t, it’s still next to impossible to be get all the other pieces of the puzzle together so long as you have in mind the general expanse of your digital foot print.
So, if you really must put your home address on your profile, then don’t start saying when and for how long you’re going to be away from the the fort.
3) Don’t geo-tag everything
…or at least if you do, it might be worth removing the meta data when you upload your images to Facebook, Twitpic or Flickr. It’s probably worth taking a look at your phone or camera to see whether your pictures auto-tag. As it goes, most compacts and DSLRs don’t have in-built GPS anyway, so you’d probably know about it if there was geo-tagging going on. Most mobile phones these days will offer you the option, so make sure you take a look at the image files before you upload from your handsets.
Of course, for 95% of your photos, it’s not really a problem anyway but worth bearing in mind that everything you snap at home and upload will pinpoint exactly where you live. That may not be a big deal on its own but if you’re not going to protect your updates and if you are going to tweet about when and where you’re going and how long for, then make sure you’re not geo-tagging all your home snaps.
4) Keep your personal away from your business
The real thing that rumbled Mr Hyman, if indeed the burglar did use Twitter and Flickr to case the job, was the fact that he’s got over 2,000 followers and he’s got that many because he’s mixed his personal life and business life in one account.
Quite sensibly, Mr Hyman uses Twitter to promote his online video business but what he hasn’t done is split his personal and business interested into two separate user names. So, on the one hand he wants to be followed by as many people as possible as an advert for his professional services and, on the other, he’s telling them all the more intimate details of his personal life.
Not a good idea if you’re then going to combine that with tweeting about your whereabouts and tagging all your home snaps too.
5) Don’t click on every single link that comes through
Last of all is just an extension of what we should all have learnt by now with regards to safety online. It applies to Twitter as much as it does to Facebook and e-mails too. Just don’t go clicking on every single line of hyperlinked URL that comes your way. Make sure you know who it’s from is probably the best piece of advice here.
If you know who sent it to you, 99% of the time they’ll be no issues at all, and on that 1% of the time when it’s some auto-sent piece malicious link, your friend from whom it came will probably have warned you already.
Generally, you can get away with ignoring one or two of these rules of thumb but if you do them all together, you’re open to running into problems. The overall message is just to be aware of the scope of all the info you put on line. There’s no need to worry about using Twitter, Facebook, Flickr or any other social media. They’re perfectly safe applications. Just be aware of how much of your life you put online.
At the end of the day, houses have been getting burgled for years and there’s only anecdotal evidence even in the case of Mr Hyman that social media was used at all in the invasion and theft of his property. On the plus side, if it was through Twitter, at least there’s a very traceable list of suspects.
Twitter generates $3million revenue for Dell
Back in March, this very blog suggested five ways in which Twitter might be able to make money.
Suggestion one was entitled “Companies must pay!” and highlighted how businesses were benefiting from free advertising via the microblogging site.
Today, it has emerged that computer giant Dell has made $3m from advertising its products via Twitter, with a third of this coming in the last six months – the period in which Twitter’s popularity has exploded.
This may seem small peanuts compared to the $12.3 billion of revenue Dell earned during the first quarter of this year, but $3million is still a whole lot of moolah. And it doesn’t really seem fair that Twitter won’t see a single penny of this.
The good news for Twitter is that Dell, who had previously dismissed the idea of ever paying Twitter for its service, may be coming round to the idea that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. They’ve admitted that Twitter offers a unique service that is incredibly useful in terms of marketing.
The web is full of affiliate links whereby commission is paid to sites linking to products – it’s what makes the free-content based system viable. It seems a bit silly that one of the web’s most popular systems isn’t involved in this system.
(via PC Pro)
Twitter to introduce Verified Accounts
Twitter have unveiled plans to introduce “Verified Accounts” in order to prevent fake tweeting.
The announcement came as Twitter issued a strict denial that they had agreed a settlement with Tony La Russa, coach of US baseball outfit The St. Louis Cardinals with respect to fake tweets made in his name.
Co-founder of the microblogging giants Biz Stone admitted that: “Impersonation violates Twitter’s Terms of Service” and admitted that they “take the issue seriously.” However, he went on to describe La Russa’s lawsuit as “an unnecessary waste of judicial resources bordering on frivolous.”
Stone stated that the verified accounts service will use a verification seal and the service will first be aimed at “public officials, public agencies, famous artists, athletes, and other well known individuals at risk of impersonation.”
He did warn, though, that the lack of a seal does not necessarily mean that a Twitter account is fake and insisted that “the vast majority of Twitter accounts are not impersonators.”
(via Twitter Blog)
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.
Twitter users duped into scam by promises of more followers
Despondent Twitterers, sad that their tweets are going unheard, except by their small band of uninterested followers, have been resorting to clicking a link which reads: “OMG I got over a 1000 followers from http://twittercut.com”. They’re then directed to a fake Twitter site and are prompted for their username and password.
The tweet then gets re-sent from their account along with one directing followers to a dating website. The fake site has accrued at least 13,000 unique user views over the last two days.
Remember you’re tweeting as much for yourself as you are for your followers. Eventually they’ll start following, and if they don’t, you know what they say? Give up and don’t go back.
Twitter Teacher faces invesigation after posting 38 tweets a day
A teacher, who tweeted while she taught, is to be investigated her employers after the Bute-based high school teacher posted up to 38 updates per day.
“Had S3 period 6 for the last 2 years…don’t know who least wants to do anything, them or me,” read one tweet.
“Have three Asperger’s boys in S1 class – never a dull moment! Always offer an interesting take on things,” read another. Argyll and Bute council have a policy of blocking all social networking sites in its schools.
It is thought that the unnamed teacher used her phone to send updates.
A council spokeswoman said: “Social networking sites are blocked in all schools as policy. This has always been the case and applies to all council staff and not just teaching staff.”
“The teacher in question is not facing disciplinary action, although the council is looking into the matter,” she added.
Even though the timing of posts appeared to coincide with school hours; “Depute came in while I was logging on.” Surely they’re at least going to confiscate her phone till the end of term!
London business babe makes money with twitter
Internet publishers have long complained, like a bunch of ninnies, that they can’t turn high traffic into high profit. Alicia Navarro’s skim links company allows online publishers and bloggers to create affiliate links automatically.
And after tweaking this technology she’s found a way of making money from tweets. Using her good.ly service, which like tinyurl.com, shortens URLs, Navarro’s users link to say, a book they enjoyed and someone else buys it – cablow, Navarro is in the money.
But being the caring, conscienouss and frankly pretty sexy businesslady she is, she’s giving the money to charity. Fancy her a bit? I do.
“I’m a huge fan of Twitter, but I really wanted to use it for something a bit more useful. I had already developed most of the technology for a commercial version so it was relatively simple to alter it for Twitter,” said Navarro, probably very sexily.
The entrepreneur, who has been shortlisted for a prize at the National Business Awards and in our opinion deserve to win it, said: “There is an incredible number of internet firms around.
“It’s amazing how London has become a real world centre for dotcom entrepreneurs, and there is a real feeling that despite the economic climate, people are beginning to set up firms and use technology to save money.”
Swoon.
(Via London Evening Standard)
Twitter goes TV with Samsung
Twitter is hitting our TV screens as the Samsung Internet@TV service embraces the world of microblogging. Now, to begin with my inner monologue went something like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” as it has done with all the widget TV nonsense since CES 2009 but actually this is completely brilliant.
You’re going to be watching TV with your mates at all times. Lonely nights in are a thing of the past. You can watch the box with people all over the country. Imagine the mass slaggings during reality TV; the awesome virtual mayhem through football games? Samsung, this is a stroke of genius. Great way to get around expensive premium rate phone calls for audience interactivity too.
The service is available NOW on Samsung LED 6000, 7000 and 8000 series televisions, and 6 and 7 series LCD screens too. Go use and make merry.
Samsung
Yoko Ono judges Twitter poetry competition
High-culture monolith, Yoko Ono, will begin judging the first ever Twitter poetry competition which started today.
London commuters are being encouraged to submit haiku poems about the British summertime, and those judged good enough will appear on the largest digital display at Kings Cross station and on Twitter.
Scottish poet, Jackie Kay, who will also judge the competition said: “I liked the idea of doing something that combined an old form with a very new form.
“People could do a haiku on the way to work and it’s a good way to exercise the brain. It’s like the sudoku.”
Whether the crowded commute on the tube is the most conducive environment for creativity is yet to be seen, and with a measly 128 characters to work with after the @kingsplace prefix, budding poets might find their burgeoning verse stymied.
But, getting into the spirit of things, I had a pop at one:
I recall summer,
The sun between may and july,
When I forgot how to write.
Not too shabby I think you’ll agree. Why not leave your comments as a Haiku? That’d be nice.
(via Telegraph)
Five ways to win when Google fails
So Google freaked out over night. Thousands of people all over the world were cut off from all things G as an error in the internet giant’s system diverted vast amounts of traffic through their Asia servers. It caused 14% of all their users to have a slow and interrupted service. That’s a lot of users.
For many it brought their web life to a standstill, so reliant are they on Google and all its products but there’s no need to fear. Google don’t and will never own the internet and there’s a million and one alternatives to everything they do. So, next time their service goes down, here’s five ways to keep you winning while Google fails.
Search
Before Google came along there was a huge choice of search engines. The likes of Webcrawler, Lycos and Ask were around a good five earlier and they’re still going strong – just not compared to the G monopoly.
I entered the term “Squeaky Bum Time” into Google, Alta Vista, Yahoo!, Lycos and the self-proclaimed “World’s Biggest Search Engine” Cuil. All of them came up with relevant results, most of them started with the definition of the idiom as the first result and they all returned pages on Alex Ferguson – often in relation to the Russian and Swedish football teams.
Each engine demonstrated understanding of the phrase and its relevance to modern culture. The bottom line is that you’re going to find what you need, certainly, between them, if not, with each individually, and design-wise, there’s plenty to chose from for something that’s both straight forward and pleasing to use.
I don’t use gmail but I understand I’m in some kind of minority here. I know that there’s plenty of good things about it, such as IMAP and POP3 options, the layout and the spam filter that’s pretty much as good as it gets, but everyone has back up e-mail accounts, right? Tell me you do? Everyone needs junk mail services – ones that you might use for entering competitions or signing up for newsletters or just when some website makes you register with them before you use it.
Just make sure that you don’t put all of your e-mail eggs in one basket. Spread your e-mail service of choice around a bit. They all go down from time to time so you unless you want to be stuck every time they do, keep all your contacts in a few different ones.
Hotmail may be a bit of a dinosaur but it still works well. They keep up with the times even if they don’t innovate and functionality is very straight forward. Your ISP will have probably given you a free e-mail service when you signed up for them and if, it’s obscure enough, you might even still be able to get [email protected].
At the end of the day, e-mail’s e-mail. You can attach a world of bells and whistles but so long as you’ve get plenty of storage, you can search, you can send and receive and it doesn’t cost anything, then it’s good enough.
Oh, and if you really can’t face leaving Google’s bosom on this one, then at least use one of the online services that stores all your contacts like 02’s Bluebook or Mobyko. At least then you’ll be able to contact friends and family when meltdown next arises.
Online Office
“My Google Docs!” was a typical cry yesterday on Twitter as access to all manner of the most important spread sheets and cloud office files were rendered inaccessible. The first thing I can suggest here is a bit of an obvious one – back them up.
Now, I’m not saying back up everything – no one can be bothered – but don’t leave the most important files at the mercy of the whims of the web. If Google doesn’t go down, your own home or office network might so keep mutliple copies of the grade A important bits and pieces. That’s really down to discipline though and either you’re that kind of person or you’re not.
Don’t worry, I’m not either but I am the kind of person to spread my footprints around the web and I use Zoho Docs as well as Google’s service. It’s got more than I could ever use from docs and spreadsheets through to calendars, planners, projects, invoices and business reports. In fact there’s more than any other service, it’s easy to use and it looks pretty too.
Video Players
When Google goes down, all its little buddies do too including the enormously popular YouTube. Sure it’s got over 62 million videos and gets at least five times more daily plays than anyone else but there’s still plenty of competition and, more to the point, weeks’ worth of footage to enjoy on all sorts of others services.
Vimeo, Imeem and Metcafe are all good choices and, because they’re not quite so big, there’s probably a better overall standard of quality, a little less of the happy slapping and not quite the insanity of the famous “YouTube community” to contend with. The other bonus of being smaller is that any copyright sensitive material is more likely to remain there unseen without the big companies demanding its removal.
Web Analytics
Websites relying on Google Analytics had a bit of an issue last night with many refusing to load while they were waiting for the stat service to kick in. Now sadly, as a user, there’s not a lot you can do about that if the site in charge hasn’t done the decent thing and disabled the service to keep their site afloat.
What I can at least do, is recommend a few other good stat services that’ll run at the same time as GAnalytics so that you can keep an eye on your traffic even when Google throws a wobbly.
StatCounter is one. It doesn’t necessarily give you the most accurate reflection of what’s going on but it is consistent, so you will be able to view the trends – probably all that matters when you get down to it. The other bonus is that it’s easy to use and it’s free.
If you want to feel good about yourself, you can try a service from the open source community called AWstats. It doesn’t have quite the same straight forward functionality as Stat Counter but it is accurate and free to use too.
