Month: April 2011

News Corp Sells MySpace for $100 Million

News Corp paid $580 million for MySpace back in 2005. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but Facebook has since taken the spotlight. Now, according to The Wall Street Journal, News Corp. is seeking bids for no less that $100 million. Potential buyers include private equity firm Thomas H. Lee Partners, Redscout Ventures and Criterion Capital Partners LLC, owner of social networking site Bebo. MySpace attempted to reinvent themselves, but it looks like they just couldn’t turn things around.

Playstation Network Compromised

Between April 17th and 19th, Sony noticed there was an “illegal and unauthorized intrusion” on the Playstation Network. It was not until the 26th that users were finally alerted about the intrusion. Sony explains the delay on the Playstation Blog.

“There’s a difference in timing between when we identified there was an intrusion and when we learned of consumers’ data being compromised. We learned there was an intrusion 19th April and subsequently shut the services down. We then brought in outside experts to help us learn how the intrusion occurred and to conduct an investigation to determine the nature and scope of the incident. It was necessary to conduct several days of forensic analysis, and it took our experts until yesterday to understand the scope of the breach. We then shared that information with our consumers and announced it publicly yesterday evening.”

For more details about the breach, there is a FAQ.

NOOK Color Gets Major Update

The Barnes & Noble NOOK Color has been considered to be a junior Android tablet since it’s launch. Many have already rooted the device to open up the possibilities for it’s use beyond an advanced ebook reader. Now, with the latest update, your average NOOK owner gains access to more than 100 select applications across a broad range of categories. Yes, Angry Birds is included, along with a few choice apps like my6sense and Pulse. The whole Android Market is not included, but this may be easier to manage for your average NOOK user while still making the device infinitely more usable.

via LouisGray.com

Twitter Changes OAuth Screen. Passes 200 Million Accounts.

You may have authorized an application to access your Twitter account before by hitting a “Sign in with Twitter” button. Usually, you get a simple screen telling you the name of the app that wants to access your Twitter account along with the Allow or Deny buttons. Now, Twitter is tweaking this exchange so that you get a better of idea of exactly what the site you’re authorizing will be able to do. On another Twitter note, they’ve now passed 200 Million registered users worldwide.

Official Google Docs App for Android

Google has finally launched an official Google Docs Android app. What you may want to know up front is that you can’t actually edit documents using the app. Whenever you open a document for editing from the app, it jumps to the web browser. So, why would you want this app? It’s the deep integration of your documents with your Android device, including the ability to upload content from your phone and open documents directly from Gmail. I’m sold right there, but you can also add a widget to your home screen for easy access to three basic tasks: jumping to your starred documents, taking a photo to upload, or creating a new document with one tap.

The most exciting feature, though, is Optical Character Recognition. Take a picture of a document and the Docs App will convert the image into an actual, editable, document.

Using the app and your phone’s camera, you can turn photos with text into editable Google documents with the power of optical character recognition (OCR). Just create a new ‘Document from Photo’ or select the camera icon from the widget, and your converted document will appear in your documents list shortly after you snap the picture. You can also convert photos already stored on your phone by sharing them with the Google Docs app. OCR does a pretty good job capturing unformatted text in English but won’t recognize handwriting or some fonts – stay tuned, it will get better over time!

via Google Mobile Blog

FindLikes is a service that lets you find music and videos that you like based on what you’ve liked on Facebook. Not only does FindLikes find your own Likes from Facebook, but it pulls in all the stuff your friends like. This is a great way to expand your horizons and get direct referrals and recommendations from your friends.

When you first hit FindLikes, you’ll need to connect your Facebook account. This pulls in all the Movies, Music, and TV Shows from your profile that you’ve said you like. These show up as a grid of thumbnails organized by category. Clicking on any thumbnail brings up a list of videos related to that subject. For instance, if you said you liked Tupac, You’d get a huge list of Tupac-related videos. These play continuously if left alone, but you can also choose which video to play from the list. You also have the option to save the video you’re watching for later, which adds it to your personal playlist. The Facebook page related to what you’re watching shows up on the right. If you prefer YouTube and have a new channel our you are just trying to grow your channel you can now buy youtube views.

Now comes the fun part. You already know what you like and now have access to just about as much video as you could shake a stick at on those topics, but what if you want to branch out? If you jump over to the Movies, Music, Videos, or Photos tab, you can do just that. These all show stuff your friends like, which could lead you to finding something awesome. Hitting a topic on these pages lets you browse the related videos, see which of your friends Like it, and you can hit Like yourself if you find something cool.

FindLikes is a great concept and definitely has potential. There are a few odd quirks about the interface, but these are minor. For instance, clicking on a Liked item opens up the list of media in a new window. There is no way to get back to the main FindLikes site from this new window as the huge FindLikes logo at the top links to the Facebook page. I also noticed that your Facebook connection can time out after a while, requiring you to login with Facebook again.

Overall, the service is awesome and worth a look. Users have watched well over 4500 hours of video on the site. Founder Dexster Smith is a serial entrepreneur who previously served as President and Co-Founder at Doubletwist, Digiscents, and Upstream Biosciences.

It was inevitable with the ridiculous growth of Android. Apple currently still holds the title for largest app store, but that will change in just a few months. This info comes as part of a report from Distimo.

“The Apple App Store for iPhone is the largest store in terms of all applications available; however it was among the slowest growing stores in terms of relative growth in March,” Distimo observes in its report. “Regardless of its low relative growth, the Apple App Store for iPhone was still second only to Google in terms of absolute growth figures.”

By the end of June 2011, Distimo expects the Android Market to have about 40,000 fewer applications than the Apple App Store. Just one month after that, based on current growth numbers, the Android Market should eclipse the Apple App Store.

“If all application stores maintain their current growth pace, approximately five months from now Google Android Market will be the largest store in terms of number of applications, followed by the Apple App Store for iPhone and iPad, Windows Phone 7 Marketplace, BlackBerry App World and Nokia Ovi Store,”

As of this writing, Android already beats Apple in the sheer number of free apps available as opposed to total apps available. I’m not exactly sure, though, if that’s good or bad. Is more always better?

via AllThingsD

Apple has finally released a statement regarding the location data controversy which erupted last week. The statement answers 10 questions that should help iPhone users understand exactly what is going with their location data.

The main take-away here is that Apple is not actually tracking your location. They aren’t even storing your location. The location data that people are seeing is from a “crowd-sourced database of Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data that is generated by tens of millions of iPhones sending the geo-tagged locations of nearby Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers in an anonymous and encrypted form to Apple.”

In an upcoming software update, Apple will address a bug which continues to update this database when Location Services is turned off. Other fixes include: Reducing the size of the crowd-sourced database, no longer backing up this cache, and deleting the cache entirely when you turn off Location Services.

To reiterate, the information in the database is not necessarily yours, it’s simply a cache of towers and WiFi hotspots that Apple has collected anonymously in order to speed up the process of finding a GPS satellite when you do choose to use Location Services.

Check out the full statement here.

via Ars

Google Realtime Search just got a lot more useful with the addition of results from services like Quora, Gowalla, Facebook, and a few others. The additional services came yesterday with no official announcement from Google. Other services added include (but may not be limited to): Plixi, Me2day, and Twitgoo.

The discovery was made in a thread on Quora, which showed that Google Realtime Search was “indexing Quora activity such as asking Questions, adding Answers, upvoting Answers, and submitting Posts.” This thread was later upvoted by Quora co-founder Adam D’Angelo and CFO Marc Bodnick, giving some confirmation.

This is great news for Quora and the other services involved here. Not only are they getting some shine in Realtime Search, but this means they will probably see more action in search results overall.

It’s also interesting to note that Gowalla check-in information is being highlighted, but no Foursquare. This is because Gowalla location data is public while Foursquare only shows your check-ins after you’ve logged in.

via TechCrunch

Under Armour has launched an interesting digital search for two outstanding candidates to join the sports performance apparel brand this summer as members of the “Ultimate Intern Team”.

“Under Armour is constantly looking for fresh and innovative ways to reach our audience and tell our story,” said Dan Mecchi, Under Armour’s Director of Digital Media. “We’re raising the stakes on the typical internship by offering two passionate and talented candidates the opportunity to join our team.”

What’s interesting about the search is the way you apply. Students must submit a 140-character cover letter and resume via Under Armour’s Facebook page through May 12. Many people can barely organize a thought in only 140-characters, so Under Armour is really narrowing the field. If you abuse Twitlonger and Deck.ly, you might have trouble with this one.

To qualify, you must be a current undergraduate or graduate student who will be returning to school after the summer. The selected interns will get a $5,000 scholarship paid directly to their school. The final 100 candidates will be announced on May 16. 10 finalists will eventually be selected for a Skype interview on May 23. From those 10, two Ultimate Interns will be announced at the end of May. While you have to live in Baltimore from June 13 – July 15, all travel and housing expenses are covered as part of the internship.

Pretty awesome way to apply for a position. For all the details, visit Under Armour’s Facebook Page.

via Digital Journal

Michael Vick is urging Google to drop a dog-fighting game from the Android Market. He says he’s “come to learn the hard way that dogfighting is a dead-end street,” referencing his 20-month stint in federal prison for a dogfighting conviction.

“Now, I am on the right side of this issue, and I think it’s important to send the smart message to kids, and not glorify this form of animal cruelty, even in an Android app.”

The game is called “Dog Wars” with the description: Feed, water, train and FIGHT your virtual dog against other player’s… action games, chatroom, many characters and dogs to choose from, virtual store, etc.

“Android should drop ‘Dog Wars’ from its online market and join the national movement to save dogs from this violent practice,” said Vick. Besides just being tasteless, the danger with this app is that it teaches you how to dogfight and could lead to people actually dogfight outside of a virtual world.

“Because ‘Dog Wars’ actually instructs players on how to condition a dog using methods that are standard in organized dogfighting, this game may be a virtual training ground for would-be dogfighters. Its timing and message are all wrong.”

The MSPCA-Angell issued a statement to PC Mag detailing exactly how bad this app is, saying “in the past, dogfighting instruction remained underground; however this ‘game’ brings this knowledge to the mainstream public through a tool attractive to young game players.” Of course, the developers of the app are defending themselves, pointing out that the game is rated “high maturity” and saying that “just because something is illegal in real life in certain countries, does not mean it is illegal to make a song, movie or video game about it.”

What do you think? Should this game be pulled or do these developers have a right to distribute it?

via PCMag.com

It’s almost ridiculous when you think about the fact that YouTube was not the first to offer a movie-on-demand service, an area now dominated by the likes of Apple and Netflix. That’s all about to change as YouTube is finally set to launch a service which charges users to stream mainstream Hollywood movies.

The new service means a full-bore challenge to Apple’s iTunes service – currently the most powerful player in paid video streaming — and a welcome new revenue stream for Hollywood as home entertainment revenues continue their steep decline.

The Wrap Movies reports that the service is set to launch within the next couple of weeks. Sony Pictures Entertainment, Warner Brothers and Universal have reportedly licensed their movies for the new service. A number of independent studios, including Lionsgate (Madea, anyone?) and Kino Lorber are also on board.

One of the major stumbling blocks for any service looking to stream movies or music is dealing with the old-school media companies. This is probably what’s taken so long for Google to bother with this. Even as many studios are now cooperating, Paramount, Fox and Disney have decided not to join.

YouTube has declined to comment on this new service, only responding that they have been renting movies for a year and issuing the following statement:

“We’ve steadily been adding more and more titles since launching movies for rent on YouTube over a year ago, and now have thousands of titles available,” a spokesperson said. “Outside of that, we don’t comment on rumor or speculation.”

YouTube offering video on demand sounds cool and all, but would anyone really care? Probably not initially. What would make the service more exciting and help it stand out from the competition would be a cloud storage locker for your purchases (much like Amazon’s new Cloud Player). The studios are even excited about such a feature as they believe it could help save plummeting DVD sales. Here is a list of some great free movie apps.

Will you buy movies on YouTube?

via TechCrunch, All Things D

Sturvs is a source for Nigerian news which, at first glance, looks like your average blog. Some have also referred to the site as the Nigerian version of Digg. It definitely has a snazzier color scheme, though.

The James Allen rings site, still under development, features a home page with an overview of the categories available, currently: News, Music, Entertainment, Events, Business, Fashion, and Tech. There are links here for Photo Galleries and Reviews, but they don’t go anywhere yet.

The home page is a river of the latest news stories and tweets from around the web regarding Nigeria. Each story has Tweet and Like buttons and you can comment directly on the site via IntenseDebate. Each Tweet in the stream provides buttons to Reply to the tweeter or ReTweet the tweet.

The site doesn’t provide a built-in method for rating the items, but does a good job integrating with Facebook and Twitter for sharing and Liking things. One feature that could make the site immediately easier to use would be the addition of Twitter Web Intents (@corvida describes how to use them here), which would make interacting with the tweets on the site much easier. As it stands now, the reply and retweet buttons simply open a new window to Twitter.com.

As I said, it appears the site is still under development, but it does show some potential. If you’re into Nigerian news, this is one spot to keep an eye on.

via @clpope of Aislefinder

Students Circle Network is a Kyrenia-area start-up (Girne American University Roots) founded in 2010. It is a social network focusing on education for college and high school students, but also provides free course resources and materials, live faculty/teachers/lecturers to help students, scholarship offers, study groups, and many more student-focused services. If you’re interested in continuing education, there’s a webinars, customer service and ce seminars at halfmoonseminars.org. The site is currently indexing over 10,431 courses from over 200 OpenCourseWare member universities across the globe, which will go live soon. Right now, they boast over 340 live courses in Business, Computing, Engineering, Sciences and Humanities. Of course, this all comes free for users.

I am committed to the vision of “building a body of knowledge” that is free and accessible to everyone across the globe. I hope to take online education to the next level in the coming months-years by staying by the commitment and providing even greater resources for students. — Developer and Founder at Students Circle Gossy Ukanwoke

The Students Circle Network team says that the use of collaboration networks in education has increased across the globe. Their primary goal is to unite students and provide a platform to share ideas, have project discussions, and network. It is also gives new students access to experienced students and faculty members who can provide mentoring and enable them improve on their current academic standing.

Check out Students Circle Network and tell us what you think.

Your iPhone is Tracking You…So is Your Android

Everyone pretty much lost it once it was discovered that their beloved iPhones were tracking their every move. Never mind the fact that locating a device through triangulation is a well-known technique. In reality, there isn’t much to fear about this iPhone tracking thing. It boils down to your phone storing your location in a file. It doesn’t matter if you have Location Services enabled or not. There is no way to turn it off and the file is not encrypted. Also, the file will be stored on your computer when you backup your device through iTunes. Now, if someone will go through the trouble of gaining access to your iPhone or your computer in order to get your location history, you probably have more serious things to worry about. Oh, and us Androids get our location info stored as well, just less of it and it’s more difficult to access.

DuckDuckGo Joins Wolfram|Alpha. Should Google Care?

Dr. Stephen Wolfram’s super intelligent “computational knowledge engine” Wolfram|Alpha has joined forces with MIT grad Gabriel Weinberg’s DuckDuckGo search engine. DuckDuckGo uses online crowd-sourcing to augment traditional search engine results, hopefully increasing relevance and cutting out clutter. Wolfram|Alpha is a massive data base, curated by approximately 1,000 human experts and can answer questions like “what the weather was like in London on the day John F Kennedy was assassinated in an instant.”

Why should Google beware? Because Wolfram|Alpha, “the computational knowledge engine,” which launched in May 2009, is considered to be the biggest Internet revolution since the invention of search. In fact, many consider its goal to be the ”Holy Grail of the Internet,” a global store of information that understands and responds to ordinary language in the same way a person does.

via The Next Web

Nokia Challenges Google Maps with Ovi Maps for Web

You thought Google Maps was the only game in town. They’ve got cars mapping the world and can display maps in 3D in the latest updates for your newest car (see hire providers here). You were wrong, though. Nokia has just launched an incredibly realistic three-dimensional map app for the web. Partnering with C3, the leading provider of 3D mapping solutions, Nokia is offering photo-realistic models of the world.

via Engadget source Nokia

HBO GO Coming to a Mobile Device Near You

The HBO Go online streaming service lets subscribers catch up on HBO’s “award-winning and ass-kicking TV content.” According to Engadget, the service is about to hit smartphones and tablets early next month (5-2-11 according to the video). This includes Android, iPhone, and iPad. The video also promises “instant and unlimited access” to “every episode of every season” of your favorite shows with a sprinkling of hit movies.

T-Mobile Launches Voice Calling on Facebook: Bobsled

Google, Skype, and others might want to look out. T-Mobile has announced a set of products called Bobsled which initially allows for voice communications via Facebook, but will later be expanded. Right now, it’s flash-based, but T-Mobile plans to expand the Bobsled brand to mobile devices.

Here’s how the new product works: After downloading and installing Bobsled for Facebook on a Windows or Mac PC, the software adds a phone icon next each friend in your Facebook Chat window. Tap the phone icon, and a free voice call is initiated, even if the call recipient hasn’t installed the Bobsled application yet. Aside from one-touch calling, the service also supports voice mails in case the personal you’re calling isn’t available or doesn’t pick up. I ran a quick, early test with Mike Wolf, one of my GigaOM colleagues, and the sound quality wasn’t bad. More importantly, I didn’t have to worry about what phone number to dial.

via GigaOMTech

Big Snoop Dogg, well-known for his activities both on and offline, is promoting another brand using social media. Blast by Colt 45 is his new thing and some are not very happy about it. Paul Porter, founder of the media watchdog group Industry Ears, is one of those people. While Snoop and Pabst reach out to their audience via YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and video, Porter is using his website and other resources to combat the Blast campaign and raise awareness.

The problem is that the Blast Colt 45 appears to be geared toward a younger crowd. The packaging is colorful and reminiscent of your average energy drink, but the drink is a fruity mixture weighing in at 12% alcohol content. It’s cheap and mostly available in urban areas. Snoop is featured on the Colt 45 Facebook Page and in other print ads holding the drink. Blast’s Twitter account (@blastbycolt) is mentioning @snoopdogg whenever possible. He also featured Blast by Colt at his Album Release Party and video of the event was posted on YouTube.

For 4/20, Snoop was hanging out on Ustream playing music and doing…uh…4/20 things. About 24 minutes into the recording, Snoop requests a few cans of Blast to set up in his background. After encouraging viewers to drink Pepsi “cuz Snoop Dogg says so,” he blasts MSNBC for saying he’s selling Blast to the kids. With slim red and purple cans in the background, he says Blast is for adults.

Paul Porter has been reaching out to artists on Twitter who may be unwittingly promoting Blast by Colt 45 drinks. He received a response from Talib Kweli, who removed Blast from a recent show promo.

@RealTalibKweli Talib Kweli Greene

So on 4-20 I will be at the Granada in Lawrence Kansas but Colt45 is no longer involved in the show promo. Thank yall (fans) for alerting me.

Blacks are large consumers of content via mobile and big social media users, so it’s usually good to see digital marketing companies finally getting it and reaching out to us where we live. In this case, though, I don’t think we need what they’re pushing. Porter is still awaiting responses from Snoop, Raekwon , Zion I and Grouch on their upcoming Blast-affiliated events.

via The Root

Stanley Burrell, whom you may know as MC Hammer, will be lending advice to minority entrepreneurs in the New Media Entrepreneurship, or NewMe, accelerator program in Silicon Valley this summer. Starting June 16, seven minority-led start-ups from across the country will live in a rented house in Mountain View, CA. They will be able to work there in the house or in a shared space in San Francisco, a maid sailors home cleaning service will be provided for them for as long as they stay in the houses. Additional Bay Area start-ups will also be invited to participate, but will not live in the house.

Produced by Black Web 2.0, Semantic Seed, and one of our favorite North Carolina based-entrepreneurs Wayne Sutton, the nine-week program will provide practical advice, networking and exposure to minorities and women leading tech companies. Hammer and others will make scheduled visits to the entrepreneurs.

“Just as it was no big deal to get a hold of me for this (interview), I’ll be just accessible and available” to NewME entrepreneurs, said Hammer. “Hollywood is in the perception business where you create layers to create mystery. In Silicon Valley it’s about taking away the layers to get to the substance.”

Our own Angela Benton says the idea for a platform for minority entrepreneurs while at a conference last year in Washington D.C. and was later reinforced by a report from CB Insights which said African Americans make up 1% of Internet company founders nationally. Benton believes the reason for the anemic showing of African American entrepreneurs is lack of mentorship–a void she hopes to begin filling with the accelerator.

via WSJ

Greenpeace released a study (PDF) Thursday which gives some top tech companies low marks for energy efficiency. According to the study, Google and Yahoo made the grade while others still have some work to do.

“We expect these companies to play a pivotal role in ensuring we move to clean, safe renewable energy system and avoid future disasters like Fukishima,” Gary Cook, Greenpeace IT Policy Analyst, said in a statement. “We think consumers want to know that when they upload a video or change their Facebook status that they are not contributing to toxic coal ash, global warming or future Fukishima’s.”

You would expect a company like Apple to score high in this department given their attention to detail, but they actually did the worst. The Cupertino company scored a 54.5 percent for its “coal intensity,” which was just slightly worse than Facebook at 52.8 percent.

Twitter was the worst student in the class, getting F’s across the board. This is in part because of their new data center in Salt Lake City, which Greenpeace says ” is a huge step backwards for Twitter” and that Twitter’s total electricity load in Utah could “easily be met by clean sources of energy.”

Apple ran into similar issues with their decision to build a $1 billion data center in North Carolina. Dubbed the iDataCenter, Greenpeace says it would be built in “an electrical grid among the dirtiest in the country” and Apple’s location choice “indicates a lack of corporate commitment to clean energy supply for its cloud operations.”

Google, while earning points for their announcement of a second power purchase agreement for wind energy in Oklahoma, still got an F in transparency for not disclosing information on energy use or GHG emissions.

Yahoo earned a D in transparency, but was praised for their energy-efficient “chicken coop” data center in Lockport, NY. This is the first center to use Yahoo’s green data center design, known as the Yahoo Computing Coop (YCC).

Facebook, who has had run-ins with Greenpeace before, was said “to lack the vision to become a company powered by clean energy.” Greenpeace says Facebook has selected data centers that rely heavily on coal and nuclear and has made no significant investments into renewable energy.

Does it bother you that updating your Twitter status, poking your friends on Facebook, or playing Angry Birds on your iPhone could contribute to toxic coal ash, global warming or future Fukishima’s?

via PCMag.com.