“Worst Outage in Over Four Years” Says Facebook Engineer

Facebook Software Engineering Director Robert Johnson explained to a curious public why Facebook was down yesterday, calling this incident as "the worst outage we've had in over four years."

In a brief blog post, Johnson discussed today's downtime, which occurred from 11:30 a.m. PST. The site wasn't functioning again for most users until around 3 p.m. PST.

Today's outage was unrelated to another period of downtime that happened one day before, when issues with a third-party networking provider caused problems for some users trying to connect to Facebook.

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Twitter Hit By Mouseover Bug

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Computer security firm Sophos warned that a security flaw was causing havoc on Twitter .

Graham Cluley of Sophos said on his blog that the flaw allows messages to pop-up and third-party websites to open in a Web browser just by moving the computer mouse over a link.

Thousands of Twitter accounts were reportedly affected. Victims of the bug included Sarah Brown, the wife of the former British prime minister who has over one million followers on Twitter , Sophos said.

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Build Your Career With Facebook's 'BranchOut'

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Facebook isn’t all party pics and FarmVille; some of us do serious career networking on the site.BranchOut caters to the professionally oriented Facebook user. This relatively new application transforms Facebook into your personal career center. You can search through your friends by company to see which social connections can help you professionally, too.

You can use the app to discover new contacts and business opportunities on Facebook, as well. There’s a friends-of-friends feature that will help you find connections at specific companies you’re interested in, and you can use the app to post and find job openings.

All in all, BranchOut is useful enough that we wonder why Facebook isn’t doing more internally on the career and job-search end. Here’s a brief demo video:

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Reserve Your About.me Page

About.me is a new place where you can create splash-page style one-page websites for your online profile. Your about.me page can have your picture, your bio and links to your various social profiles and your websites /blogs.

About.me is in private mode so you can’t create profiles yet but they do allow you to reserve your names – if the username (vanity URL) you are looking for is available, they’ll reserve it for you and will send you a confirmation over email.

Check out some beautiful about.me pages that are now live – Om Malik, Lindsay Campbell, Tony Conrad and Ryan Chris (they are co-founders).

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Twitter was Bought At $7500 : @ev

Evan Williams said on his Twitter profile that he bought Twitter.com domain for $7500.

Noone knows, even Twitter employees, who was the owner of the domain, and what was topic of the Twitter before Evan bought it. If we ask Evan disclose this secret? Ask him: @ev.

Approximately 4 years 145 milliion users and 300,000 3rd party application after. It will be a wonder for anyone what it costs today. It is unbelievable to know the fact that still Twitter website draws a millions of users.

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The Best Things About New Twitter

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The new version of Twitter.com  has been released. This is the first major change on Twitter so far. This is surely a great upgrade in everyway for Twitter users.

Here I want to tell what are the changes in look and feel of new Twitter and what are things that evryone on Twitter should know.


“What’s Happening?” Not As In Your Face
The “What’s happening?” box obviously still sits atop the tweet stream, but it’s a bit narrower than it was previously. And you’ll notice that by default there is no “tweet” button. It’s only when you click in the text entry field that this button (and the character-count and the location information) appears. This seems to go along with what CEO Evan Williams stated earlier — that Twitter doesn’t have to necessarily be about tweeting, it can be about exploring too.

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How To Use Youtube LeanBack?

Recently YouTube introduced a new mobile feature that will encourage its user to watch more videos on a computer screen with a better quality and makes you feel like watching television. Yes, YouTube has been trying to dominate your living room with its newly launched feature called YouTube Leanback.

The YouTube Leanback is specially designed for consumers and will make them to just sit back, relax and enjoy watching video one after the other. It is as easy as watching television at the comfort of your own living room.

This Google-owned video sharing site first announced Leanback in May upon the announcement of Google TV at the Google I/O conference. Google TV in cooperation with Sony, Intel and Logitech combines the internet with television programming giving a TV-like experience on the computer. The YouTube Leanback will be integrated with Google TV and designed to enhance effectiveness of video playback.

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Search And Listen Podcasts via 'Google Listen'

Google has developed a new application for their Android OS, called Listen, which they unveiled yesterday in their Google Mobile Blog.

Listen from Google Labs brings podcasts and web audio to your Android-powered device. It lets you search, subscribe, download and stream. By subscribing to programs and search terms it will create a personalized audio-magazine loaded with fresh shows and news stories whenever you listen. In this release Listen is indexing thousands of popular English-only audio sources.

Google Listen Frequently Asked Questions

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One System Dashboard for all Social Networks

Can’t live without your favorite social networking sites? Here’s something that will help you in those anxious moments when you are unable to access a particular social site.

Social DownorNot is a public dashboard that displays the current system status of all the popular social networking websites in near real-time.

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'Google damaging users' brain'

LONDON: An author has claimed that Google is damaging the brain of its users by providing information almost instantly, leading people to lose their intellectual capacity to store information.

Nicolas Carr, The author of 'The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains', claimed that the web was depriving our mental faculties of the regular workouts they need.

Carr, who is behind the 'Rough Type' blog, argued that to improve concentration sites such as Google should be made more difficult to use, a theory which contradicts software designers who compete to make their programmes simpler.

The comments came not long after Google launched Google Instant, which delivers search results before you finish typing. "In many ways I admire Google, but I think they have a narrow view of the way we should be using our minds," the Telegraph quoted him as telling the BBC News.

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Ban for Google in Czech

PRAGUE: Authorities in the Czech Republic have banned Google Inc from continuing in its mapping feature

"Street View" in the eastern European country.

The Czech Office for Personal Data Protection says Google has not been granted a necessary registration for the activity. Spokeswoman Hana Stepankova declined to give details. The office plans to speak about the case next week.

The office has been investigating Google for failing to meet necessary requirements needed to collect data used for "Street View" since April.

The US Internet giant has come under fire from authorities across Europe, including Germany, over concerns that it violated people's privacy while taking shots of city streets.

Google acknowledged the privacy breach in an apology in the spring.

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Harrisburg University Bans Social Media For A Week.

Harrisburg University of Science and Technology banned social media for a week for all students. The students are strictly avoided using Twitter, Facebook, instant messaging and any other online communication except e-mail.

NPR reports that university Provost Eric Darr chose to enact the temporary ban because he wants students to think about how much they’re using technology in their daily lives and what kind of impact it has. From NPR’s interview it doesn’t seem that he’s anti-technology or anti-social media per se; he just believes today’s college students take its role in their lives for granted.

“Often, there are behaviors or habits, ways that we use technology that we may ourselves not even be able to articulate because we’re not aware of them,” Darr says. Students will write reflective essays about their experiences after the blackout has ended.

Not all students will be part of this academic exercise. The blackout will simply be enforced by blocking social sites and networks on the campus network, so students living off-campus will be unaffected, and students with smartphones won’t have any trouble staying connected either.

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Twitter Search Instantized by A 15 Years Old Boy

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Google launched Google Instant last weekend, which shows results of live update as you type. Taking inspiration from Google Instant another two techies created. YouTube Instant by a student from Satnford University and Google Maps Instant by Michael Hart. The first guy offered with a job from Google CEO before finishing his collge degree.

Now it's turn to create Twitter Search Instant. Yes a 15 years old boy, name Manmohanjit Singh from Malaysia joined with those two guys by creating a Twitter Search Instant. Whether this impresses Google CEO. Will he get job offer as other two guys..?? Let's see.

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• Twitter Instant Follows YouTube Instant and Google Instant (techie-buzz.com)

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Google Is Planning To Buy Israeli "QuickSee" : Sources

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Google is planning to buy Israeli Company Quicksee, a.k.a. MentorWave Technologies, for an estimated $10 million. The startup has raised $3 million offer from Hi-Tech and Docor International Management.

Quicksee makes 3D video tour software that can be pinned on a Google Maps. It results in an effect similar to what you can see in Street View on Google Maps, allowing the viewer to plan around and see a panoramic image of a location. Except that the panoramic images do not require expensive 3D cameras mounted on top of a Googel vehicle. Anybody can create one with a regular video camera and Quicksee software.

Google is yet to confirm the acquisition or what it plans on doing with the team and technology, so this is just speculation. But the technology could allow Google Maps to accept geo-tagged, 3D panoramas uploaded by consumers. If you think Street View, which is shot by Google employees, creates new issues of privacy on the Internet, wait until consumers start uploading their own street views or who knows what else. Although 3D views inside buildings could be a nifty new feature for Google Places allows businesses to self-upload.

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Yahoo Imitates Facebook With Groups Update; Users Not Satisfied

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A few weeks ago, Yahoo updated Groups,  the company’s online discussion board and forum offering, with a UI makeover, chat funcionality, easier photo sharing and more. The result ended with a more sleek, Facebook-like interface for each Group that resembles a Facebook news feed. Apparently, Yahoo’s millions of Groups users (which is surprising, by the way), aren’t happy with the changes.

New features include a stream-like view of messages and updates in a group, and a “Post Something” box, which resembles the Facebook status update box. According to the 400-plus comments on this Yahoo forum, users hate the new interface for a number of reasons, but the most apparent complaint was that the interface resembled a social network. Here a few choice comments from the forum:

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Why Would Google Instant Increase The Ad Impression And Make You Click More On Ads

Google made clear at its press event that Google Instant will not change way that company will rank ads or show ads. From the Google blog:

“We recommend monitoring your ads’ performance the same way you usually do. Google Instant might increase or decrease your overall impression levels. However, Google Instant can improve the quality of your clicks since it helps people search using terms that more directly connect them with the answers they need. Therefore, your overall campaign performance could improve.”

Google Instant will greatly increase ad impressions: The impressions of the ads displayed on Google Search Results page will rise up. In Google Instant Search, an user may get relevant results only after it gets reloaded more than 10 times (as it displays results for every single results).

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Facebook Extends Reach of 'Like' Button to Apps

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Facebook this week added a few updates to its "like" button that will make the feature a bit more pervasive on the site.The three upgrades are directed primarily at developers, but users will see the results in their favorite apps, Pages, and on the Facebook news feed.

"Since we launched social plugins in April, we've been listening to user feedback and working with developers to optimize the Like button to make it as seamless as possible for people to like content around the web and share it with their friends," Facebook wrote in a blog post.

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Microsoft kills off social web application "Vine"

Microsoft said on Friday that it will discontinue its Vine beta service on October 11.
In an email to testers, Microsoft said the Vine beta had received positive feedback but that the company had taken the decision to shutter the service. "The decision to discontinue future development of Microsoft Vine was not easily made. Multiple options were thoroughly explored and evaluated with rigor and in the end it was determined that Microsoft Vine is not sustainable as a standalone offering."

Microsoft originally unveiled Vine, its Twitter for emergencies, back in April 2009. Microsoft mainly marketed the product to emergency management officials. The software was a desktop client for Windows which allowed users to post information to it via e-mail or SMS. The application gathered local news from 20,000 sources and displayed it on a map. Like Twitter it allowed you to post short updates named alerts. Microsoft had originally planned to integrate Vine with Facebook and the social networking service, Twitter.

The departure of Vine marks another web casualty for the software giant. Microsoft killed off the Popfly web application in July 2009 and the Soapbox MSN video service a couple of months later. Recently, the software giant killed off its Kin range of Windows Phone handsets after only three months of sales.

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Facebook Chat coming soon to Windows Live Web Messenger

The keen eyes over at Liveside.net have spotted that Microsoft have a few tweaks and additions coming to the Windows Live websites’ header, as well as Web Messenger.

Only a few weeks ago Microsoft released a beta refresh for Windows Live Essentials which saw a new feature in Messenger allowing people to chat with their Facebook friends just like talking to their Messenger friends. However, this ability was not made available on the Web version of Messenger and people could only chat to their Messenger friends. But this looks set to change.

When hovering over the Messenger link in the header a Facebook category appears on this site. The status of contacts is shown just like within Messenger, if a friend is available to chat to they have a green icon and an orange one for away; if you are also friends with them in Messenger then they can also be set to busy which is a red icon.

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Google Gets Ballsy With Its Latest Logo

It looks like we’re not the only ones doing some crazy things with our logo tonight. Google’s latest logo doodle is currently setting the web on fire — or driving people insane, depending on what you read.

Sure, it’s nothing new for Google to change its logo, but today’s variation is particularly interesting because it’s in motion. Dozens of dots or balls makes up the standard blue, red, yellow, and green logo today. When you first load up Google.com, these dots are scattered all over the place but quickly fall into the Google logo. But when you move your mouse anywhere near this logo, the dots freak out and jump all over the page.

The posting about the logo on Hacker News states that it’s using an HTML/JavaScript particle simulator. Further, one comment notes that “the particles are divs styled with border-radius and position:absolute.”

A few other interesting notes:

• If you move the browser window around, the balls also move. These movements are based on the direction you move the window.
• If you have a custom background installed on your Google homepage, you’ll see a blue-red-yellow-green grid of dots next to the Google logo — clicking on this will take you to the regular white Google homepage where you’ll see the dots in action.
• When you click back to the Google.com after being away, the dots recognize that.

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