admin | March 25, 2012
No comments

Facebook strips ‘privacy’ from New ‘data use’ policy explainer

A Facebook data policy document intended to build the site’s methods more transparent is instead kicking up a fresh firestorm.

Facebook made a significant simply little-noticed modify to its privacy policy on Sept. 23, wiping away the word “privacy” and rebranding it equally a “data use” policy. Late finally week, Facebook posted a draft version of its “Statement of Rights and Responsibilities” governance document — an explainer intended22 to channelise users through Facebook’s policies — reflecting the changes. It gave users seven days to matter in on the draft.

Facebook casts the revisions to its policy documents as a non-event. It says the literal changes to its privacy policy haped six months ago, and that the current updates are just intended99 to clarify them.

That clarity is freaking some members out. Many replied on Facebook’s comment page with a wholesale rejection of the young terms. On the German-language version of the proposal, more than 32,000 Facebook members issued the same one-sentence protest: “Ich lehne conk Änderungen ab.”

That roughly translates to: “I reject the changes.”

The supply withdrawing the nigh heat from commenters is a job describing what data applications can grab.

Facebook’s current policy says: “When you utilization an application, your content and information is shared with the application.” Its proposed revision amends that occupation to: “When you or others who may see your message and info use an application, your content and information is shared with the application.”

The idea that apps your supporters install can access your info disturbed many of Facebook’s commenters. As one placed it: “Strongly disagree — why should I be dragged into apps my protagonists are necessitated with?”

You already are. Facebook’s current damage countenance apps to tap into altogether of the information that the app’s users experience access to, Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes stated CNNMoney.

The policy revision is intended to build that reality clearer to Facebook’s users, he said. Those who want proceed apps from sucking in their data could placed granular controls on their “privacy settings” page on Facebook.

Facebook likes to emphasize the rule’s benign intent. For example, an app anticipated Gogobot uses Facebook check-in data that your friends experience shared with you to map out where those you know have been. The feature is meant to helper you detect savvy locals to tap for move advice.

But the changes experience some users edgy virtually just how widely their personal info may exist shared — and about Facebook’s incentives to button those boundaries.

“This is a significant acknowledgement that Facebook is focused on data collection, data storage and data sales, because that’s where they build their money,” says Sarah Downey, a privacy analyst at security software companionship Abine. “They’re more accurately describing what they do.”

Some of Facebook’s other changes to the policy — which was finally updated nearly a year ago — accommodate its new features. For example, the word77 “profile” is forthwith frequently replaced with “Timeline,” Facebook’s latest update to its profile pages.

The young instruction likewise reflects the features Facebook has shut down. For example, language referring to Facebook Deals has been deleted, since Facebook scratched the mess plan in August.

Another young provision makes it gain that Facebook can, in its only discretion, disable some of its features for users in certain geographical areas. The alter comes equally Facebook and its social-networking peers grapple with heavy legal restrictions on their services in some countries.

Facebook hasn’t posed a date for when its revised policy will accept effect. The companionship says it needs to form through users’ comments and concerns before finalizing the wording.

Category: Internet Content | Tags: ,
admin | March 22, 2012
No comments

The Stack that Kept OMGPOP

Zynga (ZNGA) yesterday declared that it has acquired fellow social game publisher OMGPOP, for a reported $210 million (including employee retention bonuses). Sixteen months ago, it would have been unthinkable.

For the uninitiated, OMGPOP is the creator of Describe Something, a Pictionary-like game that has got the crown mobile and crest Facebook game since being launched merely six weeks ago (bumping decease Zynga’s Row with Friends).

But OMGpop is not really a startup anymore. The New York-based society was founded in 2006 (one yr before Zynga), and received grown more than 20 games prior to Draw Something.

After raising seed funding in 2007 from folks alike Digg founder Kevin Rose, OMGPOP lifted its foremost institutional bout of VC funding in the summer of 2008, ran by Spark Capital. It then did a $5 million Series B the following year, with Bessemer Venture Partners leading and Spark returning.

By former 2010, however, multiple sources tell me that the company yet wasn’t getting much traction and nearly VCs were losing faith.

Bessemer refused the opportunity to participate in a follow-on turn at its pro rata rate, and outside leads were non-existent. So Spark gibed to basically do a super pro rata bridge, while promising to beat the pavement for other firms to join. By January, Rho Ventures and Softbank Capital had checked to got aboard, with Bessemer (which made the foremost intro to Rho) reportedly also participating to a certain extent. OMGpop held a secondary conclusion on the round, which totaled $10.1 million (and officially was listed equally a Series B-1).

What’s fascinating is that there doesn’t look to exist much, if any, quantitative ground for why Spark stayed the course. OMGpop had been spinning its wheels for more than four years, while companies like Zynga kept churning out hitting subsequently hit. Sources enunciate that it was but a case of Spark being enamored with the OMGpop team – a “gut feel” sort of thing.

Category: Internet Content | Tags:
admin | March 21, 2012
No comments

Apple iPad ‘warmer than the iPad 2 But not uncomfortable’

US watchdog Consumer Reports investigated claims that the young Apple iPad gets significantly hotter than previous models.

Complaints on Apple’s online forums said the undersurface left nook of the device gets very warm.

After testing the new iPad, Consumer Reports said: “Engineers entered temperatures as high as 116 degrees Fahrenheit [47C] on the front and rearward of the young33 iPad while playing Infinity Blade II.”

Donna Tapellini, of Consumer Reports, wrote: “During our tests, I maintained the young55 iPad in my hands. When it was at its hottest, it found identical warm simply not peculiarly uncomfortable if maintained for a brief period.”

Most of the comments on Apple’s forums articulated that the device was “warm” later about 30 instants of use, with almost users specifying that it was not hot.

Category: Internet Content | Tags: , ,
admin | March 20, 2012
No comments

Google Quizzed by France on Privacy Rules for Android, Cookies

Google Inc. (GOOG), the world’s largest Web-search provider, was questioned by France’s data protection office to see whether policies for mobile devices flowing its Android operating organization and information collected utilizing cookies violate European privacy rules.

The National Commission for Computing and Civil Liberties, known by its Gallic acronym as CNIL, asked Google to reply to the list of 69 heads on its privacy policy ahead April 5, allotting to a statement yesterday on the regulator’s website.

The questions reflect the need for legal clarifications on your new privacy policy and in special on the sharing of user data across Google services, granting to CNIL’s letter to Google Chief Executive Officer Larry Page.

Google’s privacy policy is under brushup by France’s data- protection agency acting on behalf of other European regulators. The Lot View, California-based fellowship defied two requests by CNIL to suspend changes to the policy while it determined whether those changes comply with European privacy standards.

Google is confident that our new simple, earn and transparent privacy policy respects whole European data protection constabularies and principles,the companionship pronounced in an e-mailed instruction acknowledging it received had letter dated March 16 and would respond in due course.

CNIL, which worked with other European agencies to devise the list, demanded Google nigh which services would make a cookie prognosticated PREF to exist stored on the user’s equipment, and what information it would garner and why.
Safari Browser

The regulator didn’t refer Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s Safari Internet browser in sections on cookies and browser settings, though it did expect when Google might reckon it legitimate to circumvent browser enabled third-party cookie blocking and whether it recognized a user’s browser settings as a style to articulate what variety of tracking and privacy was expected.

In the U.S., the Federal Trade Commission is analysing whether Google effectively deceived consumers by planting cookies on Safari, bypassing Apple software’s privacy settings, said a person familiar with the topic last week.

Google pronounced finally hebdomad it didn’t expect this would occur with the cookies and pronounced it has been removing the files since the issue was uncovered.

Google’s Android, employed on smartphones and tablet devices made by companies like Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., is too a focus of CNIL’s questions. The regulator necessitated if devices coursing the operating system leave personal information similar contact lists, text messages and location data accessible to mobile applications.

CNIL postulated Google when it would blend data, either from different user accounts on the same family computer or from authenticated services similar its Gmail e-mail platform to services alike Google Maps, which don’t require authentication, if the map is done on the same browser or computer.

Category: Internet Content | Tags: ,
admin | March 18, 2012
No comments

Google in Young Privacy Probes

The investigations—which span U.S. federal and country agencies, as substantially equally a pan-European try passed by France—could embroil Google in years of legal battles and result in hefty fines for privacy violations. The Journal in February reported that Google was utilising particular computer code to install petite tracking files, or “cookies,” on some people’s computers, iPhones and iPads, eventide if the devices were placed to stoppage this sort of tracking.

“We will of track cooperate with any officials who experience questions,” a Google spokeswoman said. “But it’s important to remember that we didn’t anticipate this would happen, and we have been removing these advertising cookies from Safari browsers.”

In the U.S., the Federal Craft Commission is canvasing whether Google’s actions violated last year’s legal settlement with the authorities in which Google pledged not to “misrepresent” its privacy practices to consumers, according to people familiar with the investigation.

The fine for violating the agreement is $16,000 per violation, per day. Because millions of people were affected, any fine could add up quickly, depending on how it is calculated. The FTC refused to comment.

A group of country attorneys general, including Young York’s Eric Schneiderman and Connecticut’s George Jepsen, are besides investigating Google’s circumvention of Safari’s privacy settings, granting to people familiar with the investigation. Nation attorneys general can experience the ability to levy fines of up to $5,000 per violation.

In Europe, the Gallic Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés, or CNIL, has added the Safari circumvention technique to its existing pan-European investigation into Google’s privacy-policy changes, allotting to a individual conclusion to the investigation. The CNIL is the means that levied a €100,000 ($130,960) fine on Google lastly twelvemonth for collecting passwords and other personal information when Google vehicles were gathering info for its Street Regard mapping service.

CNIL didn’t respond to a request for comment. At the time, Google apologized for its misapprehension and said it would delete the data it collected.

Google makes most of its money selling online ads. Like many ad companies, it uses cookies to cover info near a person’s online activities in society to serve targeted ads.

Advertisers will pay a premium for highly targeted ads, and Google is in a heated conflict with social-networking rival Facebook Inc. for these ad dollars.

The investigations in the U.S. and Europe advise the toll that the rivalry has taken on Google as it tries to build more social-networking tools into its own productions to compete with Facebook.

Google previously acknowledged it started circumventing Safari’s privacy settings finally year in society to embed a social-networking feature—what it calls a “+1″ button—in some ads. Roughly akin to a Facebook “like” button, it would countenance people tell protagonists that they found an ad useful. Google enunciated the subsequent tracking of Safari users was inadvertent.

This week, a former Google executive, James Whittaker, released a public letter stating that he left the fellowship because he found it was trying likewise hard to button its rival social-networking service, Google+, into totally corners of the organization.

Mr. Whittaker indited that Google+ received become “an ominous cite invoking the spirit that Google solo wasn’t enough.”

Category: Internet Content | Tags: , ,
admin | March 17, 2012
No comments

entrepreneurs among First buyers of Young iPad

Apple’s latest iPad forced the customary lines of die-hard fans look to be foremost and entrepreneurs look to make a flying profit.

Many buyers lined up for hours, and in some cases overnight, equally the tablet computer got on sale in the U.S. and nine other countries. They did therefore even though Apple started accepting online orders a hebdomad ago.

The new, third exemplar comes with a faster processor, a much sharper screen and an improved camera, though the changes aren’t equally large as the upgrade from the original example to the iPad 2.

As with the previous models, prices start at $499 in the U.S.

“I don’t consider it’s worth the cost just I surmisal I’m a victim of society,” Athena May, 21, articulated in Paris.

Dan Krolikowski, 34, was first in job at a Madison, Wis., mall. He came 14 hours ahead the store’s opening and was buying an special one to sell on the “gray market.”

“Last yr I sold one on eBay and created over $500 in profit,” Krolikowski said, leaning back in a reclining lawn chairman he brought. “I’m hoping to do that again this year.”

Those who ordered iPads online commenced getting them delivered Friday. However, Apple immediately says there’s a two- to three-week shipping wait for online orders. There’s besides demand in countries where the young iPad isn’t available yet.

In Hong Kong, a steady stream of buyers blamed up their new devices at preset times at the city’s sole Apple store after entering an online lottery.

The system, which involved buyers to have local ID cards, helped thwart visitors from mainland China, Apple’s fastest ontogeny market. A release date in China has not however been announced. Apple will start selling the iPad in 25 extra countries future Friday, mostly in Europe.

At Apple’s flagship retail store on Young York’s 5th Avenue, the piece of the line, and the mode many customers were paying for two iPads each with wads of cash, suggested that many of the tablets were destined to exist resold abroad.

The gadget likewise pulled entrepreneurs of a dubious nature. In Orlando, Fla., government arrested a Best Purchase employee and a previous worker early Thursday on accusations they schemed to rob a shop at gunpoint and steal more than $1 million in iPads and other Apple products, granting to the Orlando Sentinel.

About 450 people lined up outside Apple’s Ginza store in downtown Tokyo. Some received expended the night sleeping outside the store.

Dipak Varsani, 21, became in job in London at 1 a.m. Thursday local time and articulated he was forced by the new device’s better screen.

“You’ve got clearer movies and clearer games,” he said. “I utilization it as a multimedia device.”

Despite competition from cheaper tablet computers such equally00 Amazon.com Inc.’s Kindle Fire, the iPad remains the almost popular tablet computer. Apple Inc. has sold more than 55 million iPads since its debut in 2010.

Apple says the iPad is propelling us into a “post-PC era,” with computers that mould identical differently from the traditional laptops and desktops.

Two years subsequently the debut of the first iPad, the device’s launch has gone the second-biggest “gadget event” of the year, after the annual iPhone release. In Atlanta, one kid in business transported a signal that read “Happy iDay!”

Category: Technology Content | Tags: ,
admin | March 16, 2012
No comments

Europe investigate Google’s bypass of Safari privacy settings

The US Federal Trade Commission and European regulators get opened investigations into Google’s recent circumvention of the default privacy settings in Apple’s Safari browser.

Privacy advocates needed the FTC to investigate finally month subsequently it was exposed that Google was employing special code that served up advertising cookies to Safari users despite privacy settings intended to closure cookies. Google acknowledged the problem, only enounced it was an accident and that it would discontinue the practice. Only the Wall Street Journal reported lastly night that the FTC is forthwith investigating whether the Safari cookie utilisation violated a legal colony with the government, in which Google called that it wouldn’t misrepresent its privacy practices to consumers.

Google’s Safari tracking is likewise being investigated by CNIL, a Gallic data protection commission, which is conducting a broad investigation into Google’s privacy practices on behalf of the European Union. CNIL has added the Safari privacy posing circumvention to its existing investigation, the Journal reported. European regulators recently enounced Google’s new privacy policy—which allows for more data sharing across Google services—violates European law.

A Google spokesperson said the Journal that “We will of track cooperate with any officials who get999 questions… Just it’s important to remember that we didn’t anticipate this would happen, and we experience been removing these advertising cookies from Safari browsers.”

Category: Internet Content | Tags: ,
admin | March 15, 2012
No comments

Cisco to Purchase NDS, a Video Services Firm, for $5 Billion

Cisco said on Thursday that it planned to buy the NDS Group, a provider of substance streaming and security software, for virtually $5 billion in cash to help expand its next-generation video services.

The buy price includes the assumption of nearly $1 billion in debt. The lot is expected to closing by the end of the year, pending regulatory review.

By buying NDS, whose customers include British Sky Broadcasting and DirecTV, Cisco is hoping to augment its Videoscape streaming platform. The fellowship has been focusing on video equally a substance element of its offerings, as it works to bolster lagging maturation in its pith networks business.

NDS, which is owned by the private equity house Permira and the media giant News Corp., focuses on providing systems that permit companies stream substance to a variety of devices. Among its biggest attractions is its message protection, an important demand by media companies.

The transaction represents a sizeable return for Permira, one of Europe’s largest private equity firms. It bought NDS with News Corp. in 2009 for $3.6 billion. Since then, the software society has sold off non-core businesses and expanded into fast-growing markets such as China and India.

Permira is expected to build roughly $2 billion on the sale, based on calculations from S.E.C. filings created by NDS. That represents more than a doubling of the private equity firm’s initial $900 million investment three years ago.

The sale to Cisco besides marks a shift in strategy. Previous last year, NDS announced plans to listing on the New York Stock Substitution through an initial public offering, which was expected to raise up to $100 million.

Yet despite renewed optimism in the U.S. financial markets, Permira and its partner, News Corp., receive determined to sell the society to an manufacture buyer.

The deal is Cisco’s biggest since the fellowship acquired Tandberg, another video company, for virtually222 $3 billion in 2009.

Our strategy has always been rammed by customer need and on capturing market transitions, John T. Chambers, Cisco’s chief executive, pronounced in a statement. Our skill of NDS fits squarely into this strategy, enabling substance and service providers to deliver new video solutions that leverage the mottle and drive young monetization opportunities and service differentiation.

NDS, based in England, has nigh 5,000 employees and has operations in five countries. Its chairman, Abe Peled, will become a senior vice chairman and head strategist for Cisco’s video and collaboration group.

Cisco was advised by JPMorgan Chase and Centerview Partners, while NDS was advised by the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.

Category: Technology Content | Tags:
admin | March 14, 2012
No comments

Pinterest Plans Profile Redesign, iPad App

Pinterest, the popular pinboard site, will be getting redesigned profile pages and an iPad app in the near future, the company’s cofounder and chief executive, Ben Silbermann, declared at SXSW.

Silbermann, speaking at SXSW Interactive, said users will shortly see young profile pages that have been redesigned to feel “more beautiful,” and that will display users’ influences more prominently, CNN reports. Silbermann also said the audience that an iPad app is “in the works,” though he declined to reach a tentative release date.

Pinterest is a social network that is based around users’ curated pinboards, or icon walls. It’s kind of alike online scrapbooking — if you see a pic you alike on the Web, you may “pin” it to one of your virtual pinboards applying Pinterest’s bookmarklet. You may have multiple pinboards with different themes (such equally “pretty curtains” or “party dresses” or “LOLcats”), and you can browse other people’s pinboards and re-pin items that you like.

Pinterest has notably garnered a fortune of attention from the female sector — Internet tracking firm comScore estimates that 68 percent of Pinterest’s 11 million unique monthly users are women, and these women drive 85 percentage of the traffic on the site.

Pinterest was launched in former 2009, merely had fewer than 10,000 users for the first nine months. Pinterest took away in mid-2011, and regarded 11 million hits in one hebdomad in December. It’s this sudden rush in popularity that’s likely driving the company’s decision to redesign the profile pages and launch the iPad app.

I’m definitely interested to see what Pinterest decides to do with its profile pages. While the pinboards on Pinterest are very attractive and minimalist (and no uncertainty driven by the curator’s hand-picked images), the profile pages are blocky and uninspired, displaying users’ pinboards in a plain, gray-and-white grid style.

Category: Internet Content | Tags: ,
admin | March 14, 2012
No comments

Yahoo Cause complicates looming Facebook IPO

With an aggressive new CEO at Yahoo’s helm and Facebook look before to its initial public offering, Yahoo’s patent suit may receive Facebook in an awkward position.

Yahoo filed a lawsuit Monday in federal courtroom in California, accusing Facebook of infringing on 10 of the hunt company’s patents. The suit claims that Facebook copied Yahoo’s patents in technologies related to advertising, privacy, site customization, social networking and integrated communications in social networking.

Complicating matters for Facebook is that the world’s largest social network is expected to launch its IPO in May. With possible investors look nearly at the company, now is not the time for Facebook to be facing a lawsuit. That could selfsame substantially be portion of Yahoo’s plan.

Yahoo, which similarly sued Google ahead its IPO in 2004 and picked up a chunk of Google stock in return, is well cognisant of the scrutiny that Facebook is under. It may also exist hoping that Facebook will want to resolve the case quickly.

That consider could possibly meanspirited a improve pot for financially shinning Yahoo, analysts said.

“This [lawsuit] will positioned a dapple over [Facebook's IPO], setting extra pressure on Facebook to settle,” enounced Rob Enderle, an analyst with the Enderle Group. “Basically, Yahoo is utilizing the IPO as a lever to pull Yahoo to settle when they otherwise wouldn’t … That is why Yahoo is doing this now.”

What is surprising in the suit222 is that Yahoo and Facebook experience been on friendly terms. For instance, in 2010, the two companies partnered to convey Facebook games and condition updates to Yahoo’s hunting engine.

Facebook celebrated that detail in its comment on the lawsuit. “We’re disappointed that Yahoo, a longtime job partner of Facebook and a fellowship that has considerably benefited from its association with Facebook, has determined to resort to litigation,” articulated a Facebook spokeswoman in an email to Computerworld. “Once again, we learned of Yahoo’s decision simultaneously with the media. We will defend ourselves vigorously against these puzzling actions.”

Yahoo, for its part, contends it’s alone trying to protect itself.

“Yahoo has invested substantial resources in research and ontogenesis through the years, which has resulted in numerous patented inventions of technology that other companies receive888 licensed,” pronounced a Yahoo spokesperson in an email.

Category: Internet Content | Tags: ,
« Older Entries