The 3rd largest website and 2nd largest search engine in the world, namely Twitter and Yahoo have signed a contact sharing deal recently. This partnership has a wider range and the content sharing will place Twitter information on all Yahoo’s properties. Last year Yahoo sealed a similar deal with Facebook. It seems as though Yahoo does not plan on building their own social network site. Google has similar deals with Facebook and Twitter however has Google Buzz which is similar to a social network application.
Twitter started locking users of their accounts and sent them emails asking them to change their passwords in order to regain access to the site. The reason for these emails is because they had concerns that their accounts may have been under threat in a phishing attack. Twitter says that a part of their ongoing security efforts includes resetting passwords of accounts which they think may have been compromised. Twitter says the number of users affected is very small. The question was asked if Nutshellmail had anything to do with this but Twitter denies this. Twitter promises to keep users updated and encourages users to read the help pages on what to do if their account is compromised.
At the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference in San Francisco Tim Cook, who is the operations officer at Apple announced that the iPad will be available in many retail stores including on Best Buy. He also said that the Cupertino Company considers itself a leader in mobile gadgets, which is true considering that laptops, iPhones and iPods are the main revenue boosters for Apple.
Three European countries claim that Google injects editorial oversight to stifle competition. According to The Telegraph, the European Commission has launched an investigation into Google. The UK price comparison site Foundem, and French legal directory says that Google demotes sites in search rankings as they are considered a threat to their advertisement revenue. On the Google blog, Google has posted that they will provide feedback and information regarding these complaints. They also go on to say that their business operates in the interests of their users, partners and the European competition law.
Curt Smith who is a musician for the hit group Tears for Fears found a unique way to find a collaborator for his solo project. His All is Love single is a collaboration with him and international cellist Zoe Keating. He then went home and started looking on YouTube and had previously heard of Zoe. He then posted a tweet on her Twitter status and asked if she would like to do a track with him. He then sent her the music and she started working on it with about 80 different parts! She then gave him the revised track at a Tears for Fears concert and this was the first time Curt and Zoe met.
Many resorts and vacation spots have turned to social media to broaden their advertising and reach even more customers. The following article takes a look at the various ways vacation spots are integrating social media into their marketing campaigns.
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Glen Murphy, who does the user interface for Google wrote about his Chrome OS based tablet ideas that Google has been playing around with. These ideas went live on Googles’ Developer site just two days before Apple made the iPad announcement. These ideas are concepts and not actual products but it can be created and used in the future.
Net Applications released the browser market share figures earlier this week and what is interesting to note is that Chrome has been a fast climber. The various versions of Internet Explorer (IE6, IE7 and IE8) together have 62.1 percent market share which has decreased compared to 68.5% last year March. At the same time Chrome grew from 1.6% to 5.2%. Firefox and Safari also went up by a percentage to 24.4% and 4.5% respectively. If you take a look at the share of individual version of the various browsers you can see the shift of users moving away from Internet Explorer to other browsers. Most people hate IE6 and even Microsoft wants users to move away from this version.
Twitter users were asked to change their passwords due to a phishing attack but details of this problem were not released. Del Harvey, Twitter’s director of Trust and Safety posted a Twitter Status blog explaining the details of the attack. Del says that torrent sites have been created over a number of years by someone who then sells them to others who want to get into the business. The individual who created these sites has however also created a backdoor into these sites to gain access once the site becomes popular. Most users use the same usernames and passwords all over the web and therefore some Twitter accounts were compromised. Harvey does not mention any of the torrent sites and says they probably wont be able to figure that out. He warns that if you are a torrent user you should change your Twitter password immediately.
Facebook recently showcased their new open sourced PHP technology called HipHop at the Facebook Technology Tasting conference. This new technology transforms PHP into C++ and this in turn saves CPU cycles on web servers. Senior Open Programs Manager, David Recordon explained to the audience some of the challenges they face at Facebook mostly because of the dynamic pages they need to generate. Facebook was experiencing problems wit PHP such as high CPU and memory costs and developers had a tough time building extensions.
