Facebooks new safety center

Facebook recently redesigned their safety center which is aimed at parents, educators, law enforcement officials and teens. It was launched on Tuesday, and was created to make sure that the site's 400 million users are networking safely.

Joe Sullivan, Facebooks Chief Security Officer, says that the site is more efficient now, although he doesn't include a reason as to why it is more efficient. I think that he just thinks that saying it is will make people think that they are safer when using Facebook?

Privacy settings are also explained in detail on the new page, as well as how to block users, remove unwanted content from a profile page and anonymously report abusive behavior. The online center is a result of Facebook’s collaboration with its Safety Advisory Board.

Boy racks up $1400 tab on Farmville

I found this crazy article on cnn.com. I found it to be hilarious, and infuriating at the same time. I think I would go nuts if my kid spent that much on a game.

There aren't many details in terms of the boys age or anything like that, it just says that he was a preteen. I'm assuming that he must have been around 8-12 years old. It says that he emptied out his savings account and then stole his moms credit card and started buying things with that. When asked why he did it he said that "they had brought out good stuff that I wanted."

She says that she wishes that there was more security to prevent things like this from happening again. I agree to a certain extent. I think that first she needs to teach her son that stealing is wrong. Also, that spending this much money on frivolous things that you will not see a return on just stupid. She needs to teach him the value of money. If I was the parent here, I'd make him work it off by doing chores, and also take away the computer/tv/video games.

There is a great comparison of social media is made in this article on Lifehacker . The article has a great breakdown of Buzz, Twitter, and Facebook. I kind of missed Google’s Buzz when it first came out. I found this article while looking it up. From what I’ve heard buzz is suppose to contend with Facebook, I haven’t had the chance to use it much.

I found it odd that the author chose to put only these three in the chart. The author mentions others explaining that they are “generally too niche to be compared in the same aspects and categories.” I would argue that buzz is too new to not have a niche and twitter isn’t really comparable to Facebook or Buzz at all.

This article had some really great comments. One comment had the above picture from this site. The picture includes a breakdown of more social media sites. One of the best questions brought up in was in a different comment by cal82, “… What about the most important factor: which network your network uses?” This has to be the number one reason to use a social media site. Are the people that you want to be social with using the site?

Buzz has a step up on this process by automatically including people that I follow in Google Reader. I use social media mainly for looking at and sharing interesting things, either from friends and family’s lives, or something someone else found on the internet. I use Facebook for most of this and Google Reader for the latter. However reader can be a little overwhelming if you don’t check it often enough and would like something that offers a little more filtering options. I’m going to have to see what direction Buzz goes, and how many people adopt it.

You have to take bad with the good when dealing with "Faster" information

First let me start by saying: WOW! I can't believe that Eastern Michigan actually gave us a snow day. That is really rare around here. For all the years that I have been going to EMU I would say there has only been one, maybe two other times that classes were cancelled for the WHOLE day. The sad part is that our Global IT Club tour that was scheduled for yesterday was cancelled as well, but don't worry we will let everyone know when the rescheduled day will be.

Now on to the story that I thought I'd share with everyone. I'm sure everyone has woken up on their birthdays to find their phone blown up with text messages and phone calls from family and friends wishing them a happy birthday. And then logging into Facebook to find that your wall has double in size from all the comments of people wishing you the same thing. It kind of makes you smile knowing that old friends are thinking of you and what not.

Well twins in Sydney, Australia woke up on their 20th birthday expecting much of the same thing. But they logged into Facebook that morning only to posts written "RIP Chris Naylor" and "RIP Bobby." They quickly realized that the Bobby everyone was talking about was their 17 year old brother. They then called his cell phone but there was no answer. Next they called their mom and asked where Bobby was because people were saying he had died. Their mom knew that Bobby was out with his friend Chris the night before so she called the police to find out what happened. That is when they found out that Bobby, his friend Chris and another teen were killed in a car accident the night before.

I really feel bad for the family but the twins especially, because that is a terrible way of finding out that your brother was killed. The police said they had trouble identifying the victim and that is why they didn't get to the family before it spread around to friends and then ended up on Facebook. But thats just how things are now a days, everyday a new service is coming out that gives us ways to interact/connect to each other faster. So its just bound to happen that bad news would follow just as fast.

Story was originally posted at CNET

Google Buzz

Another idea by Google, this one is called Google Buzz. Today Google has released a new networking tool called Google Buzz, this tool allows the sharing of photos/images, videos and status updates using a new Gmail tab. These new features of Google Buzz will be on android based phones and with web based application; on the Iphone as well. This allows for real time updates to show up on a your Google Buzz feed. The new Google Buzz tab will show up on 1% of gmail account users starting today and the rest of Gmail account users will see the tab within the upcoming week.

Google Buzz boast 5 main features to try and make you change to their social network. First is that it blends in with Gmail. The Buzz tab will be next to your inbox label allowing you to see photos, videos and status updates. This feature also integrates the top 40 people you interact with on Gmail and Gchat and automatically adds them as friends. Second Feature is "Page Rank" for status updates. This features lets you like or dislike peoples update statuses and over time it determines whether to show the status update or not. The third feature is "Media gets Pulled IN" in that videos from Youtube and pictures from flickr and Picasa appear as thumbnails in Buzz. So when you click on a video or picture the thumnail plays/appear inline on your Buzz page. And you can also pull tweets from twitter into Buzz.

Google Buzz Demo

The Fourth feature is"Mobile Features", Google Buzz will appear as a mobile web application where you can make status updates by voice or geotag your post. Another interesting thing with this feature is that when your using Google mobile maps, buzz updates appear on the maps so that you can see and read location based updates. And you can also see any Buzz updates that have been made near your location. And the Last feature is "Public or Private", you can make your Buzz either public or private. Private updates can go just to your followers or a select group of people. The public updates are posted to your own Google profile and it is indexed in for Google search.

Blog Post Title: UNTITLED!

So as I prepared myself to surf the web and write yet another blog for Dr. Drake I thought about two things that I wanted to share with the class. Not sure if these are your same worries or thoughts but I'll tell you anyways. LOL

I love facebook, it's like my only addiction. While others are addicted to video games and anime, I sit on facebook and look at pictures, read messages, and comment on people's status. But the other day when I was on facebook I noticed something. When you look at someone's page and switch between tabs(info, photos, boxes), the whole page does not refresh, only the tab changes. The side panel does not change. Now I don't know much about AJAX and am on the fence about it and programming in general, but I thought; is this a form of AJAX? Does AJAX have more that one form like Java and Javascipt or HTML and XHTML? It just made me curious. I usually try to take what I learn in class and apply it to my everyday life. In this case I applied the teachings of IS449 to my addiction to facebook. LOL

My second concern is the first lab that we did. I never got my pictures to pop up in the box. I understand what is supposed to be going on and I read over the first few pages, stopped and restarted the lab but it never worked. This concerns me because if I'm not getting the basics of AJAX how am I going to pass this class and passing is not an option! It will be done, graduation is so close...I can taste it. But I guess I will need to be more social with my colleagues and get help and in turn try to help those who ask me also.

FaceBook Employees having too much fun?

I’m pretty sure everyone in our class has used facebook. Even our beloved Professor Drake has a page (good luck getting him to accept your friend request if you’re a current student). Anyways, to some facebook has A LOT of personal info stored on there accounts. Thats why we all set different privacy settings to protect ourselves from our Bosses, parents, or just plain stalkers. Well this past weekend I was doing my usual surfing of the web and came across this interesting story that I didn't know how to feel about it. It was an interview with a previous employee of Facebook who spilled the beans on some secrets. The biggest being that everyone who worked for Facebook had one password that would allow them to log in as anyone.

Guess what the password was….Chuck Norris!!! Seriously, that seems a little to childish to me, almost like it was one huge joke to everyone at the office. Other than the ridiculous password, I was more mad at the fact that the employee also mentioned that they could see any information that you have ever deleted or which profiles you visit. Just imagine dating someone who works at the Facebook office, they would have you on lock down lol. Or if its some creeper that you met at a party on a Saturday and that you ended up shooting down. They could do some serious damage to your profile the following Monday. The person could write made up things on other peoples profiles as you or just get sensitive information like where you live.

I guess the part of the ex employee interview that put my mind most to rest was them saying that the "Chuck Norris" password could only be used on computers inside of Facebook offices. This still doesn’t make it totally alright. I’m definitely all for technology and love how facebook has given me a way to reconnect with all my past friends/teammates from high school and college. But can we get a notice or disclosure when we sign up for Facebook of what employees are allowed to see or do to our accounts?

I guess this is just a remainder to everyone: Don’t ever put anything on the internet that you wouldn’t mind sharing with everyone!!

Origanially posted on Gizmodo via The Rumpus via The Awl

Social Netoworking Became Easier continue

I read a week ago in a blog from this class that facebook and twitter are incorporating services. Well interesting enough Microsoft has created earlier this year a product, which is “ Windows Live” that combines services from Facebook, Twitter Flickr, MySapce and many others into one page. Meaning that with one password to your windows suite page we would be able to check on all of the updates coming from these web socializing pages. This service should make social networking easier. The problem comes with the how secure it will be, since we will have only one password?
This new system uses, Mesh Operating Environment - software component that manages the synchronization relationships between devices and data. I believe that Windows Live does use APIs from the different participants. The Windows Live™ Contacts API is an HTTP-based service that enables developers to programmatically submit queries to, and retrieve results from, the Windows Live Contacts Address Book database service. In addition to a full contact management interface for a Windows Live user's address book, the Windows Live Contacts API provides a view to a subset of the Contact data for the purposes of sending Invitations. Each view and set of abilities is controlled by the owner of the data, namely the Windows Live user who maintains the address book through products and applications in Windows Live, such as Windows Live Hotmail® and Windows Live Messenger.
Easier
Interesting enough, while I was looking more information on Windows Live, I found that a part of the suite called Windows Live Spaces which is use for social networking, blogging, and photo sharing is using AJAX technology.

Facebook + Twitter

All of our talk about Web 2.0 in class the past few weeks has opened my eyes to how important it is for the user to have control of content on websites these days. Obviously, flourishing networks such as Facebook and Twitter are taking advantage of this new style of the Web, and so I thought it would be very appropriate and informative to discuss a method which allows the combination of the two!

One of the popular things Facebook incorporates into its services is the use of applications and other third party options. While the combination of Facebook with Twitter isn't quite a mashup, because it doesn't use the APIs from both services, it results in a similar outcome, which allows users to interact with both services at the same time. While Facebook makes it a rather simple process, the usability and inginuity of it makes for a very worthwhile application. Upon logging into your Facebook account, a quick search in the search box for "Twitter" will bring up the Facebook application for Twitter.




Upon viewing the application, Facebook provides a few basic details about Twitter and provides a link to add the application. When you click to add the application to your profile, a page of Twitter settings will appear which you can adjust to your preferences then finalize the process by clicking add. Facebook then needs your Twitter login information and then offers you the option to have Twitter update your Facebook status. This authorization to Facebook for your Twitter account not only connects the two, but allows you to only have to update your Twitter account, and your Facebook status will automatically be updated to the same thing.



This application is a great idea, and something very relavent to today's Web 2.0 type of structure. Twitter was very smart to develop an application like this, because it not only allows for easy integration between the two extremely popular Web services, but it also minimizes competition between the two. By combining uses between both services, Twitter doesn't need to try and compete with the strong Facebook presence in the industry, but can instead join in with them and work together to build up both companies.

Actual Usage: