Jul 06

Skype comes to Facebook, and Facebook comes to Skype (update: available now!)

Posted in: app, apps, breaking news, skype, social networking, SocialNetworking, Today's Chili, VoIP

It ain’t the first time Mark Zuckerberg has taken the stage to announce… something, but today’s shindig is resulting in “something” that’s a bit more exciting for the average user. As rumored, the world’s most notable VoIP service is set to become exceedingly integrated with the world’s most notable social network. Skype has just thrown up a teaser page for v5.3 for Windows (and v5.5 Beta), noting that Skype and Facebook will aim to provide “the best of both worlds.”

Zuck is primarily announcing three main things today: group chat, a new way to chat (“an easier way to find someone who is online”) and Skype-enabled video chat. Oh, and the tiny, tiny fact that there’s now 750 million Facebook members. What’s notable is just how easy it is to fire up a group chat (or send transcripts to group members who miss out) and get a video call going using your existing Skype contact list. A single click is all it takes, and we’re told that it’ll be rolled out to everyone “over the next few weeks” in 70 different languages. The new chat design will be scalable based on your browser size, and the company made a point to mention that it’ll be listening closely to user input in order to iterate as it moves forward.

Tony Bates stepped up to the plate, and noted that over 300 million videocall minutes a month are going through Skype, and at peak times, over half of its traffic is video. He also noted that the technology behind it was “tough” to construct, but somehow it managed to hammer this whole thing out in around six months via joint development. There’s also talk about future “paid products” in due time, and it’s strikingly clear that this partnership isn’t going to fade anytime soon. If you’re looking to take a dive yourself, hit up the source links below for the Windows applications, and wear that F5 button out over at Facebook’s homepage if you’re more of the “in-browser” type.

Oh, and if you’re curious about mobile — video chat isn’t active on that front yet, and Mark’s not spilling any details on “when.” To quote him on a question of time tables: “We’ll see.”

Update: Those on the web can get started right now. Of note, this forces open the familiar chat bar, so it doesn’t much look like you can hide from “those people” while attempting to find folks on Skype. Sadly, we’re also seeing that doing so can add loads of Facebook contacts to your Skype program, and there’s no real way to see that it’s happening until it’s too late. Clever, Mark.

Update 2: We’ve spent a little time with both of the new options, and you can read up on our impressions here!

Skype comes to Facebook, and Facebook comes to Skype (update: available now!) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 Jul 2011 13:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jul 04

Google Circles knockoff hits Facebook courtesy of unofficial plug-in

Posted in: Google, hack, Today's Chili

Have a bad case of Google+ envy? Here’s a little something that should help hold you over until the site fully opens its flood gates. Circle Hack is a self-described “one-night experiment with Javascript” created by a few Facebook engineers in a non-affiliated capacity, which unofficially brings Google Circles-like functionality to the top social network. The creators of the Facebook plug-in have borrowed liberally from Google on this one (turnabout is fair play, perhaps). Once you log in with your Facebook account, you can drag and drop rectangles of your friends from that site into circles at the bottom of your page — a quick method for curating your Facebook lists. Given the short development of the plug-in, the functionality of the site is, not surprisingly, a bit limited. Certain things like, say, deleting circles, are absent at present — perhaps its creators are too busy working on the Facebook Hangouts hack.

Google Circles knockoff hits Facebook courtesy of unofficial plug-in originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 04 Jul 2011 11:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jul 02

Facebook to launch in-browser video chat powered by Skype?

Posted in: Microsoft, partnership, skype, Software, Today's Chili
Microsoft’s $8.5 billion acquisition of Skype hasn’t closed yet, but it looks like Redmond is already working behind the scenes to make the service even more ubiquitous. According to an anonymous source interviewed by TechCrunch, Facebook is going to introduce video chat next week, and that service will be powered by none other than Skype. And while the service will be browser-based, it’s also said to include a desktop component. We’d say none of that sounds too fantastical — video calls would be a logical extension of Facebook chat, and let’s not forget about the $240 million Microsoft invested in the site back in 2007. What’s more, Facebook sent out invites for an event next week, where Mark Zuckerberg was clear the outfit would unveil a new product from its Seattle team. That’s in Microsoft’s backyard, of course, the invites themselves have chat icons on ’em, and, most tellingly, that Seattle office has been snapping up engineers specializing in desktop software. All told, that adds up to a likely true story to us, but we won’t know for sure until the long, beachy weekend is through.

Facebook to launch in-browser video chat powered by Skype? originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 02 Jul 2011 17:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jul 01

Facebook, Hulu partnership accidentally clicks ‘security breach’ instead of ‘Like’

Posted in: Google, hulu, privacy, sale, security, Today's Chili

Even though there’s a For Sale sign in the window Hulu isn’t taking a break and today it unveiled a new partnership with Facebook to make its library of TV shows and movies more social. Adding Facebook Connect (competitor Netflix may be on the board, but it’s still working on adding the button) should let the social network log you in, customize things based on preferences from you and your friends, and share time-coded likes and comments. Unfortunately what actually happened for some users was that they were suddenly given access to someone else’s Hulu account, a problem documented by both AVRev and NewTeeVee. According to a second blog post, due to approximately 50 users being affected Hulu has shut down the program, required everyone to log in again and cranked privacy settings to the highest for anyone who logged in while it was on. Of course, with rumors from the LA Times that Google (along with Microsoft and Yahoo) is interested in purchasing the service, maybe they can get an invite to the Google+ party and forget the whole thing ever happened

Facebook, Hulu partnership accidentally clicks ‘security breach’ instead of ‘Like’ originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 01 Jul 2011 18:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceAVRev, NewTeeVee, Hulu Blog (1), (2)  | Email this | Comments

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Jul 01

WrapUp: SourceForge Resets 2 Million Passwords, Create Batch Files with a GUI, and More

Posted in: amazon, Gmail, Google, netflix, Today's Chili, WrapUp

This article was written on January 31, 2011 by CyberNet.

Welcome to the WrapUp by CyberNet. This is a collection of news stories, downloads, and tips that we have collected over the last few days, but never got around to writing about. Don’t forget to send in your own tips, or just leave a comment on this page if you think you’ve got something we should include.

–News–

sourceforge.jpgSourceForge Resets 2 Million Passwords After Getting Hacked
The SourceForge team sent out emails last week to all two million users explaining that there were password sniffing attempts on the site. They also said that they voluntarily reset passwords to prevent any accounts from being compromised, and users will need to reset passwords to get access to the site.

 

google censors bittorrent.jpgGoogle Censoring Some File Sharing Search Terms
When performing a Google search for words like “bittorrent”, “utorrent”, and “rapidshare” you may find that you are no longer presented with auto-complete and instant results. This is only mildly annoying though since normal search results are not affected.

 

zuckerberg eissenberg.jpgMark Zuckerberg Meets Jesse Eisenberg on Saturday Night Live
Mark Zuckerberg appeared on stage on Saturday Night Live along side Jesse Eisenberg, who portrayed Zuckerberg last year in the film called The Social Network.

 

amazon prime streaming.jpgAmazon to Provide Unlimited Video Streaming for Prime Subscribers?
An Engadget tipster provided a screenshot from Amazon showing that existing Amazon Prime members will get access to over 5,000 movies and TV shows through their on-demand streaming service.

 

netflix isps.jpgNetflix Performance on Various ISPs
Netflix has written a blog post that covers the streaming performance of 16 different ISPs in the United States and 4 in Canada. In the U.S. the top spots belong to Charter, Comcast, Cox, and Time Warner.

 

–Tips, Tutorials, and Reviews–

gmail notifications.jpgChrome Gets Desktop Notifications for Gmail and Chat
If you look in your Gmail settings you may see that there is a new section for controlling both chat and new mail notifications. As of right now these only work in Chrome, but they are hoping it will expand out to other browsers in the future.

 

wot.jpgWeb of Trust (WOT) Available for Opera
If you’re an Opera user that has been looking for a safer way to browser the web WOT is definitley worth checking out.

 

instascriber.jpgSubscribe to RSS Feeds in Instapaper with Instascriber
It’s possible to use Instapaper as a RSS feed reader thanks to an online service called Instascriber. With the service all articles will automatically be added to your Instapaper account where you can then read them at your leisure.

 

gmail unread icon.jpgGmail Gets Unread Message Favicon in Labs
A new Labs feature in Gmail will give you an auto-updating icon that displays how many unread messages you currently have.

 

dropbox desktop.jpgSync Your Desktop Using Dropbox
Using a little trickery you can get Dropbox to sync all the files and folders located on your desktop across all of your machines.

 

visual command line.jpgCreate Batch Files with a GUI
If you think creating batch files is a cumbersome process you may want to take a quick look at Visual Command Line, which is a tool to help you build batch files without needing to know all the special syntax.

 

–Downloads–

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Jun 30

CyberNotes: Barack Obama Wins Web 2.0 “Election”

Posted in: CyberNotes, Today's Chili, Web Sites, YouTube

This article was written on January 12, 2008 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Weekend Website

The upcoming presidential election this year in the United States is turning out to be very different than in years prior.  One reason for this is that the Internet has become a HUGE ground for candidates to gain support and get their message out. Social sites like MySpace and Facebook are filled with all kinds of politics as are blogs and other sites. That got us wondering, if it were up to social site and other Web 2.0 users, who would be the winner right now? Well, we’ll tell ya! For today’s Weekend Website, we’re taking a look at who we’d see on the ballot come November, and ultimately, who would win the election based upon the information we found from various social sites. This data was collected on Thursday, January 10th, so be aware that it could be different at this point.

web 2 winner

The first thing we did was to go around and find different sites that had measurable presidential data.  Here’s the list we came up with and the weight we assigned each:

  • YouTube Subscribers and channel views for each candidate
    (20% for Subscribers, 10% for Views)
    YouTube has a section dedicated to all of the candidates which can be found at www.youtube.com/youchoose.  There you’ll find all of the candidates listed, and you can click on each on to be taken to their special YouTube page.  On those pages they list the official number of subscribers and the channel views for each candidate. We weighted the subscribers more than the channel views, simply because in our opinion, a subscriber is more important than a view.
  • MySpace friends for each candidate
    (20%)
    There’s no doubt that MySpace is one of the top social networks out there, and it’s playing an important role for some candidates in the race.  We went to MySpace to see how many friends each candidate had on their official “MySpace Profile.”
  • Facebook Pulse
    (20%)
    Facebook Pulse can be found at www.facebook.com/politics/pulse.php and it graphs the number of supporters each candidate has on Facebook.
  • Facebook Apps
    (10%)
    All but one candidate had some type of Facebook application for supporters whether it was “official” or not.  We looked for the Application with the most daily active users for each candidate, and included that information in our calculation.
  • TechCrunch Votes
    (10%)
    TechCrunch has decided to hold their own political primaries online.  People have been able to vote since December 18th, and it’ll run until January 18th.  We checked out the results, and included those numbers.
  • Digg Friends
    (10%)
    Of course social site Digg couldn’t get away without have a page setup for the candidates.  People can add the candidates as friends, and so we included the amount of friends that each has in our calculation.  You can checkout Digg’s section at http://digg.com/elections.

Republicans – Ron Paul a WINNER!

Below you’ll find all of the data we input from each of the above listed sites, and the winner of the Republican “primary” listed at the top of the list under “rank”.  As you’ll see, Ron Paul is designated as our Web 2.0 “winner” based upon the data we collected. CLICK TO ENLARGE

Republican Results

Democrats – Barack Obama a WINNER!

Below you’ll find all of the data we input from each of the above listed sites, and the winner of the Democratic “primary” listed at the top of the list under “rank”.  As you’ll see, Barack Obama is designated as our Web 2.0 “winner” based upon the data we collected. CLICK TO ENLARGE

Democratic Results

Overall Winner – Barack Obama

Based upon our calculations and the sources we used, if it were up to the users of Web 2.0 sites and social networks, Barack Obama would be the next president come November. It’s interesting, isn’t it, to take a look at the popularity some of these candidates have on the Internet?  For some though, unfortunately that popularity they have on the Internet hasn’t translated to popularity elsewhere.

So there you have it, the winner of the “Web 2.0″ elections, calculated by CyberNet…

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Jun 30

Google+ for Android app (hands-on)

Posted in: Android, android market, AndroidMarket, Google, hands-on, market, social networking, SocialNetworking, stream, Today's Chili, video

Given the number of apps Google’s made available for smartphones, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that it’s taken its suite of social networking services direct to the mobile world as well. As soon as Google+ was officially announced, an app was ready for download in the Android Market and a web app became available for Safari for iOS (with its full offering to the App Store coming soon). As usual, we couldn’t resist the urge to play around with it, but how does the mobile iteration fare against the competition? Continue past the break to get a peek of the larger-than-life service squeezed into a 4.3-inch (or smaller) display.

Continue reading Google+ for Android app (hands-on)

Google+ for Android app (hands-on) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 09:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jun 29

Google+ users can now send email invites, brag about being into the service before it was cool

Posted in: Google, social networking, SocialNetworking, Today's Chili
Google’s exclusive little club just got a little less exclusive. As promised, the search giant’s shiny new social network Google+ has opened up, giving users the ability to invite friends via email. (If it’s not working on your system yet, trying logging out and then logging back in.) Existing users, it’s time to start building out those Circles to avoid the sort of accidental social networking shenanigans Google is working so hard to curb. Everyone else, we’re sure you’ll be getting one in your Gmail inbox soon enough. In the meantime, how about prepping yourself by reading our detailed hands-on?

Update: Looks like they’ve been shut down again. It was fun while it lasted!

[Thanks, Ryan]

Google+ users can now send email invites, brag about being into the service before it was cool originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Jun 2011 21:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jun 29

HTC Status for AT&T announced on Facebook, risks being tagged in embarrassing pics

Posted in: Android, att, cellphone, cellphones, gingerbread, Google, HTC, htc sense, HtcSense, sense, social networking, SocialNetworking, Today's Chili
HTC Status

The HTC Status (formerly known as the ChaChaCha, the ChaCha, and “the Facebook phone that’s not a Facebook phone”) is inching ever closer to its AT&T debut. It’s already been pictured, sashayed its way through the FCC, and now it’s been revealed for all the world to see, appropriately enough, on Facebook. As we were already aware this social networking-focused, QWERTY candybar has had its CPU bumped up to 800MHz, but otherwise it’s the same Sense and Gingerbread packing device we saw back in February. Unfortunately, all we can tell you is that the Status will land on AT&T shelves at some point — price and availability are still as much of a mystery as ever. There’s some refresher PR after the break.

Continue reading HTC Status for AT&T announced on Facebook, risks being tagged in embarrassing pics

HTC Status for AT&T announced on Facebook, risks being tagged in embarrassing pics originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Jun 2011 14:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jun 29

RFID tags let you share waterpark photos on Facebook without leaving the lazy river

Posted in: social networking, SocialNetworking, Today's Chili

See this happy couple? They’re smiling because they’re in love, they’re at a waterpark, and they haven’t contracted E. coli yet. They could also be chuckling with the knowledge that all 700 of their closest Facebook friends will soon see them canoodling in an artificial lagoon, thanks to a strange new photo-sharing program from Great Wolf Resorts. From now on, visitors to Great Wolf’s Grand Mound lodge will be able to automatically post their vacation pics on Facebook, using only an RFID-equipped wristband. All they have to do is register their accounts at check-in, slap on their bands and head over to any of five kiosks stationed throughout the resort, where they can pose for pictures that will be instantly uploaded to their walls (along with captions). Immediately de-tagging yourself, however, remains a uniquely manual task. Wade past the break for the full PR.

Continue reading RFID tags let you share waterpark photos on Facebook without leaving the lazy river

RFID tags let you share waterpark photos on Facebook without leaving the lazy river originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Jun 2011 09:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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