Hasta La Gadget!

Another day, another cyberattack by the Syrian Electronic Army. This time the hacktivist collective targeted The Financial Times, making a nuisance of itself by taking over several of the company’s Twitter accounts, as well as changing the titles of posts on The Financial Times‘ blog posts to “Hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army.” While the actions themselves are annoying, one message in particular crossed the line when it sent readers to a video of an execution.

The Syrian Electronic Army has attacked a variety of media companies, including CBS, The Guardian, E! Online, and even The Onion. Often times, the hackers take control of the company’s Twitter account(s) and use it/them to post messages, some of them coming across as nonsense, others as fake news (such as Justin Bieber coming out of the closet), and sometimes things of a more serious nature, such as the link to a video execution on YouTube posted on one of the Financial Times’ Twitter accounts.

The Financial Times confirmed the hacks to The New York Times in an email, according to the latter company. While the company didn’t specify how the hackers gained access to their system, there’s a good chance it was accomplished the same way its other breaches have been achieved, which was detailed by The Onion earlier this month.

According to a blog post published on May 10, The Onion’s attack was the result of a rather conventional phishing scheme that involved sending links to a few of the company’s employees. The links purported to be of an interesting story, but instead took the recipient to a page requesting Google Apps login information. When someone falls for the ruse, their email is then used to try to message other workers for additional login information.

When someone in possession of the company’s social media accounts takes the bait, the hackers can then log into the account, change the password, and begin wrecking havoc. A similar attack was performed on The Associated Press, with one of the hackers revealing that 50 of the company’s employees had revealed their login information. Such attacks reaffirm that companies should train their employees on how to recognize phishing attempts, as well as taking measures to reduce the amount of damage that can result if someone does provide their credentials.

SOURCE: The New York Times

Syrian Electronic Army cyberattacks The Financial Times is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Are you a stellar mobile app innovator who needs a good excuse to show off your work? Any sort of mobile app can be thrown into the running, as long as it’s excellent!

Google is continuing its push for more Google+ features, and today it has announced a new addition for mobile users to take advantage of. Essentially, the new feature suggests other articles to read to mobile users when already reading a specific article. The content that gets recommended is based on relevancy, popularity, the author, and other minor factors.

This new recommendation feature is available for both iOS and Android, but it seems it’s only compatible with Forbes for the time being, with more publications to get support in the near future. Basically, a small bar will appear at the bottom of an article that can navigate you to other relevant reading material, as well as the author’s own Google+ page.

Mobile users will also see these recommendations whether they’re signed into Google or not, but users who are signed in, will receive more options when tapping on the bottom recommendations bar. Hopefully this new feature will roll out for all websites sooner than later, but it seems the company is still in its testing phases and will mostly likely only give a few other websites access before they roll it to every web developer.

Google says that they’re making it as easy as possible for developers to add and configure content recommendations for their mobile websites, and by adding a single line of Javascript to the code, devs will be able to make changes in the “For your site” section of their Google+ page dashboard right from the desktop.

This is sort of a win/win situation for both mobile web users and the website developers. Not only will users be able to find more stories of interest based on the initial article they read, but websites will be able to add further value for their readers by easily providing them with related articles if they’re wanting more information about the subject talked about in a specific article. The new feature is a lot like our “Story Timeline” at the end of most of our posts, and while you can still access these additional stories on our mobile site, the new Google+ feature seems to be a lot more intuitive when browsing on mobile websites. We’ll have to wait and see, and we’re guessing Google will talk more about this at Google I/O this week. Stay tuned!

SOURCE: Google+ Developers Blog

Google+ amplifies mobile reach: how in-site reccommendations will affect the reader is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Flipboard has updated its iOS app to add even more features on top of the recently-updated 2.0 version that was released on iOS and Android not too long ago. Today’s update brings new profile pages, a new “Friends” category, improved sharing that now comes with SMS support, and the ability to save an image to your camera roll by tapping on it.

The update also comes with “improved navigation for Google Reader RSS folder,” which hopes to make the process easier for those inevitably switching over from the soon-to-be deceased Google Reader RSS service, and it’ll hopefully ease the process for users switching over to find their content quicker this time around.

As for the refreshed profile pages, this gives users insights into their readership and curation activities, as well as the ability to discover “magazines” created by their friends thanks to the new “Friends” category. The update also comes with improved sharing options, which now allow you to send interesting articles and magazines to friends through SMS messaging.

Overall, not a major update by any means, but it does include some small new features that could prove useful for many Flipboardists. Just last week, The Android version of the app was updated to version 2.0, bringing the popular magazine curation feature to Google’s mobile platform and allowing users to create their own magazines that they could share with other users.

Flipboard 2.0 has been out for almost two months now, and by the second week since the app’s update, the company announced that a half a million magazines had already been created by users, proving that users are really enjoying creating their own digital product of sorts. Furthermore, the service claims to have over 50 million users who are flipping over six billion pages per month on average.

SOURCE: iTunes App Store

Flipboard update brings SMS sharing, proves that text messaging isn’t dead is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

While the "Party of No" desperately seeks something to say yes to, their
fight to rebrand themselves is met by aggressive social media
opposition by the Redditors. While bookmarking sites the likes of Digg
have withered on the digital vine over the past few years, Reddit seems
to be not only the one with staying power, but the one whose "up" or
"down" votes can sway public opinion quickly.