In the good ol’ days of spy vs. spy, the honeypot was a tried and true method espionage technique, laced with danger, intrigue, and sex. These days—as Australian soldiers have found out the hard way—all it takes to seduce your way to state secrets is a Facebook friend request and a Google image search for “hot chicks.” More »
President Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention has set a new record on the social media. During his speech, Twitter witnessed a massive number of tweets, officially declaring that it was an all-new record of the most tweets per minute.
To be specific, 52,757 tweets per minute were sent during his speech with some of his lines reaching as many retweets and quotes as 43,000! Clearly, the hype of the entire DNC also added to whip up the tweeting frenzy. In all, the convention itself attracted a total of 9.5 million tweets.
Out of these, 4 million tweets were sent on the last day of the convention alone. Incidentally, the Republican National Convention attracted as many tweets in total. During and after President Obama’s speech, topics such as Medicare and Cold War mind warp were actively trending on Twitter.
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: [Study] Social media believed to be used by most of today’s burglars, Reebok Promise Keeper app uses peer pressure to help you stay fit,
iPad owners everywhere are raising their voices about raising their iPads. It may be the latest First World Problem but fear not, Apple Fanboys (and Fangirls), Shanghai Donya’s got a first-rate solution: the Folding iPad Stand.
While AT&T’s U-verse TV service announced increased support for second screen apps earlier this year and enhanced its own app for iPad with sharing features recently, it’s just delivered a new app that brings Facebook to the TV screen. The customized interface brings in user’s status feed, friends list and photos, where they can comment or leave standard messages to the service. There’s also naturally a tie-in allowing them to share information and updates about the shows they’re watching on the IPTV service directly through the app. According to the press release (included after the break) it can handle up to ten different accounts on a single receiver, so they don’t all have to post updates to one unlucky members account. Despite seeing many made-for-TV-screens social networking apps we haven’t found one that was definitely easier to use than keeping that kind of info on a second screen phone, tablet or PC, but we’ll wait to hear from U-Verse subscribers about how well this effort is working.
Continue reading AT&T U-verse delivers a Facebook app for TVs
Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD
AT&T U-verse delivers a Facebook app for TVs originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Aug 2012 23:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The Atlantic is reporting some pretty fascinating findings from a study on Internet usage patterns in homeless vs. non-homeless youth out of the University of Alabama. Apparently, for 75% of the youth surveyed, not even homelessness if a big enough impediment to getting at least an hour a day of Facebook or Twitter time. More »
Twitter’s latest move in the war against the companies which helped build it up is to no longer acknowledge when users are tweeting from the clients of all those third-party developers. It’s no secret Twitter wants to eradicate all third-party clients and funnel everyone into its own creations. And in theory, that should be great. Users would get a uniform experience, and Twitter would be able to introduce new features at breakneck speed. More »
It was inevitable the game-like features of Foursquare’s ‘mayorships,’ ‘badges’ and ‘check-ins’ would ultimately pave a path to paid advertising. Yes, that unassuming little geolocation-based
app that launched three short years ago at South by Southwest and has
amassed over 20 million registered users has decided to monetize.
Finally slipping into their big boy pants, Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai’s company have launched "Promoted Updates," with clients Madison Avenue ad agencies have been known to court over the years.
The Pentagon has just updated their latest set of rules for service members when it comes to using popular social media outlets, and of course, you would expect the big guns such as Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest to rank amongst the list. This new directive on social media is meant to replace the old rules (issued in 2010) that expired on July 15th, where the expiration date was extended last month when the leadership failed to arrive on a new set of guidance. In a space of less than two full years, certainly the social media landscape has changed a fair bit, but the Pentagon did not really catch up with the times, diminishing it to a two-pager on general use of “Internet based capabilities.”
Perhaps the new set of social media rules will arrive in the form of a manual? Will there be a dedicated team of social media enthusiasts who will monitor every Facebook post and Twitter feed before approval? Do our readers have any tips to share with the Pentagon, and make it feel far less formal?
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Insects could help Pentagon in surveillance, Dell Streak 5 cleared by Pentagon,
Facebook has given developers that link to the social network with Open Graph a new way let let users play tag with their friends — while also increasing exposure to their app. It’s called mention tagging, and allows a user to link a friend in the text body of a message, and is not to be confused with action tagging, an existing feature which references friends only in story text. The option requires a deliberate action by the user, so the developer must implement a way to clearly show how to do that with an icon (as shown above for Foursquare) or drop-down menu, for instance. Apps must also distinguish between action and mention tags, and are not allowed to pre-fill them in the message — that can only be done by the user. Though no privacy changes are needed, Facebook requires apps using the feature to request user approval before any action can be taken. All that would increase tagging and app visibility significantly — so developers will likely be all over it.
Filed under: Internet
Facebook adds mention tagging to Open Graph for more efficient name-dropping originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Aug 2012 03:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
We’re still not sure about the Sci Fi / Syfy Network name switch, but whatever you call it the network is the latest to jump on the trend of second screen features. Currently available on the latest version of its iPad app (and listed as “coming soon” for Android tablets on the official page an in the demo video embedded after the break), Syfy Sync will work with certain shows to pull up interactive content on your mobile device along with whatever is playing on TV. The first show to get the treatment is the season premiere of Face Off airing August 21st. Naturally, there’s a social media element as well, with sharing to Facebook and Twitter, as well as integrated GetGlue check-ins. Whether or not you dig the second screen aspects or are just waiting for some better shows to come on, there are other upgrades with a new UI as, show related photo galleries and support for AirPlay to play the app’s video clips on your TV. Syfy for iPad 2.0 with sync is available for free in iTunes, we’ll let you know when the Android version is upgraded and if similar features head to any other mobile platforms soon.
Filed under: Home Entertainment, Tablet PCs
Syfy for iPad app adds Sync feature, second screen content launches Tuesday with Face Off (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Aug 2012 04:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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