Hasta La Gadget!

They grow up so fast, don’t they? Spotify’s US launch was just over a year ago, and the streaming music outlet wants us to know just how big its baby is getting. Americans listened to more than 13 billion tracks on the service in the first 365 days, and they shared more than twice as many — 27,834,742, to be exact. Not surprisingly, just over half of that socializing went through Facebook, as you can see in the company’s sugar-coated chart. Spotify is likewise flaunting 2,700 years’ worth of time spent skulking around its app platform. Don’t feel any pangs of regret if you forgot to buy something for Spotify’s birthday, by the way: the company isn’t holding any grudges and says you’ll “love” what it has gift-wrapped for year two. We’re hoping that involves more free radio stations and fewer holdout musicians.

Filed under: Internet

Spotify marks its first anniversary in the US with 13 billion listens, a whole lot of sharing goin’ on originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 21 Jul 2012 18:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If ever there were a purgatory for ideas, it’d be the USPTO’s patent application database. That land of legal limbo plays host to a multitude of tech entries both bizarre and straightforward, much of which will never see the light of day. So, it’s with a keen eye for the curious that we’ve stumbled upon this pair of filings submitted by Apple back in January of 2011 outlining a new social network specifically for hearing aids. Yes, you read that right, but its function isn’t actually as obvious as you’d imagine. According to the claims, hearing aids worn by at least two users will work in tandem with a personal computing device to identify user identities, establish a communication link and then swap profiles — not a list of likes and dislikes, but dynamic audio settings. It appears users will be able to update the sound processing on their respective devices to adjust for ambient noise and hone in on a specific sources. So, basically, it’s the Cupertino version of Superhuman hearing. It certainly lends a whole new meaning to, “Can you hear me now?” Eh?

Filed under: Peripherals, Wearables, Software

Pair of Apple patent applications set the stage for hearing aid-based social network originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 Jul 2012 17:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Facebook might be hoping to bolster its facial recognition features thanks to its purchase of Face.com, but US senators are drilling the company about the specifics. Senator Al Franken questioned Facebook about how the company is telling users about the face scanning feature, saying that it was far too difficult to find a notice on the social networking website that explicitly says facial recognition technology is being used.

Specifically, Senator Franken is concerned about how the feature is opt-out rather than opt-in. When a user uploads a photo to Facebook, the site automatically scans the faces in the picture and tries to find a match against registered users on the website. Right now the feature is disabled, but it will soon be re enabled following integration with Face.com’s tech that Facebook acquired not too long ago.

Franken highlighted security concerns regarding tools that pull down public information from Facebook which could include the scanned faces. That would make it harder to stay anonymous, with faces being matched up to other sensitive information freely available on the internet. Facebook, however, believes an automatic opt-in is the right fit for the feature: “We think that’s the appropriate choice because Facebook itself is an opt-in experience. People choose to be on Facebook because they want to share with one another.”

[via The Sacramento Bee]

Facebook questioned over facial recognition is written by Ben Kersey & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The results of the latest American Customer Satisfaction Index E-Business Report has been published, and it ranks companies on a 100-point scale. Among the companies in the rankings are social networking sites and Google+ has taken the top spot in the social network ranking, tying Wikipedia with a score of 78. While Google+ debuted at the top of the ranking chart for social media, Facebook is slipping.

Anyone that uses Facebook knows that each time the massive social network makes a change to its user interface, the outcry from users is massive. Facebook can thank some of those users angry about Timeline for the fact that it scored only 61 points on the latest edition of the survey, down from 66 points last year. Google+ continues to grow, but is still a very long way from Facebook’s massive size.

Google’s social network has over 250 million users, which sounds like a lot of people until you realize Facebook has 900 million users. Overall, the social media category slipped 1.4% in the customer satisfaction index to 69. Twitter is also a new entry to the social network group of the report and scored 64, putting it ahead of Facebook as well. Even LinkedIn ranked better than Facebook this time out with a score of 63 and Pinterest had a score of 69. Facebook’s 61 puts it in the bottom five scoring companies of all 230 firms the survey tracks.

[via Washington Post]

Google+ users more satisfied than Facebook users is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Those who extol the virtues of keeping one’s personal and professional life separate probably never had to juggle two Google+ accounts. Folks saddled with a Google+ profile for both their personal Gmail account and their organization’s Google Apps account can now migrate circles, blocks and other information from one account to another using Google Takeout. The new tool won’t eliminate your double digital life completely, however — content such as posts, profile information and comments don’t migrate. The process takes time, too, kicking off with a seven day waiting period before restricting the user’s Google+ access for 48 hours while Takeout boxes up the data. Still, this should make managing Circles across multiple accounts a little simpler. Check out the official Google help page at the source link below.

Filed under: Software

Google Takeout introduces transfer tool for Google+ circles, merges your work and personal life originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 14 Jul 2012 22:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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