Hasta La Gadget!

Earlier today, Facebook users experienced a site outage for about 20 minutes. The issue didn’t affect mobile users, with smartphone and tablet access remaining unaffected. This issue originated after Google users were also affected by outages, prompting curiosity about whether the two issues were related. Turns out, Facebook was just tinkering.

The issue caused a bit of confusion at first, with some Facebook users reporting that the social network worked fine, and with others reporting that it couldn’t be accessed. It didn’t take long for users to realize that the mobile version of the site was working, but that attempting to access Facebook via a desktop browser resulted in an error. Less than half an hour later, all was well again.

A Facebook spokesperson offered this statement to Business Insider. “Earlier today we made a change to our DNS infrastructure and that change resulted in some people being temporarily unable to reach the site. We detected and resolved the issue quickly, and we are now back to 100 percent. We apologize for any inconvenience.”

This came after Gmail users awoke to find their email down, an issue entirely unrelated to the Facebook outage. The problem seemed to persist for certain users for about 40 minutes before being corrected. Google issued this statement at 12:10 PST: “The problem with Google Mail should be resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support.”

[via Business Insider]

Facebook offers statement about site outage is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The increasingly bitter rivalry between Twitter  and Instagram may reach a peak before New Year celebrations kick off, sources hint, with the microblogging platform supposedly readying its own suite of photo filters for imminent launch. Twitter is aiming to reveal a selection of image tweaking tools that can fettle amateur shutterbugs’ shots prior to sharing, insiders tell AllThingsD, before 2012 is out, with a new version of the mobile app in testing. The results of it might already be in front of us: Twitter chairman Jack Dorsey is tipped to be using the filters on recently shared black-and-white images.

If true, the new feature would follow Instagram’s moves to drive more traffic to its own user profiles. The company blocked Instagram images from showing up correctly in Twitter’s “cards” layout last week, a strategy which although initially suspected to be an error, was later confirmed to be a strategic decision on Facebook-owned Instagram’s part.

Talk of a set of official Twitter photo tools broke earlier in the year, with insiders suggesting the 140-character social service had already planned to encroach on Instagram’s turf. The appeal of the image sharing market – which saw, for instance, in excess of 200 Thanksgiving-themed shots shared through Instagram every second on the US public holiday – has not been lost on Facebook, either, though Zuckerberg & Co. have insisted that Instagram will remain a distinct entity for the time being.

Twitter has declined to comment on the filter whispers, though chairman Jack Dorsey may have been flaunting the new functionality in our faces already. Multiple filtered images shared through his own Twitter account show evidence of editing, including an image of a plane wing posted last week.

With Christmas and New Year festivities inevitably seeing plenty of photo-taking, an accelerated launch of Twitter’s own filter features is certainly understandable. However, given that Christmas is only two weeks away, the company has little time left to deliver the polish users will demand if seasonal sharing is to go smoothly.

Twitter photo filters tipped for holidays: Has Dorsey teased them already? is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Spotify has launched Music Graph, a way of powering music suggestions based on famous listeners and people in the music industry itself. Designed to address that “what do I listen to next?” problem, Spotify Music Graph includes luminaries from Bruno Mars and Shakira, to the NME team, to Barack Obama, with the option to listen to shared playlists.

Artists can share their current playlists – not only including their own tracks, but those they recommend, as a way of building credibility among listeners – and users can build up a list of people they follow to learn about new music. Multiple playlists can be maintained, and there are recommendations as to who user might want to follow based on their listening history.

Among the participating celebrities, artists, and music luminaries:

Metallica
Barack Obama
Katy Perry
David Guetta
Justin Bieber
KCRW
Bruno Mars
Huffington Post
Pearl Jam
People Magazine
Entertainment Weekly
Lady Antebellum
Trey Songz
Wiz Khalifa
Slash

However, listeners themselves can also create their own playlists and share them. That can be done either solely on Spotify, or through links on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. Usability will be particularly enhanced when the Spotify web player is released for all users early in the new year.

The Music Graph system can also alert listeners to when new tracks and albums from their favorite artists are released. In a demo, CEO Daniel Ek showed how a new Bruno Mars album popped up a notification on iOS, and with a swipe opened up in Spotify on the iPhone.

Spotify Music Graph: The NME, Obama & more guide your playlists is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Google has revealed its answer to Facebook Groups, Google+ Communities, a way for like-minded souls to create hubs of discussion and media on any topic they’re interested in. Hitting all Google+ accounts today, Communities works as a topic-specific discussion board, with support for various sub-topics branching off from that, and with a choice of privacy settings to control whether anybody can participate, or if it’s locked down.

Communities can be made fully public, or demand membership before they can be used. Alternatively, they can be private, with a choice as to whether or not they show up in search results. It’s also possible to post new content to the Communities you’re part of simply by choosing them in the circles section of a new update.

Hangout video chats and Events are both integrated, as you’d expect, and there’s gallery support along with YouTube video embeds. There are also various filters, for cutting information down into specific topics, while members of individual Communities will be able to share directly into them by choosing that Community page when they hit +1 around the web.

“Facebook most generally is about the people you already know, about your real world connections” Google’s Brad Horowitz said of Google+ Communities’ rivals. “On Twitter, well it’s really hard to have a meaningful conversation in 140-character snippets.” According to Horowitz, the new feature is all about “making it easy to find your tribe.”

Google+ Communities:

[via TechCrunch; via TNW; via The Verge]

Google+ Communities turns social upstart into discussion hub is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Microsoft has unleashed Socl into beta for all comers to probe, bringing it out of the experimental stages and a step closer to a full-fledged site. We first heard about the project back in July when it was dubbed Tulalip, and MS Research’s Fuse Labs officially launched it internally and into some universities back in October last year. The site carries the Windows 8 tile-like look, and Fuse says that imagery is emphasized over “blue links” for search, helping democratize the site “even for people who speak different languages.” That lets you find others via posts, a people gallery, or someone’s page — where new posts, people and interests can be viewed all at once. A nav bar allows articles to be created by topics like web, videos or news, and users can create “parties,” where they can chat, create playlists or watch videos with others in a similar fashion to Google Hangouts. The project was coded using Redmond’s Java-hued Typescript to allow for rapid coding changes, according to Fuse’s blog in the source below. To try it out for yourself, check the “more coverage” link.

Filed under: Internet, Microsoft

Comments

Via: Techmeme

Source: Microsoft Research FuseLabs