X-pire! software will add digital expiration dates to your photos, photo-related embarrassment

Wouldn’t it be nice if photos you uploaded to Facebook, MySpace and Flickr just stopped being accessible after a while, saving you the almighty hassle of having to delete them yourself? Well, a few good Germans have come together to produce the X-pire! software, which promises to do just that — make online imagery inaccessible after a given period of time following their upload. It’s been around in prototype form as a Firefox extension, but next week should see its proper launch, complete with a subscription-based pricing model costing €24 per year. Yes, the observant among you will note that this does nothing to prevent others from grabbing those images and re-uploading them, but this software’s ambition is humbler than that — it just aims to give the less tech-savvy (or simply lazier) user a tool for controlling at least part of his or her presence on the web.

X-pire! software will add digital expiration dates to your photos, photo-related embarrassment originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 16 Jan 2011 22:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceAFP (Yahoo! News)  | Email this | Comments

@MeTees shows your Twitter handle to the world, gets you one step closer to #trending

Twitter-related messages on t-shirts aren’t unheard of, but tossing your actual handle on a tee? Now that’s an idea we’re down with. We can’t exactly say we’re boastful enough to toss our own name on a shirt, but it might not be a bad idea to throw your company Twitter account on there and force all of your employees to rock one on a trade show floor. Watch for The Situation to roll into B.E.D. rocking one of these in 3… 2…

@MeTees shows your Twitter handle to the world, gets you one step closer to #trending originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 09 Jan 2011 04:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Shocker! Media addicts suffer withdrawal symptoms, just like real addicts

…and we’re all media addicts, aren’t we? A recent study conducted by the International Center for Media & the Public Agenda (ICMPA) certainly seems to indicate that this is indeed the case. The premise was pretty straightforward: students at twelve universities around the world were instructed to abstain from using all media for twenty-four hours. The results were somewhat predictable: across the board, going without television was somewhat easy to do, while abstaining from text messaging and instant messaging brought on withdrawal symptoms: “When I did not have those two luxuries,” wrote one student, “I felt quite alone and secluded from my life. Although I go to a school with thousands of students, the fact that I was not able to communicate with anyone via technology was almost unbearable.” According to Dr. Roman Gerodimos of the University of Portsmouth both psychological and physical symptoms were reported by the young techno-junkies.

Shocker! Media addicts suffer withdrawal symptoms, just like real addicts originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 Jan 2011 02:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink TG Daily  |  sourceSalzburg Academy  | Email this | Comments

UK voice choir sings Please Retweet Me song for charity, probably has no idea what it means (video)

So here’s the deal: the UK Meningitis Trust wants to help raise awareness about the disease it’s dedicated to battling and has a 30-strong male voice choir at its disposal to do it with. How does it reach the widest possible audience? If your ideas include namedropping every major social media site set up over the last decade, a nod to the iPhone versus Android dichotomy, and the use of Yahoo as a bad pun, then you must be the guy responsible for putting together the video after the break. Congratulations, it’s awesome. The behind-the-scenes footage with these old crooners isn’t too terrible either.

Continue reading UK voice choir sings Please Retweet Me song for charity, probably has no idea what it means (video)

UK voice choir sings Please Retweet Me song for charity, probably has no idea what it means (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 19 Dec 2010 12:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink copyranter  |  sourceThe Meningitis Trust (Facebook)  | Email this | Comments

Multitouch Twitter wall to fascinate onlookers, Engadget staffers at #CES

CES is no stranger to larger-than-life display installations, but as this whole “social networking” thing continues to blossom, it looks as if next year’s megawall will be integrating with none other than Twitter. Designed by Finland’s own MultiTouch, the Multitouch Twitter Wall will consist of “at least” six MultiTouch Cell 46 displays, each of which checks in at 46-inches wide. The whole shebang will offer onlookers at the show the ability to open tweets, move them around and give them a perfect opportunity to blow off steam while having their minds blitzed by the sheer quantity of news associated with the #CES tag. We’ll be sure to give it a look once we touch down in the great southwest next month, but till then, you can get a taste by mashing play below.

[Thanks, André]

Continue reading Multitouch Twitter wall to fascinate onlookers, Engadget staffers at #CES

Multitouch Twitter wall to fascinate onlookers, Engadget staffers at #CES originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 18 Dec 2010 23:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceTechnopolis Online  | Email this | Comments

iTunes 10 now offering social playlists with Ping

After Twitter integration and iPad migration, looks like the next stop for Ping is social playlists. That’s right — the next time you make a mix in iTunes 10, clicking on the playlist arrow will give you two options: you can either purchase the playlist as a gift to your friend or loved one, or publish the playlist to Ping itself. Once your playlist is published, you can even give your friends on the network the option to edit it, making it a community playlist of sorts. Of course, this last option only works if you really trust your friends’ taste. After all, it just wouldn’t do to have Philip Glass invade your “Core Workout Playlist” featuring such beloved anthems Move This by Technotronic and Whoomp! There It Is by Tag Team.

iTunes 10 now offering social playlists with Ping originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 15 Dec 2010 05:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Visualized: Facebook’s global reach

If you’ve ever wondered what a map drawn entirely of Facebook relationships would look like, wonder no more. A Facebook intern by the name of Paul Butler has put together the above image by feeding in location data for pairs of friends, with the white lights representing cities, towns, and hamlets, and the blue streaks between them identifying relationships linking them. It’s fun to see large swathes of Australia and South America devoid of Facebook activity, but check out the bit on the map where Russia and China are supposed to be — is Facebook the most capitalist social network ever or what? Hit the source link for the full-scale image, it gets prettier the closer you get to it.

[Thanks, Ian]

Visualized: Facebook’s global reach originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 14 Dec 2010 06:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Netflix hiring Facebook Integration engineer

Like Netflix? Then get ready to prove it by sharing your film interests with your social network. Netflix is looking to hire a “Facebook Integration — Engineer / Architect” into its new Social Systems engineering team. According to the open position posted to the Netflix jobs board, the senior web engineer will, “conceive and build the systems that enable Netflix applications and systems to use the social graph to create a more social Netflix experience” Specifically, the ideal new hire should be familiar with Facebook’s Open Graph API to build a customer-facing service. It’s just a guess, but we’d expect this to ultimately allow Netflix subscribers and wannabes to like, view and filter Netflix offerings based upon their social input and preferences. Interesting, because Netflix abandoned its homegrown Friends feature earlier this year. Guess now we know why.

[Thanks, Eric]

Netflix hiring Facebook Integration engineer originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 14 Dec 2010 05:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceNetflix, Netflix blog  | Email this | Comments

Talay Robot will document your tweet, give it a soundtrack, Twitvid the results (video)

Tweet a message @talayrobot and something magical happens. An ST Robotics arm whirs to life inside Sony Music’s London HQ and starts transcribing your words of wisdom unto a glamorously lit whiteboard — in the finest handwriting font its designers could find! Best part is that the whole thing gets filmed and the video is sent back to you within a matter of minutes, equipped with an audio clip from Sony’s Talay Riley. Yes, it’s a promotional stunt, but it’s also undeniably one of the coolest intersections of robotics and social networking we’ve yet seen. Skip past the break for some video examples or get tweeting and create your own.

Continue reading Talay Robot will document your tweet, give it a soundtrack, Twitvid the results (video)

Talay Robot will document your tweet, give it a soundtrack, Twitvid the results (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Nov 2010 05:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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iPhone gets UberTwitter client, BlackBerrys have one less reason to exist

If the name UberTwitter sounds familiar, that’ll be because it’s one of the more popular mobile Twitter clients, accounting for 10 million tweets each day from BlackBerry users around the globe. And now it’s also available on the iPhone. Citing the “growing dominance” of Apple’s one-device-to-rule-them-all mobile platform, the UberTwitter crew has decided to expand its offering with a new open beta, which is available to download now. The major distinguishing feature being touted is something called UberView, which allows access to links within tweets without exiting the app or opening up a new window within it. Looks a pretty slick idea, but there are still some early issues to be ironed out — as with all beta iterations — and a final v1.0 should be ready to do battle with Twitter’s official app by the middle of December.

Continue reading iPhone gets UberTwitter client, BlackBerrys have one less reason to exist

iPhone gets UberTwitter client, BlackBerrys have one less reason to exist originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 24 Nov 2010 03:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceUberTwitter  | Email this | Comments