Posts Tagged ‘twitter’

This really should come as no surprise: the Guardian reports that FBI agents have been going undercover on Facebook and other social networking sites looking for criminals. And they’ve been finding them.

This doesn’t refer to persons promoting bogus FB apps designed to steal identities.

They are finding criminals who maintain profiles, sometimes public profiles, under their real names with photographs of their real faces:

Law enforcement agencies have long used internet chatrooms to lure child pornography traffickers and suspected sex predators and with a warrant, can seize suspects and defendants’ email records. But Facebook, MySpace and other social networking sites provide a wealth of additional information, in photographs, status updates and friend lists. In many cases, the information is publicly accessible.

In a section entitled “utility in criminal cases”, the document says agents can scan suspects’ profiles to establish motives, determine a person’s location, and tap into personal communication, for instance through Facebook status updates.

This really shouldn’t surprise anyone. What’s notable is that the Electronic Freedom Foundation got hold of an internal Department of Justice slideshow (presumably a PowerPoint presentation) dealing with this topic. The excerpts in the news story are fascinating.

The article goes on to point out that social networking sites are often checked as part of employment background checks–again, not news, although not necessarily publicized. I happened to be with a personnel guy when he checked the social networking page (not Facebook) of a job applicant. The picture of the applicant smoking a joint did not further the applicant’s chances for employment (no confidence was violated–I didn’t know who the applicant was or what the applicant looked like).

Mentioned, but not resolved, in the Department of Justice slideshow was the question of whether an agent’s creating a Facebook account under an assumed name violates Facebook’s terms of service. Given that undercover police work has a long history, I suspect this practice would be considered equivalent to working under cover, but I am not a lawyer.

Folks need to remember that the internet is a public place.

600 tweets a second. That might just jump up a little in the next 18 hours as the Deccabillitweeter will be crowned.

What is a Deccabillitweeter? Well that is the person who will make the 10 Billionth Twitter. I know I will be trying for that. Therefore, you will see me tweet all day tomorrow.

1st tweet: Got out of bed. 2nd tweet: Jumped in shower 3rd tweet: showering. 4th Tweet: still showering…

Deccabillitweeter meter

I looked, but couldn’t find out who the 1 billionth tweet was. All I know is it happened around Nov. 10, 2008. The 5 Billionth Twitter was sent by Robin Slone with the post “Oh lord”. He hit enter before he could finish it with “…it’s hard to be humble, when you’re perfect in every way…”

So what do you give a Deccabillitweeter? Well if it’s anything like an anniversary, it’s tin/aluminum or Diamond. So would that make it a Diamond-Deccabillitweeter?

We have 18 hours to go, according to Gigatweet.  Yep, it’s a site dedicated to watching how much time we waste online. Bless their souls.

That’s right. This week, Jeffrey Powers puts on his Bard hat and sings the 5 Tech Things you should know for February Album Writing Month (FAWM). It’s a challenge to write 14 songs in 28 days and Jeffrey is right now on 11… er… 12 after this one.

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Because this is a writen song, we have Lyrics! So sing along with Jeff!

Apple loves the iPhone, this we know is true
They want to give that OS in many ways to you.
They posted on their website a job for us to find
an engineer that will take the iPhone to another device

Just like the Android, they see that there is hope
to move beyond the smartphone, to widen the scope
But do we want to see our fridgidare get a upgrade
The App store update to tell us the milk is not grade A

These are the 5 tech things
You should know is what we sing
We have 4 more to go, and that is what we know
To these, the 5 tech things

Nine years of research, the Bloom Box has emerged
A solid oxide fuel cell the energy of the future
Taking fossil fuel and turning electro
with 100 Kilowatts of energy, they could power 100 homes

Unlike solar energy, the technology could run all day
saving customers thousand through their bill of energy
It would make for greener server rooms and still keep them up
A savior in the power market that could fill the cup

Congrats to the iTunes user, who scored 10 thousand bucks
They downloaded the ten billionth song which strengthened their luck
As Steve Jobs turns 55, his guru skills you see
And Apple rakes the money for his prosparity

The e book reader game, is heating up you see
As Nintendo throws their big old hat into that game
The DS system will release 100 classics for their Dsi
June 14th for $20, is the price you should eye

Twitter takes a staggering 50 million tweets a day
That’s 600 tweets per second of people voices to say
A year ago the number was only at 2.
That’s a 1,400 percent increase, now we’ll see businesses vie

For that means Twitters’ business model, is about to change
and that tweet that I just sent wont really mean a thing
for it’s in a sea of Twitters that try to be heard
And I only read within a day about 250 twitters

And that is the show, I hope you had a good time
You should check out fawm dot org for more rhymes
My name is Jeffrey Powers, I thank you for coming
to check out this song, and the 5 tech things

Til next time – take care.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (79.7MB)

On Wednesday, the Social Media Club Madison chapter held their first kickoff meet at the Brocach by the Capitol. About 125 were in attendance as the board of directors was introduced. We met one another and learned a lot about how everyone can work together.

The sponsors of the event created gift bags for the registered guests. Each table had products and a sign that said either Facebook, Flickr, Twitter or YouTube. You had to sit at each station and write out how you would promote the products on your given Social Network site. However, with the larger turnout, it was more difficult to move around, therefore I am not sure if they got the response they expected for that social game.

I went through the crowd and talked to a lot of Social Media and PR people. I ran into a few of the Web608 group who were also mingling. An interesting conversation about Twitter and their business model between myself, Nick and Brandyn. I also showed part of the board the iPhone application “bump” – to share contact information. The video will be forthcoming.

The Social Media Club started by Chris Heuer and Kristie Wells. The first chapter was launched on August 16, 2006 to bring all artists, creators, journalists, students, public relations and more together. The initial membership is free – with business and group memberships available.

In this video, we meet the Board of Directors for the Madison WI chapter of the Social Media Club. I took some backchannel on the event.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (107.4MB)

A little rough start as I started to use the uStream Producer for the video. Too many balls to juggle for now…Sat. Feb 20th @ 10:59 P.M. Paul Edward Powers entered the world. Congratulations to this weeks Winner of Diskeeper 2010 – LeonChan, we will give another away next week. FAWM coming to an end. Need help in getting a new Heil Boom PL2T. Madison Social Media Club Kickoff Party. My time on Google Buzz.

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I – S.U.N. (Straight Up News)
Chinese Google Attacker Found
Amazon, Microsoft Sign Patent Deal
Another Reporter is Fired For Deceptive Practice
Dynamic Digital Textbooks
Sony Patents Game Controllers
LIDAR Robots Map Dangerous Areas
Walmart Buys VUDU
$300 Tiny PC
NIST Advanced Cryptography
Google Android Released
-Dolly Parton Likes Mobile Roadie Application
Skin Font

QOTW – With Windows Mobile 7 including Zune, will you switch to WinMo?
Video – LG FilmFest Winner: Nuit Blanche

II
Apple on Adult Applications
93 Million Lack Broadband
Samsung HMX-U20
Facial Recognition Stalkers
Twitter at 50 Million Tweets a Day
Bloombox

CES 2010 Video Feed – Geekazine
Check out the other podcast: Day in Tech History

Contacts: Twitter – Plurk – Myspace – Facebook Group – FriendFeed or Digg the Podcast. The Geekazine Podcast is under a Creative Commons no-deriv license

Music for Podcast by the John Masino Band

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 52:31 — 24.0MB)

Last week when Google Buzz came out, all the Social Mediates jumped on board like the last boat of the day starting to leave the dock. Instantly, we saw everyone posting “I am Buzzing”, and others rebuilding their Social Media lists. The big names pretty much dominated the Buzz. But it did become an opportunity for a new name or two to get in there. And – as far as I know – Ashton Kutcher is not on Buzz.. Yet.

Two big questions people had about Buzz in the first week – Is Buzz like which Social Media Micro Blogging device, and which one is Buzz going to replace? In this video, we look at Google Buzz, Friend Feed, Twitter and Facebook. Jeffrey talks about what Buzz is close to and gives answers to these two questions.

What do you think? Will Buzz replace Facebook? Friend Feed? Twitter?

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (43.4MB)

Well the big news from Google today was Google Buzz. Not to be confused with Yahoo Buzz – which might cause some  friction because they are both social networks. Some even say it’s trying to be Facebook.

Google Buzz is GMail in real time. You can add to email in real time. Kinda like Wave does, except it can be on a personal level. It has some Twitter functionality – @geekazine will be recognized. You can even speak in your comments and they will be transcribed.

Buzz will also be available for the mobile phone. A little Augemented 2D action – Hit the Nearby option on Google Maps in the phone and find out what others are saying. Geotagged Buzz posts will show you what is being said. Another movie premier killer option right there.

Here is where you can see a commercial about Google Buzz. It won’t be available for everyone just yet, But you know you have it when you look under your “Inbox” and it says “Buzz”. Technically it’s in Beta, although they don’t seem to be calling it a Beta.

The iPhone app is simply a link to the page you can place on your Home screen. I instantly saw my Buzz and a comment from someone only a few miles away from me. Moved the Map over to CA and there was a lot of Buzz.

It will be interesting how this application will cultivate. Will it be a Facebook Killa? Will it change the way we use E-Mail? Will the “G” in GMail become GeoTag Mail? Will Yahoo sue Google for “Buzz”? Only time will tell. What do you think of this new innovation from Google?

The BBC reports that a phishing scam involving torrents has been uncovered. Their headline implies that it targets Twitter.

It doesn’t, not specifically. Twitter seems to have been responsible for revealing it.

The way it worked was really quite clever.

After “doing some digging” the firm (Twitter) found a network of compromised torrent sites that had been set up with the sole aim of stealing logon information.

“It appears that for a number of years, a person has been creating torrent sites that require a login and password as well as creating forums set up for torrent site usage and then selling these purportedly well-crafted sites and forums to other people innocently looking to start a download site of their very own,” said the firm.

The sites also contained security exploits allowing the person to steal usernames and passwords.

After a while, the malware would phone home with the list of usernames and passwords. The plan relied on the tendency of persons to use the same password for multiple sites; the phisher would then try the torrent passwords on other sites, such as Facebook and Twitter.

Read the rest of this entry »

Reuters is reporting that a security flaw in Twitter exposes users’ login credentials. It’s related to a known vulnerability in the Adobe Flash programming language. From the article:

Adobe has told programmers how to address the vulnerability, which was first discovered in 2006, he added, but noted the operators of many websites have failed to respond to the warnings from Adobe.

Some of the comments I’ve seen are wondering why Twitter hasn’t fixed this. I was starting to wonder why the flaw still exists in the Flash programming language, then I realized Adobe can’t be responsible for programmers’ not keeping up.

I’m not an Adobe fan (I don’t use the Acrobat reader on any of my machines and I use Flash only because there’s not much point to surfing the web without it), but I have to say that Adobe has gotten a lot of undeserved bad press lately. The attack on attack on Gmail attributed to China was first attributed to a flaw in the Acrobat Reader, but later found to depend on a flaw in Internet Explorer.

Although the Reuters story didn’t mention this, if I used Twitter, I’d change my password.

The CES Show is over and I was beat. Trip home was not that great. Videos are coming up, twice daily. Thanks to the crew and check out the awesome 2 day coverage at the NBC Universal stage. Our good friends let us borrow the stage to create that show. I give you my take on 3-D Technology. It did bring out the PR agencies. AT&T and iPhone was a Major Fail, too.

The Home page will be changing a bit. Also, thanks to Robb for noticing a problem on the page.

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All Geekazine Podcast Show Notes are also on Delicious
To add cool items next week link on Delicious – geekazine podcast 122

Hotline – 608-205-4378 – geekazine (at) gmail.com

Download the show
Subscribe: Zune – iTunes – TechPodcasts – Blubrry – Stitcher

I – S.U.N. (Straight Up News)
Twitter Hack takes down Baidu
Is the Tech Recession Over?
Facebook has a Universal Password?
Zuckerberg Privacy concerns
AOL Layoffs Begin
Google Office gets Storage
Nexus One is like Zune
- Google’s Reaction
iPhone Pocket Heat
Apple multi-touch Vanishes
An Electric Snuggie
Symantec Acquires Gideon
Fraud in Android Apps

Video – Jim Lauderback’s Weird Wacky and Dumb Products
Backchannel – Leo Laporte looks at the OWLE

II
What I really liked from CES
- CINQ
- Raidon
- Entourage Edge
- WavIT
- OWLE

CES 2010 Videos – Geekazine
Check out the other podcast: Day in Tech History

Contacts: Twitter – Plurk – Myspace – Facebook Group – FriendFeed or Digg the Podcast. The Geekazine Podcast is under a Creative Commons no-deriv license

Music for Podcast by the John Masino Band

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:04:15 — 29.4MB)

This week’s show, we take a quick look back to 2009, but we look in a different way. We explore 5 ideas that Technology has propelled in 2009. Some of it has been around a lot longer than last year, while others have created a household name for themselves.

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The 5 things we look at

• Droid
• Farmville
• Augmented Reality
• Tablets
• Twitter Trends

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (365.0MB)