Internet & Websites News - Page 78

A feature requested by many Twitter users, and partially offered by other services, will finally be offered directly by Twitter some time in the future. "We're working on a tool to let users export all of their tweets," Mr. Costolo said in a meeting with reporters and editors at The New York Times on Monday. "You'll be able to download a file of them."

However, while users will be able to go through their own Tweets, as of right now, there are no plans for a feature to allow users to dig through all of the Tweets on the site. He explained that the search problems are very different and you "can't just put three engineers on it." As of right now, there is no timeline for when a search or download feature would be available.

EU law already provides this option for users who really want to have a copy of their Tweets and several users have taken advantage of it. EU law requires Twitter to provide a copy of all data they have stored about a user. Those who have exercised that right have found that it includes your account, tweets, favorites, direct messages, saved searches and more information about you, delivered in a ZIP file.

Facebook shares were trading above $30 for a few weeks, but they dropped earlier this week, where they closed on Tuesday afternoon at a month-low of just $28.09. Facebook stock dropped 0.55-percent on Tuesday, after a huge 8.6-percent fall the day before.

Zynga shares were also hit, as the company is closely tied into the success of the Facebook platform, where they saw a drop of 5-percent on Tuesday, closing at a year-low of $4.58. The cause of these drops come after Capstone analyst Rory Maher released a report claiming Facebook's U.S. user base declined 1.1-percent over the last six months, as well as the European Facebook user base experiencing decline.

But, with 900 million monthly active users, Facebook can't see continuous growth - there will be stages of stagnation in their user growth, and maybe we're seeing the early signs of this. Looking into the future, Facebook's areas of growth seem to be international. Japan, Russia and China are their next markets to concentrate on.

In another attempt to make a pointless statement towards Washington D.C., a group of websites and privacy organizations have come together to form the Declaration of Internet Freedom. The Declaration of Internet Freedom is the start of something bigger, a movement to uphold and ensure some basic principles, much like the Declaration of Independence was.

"We've seen how the Internet has been under attack from various directions, and we recognize that it's time to make that stop," said TechDirt, a site involved with the new movement. "The Internet is an incredible platform that we want to grow and to thrive, and thus, a very large coalition got together to produce the following document as a starting point, hoping to kick off a much larger discussion which we hope you'll join in."

As it stands currently, the Declaration of Internet Freedom is composed of 5 basic values:

Over the last few months Apple have been getting hit with negative press over their OS' security, with hackers and the such gaining access to user files in less than thirty seconds, which is a concern as Apple used to always push that their operating system never got PC viruses.

But, Apple continued to run with the "I'm a Mac and I'm a PC" campaign, where they focused on the "fact" that Windows-based systems got viruses, while OS X-based systems couldn't. But now that we know that is complete BS, Apple have done what they do best, marketing and using its legal system to remove any proof so that potential liability for the company is wiped away.

As you can see in the picture above, Apple used to state that a "Mac isn't susceptible to the thousands of viruses plaguing Windows-based computers. That's thanks to built-in defences in Mac OS X that keep you safe, without any work on your part". So Apple more or less said that you just run the OS and you're protected, but for years we've known this isn't true.

Have you ever noticed that the views on a newly viral YouTube video seemingly pause at 301? If so, I imagine you've wondered why that is. Well, previously it had just been one of those many internet myths that seemingly don't have an answer. However, thanks to YouTube product manager Ted Hamilton, we now have an answer.

The basic reason behind the views freezing at 301 is the following: Once a video hits 300 views, subsequent views are collected and sent to YouTube's central servers for verification. This verification process takes about one-half day to a day and checks that the views weren't racked up by a bot. Mr. Hamilton explains:

Views, as mentioned, are a currency. When you have a video with very small amount of views you don't need to be too careful about what the view was. However, once it gets to be above 300 and beyond, this currency, we really need to verify and make sure that the number is what it purports to be. So this means that we have to go through a statistical verification process. And that statistical verification process actually takes some time. And thus we go from incrementing one by one, to then saying, OK, now we're incrementing in batch. And all of these views we're adding on have been verified by YouTube to be real views. We are preventing things like bots to go in and add a bunch of views to a video.

A new study by McAfee is showing what teenagers are really doing online and the results are a bit scary. An incredible 70 percent of teenagers in the study say they hid at least part of their online activity and behavior from their parents. What they are hiding could be even more shocking, especially if you are a parent.

43 percent of the surveyed teens accessed some form of simulated violence while surfing the web, and likely more worrying for parents is the fact that 32 percent view nude content or pornography on the internet. Even worse yet is that half of the parents believe that their children are telling them everything they are doing online.

"While it is not necessarily surprising that teens are engaging in the same types of rebellious behaviors online that they exhibit offline, it is surprising how disconnected their parents are," Stanley Holditch, Online Safety Expert for McAfee, said today in a statement. "There is a major increase in the number of teens finding ways to hide what they do online from their parents, as compared to the 2010 study."

Here's a cool new tip and trick for you Google searchers out there, which, judging by the market share, is most of you. If you're anything like me, you're not one to clutter up your favorites list with a bunch of bookmarks. The only downside to this is finding that really informative website you found yesterday while Google'ing.

Have no fear, as Google is using the vast amount of information about you to help you! As long as you are logged in to your Google account, you can filter the results to show only pages you haven't visited or only pages you have visited. There are other filter options as well, but these are the coolest.

After searching on Google, click on "Show Search Tools" on the left hand side of the page. This will pull up a menu with various options. On that menu, all you have to do is select "Visited Pages" and only pages that you have clicked on will show up. Nifty! But what if I want to find something new? Select the option "Not yet visited" and pages you haven't visited will show up.

As if we don't already have enough internet codes, it appears there will soon need to be one more. A Google employee has offered up one option for the code that will surely soon be necessary. Tim Bray has proposed that the new code be '451' in order to honor the late author Ray Bradbury, whose science fiction classic Fahrenheit 451 warned of a dystopian world defined by government-imposed censorship.

"We can never do away entirely with legal restrictions on freedom of speech. On the other hand, I feel that when such restrictions are imposed, they should be done so transparently; for example, most civilized people find Britain's system of superinjunctions loathsome and terrifying," said Bray in an interview with the Guardian.

"While we may agree on the existence of certain restrictions, we should be nervous whenever we do it; thus the reference to the dystopian vision of Fahrenheit 451 may be helpful. Also, since the Internet exists in several of the many futures imagined by Bradbury, it would be nice for a tip of the hat in his direction from the Net, in the year of his death."

Facebook is adding subscription billing which should allow app developers to make even more money from their most loyal users. Starting next month, app developers will be able to create special plans or content that is available with a monthly fee. The lowest monthly fee that can be offered by a developer is a mere $1.

Kixeye is a perfect example of how developers can take advantage of the new system. Kixeye is planning on having a $9.95 per month subscription plan that will give subscribers access to exclusive in-game items. They are focusing on a smaller subset of players that are more inclined to pay which should yield an interesting revenue stream.

In other news, Facebook is backing away from Facebook Credits as the main currency. Just a few years ago, Facebook was pushing Credits so that Facebook and online shopping would become linked in people's minds. This, unfortunately, prevented developers from using their in-game currency for purchases.

If you thought Verizon's FiOS internet was fast, then brace yourself for Verizon FiOS Quantum. Verizon has announced today the pricing and new name for their updated FiOS internet service. The speeds, as we previously reported, have effectively doubled or tripled across the board, but at the time we didn't know the pricing.

We can now officially report the pricing and tell you that the cost will be about $10-15 higher a month for at least double the speed. That is, unless you are on the bottom tier. The Lowest 15/5 tier sees a $10 price increase without any increase in speed. Prices range from $65-210 a month for speeds ranging from 15/5 all the way up to 300/65.

Existing customers won't have to fork over an upgrade fee, but will see their bill go up, depending on bundles and such. If you are willing to sign a two-year contract, prices will drop by about $5 a month, something that's probably not worth being locked into a two-year contract for. Most people probably can't even utilize their current FiOS connection, let alone these massive new speeds.