Internet & Websites - Page 39

Major ISPs have agreed to the Copyright Alert System and will begin to roll it out in the "coming weeks." The system doesn't exactly have any real force behind it, but it's more akin to the nag-ware software, such as WinRAR, where they will complain to you if you are pirating, but they never shut you down.

The Copyright Alert System allows content owners to lodge a complaint against an IP and the ISP will then send out a letter to the customer. The content owner never gets any customer information. The letter, at least the first one, is just of the purely informational variety. Subsequent letters may not be so nice.

Repeat offenders can have additional action taken by the ISP, such as throttling data speeds or forcing the subscriber to review "educational material." The CAS does not provide for cancellations, though the ISP can terminate a user's account at their own discretion. If a customer believes he is falsely accused, he can pay $35 for an independent review of his network behavior.

An update is coming to Yelp which should help deter businesses from purchasing fake reviews. Businesses who are caught doing underhanded transactions will be labeled with a notice alerting customers for 90 days. And if the business is caught doing it again within those 90 days, it will stay even longer.

The warning that will be shown can be seen above. It offers a bit of information on why it is there and why its bad that businesses purchase positive reviews. It also gives the option to show the reviews that have been flagged as purchased, which reportedly are flagged by an automatic system.

"We want to make sure consumers are making informed decisions," Yelp said in a blog post Thursday announcing the consumer alert labels. "Yelp's automated review filter is working around the clock to flag these types of biased reviews, and we believe that you deserve the right to know when this type of activity is taking place behind the scenes."

The Pirate Bay is looking to say good-bye to downtime and police raids by moving its hosting into the cloud. With this move, the data will be replicated around the world, across multiple servers and countries, basically making it invulnerable to any sort of police action in a single country.

Since clouds span multiple countries and multiple servers, usage should be snappier and there should be better up time, due to it being in the cloud, and due to its perceived safety from police raids. "Moving to the cloud lets TPB move from country to country, crossing borders seamlessly without downtime. All the servers don't even have to be hosted with the same provider, or even on the same continent," The Pirate Bay told TorrentFreak.

"Running on VMs cuts down operation costs and complexity. For example, we never need anyone to do hands-on work like earlier this month when we were down for two days because someone had to fix a broken power distribution unit," The Pirate Bay says. Using VMs is a great way to allow The Pirate Bay to quickly move to a new provider.

If only they had had this feature a couple of months ago, I would have missed that really important going away party, but alas, they have only been testing it with a small portion of their user base, and I clearly wasn't one of them. The feature I'm referring to is one that sends a reminder notification to the regular notification center an hour before an event starts that you RSVP'd "yes" to.

This feature should be of great use, and I'm not sure why they haven't done a complete rollout as of yet. Certainly just having the event on the rarely-checked right-hand side of the screen helps somewhat, but I certainly barely look to that portion of the screen as there is really no useful information over there.

Couch vacationing just got even easier as Google has just released their biggest update ever to Street View. With more than 250,000 miles of roads around the world updated and double the number of special collections, Google is the definitive mapping application and couch vacationing service.

Google specifically calls out the use of couch vacationing (my term, not theirs) in their announcement: "Street View, as you know, is a useful resource when you're planning a route or looking for a destination, but it can also magically transport you to some of the world's picturesque and culturally significant landmarks."

Google even throws in what I take to be a jab at Apple: "We hope you enjoy taking a virtual stroll around some of the world's beautiful places, and stay tuned for more Street View updates as we look to make our maps more comprehensive and useful for you." Apple does insist that their maps are getting better, but they have a long way to go to catch up to Google.

Twitter conducted a study after the first presidential debate and found some interesting statistics regarding Twitter users and a possible connection between seeing political tweets and donating. Even better is the fact that the trends don't vary significantly between political affiliation, meaning that both sides can take advantage of Twitter to further campaign contributions.

The study showed that the average Twitter user was 68 percent more likely to visit a campaign donation page than the general internet user at large. Even more incredible is the statistic that the average Twitter user exposed to political tweets is 97 percent more likely to visit a campaign donation page.

Furthermore, repetition works. Users who saw a tweet for three to seven days were more than 31 percent more likely to visit a donation page as opposed to someone who just saw a tweet for one or two days. Even repeating the tweet for more than eight days has a positive effect with a user being 130 percent more likely to visit.

Dropbox have just made some changes to their mobile site which will help users check out their photos while on the move, following the same type of changes we saw with their Android, iOS apps and their desktop site.

Dropbox have moved toward a gallery-style image viewer, which is available to anyone with a mobile device. Windows Phone is included, which is great news as there's no official Dropbox application on Microsoft's mobile OS.

The changes that Dropbox have pushed out give users a more streamlined experience across all apps, desktop and mobile sites. Dropbox have said:

Everyone's favorite online radio, Pandora, had its CEO reveal some interesting numbers at the SF Musictech Summit in San Francisco. Among these tidbits of information is the bit about how some artists are making over $2 million dollars in revenue from Pandora. "You would be surprised how many artists are making over $100,000."

These payments to artists are hurting Pandora's bottom line. As it stands right now, Pandora has to pay much more in royalties than satellite providers and typical radio stations do. "We want the same standard being extended to web radio that currently is being applied to our competition," said Westergren.

Pandora pays over 55 percent of its entire revenue to Soundexchange, an agency that collects for licenses for performing musicians. This is something that normal radio stations don't have to do. Instead, they just pay money to composers. As Pandora has gained users, their losses have continued to mount. If musicians want Pandora to be able to stick around, they're going to need to lower their fees.

OK, so it might not be quite as bad as the title made it sound, but it certainly got your attention, right? Unfortunately, the title is mostly true in that Facebook does automatically increment share counts on websites where the Facebook social plugin is being utilized when a link to that page is shared through private messages.

So, if you copy the link to this page and send it over to a friend, indeed, the "Share" counter will increase by two. Now, Facebook does use robots to scan private messages in order to produce the preview that is shown when a link is sent and to look for sexual predators using the site to look for victims.

But, the fact that a private message is then turned into a public like or share is where the problem comes in. Even though no personally identifiable information is provided, transferred, etc, it still brings to light a massive issue with Facebook and privacy concerns. Facebook's full response is below:

We knew it was coming, but Facebook have confirmed some amazing stats for the biggest social network ever. Facebook reached their one billion monthly active users (MAU) on September 14, at 12:45 PM Pacific time.

Since the launch of the social network, they've experienced 1.13 trillion likes, 140.3 billion friends connected, 219 billion photos uploaded, 17 billion location-tagged posts and check-ins, and 62.6 million songs have been played 22 billion times - enough music to fill around 210,000 years of music.

Facebook's numbers found that the median age of a Facebook user is 22, with the top five countries connected to Facebook when they reached the one billion MAU milestone were Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico and the US. The social network enjoys an insane 600 million mobile users.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is set to announce something that is being dubbed as a "historic milestone" during an interview with Matt Lauer on the TODAY show, tomorrow. Zuckerberg's interview will be the first television interview post-IPO, and with the historic milestone being thrown around, most people are wondering what the Facebook founder could announce.

We know that Facebook could smash through 1 billion users, but are they all active? This could be the announcement, and the social network probably burst through 1 billion users a while ago, but daily active users is a completely different number - this could be the 'historic milestone' - one billion active users. No other site can claim this, and no other site is even close. Competing social network, Twitter, has 555 million users for example.

Digital marketing agency, iCrossing, examined Facebook's usage and based on the site's growth rate, the firm estimated that Facebook would hit one billion users sometime in August this year. Facebook have also had quite an amazing last six months, growing from 800 million users, to close to one billion. In the past three years, we've seen the social networking site go from 300 million users, to close to (if not more than) a billion now. Insane.

YouTube has loads of content. Hours of video are uploaded every second, some of it legitimate home footage and some of it infringing footage. Formerly, if a content owner alleged that a video contained their copyrighted material, YouTube would allow them to monetize the content or take it down.

YouTube has updated this process so that users who have had their video taken down can appeal the claim. Furthermore, YouTube has updated the algorithms to detect false take-down notices, so this should help reduce the number of automated mass take-downs that shouldn't have been taken down.

"Users have always had the ability to dispute Content ID claims on their videos if they believe those claims are invalid. Prior to today, if a content owner rejected that dispute, the user was left with no recourse for certain types of Content ID claims (e.g., monetize claims). Based upon feedback from our community, today we're introducing an appeals process that gives eligible users a new choice when dealing with a rejected dispute. When the user files an appeal, a content owner has two options: release the claim or file a formal DMCA notification."

A victim of a hacker has written up a long piece regarding Twitter's security processes and how he believes he became a victim. Twitter's password recovery system is reportedly to blame, as it allowed a hacker to use a brute-force style attack on his handle. A brute-force attack tries common passwords as quickly as it can until it finds a match or exhausts a word list.

The issue seems to stem from the fact that Twitter doesn't limit login attempts per account, rather they limit them per IP. What this means is a hacker just needs to use a proxy network or some other way of IP switching and they would be able to brute-force an account indefinitely, or at least until the password was found.

However, why the victim, Daniel Dennis Jones, had chosen to use a simple, common password that could be brute-forced is beyond me. His story makes sense, though, and is why most password recovery systems limit login attempts on a per account basis, or at minimum throw up a CAPTCHA after a few failed attempts at logging into an account.

Google gives and Google takes. Today sees a rarer event of the latter as Google does it's annual fall "spring cleaning." Many of the features that are being discontinued today are ones that I hadn't even heard of, so likely you haven't heard of them either. In the rare chance that you have, we'll give you the information you need.

The majority of today's discontinuations will likely only affect a small portion of the population at large. One of the main "spring cleaning" changes that will affect the most people is the change to storage. Google is combining Picasa and Drive storage into one single pool AND the free 5GB of storage will count towards your paid storage limit.

The rest of the changes are detailed in Google's blog post, which we have replicated here for your convenience:

Google, almost as if to take a shot at Apple, has released more new imagery for their mapping service so that users can "virtually visit more places in high-resolution." Maps now features more high resolution aerial and satellite imagery, as well as a bunch of new 45 degree imagery for places around the world.

As you can see, some of the new 45 degree imagery includes famous places such as the Leaning Tower of Pisa, located in Pisa, Italy. The following are all of the cities with new imagery:

Facebook have just unveiled something very new: Facebook Gifts. The idea behind Gifts is to let you purchase, and send real-life gifts to friends and family. Facebook have said that members would be able to buy gifts as part of a birthday reminder, or by visiting their friends' Timeline.

RIght now, Facebook Gift options are limited to a few items such as Starbucks gift cards, cupcakes, chocolate and the usual stuffed animals - the social networking site have said that there will be new gifts added every day. When giving a gift, you can post the present straight onto the recipient's Timeline, or through a private message.

The receiver can then "unwrap" the gift with the option to keep it, exchange it for something in another color, size or choose something else entirely - as long as its of equal value. Facebook Gift payments can be done at the time of the purchase itself, or the gift-giver can be billed at a later time. Gift notifications, once received, will have the recipient needing to supply their mailing address - so that the physical item can be delivered.

Remembering all of the login and password details to your various accounts, e-mail, websites, social networks, banking details and countless other sites can be tiresome, annoying and repetitive. A Google software developer has opened up, hinting at a world without multiple logins.

Tim Bray, a Google software developer, mentions that logging in is annoying and slows you down, through his blog post. Bray says that his work with the company is pegged on getting rid of the annoying, time waster for two reasons. The first point, is that logging into various websites takes time, which makes a user less productive. Reduced login time makes more time available to improve the overall experience.

Secondly, Bray makes a point that most people begin a new search for a product, or service, they don't immediately head to a search engine. They type in the address of a large retail chain, bookstore, or even Craigslist. Bray says that these people don't want to go through the hassle of registering a new account, or create a new set of login credentials to find the product they're after with a new merchant.

Google has updated Google+ Hangouts to include sound effects that range from laugh tracks, to chirping. Get ready to be annoyed by constant laughing after jokes, clapping after singing, and plenty of other annoying sound effects that will ensure that your conversation is radically different from before.

If you would like to start annoying your conversation partner, it's extremely simple. Click the "Google Effects" button, like in the picture above, and start clicking all the sounds. Google notes that users will need the latest version of the Hangouts plug-in, v3.6, but that should automatically update.

If you're having trouble using the new feature, you can download the updated plug-in from Google. Most of the population won't ever use these sound effects, but I'm sure there's that one person--you know who I'm talking about--that will enjoy using these sound effects to everyone else's dismay.

New evidence is showing that blocking torrent sites such as Pirate Bay and others has little- to no- effect on torrenting. Go figure. It seems that even after blocking torrent sites, the number of people torrenting continued unabated in the UK. MusicMetric released the "largest ever public data set showing trends in music on BitTorrent."

Currently, that data is for the UK, though they are planning on releasing US and Canadian data soon. The main point in the data is that blocking pirate sites really had zero affect on the number of torrents being downloaded. People must have either avoided the blocks, which isn't hard to do, or found alternate sources.

Of course, Pirate Party UK didn't want to let this go unnoticed. Leader Loz Kaye commented on the findings: "These figures don't prove anything very much, other than the fact that people like music, and that the people of Manchester are leaders in using technology. They are certainly not evidence of the BPI's shrill claims that 'a lot of people are getting very rich' from so-called piracy. And as MusicMetric point out, torrents download numbers also include lots of legal files: the actual most downloaded album in those statistics was a legal one."

The era of IPv4 is drawing to a close. As the last block of IPv4 IP addresses begin to be allocated, TweakTown would like to wave good-bye to the outgoing Internet standard that has been around for 30 years or so. When it was first announced, it was thought that we would never run out of IPs. Apparently the developers didn't foresee smartphones, set-top boxes, and all kinds of other web-connected devices.

Allocation has started on the last block of /8 addresses, some 16.8 million addresses. Since there are so few IP addresses left, each application has to go through a strict set of guidelines set forth on RIPE's website. Once these last addresses are gone, no new devices can be added without NAT translating, which isn't always possible. IPv6 can't come soon enough.

Axel Pawlik, Managing Director of the RIPE NCC: