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RT @jowyang: First Media Disruption of the Year: Samsung/AP/Twitter by @lieblink

RT @Techmeme: I'm Rep Zoe Lofgren & I'm introducing "Aaron's Law" to change the Computer Fraud and Abuse...... ...

RT @Techmeme: Rep. Lofgren introducing "Aaron's Law" - critically impt chng 2 CFAA 2 protect future... ...

- Jim Romenesko journalism website | Greg Sandoval quits CNET over CBS editorial interference |...

RT @howto_guides: Got noisy neighbors? Change your Wi-Fi name to send them an angry message.

RT @mkapor: SPONSORED: The Taliban Is A Vibrant And Thriving Political Movement | The Onion

RT @TheAtlantic: We screwed up. Our statement on the Scientology advertisement that appeared on our website:

RT @mashable: Google Glass to Hit Developers' Hands This Month

With a typical Google search, the objects we search for are web pages, with the connections (or graph) that help determine the pages that rise to the top primarily being links from across the web. Links, simple form, are like votes, helping Google decide which are the most popular pages to show for a particular topic. With Facebook Graph Search, the objects we search for aren’t web pages but instead virtual representations of real world objects: people, places and things. The connections are primarily Facebook Likes. Did such-and-such a person like a particular photo? A particular doctor? A particular restaurant? Those likes are the ties that bind the information in Facebook together.

Rasmussen acknowledged that there are a lot of unknowns for the company and it is still not clear what kind of computing resources are going to be required for Graph Search at scale. Facebook plans to learn from phased beta rollout and do compute-resource planning based on that, he said.

For years now, Facebook watchers have wondered when the company would unleash the potential of its underpowered search bar. (Nobody has feared this day more than Google, which suddenly faces a competitor able to index tons of data that Google’s own search engine can’t access.) They have also wondered how a Facebook search product might work. Now we know.

For starters, Facebook users and social media experts will start talking about SGO -- Social Graph Optimization. Want to get recruited and hired by a better company? You'll need to change your profile and behave in a different way on Facebook so that when headhunters use Graph Search, your name will come up. Want to be a more effective leader, find a new girlfriend, avoid getting fired or find new customers for your small business? You'll need to "tweak" your Facebook activities so you'll achieve the desired outcomes when people search for things. Experts will offer advice on using Facebook for reputation management. Another new behavior is that an active, more technical and savvy minority will go into the Facebook privacy settings and lock things down better. Smart users will also keep Graph Search in mind when they're liking things, commenting and generally interacting on Facebook. The majority of users won't change their settings, and it will be easy to violate their privacy in a variety of powerful ways.

Let me repeat that: nobody asked Aaron for his true identity, but he was indicted for wirefraud for concealing his true identity. He was indicted for doing the same things I do every day.

The story goes a little something like this. A developer at a US-based critical infrastructure company, referred to as “Bob,” was caught last year outsourcing his work to China, paying someone else less than one fifth of his six-figure salary to do his job. As a result, Bob had a lot of time on his hands; in fact, during the investigation, his browsing history revealed this was his typical work day:

Google today invited the people who signed up for the $1,500 developer edition of its Project Glass wearable computing device to a set of developer events in San Francisco and New York City.

A judge has found that two news organizations improperly used images that a photojournalist had posted to Twitter in one of the first big tests of intellectual property law involving social media. Agence France-Presse and The Washington Post infringed on the copyrights of photographer Daniel Morel in using pictures he took in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake in January 2010, District Judge Alison Nathan in Manhattan ruled.

RT @Carnage4Life: Google CEO Larry Page says Facebook is doing 'a really bad job on their products' -

Kim Dotcom reveals Mega will offer 50GB of free storage, hopes to offer Megaupload data transfer - The Next Web | |

Macquarie Research has estimated that iPad shipments will tumble nearly 40 percent in the current quarter to about 8 million from about 13 million in the fourth quarter, although Apple's total tablet shipments will show a much smaller decrease due to strong iPad mini sales.

There is so much happening on the Internet during a year that it’s impossible to capture it all in a blog post, but we’re going to give it a shot anyway. How many emails were sent during 2012? How many domains are there? What’s the most popular web browser? How many Internet users are there? These are some of the questions we’ll answer for you.

At last count, more than 90 million people use Instagram on a monthly basis, the company said on Thursday. Moreover, the company is seeing growth rather than decline; that number is up ten percent, month on month, in the period from December to January.

RT @gigaom: Harper’s publisher doesn’t understand how the internet works, blames Google

RT @Techmeme: Atari U.S. operation files for bankruptcy (@benfritz / Los Angeles Times)

RT @Techmeme: Atari U.S. operation files for bankruptcy (@benfritz / Los Angeles Times)

With the data now coming it, it is clear the market movement away from Microsoft products, toward Apple and Android products, has not changed. On Christmas eve, as people turned on their new devices and launched their first tweet, Surface came in dead last – a mere 2% compared to the number of people tweeting from iPads. (Kindle was second, Android third.) Looking at more traditional units shipped information, UBS analysts reported Surface sales were 5% of iPads shipped. And usability reviews continue to run highly negative for Surface and Win8.

The Verge has learned that Microsoft is planning to support CardDAV and CalDAV in Windows Phone, Google's new preferred route to sync contacts and calendars. The software giant has not yet issued a public statement on its plans, but sources at Microsoft have detailed an eyeopening path that has led to the decision. In exchanges that underline the tensions between Microsoft and Google, we understand that Microsoft was fully anticipating Google's announcement.

Whatever the underlying method, the fact that block deduplication exists is a blow against the "see no evil" approach taken by Mega. By itself, a global method of identifying specific data doesn't necessarily mean anything; however, the implication is that a uniquely identifiable thing can be derived from any given piece of data. This returns some burden to Mega—rather than throw up its hands and say that it has no idea what Mega users Alice or Bob have in their Mega accounts, there apparently is a way of telling whether or not Bob and Alice have the same file or files. If the MPAA gets wind that Bob is hosting a copy of The Hobbit: An Unexpectedly Long Movie in his Mega folder, and Alice also happens to have the same file in her Mega folder, it's trivial to prove that Alice has the same file—in fact, the nature of deduplication means there's some record of every deduplicated block, and therefore every other infringing user.

RT @allthingsd: Netflix, Amazon Video, Redbox and More: What You Need to Know -by @LaurenGoode

RT @Techmeme: Samsung's road to global domination (@mlevram / Fortune)

RT @Techmeme: Samsung's road to global domination (@mlevram / Fortune)