Facebook Tweaks Account Settings, Again

Facebook might have come under fire on numerous occasions over privacy concerns; however, the fact is that Facebook has always offered fairly granular settings. The trouble has always been with the default settings, and the often convoluted process involved in changing these default settings.

Facebook facial-recognition feature won't be available to Canadians

Facebook’s controversial facial-recognition technology for photographs will not be available to Canadian users, the social-networking site says.

A spokesperson for Facebook did not say why Canadians would not get access to the feature but wrote in an e-mail: “Not all of our launches roll out globally and each of our different products and features have varying launch schedules, and we don’t have plans to roll this feature out in Canada at this time.

MEDIA

How does facial recognition work?

The feature, referred to by

How does facial recognition work?

There are two methods used to assess faces. One is the "fiducial" method, shown below, which hunts for distinctive features in a face, often where the bone structure is most apparent. Measurements are taken at these nodal points to give a map of the face. These points make up a numerical code called the faceprint.This code is then compared to other codes in the database to see if there is a match.

Some measurements taken:

Team Develops Accurate Prototype to Detect Fake Sites

Despite the wide use of the internet, there is a surprising lack of awareness amongst most users about fake sites on the net. The number of sites is on the rise and the number of victims is also rising at an accelerating pace. Now a team of researchers from the Arizona Eller College of Management have developed a prototype system that can detect fake websites

The system can detect fake sites much better than a human can. The article by the team on this development got published in the prestigious journal MIS Quarterly, published by the Management Information Systems Research Center, Carlson School of Management and the University of Minnesota. An MISQ publication is a trophy in one’s research career.

Importance

The importance can hardly be over-emphasised. Fake sites are responsible for robbing people of a lot of money or phishing attempts and other such acts of cyber crimes.

Ahmed Abbasi, the lead author of the paper and now a University of Virginia professor of information technology, says:

The problem we’re looking at is quite big. Fake websites constitute much of the Internet fraud’s multi-billion dollar industry, and that is monetary loss…we can’t even quantify the social ramifications. That’s the whole motivation. It is so profitable for fraudsters, and it is slipping through the cracks.

The Methodology

The methodology was two-part.

The first involved checking the easily verifiable information. The prototype checked whether a site’s URL contained ‘http’ instead of an expected ‘https’. Further, it can check when the site was last updated, whether a security key is missing or if the images appear unexpectedly pixelated.

The second part used more hidden information like URL length, number of links and to which sites it is linking to, the character types on the site and how the FAQ section on a site is maintained.

Way forward

Abbasi emphasises the use of great amounts of information for improving the prototype. Fake sites are constantly evolving their look and how they look is not really a criteria any longer, which makes it all the more difficult for a human to detect them. The days of long-held idea of a fake site having a lot of Unicode characters and other unreadable nonsense are gone.

The project is still underway and very much on track. It is, however, a long way from sneaking into our own lives and saving us from a lot of harassment.

Why I’m Afraid to Switch to Google Apps

I love the idea of Google Apps. I mean, who won’t get into the idea of being able of being able to access their documents from anywhere? There are so many advantages to using Google Apps. You don’t have to invest in a costly data center to house your files. You can access your files from any web browser on any computer, as long as you’re connected to the internet. You don’t have to purchase 

Expand Short Urls Without Actually Visiting them

Short URLs are easy to share thus solves the problem of sharing long urls with limited space length at Twitter, Facebook, etc. But with this useful advantages there’s also a major disadvantage with short urls and that is obfuscation.

Nobody by looking at a short url can say where it leads to. So anyone can use this to their advantage. Using a short url anyone could mischievously send you to an unrelated or malicious web page.

Facebook’s iPad App Leaked

Nokia Ovi Store Now Has 50,000 Apps

Nokia, which recently posted very disappointing quarterly results, finally has some good news. The Ovi Store, Nokia’s application store, just hit a major milestone – it now has more than 50,000 apps.

WARNING: Amy Winehouse Death Video Scam Spreading on Facebook

As with the past Facebook Scams , the scammers on Facebook are all out to exploit situations to make money and scam people. Quite recently, they took advantage of the Oslo bombings and spread a Fake Oslo Bombing Video Scam. Earlier they had exploited Ryan Dunn’s death and spread a scam about Ryan Dunn’s LAST WORDS – EXCLUSIVE Video.

Nokia X6 Firmware Updated To V32

Nokia has started rolling out a new firmware update for its previous generation music oriented phone – the X6. The new firmware number bumps up the software version to 32.xxx.

How To Get Back Old Facebook Chat Back

Recently, Facebook rolled out a new video calling feature in collaboration with Skype. The new feature allowed for one-to-one video chatting with your friends. However, they also rolled out a new  chat sidebar which has been annoying people to no end.

Top 14 websites for students

If you want to a see a blank look on students’ faces, ask them about the Dewey Decimal library classification system. For better or for worse, the Internet has become the alternative to a library card catalog for browsing and locating resources. But how do you navigate that system, and how can you trust what you read on the web?

"Frankly, this is my main concern, along with stumbling onto inappropriate material," admits Bonnie Marks, a mother of two. "Just because someone publishes something on their home page, it doesn't make it gospel—many kids don't know this."

Airtel Hikes Prepaid Tariff Rates By 20% In 6 Circles

Bharti Airtel is the India’s largest telecom operator. Earlier this year, Airtel launched its 3G services in India. The company has won 3G license in Mumbai, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh (West), Rajasthan, West Bengal, Himachal Pradesh, Bihar, Assam, North East, Jammu & Kashmir, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka circle. Airtel subscribers in other circles will also be able to enjoy the 3G services, thanks to the Intra Circle Roaming Agreement (ICRA) with private operators such as Idea and Vodafone. This is definitely a good news, but we also have a bad news for the Airtel subscribers.

Scammers Are Using VLC Media Player To Spread Malware

In a recent blog post, VLC developer Ludovic Fauvet said that scammers are taking advantage of the availability of the VLC source code to trick users. The scammers are adding malware and adware to VLC and releasing them as the original product.

OMFG: A Girl Raped by Her Teacher in the Classroom – Facebook Scam

The Facebook scam titled – “OMFG: A girl raped by her teacher in the classroom…” with a “explicit content” warning message as its description.

When you click on the link provided in the scam message, your Facebook account will be click-jacked and like-jacked, which will allow the message to automatically post and ”like” on your Facebook wall without your knowledge.

How to Activate Facebook Video Calling

Facebook recently introduced Video Calling in collaboration with Skype. This was a much awaited feature. Now you can video call any of your friend inside Facebook itself without going anywhere else. And everything works perfectly and easily. Picture and sound quality is good. Video could be enlarged to full screen.

Here’s step by step procedure on how to activate video calling in your Facebook profile -

1. Goto http://www.facebook.com/videocalling
2. Click on ‘Get Started’
3. Select any of your friend from the chat list
4. Click the video call button
5. You will then be asked to install an application
6. Download and install it. (This is only a one time install)
7. After successful install Facebook will initiate a video call between you and your friend you previously selected.

From now on you only need to follow point 3 and 4 to video call any of your friend.

How to Recharge your Mobile for Free!

In the existing lifestyle,it’s a must for every one of us to recharge his/her mind, physique and most important of all is that we need torecharge our phone balance often:) By the tick of a minute a rupee flies away but that can’t be blamed as each individual is desirous to earn money and the network providers are no exceptions.What if I say you there is a service that lets you recharge your mobile online and also gives away coupons worth the money of what you recharged!You would straight away say it’s just another spam services that’s luring people in to make money.Initially even I thought so.But I wanted to try out that service taking the risk.The end result was fruitful.I thought to myself I am not going to write about this service without trying it out and having enough evidence in hand before speaking about it.Perhaps almost all information,tricks and hacks provided in this site are tried out before being published online.This service did deliver what it promised-Online Free Mobile Recharge and Coupons delivered right at your door step!So i thought of sharing it with you people.I was lucky enough to try that and get my mobile recharged and also got coupons with discounts at several top outing spots in the Metros.

How to Find Out Who Unfriended You on Facebook

Prank Your Friends with Fake Facebook Profile, Wall and Conversations

We have seen many prank articles in the past.In fact we have separate category for Pranks.You can try all of them in it and freak your friends out.Here is another Prank that you can play on your Facebook crazy friends.People seem to share every moment of there daily life on Facebook nowadays.Seeing a strange,unbelievable Facebook wall, conversationetc., say you chatting with Mark Zuckerberg ,Bill Gates giving like to your status is sure to make your unaware friends go Wow! To make our work easier there are many online services that lets you generate cool,fake Facebook wall,profile,conversations and chats.Most of them have easy to use Interface which lets you create fake contents in seconds.Let your creativity loose to make the most of these services.Once done you can share the image/screenshot of the same with your friends.

Lets see few of the best services to create fake Facebook wall,profile ,conversation/chats.

Fake Facebook Wall,Profile and Conversation Generators:

1.My Fake Wall: You can easily create fake profile pages just for fun. This fake Facebook wall generator allows you to create a funny profile to entertain your friends.You can add posts, add picture/event posts, add comments, change your profile pic and add friends. It has most easy to use interface.

Link: My Fake Wall

2.The Wall Machine:This service directly lets you connect with your Facebook Profile.All your friends list are imported which makes it easy to create fake conversation,walls.It uses WYSIWYG style interface which makes it very easy to us.You can add fake status,profile pictures,friendship status,photo status and comments.It is one of my favorites.

Link: The Wall Machine

So, have you created your fake Facebook walls ,profiles and chats ?How many of your friends were victims ? 

Facebook Will Launch In-Browser Video Chat Next Week In Partnership With Skype

Earlier this week while visiting Seattle, Facebook CEOMark Zuckerberg tipped off Seattle press that the company would be launching an “awesome” new product next week that has been built by Facebook’s Seattle team. The press invitations to that event went out today, saying nothing more than “Please join us for an event at Facebook” on July 6.

So what is the new product? MG Siegler speculates here that it might have a desktop component given all the desktop software hiring going on in Seattle.

And he’s right. This isn’t the main project that team is working on, but next week, says a source with knowledge of the partnership, Facebook will launch a new video chat product, powered by Skype, that works in browser. Suddenly those chat icons in the invitation have a lot more meaning.

The product has been built on Skype and will include a desktop component. It’s not clear to me whether that means it will just work if a user has Skype already installed on the computer, or if additional software will need to be downloaded even if the user already uses Skype. But it’s clear that there’s very deep integration between the products, and from the user’s perspective, the product will be an in browser experience.

Facebook and Skype have already been working together, including integration of various Facebook features into the Skype service.

But this is something else entirely. The partnership could substantially increase Skype usage. Facebook has more than 750 million active users. Currently Skype has just 170 million. And it will certainly help Facebook become even stickier for users as they start to have voice and video chat as an option to communicate.

And this also brings Facebook even closer to Microsoft, which is a Facebook shareholder and has a pending acquisition of Skype. The guys in Redmond must be smiling today, something that happens far too infrequently at Microsoft HQ.

Achieve All Your Goals with Fitango

All of us have goals. That isn’t the hard part. The real test is whether you stay course and see them through. I think of a bunch of goals every single day but end up forgetting half of them amidst the busy schedule. Besides that, some goals need to broken down into milestones for a smoother execution.

A couple of incentives and Atta boy‘s would be nice too. What if we had a web app that comes with everything I just mentioned rolled into its core? Let us take Fitango for a spin and find out if it is the digital motivator you are looking for.

3 Fabulous New Google Search Tricks

Except for Google, I can’t think of a monopolistic business that is so dutiful in updating its products and rolling out new features ever so often. They might have the nasty habit of snooping our browsing habits and history, but Google does a bang up job in identifying the domains in search that needs improvement.

Last week, Google unveiled three brilliant new additions to Google Search at Inside Search, an event dedicated to making online search better. Now, in addition to searching with text, we can search using voice and images. And then there is Instant Pages that decreases page load times. To know more about how these features work, follow me after the fold.

100 Web Apps to Rule Them All

There’s so many web apps today, it’s hard to keep up with them all. From the apps we’ve all used for years such as Gmail to newer apps that just came out this year such as Flow, web apps have increasingly become a part of our daily lives

Sites to Explore Magazine, Comic Book Covers and Vintage Advertisements

Are you a comic book fan? Cover Browser is a website to explore and search comic book covers. You’ll find everything from Superman to Spider-Man to independent comics. With comics the site also includes the cover galleries for some other books, pulp, games, DVD, magazine covers.

Established in 2006, Cover Browser currently has 455,613 searchable covers from 2,923 different series. For your convenience covers and associated data have been properly assembled. There’s also links to buy comics.

Cover Browser also has a sister site Vintage Ad Browser. Which aims to collect vintage ads from a variety of sources, including comic books, CD-Roms, websites, APIs, user submissions, book, magazine & comic book scans, and more. You could find Ads dating back to year 1840, actually we were able to get only till 1804, the site might have Ads of even more earlier times.

Overall both these sites are extremely interesting and I am sure you’ll love to flip though amazing magazine covers and Ads. And If you are a designer these sites could be a great source for inspiration and reference for your future works.

Facebook Updates the Facebook Comments Box Plugin, Adds Features and More Control

The Facebook nemesis is already here and it’s called Google Plus. If you didn’t catch a glimpse of Google Plus yet, I suggest you read on. Of course, you will need invites before starting out, so we are giving out invites and helping you set up your account too. However, I won’t talk about Google Plus in this post. In the midst of all the Google Plus hoopla, Facebook has announced two important updates to its Comments plugin that is in use at over 300,000 blogs and websites.