From the Internet to eternity

AT A LOSS How do we to live in a world where the Internet records everything and forgets nothing

Four year ago, Stacy Snyder, 25, a high school teacher in training in Pennsylvania, Posted a photo on My Space that showed her at a party wearing a pirate hat and drinking from a plastic cup, with the caption "Drunken Pirate."

A game that gives you license to 'kill'

A group of board game junkies is taking their pastime quite seriously, and beyond board, finds Lhendup G Bhutia

Rohini Ramnathan, 25 was sipping coffee early one morning when she got the email. It was titled 'The Target'. There were two attachments. One a photograph, and the other, a bio data of the person in the photograph. She smiled. It would be easy; she knew the person.

Older folks flocking to online social networks: study

San Francisco: While online social networks remain havens for the young, they are also be coming increasingly popular with the over 50 crowd in the United States, a study showed.

"Young adults continue to be the heaviest users of social media, but their growth pales in comparison with recent gains made by older users," said Mary Madden, from the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Primary way that older users maintain contact with friends, families and colleagues, but many older users now rely on social network platforms to help manage their daily communications."

When the fakes beat the originals

May fake Twitter profiles are more popular than celeb originals. Arcopol Chaudhuri addresses a classroom of fakes, begging them to keep tweeting

Dear class,

I'm you biggest fan, so please continue tweeting in class.

It's become rather boring to follow a celebrity on Twitter. They neither reply to my tweets, nor do they retweet mine. So predictable they've become that I can manage their accounts in my sleep and type stuff like, 'heyaa pple...how is every1 doin...jus finished a shoot...went off well..believe in hard work, follow your dreams..luv ya!

Get, set, tweet for a social cause

Is the ease of using Twitter and Facebook giving rise to a growing breed of armchair activists? Does such activism bring about any social change at all?

On Saturday, some members of the city's Twitter community at Bandra came together at a discussion hosted by organisers of the initiative, Jaago Re - One Billion Votes. The campaign was successful in influencing a large section of youngsters to vote during the last assembly elections. NGOs and social institutions, however, have been worried about the Internet's ability to make netizens complacent with lighting virtual candles and signing online petitions.

Google's real-time search page challenges Bing, Twitter

You can narrow the search to find out what people are saying on various subjects in different locations

New York: Google is digging deeper into real-time search, with a new search page that displays only results from timely sources, like updates from Twitter and other social networks.

Google is the default search engine for most people searching most topics. But as the real-time web exploded, other search engines, like Twitter's and Bing, became more useful for those who wanted quick access to just those live updates.

Log on for safe road travel

NEW WEBSITE Traffic updates, road maps, important phone numbers now a click away

Mumbai: Next time you plan a road trip across the state, http://highwaypolicems.in will guide you through it.

Home Minister R.R. Patil inaugurated the website at Mantralaya on Friday.

You can log on to the website and get updates on traffic Jams, maps of roads to take and even telephone numbers of nearest police stations to help in case of a breakdown.

Avatar has the biggest fan page on Facebook India, after 3 Idiots

James Cameron's Avatar that has done the third beggest business in the history of Indian cinema has manged quite a huge fan base in India too.

The movie's fan page in India on the social networking website Facebook, has touched around 1.25 lakh fans. In just two days, the page witnessed an immense surge from 50,000 to 1.25 lakh fans. The numbers seem to increase every day, as about 20,000 people join the page on a daily basis.

When getting away means staying in touch

New York: People used to go on holiday to unplug. Now they're demanding to be plugged in. That secluded, desert island - type getaway may soon be as dated as the post-vacation slide show as more travellers use e-mails, Facebook and Twitter to nurture the ties that bind even while they get away from it all.

"For many travellers figuring out how to stay connected is as integral to the travel process as packing sun lotion and swimwear," said Amelie Hurst of travel website Trip Advisor.

Facebook sues Teachbook for copyright breach

New York: Facebook has filled suit against Teachbook.com, an online community for teachers. The lawsuit accuses TeachBook of "misappropriating the distinctive BOOK portion of Facebook's trademark."

The lawsuit argues that Teach book's use of "book" deletes the Facebook brand name, impairs Facebook's ability to remain unique and creates the facade of a false relationship between the two social networking entities.

Facebook Fast helps you connect with real friends

Americans shun social networking sites for a day to sped time with their loved ones

Houston: Thousands of people in Houston took a 24-hour break from their digital lives on Wednesday as part of the National Facebook Fast. Pastor Kerry Shock of Fellowship of The woodlands led the charge with his wife Chris. He encouraged everyone to take a break from Facebook, Twitter, email and testing to focus on relationships that matter most.

Jackie Chan's tweets draw ire in HK

Hong kong: Jackie Chan's tweets about the Manila bus hijacking have drawn a barrage of Internet attacks in his native Hong Kong, which lost eight residents in the tragedy.


An armed former police officer seeking reinstatement commandeered a bus carrying a Hong Kong tour guide and 20 tourists in the Philippine capital on Monday.

Google's Gmail moves towards free phone calls

San francisco: Google is adding a free e-mail feature that may persuade more people to cut the cords on their landline phones.

The service unveiled on Wednesday enables US users of Google's Gmail service to make calls from microphone-equipped computers to telephones anywhere in the world.

IPO talk: Facebook's put shares soar

London: Facebook is being valued at more than $33 billion as investors try to secure a stake in the social networking site in anticipation of its flotation on the US stock market.

The latest data shows that shares in Facebook are changing hands for up to $76,more than double their value at the start of this value at the start of this year. While Facebook is still privately held, shareholders are able to sell the company's stock though "secondary market" trading. By buying at these prices, some investors are calculating that Facebook is worth more than eBay or Dell, or nearly twice as much as Yahoo!

Shut down unofficial web page: Traffic police

Facebook confusion Say citizens won''t know where to post complaints against traffic violations

Mumbai: Two web pages on Facebook, both sporting similar names, but one official, the other not, has apparently been creating confusion among the citizens it was meant to help.

The unofficial web page (forum) was created by Ajesh Shah and his colleagues in early August to allow Mumbaiites to voice traffic complaints. Weeks later, on Monday, the traffic police launched their own official web page with a similar motive.

Healthy networking

Social networking sites are often criticised for disrupting one's private life. But I have never had any such bitter experiences from these things. when you strictly stick to clean surfing, chatting and interacting with people you actually know personally, it's not that bad.

Unnecessary logging into cat rooms just to kill time and fantasise about strangers is a foolish affair. It eventually leads to disappointments and frustrations.

Roadies now in Pakistan

First Indian reality show show to be licensed to Europe, New Zealand and Middle East

After borrowing several formats from the West, like Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, Celebrity Big Brother, Fear Factional Bingo Night, MTV Roadies has officially become India's first homegrown format to be licensed to other countries, including Pakistan.

Find your perfect roomie

Website lets people find housemates that suit their requirements

Finding a roommate just got simpler. A website called www.indianroommates.in now offers subscribers the opportunity to find themselves their perfect roommates who fulfill their requirements. This service is available to people in India and abroad. Users can also fill in specific preferences with regards to lifestyle and religion as well.

An epic Initiative

India's first Web browser, launched last month, allows for immense personalisation

For quite a while, tabbed browsing on the Net was synonymous with Mozilla Firefox. The open source browser was among the first applications of its kind to provide add-ons and themes that allowed you to choose the way the Net appeared and keep everything useful at hand.

Parents mull over being 'friends' with their kids on Facebook

New York: To friend or not to friend is the big question facing many parents dealing with teenagers on Facebook.

Three quarters of parents questioned in a Nielsen survey said they are friends with their children on the popular social networking website which boasts 500 million active users.

But a third admitted they are worried they are not seeing everything their children are doing on the web.

Now, you can file police complaints online

E-COMPLAINTS Cops will conduct investigations on initial complaint, then convert it to FIR or NC

Mumbai: Filing an initial police complaint will no longer require you to make a trip to the police station. In a little over a month you will be able to do that online through the police and government website.

A window into Games volunteers' woes

New Delhi: "The RSTs are over". "No clue about VSTs. HELP". "The Acc. Cards are still awaited. any one to share the griel?"

Such updates are all over the placeon social networking sites these days, as Commonwealth Games vilunteers have made cyberspace their one-stop location for information on pre-event training and roles during the Games.

Facebook game teaches marketing

Want to learn marketing? Just play a game on Facebook and develop stills that could take you may also get shortlisted as a potential employee. Reckitt Benckiser (RB), a British company, which has a precence in India in household, health and personal care products launched this game.

In the living room, hooked on pay TV

New York: It is a fantasy shared by many Americans: dropping cable television and its fat monthly bill and turning instead to the wide-open frontier of Internet video.

Some are finding that the reality is not that simple.

Just ask Bill Mitchell, a 40-year-old engineer in Winston-Salem, N.C. He canceled his Time Warner cable service and connected his flat-panel television to the Internet to watch sitcoms and his other favorite shows, using products from Apple and Boxee.

Increase blog visitors

A question I got from a reader sums up all the other queries in my inbox. So Rattan says: On May 28, 2010, I started blogging at www.rattanji.blogspot.com. However, may blog hasn't been visited even once. It is not searchable in any search engine. I feel discouraged. Please help me attract visitors.

Arun Rampal's social experment

While promoting We Are Family, Arjun Rampal started a little social experiment. The actor, while on the sets of a TV show, gave out a mobile number for an hour. "Call me, then we can chat starting now here for an hour.

You cannot block Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook

San Francisco: With 500 million users and growing, it is the largest collection of people in 'one place' that the world has ever seen. Yet the one person immune to being blocked by a user appears to be the founder and chief executive.

If a user goes to Zuckerberg's Facebook profile page and hits the bottom of the left hand side, when attempting to block Zuckerberg the user will find that the action cannot be completed through a "general block failure error". This occurs on no other profile.

US teacher quits after abusing staff, pupils

Washington: A teacher in the US resigned after accidentally Publishing abusive comments against staff and pupils on Facebook. June Talvitie-Siple thought only her friends would see her comments.

Instead, the whole town of Cohasset in Massachusetts read her comments and Talvatie-Siple has resigned. "I'm so not looking forward to another year at cohasset schools. Now I remember why I stopped teaching! Kids... they are all germ bags," Sky News quoted her as writing on her Facebook page. But Talvatie-Siple is justifying herself.

Online facial recognition programme for the masses

Detailed individual profiles can be built up purely from online photographs raising privacy concerns

London: Netizens could soon be able to identify people from photographs posted on the Internet, all thanks to a revolutionary software being developed by Face.com.

Face.com, the software company produced technology that can identify individuals on social networking sites and online galleries by comparing their image against a known picture of them.

Gmail gives more time to undo 'send'

Techies warn that since it is part of Labs, it is still in testing and may not always work

New York:

Google has increased the window to undo a sent email from five seconds to 30 seconds, during which your can hit the 'undo' button, Mashable reported on Monday.

Will the real SRK STAND UP?

The Twitter world has spawned several fake Shah Rukhs, Sachins and Amitabhs, who enjoy as much admiration as the real ones

If you are not Twitter savvy, then you may just end up following one of the fake Priyanka Chopras, Kareena Kapoors, Sachin Tendulkars or more such celeb imposters. Interestingly, these impostors boast of a huge fan base when it comes to their followers.

NO negotiation with Wikileaks over secret files: Pentagon

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange attends a seminar at the Swedish Trade Union Confederation in Stockholm

Washington:

The Pentagon has said it would not negotiate for a 'sanitised' release of thousands of sensitive Afghan war documents, currently in possession of whisteblower website Wikileaks that has plans to make them public.

The defence department however acknowledged that an attempt was made to contact the lawyer of the website.

Prune trees, societies told

BMC DIRECTIVE Xavier's girl's accident prompts urgent action against 'dangerous' trees

MUMBAI:

In a bid to avoid a repeat of the July 24 incident, which cost 19-year-old collegian Antara Telang her right foot, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is now targeting trees growing wild in private societies.

The civic body will be instructing societies to prune any tree that they believe is dangerous and could endanger life.

The move comes just days after Hindustan Times had reported how the civic body's dilly-dallying in pruning a tree inside the premises of a housing society caused Antara to lose her right foot. A loosely hanging branch of the tree came crashing down on her as she stood under the tree outside the premises.

Vuvuzela enters Oxford dictionary

London:

The ever-present hum of the vuvuzela during this year's soccer World Cup has earned it a place in Oxford Dictionary of English.

Vuvuzela is among 2,000 new words and phrases added to the third edition of the dictionary, published on Thursday, which is compiled from analysis of two billion words used in everything from novels to Internet message boards.

Imran Off Twitter

Actor signs off from the micro-blogging site, many celebs have begun to reject it as well, citing privacy issues

For over a year now, many Bollywood actors have used Twitter to make an announcement, promote their movies, and interact with fans. But seems like all that communication is getting to them, so much so that the frequency with which most stars have been tweeting have reduced considerably. On Wednesday, Imran Khan quit the micro-blogging site for good, few days before the promotion of his forthcoming film, Break Ke Baad, was scheduled to begin.

Facebook to tell you where you are

SAN FRANCISCO:

Facebook on Wednesday threw the switch on a new feature that lets US members of the social networking service share their whereabouts with friends while on the move.

Facebook Places marks the firm's hotly anticipated first step into "location-based" services that have been catching on with people who own smartphones equipped with satellite position tracking capabilities.

Keep track of friends with Facebook Places

PALO ALTO (CALIFORINIA)

Facebook's 500 million-plus users will soon be able to track friends' whereabouts across the United States, as the world's largest internet social network adds technology to increasingly tie its virtual world to everyday life.

The new Places feature - which began rolling out on Wednesday to some users and goes nationwide within weeks - is touted as a tool to help users share where they are, figure out who is in the vicinity, and check out happenings and services within the same locale.

BlackBerry ban threat real, says government

NEW DELHI

Sending a strong message to the telecommunication industry, the government told parliament on Thursday that it may ban BlackBerry if interception and monitoring of certain services by security agencies was not allowed.

This is the first time that the government has used the word 'ban' with regard to BlackBerry in parliament.

Asked whether telecom operators would be given time beyond August 31, the deadline set for BlackBerry makers Research In Motion (RIM), for compliance with security norms, a government representative said, "They have already been given enough time..."

Online drive for St Xavier's girl gathers speed

Mumbai:

The online campaign to protest against the civic body's callousness in not trimming dangerous trees gained even more momentum on Day 2 of the campaign, with the number of members going up to 255.

Hindustan Times had, on August 17, reported how Antara Telang's friends were launching a campaign against the BMC's negligence after a dangerously hanging branch of a tree cost Antara, a St Xavier's student, her right leg. It had to be amputated after a falling branch on July 24 crushed that leg, while leaving her left leg fractured.

Federer trick hit on web

London:

Roger Federer demonstrated a trick where he knocked off a bottle off a man's head with hes serve, similar to the legend of William Tell, the Swiss folk hero who was said to have shot an apple off his son's head with a crossbow bolt.

Federer as tounded crewmembers at a photoshoot with his trick, now a video on YouTube. The demo was a part of proving his accuracy. "What's next? That was good, right?" The Telegraph quoted Federer as saying after successfully repeating the trick.

Fake Aditya Chopra wants to date women

Filmmaker's impersonator on Facebook befriends random people; director plans to approach cyber crime cell to find solution

MUMBAI

One of India's most celebrated filmmakers, Aditya Chopra, who respects his privacy so much that he rarely poses for pictures and even refuses to be interviewed by the media, has an impersonator on social networking site Facebook.

Facebook campaign against BMC apathy gathers steam

Mumbai:

Within a day of its launch the online campaign on Facebook, protesting the municipal body's careless attitude towards pruning trees regularly had 130 members.

The Movement was started by the friends of Antara Telang (18), the FYBA student from St Xavier's College, who had her right leg amputated after a tree branch fell on her on July 24.

Friends launch Facebook protest

MUMBAI:

Till a few days back, Neha Sethi was your average 18-year-old, who thought Facebook was cool for catching up with friends and classmates. But when her friend Antara Telang (18) lost her right leg after a tree branch fell on it, Sethi and her friends realised Facebook can also be a powerful tool of protest.

They are now launching a Facebook campaign to protest the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation's (BMC's) negligence in not trimming the tree branch.

Share files securely

When you need to send an important file to a contact, you can either send it as an email attachment or, if the file size is too big for an email message, you can upload it to any of the file hosting services (example, drop.io or yousendit.com) and share the download link with your contact over email.

IM software applications such as Skype and Google Talk also allow you to transfer files from one computer to another without imposing any restrictions on file size or the file type. This is generally quicker than sending files over email. The only downside is that both parties should be running the IM client in order to send or receive files.

Video game mocking Naomi a hit

LONDON:

Naomi Campbell's courtroom was a headliner for sure, but now, it has turned into an Internet rage too - with an online video game mocking the supermodel's blood diamond case.

Neil's account hacked

My twitter account has been hacked. Please ignore all messages you are receiving from my ID," tweeted Neil Nitin Mukesh from his publicist's twitter handle.

Amartya Sen blasts Facebook over fake profile

Nobel Laureate won't join social networking site as managers did not help delete page

After falling victim to identity theft on Facebook, Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen has said he got no help from the managers of the social networking site in closing the "fraudulent" page of someone impersonating him. Sen said he never intends to open any account on a site where it is difficult to check the 'genuineness" of a participant.

Experts warn of weak link in the security of sites

Exhibit No 1 of the weak links in the chain is Etisalat, a wireless carrier in the United Arab Emirates

San Fanclsco: Computer security researchers are reasing alarms about vulnerabilities in some of the Web's most secure corners: the banking, ecommerce and other sites that use encryption to communicate with their users.

Theose sites, which are trpically isentified by a closed lock displayed somewhere in the web browser,rely on a third organisation to issue a certificate that guarantees to a user's Web browser that the sites are authentic.

16-year-old British schoolboy becomes a millionaire

London:

A school going entrepreneur in Britain has turned a millionaire at the age of just 16. Computer whiz Christian Owens set up his first firm with his pocket money at 14 and another a year latter.

Start-up venture Mac Box Bundle, which sells cut-price packages of Apple Mac computer applications, has earned 7,00,000 pound since 2008.