In 6 years, Twitter becomes major social, political player
A lot can change in six years. Just ask the folks at Twitter.
The microblogging site celebrates its sixth birthday, if you will, this week. The first tweet was sent March 21, 2006. A lot has changed since then.
Twitter now has more than 140 million active users and they're posting more than 340 million tweets a day, according to the microblogging site. That's more than 1 billion tweets sent every three days.
"Six years may not be very long in human terms, but it's been quite an enormous span for the thing we know and love as Twitter," a blog post on the site said Wednesday. "When @jack [Jack Dorsey, executive director of Twitter] first sketched out his notion in March 2006, no one could have predicted the trajectory of this new communication tool." Read more...
Facebook tells employers not to ask job seekers for log-in info
Facebook on Friday warned employers about trying to gain inappropriate access to Facebook accounts to check out private information about potential employees, citing possible legal liability.
In recent months, Facebook has seen a "distressing increase" of reports about employers trying to access user accounts in the U.S., Erin Egan, Facebook's chief privacy officer, said in a post. "The most alarming of these practices is the reported incidences of employers asking prospective or actual employees to reveal their passwords." Read more...
LTE option poses data dilemma for iPad, smartphone users
The new iPad's LTE option, which allows access to fast 4G networks, has also shocked some customers who found they can eat up an entire month's worth of data watching just a couple hours of streaming video.
For a long time, analysts and even carriers have urged customers to download videos and other large files over Wi-Fi to avoid the high price of using a cellular connection.
But that hasn't stopped owners of the new iPad and some recent LTE Android-based smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy Nexus from leveling renewed criticism at carriers like AT&T and Verizon Wireless for imposing high data fees. Read more...
LibreOffice will have roadmap for cloud service next month
The Document Foundation (TDF), which produces the leading open source office software suite LibreOffice, is on schedule for the release of its plan to offer a cloud version of its software next month.
The team released the last update to its 3.4 build on Thursday and is now focused on developing version 3.5 further, but the group is now also ready to detail its plans for cloud services in April. That said, the team reserves the right to hold off on launch until the last few software fixes come in, TDF spokesman Italo Vignoli told The Register.
"At the moment we are focusing more on this because of some of the opportunities that are arising, which we can't disclose now," he explained. "We will have the cloud version roadmap out in April." Read more...
Hard-up Iceland plumps for cheaper open source
Iceland’s government is accelerating its move to open source at the expense of proprietary software from the likes of Microsoft and Oracle.
The government has launched a one-year migration project moving public institutions to open-source software and is working on a call for a tender to buy services based on free and open-source software.
The plan is for the project to create a common infrastructure for migration where public administrators will document the level of maturity of open-source alternatives to proprietary software used in their departments.
A group of unnamed specialists has been formed to monitor the project to prevent failures. Read more...
Rovio: Actually there will be Angry Birds Space on Windows Phone
Rovio has apparently changed its mind, with the company's CEO telling Reuters that a Windows Phone 7 port of Angry Birds in Space is in the offing, though he's not saying when.
That contradicts what the company's chief marketing officer told Bloomberg earlier, but CEO outranks head of marketing so we're betting that Angry Birds In Space will get a Windows Phone port, but can't help wondering if Nokia or Microsoft haven't been on the phone to Rovio recently. Read more...
Facebook reportedly buys IBM patents
Facebook has reportedly acquired patents from IBM, a move that could help it shore up defenses against new patent infringement lawsuits ahead of its IPO.
The social networking company confirmed the purchase, and said the patents cover software and networking technologies, The New York Times reported on Thursday. Facebook did not disclose how much it paid for the patents or the patent numbers. Bloomberg reported earlier in the day, citing an unnamed source, that Facebook acquired 750 patents from IBM. Read more...
What IT managers say to get the CIO’s OK
When data center and facility managers meet with the CIO about new equipment, the conversations are rarely easy. The equipment they seek is often expensive, in the six- or seven-figure range, and justifying the expense can be challenging.
That was the backdrop for an unusual session of front-line technology managers at the Afcom data center conference. Part of their job involves convincing the CIO of the need for the equipment.
At this session, hands-on managers shared their techniques for getting CIO approval for new equipment. The forum was a roundtable, informal, and people spoke candidly, and so it was agreed that no names would be published. Read more...
Amazon deal alone can’t save Eucalyptus from OpenStack
Private cloud company Eucalyptus got a much-needed boost yesterday when public cloud giant Amazon announced it will support interoperability between Amazon Web Services and the startup's own open source platform.
Though the deal with Amazon should help increase Eucalyptus' enterprise appeal, it by no means guarantees the struggling company's success; rather, it ensures that the company will persevere a while longer in the face of competitive pressure -- particularly from rival open source, private cloud upstart OpenStack. Read more...
Facebook, senator fire back at password snooping employers
Password snooping employers demanding access to Facebook accounts got an earful from Facebook Friday when it issued a harsh statement condemning the practice. Erin Egan, Facebook's chief privacy officer, wrote on a company blog: "We don’t think employers should be asking prospective employees to provide their passwords because we don’t think it’s right the thing to do."
Earlier this week U.S. senator from Connecticut Richard Blumenthal also to pledged to file legislation to outlaw the practice. It's an unreasonable invasion of privacy and should be banned, Blumenthal told Politico in an interview earlier this week.
He vowed to file a bill to address the practice "in the very near future." Read more...