Social networking just got real
In the 1995 sci-fi thriller Virtuosity, starring Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe, the virtual bad guy from a supercomputer crime simulator (played by Crowe), managed to escape the world of software and make it into the real world as a nano-tech self-generating Android. That's a far-fetched premise, but Virtuosity was a great movie anyway.
In any event, the code sometimes does become real, at least in the world of social networking. As norms and conventions from sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Instagram become popularized online, entrepreneurs and artists are finding ways to bring them to life.
A real
Facebook book
A company called Egobook will download the content from your Facebook profile and print a hardcover book called a Likebook.
The book is printed in the colors and broad look-and-feel of Facebook and includes your photos, status updates, comments, albums and more. It's just like your Facebook profile, but made out of dead trees. Read more...
Facebook Takes A Cue From Instagram, Redesigns Mobile To Make News Feed Photos 3X Larger
If you’re sick of interrupting your news feed reading to open and load photos, you’ll like a new Facebook mobile site, iOS, and Android app redesign rolling out today that makes photos three times larger. Shares of single photos now look a lot like Instagrams, as they appear full width so there’s less need to stop and open them. Meanwhile the bigger previews of photo albums will help you instantly assess whether to dive in or breeze past.
As Facebook’s user base shifts to mobile where it can’t show as many ads as easily, it will need to keep mobile session length and return visit frequency high. Making the news feed less tiring to browse should keep us scrolling for longer as we ravenously peer into the lives of our friends our friends. Here’s the before and after photos…of photos. Read more...
School punishes Filipino boys for Facebook kissing
A Philippine Catholic school is withholding the diplomas of six high school boys who uploaded Facebook photos that appear to show them kissing one another, an education official said Friday.
A day earlier, a Philippine court rejected another Catholic school's decision to bar five girls from graduation ceremonies because they had posed in bikinis for photos posted on Facebook. The cases test the limits of privacy in a conservative Catholic nation that is also among the world's most prolific users of social networking sites.
Department of Education officer Samuel Mergenio said the six boys told him they had taken prank photos to make it appear that their lips touched. One of the boys uploaded the pictures on Facebook and mistakenly made them available to others, Mergenio said. Read more...
Animate your photos instantly with Animoto Video Slideshows
Tired of sharing your photos one by one? The new Animoto Video Slideshows app for iPhone and iPod Touch makes it easy to turn those static shots into moving pictures to share with your friends and family.
Animoto Video Slideshows lets users turn their camera roll photos — or live images — into instant video slideshows backed with style effects, custom text and even music. Animoto has a library of more than 500 songs available for pairing. You can preview each song before you add, and although most of the bands are obscure, there are 13 genres to choose from, so you should be able to find something suitable for your video. Ideally, users would be able to select music from their existing iTunes library, but I’d guess licensing issues prevent this. Read more...
Facebook under fire for photo tagging feature
Facebook is coming under fire for a feature that uses facial recognition software to allow members to tag pictures of their friends on the social network.
The "Tag Suggestions" feature made its debut on Facebook in the United States six months ago but has drawn renewed attention this week after the social network began rolling it out to other countries.
Tag Suggestions uses facial recognition software to match newly uploaded photos to photos that have been tagged elsewhere and suggests the name of the friend in the photo for tagging.
Although the feature was launched in the United States in December, it began coming under scrutiny again this week following a blog post by Graham Cluley of the security firm Sophos. Read more...