Oct 03 2011
Somebody was discussing the virtues and dangers of Facebook with me recently, and he subsequently sent me this cartoon summarising his feelings :)
Facebook and You
In fairness, this could equally be applied to Amazon‘s new Silk browsing experience! See Amazon’s Silk looks creepily Phorm-ulaic.
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Jun 13 2011
There was lots of talk about Apple‘s announcement of iOS 5 last week. For an overview of the new features read See new features included in iOS 5.
The most interests aspects are:
I am not an iDevice user, but I am becoming more impressed :)
Finally, Google Android vs. Apple iOS: Handicapping the 2011 death match gives a good comparison of iOS and Android.
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Feb 03 2011
Facebook is becoming location aware on mobile devices in the EU (or at least in the UK, Germany, Italy, France, and Spain).
For more details see Facebook Deals Launches in Europe.
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Aug 24 2010
OMG WWII on FACEBOOK! – a modern adaptation of world war II for the american teenager.
Very funny ;)
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Oct 25 2009
I read an article during the week about a letter of support for Net Neutrality from some of the biggest, and most well-known, Internet based companies in the world. The article is Big names support net neutrality, and it lists the following supporters:
The letter, signed by the chief executives of Google, Ebay, Skype, Facebook, Amazon and Sony Electronics among others, says that maintaining data neutrality helps businesses to compete on the basis of content alone.
And…
Other signatories included community websites Digg, Flickr, LinkedIn and Craigslist.
This list of companies does not really surprise me, as they probably have the most to gain from Net Neutrality. Conversely, it is probably the telcos who have the most to loose!
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May 26 2009
There will be local elections in Ireland in early June, so the candidates are currently trying to get as much publicity as possible. The Internet now forms a crucial part of most candidates’ campaigns. However, some candidates have more interesting online presences than others…
Emma Kiernan is an example of such a candidate. Her official web page contains the follow corporate looking photo:
Official Photo of Emma Kiernan
However, until recently Emma Kiernan also had a publicly accessible Facebook account. This contained some less formal photos, such as this one:
Facebook photo of Emma Kiernan
It is debatable which photo is more likely to gain votes for her, but I guess that it depends on which segment of voters she is trying to attract!
This story comes from Elections Thread. Alternatively, I could have posted this article as yet another story of people not realising the loss of privacy associated with Facebook. I expect more similar incidents in the future…
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Apr 27 2009
Yet another employee getting into trouble with her employer due to the information she published on Facebook – ‘Ill’ worker fired over Facebook.
And still there will be more…
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Feb 07 2009
This week Google launched a new version of Google Maps for Mobile that enables users to share their location information with their friends. So basically it realises a FriendFinder LBS! This is something that I worked on before, but neither the technology nor the market were ready at that time :(
The new software is known as Latitude, and there are both desktop and mobile versions. The privacy features seem fairly basic, so I am sure that it is only a matter of time until there is some controversial security breach!
I will try and install and review Latitude here soon! In the mean time, you can read more details about it in Google will tell your mates where you are, and you can download it from Introducing Google Latitude.
However, Latitude has been dismissed by Irish company Locle for not being social enough! Locle has an application that enables users to locate their friends. However, its application is intended to be significantly more social because it will integrate seamlessly with both Facebook and Twitter. For more details about this see Competitor to Google Latitude pitches to Facebook and Twitter.
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Nov 05 2008
I have stayed up very late to watch the US election, and it is now clear who the winner is! However, I do not want to get into politics in this blog!
From a technology point-of-view, I am amazed how much attention the mainstream media has given to the online election campaigns. In particular, I am sure that every viewer must now be aware of Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube. Also, the winner thanked his supporters by email before making his first public appearance!
It will be very interesting to see some statistics from the main news web sites over the next few days regarding how busy their web servers were. I would expect some records!
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Nov 03 2008
ComScore released a press release today covering the UK Web Rankings for September 2008. Several news sites are commenting on the fact that Facebook has overtaken the BBC to occupy the fifth spot. Indeed, this was the most significant change in the list. I guess that this is not surprising, given the universal appeal that Facebook currently has!
I find this especially interesting, because I read an article on TechCrunch over the weekend claiming that Facebook may be trying to raise more capital in order to cover their soaring costs. To put this in context, Facebook have raised almost $500 million in 2007 and 2008 already. So what are they doing with all of this cash? Some of the more interesting costs cited are:
So where are Facebook trying to raise this extra capital from in this time of economic cautiousness? Dubai!
It will be very interesting to see if they succeed in raising more capital, and at what price! I am certainly not dying to get a piece of that action!
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