LinuxGram | The Newsletter For The Open Source Industry

Apr30

Facebook Won’t Cover Up Graffiti When it Reopens Old Tunnel in Menlo Park

Facebook is one of the premiere social networking sites on the Internet today. Used by average people to keep in touch with friends and family, it’s also become an invaluable resource for businesses and professionals to network and to keep in touch with their fan bases and customers. In fact it’s that ability to see and be seen that has created the trend where a business or professional will buy Facebook fans in order to gain more attention and increase his or her visibility.

Facebook is More Than Just Casual For Law Enforcement

However, while people who aren’t constantly checking their Facebook fans might not know this, the social networking giant is also a tool used by law enforcement to fight crime and to gather information on people. For instance, Christopher Robinson is a man in Milwaukee that has been claiming he lacks the resources to pay $150 a month in child support. He also posted pictures of himself on his Facebook account surrounded by money and liquor bottles, which was enough to lead to a query.

Not an Open Forum

While it might sound like a Big Brother nightmare come true, law enforcement does not have access to Facebook profiles and social network information on a whim. In fact, according to the law, police have to jump through a lot of hoops and get through a lot of red tape before Facebook provides them very narrow access, in keeping with a search warrant issued by a judge. In the case of Mr. Robinson, the photos in question were reported to police, who then had to go and get a search warrant based on the complaint they’d received. Only after the judge granted a warrant did Facebook open up that one profile and give police access to the information contained in it.

Like Any Other Investigation

While there are a lot of discordant voices that cry foul over using sources like social media to find incriminating information, there’s no reason to exclude computer communications from the law unless those communications are somehow privileged or gotten illegally. However, when police receive a tip that a suspect is publishing potentially damning information online in a public or semi-public forum, they have the full legal right to investigate that the same way they would any other sort of tip from the public. Even the procedure for investigating it is clearly laid out in the law.

The answer then, for people who don’t want the police looking at their FB pages, is to make sure they don’t post information that they wouldn’t want authorities to see. All persons have the right to remain silent, but the Internet can still be very, very incriminating if people aren’t careful with it.

Apr25

Look Out Naysayers, Instagram and Facebook Remain BFFs

How long are the doomsayers supposed to wait until chiseling Facebook’s tombstone? They’ll probably be wringing their hands for a long while longer. Here we are a year later after the acquisition of Instagram, and while Facebook’s share price is a bit worse for wear, they’re still chugging along. The big winner is the famous photography app, whose association with the Facebook brand has seen its user base skyrocket beyond 100 instagram followers. For enterprising small businesses, this creates an opportunity to seek out users who would like to buy Instagram followers and reach a wider audience, which is never a bad thing.

It was a shrewd gamble on the part of Facebook, who ponied up $1 billion to bring Instagram aboard. Ever since it became increasingly obvious that Facebook will eventually reach a peak maximum of users (if it hasn’t already), there’s been a question of how it can maintain some sort of growth. The answer just got a little more obvious.

Now the pump is essentially primed for integration between the two apps. Let’s face it, a move like that makes total sense for the world’s top two social sites, and could very well happen, whether loyal Instagram followers like it or not. It’s already adopted more than a few new additions that one might be tempted to describe as “Facebookish”, such as user profiles, a feed, and a geo tagging map feature. As the camera app continues to add features like new photo filters and improved image capture technology, it will continue to attract a larger user base, and by extension so will Facebook. Both social networking sites will eventually benefit from users who seek to buy Instagram followers, with some naturally turning into Facebook users as well, thereby increasing the monthly average users for both apps/sites.

If Instagram is becoming more like Facebook, it can only be a matter of time before Facebook does the same and squeezes Instagram into it’s photo section. Eventually the subtle changes will become more obvious, as Facebook seeks to monetize their $1 billion dollar asset, and start making enough money back on their investment that shareholders sitting on the fence can’t deny the profits. There have already been hints that the kind of intrusive advertising we largely take for granted is already on the way. In February Instagram unveiled the ability browse through users’ photo feeds on the web, as separate from their mobile phone app.

It is too coincidental that the margins resemble Facebook’s and all that is missing is the ads taking up the right side of the screen. It’s hardly a stretch to imagine advertisers being excited by the idea of some users who wish to buy Instagram followers and increasing the number of clicks. You don’t have to be Andy Warhol to see there’s money to be made in the margins of popular art, even if it’s amateur.

Apr15

Close to Half of Justin Bieber’s Followers on Twitter Turn Out to Be Fake

2013 hasn’t been a good year for Justin Bieber so far, whose problems have caused numerous celebrity gossip writers to speculate as to whether he’s going through a meltdown. First, he was out of breath during a performance and had to be seen by paramedics, later ending up in the hospital for the night. Then there was the confrontation with paparazzi outside a hotel, which resulted in a video that was broadcast in entertainment news all over the world. Not to mention the numerous times he was caught by police speeding in his sports car.

Some fellow stars have joined in and expressed concern for Bieber’s behavior. Even Chris Brown said that he was praying for the 19-year-old singer, which is not really a good sign. But there might be some good news for Justin Bieber this year. He was crowned the “King of Twitter” by being the individual with the most followers on the popular microblogging site. He even managed to top Lady Gaga when it comes to the number of followers.

But some are saying he doesn’t deserve to sit on the Twitter throne. According to Socialbakers, a company that specializes in analyzing social media trends and stats, an estimated half of Bieber’s 37.3 million followers on Twitter are actually either fake or inactive. As much as 16.7 million of his followers could be fake accounts. Everyone knows that it’s possible to buy Twitter followers to boost your popularity in the social media world. All that one needs to do is to visit a website that offers such a service and order as many fake followers as desired.

Could it be that Bieber’s PR team has managed to buy Twitter followers by the millions to increase the young singer’s online popularity. We can’t say for sure, but the topic is certainly drawing a lot of attention on news sites. Determining whether someone’s followers are actually real isn’t too difficult in most cases. Fake accounts tend to have zero followers, generic pictures taken from the internet as their profile pic and often have names that sound nonsensical, like a random string of letters.

According to Socialbakers, Bieber isn’t the only one with a fake followers. In fact, most famous people have millions of fakes following them on Twitter. But if you take out the fake and dormant accounts, Bieber is left with 17.8 million “real” followers, which would put him in second place behind Lady Gaga, who currently has around 19 million genuine Twitter followers.

Apr15

Using Twitter as a Jobs Platform: Good or Bad?

One of the newer ways to use twitter these days is to get a job. Some people would say that twitter is becoming the new résumé. Twitter user @DawnSiff managed to get a project manager job after she tweeted a vine résumé that told employers why they should hire her in six seconds. This followed after her job hunting for six months, and doing everything in her power in the offline world to get one.

Everyone is aware that they should monitor their social media usage. People are cautious about what tweets they post in case a potential employer might see and dislike it. This leads us to the new trend of marketing yourself in terms of employability using social media. Twitter can be great for this and depending on what your area of expertise is, you can manage your twitter account to promote yourself and your abilities. However, using twitter as the new résumé means that you only have 140 characters to convince someone why they should hire you, rather than a detailed résumé.

Twitter becoming the new résumé is probably a good thing for employers. While there is no official employment use of twitter, some employers are using it gain access to the type of person they want to hire. Twitter makes the whole process easier for them. All they have to do is read a few short tweets and look at someone’s profile in contrast to having to read through pages of information or deal with attachments and irritable printers.

Twitter also provides employers with a great platform for advertising jobs and it makes this job easier. It also allows employers to choose who they want from the pool of twitter followers that they have. In one way this is good, as it will allow employers and potential employees to find the right match for them. However, it might mean that twitter will become full of people who are only there to sell themselves and it might allow employers to buy twitter followers to help with advertising their own company.

On the other hand, some recruiters don’t like the idea of the “twitter résumé” because there is the possibility that the person they are seeing on twitter isn’t the whole or the real person. Perhaps they are a brand of themselves. And when it comes to the internet, everyone should be wary of believing what they read.

We must ask the question too of how effective it may be to rush through something like the recruitment process. In the task of looking for an easier way to do things, maybe we are losing something along the way. It’s possible that something like the job market is something that deserves to have some time invested into it.

Apr03

A Shoulder to Cry on: How Facebook and Self-Affirmation go Hand in Hand

Have you ever been drawn toward your computer screen like a moth toward light on a moonless night, and as soon as your cheeks hit the seat your hand instinctively executes all the required maneuvers to launch and log-in to your Facebook account? Then, when you get there, instead of perusing the news-feed to get up to the moment information about the goings-on of other Facebook fans; you navigate almost unconsciously toward your own page and gaze upon it like the mesmerization of Narcissus.

If you can relate (surprise! surprise!), you are not alone. We all have done it and a recent study from the University of Wisconsin gives us some deeper insights as to why we sometimes behave this way:

Think back to the last time that you vigorously dwelled on your own profile. You may recall what your mood was like, what had happened previously on that day, how it felt to glimpse at the culmination of your digital life . The study mentioned above would tell us that the reason you are doing this is that you had recently experienced some kind of negative emotional state, in some way or another your feelings were hurt, and your ego somewhat shattered.

Apparently, the reason that fans on Facebook get locked into this desperate need for reflection is that our Facebook pages’ can have a powerful and direct relation to who we see ourselves as. They encapsulate our entire network of friends and family, present a history of received and circulated attention, and contain a collection of ‘likes’ that ostensibly sculpts a replica of our core beliefs and biases.

A parallel study has shown how a myriad of personal information could be gleaned by using an algorithm to cull up some eerily accurate data. Sexuality, political inclinations, and even vital psychological traits were flayed out like a clothesline on laundry day. It turns out that all those seemingly innocuous ‘likes’ we haphazardly click with trivial glee have swelled into a vast, international bureau of human statistics.

The experiment that gave birth to this hypothesis involved research participants being intentionally duped into delivering an emotionally charged speech in front of judges who were pre-directed to only provide negative feedback, while a separate control group was only given neutral feedback from the the panel. The test subjects were put behind a computer directly after and observed while given several options of activity, including: reading the news, watching videos on YouTube, listening to music, playing video games, and of course, Facebook.

As would have it, the neutral candidates had an equal chance of choosing any activity, while those who were barraged with criticism were twice as likely to use Facebook, the researchers concluded, as a means to bolster their dented egos’.

Apr02

Of Twitter and privacy in Staten Island

Never has the danger of abusing social media been so visible than in the case of Fire Commissioner Salvatore Cassano’s son Joseph Cassano, 23. The young man was forced to resign from the Emergency Medical Service after some racist, anti-Semitic and sexist remarks on his Twitter account went viral. Commenting on these tweets, Mayor Bloomberg commented saying that they were “offensive” and that the resignation was the right move,

On the other hand, the shame that Joseph’s family had to face as a result in Staten was pitiable. Commenting on his son’s words, who incidentally happens to be living with his parents, Salvatore Cassano said that he was sad at the comments his son had posted online, and that they do not reflect, in the least, the values that are held by his own family as well as the FDNY. Joseph Cassano tendered a public apology and withdrew his comments from Twitter.

His terrible remarks apart, this incident is reflective of the fact that there is no privacy on the Internet, a lesson many are yet to comprehend, despite the fact that the Internet has been the cause of several scandals on a daily basis.

Twitter recently completed its 7th year of existence and has more than 200 million twitter followers making almost 400 million posts each day. Despite the proliferation of the social networking media, the fact that most people believe their privacy is retained is strange. Almost 92 percent of American youngsters between 18 and 29 years utilize social media says recent research, and almost 3/4th of all teenagers own a cellphone and make use of the Internet.

In fact, high school students are estimated to send more than 100 texts each day. At one time, there was only a need for sex education, but today it is also the use of technology that one has to discuss with youngsters. It is important for youngsters to realize that what they post online can be the source of trouble later. This goes for sharing of private photographs, intimate details and even emails that are meant to be a private affair.

Take the case of former New York Rep. Anthony Weiner, who was forced to give up his office in Congress when it was found that he was indulging improper communication with his female Twitter followers. Even ex-CIA Director David Petraeus was unable to hold personal e-mails that were exchanged with his mistress and this resulted in the loss of his job. These are just a few of the cases that show Joseph Cassano was not the only one to suffer the result of believing that his privacy was safe when released via the electronic media.

Mar28

Police From Around The World Come Together for a Tweet-a-Thon

With the goal of spreading the awareness of the activities of the police, many officials from around the world have been part of the Global Police Tweet-a-Thon. The event took place on March 22, and had agencies participating from six different countries.

Lauri Stevens, whose job it is to integrate the use of social media by police agencies, inspired the idea. The idea was thought of over a year ago, but it all finally came to fruition and was a success as police officers from all over the world communicated with their twitter followers. The goal was to educate, and hope their twitter followers would retweet their messages to help grow their social media presence.

The event only had two rules. The tweet had to use a specific hashtag (#poltweet), and their activity had to be local so that the communities they serve can see all the work they do in a day. Additionally, social media use is on the rise, and more businesses and government agencies are jumping on board to figure out the best way to use these types of platforms.

It is not going away anytime soon, and it will become a bigger part of their jobs as time goes on. Another bonus that Stevens alluded to is it allows the police departments to make their official statements on their own terms; rather than waiting for the media outlets to arrive and distribute their message.

Now, if there is an urgent message that needs to be distributed, it can be tweeted instantly. The Mountain View police department, outside San Francisco, already uses social media to distribute information in hopes of having a normal citizen provide them with helpful information regarding criminals.

The Global Police Tweet-a-Thon will give the Mountain View police department the chance to show off the tactics it employs with social media to give other departments around the world an idea of how it can benefit them.

Most of the police departments that are participating in this event will be providing updates to their community about the calls they attend to throughout the day. This will give local communities insight into procedures, and the nature of arrests. It is an educational experience that sheds light on how the police service their communities.

Mar28

Looking Back at Twitter

It has been 7 years since Twitter, one of the most popular and influential social networking sites was started by Jack Dorsey in 2006. Many people associate Twitter with a rather robotic user, one that feels that they have to tweet every day for their follower. And it is true that many people do use Twitter in this way. People tweet about every day activities like the food that they are eating, or other seemingly non-important things.

Despite this, Twitter has in fact changed a lot since its creation. Twitter has become something which can not only be very interesting, but is also a very important stream of information for many people.

Twitter has had a rough road since its beginnings. There has been a lot of disagreement on what Twitter should be and what it should become. The debate about what Twitter should become is a very public one. Everyone seems to disagree. Twitter has gone from being a messaging company to being a real time media company.

Another transition that Twitter has made is the transition from people using their own names to using a sort of alias for their profile. This is largely due to the fact that there are more and more people signing up to Twitter and new users are starting to have to be more creative with their on screen names.

One thing that Twitter has put a lot of work into over the years is the follower recommendation system. People could have been with Twitter since it first started, and still get recommended users that they should have started following years ago. This is a system that is still being tweaked and likely always will be something that they are working on. It is very common for people to get followers on Twitter through recommendations that Twitter gives you.

Twitter has also made a huge migration from being a computer based system to being a mainly mobile system. More people use Twitter on their mobile device then ever before and it is used much more on mobile devices than on personal computers.

Tweets have really evolved over the years. They have gone from being simply a caption to being a caption that often leads to media. This can be pictures, music, videos, and so on. Twitter is also becoming a stream of news for many people. A large number of users get their news from Twitter.

As we can see Twitter has changed a very large amount over the years. It has gone from simply a caption based system to a media system. Despite this, many people still dismiss Twitter as a simple waste of time. Twitter, however, has a large impact on many peoples social media usage. The question for Twitter is whether or not they will be able to maintain this impact or not.

Mar23

Twitter, Facebook advertisers face tougher restrictions from FTC

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission recently made online advertising on social media and mobile devices a bit more onerous for advertisers. The FTC has long required ads to display disclosures or disclaimers of potentially deceptive promotions, but in an effort to catch up with a decade of rapidly evolving technology, display of those disclosures will now be required in social media ads like Facebook, or in Twitter feeds, and on mobile platforms.

Just as in the last report issued back in 2000, the guidelines updated this year, holds online advertisers to the same level of disclosure and honesty as to which traditional print and broadcast media have been held. Those guidelines require disclaimers and disclosures to be displayed with enough prominence for viewers to clearly see them along side the advertisement.

But mobile platforms, Facebook and Twitter ads have very limited space making it difficult, if not impossible, to provide appropriate disclosures in plain view with the advertisement. For example, how would an Facebook advertiser running the promotion “Buy Twitter Followers”, also include a disclosure statement, then they are limited to 90 characters in the body of the advertisement?

In a blog post that accompanied the report, FTC’s Lesley Fair stated that advertisers are responsible for making their disclosures clear and conspicuous regardless of the platform of device that a person may use to view the advertisements.

Fair then went on to say that if an advertisement requires a disclosure of potentially unfair or deceptive practices, and that disclosure cannot be conspicuously and clearly made on a particular platform, device, or ad format, then the advertisement should not be run on that platform or devices.

The FTC also notes in the report that most webpages that can be viewed on a desktop computer are usually viewable on smartphones, so advertiser’s websites should be designed such that disclosures are plainly visible and conspicuous, irrespective of the platform on which they are viewed.

In most cases social media sites already require disclaimers and disclosures. Twitter specifically requires any product endorsements by celebrities to disclose if they are paid for promoting it. Facebook did not comment on a similar inquiry.

Eric Goldman, a law professor a the High Tech Law Institute in Santa Clara University School of Law, points out that many of the these issues regarding social media and disclosures surfaced some years ago. The new guidelines shift the burden more to the advertiser paying for the placement rather than the publishing platforms, like Twitter and Facebook.

Goldman doesn’t see anything in the updates that specifically directs Twitter, Facebook, or other platforms, on how they must design their platforms. But he points out that although the guidelines do not carry the force of law, the FTC is trying to get the attention of industry and if the industry doesn’t follow, the FTC tends to get cranky.

Mar23

Exploring Twitter’s a Groundbreaking Potential in Public Education

Two scholars debate the use of Twitter as an educational platform to benefit the student experience.

In late 2011, a group of Swedish techies launched Swedish Twitter University to deliver lectures as a series of tweets to about 500 student-followers. Most likely, the seminar was the first of its kind, leveraging Twitter as an educational medium. Massive open online courses (MOOCs) is a hot topic, so it’s timely to explore Twitter’s potential for academic innovation.

An experiment was devised to test this concept using a dedicated hashtag to compile the findings. Hosting a seminar on Twitter is more complicated that one might imagine: Ensuring all students have devices for tweeting, coordinating the guest lecturer to be at his computer (enter Professor Andy Miah, University of the West of Scotland), and more before the live event.

To quote MIT’s Sherry Turkle, “Is there something to gain by being ‘alone together’?” Mobile devices free us from the conventional classroom and also enable us to retain a shared experience. The live-stream lecture, based on one of the professor’s articles, was followed by a lively student-lecturer exchange of 110 tweets.

Was it successful? Did the students derive more, or less than they would from a classroom lecture? Should institutes of higher education offer learning through the hyper-fast social stratosphere? It’s tough to say, but the experiment was an interesting educational foray.

The pros:

Students have the uncommon ability to tweet questions and comments, and get replies.
It encourages interaction, instinctive thinking and recognizes a departure from traditional lecturing, engaging social media as educational tool.
Students experienced tutelage through tweets directly, and were integral contributors within the shared space.

The cons:

Relating complex ideas in 140 characters is difficult and can lead to over-simplification of concepts.
Are students receptive to this style of learning?
Misinterpretation risks run high, limit debate, and can result in a reluctance to participate.

Something worth examining buy Twitter followers, is the BBC article, A Guide to the Law. It provides guidelines for safely communicating in the public domain. Of course, these laws do not cover social decorum and anonymous exchanges online. Click here to check it out.

Many participants would have felt uncomfortable tweeting a renowned professor, if this hadn’t been a formal experiment. As the potential of these revolutionary technologies expands, it’s difficult to foresee how current rules could change.

In these rapidly changing times, being flexible and responsive are essential life skills. This lecture-style compels greater participation and reflection of students’ online interactions; something that’s been unrelated to higher education, until now.

Article contributors and lecturers, Emma Rich, Dept of Education, University of Bath. Andy Miah, director of Creative Futures Institute, University of the West of Scotland.

Mar13

Instagram issues warning to Madonna: Remove Photos or Have Accountant Disabled

Madonna has now been warned. It looks like Instagram is not able to handle some of its really hot celebrity account holders. It is being said that this social networking site issued notices to pop sensation Madonna stating that her photos were not in keeping with the guidelines of the site. She has been asked to adhere to the guidelines with her post and not share those that “that show nudity or mature content.”

Madonna received a letter, which she subsequently placed on Instagram, where the site says that she is in violation of the their “community guidelines.” According to the rules in the letter, the instructions explicitly say that photos that are not your property, should not be uploaded. On similar lines, photos that have “nudity or mature content” too are not allowed.

In the letter, there is nothing specifically that talks of what was posted by Madonna to prompt this letter. But a cursory glance of her account shows a collection of racy pictures that have been shared. It is possible that this has been thought of as mature content. There are photographs of a Madonna with a close-up of a cleavage as well as those of her performing while wearing a close to non-existent leotard. There is also an image of artist Frida Khalo, which in all probability is not hers and will be in violation of the site’s rules on posting photos that are not copyrighted by you.

The letter urges Madonna to get rid of the photographs that are in violation of the guidelines given. Instagram can be quoted as saying that they strongly urge the deletion of any content in the account that is not in keeping with the guidelines of the site. If Madonna continues to do so, then she will be in violation and can face having a her account disabled or will lose access to Instagram without any warning. There has been no sign of any action being taken by Madonna on account of this letter.

You may not be a celebrity like Madonna, who will not have to struggle hard to get Instagram followers. But if you are looking to buy Instagram followers, here are a few pointers to keep in mind. You can easily make a purchase of followers as part of your social networking campaign. There are several ways in which you can make a purchase, for more information click here.

Mar13

Vimeo Looking to Increase Hits, Buys GIF Application Echograph

Vimeo recently purchased the GIF making application known as Echograph, although the overall amount paid for the application is not yet known. The application works on Apple based mobile devices, although the good news for consumers is that the app, which formally went for $2.99 on the App Store, is now going to be free. The entire Echograph team is going to move over to Vimeo, and the CEO of Clear-Media and creator of the application is going to transfer over to VP of Mobile at Vimeo (and most likely a nice pay scale increase for the former CEO as well). This way, the new Mobile department is able to focus on all mobile platforms.

Vimeo has disclosed the deal makes sense as more and more users are looking for ways to post short, video like information on their social media accounts. Vimeo is leaving Echrograph on the West Coast (it is based on the East Coast), in order to have a strong presence in both major markets of the United States. During the time being, Echograph is able to make its own side-products, should it choose, at least for the time being. Vimeo primarily purchased the company for its GIF application ability, but given time it is very possible the company completely takes over the Echograph service in order to maximize its sales potential. A good amount of that has to do with how much money and units Echograph makes off of selling the other applications.

Vimeo is doing this in order to increase Vimeo views on mobile platforms. This is to help offset the recent Twitter creation of Vine, which allows user of the social media platform to create six-second video clips and upload the content to the site. Vimeo has long been a strong presence on traditional Websites, but with more and more users going the way of mobile devices, it is necessary for the company to essentially buy Vimeo views, and this recent transaction is exactly what it is doing. This way, Vimeo doesn’t want to lag behind other mobile video applications and services. In order to maintain and hold a strong presence on the Internet, the company knows it must shift its services towards mobile Internet users.

Of course, with more and more easy video uploads coming, social media giant Facebook is surely not going to be far behind, and it is even possible the social site looks at a website such as Vimeo. Vimeo also wanted to purchase the Echgraph team before Facebook could snatch it up, as Facebook has far more resources and services available and at their disposal.

There are other similar service that are drawing attention, such as Flixel and Cinemgram and have a good user base currently. Vine has already made a large splash, and other social media website are going to want to keep up.

Mar13

Man Laughs While Burying Cars on YouTube

YouTube has become a house hold name in almost every part of the world. People upload videos everyday and some videos go viral. Viral meaning that for one video, it reaches a huge span of people creating a tremendous audience and view count. YouTube views are what makes this internet company, currently owned by Google, so successful. Some people go to great lengths to make their video view count so successful. Certain companies allow users to buy YouTube views, thus increasing the placement of the video on a search. Other times, the video may become one of the top viewed videos on YouTube, making it onto the “must watch” list for the millions of users to see.

In a small part of the world, one man, using the alias Dogg, recorded himself plowing the snow in his truck, burying cars under the snow, and laughing about it. It came to the point where it seemed that he was deliberately trying to bury the cars with the snow. It’s understandable for some people to try and have fun at work. This is a necessity some-times. The day to day life of doing something that might be mundane in nature might eventually become boring.

However, surprisingly, this man’s video went viral. People from all over the world ended up watching this video. The result is that he received a few minutes of fame. However, this infamy could have possibly created a very embarrassing situation for him. The video was made in Massachusetts, and created a fair uproar of people who were not particularly pleased with the video.

The biggest problem with his situation, was that the people who hired him at RSG Contracting saw the video as well. His superiors in this company didn’t think that the video he posted was very funny. In fact, many would say that they were appalled by his actions. Some were hoping that people in the city did not think that all the contractors who plowed snow had the same sense of slightly sadistic humor.

Dogg at one point in time before doing this job, was a garbage collector. It’s possible that his sense of humor might have been carried over from having to live with smelling bad first thing in the morning. It’s easy for one to find misfortune under their current living conditions, and in doing so try to find humor in the misfortune of others. However, to his employers, this didn’t matter. He did a job and laughed at other peoples misfortunes, and was penalized for making this a public display of arrogant humor.

Consequently, the video itself cost him his job. This job, supposedly, was the best job he had. Considering that he was a garbage collector at one point in his life, he probably had fun this time around. However, maybe he had too much fun.

Mar11

Google Borg Changes The Way People Use The Interwebz

Google has changed the way people use the Internet. Much more than just a search engine, Google is a way of life for some people. That way of life becomes even more defined for the lucky few who find themselves employed by Google. One man’s transition from outsider to company employee showed him exactly how powerful Google’s web services are.

John Wilkes, one of the lucky Google users that went from mere fan to company employee, compares working for Google to being a main character in an environment exactly like The Matrix. Looking at this worldwide network from the inside out made Wilkes realize just how large Google’s reach is. As a long time lab researcher, Wilkes was amazed at the number of machines that work together to make up Google’s many services.

When Wilkes started his career in computers, the technologies and equipment that Google now uses to run their business were unheard of. He cut his teeth in a technological world where the biggest thing he had to wrap his head around was megabytes. Working for Google opened Wilkes’ eyes to the increases in computer memory between when he started his career and now. While a megabyte of memory used to be a lot, by today’s standards it isn’t as much, especially for a company that operates on as wide as a scale as Google does.

Before Wilkes even had a chance to absorb the increased amount of megabytes he encountered when working with Google’s systems data he was exposed to the software system that is the backbone of the entire company. To give this whole experience an even more Matrix type feeling, Google’s software system is known internally as Borg. This blows Wilkes’ mind so much that he refuses to call the software system by its real name, instead referring to it as “the system that will not be named.” While Wilkes may be blown away by this “new” system, Google has actually been using it for almost a decade. Wilkes and his team of employees are in the process of building an all-new version of the Borg and have nicknamed the new version Omega.

The purpose of Google’s Borg is to spread work to all of Google’s servers in the most efficient way possible. Since the Borg is such an effective system, Wilkes reports that it has prevented Google from having to build an additional data center to accommodate the massive amount of information that is sent out their servers.

Engineers at Twitter have built their own system that is similar to the Borg. The software platform they used to build this system was first developed at the University Of California, Berkeley. This open-source platform called Mesos is slowly being picked up by others. Mesos has served to help twitter followers be managed more easily. Since many users buy twitter followers Mesos has to work extra hard to handle them all.

Mar10

Teacher Learns Lesson After Tweeting About Teacher

A high school took to Twitter to release some frustration after accusing his teacher for allegedly switching the day a test was going to be given on.

The student sent out a Tweet saying that he hated his teacher, and said that the teacher said that the test was going to be taken on Wednesday, and that was when the test should have been taken, not on Tuesday.

What the student did not count on was the teacher having a Twitter account, and having the Tweet seen by the teacher. In matter of fact, another student ended up retweeting the Tweet and they included the teacher’s handle. That was when the teacher saw what the disgruntled student Tweeted about him.

The teacher thought it would be fun to make it known that he saw the Tweet. The following day he decided to make the Tweet visible, so the rest of the class could see it. He also left the Tweet up for the duration of the class.

The student who made the Tweet public said that the teacher is a good teacher who uses comedy to help teach his pupils, and it works very well. The student went onto say that the teacher is a very nice person and that he usually does not hold grudges, but the Tweet seemed to tick him off quite a bit. The student did say that it is likely that the teacher would get over it within the next day.

The student also had something to say about the student who Tweeted about the teacher. According to the student, the other student did something unusual, which was stay quiet throughout the entire class. As of now the student did not say anything else on the matter.

Twitter is a powerful site, but if a person is not careful they can end up Tweeting something they regret. Then again, a person can use the site to get great results if they run a business or if they just want to increase their popularity. No matter what a person wants to use the site for, they should have a lot of Twitter followers. Getting Twitter followers can be difficult to do, but there is an easy way to get them. The easiest and quickest way to get followers is to buy them from websites such as buyrealmarketing.com or Intertwitter.com. It is easy to buy Twitter followers, and it is a very quick way to build up following.

Mar08

Can Twitter Help Prevent Epidemics?

Arguably, one of the most popular forms of social media and networking today is Twitter. This massive network of snippets allows people to stay connected across the globe instantly. While this is often used for detailing bits about what might happen in someone’s day, where someone is or how they are feeling, imagine if it could be harnessed towards a greater and healthier purpose.

With the millions of tweets sent every single day, it is hard to believe that people are not talking about when they are sick. So, this means that if there were some way for researchers to monitor the spread of this sickness between people, and see where its hot spots are, it can be better poised to stop a serious outbreak should it occur.

Right now, the type of research that centers are using to keep informed is outdated, and often occurs weeks or even months after all of the information has been compiled in a central location. With this in mind, harnessing the instantaneous power of Twitter, the stream of information could be constant and up to the minute with the latest details and new statistics.

Since Twitter is global, it is even being used in countries that have very limited to no means of tracking and compiling public health information. So anything that could be pulled from Twitter to be used along these lines would be very crucial towards developing new means of fighting potential outbreaks of epidemics.

More than any other social networking site, Twitter is engaging more people in a constant global conversation of sorts. So what this means is, with the some 500 million tweets sent every single day, and the amount of followers on Twitter ranging for popular icons around the globe, important health and wellness information could be dispersed more easily as well.

There are many sites that are even allowing companies or individuals to buy twitter followers. With a service like this, mixed with the necessity to get out health and wellness information geared towards limiting or preventing potential epidemics, it would be reasonable to assume that an organization could drastically reduce the spread of disease and sickness in general.

Mar08

Quipio; Where Instagram Meets Text Messaging

Instagram is one of the most popular social media networks out there. It allows individuals, companies, or anyone that has a profile and who wants to provide clever content to reach a huge population, including all of the Instagram followers that one person has. In fact, this site is so popular that companies have begun to buy Instagram followers so they can get more attention drawn to the pictures and content they share. However, Quipio is taking the formula created by Instagram and running with it to reach an even bigger audience than ever before!

What is Quipio and How Does It Work?

Quipio is a simple program that takes text and makes it fun. Users type in a phrase, and then highlite different words to make them bold and give them extra feeling. They can add a background photo to instantly create their own inside joke, or potential meme. Once the image has been created, Quipio users can simultaneously share it on every network they’re connected to, including Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and dozens of others. This allows even small images to go viral practically instantly with complete, shotgun submission all over the Internet.

This is what makes Quipio both popular and powerful; the ability to explode content everywhere all at once. Users who are big into social networking will have half a dozen different websites and groups they belong to, and there’s no reason to post on them one at a time. Instagram may have started the trend of stripping down a message and making it easy to send out at the drop of a hat, but when the company created Quipio, the student became the master, so to speak.

Easy to Use, Simple to Understand

One of the reasons that Quipio has outstripped its parent company, at least in terms of current popularity, is that it is so simple to dope out. Social media has to appeal to a wide range of users, both the young and the old, the knowledgeable and the inept. So the simpler the process for sharing quotes and images is, the bigger the base a company is going to have to draw on. With Quipio it’s literally as simple as type, highlite, select an image, and broadcast. There’s no coding, no technical terms and it’s free of charge to anyone that wants to use it. Combining those factors, along with how much fun it can be for users to create their own memes and add imagery to inside jokes among their social groups, makes Quipio something of an addicting place to be. This is true even for those who don’t create new or unique images; with so many different ones flying around there’s always something to see, steal and repost on a user’s own social networks so that his or her friends can see the latest from Quipio.

Mar08

New Features to Twitter for iOS

Twitter has become one of the leading sites for social networking ever since it was founded in 2006 and there are a very large number of users who use Twitter on their mobile phone, especially their iPhone. Twitter recently added a number of updates to their mobile apps, most of all their iOS app. These features are aimed at making tweet results much more relevant to what you are searching. They will also help increase the number of Twitter followers someone has, even though users can also buy Twitter followers.

Twitter added the feature, Top Tweets, to their mobile apps very recently. Using this feature, when you search for a particular tweet, Twitter will also show a tweet labelled “Top Tweet” which is supposed to be “the best match for your query based on relevance and engagement,” according to the blog post that twitter posted on the subject. You can also view additional tweets from the same period of time by pressing on the button labelled “View more from this time.” There are a number of features to this that are still being added and that you might not see right away.

A number of features were also released on the latest version of Twitters app for the iPhone and iPad. One of the biggest of these features is keeping tweets easily seen in order to ensure that people do not forget to retweet. The tweet can also be easily removed from view if you do not want to see it anymore. To take advantage of these features users must make sure to install the latest app update. Twitter has also added more features for web browsing on their iOS app. In the recent update, when a user clicks on a link in a tweet, the tweet will continue to be shown at the bottom of the screen. This provides further context for the tweet and makes it a lot easier for users to retweet, reply, or favorite the tweet that they are linking from. They can do this while they are browsing the web page that they have linked to.

Another feature that has been added to the new Twitter app is that the autocomplete feature is much more prominent when users search or compose a tweet. Twitter is also expected to update these suggestions much more frequently.