Archive for category Social Media
And now for something completely different
Posted by orerfireced in Articles, Google, Twitter on March 11th, 2010
Since I’ve been working on Google Reader, I’ve told a lot of my friends about how great it is. And while some of them try Reader and find it really useful, many of them aren’t interested in taking the time to get Reader set up. That’s why today, I’m happy to announce an experimental product from the Google Reader team that makes the best stuff in Reader more accessible for everyone, while giving Reader users a new way to view their feeds. It’s called Google Reader Play, and it’s a new way to browse interesting stuff on the web that’s easy to use and personalized to the things you like. Best of all, there’s no set-up required: visit google.com/reader/play to give it a try.
What’s the Easiest Way to Share Large Files and Media with Friends? [How To]
When you want to to share music, movies, photos, or other files online, you’ve got countless options. We’ve examined most, and for our money, one tool emerges on top of the heap for its ease of use, wide support, and all-around excellence. Read the rest of this entry »
Most Popular How-To Features of 2009 [Best Of 2009]
Posted by vosduholov in Articles, Google, Twitter, apple on December 10th, 2009
We cover a lot of tips every day on Lifehacker, but we get our greatest pleasure from putting together in-depth, step-by-step guides. From Windows 7 to Hackintoshes and beyond, here’s a look back at our most popular how-to features of ‘09. Read the rest of this entry »
Facebook for Mobile is Growing Rapidly
Just eight months ago, more than 20 million users were actively using Facebook on their mobile devices. Today, the company has announced that that number has more than tripled — bringing the current active userbase to more than 65 million.
The other big news today is that Facebook Connect will now start appearing on mobile sites and in mobile applications (iPhone is already supported). Read the rest of this entry »
What Keeps Us Online Late at Night: Porn, Games, and Chat
Posted by Gulisoferus in Articles, Social Media on September 3rd, 2009
A study of online behavior conducted by security firm Arbor Networks reveals that the prime time on the Internet may be later than you’d think. It also reveals the habits of late-night surfers, which boils down to surfing the web and watching videos (a large amount of which are adult content), chatting and gaming.
In what is perhaps the largest study of Internet traffic’s temporal characteristics, the folks at Arbor have used data from the Internet Observatory and analyzed weekday application traffic flowing through 110 geographically diverse Internet service providers. What they’ve found is somewhat surprising: US Internet traffic is at its peak at 11pm EDT, and it stays relatively high until 3am in the morning. Read the rest of this entry »
BitTorrent Goes Social with Hexagon.cc
Posted by Hassan Alsheikh in Articles, Social Media on September 3rd, 2009
Though the drama around one of the biggest torrent trackers out there, The Pirate Bay, still hasn’t subsided, most of the users are turning elsewhere, trying to find decent alternatives for their torrent needs.
Hexagon.cc may not be indexing millions of torrents, but it does bring something fresh to the concept: a focus on social file sharing. Started by the admins of another popular torrent site, isoHunt, Hexagon.cc looks completely different from most torrent-related sites: it’s got a very clean design, it’s not overrun by ads, and has the overall look and feel of a completely legitimate web service. Read the rest of this entry »
Facebook Captcha: What You DON’T Need to Type
Posted by Hassan Alsheikh in Facebook on September 3rd, 2009
*Update: Commenters pointed out that the methods explained below ruin the reCAPTCHA project, which Facebook uses for its bot detection, and it might be true, so let me clarify. I’m aware that reCAPTCHA serves a good cause – digitalization of books and newspapers, and I’m sorry if I’ve encouraged anyone to cheat the system, as that was not my intention.
However, as you can see in the example below, most “special” characters that appear in reCAPTCHA, such as those with umlauts, apostrophes or ampersands, are quite cumbersome to read properly, even for a human. Having encountered those on a daily basis, my idea was that skipping them can’t hurt more than entering the wrong characters. Of course, for the sake of reCAPTCHA project, if you’re sure you know what the word in the image is, you should always type it in its entirety. Read the rest of this entry »
Facebook Friends For Sale: This Time It’s Not a Game
With all the buzz around social media, opportunistic and shady businesses are savvy to the fact that those with less than perfect intentions want to take the easy street to instant credibility.
Enter social media salesman, uSocial, a company that has become somewhat notorious for previously selling Diggs and Twitter followers. In both instances, the startups tried to have them shutdown, but uSocial is back at it, and this time their promise is thousands of Facebook friends or fans. Read the rest of this entry »
I scream, you scream, we all scream for iGoogle social!
Posted by Hassan Alsheikh in Articles, Google, Social Media on August 12th, 2009
We launched iGoogle in 2005 as a way for people to quickly and easily personalize their Google experience with all the information on the web that was most useful to them. Now tens of millions of people choose to use their iGoogle homepage to check email, track the news, watch videos, chat with friends and much more. Today, we’re pleased to tell you about the new social features that we’re introducing to iGoogle.
First, we’re excited to introduce social gadgets for iGoogle. Social gadgets let you share, collaborate and play games with your friends on top of all the things you can already do on your homepage. The 19 social gadgets we’re debuting today offer many new ways to make your homepage more useful and fun. If you’re a gaming fanatic, compete with others in Who has the biggest brain? or challenge your fellow Chess or Scrabble enthusiasts to a quick match. Stay tuned in to the latest buzz with media-sharing gadgets from NPR, The Huffington Post, and YouTube. To manage your day-to-day more efficiently, check things off alongside your friends with the social To-Do list gadget. Read the rest of this entry »
YouTube Redesign: Becoming the Google of Video?
Posted by Hassan Alsheikh in Articles, Google, YouTube on August 1st, 2009
YouTube may be testing changes to its navigation design, according to reader Eric Calouro. While visiting the site’s homepage today, he grabbed a screenshot of a previously unseen design that puts a large search box at the top of the page, removes the “Broadcast Yourself” tagline and de-emphasizes all menu items. In other words: the site looks increasingly like a video search engine.
However, the change has not been rolled out to all users: Eric’s is the only report we have so far, seen in Google Chrome on the PC – in Firefox, he sees the old design.
Whether it gets a full rollout remains to be seen, but such a move would continue Google’s moves to put search at the center of the YouTube experience. Watch this space. Read the rest of this entry »