Since some numbers in Japan show that people over there prefer Twitter to Facebook, one can only think of juxtaposing other numbers that say that Twitter crowds are better educated and of higher spending than Facebook ones.
In the mean time the US is contempt with letting people unknown launch missiles 35 miles of the coast and then call it all a jet trail with a conspiracy theory twist.
And while selling self help books for Pedophiles seems to be OK according to Amazon (until the outrage grew to be too much, that is ), the queen of England got her Facebook page hijacked by anti monarchy protesters within hours of its launch.
Google vs Facebook scorecard
Impress your friends as an in depth researcher of techy trends by memorizing the few pointers below, before the list grows:
1) Google Blocks Facebook API
Google feels there should be something they termed “reciprocity” when allowing third parties to use their contact polling service, which Facebook isn’t buying into, so they changed their terms of service accordingly, effectively shutting out Facebook s ability to import Google’s contacts from a willing Facebook user.
2) The (Facebook) empire strikes back
Using a technique called deep linking, Facebook implemented a two steps procedure to overcome the API ban, this meant first “exporting” the Google contacts info and then uploading it to Facebook.
3)Google pouts
Blocking deep linking is relatively easy, but somewhere PR crowds from within must have interfered, the resulting inner struggles turned into a statement in which Google declared itself disappointed that Facebook didn’t share its gum toys instead of acting silly hacking.
4)Trap my contacts now
Probably to be known as the disclaimer of the decade (and yes, that’s the original title right there), the lengthy text that precedes the option of exporting your contacts from Google warns how your contacts will be “trapped” once exported and inserted into some other evil social service. there is no easy proceed anyway button, just a lengthy, daunting if childish Google rant.
5)I can smell your brains
Zombie fad gone and forgotten, the brain hunger normally attributed to the undead seems quite fitting for these two giants; the offer, courting and eventual counter offer the Google engineers are getting talks by itself. Best counter bid so far? a 3.5mil in stocks made to an engineer at Google by,.. Google, this in part due to another of its engineers actually leaving for Facebook after being counter offered a paltry 500 thousand in stocks to stay. I wonder if Facebook has any plans on hiring the guy that was sacked from Google for spilling the beans on the 10% cross the board raise all engineers where going to get.
Worms in the Apple
Ok so Apple is probably the hottest thing around since sliced bread, but it isn’t without faults, just check for yourself:
-Glassgate
Got to notice a shortage of third party slide-on cases for i-phones lately? well it isn’t due to lackluster production; Apple withdrew most of them from public domain (re releasing some of them later on the i-store) after its engineers found the possibility for these slide-ons to cause speckles of random material trapped within to turn glass parts of the i-phone into shrapnel.
-Vaporprint
The possibility to simply send something to print from a distance to any Mac or Win connected printer, originally touted by Apple itself, disappeared into thin air and will not be part of the upcoming IOS mayor upgrade (4.2, due in November ), instead, only “airprint friendly” printers, of which there (conspicuously?) only seems to be HP models in the market, will be able to do the deed.
-The one hour snooze
I haven’t heard of any law suits pertaining to iphone owners getting fired because of late arrivals due to the fact that their alarm clocks went off one hour late after the daylight saving time adjustments failed to take place on the device. Off course little grief was taken from the issue since there is a plethora of free apps in the i-store that pull the feat, on time.
-Airbook style blues
After all the oww and ahh, people are starting to notice the trade-backs of stylish till the bitter end computing; alleged graphical glitches and hinges loosening notwithstanding, with a lack of ports and locked in components, i-store independence and true multitasking concerns are creeping up among the user base once they start realizing that:
you can’t swap batteries on a long trip.
Will have to do without the device while the battery is replaced once it wears out or want a flash / ram upgrade.
Won’t be able to sync / transfer with other devices while surfing the web if not within a wifi covered area (using the USB to Ethernet cable, sold separately, on the lone usb port ).
Have a cookie, and another, and another
Since the advent of cookies in the browser, the types, variety and locations of these snippets of data, used by webmasters abroad to track your intent in either useful or malicious ways, has diversified into as many as eight different siblings.
One Samy Kamkar decided the world should be warned about the implicit dangers of such proliferation releasing a JavaScript API that turned the communal cookies into something akin to the t-1000 liquid metal Terminator; destroy a part of it and the standing rest re assembles it. Evercookie (as its creator baptized it) wont shape shift your keyboard into a freak pin cushion, but the point was made, cookies can get nastier than originally presumed.
This week saw the release of a counter measure, a free Firefox add-on called quite appropriately Nevercookie (by Anonymiser, Inc), which is meant to supplement private browsing mode. Opera fans rejoice; your private browsing mode already deals with the Evercookie strain.
Feel I didn’t quote your favorite news bit? got a rant/comment/praise/suggestion? hit me up @tecnocratica or use the comment section below