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to make things a little easier for people i decided to put a list of file and image host together when i was a newbies to all this stuff i remember wishing i had came across a list such as this it would have saved me a lot of surfing time.
At some point during your time on the forum you are going to need to upload pictures, music or files to the internet so that you can share them, in order to do this you are going to need a site that will host your stuff for you, there are many sites on the internet that offer these services, im only showing you the ones that i know, and i know to be reliable, the thing you must remember about these sites is that most of the follow the same TOS (terms of service) most of the time this mean no uploading of adult material ie: porn, in the form of images and video etc etc, also they will not allow the uploading of copyrighted material, unless you are the copyright owner, please make sure you read all the TOS for eatch site before you use them.
Image HostsimageshackI tend to use this the most, i have used them for quite a while now and have always found them reliable. Once you have uploaded your image with them they will show you a row of boxes, inside these boxes are the url code to your image the best one to choose is the one right at the bottom that says
Direct link to image once you have that code you can place it between your img tags on your post. Most of these hosts work in much the same way so you should be able to work it out for yourself.
http://www.imageshack.usphotobucketthis site works much the same as the one i mentiond above the only difference with this one is that, firstly you must register with them to use there site, registration is free but will require a valid email address.
Second with photobucket you are able to upload more than one image at a time, and afer it has uploaded it will stay there untill you decide to delete it, also you will be able to go back and get the url code for your image at anytime.
http://www.photobucket.comimageshippersAgain this site is very much like the others no registration requierd on this one ImageShippers is a free picture hosting / image hosting site allowing people to host their images / pictures in the internet at no cost at all!
http://www.imageshippers.comFile Hostsif you are going to want to upload some of your own music , or just if you have a home video that you want to be able to share with your friends online you are going to need somwhere to host them again there are many many of these sites to be found around the net , im just going to show you the ones that i use and know to be reliable.
filelodgeas above if you want to upload your music, or you want to upload a video then the best one to use would be filelodge, you must register on this site ( dont worry its free) then afterwards they will allow you to upload files of up to 50mb per time once they have uploaded you will be given the url to the file and that url is what you use to share the file with your friends, this site is great because they have no restrictions on the amount of downloads, bandwidth or time uploaded
http://www.filelodge.comyousenditAgain Free, This is a good host site, it is used to send large files via email, once you have uploaded your song you will recieve a link in an email which you copy and paste on message boards etc. This site also has limited listens, on average you will get about 22 listens or after 7 days the link will expire. There is of course nothing stopping you from uploading it again and renewing your link, as its so very easy to do. This site also does not require you to join anything.
http://www.yousendit.com rapidsharethis one is much the same as the first, it works in a slightly different way but you will work it out without probs, the only prob with this site, like yousendit is that it has some download restrictions see the TOS for more infomation
http://www.rapidshare.de/i hope this helps somone
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potheaduk |
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9th April 2006 - 03:09 AM
Last post by: potheaduk |
Distributed Computing Projects Put your idle CPU power to use. These programs use a small amount of your CPU cycles and memory when you are not using the computer to help in scientific and health research. You must have an internet connection for most of them to work, because the results will be sent for analysis. In addition, most of these programs can be used as a screensaver, so if you are bored and looking for an exciting screen saver, then this is for you. Some of these projects have produced amazing results. Here are some of them:
Folding At Home:Author's Description:
Folding@Home is a distributed computing project which studies protein folding, misfolding, aggregation, and related diseases. We use novel computational methods and large scale distributed computing, to simulate timescales thousands to millions of times longer than previously achieved. This has allowed us to simulate folding for the first time, and to now direct our approach to examine folding related disease.As mentioned by the author, the program simulates the creation/folding of proteins from their amino acids. The program can be used as a screen saver and you could make your own team or join one for your score to be added to the stats. The project is an extension to the Genome@home project.
Homepage:
http://folding.stanford.edu/Download Page:
http://folding.stanford.edu/download.htmlTo participate in the klt team folding@home
go here and follow these directionsSETI At Home:Author's Description:
SETI@home is a scientific experiment that uses Internet-connected computers in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). You can participate by running a free program that downloads and analyzes radio telescope data.As the description says, SETI uses the data produced by telescopes and satellites to generate a graphical representation of the results to be used to search for "Aliens". The program can be used as a screensaver.
Homepage:
http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/Download Page:
http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/download.htmlClimate Prediction:Author Description:
Climateprediction.net is the largest experiment to try and produce a forecast of the climate in the 21st century. To do this, we need people around the world to give us time on their computers - time when they have their computers switched on, but are not using them to their full capacity.BIONIC simulates the temperatures, pressure, rainfall etc for the globe and change in climate in the next few years. The program can be used as a screensaver. You must make an account before you can use BIONIC in order to set your preferences. The account is free.
Homepage:
http://climateprediction.net/Account/Download Page:
http://climateapps2.oucs.ox.ac.uk/cpdnboinc/index.phpThe Golem Project:Author Description:
We would appreciate you representing it as work by both Dr Hod Lipson and Dr Jordan Pollack. Hod Lipson is Research Scientist at Brandeis with a recent Ph.D in Mechanical Engineering from the Technion. He did most of the work. Jordan Pollack is an associate professor of computer science and complex systems at Brandeis who directs the Dynamical and Evolutionary Machine Organization (DEMO) laboratory. Jordan has a long history of contributions in scientific fields like AI, cognitive science, neural networks, machine learning, evolutionary computation, and robotics, and is also an entrepreneur and an advisor to several internet companies. You can get pictures of us from our homepages or the official photo here.
The general laboratory site is demo.cs.brandeis.edu; information on this project "Genetically Organized Lifelike Electro-Mechanics" (GOLEM) is at demo.cs.brandeis.edu/golem.This projects helps us understand how robots evolve and become more human-like. If you have seen I-Robot, then you would know what This is all about.
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NOTE: The golem@Home project has concluded. After accumulating several Million CPU hours on this project and reviewing many evolved creatures we have concluded that merely more CPU is not sufficient to evolve complexity: The evolutionary process appears to be hitting a complexity barrier that is not traversable using direct mutation-selection processes, due to the exponential nature of the problem. We are now developing new theories about additional mechanisms that are necessary for the synthetic evolution of complex life forms. Some of these new mechanisms are based on ideas of modularity, regularity, hierarchy, symbiosis and co-evolution. These ideas are resulting in a new generation of artificial-life systems. If you are interested in our developments, please follow our recent publications at Brandeis DEMO Lab and Cornell CAD Lab. We thank the more than 30,000 participants for their assistance, and hope it was an enlightening experience.Homepage: http%3A%2F%2Fdemo.cs.brandeis.edu%2Fgolem%2F
Download Page:
http://demo.cs.brandeis.edu/golem/download.html
OPTE:Author's Description:
This project was created to make a visual representation of a space that is very much one-dimensional, a metaphysical universe. The data represented and collected here serves a multitude of purposes: Modeling the Internet, analyzing wasted IP space, IP space distribution, detecting the result of natural disasters, weather, war, and esthetics/art. This project is free and represents a lot of donated time, please enjoy.This program shows graphically the distribution of assigned IP addresses and the evolution of the internet. The results can be useful in studying many problems with the internet. Thus, scientists will be able to come up with solutions to problems, such as traffic jams etc.
Homepage:
http://opte.org/Download Page:
http://opte.org/downloads/General Distributed computing projects:
GRID.org Authors' description:
Grid.org is a single destination site for large-scale, non-profit research projects of global significance. With the participation of over 3 million devices worldwide, grid.org projects like Cancer Research, Anthrax Research, Smallpox Research and the new Human Proteome Folding Project (running in conjunction with IBM's new World Community Grid) have achieved record levels of processing speed and success.Homepage:
http://grid.org/home.htmWorld Community Grid:Authors' Description:
World Community Grid's mission is to create the largest public computing grid benefiting humanity. Our work is built on the belief that technological innovation combined with visionary scientific research and large-scale volunteerism can change our world for the better. Our success depends on individuals - like you - collectively contributing their unused computer time to this not-for-profit endeavor.Homepage:
http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/Please PM/Email me for any mistakes/spelling errors if you find any. Also, PM/Email me if you know of a good Distributed Computing project that is not mentioned here.
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SuperSonic |
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15th February 2005 - 10:18 PM
Last post by: SuperSonic |
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SharedHolder |
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5th February 2004 - 02:54 PM
Last post by: SharedHolder |
| Forum Topics |
This app compares side by side search engine results between the two, have fun.
Example: type
Crap Cleaner in the search box for comparison results.
http://www.bing-vs-google.com/
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firefox |
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5th July 2010 - 01:33 AM
Last post by: jacobrock23 |
I just started a New Forum called www.pliclan.com
It is based a on FPS game Called WARROCK .. been playing this game since 3 and half years now .
since i have a lot of friends here ,who have thier own websites .. iwanted to ask if u can give me some buttons or links that i can post in my forum , so other people also get to know the good work u people doing
dont worry i am not going to ask u to my link in ur forum or anything cuz the site is only for warrock clan .so i am not expecting any other visitors ...
P.S MM i wanted to post some links from ur forum of the tips and tricks i will give alink back to this forum ,if it is ok with u only then
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ricky123 |
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18th December 2009 - 05:35 PM
Last post by: firefox |
I am only saying this cuz i quit my job in HP 2 months ago ..
First of all donot buy hp computers .. most prob the hardware will fail within the first year ..
i have seen a lot of irate customers for that , people buy hp computers and they go home and find it to have a NOboot issue (where computer doesnt boot at all ) ..
the thing is the computer which u buy thinking it is hp,has no parts in it which is manufactured by hp itself..
those are all cheap parts made in china and labeled HP brand ....
i have only since nvidia video card to be a Good brand in hp computers ..
and one more thing dont ever go for the sleek and slim desktops , they r the worst ...
now hp has a Good warranty policy ,
if u purchased a computer say august 13th u will get a 1 year manufacturer warranty free ,
but if u want to upgrade that into say like a inhome tech or accidental policy .
(inhome service ) where a technician comes to your place to replace the parts
(accidental ) if u damage the computer by accident
So if u buy one year warranty for inhome service or anything
ur warranty will start from Aug 13th and will end in dec 31st of the same year
so if they fool u to buy 2 year policy .
u only getting a year and half ...
one more thing about the inhome tech .. they only replace parts ,they will never troubleshoot even if u pay them extra
troubleshooting has to be done by calling techsupport only ...
now when u sent in ur pc which is not working
say for example ur PSU is not working . what hp does is they will only change that part for u
they will repair the faulty PSU and use it in other computer.which might have come for repair
what this does is that customers often have to send thier computers for repair ,and u left with no computer for atleast 15 days ....
i hope this info has helped u ......
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ricky123 |
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13th December 2009 - 12:55 PM
Last post by: MUSCLEMAN |
Hundreds of Facebook groups 'hijacked'
Caper intended to highlight vulnerabilities on social networking sites, group saysAn anonymous group calling itself "Control Your Info" has taken over hundreds of Facebook groups to highlight what it claims is a major security weakness on the social networking site.
Facebook downplayed the incident and said no hacking or confidential information was involved.
As of this morning, more than 200 Facebook groups had been hijacked and renamed Control Your Info. Pasted on each group's Wall was a message announcing that it had been "hijacked" and reminding members to be careful about controlling personal information on social networking sites.
"This means we control a certain part of the information about you on Facebook. If we wanted we could make you appear in a bad way which could damage your image," the message said.
"For example we could rename your group and call it something very inappropriate and nasty, like 'I support pedophile's rights,' " the message said, while going on to assure group members that Control Your Info wouldn't do that. The message also promised to restore each hijacked group's name by the "end of next week" and promised not to "mess anything up."
A separate Web site set up by Control Your Info claimed that the group's action did not constitute hacking but was a demonstration of how a legitimately available feature on Facebook can be used to easily hijack Facebook groups.
According to Control Your Info, when the administrator of a Facebook group leaves, anyone can register as a new administrator for that group. To take control of a Facebook group, a user only has to do a quick search on Google to identify public groups with no administrators.
Once someone signs up as a group administrator, that person then can do what it likes with the group, including changing its name, sending e-mails to members and editing information on it.
"This is just one example that really shows the vulnerabilities of social media. If you chose to express yourself on the internet, make sure the expressions are your own," the group urged.
In an e-mailed statement, a Facebook spokesman downplayed the incident and said there had been no hacking and no confidential information was at risk.
"The groups in question have been abandoned by their previous owners, which means any group member has the option to make themselves an administrator in order to continue communication to the group," the spokesman said.
The spokesman further stated that Facebook group administrators have no access to confidential information. Administrators can edit a group name, moderate discussions or send a message to members only in the case of small groups, the spokesman said. "The names of large groups cannot be changed, nor can anyone message all members," he said. In cases where Facebook finds that a group name has been changed inappropriately, it will disable those groups, which is what it plans on doing in this case, he said.
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firefox |
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10th November 2009 - 05:48 PM
Last post by: firefox |
Facebook to tighten privacy after Canadian investigationFacebook will enhance its social-networking site's privacy features over the next 12 months as a result of a set of recommendations from the Canadian government.
Facebook will increase the information it provides to its users about its privacy features, as well as make technical changes to tighten privacy controls, the company said Thursday.
The changes come as a direct result of a review of Facebook's privacy policies and controls conducted by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. Facebook cooperated with the Canadian agency's study, which lasted more than a year.
Specifically, Facebook will update its privacy policy so that it more clearly explains its privacy practices. Facebook will also reach out to users, prompting them to review their privacy settings.
For the tens of thousands of third-party applications built for the Facebook platform, Facebook will begin to require that they comply with a new set of permissions, specifying the types of information they want to access. "Express consent" from end users will also be required before their data and their friends' data is made available to external applications.
The new privacy requirements for third-party applications will take about a year to implement because they involve changes to the Facebook platform's API (application programming interface) and to the applications themselves. It will be interesting to see how Facebook developers react to the news that they will have to re-tool their applications to comply with these stricter privacy controls.
In July, Facebook announced plans to simplify its privacy features, saying that they have become too numerous and complicated for end users to understand and apply.
Under pressure from Twitter, Facebook is also in the process of adding less restrictive privacy settings for end users who want to make their profiles, or at least portions of it, more public and thus more widely available to others on and off Facebook.
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firefox |
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28th August 2009 - 12:24 AM
Last post by: firefox |
Security experts scramble to decipher Twitter attack
Facebook exec claims Twitter, Google and others were attacked to silence pro-Georgian activistSecurity analysts Thursday scrambled to find a motive behind the distributed denial-of-service attacks that brought down Twitter for several hours, and also hit Facebook, Google and LiveJournal.
With little information to go on, researchers ended up speculating on who launched the attacks and why, although several agreed that Twitter's infrastructure needed immediate strengthening.
"If you monitor the hacking forums, it's clear they're pissed at Twitter," said Richard Stiennon, founder of IT-Harvest, a security research firm. "Twitter came out of nowhere. Hackers hated that. They'd been using forums and IRC to communicate, and all of a sudden, the rest of the world has their own thing in Twitter."
To Stiennon's thinking, the rise of Twitter -- and the backlash against it -- resembles the situation in the 1990s, when AOL rose to prominence, but tech-savvy users denigrated it as little more than a glorified BBS (bulletin board system).
"It's the same thing now," Stiennon said. "They look at Twitter and think, 'there goes the neighborhood.' So they wanted to demonstrate that they could take it down and generate news at the same time."
Roger Thompson, chief research officer at AVG Technologies, has a different idea.
"I think it was a vigilante," he said, "who wants to call attention to the danger of botnets."
Thompson's theory posits that the vigilante -- perhaps a security professional -- assembled a small botnet, then aimed it at Twitter and Facebook, which was also attacked Thursday. He based his idea on several similarities to the distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that hammered U.S. government and South Korean commercial sites in early July.
Those attacks, at one point thought to originate from North Korea, were unfocused, had no noticeable political agenda and most important, ended with the botnet controller ordering the machines to self-destruct by wiping their hard drives.
"Who builds a botnet, then destroys it?" Thompson asked. "That's just crazy."
In fact, Thompson said he believed the Twitter hacker was the same person who ran the U.S./South Korea DDoS almost exactly a month ago. "No one profits from DDoS-ing Twitter," he said. "The only possible explanation is that someone wanted to make people think about something, and I think that something is botnets.
"Botnets are a very big problem, but no one does anything about them," he added.
Both Stiennon and Thompson used the word "easy" to describe the kind of DDoS attack required to successfully attack Twitter and other Web sites. "It wouldn't take a real big botnet," said Thompson. One with 20,000 to 30,000 bots could have spoiled Twitter's day."
A different motivation surfaced late Thursday, when a Facebook executive told CNET News that his company believed the attacks were directed against one individual, a pro-Georgian blogger identified only as "Cyxymu," who had accounts on Facebook, Twitter, LiveJournal and Google Inc.'s Blogger and YouTube.
"It was a simultaneous attack across a number of properties targeting him to keep his voice from being heard," Max Kelly, Facebook's chief security officer, said.
One thing security researchers seemed to agree on was that Twitter needed to bolster its Web infrastructure, or it will invite further attacks. "If Twitter is following the usual commercial site approach to plan for a 100% traffic increase, it would be easy for a DDoS to take it down," Stiennon said.
"Twitter has to [re-examine] their infrastructure," Stiennon recommended. "It wouldn't take much more than $10 million to double the transaction capacity from what they have had. I'd double that or even quadruple that right away."
Barrett Lyon, the former chief technology officer and co-founder of BitGravity, and a noted expert on DDoS attacks, concurred. He and Stiennon collaborated yesterday in an attempt to dig up information about the Twitter attack; Lyon pegged the attack a DDoS before Twitter acknowledged it later Thursday morning.
"It's pretty clear [Twitter is] ready for a redesign," Lyon said in an entry to his personal blog. "They need their own autonomous network, bring in bandwidth from many different providers, and have several layers of security. Building a strong ACL border and a nice mitigation layer would make a lot of sense for a company that is enabling communication."
According to Lyon, Twitter relies on just one vendor to provide its link to the Internet backbone: NTT Communications, a subsidiary of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, based in Tokyo.
"I would guess something in their load balancing farm was not configured to deal with the attack or this would have just been absorbed without much notice," said Lyon, who noted that Facebook, which has a much more robust infrastructure, largely escaped harm.
Thompson, meanwhile, said if his premise is correct, Twitter may not have much time to get its act together. Noting the monthlong gap between the July DDoS attacks against U.S. and South Korean sites and Thursday's assault on Twitter and others, he said the vigilante might strike again using the same timeline.
"If I was a betting man, I'd be betting on another one in early September," Thompson said.
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firefox |
118 |
7th August 2009 - 09:14 AM
Last post by: firefox |
With Microsoft deal, Yahoo tosses in the search towel
Analysts wonder what will happen to Yahoo once the deal is past -- merger or demise?When Yahoo Inc. agreed to team up with Microsoft Corp. to better take on search giant Google Inc., some analysts said they wondered whether the online pioneer mistakenly sold its soul in the process.
The 10-year Microsoft-Yahoo deal announced yesterday calls for Microsoft's new Bing search engine to power searches on Yahoo's various sites. That means Yahoo's own search technology will go the way of the dinosaur.
And looking down the road, analysts question what will happen to Yahoo once the deal is over.
The the new partnership could simply be the beginning of a long-term courtship that eventually leads to the merger of the two industry giants. But If the companies don't merge and the deal isn't renewed, what happens to a Yahoo that has no up-to-date search technology?
That, says Karsten Weide, an analyst at research firm IDC, is a big question. And one that leads him to believe that Yahoo has made one heck of a big mistake.
"I was never in love with this deal, and I think it's a strategic mistake for Yahoo," said Weide. "With something as important as search, you don't want to give away the technology you need to compete with everybody else. Once you've outsourced search, it will be almost impossible to get it back in-house after 10 years. This is really a pretty grave decision to make."
Industry analysts aren't the only ones who think this could be a dubious move for Yahoo.
In stock market action Tuesday, Yahoo's share price dropped more than 11%, hitting $15.17. The stock's value had risen 20% over the past several weeks on speculation that a deal was brewing with Microsoft -- and that the pact would include a hefty upfront payment. Such a payment, however, was not part of the actual deal.
Following a telephone conversation with Yahoo officials today, Weide noted that while the company will use Microsoft's search technology, it will handle design of the the user interface in-house. "What happens under the hood, they will give all away to Microsoft," noted Weide. "[Yahoo] will retain [responsibility for] how the results are presented to the user. Some of the search engineers will stay [at Yahoo] to work on the user interface experience, some will go to Microsoft and some will be laid off."
When Carol Bartz took over as Yahoo's CEO earlier this year, she made it clear that she was going to try to re-ignite the company and regain some of the hip buzz that surrounded the online pioneer in its early days. However, Bartz also was adamant that she wanted to clean up shop operationally and get costs and revenue in line. And this move falls into line with that part of her plan, analysts said.
Weide noted that, in the short-term, the deal does make financial sense for Yahoo. The company will retain 88% of its search revenue, only paying 12% to Microsoft for tech services. And, he said, Yahoo will save millions of dollars that no longer need to be spent on data centers and massive server infrastructures.
"They'll boost profitability, and [Bartz] needs to show to Wall Street that she's making this ship more profitable," said Weide.
Jim McGregor, an analyst at In-Stat in Scottsdale, Ariz., said that if a merger with Microsoft is the final result, the move won't be such a bad one for Yahoo. "This kind of puts the two companies much tighter, where Yahoo becomes the advertising and services arm," added McGregor. "If they're successful and hold their own in this market, five years out we're probably looking at one company and not two."
However, if a merger isn't in the cards, Yahoo could be in a jam.
"Once you give up a key part of your business, it's hard to regenerate that," said McGregor. "What you do is merge with your partner. And a 10-year deal is kind of unheard of in this industry. They didn't do this as a temporary thing. They did this as a permanent thing."
He added that by putting all of its eggs in Microsoft's one basket, Yahoo became extremely dependent on Microsoft's continued interest in the partnership.
Ezra Gottheil, an analyst at Technology Business Research Inc., said Yahoo's big mistake was not accepting Microsoft's offer last year to buy the company for some $45 billion. "The bad deal for Yahoo was turning down the insane first offer," said Gottheil. "Frankly, Yahoo wasn't going to be around at the end of 10 years without it."
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firefox |
113 |
30th July 2009 - 12:29 PM
Last post by: MUSCLEMAN |
Chinese news sites go down after reports on gov't scandalTwo of China's most popular technology news Web sites went offline today after carrying news reports that linked the son of China's president to a corrupt African deal.
The technology news sections disappeared for several hours from major Chinese portals Sina.com.cn and NetEase.com early today when they started redirecting viewers to general news pages. Both tech sections had carried reports on a state-owned company accused of bribing Namibian officials in the last day, but those reports were missing when the Web pages reappeared.
The suspensions appeared to be a government penalty against the companies for reporting on a sensitive political issue.
"I'm impressed by the bravery of Sina and Netease in attempting to report this at all," said Rebecca MacKinnon, a Hong Kong-based expert on the Internet in China, in an online message.
Information on top leaders' children has always been off-limits in Chinese media, though the Internet has made it more difficult to control discussions on such topics, MacKinnon said.
Chinese police heavily patrol the Internet, and Internet companies run rigorous screening to prevent sensitive information from appearing on user forums or in search results on their sites. Companies can be punished if that process fails to catch certain political or pornographic content.
"This is not particularly surprising or different from long-standing censorship patterns," MacKinnon said.
A story posted on the NetEase tech page the night before its suspension cited English broadcaster BBC as saying that Nuctech, a Chinese company, was suspected of bribery in a deal to provide scanners for airports and ports in Namibia. The BBC report had said Namibian authorities wanted to question Hu Haifeng, the former company president and son of Chinese president Hu Jintao, but did not suspect him in the case.
The NetEase story did not mention Hu, but said Namibia wanted to question "relevant" Nuctech executives.
Sina's tech page carried a similar article the next morning, hours before the sites went down. After the tech sections returned to the portals, visiting the URLs of the scandal reports returned messages that they could not be found or had been deleted.
An employee who answered the phone at NetEase today said its tech section was down for tests. Sina did not respond to a request for comment.
Nuctech's parent company, Tsinghua Holdings, controls a range of other technology companies including Chinese PC maker Tsinghua Tongfang.
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firefox |
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21st July 2009 - 03:59 PM
Last post by: firefox |
Facebook puts privacy controls in users' hands
Social networking site trying out feature that lets users pinpoint who gets their postsFacebook Inc. yesterday moved to give its users more control over who can see their postings on the site.
The social networking powerhouse launched a beta version of its updated Facebook Publisher tool, which adds a privacy control feature designed to let users pick and choose who can see their posts.
"You may have some posts you want to share with a wide audience, such as whom you voted for or how great the weather is today," Olaoluwa Okelola, a Facebook engineer, said in a blog post. "Other times, you may have more personal updates like your new phone number or an invitation to join you at your favorite restaurant for dinner that are meant for only close or nearby friends."
Okelola noted that the updated tool will ask users "Who do you want to tell?" after each response they make to "What's on your mind?" The answer will determine which Facebook friends get to see a user's posts, pictures and video.
To access the privacy controls, users can click on the lock icon in the lower right-hand corner of the Publisher page to access a drop-down menu of options, according to Okelola. From there, they can choose to make their posting available to anyone on and off Facebook, only to confirmed friends, or to friends of friends.
Dan Olds, principal analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group Inc., said the upgrade could be good for people who want to make funny or risque posts but make sure the posts don't haunt them in the future.
"Facebook's new privacy options should be welcomed by users, particularly anyone who posts content that might not be, well, understood by their employer or their parents," he added. "With the new options, users can keep particular posts very private, to the degree that they can even hand-pick who can see the post. This should help them avoid embarrassing posts getting them in trouble with their bosses or family members."
But Olds also said there's a rub to this plan.
"In order for this to work, users need to actually use the feature," he noted. "And a user who is prone to posting risque content might not be a user who is likely to take the time and extra steps to make it private."
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firefox |
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25th June 2009 - 05:44 PM
Last post by: firefox |
Opera Unite Puts File Sharing in the BrowserOn Tuesday, Opera released Opera Unite, a technical preview of a service that turns the Opera browser into a Web server for file sharing and streaming.
Although Opera won't release the Opera Unite service in a formal form until the release of Opera 10, users can try out the service by going to Opera's Labs Web page and downloading a special version of the Opera browser with the Opera Unite service installed.
As of now, the service works on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Other browsers can access files shared under Opera Unite, but can't actually share the files themselves. And although Opera Mini and Opera Mobile both work on mobile phones, the service itself isn't available on smartphones yet, chief development officer Christen Krogh said during a Tuesday Webcast announcing the product.
What is Opera Unite? At its core, it's a desktop-based version of services that typically run in the cloud, such as HP's Upline, which was discontinued at the end of March. Other services like iMeem for smartphones, and Flickr, also reproduce some of Opera Unite's functionality, but within the cloud. According to Krogh, Opera Unite places a small Web server inside of the Opera browser.
Opera executives described Opera Unite as sort of a hybrid of a peer-to-peer file-sharing service and a software platform. In fact, users can share and stream files, much like many traditional peer-to-peer applications can. Two questions that Opera executives didn't answer was whether IT administrators would allow Unite services to be streamed over corporate networks, and whether organizations like the RIAA would approve.
Other users using non-Opera browsers can view and access files shared with Opera Unite.
"If you take some photos and want to share them with the rest of the world, you have to take them and put them in the cloud," said Jon von Tetzchner, who delivered what an Opera spokesman described as a recorded address during the Webcast. "But what if you want to share them with just a few people? What if you want to share them just with friends and family? You still have to put them in the cloud."
"We want to make every PC a two-way street on the Internet," von Tetzchner said. For now, however, the Opera Unite service requires Opera to be running and the PC to be on to allow the services to work, unlike cloud applications.
The Opera Unite service is actually a collection of six services, more of which may be added before the Opera 10/Opera Unite launch. Opera executives described four: file sharing, photo sharing, a streaming music server, and a "fridge" application for posting shared sticky notes. Opera executives did not show a service for streaming video.
Users can also host a chat in the "lounge" service and even host their own Web sites on their PC, although users would have to leave the PC up and running 24/7 to enable that feature.
Developers are also free to visit dev.opera.com and begin to design their own Unite services, which will be featured on the Opera site. Users, meanwhile, can visit unite.opera.com for more Unite services.
Opera itself will not charge for the Unite services, but it was unclear whether developers would be able to ask customers for a small fee for an instant-messaging plug-in, for example. "From our end, we want to give away the services," Krogh said.
With media sharing and file sharing, users are asked to identify a folder of shared media, and then identify who can access it. At present, users have three levels of permissions: completely open, password-protected, and completely private, or restricted to a single computer. Krogh said that the service was as secure as "widgets," or small applications that run inside a sandbox.
A test app, "the fridge," allowed small "sticky notes" to be placed in a shared workspace. Examples included "I need milk."
QUOTE
Other users using non-Opera browsers can view and access files shared with Opera Unite.
I'm currently trying this out, that statement is true - don't try to access someone's files with Opera itself or it will crash your browser. The
victim good friend who helped me test this has confirmed this to be true.
Also there's only one folder that can be shared as far as I can tell so everything would have to be put in there and then the whole folder is accessible to those you allow access rather than just an individual file.
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shakita400 |
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17th June 2009 - 11:27 PM
Last post by: firefox |
6 ways to protect your privacy on GoogleConcerned that Google knows too much about you? The company provides many ways to protect your privacy online -- you just need to find them. Here are six good ones.
1. Know your privacy rights: Use the Google Privacy Center. This site includes all of Google's privacy policies, as well as privacy best practices for each of its products and services. Although the "legalese" of privacy policies can be difficult to understand, Google's Privacy Channel offers a library of short YouTube videos with practical tips on protecting your data when using Google products and services. Try the "Google Search Privacy" and "Google Privacy Tips" series.
2. Protect your content on the services you use. Some content that Google stores for you, such as photos uploaded in Picasa Web Albums, are public by default. You can protect your privacy when you upload photos by choosing the appropriate checkbox.
Choices include "unlisted" (accessible only if you have the Web link, and not indexed by Web search engines) or private (viewable only by named users who must sign in).
Another example: You can take a Google Chat "off the record" if you don't want the instant messaging transcript stored.
In contrast, Google Latitude, which tracks your whereabouts by way of GPS-enabled cell phones, does not share your location data by default. You must authorize others to see it. Latitude stores your last known location, but not your history.
3. Turn off the suggestion feature in the Chrome browser. By default, Chrome retains a history of Web sites you've visited -- and the full text of those pages -- so it can try to guess which Web address you want as you type in the "Omnibox."
You can turn the feature off by going to "Under the Hood" under Options and unchecking the "Use a suggestion service" box. You can also select other privacy options, including surfing in Chrome's "incognito" mode.
4. Turn off Web History. You may have turned on the Web History option, also called Personalized Search, when you first created your Google account. If so, Google may be maintaining a "personalized" search history for your use.
Google does not use this data to target ads. It uses a separate search history, stored in Google's server logs and associated with a browser cookie, for that purpose. That data is "anonymized" after nine months. But your Web History is retained forever, unless you turn it off or delete the contents.
5. Opt out of interest-based ad serving. As of March 11, Google and third parties in its AdSense network are using not just contextual information (what you're searching for) but a history of previously viewed Web pages to serve up targeted advertising. The idea is to serve up ads that are more relevant to your interests.
You can remove interest categories Google has attributed to you or add others by visiting its Ad Preferences page. You can also opt out. To make the opt-out setting permanent, however, you'll need to install a plug-in for each browser you use. It's available for IE, Firefox, Chrome and Safari.
6. Add SSL to Gmail. You can encrypt e-mails you read and create in Gmail. Your log-in data is encrypted by default by SSL encryption, but SSL is turned off when you interact with your e-mail, because it can slow performance.
You'll find the option in Settings under the General tab. Scroll to the bottom of the screen and select the "Always use https" option under the Browser Connection setting.
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24th May 2009 - 10:39 PM
Last post by: firefox |
Time Warner drops Internet metering plan
User win this time, but some say usage-based broadband service pricing is inevitableTime Warner Cable Inc.'s decision to back off from a usage-based pricing change for high-speed Internet subscribers in four cities demonstrates how politically fraught the governance of Internet access and pricing can be.
Time Warner's new CEO, Glenn Britt, issued a statement yesterday saying the company had shelved the pricing trials in Rochester, N.Y.; Austin and San Antonio, Texas; and Greensboro, N.C. Those trials, which started only two weeks earlier, charged subscribers for the amount of bandwidth they used. Time Warner called it a "consumption-based" model.
Britt said he had heard the public outcry over the pricing change in reaching the decision to pull back. It was an outcry that got members of Congress involved, and at one point, U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) even met with him to describe Rochester's "outrage" over the proposal, according to a statement that Schumer issued.
Maybe Britt would have been better off to launch the trials in other cities where the political machinery is not as sophisticated, one Washington insider remarked.
But the real issues involved are much more difficult than counting the number of demonstrators or finding a way to quiet them, said observers.
The reality is that data use on the Internet is exploding, primarily because of video and other multimedia. It's becoming commonplace to download entire movies.
Carriers complain that a small number of users, maybe less than 15%, are using so much Internet capacity that they are hurting efficient and reliable Internet access for average users, but in a few years, the average user will be a bandwidth hog, too.
To keep up with this growing demand, carriers have said that they have to enlarge their networks quickly and deploy more efficient technologies that increase capacity. It seems inevitable to all parties that Internet access will cost more, but making the transition to a new pricing scheme based on consumption can't be done overnight.
"The problem is that Internet customers are holding current contracts that say they get unlimited bandwidth, so to come back with metering is basically the carrier saying, 'We didn't mean it,'" said Jack Gold, an analyst at J.Gold Associates LLC.
"Really that's like GM or Ford saying if you drive your car over 100,000 miles, we'll charge you more," Gold said.
One lobbyist, at a Time Warner Cable rival who asked to not be named, said it's likely that Time Warner and other carriers will implement metered pricing eventually.
Time Warner Cable said it was going to focus for now on making measurement tools available so consumers can learn how much bandwidth they consume.
Under the trial that was shelved, customers were asked to choose Internet usage plans that capped monthly uploads and downloads at 10GB, 20GB, 40GB or 60GB. Customers would pay $1 per gigabyte if they went over those caps, with overage fees limited to $75.
Two additional pricing plans in Greensboro and Rochester allowed for a budget plan of 1GB of usage per month for $15 and another tier of 100GB for $75. Overage fees were also limited to $75.
Despite what Schumer and other lawmakers say, there are not many alternatives to charging for Internet service based on usage. Nobody has suggested anything else workable, and carriers have pointed to other countries, including Canada, where metering has worked.
At FreePress.net, a nonpartisan organization in Washington, Time Warner Cable's decision to back off for now was welcomed, but organizers said the issue will continue.
"This metering approach will come up again," said Chris Riley, policy counsel at FreePress.net. "It's inevitable some other carrier will try it."
Riley said it is obvious that Internet data growth will require investment, but he said the alternative to metering is increasing competition for Internet services. Most customers have only the phone or cable company to choose from, but Riley said new technologies and providers are needed to expand choices and keep prices down.
The Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission need to find ways to increase competition, Riley added. While FreePress.net has not seen any legislation to do so, he said it's possible Congress could also act to prohibit metering approaches.
Even if metering is inevitable, analysts said it will not be welcomed by politicians, primarily because customers have grown to distrust the cable and phone companies because they have overcharged for services.
"The ultimate question is, does the public trust the carriers to charge them fairly?" Gold said. "Without a lot of oversight, nobody will know."
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firefox |
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20th April 2009 - 08:46 AM
Last post by: firefox |
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