August 2009 Archives

Social networking sites are like internet shopping for burglars with users revealing details about their home and whereabouts to complete strangers, an insurer warned today.

Users of sites such as Facebook and Twitter are putting themselves at risk of being burgled by revealing too much personal information, according to Legal & General.

Research found that 38% of users of social networking sites have posted updates about their holiday plans, while 33% have told people they are going away for the weekend.

Nearly a quarter of people have also discussed their travel plans 'wall-to-wall', meaning they have no control over who reads them.

PEOPLE who repeatedly swap and download copyrighted films and music could have their internet accounts suspended, after the Government toughened up plans to fight online piracy.

Stephen Timms, minister for Digital Britain, said the proposals previously being considered by the Government, which only went as far as possibly restricting users' broadband speed, "could delay action, impacting unfairly upon rights holders".

He unveiled new plans designed to allow "swifter and more flexible measures" to tackle illegal file-sharing, including temporarily suspending an individual's internet account or blocking access to download sites.

If you look at reviews submitted by amazon users, any game which utilises the steam delivery system comes in for, erm, a certain degree of criticism.

For example for Dawn of War 2, 48 reviewers give it one star, (and the game, while not perfect, is pretty good) most have some gripe about online game organising and updating system steam.

But the drawbacks for users by the parallel expansion of Windows Live were brought home to me while having a blast on DOW2 the other day.

Why the publishers decided to insist on users logging onto Steam and then Windows Live before playing the SINGLE PLAYER campaign is quite beyond me (Windows Live really exists to enable players to find each other online).

When I last played I had to wait for Windows Live to update itself, quitting to the desktop as part of the installation, and I accidentally closed it down while cycling through DoW2's intro screens meaning I had to go through it all again.

All the time a little message was playing across the bottom of the screen saying that since the Windows Live 3.0 update game players had been experiencing DoW2 crashes, that they were investigating why this was and 'thank you for your patience.'

I don't play DoW2 online, so my enforced Windows Live membership is entirely superfluous, adding to load times, and increasing risk of crashing. Nice.

I loved the description of the types of different postings on the micro-blogging site twitter which was part of a new study.

The report from market research firm Pear Analytics described 40 per cent of the messages sent as being "pointless babble." (an unfeasibly low proportion, I'd say).

The study found that only 8.7 per cent of messages could be said to have "value" as they passed along news of interest.

A version of the social networking site Facebook is being developed for the latest Apple iPhone, it has emerged.

Software engineer Joe Hewitt wrote on his Twitter page: "Just uploaded Facebook for iPhone 3.0 to the App Store for review. :)".

'There but for the grace of god....'

The perils of forgetting who your facebook friends are were brought home for one user recently.

A worker called "Lindsay", updated her status with "OMG I HATE MY JOB!!"

She went on: "My boss is a total pervy ******, always making me do ****stuff just to **** me off!! ******!"

Unfortunately for her said boss was a facebook friend and his response was: "Hi Lindsay, I guess you forgot about adding me on here?"

"Firstly, don't flatter yourself. Secondly, you've worked here 5 months and didn't work out that I'm gay? Thirdly, that 's**t stuff' is called your 'job', you know, what I pay you to do. But the fact that you seem to be able to f**k up the simplest of tasks might contribute to how you feel about it.

"And lastly, you also seem to have forgotten that you have 2 weeks left on your 6 month trial period. Don't bother coming in tomorrow.

"I'll pop your P45 in the post and you can come in whenever you like to pick up any stuff you've left here. And yes, I'm serious."

Easily done - many of us have added people, promptly forgot and six months later posted something which causes offence.

The whole issue brings the issue of how to keep your private life just that.

People seem happy to live their lives in full glare of all and sundry - most not even bothering with even the most rudimentary privacy settings.

And they are also more keen on adding to their 'friends' tally without properly thinking about potential problems.

Do you turn down your boss' friend request and would it be rude not to request them to be your friend?

Making the right decision could save you from the sack!

Facebook is to buy content-sharing website FriendFeed in a move that could make it even easier for users to keep track of their friends' movements.

The deal was revealed in a blog yesterday by Friendfeed founder Bret Taylor, who stated that the firm "accepts Facebook friend request".

NHS patients will be able to read their medical records online under Tory proposals to be unveiled today.

IT giants such as Google or Microsoft could host the information which would be accessed securely via personal computers in the way bank account details are, the party said.

The proposal comes after an independent review of NHS IT commissioned by shadow health minister Stephen O'Brien.

Ok, so there's a new series called the Deadliest Warrior which seeks to find out who, through history was the, er deadliest warrior.

It looks at the weapons, techniques, skills and overall fighting prowess, before running it through a computer simulation.

Green berets, vikings, saxons, the ira and taliban are all covered.

Each episode on TV channel spike ends on a mocked up battle between the two sides based on the computer simulation.

In short it's hilarious, violent, perhaps slightly enlightening (perhaps...ok not really) and very offensive.

Here's the IRA vs Taliban episode finale. It's violent so not suitable for young technobabblers, but absolutely amusingly brilliant.

The legacy to historians around the world of this series cannot be underestimated.

An attack on Twitter which prevented users from "tweeting" today could have been the work of a teenager in their bedroom, an expert said.

The micro-blogging site went down for several hours on Thursday afternoon after falling victim to a "denial of service" attack.

Colin Sweetman, who provides internet technology and digital media advice through his company E-Volutionary.net, said such attacks were very common.