Apple, Starbucks Team Up To Give Away Free iPhone Apps
Is Facebook Blocking Google Plus Invite Links?
Now that Google allows its Plus users to invite (more people) their friends to experience the new social network, its rival Facebook, seems to be overwhelmed. Of course, currently the best way to interact with friends on the Internet is via Facebook, and thus users are making use of this means by sharing Google Plus invite links on their walls. Users are not just getting themselves a Plus account, but are also attracted to the new social network and slowly migrating from Facebook.
Facebook appears to be piqued about this and is reported to be blocking Google Plus invites from the users’ Facebook news feed. This came into light when the Senior Vice President of social business, Vic Gundotra posted a video on YouTube demonstrating that Google+ invites that have been shared on Facebook did not show up in the news feed of other Facebook users.
The video was posted after which the company had gotten reports of this unusual behavior. “I wonder how widespread this problem is?” Gundotra asked.In response to Vic Gundotra’s statement, Facebook (obviously) has denied the fact that it is stopping users from sharing the Google Plus invite URL. Facebook noted that they have a display-filtering technology that help prevent spam and thus could exclude certain links from re-appearing on a user’s news feed if it had previously been posted several times.
“Newsfeed is an automated system that is designed to deliver the most relevant content to you and your friends. The technology evaluates hundreds of factors, including your relationship to the poster, the type of content, the click-through rate (where appropriate), and people hiding similar posts from their feed.Facebook, are you sure that you truly “attempt” to “identify” and “block” spam messages? Well, there are several scams that are out there on Facebook, and practically a new one is born every day. As a matter of fact, scams that were reported months back are still spreading on Facebook.
In real time, it decides what to display to you and what to filter for both Top News and Most Recent. It also includes systems that attempt to identify and block spam. Links have a history of the most abuse and are given the most scrutiny. As a result of all of these factors, a given link may be shown or filtered to people differently at different times.”
Nevertheless, after watching the video, I tried the same by sharing a Google Plus invite on Facebook and simultaneously checking with another account if it had updated or not? The results? Well, it successfully posted the invite link in the news feed of the other account.
Now the question is whether Google tried to drive attention towards its social network by creating this gimmick or did Facebook really block the invite link? Vic Gundotra, edited his original post and added – “they appear to have stopped on Friday”
Author: Joel Fernandes
20yrs young and is a passionate Blogger, Web Developer, Photographer, Gamer and an Entrepreneur. Not a professional in anyway!My Twitter handle - @joelfernandesHe owns a tech blog TechnoBitez Joel Fernandes has written 136 articles.
Google Celebrates Fermat’s Birthday With An Awesome Doodle
The doodle
The doodle looks like a board in the room of a mathematical genius. Maybe, if Fermat had a board on his wall, it would’ve looked something like this. Strangely though, out of the mathematical mess of seemingly random squiggles, emerge the letters “G-O-O-G-L-E” in that order, while also maintaining complete mathematical harmony by spelling out the statement of Fermat’s Last Theorem. This is a masterstroke from the Google artist, unnamed as yet. Try a mouse-over and see the comment. Have patience – the explanation of the mouse-over comment is delicious.
The life of Fermat is, however, way more awesome than the doodle. Starting off as a lawyer, he learned arithmetic, largely by himself. After shedding off the tag of being an amateur mathematician by discovering a method to calculate slopes of curved lines (which we regard as differential at a point), without having any knowledge of differential calculus (which came later), he moved onto things far greater. Newton would come half a century later and would develop calculus into a branch of mathematics.
Insight
Fermat’s great insight led him to discover the Fermat’s principle. This, in the garb of the language of modern optics, said that light always takes the path that lets it take the least time when it propagates from one point to another. Huygens, nearly two century later, would boldly propose the wave theory of light using Fermat’s principle to derive observed phenomenon of reflection and refraction. Now every branch of physics – Classical mechanics, Relativity or even Quantum Mechanics – uses this principle, in one form or the other.
Lasting legacy
But this was for technicians in the field. Fermat left behind a delicious puzzle for future generations. He conjectured (and never proved) that three positive integers, x, y and z, cannot possibly satisfy the equation xn + yn = zn, for any n>2 (For n=2, you’d recognise it as the Pythagoras theorem). Fermat supplied a proof for it for n=4, for not a general proof. In his copy of Arithmetica, a book written by the Greek Diophantus, he scribbled on the margin something which said that he had a proof but it was too big to fit in the margin.
Mouse over the doodle, and you’ll see that it says that the discovered proof is too big to fit in the doodle.
The general proof of Fermat’s last theorem is a stuff of legends now, with Andrew Wiles’ proof and his struggles to get to it have been made into TV shows, documentaries and books.
Fermat, pot-bellied and round-nosed, left behind a legacy too big to fit into this one article.
Author: Debjyoti Bardhan
Is a science geek, currently pursuing some sort of a degree (called a PhD) in Physics at TIFR, Mumbai. An enthusiastic but useless amateur photographer, his most favourite activity is simply lazing around. He is interested in all things interesting and scientific. Debjyoti Bardhan has written 130 articles for us.
The author of this post can be contacted at debjyoti@techie-buzz.com
Google Releases Google Catalogs for iPad
This app brings digital versions of many popular catalogs to tablets. They cover the categories including fashion and apparel, beauty, jewelry, home, kids and gifts. They have hooked up with many top brands including Crate and Barrel, L.L. Bean, Lands’ End, Macy’s, and Sephora.
These digital versions bring a number of unique features to catalog shoppings. You gain the ability to zoom, tap on tags to get more information, or even look at cool pictures or videos. You can then look up products in in nearby stores or find it to purchase it online. You can then share your favorite products and catalogs with your friends via email.
Another really cool feature of Google Catalogs is the ability to create your own catalog to share. You can collect your favorite products and pages from various catalogs and compile them into one set. Then, you can send that catalog to family or friends. I see this being a great way to establish a *gift list for loves ones to shop off of.
If you want to check out Google Catalogs, it is available for the iPad now. Google promises that an Android version of the application is coming soon. Check it out and let us know what you think. Leave us a comment to have your voice heard.
Microsoft Products Steer Clear of Vulnerability Leaderboard
Software Makers
The top 10 rating of vulnerabilities includes products from just two companies: Adobe and Oracle (by virtue of Java vulnerabilities). With great improvements in the Windows updates mechanism and several Windows XP users moving to a more secure Windows 7 experience, Microsoft is no more featured in the list. Incidentally, seven of the top 10 vulnerabilities were found in Adobe Flash Player alone!
Web-surfing
Navigating the web remains the riskiest activity on the Internet. 87 per cent of the websites used to spread malicious programs were concentrated in just 10 countries, with the US leading the pack.
Local infection
The number of fake antivirus programs detected globally by Kaspersky Lab has increased and also the number of users whose computers blocked attempts to install counterfeit software increased 300 per cent in just three months of the last quarter.
India was among the top 10 countries with highest risk of local infection on computers. Every second computer in the country was at risk of local infection at least once in the past three months.
Botnet controllers see India as a place with millions of unprotected and un-patched computers which can remain active on zombie networks for extended periods of time.Hacking
- Yury Namestnikov, Senior Virus Analyst at Kaspersky Lab
Interestingly, 2011 can go down in the technology history as the year of services from several major organizations like Sony, Honda, Fox News, Epsilon, and Citibank were hacked and disrupted
Mobile
The number of mobile threats targeting different mobile platforms has increased exponentially. In the second quarter of 2011, the detected threats running on J2ME doubled while those on Android nearly tripled. Malicious programs continue to be detected in the official Android Market.
360 for Android – Click and Share Panorama Images with Your Friends [Review]
Below is an example of a panorama image-:
In today’s world, camera phones are the primary image capturing device for a majority of people. Irrespective of the poor quality of images, and the lack of detail, everyone prefers camera phones because of their portability factor, and mainly because we carry our cellphones with us everywhere.
2-3 years ago, it would have been impossible to click a panorama image from your handset. However, with advancements in technology and handsets featuring faster 1 GHz processors, and oodles of RAM, capturing panorama images is not a big task for modern age smartphones. Many quality apps exist for iOS to click panorama images. However, the same cannot be said for Android. The problem with panorama images is that they are very hardware centric, and since every Android phone has a different hardware configuration, it is tough to make one app which works on a range of hardware, especially on low-end ones.
360 for Android is one slick app to click and share panorama images with your friends. The app is made by TeliportMe, which consists of only 3 highly talented people. This same team was awarded by Nvidia as the Emerging Technology Company in 2010. The app has been available in the Android Market for quite some time now, and has a pretty big user base of around 45,000+ users.
Recently, a new version of 360 was released on the Android Market which has many under-the-hood changes. I gave the app a try, and I must say I have been pretty impressed by it.
Below is a video of 360 in action –:
360 uses the various sensors found in today’s high-end Android handsets, and the powerful CPU+GPU combo to click panorama images. The app makes use of the GPU instead of the CPU to stitch the images together, and because of this the images are stitched together in a very short span of time. The best part about 360 is its ability to share your panorama images online with other fellow 360 users, or your friends on Twitter or Facebook.
360 also has a public timeline which shows you the panorama images clicked by other 360 users. I spent a lot of time in seeing all the panorama images clicked by other 360 users. Thanks to the image being panoramic, you get a feeling of being physically present in that place. This one feature is what makes 360 stands out from other panorama apps on the Android Market.
Sadly, not all is perfect with the app. The images are not stitched properly all the time. However, the team behind 360 is working on this, and in the latest version the stitching errors are definitely less. Another problem with the app is the 3D image viewer. It is a bit buggy, and sometimes one light flick will be registered as a full swipe.
Thankfully, I have been in constant touch with the developer, and they have assured me that they are working hard on improving the stitching process. That said, these couple of small bugs do not deter me from recommending 360 to all Android users out there. Install the app, and have fun by just watching panorama images of unknown places, a stranger’s room or car. 360 for Android can be downloaded for free from the Android Market (link).
Twitter Launches HTML 5 Version of Twitter.com Aimed at iPad Users
Announced by @twittermobile, there is now a HTML 5 version of Twitter’s website, twitter.com, aimed specifically for the iPad. While Twitter has had an iPad app for a while now, this new user experience is designed to be used in the tablet mobile browser. It appears to be a hybrid of the desktop site and the HTML 5 based app. It features a dual column design that is very reminiscent of the current desktop web experience.
If you prefer to use your iPad’s browser over using an app, then this is a great update for you. It is also a great example of how good a mobile web experience can be. I think other companies (Google+) could take a few notes from Twitter. The iPad offers a greater screen real-estate than the typical mobile phone, and it should be taken advantage of.
The timing on this release is pretty interesting. Facebook announced their own HTML 5 web app initiative, Project Spartan, a few months ago. While nothing has come out of that project yet, it is expected to show fruit any day now. Its possible that Twitter felt it was necessary to beat Facebook to a launch, and they have done just that.
According to Twitter, the new version of the site is not currently available to all users. I know that I could not access it just yet, but some users can. It is said to be rolling out to all users over the next week. When I manage to access the site, I will take some screenshots and post them (or someone could send me some.)
Author: Tony PriceTony A. Price is a Nutrition and Dietetics Student from Louisiana in the United States. He has a deep passion for high end technology, mobile devices and applications, Mac hardware and software, and video gaming. His website is Tony's Brain, and his Twitter handle is @tony_price. Tony Price has written 41 articles for us.
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