Are We All Asking to Be Robbed?

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A new website called PleaseRobMe.com does nothing more than aggregate publicly shared check-ins, but its name and purpose attempt to shed more light on the dangerous side effects of location-sharing.

It’s no secret that when you share your location via Google Buzz and Foursquare you’re exposing information that could put you at risk. Many of us location-sharers get so caught up in the novelty and bonuses associated with our behavior that we forget the implications of our actions. PleaseRobMe.com seeks to make us more aware.

While the functionality of the site is minimal at best, the fact that you can view a livestream of check-ins — with data aggregated from Foursquare and Twitter — and filter by location or Twitter name is meant to be a bit jarring.

The point is driven home with the site-wide terminology, which caters to hypothetical would-be burglars. Check-ins are referenced as “recent empty homes” and “new opportunities,” and the name of the site alone is sure to raise a few eyebrows.

The site was created by three enterprising individuals who aren’t really out to get you robbed. Here’s how they describe the problem created by check-ins and the purpose of the site:

“The danger is publicly telling people where you are. This is because it leaves one place you’re definitely not… home. So here we are; on one end we’re leaving lights on when we’re going on a holiday, and on the other we’re telling everybody on the Internet we’re not home. It gets even worse if you have ‘friends’ who want to colonize your house. That means they have to enter your address, to tell everyone where they are. Your address.. on the Internet.. Now you know what to do when people reach for their phone as soon as they enter your home. That’s right, slap them across the face.”

These guys have a legitimate point. Stories about status updates leading to burglaries are becoming commonplace. You may remember that video podcaster Israel Hyman was robbed after tweeting that he was out was out town, and there’s even evidence to support the notion that burglars are turning to social media to find their targets.

So are Foursquare, Loopt, Google Buzz and all the others just sites that make us all easier targets? Location-sharing is becoming such a popular trend this year that it doesn’t seem likely that the site will do much to curb the behavior. If there is such a thing as safe location-sharing, however, we hope you practice it.

Tags: foursquare, location sharing, Mobile 2.0, social media

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Bored of Buzz? Try it on your phone – it’s what Twitter should be

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Bored of Buzz? Try it on your phone its what Twitter should beHold it! I know what you’re thinking. “Another post about Google Buzz. Yawn”. But wait – you’ve probably missed the single best thing about it.

While most tech-obsessives have been complaining about privacy or moaning about it being a cut-down FriendFeed, some of us have been out there discovering the mobile side of Buzz – and it’s fascinating.

As I discussed at the weekend, the Gmail and mobile sides of Buzz amount to something of an identity crisis. While Gmail-based Buzz is all about sharing the web, mobile Buzz emphasises location in a way that turns it into exactly what Twitter’s geolocation feature should be.

Putting people’s thoughts on the map

Buzz mobile’s ‘Nearby’ function allows you to browse what’s on people’s minds as they make their way through their days. Yes, it’s just like Twitter but because it’s tied to a location it’s fantastic to browse.

If you have an Android phone, the latest version of Google Maps even includes the option to browse Buzz posts around the map. Looking around my city of Manchester today I see that a man down the road is having a “Yummy dinner” with his brother, just north of me someone is wondering why his bus is late. Someone is cuddled up in bed while another is reviewing the restaurant he’s eating at.

Sounds a bit mundane? Well yes, it is a little at times but it’s addictive. Those little speech bubbles dotted around the map are intriguing – you see them and you just have to open them up.

With mobile Buzz you can browse people’s thoughts based on where they are. As Buzz’s userbase grows this is only going become more powerful. Imagine browsing the opinions of the crowd at a concert or a political rally just by looking at a map.

But can’t Twitter do this already?

Yes, Twitter’s geolocation API makes all of this possible with tweets but the users have been slow to take up the chance to tag their tweets with a location. It’s something of a leap to tweet your location when you;re used to not being able to, especially as it’s so damn difficult to switch on in the first place.

With Buzz, users don’t have to sign up to anything new and they know from the off that they’re tagging their location – it’s part of Buzz’s initial offering and they’re embracing it.

What’s more, this isn’t just a handful of early adopters – this is everyday users picking up their phones and Buzzing.

So – stop moaning about the uninspiring world of Gmail Buzz and get mobile. It’s what Twitter geolocation really should be.

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Facebook Is the Web’s Ultimate Timesink [STATS]

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The average U.S. Internet user spends more time on Facebook than on Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Microsoft, Wikipedia, and Amazon combined. Think about that for a moment.

New numbers released by Nielsen today confirm what we’ve known for a while: Facebook is the web’s #1 time sink. What’s more interesting though is just how much more time we spend on the world’s largest social network today than we did 6 months ago.

Back in June 2009, Nielsen estimated that the average U.S. user spent 4 hours and 39 minutes on Facebook per month. That’s about 9.3 minutes per day in a 30 day month. In August, that number rose to 5 hours and 46 minutes, or 11.5 minutes per day.

In January 2010 though, the amount of time the average person spent on Facebook jumped to over 7 hours. Each American Facebook user spent an average of 421 minutes on Facebook per month, which amounts to over 14 minutes per day. Even if you lump together the time spent on Google (1:23), Yahoo (2:09), YouTube (1:02), Microsoft/Bing (1:35) Wikipedia (0:15), and Amazon (0:22), it still doesn’t beat Facebook.


As you can see from the tables above, there are a few other interesting stats (the average number of websites people visited rose by 8.4%, while the amount of time people were on the PC went down by 8.2%), but the clear story seems to be Facebook’s still-meteoric rise.

How much more time can we sink into Facebook? Let us know what you think in the commments.


Reviews: Bing, Facebook, Google, Wikipedia, YouTube

Tags: facebook, Nielsen, social media, stats, trending

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There Are 6.5 Billion People and Almost 5 Billion Cellphone Subscriptions In This World [Cellphones]

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On a planet with around 6.8 billion people, we're likely to see 5 billion cell phone subscriptions this year.

Reaching 4.6 billion at the end of 2009, the number of cell phone subscriptions across the globe will hit 5 billion sometime in 2010, according to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). The explosion in cell phone use has been driven not only by developed countries, but by developing nations hungry for services like mobile banking and health care.

"Even during an economic crisis, we have seen no drop in the demand for communications services," said ITU Secretary-General Dr. Hamadoun Toure at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week, "and I am confident that we will continue to see a rapid uptake in mobile cellular services in particular in 2010, with many more people using their phones to access the Internet."

long with the surge in cell phones, demand for mobile access to the Internet has skyrocketed. The ITU expects the number of mobile broadband subscriptions to surpass 1 billion around the world this year, a leap from 600 million at the end of 2009. The organization predicts that within the next five years, more people will hop onto the Web from laptops and mobile gadgets than from desktop computers.

People in developing countries are increasingly using their cell phones for mobile banking, even those who have no bank accounts. But it's in the area of health care that cell phones have made a difference in developing regions, believes the ITU.
"Even the simplest, low-end mobile phone can do so much to improve health care in the developing world," said Toure. "Good examples include sending reminder messages to patients' phones when they have a medical appointment, or need a prenatal check-up. Or using SMS messages to deliver instructions on when and how to take complex medication such as anti-retrovirals or vaccines. It's such a simple thing to do, and yet it saves millions of dollars—and can help improve and even save the lives of millions of people."

This story originally appeared on CNET

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Microsoft Is Back In The Mobile Business (MSFT, AAPL)

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Steve BallmerMicrosoft's new Windows Phone 7 Series, unveiled today, is not an iPhone killer. But it's Microsoft's best mobile offering yet, and puts Redmond back into the mobile race after years of mediocrity.

In short, it looks like Microsoft finally figured out that mobile phones are vastly different than PCs, and it stopped trying to make Windows Mobile just a tiny version of Windows 95. Gone is the silly "Start" menu on every screen, blue sky desktop background, and beveled user interface. Thank goodness.

In its place: A very simple, very clean user interface, designed purely for mobile devices. And a well-thought focus on people, social networking, photos, music, video, and games.

Read the rest of this story »

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MeeGo: A New Linux OS to Fight iPhone, iPad and More

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Nokia and Intel have just announced the creation of MeeGo, a new Linux-based operating system designed for portable devices including netbooks and smartphones as well as other non-desktop platforms like connected TVs and vehicles. The new OS is a combination of Nokia's Maemo and Intel's Moblin, both Linux-based computing environments. This partnership is notable not just for combining two different Linux platforms under one roof, but for its cross-platform support of both Intel and ARM chips, the latter currently popular in mobile devices like Apple's iPhone thanks to its low power consumption needs.

Sponsor

The MeeGo operating system is designed to let developers write once and then deploy to a number of hardware platforms including everything from smartphones to netbooks and more, a popular strategy these days in an increasingly fragmented mobile world. The same strategy has also been recently embraced by Adobe, who now lets their developers write once and then deploy their Flash apps to any operating system, both desktop and laptop-based or mobile.

Applications that previously worked on Maemo or Moblin will work on the new MeeGo OS, too, say the companies. Also, the new platform is not intended to replace Nokia's own Symbian OS, Nokia assures. Instead, using the Qt application and UI framework, developers can deploy apps to both MeeGo and other platforms, including Symbian. The resulting applications will then be marketed through Nokia's Ovi Store, for all MeeGo and Symbian-based Nokia devices while Intel's AppUp Center will handle the marketing of apps for Intel-based MeeGo devices.

Open Source vs. iPhone OS...and More

Both companies are positioning the new OS an open source alternative to the iPhone App Store model. Although they don't come out and directly call out the popular Apple iPhone OS by name, they hint at it by stating that with MeeGo, people "are not locked into one kind of device or those from any individual manufacturer."

Both companies are also preparing for a new range of tablet devices that will compete against the trail-blazing iPad. In an interview with CNet, Renee J. James, a senior vice president at Intel, affirms that "this kind of operating environment is targeted very well for a tablet-style device."

However, the platform isn't meant to just compete with Apple products. It will also go up against the upcoming netbook OS from Google, Chrome OS, as well as mobile, tablet, and in-car OS's from other vendors, including Microsoft.

MeeGo will arrive in the second quarter of 2010 with products becoming available starting in the third quarter.

Discuss

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BREAKING: AT&T and Others Announcing Rival to Apple App Store

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Twelve of the world’s biggest phone networks – including AT&T, Orange and Telefonica – will announce their rival technology tomorrow to Apple’s App Store. The combined audience for the app platform will be 2 billion customers. Phone manufacturers Samsung, LG and Sony Ericsson are also part of the alliance.

The announcement is expected to take place at tomorrow’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, writes the Times, and will be good news for consumers. With the fragmentation of app stores from Apple, Android and others, many handsets and operators will now support a single standard of apps that work across multiple devices.

There’s no word if there will be a single app store, but a single standard for apps on devices from multiple networks is expected. It’s also unclear if the technology itself will be unveiled tomorrow — we may simply see a statement of intent.

Tags: apple, att, trending

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Tweeting Dog Collar Posts Your Dog’s Movements to Twitter

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Mattel is about to launch a toy that will brighten the lives of some dog lovers — but act as a sign of the coming apocalypse for folks who aren’t so keen on cute pet gimmicks. It’s called Puppy Tweet, and it gives your dog the ability to send Twitter updates about what he or she is doing.

Well, sort of.

The collar detects when your dog moves or make a sound, then randomly selects one of 500 pre-written tweets to post to Twitter. Your dog has to be within a reasonable distance of the room with your computer in it, though; the tweets are sent wirelessly from the collar to a USB receiver that has to be plugged into a supported Internet-connected device.

Since the selection is random, the tweets don’t really represent what your dog is doing. It’s more a placebo that reminds you that your beloved pet is out there doing something, whatever it is. They’re cute though. A couple examples: “I finally caught that tail I’ve been chasing, and . . . OOUUUCHH!” and “I bark because I miss you. There, I said it. Now hurry home.”

It sounds like it would get redundant, but Mattel Brands President Neil Freidman said “”Eventually it will certainly repeat itself, but people repeat themselves, too.” True enough.

Puppy Tweets will cost $29.99 when it launches in the United States this fall at e-tailers like Amazon.

We’d be remiss not to mention when seeing this that it resembles the talking dog collar in the Pixar film Up — everybody else has mentioned it! Sadly, Puppy Tweets isn’t nearly as advanced as that one.


Reviews: Twitter

Tags: dogs, mattel, pets, twitter

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Google Buzz Gets Some Serious Privacy Tweaks

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GMAIL USERS: You’re welcome to join the discussion over on Mashable’s Google Buzz account.

Google Buzz only launched four days ago but it’s already taking off in a big way. Google already made some changes to how Buzz works on Thursday but today the company has created a blog post highlighting some additional changes — including some ways to turn Buzz off altogether.

Here are some of the big changes that Google is making to buzz, that it plans to roll out over the next few days:

Auto-follow will become auto-suggest — Based on privacy concerns from users who aren’t happy with the current auto-follow structure, Google Buzz will instead prompt users with some suggestions of what users they want to follow, based on who they e-mail most. This is what that screen will look like.

Existing Buzz users will be able to review and confirm their followers via similar screen over the next few weeks.
Buzz will no longer connect to Google Reader or Picasa Web Albums automatically — Although only public items were shared via these two connect options, due to feedback from concerned users and confusion, Google Reader and Picasa Web Albums will have to be added manually to your Google Buzz profile just like Twitter or Flickr.
New Buzz tab in Gmail Settings — You can see what the Buzz tab looks like below, but it offers you a chance to decide to show or exclude who you follow on your public Google profile and gives you the option to hide Buzz from Gmail. You can also disable Buzz completely.

One other note — at the bottom of the page in Gmail, you can select a turn-off Buzz button. This will hide Buzz from your Gmail account, although you can turn it back on without losing your information.


Reviews: Flickr, Gmail, Google, Google Buzz, Google Reader, Twitter

Tags: gmail, google buzz, privacy

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