November 17th, 2009

The weirdest Easter egg ever seen on Facebook

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 4:58 pm

Categories: Social networking, University fun, Weird and wonderful

Tags: Facebook, Arrow, Easter Egg, Keyboards, E-mail, Web Browsers, Hardware, Peripherals, Online Communications, Internet

I am truly stunned and baffled. How many times do you get emails or messages which say something along the lines of, “if you press Alt+F4 then you get a secret menu”, or similar?

This was exactly the case when I saw a friend’s status message on Facebook. I’m still struggling to cope with this as the sheer surprise of it actually working has taken my breath away. But what’s more peculiar is to why it is even there in the first place.

Here’s what you do.

1. Go to any Facebook page and click once in a white area just to get a blank timeline to do this with.
2. Press up arrow, up arrow, down arrow, down arrow, left arrow, right arrow, left arrow, right arrow, B, A, then the Return key.

For those who are confused, the key layout is below:

If you left-click or right-click, scroll or push any keyboard key after that, a strange shining set of circular rings will appear on your screen. To get rid of it, simply refresh the page or failing that, close the browser and start again.

Why? I have no idea. How this was even found? Perhaps this is the stranger mystery.

Digg this post. Tweet this post. Comment on this post?

November 15th, 2009

How could Twitter help in a terrorist attack?

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 11:33 am

Categories: Discussion, Events, Major breakthroughs, Mobile computing, Security, Social networking

Tags: Network, Mumbai, Twitter Inc., London, Terrorist Attack, Corporate Insurance, Homeland Security, Business Security, Telecom & Utilities, Networking

On 7th July 2005, fifty two people were killed when four suicide bombers detonated home made explosives on the London Underground. During this time, there was panic, confusion, miscommunication and a number of issues relating to where to go and what was going on. Even law enforcement suffered making the situation even more fragile.

With experience of hindsight, with a number of events which social networking from ordinary members of the public (”citizen journalism”) from the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, the Hudson river plane crash and the death of Michael Jackson; Twitter especially has been a key point of communication.

Mumbai was a perfect example of how Twitter dominated the intelligence gathering process, using real people and human intelligence but through an unconventional, insecure medium. Photos were being uploaded to Flickr and Twitpic, and tweets were dominating the blogosphere, and being used as part of commercial news channels as their own journalists simply couldn’t be spread thinly enough.

However in the case of Mumbai, public and very widespread intelligence could have been used to the terrorists’ advantages, also. Not so much the case of the London bombers, though.

How could it have helped London?

Read the rest of this entry »

November 9th, 2009

10 technological changes in 10 technological years

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 4:39 am

Categories: Cloud computing, Discussion, Events, Hardware, Major breakthroughs, Multimedia, Social networking, Uncategorized, Weird and wonderful

Tags: TV, Computer, Internet, Productivity, Text Messaging/SMS/MMS, Cellular Phones, Consumer Electronics, Personal Technology, Online Communications, Zack Whittaker

My goddaughter is now of an age where she can talk, understand, and learn pretty well. She’s six, so she’s pretty on the ball with things already. The things that she experiences and sees are so different to mine, and she’s only 16 years younger than me. Times change quickly, I know, but it hit me like a wave of elderly welfare benefits disguised as a petrol tanker last night.

The differences between her generation and mine, even though separated by a few years, are stark and somewhat terrifying in hindsight.

1. There were nine planets in the solar system.

For years it was always nine planets and then one day, they decided it was either going to be eight, or about twenty. They chose eight. After seven years of primary education, the world I knew it was, well gone actually; they had just declassified it as a planet.

2. A BlackBerry was a fruit, and so was Apple.

I wouldn’t be too surprised if people heard either “blackberry” or “apple” and genuinely thought of the fruit. But I cannot seem to shake the association now built with my mobile device. People say, “have at least one of your five a day”, whilst I have my BlackBerry in my hand making a call. I’d say that counts, right?

3. To load up a program, you’d have to slam in a cassette tape and wait 20 minutes for it to load.

My first computer, a CPC-464. It was so heavy you could have used it as a concrete block in a mafioso novel. A ten year gap is a bit of an exaggeration but I knew people still word processing back then on green-screened computers. When the 5″ floppy disk came out, we saw that as a mini-revolution in itself.

4. You had to dial into the Internet.

You couldn’t just have the Internet flowing in and out of the computer like an out of control waterfall. No, you had to tell it to dial another computer and information would be sent to and fro through, what was essentially a computer-to-computer phone call. What’s even more weird is that it’s still available, even today.

5. A single gigabyte hard drive simply couldn’t be filled, through no will of trying.

My first computer bought for the family at Christmas 1996 (yes, it had Windows 95) had a 64MB memory and a single gigabyte of storage. My dad said, “we will never, ever fill that”.

6. Video tapes the size of Bibles would be the only way to record a television programme, and even then it’d only be able to record an hour and a half at best.

Even though I’m far too young to remember the Betamax vs. VHS war, I most certainly remember hoping to watch back an episode of The Simpsons which I’d recorded on the oldest VCR in the world, and it failing miserably with tape lodged and jammed in every bit. It was heartbreaking.

7. The only porn we could find was the shredded remains of a dirty magazine under a bush in the local park.

This generation of Internet kids has seen more porn than any other generation of children, ever. When I was a lad, one morning you’d be lucky enough to find a shred of it near where the local dirty old man sleeps in the evening. “Kids having kids… blame the parents”: no, blame the Internet.

8. There was only one computer in the house, and if there were more, only one would connect to the Internet at a time.

No such things as wireless back then. The only wireless you’d know of was the radio, and that would have been a main source of entertainment. It may sound like wartime England, 10 years ago wasn’t that far away. Windows XP hadn’t come out yet, I was still in a school uniform and the computers we used were running Windows NT.

9. There were no such things as flat screen televisions.

At least commercially, anyway. I come from a generation where our eyes are slightly closer together yet facing slightly the opposite way from being transfixed by a CRT television for all these years. And I laugh now at the “radiation warnings” from the sticker on the side of the box…

10. Twitter was called “text messaging” and the “tweet” only went to one other person.

Yes, a new phenomenon which many don’t realise that was basically text messaging. While sending a text is still far more popular than Twitter, the days where news would slowly seep its way through a friendship group (nowadays a “social network”), whereas now you can update literally anyone and everyone in the space of 160 characters.

A lot can happen in ten years.

November 6th, 2009

Facebook profile privacy: Take control, student style

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 1:25 pm

Categories: Careers, Discussion, Multimedia, Security, Social networking, University, Weird and wonderful

Tags: Facebook, Advertisement, Privacy, E-mail, Online Communications, Zack Whittaker

A question arose in one of my seminars yesterday, asking whether universities spy on students through Facebook.

Yes, they do in many cases. But then the discussion evolved into another topic and this got me thinking. I get emails all the time asking about Facebook privacy settings and those who are worried about certain things being discovered, and the employment problems for future reference.

With the multitude of settings, and more often than not rather confusing and somewhat contradictory, how do you effectively lock down your photos, notes, profile and information, to not only certain people but everyone else outside your close-knit networks?

There are articles already on how to lock down your Facebook through the in-built settings, and this one is particularly good. However there are tricks and subtleties I’ll mention here which you may not have considered before.

Feel free to leave verbal heckles, but in the meantime - are you sitting comfortably? Shall we move on?

Network hacking to avoid staff/student snoopage –>

November 3rd, 2009

Google Wave: Has potential, but let loose too soon

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 4:12 am

Categories: Cloud computing, Google, Multimedia, Next-generation technology, Productivity, Skills development, Social networking, University, Weird and wonderful, e-Learning

Tags: Google Inc., Google Wave, E-mail, Corporate Communications, Online Communications, Marketing, Zack Whittaker

Google Wave has annoyed me so far. Because I am set in my ways and stubborn enough to brandish anything new, exciting and radical to my everyday routine as “a giant waste of my time”, I saw Wave as more of a challenge than anything else.

At the moment the only real factor it has in its favour is the real-time collaborative space, and of course I see this as a positive from a students’ perspective in a university enterprise arena. But besides that, it has very little substance. Sure it has the avatars, the ability to change the colour of certain items here and there, and it’ll give you a contacts list. Besides that? Mostly unfinished features and no obvious end-game.

One of my favourite features so far is the “Sign out” button in the top right hand corner. This has been particularly useful when pulling out my own hair, trying to work out what the hell is going on, and becoming confused as to what is being said.

Read the rest of this entry »

October 28th, 2009

Facebook freezes deceased person's profiles

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 5:03 am

Categories: Breaking news, Security, Social networking, Weird and wonderful

Tags: Facebook, Page, Person, Zack Whittaker

Facebook for some time adopted a policy which allows profiles of the deceased to stay as they are. With the importance of online identities and many more people than before using the online space as a communications tool, when people pass away, the impact can be more obvious than a few years ago.

But now as the world’s largest community and social network, the company recognises that a number of users will die each and every day and that their online identities and pages should be memorialised - primarily for others to preserve their memory. Read the rest of this entry »

October 7th, 2009

Next-gen operating systems: Facebook on steroids?

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 10:33 am

Categories: Cloud computing, Discussion, Google, Next-generation technology, Productivity, Research, Social networking, Web 2.0, Weird and wonderful

Tags: Facebook, Operating System, Operating Systems, Software, Zack Whittaker

The conversation I had with Mozilla Labs UX chief, Aza Raskin, last week has made me think about the future of the web. He envisions a future when the vast majority of things in the cloud are combined with a social web, and “something” where the two overlap. Stick with me on this one for a minute…

Readers of the ZDNet “All About Microsoft” blog should be aware that in the next decade, Windows will be phased out and replaced by a next-generation operating system, “Midori”. My guess is that it will run as a Software+Services model where the client machine will do processing but the vast majority of the “workings” will be run from the cloud, including applications.

It’s just a guess, mind you. There’s nothing definitive yet, and even the Queen of Redmond herself isn’t entirely sure, due to the tight-lipped nature of the Singularity/Midori teams. This is at very least my vision of the future operating system.

So based on this thinking (and I am keen to stress that this is purely conjecture), isn’t this to some extent what Facebook could turn out to be if it was stuffed full of electronic uppers and poppers, and poked very hard with an ingenious stick?

The very nature of Facebook is that of a social experience. You interact with others - friends, family and colleagues - in a way which has gotten modern sociologists wetting themselves with excitement. The psychology of the whole thing is blowing the minds of these radical professors into new ways of thinking, and technologists are seeing this sort of platform as the potential for the future.

Read the rest of this entry »

September 2nd, 2009

Should the anonymity shroud be lifted online?

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 8:31 am

Categories: Discussion, Events, Google, Legal and political, Money, Social networking

Tags: Google Inc., Web, Anonymity, Blogger, 4chan, Blogging, Channel Management, Internet, Marketing, Zack Whittaker

The online-anonymity factor has caused even more uproar and controversy with the recent Blogger fiasco, one of the sites owned by Google, which led to the lifting of anonymity of an online abuser.

The background to this case sees an anonymous blogger posting defamatory photos and abusive captions of Liskula Cohen, a Canadian born model, who subsequently tried to sue the blogger. For this to happen, a name would need to have surfaced. Google resisted the move, but after a judge signed a court order, Google provided the registered details of the blog which may or may not have been true. It turned out the registered details were in fact genuine and the identity of the anonymous blogger was revealed.

The anonymous blogger now named as Rosemary Port is now suing Google for $15 million for “breach of anonymity”.

Website communities such as 4chan are built on anonymity. The group, “Anonymous”, which has claimed responsibility for a number of attacks and, albeit sometimes rather funny, “raid and invade” activities such as hacking Facebook accounts.

moot, the founder of 4chan, told me some time ago:

“‘Anonymous’ imageboard culture started with 4chan. ‘Anonymous’ the group traces its roots to 4chan, but splintered off after the whole Scientology thing. 4chan’s ‘/b/’ board in relation to ‘Anonymous’ the group; they aren’t the same thing. I can’t speak for the ‘Anonymous’ group.”

I cannot see why the difference in human socialisation should be treated differently in the online and offline world. The fact of the matter is that even a seemingly anonymous comment on a website, forum or blog - through an alias or otherwise - is still sent by an actual person in the direction of another person. After all, the vast majority of content on the web is generated by humans.

The only difference is that one can hide behind a shroud of secrecy - that is, unless they are sued in one way or another.

My argument is simple. The things we write on the web should not be anonymous in any way. If you said something defamatory or offensive to somebody in person, not only could they identify who you are by the way you look, but they have to hold themselves accountable for when they are inevitably punched in the face.

So just because you have an online handle or an alias shouldn’t excuse you from saying what you really think on the web. The anonymity shroud should be lifted because if you couldn’t get away with saying something in the offline world - why should you be able to get away with it in the online world?

This isn’t to say that what we do online, where we go, who we speak to (with the exception of social networking because it is obvious who we speak to) and what we look at shouldn’t be anonymous. With this, the only exception should be images, media and content which has been flagged already by the IWF or Interpol as illegal content.

The debate opens up when those without unrestricted access to the Internet such as China need an element of anonymity to protect them from their own state. This is an entirely different kettle of fish, and to some extent the wider web doesn’t apply to China. Their access to the Internet is controlled by the state and the rest of the web cannot really intervene.

Not only would an identifiable web open up the potential for more lawsuits, I believe that the content will be generally toned down. No more will you have personal abuse spouted in comments and forums, because the anonymity factor would not exist. You represent yourself and yourself alone.

Even with all this said, it’s merely a thought said out aloud. Would this work?

September 2nd, 2009

Bad ethics in the wild: Twitter spamming and site stealing

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 6:31 am

Categories: Discussion, Gratuitous rant, Legal and political, Security, Social networking

Tags: Twitter Inc., API, Web Site, Ethics, Spamming, Web Site Development, Web Technology, Internet, Zack Whittaker

When Twitter is used as a marketing tool to either promote a cause, a post within a website or a leading brand, it can reach far more people provided you have something to truly offer the recipients. However, many are abusing the API to mass-tweet dishonest but seemingly genuine messages to the Twittersphere.

Through ordinary day-to-day use of my Twitter account, this evening I was tweeted with a message and a link which put me through to a FMyLife-type website. By investigating the tweets sent out by this user, I was made aware that this account was not only serving tweets through the API, but that all of the messages were very similar and providing a shortened URL to the same page.

The rise in spam has increased proportionally with the popularity of the site, although things are slowly improving. The average Twitter user may not notice this, but two things stuck out to me: the shortened URL had some strange extension (which now I realise allows the link creator to monitor and track clicks), and the client sending the tweet was the API.

My suspicions were aroused.

Not only was I furious at the fact someone had the audacity to promote a website in this way, but to find out what the website actually was, I was utterly livid. They had copied the exact identical concept from the ever-growing popular website, FMyLife, with the exception of a few tweaks and a conflicting colour scheme.

While I don’t even want to give them the satisfaction of a direct link back, the website is www.dumbemployed.com.

As with many popular websites, the format can often be adapted in a way - the wiki is a good example. But taking a website and shamelessly ripping it off, but taking in a different type of user inputted content is plain unethical.

Sites like these shouldn’t exist. The Twitter API shouldn’t be open to abuse like this. What annoys me the most is that I cannot see for the life of me how this rip-off website is even making money. There isn’t an advertisement in sight.

The problem with the API is the genuine side of business. Even here at ZDNet, we publish every hour or so a bulk of links which people can choose to follow. This maintains our profile on a very social and popular area of the web, but is used in a legitimate way.

Restricting the API to reduce spam messages simply wouldn’t work, as genuine and non-genuine API users perform the same actions internally; only the output - the tweets - are different.

• Read more: Twitter anti-spam efforts go overboard
• Read more: On Twitter: Difference between spam and noise
• Read more: Spotting a new breed of Twitter spammers

Should Twitter tighten up the API controls to restrict spamming in this way? With online web publishing standards being one side to supporting the web, should their be a global ethics policy for this sort of behaviour? Leave a comment.

August 28th, 2009

Universities should embrace existing online identities

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 10:38 am

Categories: Discussion, Environment, Skills development, Social networking, University, Workplaces

Tags: Identity, Jen Leggio, E-mail, Online Communications, Zack Whittaker

On second thought, why shouldn’t universities embrace existing online identities?

I’ve already established the importance of having email in a university environment. Firstly, it is a dual responsibility held by both staff and students who send and receive mail, although the responsibility is not necessarily mutually exclusive to each other. One person can send an important email, and if it is not received in time by the recipient, then it is the recipient’s responsibility. This reminds me of the time I handed in an essay far too late…

When you join a university, you represent that establishment. When sending emails, you are clearly a part of that institution and can often work in your favour if sending from a highly reputable college. But there is often a single clear distinction between students and staff.

Staff will often have their name or some variant of their personal identity in their university email address. For me, it would either be z.whittaker or zack.whittaker, or z.a.whittaker, depending on the institution’s policies.

Students on the other hand dominate the register of users so there are often more combination’s of the same name, leading to alphanumerical addresses which include the initials of the student. Depending on how many same combination’s of the same initials, an added incremental number will be added. For me, I have zaw2 which is my bog-standard university email address, and zaw3 as my overdraft account because my previous account exists.

Luckily I have a strange initials making my email address interesting to say on the phone.

But as Facebook now has usernames and Twitter enables us to use personalised addresses to further our online established identities, perhaps it would be of some use for colleges to help perpetuate this in an ever growing online world?

Consider @mediaphyter. For those who know who @mediaphyter is on Twitter, you’ll know her overall online identity as the mediaphyter. Jen Leggio uses this online handle and identifies her as who she is, as no doubt there are other people out there with the same birth name as her. It’s not just a username - it’s an online identity.

So if that identity is already established on the web - and considering the way the web is nowadays, you can find more out about someone on the web than anywhere else - why shouldn’t universities embrace this as a wider form of identity branding?

Instead of it being her initials and an incremental number, why not mediaphyter@university.ac.uk or mediaphyter@university.edu?

To me, that makes more sense. That is, unless two or more people have the same handle, and that’s when you would throw them in a ring, and watch them wrestle to the death to (literally) claw their identity back.

What do you think?