Tag: Internet

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News

Facebook improves its Photo Application

image Photo application happens to be Facebook’s most popular feature. There are some 15 billion photos on Facebook till date making Facebook the biggest photo sharing website today.

These 15 billion photos actually amount to a total of 60 billion as Facebook generates and saves 4 images of different sizes for every uploaded picture. That’s some 1.5 PB of storage. Wow!

Facebook says that their current growth rate is 220 million new photos per week, which translates to 25TB of additional storage consumed weekly. At the peak, there are 550,000 images served per second. Now, that’s intense!

Overcoming the choke-points of their old photo applications, Facebook launched a new, more efficient storage system some time back – the Haystack Photo Infrastructure.

The Outcome

  • Significant savings in costs
  • Better performance
  • Improved user experience

Job well done, I’d say.

For getting into the technicalities of Haystack’s What & How, click here.

(Source: Facebook)

(Image credits: ShoWareCenter)

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Reviews

Extra Emoji brings over 1000 emoticons to Gmail

A picture’s worth a thousand words. And it gets better when you have more than a thousand to choose from! With Gmail’s new Extra Emoji Icons, you can add more than 1000 emoticons in your emails.

Good news – Now you get a chance to express better without words.

Bad news – Now you spend ages wondering which emoticon to use when and where!

All these extra emoticons come from the so called “secret underground labs” of some top Japanese mobile carriers. Of course, Gmail has taken the permission to use them.

The icons are divided into 13 different categories, the first two being the standard ones from Gmail. Some of the new stuff includes animals, various road signs, national flags, and animated icons.

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Enable your extra Emoji icons:

Just follow the simple steps below:

  1. Login to your Gmail account
  2. Go to the ‘Labs’ tab under Settings
  3. Scroll down to the ‘Extra Emoji’ option
  4. Check the ‘Enable’ box
  5. Hit ‘Save Changes’ button

Bingo! You got it…

(Source: Gmail blog)

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News

Google Web Search in your Gmail

clip_image002Google’s got something new in their labs yet again. This time it’s a cool feature that adds the Google search box right in your Gmail inbox. A sigh of relief! This could make life online so much more simpler!

Wonder what took them so long to come up with this?

Now, there is no need to leave your inbox to search for something online while chatting or writing an email, toggle between windows, and waste time.

How does this feature work?

  • Type your search and begin searching.
  • Your search results will display in something that appears to be a bigger version of a chat window, at the bottom of your screen.
  • Click on the search results to read more (which will open in a new tab).
  • Once you’ve found what you want, hover your mouse over the search result back in your Gmail window and you will see a pull-down menu with some options like:

– Send result while your composing email
– Reply result while chatting with someone

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Enabling the feature

Just follow some simple steps below:

  1. Login to your Gmail account
  2. Go to the Labs tab under Settings
  3. Scroll down to turn on the ‘Google Search’
  4. Hit ‘Save Changes’ button

Problem solved! Try it out.

(Source: Gmail blog)

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News

Twitter Quitters: Around 60% twitters fly away every month

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Twitter’s monthly user retention rate is just 40%. In other words, of all the Twitter users in a particular month, about 60% of them do not return the following month. The data was released recently by Nielsen Online- an Internet traffic research service.

The Pattern

If you take a closer look at this chart that compares Twitter loyalty against Facebook and MySpace loyalties, you will observe that the 40% retention is, in fact, the maximum when plotted against the internet reach. Nielsen research also suggests that for the last one year, the retention rate has been hanging below 30%.

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The significance

As per Nielson, the retention rate of 40% will limit the site’s growth to a 10% reach figure, over a period of time. See the chart below for details:

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Trivia

  • Twitter’s website had more than 7 million unique visitors in February this year as compared to 475,000 in February a year ago.
  • Facebook has a retention rate of about 70% with around 200 million users.

(Charts: Nielson)

(Sources: Reuters, Nielsen)

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News

FeedDemon brings Google Reader to your Desktop

Yesterday, NewsGator launched FeedDemon 3.0 Beta 4, which brought out the Google reader synchronization feature. This will allow you to read Google reader subscriptions on the desktop.

FeedDemon Google Reader

To get started, download this feature from FeedDemon.

Existing FeedDemon users can also use this option. If you are using FeedDemon and want to move to latest version with Google Reader sync, then follow this steps:

  1. Move your Newsgrater feed to Google Reader. In order to do this, go to Tools | Synchronization Options | Advanced | Convert Now.
  2. Run the set up you’ve downloaded.
  3. FD1 Enter your Google User ID and password to start synchronizing. It might take a few minutes based on your subscriptions.

Now, you can manage your Google Reader with FeedDemon. Sync speed is also good but note that this is a pre-release software, which means that you will run into bugs while using it.For example: FeedDemon is marking all the unread items as read while syncing with Google Reader.

If you’re not comfortable using this ‘unfinished’ software, please wait until the final release before downloading it.

Links: FeedDemon | NewsGator

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News

Beware! Phishing scam on Facebook

facebook phishingHas anyone faced a hoax issue on Facebook yet? If you have a Facebook account, then be a little careful. There has been a major spur of phishing attacks on Facebook to steal usernames and passwords and spam your friends.

How is it being done?

Facebook’s mail system is being used by the attackers to send messages to the users, enticing them to go to – fbaction.net – a site that duplicates Facebook’s log-in screen.

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The word has been around that Facebook has blocked this URL and this has hopefully brought an end to the entire nuisance.

Better safe than sorry…

It is still very important that we REMEMBER NOT TO LOG into a page that claims to be “Facebook” unless the URL is www.facebook.com. Wouldn’t hurt being just a little extra-cautious!

(Source: allFacebook)

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Reviews

A map to help you track the Swine Flu Outbreak!

Within a week of first outbreak, the Swine Flu virus has killed 160 people and at least nine countries have been affected. While the web is buzzing up with Swine Flu related news and updates, I found a Google map that is being updated to keep track of the Swine Flu outbreak.

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You can check this map out here.

About the map

This map depicts confirmed and suspected cases of Swine Flu with source links. You may need to have a look at the map legend to understand it properly.

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What is Swine Flu?

Swine flu is a respiratory disease of pigs caused by type A influenza viruses that causes regular outbreaks in pigs. People do not normally get swine flu, but human infections can and do happen. Swine flu viruses have been reported to spread from person-to-person, but in the past, this transmission was limited and not sustained beyond three people.

For more details and Do’s and Don’ts on Swine Flu visit Centers for Disease Control and prevention (CDC)’s site.

If you wish to follow CDC’s emergency updates on twitter, here is the link.

Link: Google map, CDC, WHO

(Image credits: Google map)

Categories
Reviews

Google Profile: Your Personal Google Identity

As you might be knowing already, Google profile has been around for quite some time, however, never really made it big. But it is now being integrated in most Google services allowing the user to have a uniform identity.

Google profile will automatically connect you to your other Google contacts. This means that your contacts will get access to your complete profile, and vice versa. This will also allow you to connect your Google Profile to Google Maps and your Picasa photos albums.

According to Google:

“A Google profile is simply how you present yourself on Google products to other Google users. It allows you to control how you appear on Google and tell others a bit more about who you are. With a Google profile, you can easily share your web content on one central location.”

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Features:

  1. Receive messages by enabling the “Send a message” feature to allow anyone with a Google Account to email you without revealing your email address. (Unless you are OK with spam, I am not sure how many people would like to do that. Somehow, this feature appears a little foolish to me)
  2. Add photos from Flickr or Picasa. (Make sure you re-check your Picasa settings to decide on what you really want to share in public)
  3. Create a page about you in the About me tab and tell people about yourself.
  4. Add your contact information and be sure of whom you are letting this info out to. There is a way to control that, so make use of it! (Unless you don’t mind strangers stalking you!)
  5. Add links to your other profiles and sites like your Blogger blog, public Picasa Web Albums, Google Reader shared items, Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
  6. Show your location on a map with your current location and places you’ve lived.

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I don’t have a Google profile yet, maybe because the idea of creating one sounds a little scary to me. It would only expose my personal profile details and even photos to a whole bunch of people. Google profile appears to be a very PUBLIC space.

However, if you wish to try this out yourself, here’s the link – Create your Profile

Link: Google profile

(Image credits: Google profile)

Categories
News

Security Problems with Google Chrome?

clip_image003There was a security threat with Google’s web browser – Google Chrome. According to the Google Chrome Team, there was an error in handling URLs with a chromehtml: protocol. This allowed the attacker to run scripts of his choice on any page or enumerate files on the local disk under certain conditions.

Because of this problem, the attacker could endanger any user who browsed a malicious site using Internet Explorer and had Google Chrome installed.

As per IBM Rational Application Security Insider, this allowed a dangerous combination of new security vulnerabilities letting a malicious attacker to bypass the Same Origin Policy restrictions for any site using the victim’s Google Chrome.

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The dangerous impact:

  1. Cross-Site Scripting attack where the attacker could steal cookies, save form filler data, modify user-browsing experience and facilitate phishing attacks.
  2. Leaking of information: from the victim’s files and directories on the local file-system.

But, the good news is that a FIX has been released: Version 1.0.154.59 of Chrome and hopefully, all the security issues revolving around Google Chrome are under control now.

Link: Fix for Chrome

(Source: GoogleChromeReleases | IBM watchfire)

Categories
Tips

Disable JavaScript in Adobe PDF Reader!

Adobe Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) has reported a potential Adobe Reader issue.

“Adobe is aware of reports of a potential vulnerability in Adobe Reader 9.1 and 8.1.4, as described in SecurityFocus BID 34736. We are currently investigating, and will have an update once we get more information.”

Adobe has urged users on all platforms to disable JavaScript. This is a temporary arrangement made to avoid any code execution attack. Adobe said that they plan to provide updates for all affected versions for all platforms (Windows, Macintosh and Unix) so that the issue can be resolved as soon as possible.

adobe un-check

Instructions:

Here are a few steps that Adobe suggests:

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  1. Launch Acrobat or Adobe Reader
  2. Select Edit> Preferences
  3. Select the JavaScript Category
  4. Un-check the ‘Enable Acrobat JavaScript’ option
  5. Click OK

Immediately recommending the users to disable JavaScript till the time a patch is released looks like a welcome step by Adobe. Better be proactive than be a victim later. No harm in playing safe, right?

However, in the meantime, is anyone aware of any alternate secured software that can be used temporarily?

(Source: Adobe blog)