This is a quick post to inform you that Apple store is down as the event for the launch of Apple’s new phone will begin in few minutes. When I tried opening Apple Store I got the note that:
It clearly means that 15 months long wait is over now and Apple is going to reveal its new iPhone and iOS 5 soon with some changes in its present iPod models. But the confusion is still there that the newer iPhone will be 4S i.e a phone same as iPhone 4 with few modifications in it or it will be iPhone 5, a completely new phone. Also people are waiting for Tim Cook as this time when Steve Jobs won’t be there on the stage who’s the original man behind iPhone.
‘Facebook pokes’, not a very popular feature but still people use it specially after Facebook started banning users to send friend request to strangers and even people you know personally. You can simply poke the other person if you cannot send them a request or message but there should be at least one mutual friend between two of you.
But it seems like Facebook is going to remove this feature completely. First Facebook removed the Poke button and now they stopped showing Pokes on your Sidebar. Rather pokes are shown as a notification which is a very ineffective way of informing profile owners and there’s no use of such notifications.
The problem with pokes as notification is that what if you missed a poke notification? You don’t know that your friend already poked you and the other person cannot poke you again as you haven’t replied his/her last poke. But this seems to be a strategy by Facebook to stop this poke feature completely.
But personally I like this poke feature very much as users stopped talking on social networking site these days so it’s better to poke someone rather than sending a ‘Hi’ in the message if you are talking after a long time. Let’s see what’s there on the mind of Facebook officials.
Do you poke your friends and strangers? What’s the importance of Poke button for you? Don’t forget to tell us!
You might have noticed a major downtime today for Devils Workshop as well as other blogs in rtBlogs network.
We were pushing a major update where we merged all blogs in rtBlogs WordPress multisite inside rtCamp’s WordPress multisite. The goal was to centralize our user’s login info so that they can easily contribute to our blog network, as well as use support forums at rtCamp’s product portals easily.
In the long run, you will be using a single account to:
A totally new web-app is on the way! More details later….
Important Notes:
Our current move many have some side-effects. So please check few things:
If you are using our Google AdSense Revenue Sharing program, please check your posts to see if they are displaying your ads.
Also check if your posts are attributed to you only
If you are not able to log in, try resetting your password with email-address you used at the time of registration.
If you see your user-name changes, please do not panic. We are expecting few usernames to be changed as we merged two user-bases.
We have triple-checked many things, but still in a big community like this, things may go wrong. Whatever issue you may encounter, do NOT panic!
You can use comment form below or our contact-form to reach us. Please give as many details as possible while contacting for technical support (related to above issues).
While today’s changes will most likely go unnoticed for a while, we hope to surprise you with our next round of changes. The good thing about next round is, there will be no downtime! 😉
Facebook is doing a major change in its present feature of Friend Lists, currently an unpopular feature which is used by very few Facebook users only. The reason why Friend Lists feature is not used my many users is just because its quite boring and time consuming to create a list and update it. So Facebook finally unveiled automated lists which will add people to some ‘Smart Lists’ according to their Workplace, School, City e.t.c. so that you can see ‘News Feed’ updates from a particular group of friends or list only.
Smart Lists: Automatically created lists that includes different group of people sorted according to Work, Family, School and City. This feature is just like Circles in Google+. Facebook will automatically add people to smart lists however you can anytime manually add or remove a friend from a particular list. Facebook will suggest you to add people to Smart Lists so that you can easily update these lists and make them more accurate.
Close Friends and Acquaintances Lists: Close friends list is a list where you can add your best friends or family members so that you can see updates only from them only. You will also receive a notification when someone from Close Friends list posts an update or a photo. Acquaintances list on the other hand is for those people who are not much close to you like old classmates or strangers you met online. Add them to this list to see only important updates from them hiding other daily status and photo updates.
With these lists, you can also share an update with a particular list only so that friends in other lists cannot see it. What do you think about these new lists? Seems useful or not? Drop a comment below and tell us your views.
After almost two weeks, I do not see this new widget activated. I asked around a few friends and family members and even they have not had this widget activated 15 odd days later.
What is a People Widget on Gmail?
The people widget shows up on the right hand side of your Gmail layout. It has information about your contacts.
On clicking on these contacts, we can view their activity over the last couple of days. This mainly would highlight emails sent by them and other messages and documents shared.
I got the impression that it would be a truly great social innovation from Google and more importantly, it focused on interactivity and not just sharing links like Buzz or Google’s +1 is doing.
Is Google being over-cautious?
Gmail, indicated that it would be rolled out, over the next two weeks. After two weeks I still see quite a few people still asking about the new “People Widget”.
I think the slow pace of roll-out might be because of the bad press they had with Google Buzz when it was rolled out.
A quick look at the help forums on Gmail, still get you the standard reply that it will is rolling out the people widget and we should soon see it. 🙁
It would have been nice for Google to give us a post on their blogs, to update us on why the slow roll out. I miss the old Google which was lucidly open with it’s users and fans.
Has your Gmail account seen the new People Widget? Do drop in your comments and view about it.
Twitter has started rolling out a new notification feature. The notification feature allows notifying users through an email about retweets and when ever someone mentions their username in a tweet.
Twitter had earlier announced it was rolling now the new notification feature in a tweet.
How Email Notification will work!
For power users, such notifications will be a good idea. The retweet or @mention notification is sent only if it is from a person you are following.
That way, useless spam can be avoided especially when bots can often end up retweeting or mentioning your username.
The option should show up under Twitter Settings >> Notifications. I did not have the new notification feature on my account, but Deepak Jain (Editor – DW) @DJain1989 has the feature on his twitter account. Here is a screen-shot of how the email looks for @mention notifications.
Email notification are very good for people who cannot spend time on Twitter looking up and replying to all mentions and retweets. Currently, Twitter is used to share information and links a lot more than anything else. This new feature might increase interaction between users when it comes to discussions.
Firefox 4 was released only a few months ago. Firefox 4 took an eternity in development and in my opinion it was probably 6 months too late. Six months in the tech world is a lot of time. When it comes to browsers the growth of Firefox was being thwarted thanks to Chrome churning out newer updates so often, that they stopped announcing them.
Firefox Beta Features
There is added support for CSS animations .
Previously the Do-not-Track header preference has been moved to increased viewing area in the browser.
It also claims to have improved standards for HTML5, canvas, JavaScript.
The big new change is with support for switching Firefox development channel. Just go to your Help > About Firefox and we see the option to switch development channel.
Firefox is finally waking up to faster updates!
When I started writing on this blog, way back in late 2009, there was talk of how Firefox 4 will change things. It’s final version was released in 2011 March. That was just too much time for a new version.
Chrome managed to keep gaining momentum and other than some specific add-ons, a lot of people do not find any reason to continue with Firefox when compared to Chrome.
With faster updates, it will probably push the developer community around Firefox browser into activity which might lead to better momentum.
What are your views on Firefox’s future? Do drop in your comments.
Have you heard of a car that reads the email, twitter and Facebook updates ? Well, here it is what scientists may call an internet car! Read on for further information.
The unique Rinspeed Bamboo car can also help motorists behind the wheel surf the net by using a series of voice commands. To avail this facility drivers just need to attach their smartphones or ipads into a charger in the electric car before they set off.
The car was unveiled at the Geneva Motor Show recently. According to Harman, the first cars fitted with the technology could be on the road within 18 months. The car is compatible with all smart phones and ipad. Wow, seems interesting. I am waiting for this car to be out so that I may start planning to buy it. 🙂
Share your views for it here. Do you think that it may lead to accidents if some Facebook addicts read or react to their Facebook updates while driving ?
“Break In If You Can” is official hacking contest organized by The International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad, India.
This hacking contest is organized as part of Felicity, the annual cultural and technical festival, to be held from 18th – 20th February, 2011.
Real Hacking Contest!
Most hacking challenges creates a dummy site/scenario where organizers know in advance how far you can go! In most of those challenges, once you uncover security holes, you are often encountered with a lame message congratulating you.
But in this real hacking contest, you are expected to hack into IIIT Hyderabad’s website itself i.e. http://iiit.ac.in/
They have promised not to sue you but make sure if you break-in successfully rather than damaging and creating havoc, you contact organizers to claim your prize. 😉
Prizes:
As per official site 1st Prize is Rs. 5000. But I personally feel that this hacking contest itself is bigger than any other prize! 😉
After lots of problems and feedback, Facebook finally decided to come up with few simple controls so that we can handle our profiles in better way and make it more secure and safe from hackers.
Mark Zuckerberg , CEO of Facebook came up with few plans to make changes in Facebook to make it safer to use. Facebook has focused on main 3 things which are:
Single Control for your content:
This single control will help you to set the option about who can see the content of your post. You can also change the option to view the content by everyone, your friends or friends of your friends.
More powerful controls for basic information:
This is the next step of Facebook for maintaining privacy. Facebook have reduced the amount of basic information to be visible by everyone. Now you can control who can see your friends, pages etc. But, I guess we have to make this option public otherwise, it would be tough to search us and know more about us and Facebook is all about knowing each other better.
Sharing information with third party:
Now you can choose the option that any Facebook application or website can access your information or not. If you are like me who don’t like to access games or other applications , you can easily turn them off , thus your information will be secured to you and third party applications or website won’t able to access it.
All these settings are expected to roll out in next two weeks. Hope all this options ends up with positive and useful note.
Do share with us what you think about these changes by Facebook, are they worth for securing our accounts by hackers?
