Recent Tech articles 4th – 10th July 2011

It’s been another week of Google+ V’s Facebook. With more people gaining access to Google+ by fair means or foul and Facebook making their ‘Awesome’ announcement. The jury seems out whether Google+ will be a mainstream hit or just be a tech haven for geeks. The full global opening of the gates is likely to happen later this month. I finally managed to get my own invite and have been roaming about the site… I do have a limited amount of invites for anyone willing to subscribe to the blog.

Google started the week off a announcing that Blogger and Picasa would Be renamed. They then finished off the week announcement that YouTube, although not being renamed will take on the new design style.

During the early part of last week it seemed that each day was bringing a new security hack. A fresh one for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.
Post: https://cbeagrie.wordpress.com/2011/07/07/antisec-attacks-the-gathering-storm/

On Tuesday, a Global team was set up to fight global cybercrime. This has taken a while to set up and through other previous treaties. Recent AntiSec events have promoted a push to get it up and running.

There was a call this week from Google to the UK Government to open previous closed door discussions on the website-blocking debate to the public. In a later post, Ed Vaizey responds to reports of ‘conspiracy’ on industry web-blocking discussions.

Facebook announce that it was introducing video calling as their ‘awesome’ announcement.. Half a week later, Spammers swoop in to try and catch people out.

Apple filed a patent for an Augmented Reality device, so what is it? Plus some examples

Recent Tech articles 4th – 10th July 2011

It’s been another week of Google+ V’s Facebook. With more people gaining access to Google+ by fair means or foul and Facebook making their ‘Awesome’ announcement. The jury seems out whether Google+ will be a mainstream hit or just be a tech haven for geeks. The full global opening of the gates is likely to happen later this month. I finally managed to get my own invite and have been roaming about the site… I do have a limited amount of invites for anyone willing to subscribe to the blog.

Google started the week off a announcing that Blogger and Picasa would Be renamed. They then finished off the week announcement that YouTube, although not being renamed will take on the new design style.

During the early part of last week it seemed that each day was bringing a new security hack. A fresh one for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.
Post: https://cbeagrie.wordpress.com/2011/07/07/antisec-attacks-the-gathering-storm/

On Tuesday, a Global team was set up to fight global cybercrime. This has taken a while to set up and through other previous treaties. Recent AntiSec events have promoted a push to get it up and running.

There was a call this week from Google to the UK Government to open previous closed door discussions on the website-blocking debate to the public. In a later post, Ed Vaizey responds to reports of ‘conspiracy’ on industry web-blocking discussions.

Facebook announce that it was introducing video calling as their ‘awesome’ announcement.. Half a week later, Spammers swoop in to try and catch people out.

Apple filed a patent for an Augmented Reality device, so what is it? Plus some examples

Facebook gets video calling.. Half a week later, Spammers swoop in

A feature that has been rumoured for a while now was released last week ending the speculation about the ‘awesome new product’ event; Facebook now has video calling integrated in the form of Skype. The event seemed to be announced after Google+ was with many tech bloggers suggesting that Facebook was scared of what the search companies new social networking product was and had pushed this forward to try and steal some of the thunder. Google+’s own video chat feature is called ‘Hangouts’ which is a revolutionary group chat. Facebook’s video chat doesn’t support group chats yet, but when asked if Facebook will be rolling out group video calling, Zuckerberg said not to rule anything out. He added that one-to-one calling makes up the vast majority of video calling.

Now, whenever you browse to a friend’s profile, you’ll see a new button nestled between the ‘Message’ and ‘Poke’ buttons that says ‘Call’. Click that, the other user will see a popup asking if they want to accept a call, and you’ll be immediately connected. You will need to install a small plugin the first time you use the service which is a java based applet that connects to Skype.

However, In a number of days the spammers were at it already. This first one doesn’t do any real malicious damage but no doubt others will in the days and weeks to come.

This particular scam doesn’t use the actual Facebook video service itself but relies on peoples current unfamiliarity with the new service.There’s a legitimate way to sign up for Facebook Video Calling, where you’re asked to download a program from the official Facebook Video Calling page, and then the chat window asks you to configure a few Flash settings.

don't accept, if you see this page

This one behaves as if the Video Calling is just simply another app installed in the usual way. It asks for your personal information, the ability to post messages to your wall, read your posts(?) and to do all of this any time it likes… If you accept then it simply spams your friends and leads you to the ubiquitous surveys to fill out and generate referral fees for the criminals. So if you see a wall post referencing “Enable video calls.”, don’t click it! Send your friend a message that they have been tricked.

Google releases details of Google+

Here I sit writing about this, positively giddy about the imminent release of Google+… this is of course nothing new; I was one of those desperate people looking for an invite to Google Wave and did I use it in the end? No and very few others did either. Then came Buzz, released to everyone with a Gmail address so no invitations required. Did I use that? No, I linked my twitter feed to it and walked away… Too much noise.

So, why is this time any different? I think this XKCD cartoon strip sums it up very nicely

Recent Tech articles – 6th-12th June

Last week there was a quiet hum going on in the Tech World. It wasn’t as if there was nothing going on, it was just that a lot of the Journalists were either at the WWDC or at E3.

The E3 covers consumer electronics so other than to mention that the New Playstation Vita and the Nintendo Wii U shows us the advancement of new tech, I’m not covering it here, I will however make mention of the WWDC and you can read my overview and underlying posts on that starting here…. There is more in depth coverage of the main highlights of Lion, OS5 and iCloud too. It wasn’t mentioned in the original post but it’s worth mentioning that us here in the UK are just going to have to wait for iCloud to fully come to us as the record labels over here have yet to settle on a deal…

Moving on to social media, Twitter announced that they were gong to be providing their own link shortening service for the Twitter web service… No announcement for third-party applications. Once again Facebook this week was in trouble again this week over privacy issues when it was announced (quietly), that facial recognition would be promoting tag suggestions on your photos.

More Apple news with more on the Lodsys patent suit where developers bite back and Apple tries to get in between them an Lodsys. Also, Apple settles with Nokia over long standing patent infringements.

An article and video worth watching on the BBC Click website is about concerns that schools and universities are not teaching the basic programming skills that are required and the introduction of a £15 tiny PC on a circuit board called Rasberry Pi… Thanks to Daniel for that one… See it here http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/9503255.stm

I’ll close out this week with a Mac app for you to look over, iTerm2 is a feature rich terminal app. If you spend time at the command line on Mac, it’s well worth it.

Facebook in trouble over automated face tagging

Facebook have opted to enter an arena the Google isn’t willing to tread. Not so long ago Eric Schmidt stated thst although Google had the capability to add facial recognition to its Google Goggles application, it want going to implement it over fears that the public would be against it over privacy fears. Earlier this week on the 7th June Facebook posted un update to this blog post stating

We’ve been rolling Tag Suggestions out over the last several months and this feature is now available in most countries. We’ll continue to post updates here as the roll-out progresses.

Recent Tech articles – 30th May-05th Jun

In is past week we start of with news that flows over from the previous week. To start we have seen more news about the MacDefender malware. First we heard that the Trojan had moved over onto attacking through Facebook profiles using the Clickjacking technique. Then Apple finally released the security update to removed old infections and prevent new ones… It was worked around in 8 hours… Since then nothing.

Also from the previous week, Lodsys crawled back into the news by retaliating over Apples letter by bringing forward their litigation timing to 31st May instead of waiting the 21 days originally given.

Moving into this week, Lockheed Martin reported a serious hack attempt on their systems. This prompted both UK and US governments to raise their objectives towards cyber crime,

Shortly after Google announces that they are introducing a new service this summer called Google Wallet… Then gets sued by Paypal shortly after.

At the D9 conference at All things Digital this week, CEO of Twitter, Dick Costello announced some new Twitter enhancements to search and photo. He talked about how they were enhancing their search facility and were releasing a new feature to allow users to upload photos and attach it to a tweet right from

My final article from this week was on buttons… It seems this week that the Internet has gone button crazy with Twitter, Google and LinkedIn talking about their offerings.

Is the Internet going button crazy?

When Facebook initially launched it’s Like button, no-one was really sure how it was going to work out… Would it be a fad that would fade away or be a runaway success? It would seem that the latter option was the one to come true and around a year later they have gone on to incude the addition of their Send button to allow sharing of Facebook Group information too.

Now others are starting to take notice of this success and looking to replicate if for their own domains. This week, Google and Twitter released their own options and then LinkedIn added their own variant to allow employers to add a “Apply with LinkedIn” button.

MacDefender leaps onto Facebook

In a desperate attempt to capture more victims before the latest Apple update kills MacDefender and MacGuard dead once and for all (for now anyway) the Mac malware has made the leap to Facebook and is now spreading virally, claiming to be a video of IMF boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

The malware is using a technique called clickjacking to spread. A message appears in your timeline apparently posted by one of your friends, in this case referring to the news story of IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn who is facing charges in New York over charges of rape. You are then invited to click a link to view a story or in this case a video. Instead of opening anything however the malware download is triggered. Finally the message you received is now posted on your timeline to catch the next unwary viewer.

Recent Tech articles – 13th-22nd May 2011

Well so much for a quiet week…

Lets start off with a couple of articles I forgot in my last Tech News posting; Blogger went down for 48 hours and Facebook launching a smear campaign against Google. That links us nicely into this week when just after Facebook goes on about their information appearing in search results, they cuddle up to Microsoft to link their info within Bing.

RIM had a bad start to the week as they announced the recall of 900 PlayBooks.

After all the kerfuffle around Apples LocationGate, it was Androids turn for a kicking as an exploit was revealed in Google connection to Web services. A day later it was reported that the problem was resolved and no-one needed to update anything to get it working.

After writing previously haven written about the MACdefender Trojan and suggesting that it was one to catch the unwary, it would seem that people have been falling for it after all.

There has been rising tensions this week between IOS developers and Apple when a company has been issuing letters to individuals and small companies that have been using the Apple provided API for in-app upgrades or purchases.

Finally, a TED talk that has been causing a lot of discussion this week is worth a watch. It is about people becoming trapped in what has been termed as “filter bubbles”. Eli Parisier warns us that personalised search results might be restricting the breadth of the results we get back. Watch it here