Thoughtpick: A unique perspective of the Web and social media...
A unique perspective of the Web and social media...

January 19, 2010

How Social Media Compromised Our World in 2009 [video]

My beloved “Noise to Signal” present you with: 2009 in social media!

An interesting video mostly condemning the way in which social media has twisted and altered our lives, chronologically and throughout the year 2009 covering Twitter and its victims, Facebook and its poorly presented new terms, Google’s latitude for tracking people, MySpace and its defeat and so much more!

Bravo Noise to Signal, you have nailed them all!

If you have enjoyed this post, you’re also going to love our 5 Web & Internet 2010 Funny Predictions!

Finally, what do you think of this video? Do you think is really portrays the reality of social media in 2009? What would you change if you had the chance to?

December 9, 2009

How to Hack Facebook: The Trick is Social Engineering

It is often neither security loopholes nor password cracking that allow people access our private information on Facebook without our approval. It’s actually our own human nature: the trust of a friend’s name.

Don't add anyone as a friend

Don't add just any person as a friend

Whether you like Facebook or not, the truth remains that Facebook is one of the best mainstream websites around when it comes to providing options with which you can protect your privacy.  Every time anyone discovers a new method for hacking private information, the guys at Facebook patch it the next day. What their security engineers cannot do though is teach the users to tell a social engineer apart from a friend.

And that’s why you need to be aware of this: the easiest way to hack Facebook today is by borrowing a chapter from psychology class. Hackers are not hacking as programmers anymore, they’re hacking as social engineers.

Huh?

[read full article >>]

November 10, 2009

The Self-Destructing Worm: Crawling into an iPhone Near You!

Within a few days of publishing an article entitled “The iPhone is the worst phone in the world“, the iPhone self-destructing worm came into play. Is Flora Graham clairvoyant? Or is it just that the iPhone is simply going downhill just like any other ex super-hyped, highly-priced technological device about to hit the gutter?

Around 8 months from posting her article: How I learned to stop worrying and love the iPhone, Flora Graham brutally attacks the iPhone in terms of dropping calls, data gaps, poor overall design, relatively short battery life and so on. I am curious here: What brought about this hate after what seemed to be a deeply entrenched “love” relationship built on trust and respect for the phone’s features and the tools it provides?

Ikee iPhone Wallpaper

Ikee iPhone Wallpaper

Personally, I never was interested in buying an iPhone; the Blackberry was more appealing to me due to its highly facilitated and flexible access to e-mails. However, I keep up with the latest technology news and reviews and have never yet, up until the past week, come across such negative reviews about the iPhone then all of a sudden, boom, the iPhone’s fairly good reputation starts heading down hill!

The 21-year-old hacker, Ashley Towns, has written a worm – a type of self-replicating computer program similar to a virus, that changes the iPhone’s wallpaper to show a picture of 80’s pop singer Rick Astley and displays the message “ikee is never going to give you up“.”

It makes you wonder, doesn’t it, to what extent are we really safe with technology? And how long can we depend on our phones and even computers to keep our information intact and safe from hacks, spam and / or theft?

Looking forward to reading your thoughts down below :)

Filed under: Web News — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Beirut @ 8:47 pm

July 30, 2009

I Want My Twitter Fix And I Want It Now! Overcome the Censors

Are you a Twitter addict that happens to be stuck in China, the U.A.E., Iran, or even the White House? Then chances are that you won’t be able to get your Twitter fix, but worry not for as long as there is an internet connection then there is way. We will be going through some of the ways to bypass the blockage of Twitter and help you get your fix.

Bypass Twitter's Blocking and Censorship

Bypass Twitter's Blocking and Censorship

1. Use your instant messenger: If you are using Gtalk, Msn or Yahoo add the user “imified@imified.com”. As soon as you start chatting with that user(bot) you will be provided with a menu and it will create an account for you on imified. Select the “My Account” from the main menu by typing 4(default) and you will be redirected to the imified website and there you can add the Twitter widget and add it to your account menu. So when you access it you will be able to get notification and update your status. This will allow you to easily update your Twitter timeline from anywhere you can access your IM, even on a phone. That’s just the tip of the iceberg of what you can do with imified!

2. Use your email: Browse to twittermail and enter your Twitter credentials and they will supply you with an email address. By using that secret email address you will be able to send and receive tweets using your email account, the message body of the email sent will be the tweet.

[read full article >>]