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

March 2, 2010

European Union Kicks IE’s Butt

I never saw this day coming, but now that it did, I am very impressed.

The European Union, believing that “not knowing you have a choice is no choice at all“, has made Microsoft integrate a Browser Choice window in their operating system for both new users and existing Windows PC users. This screen will provide users with a chance “to make an active choice in the source of the software that acts on your behalf to broker your online experiences, and meet your own unique needs and interests.”

This decision ends a long-running dispute over the US software giant’s dominant market position. This “browser choice screen” will present users with a list of leading browsers — including Mozilla’s Firefox, Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome — presented in a random order. The screen will be offered as an automatic download for XP, Vista, and Windows 7.

The browser choice menu

[read full article >>]

Filed under: Web News — Tags: anti-trust, browser choice, Cascading Style Sheets, choice, European Union, google, google chrome, Google Inc., Microsoft, Microsoft Corporation, microsoft monopoly, Microsoft Windows, Mozilla Firefox, online experiences, Opera, Operating system, privacy, Safari, software giant, Technology_Internet, Web browsers, Windows 7, XP — Roba @ 3:48 pm

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February 20, 2010

10 Ways to Lose Your Facebook Friends in 10 Days!

“The friendship that can cease has never been real.”- Saint Jerome

By now, I would assume that most social media users realize the positive and negative effects that social media reflects on us and our current and future environment. Whether how social media can help parents raise their children better, or how it can hinder friendships or relationships, social media’s consequences are becoming more and clearer to its users!

As one of Thoughtpick’s content chefs, I am always seeking to research, create and write about controversial and intriguing ideas which have the ability to get you to think about different things in a new light! Therefore, for my special dish of the day, I decided to present you with 10 easy and time efficient ways to lose your Facebook “friends” in ten days!

Remember, if you lose them, then they were never really your friends :)

Are you ready for it? Here I go!

1. Make sure you BOMBARD them with meaningless video and audio shares!

I promise you, if you are a regular Facebook user focusing your use for business or just to staying connected with friends and their lives, you will just hate being bombarded with more than 2 video or audio shares per day. I personally removed friends from my account due to the fact that they seem to have too much time on their hands and they share meaningless and useless audio and video clips on my profile!

Bombard them with videos!

2. Limit their access to your profile!

Are you shocked? Well, don’t be! I had friends remove me from their Facebook account simply because I placed them on my Limited Profile list due to privacy concerns! Sometimes, I even got calls r messages complaining about it to the point where we almost lost our friendship! [read full article >>]

Filed under: Offbeat, Tips and How To’s — Tags: Ads, Blog hosting services, Blog software, Criticism of Facebook, facebook, Facebook features, Facebook Inc, fanpages, friends, friendship, groups, howto, Human Interest, limited, losing, loss, messages, Online social networking, photos, privacy, profile, Social information processing, Social Media, social media users, socialmedia, status, tagging, Technology_Internet, tips, updates, web 2.0, World Wide Web — Beirut @ 6:32 pm

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February 17, 2010

10 Tips to Ensure That You’re NOT A Social Media Sucker!

“Learn all you can from the mistakes of others. You won’t have time to make them all yourself“. ~Alfred Sheinwold

If only we, for once, actually took the time to understand the value of this quote, most of us wouldn’t have gone through most of the crap we had to deal with, whether on a personal level or business wise! But we are humans and we are stubborn!

My mother knew better than to try to teach me from her mistakes, however, I still have faith in you, my readers, and in the fact that you will trust me enough to learn from my own experience on social media venues as to not commit the same mistakes I did!

Top 10 Tips You Should Follow When Using Social Media!

Are you ready for this? Here we go..

1. Culturize!

Being culturally aware and sensitive is very important when using one or multiple social media platforms or venues. Cultural ignorance is highly destructive in your relationships with the communities you are trying to be a part of!

2. Emphasize!

When active inside a realm as impersonal as social media, it is very important for you to be able to emphasize any point you are trying to make in order not to be misunderstood. No one can hear the tone of your voice or see your body language so your words are your weapon and your executor!

[read full article >>]

Filed under: Offbeat, Tips and How To’s — Tags: addiciton, business, comments, creativity, experience, facebook, feedback, follow, fresh, gurus, humble, innovation, lessons, marketing, mistakes, new, privacy, quality, socialmedia, specialty, ten, top, Tweet, twitter, unique — Beirut @ 9:35 pm

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February 9, 2010

Blippy: Could This Insanity Have a Purpose?

Well, privacy in the new social age is a very illusive ideal. Some people, like one Mark Zuckerberg, think that privacy is dead but even they try to reclaim their own private space! With Blippy privacy is not just dead, privacy has been dug up from its grave chopped up, processed and sold as piranha food.

So what is Blippy?

Blippy / What are your friends buying?

Blippy is a service very similar to Twitter in its look and it’s dubbed as a “social shopping” service. Basically, what it does is that it allows its users to automatically share their purchases from iTunes, Amazon,Visa, MasterCard and others and allows them to discuss those purchases and track them. Yes; that means your entire financial transactions are going to be shared with the whole wide web, if you opt to that. The site provides you with a “Blippy Credit Card” and all the transactions on this card will be shared while your private credit cards will remain… private. So with the launch of this service privacy is dead, but are the founders of Blippy crazy to think people will be willing to share that? Or are they at the bleeding edge of social media?

[read full article >>]

Filed under: App Reviews — Tags: Amazon, Blippy, Credit card, ethics, Identity management, ITunes Store, Kama Sutra, Mark Zuckerberg, MasterCard, Phishing, privacy, Social Media, twitter — M. Bamieh @ 4:01 pm

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January 23, 2010

Haunted by Facebook: The Smoking Baby!

A very old saying goes along this line: “Every coin has two sides“.

Although I don’t entirely agree that this applies all the time, I must admit that I have faith in its meaning on more than one level and that it does really apply in many different situations. The argument of this post is definitely listed under those situations!

Social Media: Into Play

Since the emergence of social media, its tools, sites, ideas and influences, many things have changed such as:

The way people interact with each other.
The loose approach towards privacy.
The amount of information we share.
The way people handle their own personal feelings.
The reactions of people towards different crisis, problems or even causes.

In return, these newly adopted trends have created a gray area for wrong and right thus influencing our abilities to make well-studied, worthwhile judgments and, consequently, decisions as well!

[read full article >>]

Filed under: Controversial Picks — Tags: accused, baby, causes, childcare, children, crisis, declaration, facebook, feelings, humanrights, information, mother, personal, police, privacy, protest, right, rights, sharing, smoking, unfair, wrong — Beirut @ 3:57 pm

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January 19, 2010

Facebook Launches Its Own Version of “Retweet”

Obviously, since our last bout of complaining about how Facebook should realize it won’t ever be Twitter, way back in August, Facebook is still trying hard to become more like the micro-blogging platform.

This decision eludes me; I feel like there’s a main distinction between the two social networks, where Twitter is external and Facebook is internal. Facebook is more about friends and Twitter is more about content curation. Facebook is about digital communication with our real-world friends, while Twitter is about interaction with other netizens.

Eluding or not, Facebook started rolling out a new feature this week for its users. This feature is basically its own version of “retweet”, where the user can share what their friends shared, while sending an automatic hashtag “tag” a la Twitter as a notification.

How It Works

You are reading something a Facebook friend shared and you think “WOW, I want to share this with my friends too“! All you do is click a button, smartly placed next to the familiar “Comment” button.

The "Share" button is right next to "Comment" and "Like"

[read full article >>]

Filed under: Web News — Tags: facebook, Facebook Inc, information curation, online communities, Online social networking, privacy, social bookmarking, Social Media, social networking, socialmedia, twitter, Twitter Inc — Roba @ 3:58 pm

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January 8, 2010

Obama Warns: Facebook is a BIG BAD Wolf! [video]

“Privacy is not something that I’m merely entitled to, it’s an absolute prerequisite.” Marlon Brando

I, too, believe in privacy as being an absolute perquisite; one which must exist in order to be able to practice and reach real freedom and, accordingly, self development.

Yet, and since Web 2.0 and social media have become major elements in our life’s routine, our privacy is slowly receding, like an old man’s balding head! Day after day, we are finding ourselves more exposed to the world outside and people we have never met. It seems that everyone knows each other across this big world, as sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube becoming more and more inhibited!

In the two videos below, Obama warns about posting pictures or personal information on Facebook, stressing that this might come and haunt you in the near future! Whether this is this another PR stunt or not, is not clear to me however it seems that even Obama has been stung by Facebook just like Zuckerberg was a few weeks ago!

[read full article >>]

Filed under: App Reviews, Future of the Web — Tags: campaign, cons, facebook, murderer, Obama, people, pervert, pictures, PR, privacy, rapists, socialmedia, twitter, users, videos, violations, web2.0, work, youtube, zuckerberg — Beirut @ 9:40 pm

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December 28, 2009

Supernova 2009: Taking Data Seriously [video]

Andreas Weigend talks about the revolution of the web and how important it is to “take data seriously”…

The amount of data created by each person doubles roughly every one or two years!

Furthermore, 10 billion pieces of content are shared per month through the Facebook share button?!

Taking data seriously is dividing into categories: (1) Customer to Business, (2) Customer to Customer and (3) Customer to the World.

Based on the video above, I would like to know what you think: Are we really taking data seriously? Are we using it efficiently to attract customers, build loyalty, maintain friendships, educate and learn?

Filed under: Future of the Web — Tags: AndriasWeigend, computers, data, facebook, pages, people, privacy, revolution, RFID, share, socialmedia, video, web2.0, youtube — Beirut @ 10:00 pm

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5 Web & Internet 2010 Funny Predictions – Photoshopped & Illustrated!

“The only constant thing is change!“

Therefore, and to make sure that we capture the changes in social media for the coming year, we have prepared for you a funny list of our own predictions for ten social media tools and sites for the year 2010! Make us smile, and share them :)