Tag / Twitter

by Xavier Voigt-Hill

Amazon Cart launches, allowing lazy shoppers to consumerise without leaving Twitter

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAm6pa9hPKA]

For all of us who find clicking on Amazon links and pressing buttons to add products to shopping carts mind-numbingly tedious, Amazon and Twitter’s new partnership promises to revolutionise how we shop in the most #social way ever. Enter #AmazonCart (or #AmazonBasket for my fellow Brits). Once you’ve linked your Amazon and Twitter accounts, you can add any product to your Amazon purchase queue by tweeting #AmazonCart in reply to a tweet that contains an Amazon product link. Of course what this doesn’t tell you is how much the product is, whether it is any good or if you can find a better deal elsewhere. Much of this can be solved by clicking on the link, but then what’s the point in this new scheme? Click on a link, take a peek and tap a button sounds a lot faster, simpler and consumer-savvy than seeing a tweet, pressing reply, typing out a response to (what is most likely) your brand of choice or a friend who couldn’t actually care any less about your chronic purchasing habits, scribbling #AmazonCart at the end and then tweeting your response.

But #hashtags, right?

by Xavier Voigt-Hill

Twitter introduces photo filters into its iOS and Android apps

[tweet https://twitter.com/Xavdog/status/278284300485541888]

After Facebook-owned Instagram removed its integration with the social network last week, Twitter has released an oft-rumoured update to its Android and iOS applications that add photo editing and filters without the need for third-party services or applications. Powered by Aviary, a photo editing platform which provides an SDK that is already implemented in a number of third party applications, the new app provides eight filters that were designed specifically for Twitter along with basic cropping and enhancement options. While unlikely to tempt many users away from Instagram, which also added a new filter today, frequent users of Twitter’s own mobile apps may be pleased to see them gaining more features to challenge third-party clients. The updates are available now through Google Play and the App Store, but no information has been offered up regarding the filters debuting on other platforms.

Twitter Filters

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=2giNzaZunqE]

Source Twitter Blog

by Xavier Voigt-Hill

Myspace teases complete redesign in plan to return to social greatness

In a video posted on Vimeo today, Myspace teased an upcoming redesign that the company claims is an all-new social network built from the ground up. The latest version of the network appears to integrate Facebook and Twitter posts and an active sign-in page confirms that users will be able to sign in to ‘Newspace’ with their existing social accounts. Similar to the network’s recent iterations, music appears to remain the focus to users, but whether this can keep Justin Timberlake’s company afloat remains to be seen. Access to the new Myspace is not open yet, however budding users may request an invite at the teaser page.

Via Joe Simpson (Twitter)
Source Myspace (Vimeo)

by Xavier Voigt-Hill

Apple’s iPhone 5 event in 1400 characters or less

While some of us were frantically liveblogging proceedings from Apple’s San Francisco event, the guy behind the hilariously accurate Twitter account @NextTechBlog did things a bit differently. In the space of 12 tweets, they said more about the world’s reaction to the iPhone 5 and new iPods than a thousand word blog post ever could. If you are a tweeter and not following them, you’re seriously missing out.












ERMAHGERHD ERNDERHD.

by Neil Thomas

App of the week: Boid for Twitter (Beta)

When Android 4.0 came out, Matias Duarte, Google’s head of Android design, laid out a set of rules for ‘Holo’ style applications to go with the sweeping UI changes brought in by Ice Cream Sandwich. The guidelines have been adopted slowly, but the apps that have adopted them have risen to the top of their respective categories. One of these apps is Boid, a free Twitter client.

Team Boid set out with one objective – to make the best Twitter client. It makes effective use of the space on the screen, providing a tabbed interface that covers the entirety of Twitter. It also follows the Android design guidelines to the dot, making it a pleasure to use. The app is currently in beta, but don’t let that deter you from downloading it. The app is stable and packed full of features. The only notable omissions are autocompletion of usernames and push notifications, although both of these are planned for future releases. The team keeps users updated constantly through their Twitter account, and they have promised to push on with development (and a Chrome version) in the face of Twitter’s API changes.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDBSoOdzBig]

Boid is available on Google Play for free, and I have been assured by the team that it will stay that way, and it is ideal for casual tweeters and power users alike.

Boid for Twitter (Beta), Android, Free
Download it from Google Play or visit the website

by Xavier Voigt-Hill

Spool shuts down after Facebook acquisition

Earlier this year we wrote about Spool, an up-and-coming service that promised to take on Readability and Read It Later (now Pocket). Today users were emailed to inform them that the service, still in private beta, was to be shut down immediately despite a $1 million round of funding, but a blog post on the company’s site has made things clearer. The team has confirmed that they will be joining Facebook’s mobile department and issued instructions on how to recover your Spools, but there is no mention on an acquisition figure. Needless to say, we are intrigued as to what Facebook are planning to do with Spool and what the acquisition could mean for the company’s mediocre mobile arm.

Via Josh Constine (Twitter)

We started Spool to make content easy to consume on a mobile device. To accomplish this, we built some very sophisticated technology and developed a deep expertise in mobile software development. We firmly believe that solving these problems will be increasingly important as the world accesses the Internet primarily through mobile devices.

We are proud to announce that today we will be pursuing our vision as a part of Facebook. If you were a Spool user, please read the instructions on retaining your bookmarks.

We are extremely excited to accelerate our vision and help Facebook’s users connect and share with the people in their lives. We wouldn’t be in a position to have this sort of impact without our supporters and the Spool community. Please accept a heartfelt thank you for supporting us and for affording us this opportunity.

Sincerely,
The Spool team

View original post

by Xavier Voigt-Hill

6.5 million LinkedIn passwords leaked by Russian hackers

Are you a LinkedIn user? If so, you might want to change your passwords, as 6.5 million passwords belonging to users of the business-centric social network have been leaked onto a Russian hacking forum. The dump contained unsalted passwords hashed using the SHA-1 encryption system, meaning that they are easily decryptable using online tools. No other information has been released, but it is possible that usernames and passwords were also compromised during the attack. Remarkably, LinkedIn’s share price ended the day up 0.09%, only to fall in after hours trading.

In a blog post regarding the attack and password dump, LinkedIn’s Vincente Silveira explained how the company plans to deal with the compromised accounts, which make up for a small fraction of the network’s reported 161 million users.

We want to provide you with an update on this morning’s reports of stolen passwords. We can confirm that some of the passwords that were compromised correspond to LinkedIn accounts. We are continuing to investigate this situation and here is what we are pursuing as far as next steps for the compromised accounts:

  1. Members that have accounts associated with the compromised passwords will notice that their LinkedIn account password is no longer valid.
  2. These members will also receive an email from LinkedIn with instructions on how to reset their passwords. There will not be any links in this email. Once you follow this step and request password assistance, then you will receive an email from LinkedIn with a password reset link.
  3. These affected members will receive a second email from our Customer Support team providing a bit more context on this situation and why they are being asked to change their passwords.

It is worth noting that the affected members who update their passwords and members whose passwords have not been compromised benefit from the enhanced security we just recently put in place, which includes hashing and salting of our current password databases.

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this has caused our members. We take the security of our members very seriously. If you haven’t read it already it is worth checking out my earlier blog post today about updating your password and other account security best practices.

To find out if your password is included in the list, head to LeakedIn which will take your password and hash it using the same SHA-1 encryption, before checking for presences of that hash in the list of passwords. Mercifully mine was not published, but the Digixav offices do have a number of passwords in the leak. Buzzfeed’s John Herrman used the tool to check for some possible passwords, both common and hilarious, and created a list of the best 23. Even if you are not affected by this attack, it should serve as a good reminder to constantly change your passwords and make them unique, but not to make them anything like these.

by Eddie King

Birdwatching: How social networking can (stupidly) ruin your life

Birdwatching is a column by Eddie King. Views expressed are not necessarily those of Digixav.

My first post may have been a little limp wristed so far as rants go, but, when checking the news, I sometimes get the unexplainable urge to shout at the authors of some of the UK’s worst articles. So, despite it being rather late, I have to alert all of you to how intelligent we really are. because if the level of intelligence required to be a technology journalist amounts to this particular article, then we must all be bloody geniuses and shouldn’t have any problem in taking over the world when we are older. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the first of many social networking rants.

I do hope you will take the time to read the article from MSN in full but my attention was drawn by an example about half way through about a man who was sacked from two jobs and fined £1000 for a single tweet. The article in question was entitled “how social networking can ruin your life” and it was basically stoking the anti-Facebook fire and bringing up some real world examples of the effects of being normal in the twenty-first century. First off. I need to protest at the principle that a single phrase comprising of less than 140 characters can cause such a stir as to turn a good man’s life into living hell. At the moment we are fighting several wars and are in the middle of social unrest and confusion on a scale that has never been imagined before due to the world getting smaller, what with racial, sexist and ageist (yes, it exists) abuse and having to live our lives around the idiots who invented health and safety. You really expect me to believe that anybody gives a rat’s fart about some guy complaining about delays at a small airport I didn’t even know existed? It is an outrage.

But now we must discuss the statement at hand. After delays at Robin Hood Airport, a man tweeted about blowing the place sky high in frustration. He was the sued for bomb threats and charged with sending a message that was “grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character” and sacked from his jobs over the scandal.

Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!

Generally I do not approve of text speak in written work but I think just such an abbreviation sums up the incident very nicely, that abbreviation being WTF‽ Words don’t even begin to describe how stupid this really is. If the guy really were intent on blowing stuff up, do you really think he would put it on Twitter? And even if he did, he was charged a week later so if he was a terrorist then he could have blown old Robin Hood Airport and many others “sky high” before he was sent a letter asking him to rephrase his annoyance.

I completely understand the government’s need to censor and watch social networking sites and what is being written on them, but the airport didn’t get bombed and the man had no history. It just seems like a case of finding a reason to prove an innocent man guilty and this is unacceptable – almost as bad as the man who went to jail for commenting on the on-pitch heart attack of Bolton Wanderers player Fabrice Muamba. I do not follow the Bolton Wanderers every move intently, and so I only heard about what happened in passing, but it did occur to me that the chances of a young football player who is in peak physical condition having a heart attack and being taken to intensive care were pretty slim. Now, imagine an avid fan who is 21 and is studying biology at university. The worst part of this story, however, is that he was sent away for racial abuse. Racial abuse? Because of a heart attack? The charge is just wrong. There are plenty of horrid people out there but sending a guy away to jail for being a hater and then blaming it on him being a racist is just a little extreme in my eyes.

There were some valid ones too where various illicit pictures were involved but, to be honest, on a computer you always have the off button whereas in real life a lot more can happen with far worse consequences. I think people should stop wasting their time trying to teach people how they should think and accept that as long as they aren’t breaking the law they should be allowed to live however they want. And what is more, they should stop trying to blame it on social networking. And for God’s sake, stop writing annoying, sissy, health and safety clad, nanny state, cheap, badly written articles about it because it is very late now and every time you do, I have to devote some minutes of my life pointing out to the rest of the world how stupid you are.