Read a little. Learn a lot. • Tightly-written news, views and stuff • Follow us on Twitter • Be a Facebook Fan • Tumble us!

18 Oct 2010 22:27

tags

Tech: Facebook’s “privacy breach”: Meet Rapleaf, circa 2007

  • This is an e-mail we got way back in 2007. Good time of our life. We were living in Norfolk, Va., probably drinking an iced coffee and getting dumped on by an old ex or something. Well, one day, we got this e-mail in our inbox. Something seemed pretty bizarre about this e-mail. We don’t have the old page, and it no longer exists, but this company, Rapleaf, had a significant amount of information about us that it was publicly sharing with other people we didn’t know. And the service wasn’t opt-in for some reason. After getting really pissed about it and yelling and stuff, we opted out and didn’t think about it again for a while. We were reminded of this e-mail when we read the WSJ’s Facebook story today.
  • What’s going on?The WSJ investigation suggests that certain app developers have been giving away personal information about their users to services like Rapleaf, who then sell the information to marketers, who were then able to trace the users by linking their e-mails and user IDs. Rapleaf says it was unintentional.
  • LOLApps was doing it Over the weekend, Facebook game company LOLapps, known for their quizzes and other games, was kicked off of the site unexpectedly. (They’re back now after a cooling-off period.) Their platform is super-popular and has millions of users. Nobody knew why – that is, until the WSJ made it clear.
  • Don’t blame Facebook Facebook isn’t the bad guy here; they’re just the indirect conduit. We’re much more inclined to question Rapleaf. Based on our prior history with them, we can say that they have a history of directly violating end users’ privacy. And we find it hard to trust their explanation at face value. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

18 Oct 2010 20:05

tags

Biz, Tech: Apple’s 3Q earnings report overloaded with (mostly) good news

  • 91% increase in iPhone sales from a year ago (wow)
  • $20
    billion     Apple’s quarterly revenues, which happens to be a new record for them, by the way
  • $4
    billion     Apple’s quarterly profits, which is also a record for them – and up 70 percent (!); freaking show-offs
  • +28% increase in Mac sales year-over-year; not bad considering their light recent publicity
  • +28% increase in iPad sales from last quarter; pretty good but not particularly spectacular
  • -11% decline in year-over-year iPod sales, which admittedly was kind of expected source
  • » Investors somehow not impressed: Wait, what? Well, here’s why: They expected the increase in Apple’s iPad sales to be much higher, so as a result, Apple’s stock went down five percent in after-hours trading. You bastards can’t ever be impressed, can you?
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

18 Oct 2010 18:55

tags

Offbeat, Tech: Thief steals computer, sends victim backup of hard drive

  • bad A Swedish professor placed his laptop behind a door for several minutes whilst doing laundry, where it was promptly stolen.
  • good As a consolation, the thief backed up all of the professor’s documents and sent them to him a week later. How thoughtful! source
Posted by Seth Millstein • 0 Comments • Permalink

18 Oct 2010 10:37

tags

Tech: Apple: The iPad isn’t technically a PC, but if it were …

  • 10.6% Apple’s share of the PC market in the third quarter – enough for third place on growing Mac sales
  • 25% Apple’s share of the PC market in the third quarter – IF the iPad were included; they’d be in first source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 1 Comment • Permalink

16 Oct 2010 12:38

tags

Tech: T. Rex a cannibal? It’s OK; “Electric Warrior” was a great album

  • See this guy? Cannibal. He would eat his buddies. At least that’s what a new study says. Seems like a questionable way of life, but then again, we’ve never tried it. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

14 Oct 2010 20:57

tags

Biz, Tech: Based on its profits, Google’s freewheeling spending warranted

  • $2.17 the size of Google’s profits this quarter
  • 25% boost in Google’s overall revenues last quarter – not bad, considering all that extracurricular spending
  • 9% jump in stock price on the news; put that in your self-driving car’s tailpipe and smoke it source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

14 Oct 2010 10:31

tags

Tech: Yahoo blames Google Instant for their own search problems

  • I bet even the folks at Google are mystified by this kind of accounting.
  • Yahoo! Senior VP of Search & Marketplaces Shashi Seth • Trying to explain why Google gained on them by nearly a point in the overall search rankings. Hint: He thinks it has everything to do with Google Instant skewing the results. To which we say, whatever. This sounds like an excuse by a VP in a sector that needs explanations for their mediocre performance. Note that nobody dipped anywhere near as badly as Yahoo did last month. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

14 Oct 2010 10:16

tags

Tech: Not really a surprise: 3D TVs surprisingly not taking off

  • 2% of all flat-panel TVs sold in 2010 will have 3D capabilities as part of the overall package
  • 41% the percentage industry group DisplaySearch says will be out there by 2014; good luck
  • one the number of pairs of 3D glasses sold with each set; just kidding, it’s less than that source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

14 Oct 2010 10:06

tags

Tech: Harbinger? AT&T, Verizon to start selling iPads at the same time

  • at&t They’ll begin selling Apple’s iPad, including the 3G version, starting October 28th.
  • verizon Strangely enough, so will Verizon, but they’ll bundle it with MiFi, which is pretty genius. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

13 Oct 2010 21:49

tags

Biz, Tech: Rumor mill: AOL interested in buying fellow giant also-ran Yahoo

  • Good freaking god, could you imagine? Yahoo and AOL together would be like Scott Baio and Tony Danza doing a sitcom together. It’d be diminishing returns all around. It’d be a sitcom on ABC Family instead of ABC, trying its best to win a smaller audience than either star once had, and the jokes will almost certainly feel old and worn by the time they make ’em. On the other hand, we really like AOL’s current editorial-leaning direction, but Yahoo has not done anything of note since around 2000. AOL would strip Yahoo of most of the extra crap and turn it into a big advertising company. How would this work? And why is AOL acquiring so much stuff right now? And would Tim Armstrong boot out Carol Bartz? We wanna know what Alec Baldwin thinks of all this. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 2 Comments • Permalink
 
<< newer 
top tags
older >>