09/05/2008 by swordfish.

Facebook is to add a slew of new safeguards to protect young users from sexual predators and cyber bullies.

At the heart of the changes are efforts to ban convicted sex offenders from the site and finding better ways to verify users’ ages and identities.

The agreement was announced by Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal in a deal along with other attorneys general around America. “This marks another watershed towards social networking safety,” he said. It will “protect kids from online predators and inappropriate content,” he added.

It comes on the heels of a similar comprehensive agreement that 49 states and Washington, DC, made with MySpace last January.

Source: BBC Technology News

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28/03/2008 by swordfish.

A recent security lapse on Facebook which allowed access to private photo libraries highlights what can go wrong if companies use public social networking sites without security, experts warn.

Users’ pictures, including those of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and socialite Paris Hilton, were exposed on the site, even though the photos were tagged as being visible only to the member and associated friends.

David Lavenda, vice president of marketing and product strategy at web security firm WorkLight, said: “Just imagine what would happen if a business-to-consumer document such as an employment contract were to leak in this way.

Source: VNUNET

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27/03/2008 by swordfish.

Adobe has launched a beta version of its free online image editor Photoshop Express, offering seamless integration with Facebook and Picasa.

Once registered, users are given 2GB of space to store images, which can be edited and publicly shared via the My Gallery feature.

The service works especially well with Facebook, importing all images and albums from an account with titles and descriptions intact.

Source: PC Pro

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18/03/2008 by swordfish.

Amazon is looking to harness the potential money-making opportunities in social networks, by launching two new applications for Facebook users.

Amazon Giver allows users to view other users’ Amazon “wish lists”, and click through to buy items. It also generates recommendations for individual users based on their Facebook profile page interests and likes.

The Amazon Grapevine application, meanwhile, updates users’ friends if they write a product review on Amazon or update their own wish lists.

Industry experts say that “this move shows the increasing maturity of Web 2.0, and the trend towards personalisation in e-commerce”.

Source: Yahoo news

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04/03/2008 by swordfish.

People who have left education in the past three years have strong confidence in their IT skills but the organisations they work for are not always making the most of this skill-set, according to database software company FileMaker, which commissioned the research.

The vast majority (82 percent) of 16- to 18-year-olds surveyed felt confident about their level of general IT skills going into the workplace: a higher percentage than those who felt confident about their interpersonal skills (64 percent).

According to the research, the majority (85 percent) of school leavers and university graduates learnt to use PowerPoint software while in education but only slightly more than a third (39 percent) reported using it at work. A further 88 percent learnt to use spreadsheet software but only 65 percent said they use it as part of their job.

In addition, just over half (51 percent) said they had actively looked for creative ways to use technology at work.

Source: ZDNet

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Posted in Social Networks, Facebook, Software, Office Tools, Technology News | Print | 1 Comment »

03/01/2008 by swordfish.

The BBC reports that it’s not just the average net user who is a fan of social network sites, so are hi-tech criminals.

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