Social networking

Foul ball smashes into man using iPad as camera

Some things I still can't come to terms with.

You know, like the members of Senate being all millionaires.

Then there are people who use their iPad as a camera. I know you can do that, but it doesn't mean you should, any more than you should drive your F-150 through the front door of a drive-through McDonald's.

The iPad as a camera feels like the shoulder pad as an expression of style.

I am, therefore, in some shallow sense, grateful to Busted Coverage for directing me to this video of a women's softball game at the University of Northern Iowa.… Read more

Facebook launches new tools for mobile, including Open Graph

Facebook on Thursday announced three new products, including Open Graph for mobile, to boost its presence in the fast-growing smartphone and tablet markets.

The company said in a blog post and at its mobile developer conference in New York that along with making it easier to implement Open Graph on mobile, Facebook also is improving Facebook Login and is releasing a new SDK 3.5 for iOS.

In addition, Facebook also announced a new partner program to help developers integrate Facebook on a variety of mobile platforms. Some early partners include C# SDK for Windows 8 by Microsoft, Corona SDK … Read more

LinkedIn reinvents mobile apps for daily consumption

LinkedIn today released completely overhauled versions of its applications for iPhone and Android as part of an ongoing effort to make its social network for professionals a rich, daily destination for consuming content and connecting with others.

The fresh applications, which bear little resemblance to their former versions, sport a colorful and crisp design, a reworked navigation, and personalization features all intended to make LinkedIn for iPhone or Android a vehicle for rabid consumption. The iPhone and Android apps are also now available in 15 different languages.

The underlying design principle behind the new mobile apps is that everything you … Read more

Crowdsourcing or witch hunt? Reddit, 4chan users try to ID Boston bomb suspects

As the search continued Wednesday for clues as to the person or persons behind the Boston Marathon bombings, hypothetical suspects and crime scenarios began popping up via online crowdsourcing.

After 24 hours passed without an arrest in the attack, the Federal Bureau of Investigations said Tuesday that the "range of suspects and motive remains wide open" and asked the public to submit photos, videos or anything suspicious that they may have seen or heard.

Members of the link-sharing community Reddit launched a sub-section called "findbostonbombers" late Tuesday to collect clues.

"Sometimes the rules change. Sometimes dogma needs to be flipped: 'Shut up and let the cops do their job' in the case of a terrorist attack is exactly wrong," Jason Calacanis, Internet entrepreneur, said in a blog post. Calacanis suggests that investigators should be combing through services like Twitter and video-sharing app Vine for clues.

Reddit users targeted at least three men, based purely on speculation. A link posted from photos-sharing site Imgur showed photos of the men collected on the Web site 4chan. … Read more

Should incest-warning app be a Facebook service?

Meeting someone in a club or a bar -- or even a church -- has its dangers.

You don't know who they really are. You don't know what they're like in a bad mood, as opposed to a bed mood. And you have no idea if they're really your cousin.

Such dilemmas have struck all those who are seeking love, or merely the comfort of warm, fragrant skin on a chilly Wednesday night.

Some extreme intellectuals in Iceland have decided to assist society's thrust toward safer human interaction.

They have created IslendingaApp, an app that gives you fair warning if the target of your pupillary expansion is, in fact, a close relative.… Read more

People spend more time on Tumblr than on Twitter or Facebook, CEO brags

Tumblr CEO David Karp today boasted that members of his blogging platform spend, on average, 14 minutes per visit.

The per-user Tumblr stat, he said, is greater than the time people spend on competing networks. "It's about a minute and a half higher than a Facebook visit, a few minutes higher than an average Twitter visit," Karp said during an interview at a PaidContent event in New York.

Karp even acknowledged that he's made sure Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is aware of this fact.

"The reason for that is, I don't think that Tumblr … Read more

Alicia Keys gives PowerPoint presentation to BlackBerry

It would be easy to think that no one, no one was buying BlackBerrys right now.

Somehow, the brand -- at least in the U.S. -- appears to be enduring a soporific phase. Why, only the other day, some highly unreliable research suggested that it was the phone that people least wanted to buy.

BlackBerry, though, believes bigger and brighter days are ahead. Recently, it hired Alicia Keys as its creative director.

Some pointed out, to BlackBerry's discomfort, that Keys was an iPhone user with an iOS app.

Just as that information reverberated, Keys was seen tweeting from … Read more

Twitter adds tweet keyword targeting for advertisers

Twitter said today that it has added the ability for advertisers to target ads at people based on keywords from those users' recent tweets.

In a blog post this morning, Twitter characterized the new feature as "an important new capability -- especially for those advertisers looking for signals of intent -- because it lets marketers reach users at the right moment, in the right context."

To be sure, millions of people are letting the world know what they're thinking in real time by sending out tweets about what they're doing, links they've noticed, news they'… Read more

Move over Siri, Sherpa's in town

The march toward a better, voice-controlled future continues, even with Siri, Google Voice Search and newer digital assistants, such as Donna, already on the scene.

The latest entrant is Sherpa, a natural language Android app that's a top app in Spain and Latin America and today is rolling out in the U.S. -- first for Android, eventually for iOS.

Like Siri, Sherpa attempts to help organize your life and perform tasks when you ask the app questions or give it commands. It's the brainchild of Xabier Uribe-Etxebarria, who's based in Bilbao, Spain, and has been working … Read more

Facebook status change reveals new husband has old wife

Not all marriages end in paradise.

Sometimes, they dissolve into purgatory or even worse.

Sometimes, though, you can choose a partner who very quickly becomes someone entirely different. A glutton, for example. Or a bigamist.

A woman in Australia recently married the love of her life and became Mrs. Keyet. Excited that she was now Mrs. Keyet, she changed her relationship status to "married."

She might have wished she'd changed it to "harried."

For no sooner did she ask her most important friends to share in her joy than she received a Facebook message: "… Read more