microblog

Smutty Twitter scam snares U.K. politician

Good heavens! If your Twitter followers include Ed Miliband, the U.K. secretary of state for energy, there's a chance that you received a direct message from him early on Friday that read, "Hhey, i've been having better sex and longer with this here." CNET sincerely hopes you did not click on the link that followed. Miliband might be an expert on energy, but presumably not that kind of energy.

The cabinet minister, rather, had fallen victim to a particularly voracious Twitter phishing attack that's been making the rounds this week, one which steals users' … Read more

Google Buzz essentials

Google Buzz took the world by storm with its Twitter meets FriendFeed meets your e-mail inbox sort of behavior. It also caused a storm of concern over how it behaves and what information it reveals to the world.

Here's how to protect your privacy, remove Buzz notes from your Gmail inbox, and turn Buzz off altogether.

If you've never had a Google Profile before, you're in the best position to protect yourself. You can say no to Buzz altogether. Of course, you can also say yes to Buzz, but make sure your profile is private.

But let'… Read more

D'oh! Twitter already swamped before Apple announcement

Seriously, Twitter? We thought the company had learned by now that Steve Jobs has the mystical power to instantly summon the fail whale--or in other words, that nerd chatter surrounding any kind of Apple product announcement is enough to swamp the microblogging service's infrastructure.

An hour before Apple's San Francisco event to the much-hyped tablet device now known as the iPad, Twitter had already slowed to a crawl, spitting out tweets between eight and fifteen minutes late--and sometimes out of order--on both the Twitter.com home page and third-party clients. It doesn't seem like there were … Read more

Astronaut sends first live tweets from space

You really can't escape Twitter. Even in space.

NASA astronaut T.J. Creamer, on board the International Space Station, made social-media history Friday morning when he became the first person to send a Twitter message from space. Creamer, under his Twitter username @Astro_TJ, tweeted, "Hello Twitterverse! We r now LIVE tweeting from the International Space Station--the 1st live tweet from Space! :) More soon, send your ?s."

The astronauts on the International Space Station have connected to the Web through Crew Support LAN, which significantly enhances the private communication access that astronauts have while floating above the Earth. … Read more

Twitter hijacked by 'Iranian Cyber Army'

Updated at 11:15 p.m. PST to include comment from witness and reflect Twitter.com accessible again. Updated at 11:50 p.m. PST with status update from Twitter.

Twitter.com was down Thursday evening, and it appears that the microblogging site may have been hacked or the victim of a DNS hijacking.

The site, which was inaccessible for about an hour starting around 10 p.m. PST, was defaced with the following image before it was taken offline:

The message at the bottom of the image appears to be written in Perso-Arabic script and when translated to English … Read more

Microsoft: We did copy Plurk's code

Microsoft said on Tuesday that a blogging application posted to its MSN China site did in fact copy code from a rival.

Microblogging site Plurk lashed out at Microsoft on Monday saying that the Juku application stole its user interface and code. Microsoft said on Monday that it was investigating the matter and suspended the Juku service on Monday night.

Microsoft has said a third party and not it or its Chinese joint venture partner wrote the Juku program.

"The vendor has now acknowledged that a portion of the code they provided was indeed copied," Microsoft said in … Read more

Microsoft pulls China blog site amid code-theft charges

Microsoft said late Monday that is suspending access to an MSN China microblogging site amid allegations the service is based on code swiped from a rival.

Canadian start-up Plurk lashed out at Microsoft earlier on Monday, saying that 80 percent of the code for Juku appeared to be lifted directly from its service.

Microsoft reiterated late Monday that it is investigating the matter but issued a statement saying it was pulling down the Juku feature while it looks into things.

"Earlier today, questions arose over a feature developed by a third-party vendor for our MSN China joint venture," … Read more

Does Twitter mean business with 'Contributors' test?

One of the hottest use cases for Twitter, as you well know, is businesses communicating with their customers or potential customers. Up to this point, Twitter really has not introduced any new features to support these business users, but as a part of an initiative to roll out more business-specific features, Twitter on Monday introduced "Contributors." Contributors allows business accounts to designate other Twitter users, usually employees or PR, to tweet on their behalf. Twitter is currently testing this with "a limited subset of folks."

The screenshot above is what this new feature will look like, … Read more

Microsoft investigating charges it stole rival's code

Microsoft said on Monday afternoon that it's investigating allegations that a recently launched microblogging site in China lifts the code and interface of a start-up's rival service.

"Microsoft takes intellectual property seriously, and we are currently investigating these allegations," company spokesman Mark Murray said in a statement. "It may take some time due to the time zone differences with Beijing."

Earlier on Monday, Canada's Plurk went public with charges that Microsoft's Juku service "rips off" the look and feel of its microblogging service and also appears to use more than … Read more