user

Florence Detlor may have been born when William Howard Taft was president, but at the moment she is social media's it girl.

Facebook has confirmed that out of nearly 1 billion users, she is the oldest registered user of the social-networking site at 101 years old.

Detlor brushes off the recent media attention. "It's a matter of circumstance, it just happens to be that way," she said.

The centenarian signed up for Facebook two years ago, after taking a computer class at a community center near her home in Menlo Park, Calif. She has friended around 700 people, but has uploaded only about two dozen photos to her profile.… Read more

To help troubleshoot problems in OS X, Apple supports several alternative boot modes, the most common of which is safe mode. There's also a verbose mode that displays what background processes are being loaded, and a single-user mode to avoid user accounts and the OS X graphical interface. While these various modes can be useful, there are times that a system gets stuck loading them and won't boot normally.

These modes are triggered by a boot argument that is passed to the OS X kernel, which can be done in one of two ways. The first is to … Read more

While the use of the log-in window at startup in OS X is the more secure option to use, often people may prefer to have their systems automatically log in to a specified user account, especially if they are the only user on the system and the system is in a relatively safe location such as a locked study or office. However, there are times when users may enable automatic log-in for systems in more public areas, and you might wish to ensure this setting either remains off or can be quickly reverted with a script or command that can … Read more

A day after it was revealed that LinkedIn was transmitting user data without their knowledge, the business network said it would discontinue the practice.

Mobile security researchers Yair Amit and Adi Sharabani discovered that once enabled by the user, an opt-in feature on the iOS app's calendar automatically transmits users' calendar entries, including passwords and meeting notes, back to LinkedIn servers. The transmission of data, which is not revealed to users, is thought to violate Apple's privacy guidelines, which prohibit apps from collecting and transmitting users' data without their express permission.

A LinkedIn representative explained last night that … Read more

LinkedIn's iOS app is collecting information from calendar entries, including passwords and meeting notes, and transmitting it back to the company's servers without their knowledge, according two mobile security researchers.

The business-networking giant's app for Apple's iPad and iPhone has an opt-in feature that allows users to view their calendar entries within the app. However, researchers Yair Amit and Adi Sharabani discovered that once enabled by the user, the app automatically transmits users' calendar entries back to LinkedIn servers. Amit and Sharabani expect to present their findings at a security workshop at Tel Aviv University tomorrow. … Read more

The U.S. has long been Facebook's top market, but according to analysts, that could soon change.

Speaking to CNBC in an interview published yesterday, Gartner principal research analyst Shalini Verma said that India's strong growth and expected increase in Web users over the coming years, will help the country overtake the U.S. in total Facebook users.

"India could overtake the United States in the next three years," Verma said during the interview with CNBC. "Last year, Facebook users in India doubled. Growth will be driven by mobile internet users in second- and third-tier … Read more

Android smartphone and tablet browsers sometimes load mobile versions of Web sites. On native Android browsers, you can try the about:debug trick to change the user agent to force desktop sites to load. You can also use an alternative browser, like Dolphin Browser HD, which lets you easily change the user agent in its settings.

If you're a Firefox for Android user, you can change the user agent with a simple Firefox add-on called Phony. It works with the new Firefox beta for Android as well, which was released a couple of days ago.

To set up Phony, … Read more

Researchers are tapping into the brain's signals to ease the downsides of multitasking and information overload, a worsening problem in digital lifestyles.

A group of researchers at MIT, Indiana University, and Tufts University last week presented the Brainput computer interface device at last week's Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2012) which explores new human-machine interface designs.

Brainput seeks to address the problem of people getting overloaded when working on machines and to improve people's ability to multitask. It's geared primarily at complex control systems, but its makers say the technique could eventually spill … Read more

Twitter today decided to reveal some information about users in the U.K.

According to the company, 10 million people across the U.K. are actively using Twitter, placing it in fourth place behind the U.S., Brazil, and Japan. In addition, the company revealed that 80 percent of those users are active on mobile devices, easily outpacing the global average of 55 percent.

Twitter is notoriously tight-lipped about its userbase and growth, making today's announcement somewhat notable. Twitter defines an active user as someone who has logged into its service at least once in the past 30 days.… Read more