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Radiohead ventures into Chinese social media (AP) : Technet |
- Radiohead ventures into Chinese social media (AP)
- Havana's small community of Twitterati meets IRL (AP)
- NBA faces $1 million fine for using Facebook or Twitter during lockout (Yahoo! News)
- Zynga's Journey From Founding to IPO [INFOGRAPHIC] (Mashable)
- Vote to replace former Congressman Weiner on September 13 (Reuters)
- Vatican goes online in struggle against child abuse (AFP)
- Gilbert in yellow thanks to maiden Tour stage win (AFP)
- Android app Retrollect offers a unique way to share and organize your photos (Appolicious)
- Facebook engineers copy Google+ with 'Circle Hack' app (Digital Trends)
- Supreme Court rules games are art, is Apple listening? (Appolicious)
- Vodafone buys out Essar from India unit for $5 bn (AFP)
- Apple iPad Nabs 1 Percent of Global Web Browsing (PC Magazine)
| Radiohead ventures into Chinese social media (AP) Posted: 02 Jul 2011 08:50 PM PDT HONG KONG – Radiohead has taken a tentative step into censored Chinese cyberspace even though the British rock band has been critical of China's human rights record. Radiohead recently launched a page on the "weibo" site of leading Chinese Internet portal Sina.com. "Weibo," which translates as "microblog," is the Chinese-equivalent of Twitter. But the band has only posted a single message on Friday. It says "testing the weibo." The Chinese government screens Internet content for material it deems politically sensitive. Microblogs are required to delete questionable posts. Radiohead has performed at Free Tibet concerts and called for the release of Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo. The band's U.S.-based publicist didn't comment immediately. |
| Havana's small community of Twitterati meets IRL (AP) Posted: 02 Jul 2011 04:07 AM PDT HAVANA – A few dozen members of Cuba's small but growing Twitter community have met in real space for the first time. They got to put unfamiliar faces with familiar user names, and they commiserated about the woeful Internet access on an island that has the second-worst Web connectivity rate in the world. Gathering at a downtown Havana pavilion Friday, Cuba's Twitterati wrote their online handles on name tags emblazoned with the Cuban flag and the hash tag used to organize the event, TwittHab. One by one they introduced themselves, told of their history with social media and compared numbers of followers. "Many of us didn't know each other. This is about stepping out from behind the 'at' symbol," said "alondraM," who was only identifying herself by her username. Next to her, "cuba1er.plan," a.k.a. Alejandro Cruz, said Cubans like him are increasingly using social media to share interests and information. Their ranks are still relatively sparse because Cuba lags far behind the rest of the world in connectivity, besting only the Indian Ocean island chain of Mayotte, according to a report by the consulting firm Akamai Technologies Inc. The decades-old U.S. economic embargo has left Cuba without a hardwired connection to the rest of the world, and the island relies on slow, costly satellite service. The Twitter users expressed hope things will soon speed up now that an undersea fiber-optic cable to Venezuela has arrived in Cuba. It could go online this month. For now, plodding dial-up is about the only option — and even those accounts have historically been hard to get and prohibitively expensive for most Cubans. The government says it must use its limited bandwidth carefully and gives priority to usage with what it deems a social purpose. Cuba's National Statistics Office reported last year that just 2.9 percent of islanders said they had direct Internet access, most through their schools and workplaces, though that number doesn't reflect the black market sale of minutes on dial-up accounts. The real figure is more likely between 5 percent and 10 percent, said Ted Henken, a professor of sociology and Latin American studies at Baruch College in New York who has traveled to Cuba frequently and is writing a book on social media and civil society on the island. It all creates unique challenges for tweeters in Cuba. For one thing, their local audience is relatively small. Also, cost and availability limit how much time they can spend connected. And while Twitter is popular in other nations among smartphone-toting technophiles, limitations here mean most Twitter interaction happens on computers. When users here want to send a tweet from the field, they send a cellphone text message to an overseas number that converts and posts it, said Mario Leonart, a 36-year-old from Villa Clara known online as "maritovoz." It's expensive: $4 for the initial setup, plus $1 per tweet. Send 20 tweets and you've already equaled Cuba's average official monthly salary. Some get around that by hitting up followers abroad when they start to run low on funds, Henken said, citing the case of one tweeter he monitors. "Like most Cubans he doesn't have a whole lot of money to be able to do this, but he tweets all the time," Henken said. "So he must have this feedback from people who follow him, because they put money in his account." Nevertheless, Henken said, Twitter's immediacy and the fact that Cubans are learning to take it mobile are creating an incipient "new narrative" that at least has the potential to challenge state domination of information. "Just like in the rest of the world, it can be used as a form of pushing back against the mainstream media — and, of course, in Cuba the mainstream media is the official government media," Henken said. "So it does act as a corrective on what's happening or gives another version of events." For a little more than an hour Friday, the tweeters talked about strategies for staying connected and dreamed aloud about having Internet in their homes. The event was organized by Leunam Rodriguez, a 26-year-old radio station employee who has been tweeting for just a few months. Rodriguez, who doesn't fall into either the pro- or anti-government camps, pitched the meet-up as an apolitical gathering. But when the venue was moved from a pizzeria to the Cuba Pavilion, Yoani Sanchez, known internationally for her blog writings opposing the government, complained that the meeting had been "kidnapped" by officialdom. Ultimately she skipped both the gathering and the handful of tweeters who met at the pizzeria. Rodriguez denied that the site change was politically motivated. "I've said that I don't belong to any organization. I'm just a Cuban," he said. Henken said tweeting in Cuba will involve politics, no matter what individual tweeters might want. "I think Twitter is political even when it's not political," he said. "The (Cuban) system is very monolithic; therefore even if you use Twitter to promote a sewing circle ... it's political because it is unfiltered." |
| NBA faces $1 million fine for using Facebook or Twitter during lockout (Yahoo! News) Posted: 01 Jul 2011 06:11 PM PDT |
| Zynga's Journey From Founding to IPO [INFOGRAPHIC] (Mashable) Posted: 01 Jul 2011 01:50 PM PDT In Zynga's IPO filing, which was announced Friday, we found out a lot about the company. During the day, the company released some of its own stats about its userbase and user behaviors. [More from Mashable: Zynga: 232 Million Monthly Players, $597 Million in Revenue [INFOGRAPHIC]] However, some of the most interesting numbers came from the SEC filing itself, which showed flat growth in number of users but skyrocketing revenue figures. From the startup's founding in 2007 through its first rounds of funding and $3 billion valuation in 2009, here's a look at the company's history, including a string of acquisitions over the past two years that's placed some of the best talent in web games squarely in Zynga's game dev studios. [More from Mashable: Get Ready for Google+ Games] Check out this IPO infographic from real-time conversation startup Namesake, and let us know what you think in the comments. Click image to see full-size version. [source: Namesake blog] This story originally published on Mashable here. |
| Vote to replace former Congressman Weiner on September 13 (Reuters) Posted: 02 Jul 2011 01:52 PM PDT NEW YORK (Reuters) – A special election to replace disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner, who resigned after lying about sending lewd photos of himself to women over the Internet, has been set for September 13. Governor Andrew Cuomo at the start of the July 4th holiday weekend announced the special election for the Ninth Congressional District to coincide with New York's statewide Primary Day. The district covers parts of Queens and Brooklyn. Weiner, 46, a seven-term Democrat, resigned in disgrace over the sexting scandal in June under pressure from President Barack Obama and fellow Democratic leaders. Once seen as a rising liberal star and likely future candidate for mayor of New York City, the newly married Weiner, a soon-to-be father, was tripped up by the very social media tools such as Twitter that had once made him so successful politically. After a week of denials, he admitted he had lied and had inappropriate online exchanges with at least six women over three years. (Reporting by Barbara Goldberg; Editing by Greg McCune) |
| Vatican goes online in struggle against child abuse (AFP) Posted: 02 Jul 2011 11:16 AM PDT VATICAN CITY (AFP) – The Vatican is turning to the Internet in its struggle against child abuse with a new website allowing clergy around the world to share information on eradicating the problem. A key figure behind the initiative is German psychologist priest Hans Zollner from the Vatican's Gregorian University, who spoke to AFP about the need for fundamental changes in how the Catholic Church handles abuse cases. "Bishops have to give priority to victims," said Zollner, a member of the order of Jesuits, often seen as intellectuals inside the Church. "People working inside dioceses and religious orders should be taught to listen to them. All complaints have to be taken seriously," he said. Zollner's university will host a conference next February at which the new e-learning centre is expected to be launched, with some 200 experts, diocesan officials and representatives of congregations attending. It will be "a step ... on a long and painful path," Zollner said, adding the website would bring together the latest research on child abuse and Church laws, while allowing churches in different countries to have their say. The website will be in five languages -- English, French, German, Italian and Spanish -- and the project is funded to last three years. The Church is struggling to deal with rising anger and a string of lawsuits following thousands of abuse claims in Europe and the United States. But many in the Church are concerned that the cases uncovered so far may only be the tip of the iceberg since abuses in much of the developing world -- including in Africa and Latin America -- have so far received little attention. Pope Benedict XVI's ever stronger denunciations of abuse are bringing some changes, however, and national bishops conferences around the world are set to come up with common guidelines against paedophiles by May 2012. Zollner explained the process is slow and complex because of wide variations in national laws and the need for international coordination. "The general sensitivity to the problem has clearly increased," he said. "But the Church is not a monolithic block. Sensitivities are very different. A critical point appears to have been reached," he added. "Many bishops are now saying: 'We have to act'. There needs to be a more consistent and coordinated response as wanted by the Holy Father." The common agreement in the Church is that those responsible "must receive their punishment according to Church law and criminal law," he said. Among the changes Zollner has been working on, is stricter psychological tests for would-be priests to identify possible abusers. The e-learning centre will make use of research from the child and adolescent psychiatry department at Ulm university in Germany, he said. Abuse victims groups have accused the Vatican of failing to take the problem of paedophilia seriously early on, of not cooperating with police and allowing priests and bishops who covered up for abusers to go unpunished. "For almost all victims, the most important thing is to be heard by a representative of the institution whose members have hurt them," Zollner said. Victims "should have the chance to express all their pain, anger, depression and fears to an official representative of the Church," he added. "The pope's stance is there should no longer be priests who are protected and moved along. The Church must no longer give the impression it is shielding the perpetrators as it has often been seen as doing in the past," he said. The Jesuit father added: "It makes the victims suffer a second time." |
| Gilbert in yellow thanks to maiden Tour stage win (AFP) Posted: 02 Jul 2011 02:27 PM PDT LES HERBIERS, France (AFP) – Uphill sprint specialist Philippe Gilbert dominated an incident-packed first stage of the Tour de France here on Saturday to win his first stage on the race and pull on the yellow jersey. Defending champion Alberto Contador of Spain was involved in a mass pile-up 9km from the finish, the Spaniard trailing home in 82nd place, 1min 20sec behind Gilbert as the Belgian lived up to pre-race predictions. Gilbert's Omega-Pharma team had been on the front of the bunch for most of the 191.5km ride from Passage du Gois as they chased down a three-man breakaway that took off from the first metres of the race. Having built a maximum lead approaching five minutes, they were reeled in with just over 18km to race. From then on, it was a fight for position as the peloton negotiated their way through terrain that included a number of crash-inducing roundabouts and traffic islands. Gilbert, racing his fifth Tour but his first since 2008, avoided the carnage to find himself behind the last two team-mates tasked with winding up the pace on the final climb in a bid to drop his rivals. Late attempts by Alexandre Vinokourov and Fabian Cancellara to foil Gilbert proved futile, the Belgian countering each in commanding fashion. When Cancellara went just inside the final kilometre, Gilbert knew it was time to go. He pulled level with the Swiss, and left him trailing with 400 metres remaining to solo to victory. "I dream of winning big races like Liege-Bastogne-Liege, Amstel or Fleche Wallonne, but to win here on the Tour de France is also something very special," said Gilbert, who won all three races, known as the Ardennes classics, earlier this year. "In the final I knew that Cancellara was going to attack, and I knew he'd attack where he did. With the big engine he has, he is capable of coming from the back and taking everyone by surprise. "And when I saw that he was up the road on his own, that's when I knew I could go." Contador was left to rue a bad day at the office. "In cycling today, races are won and lost in seconds," he said. "So losing (around) 1min 15sec on all the favourites is a gap that will be hard to make up." Despite his climbing skills, second-placed Cadel Evans had not been tipped to come so close to victory on the uphill finish. However, with his BMC team taking their responsibilities at the front of the peloton after the three-man break had been caught, the Australian was fully deserving. "First place is always better, but second is not too bad," said Evans. "It's a good start, a pleasant surprise." Cancellara, who would eventually finish 18th, said: "I might have attacked a bit too early. Gilbert jumped straight to my wheel, and he stayed there until he went again. I wasn?t ready to follow his move." The Europcar team of local hope Thomas Voeckler had saved precious energy staying in the bunch thanks to Perrig Quemener jumping into the breakaway early on. And with around 15km to go the men in green appeared in numbers at the front, driving the pace hard and stretching out the bunch. Although Voeckler hit the wall when Cancellara attacked, the Frenchman conceded that Gilbert was simply unbeatable. "I was fighting for the runner-up places," admitted Voeckler. "And whoever says he just missed beating Gilbert is being a bit economical with the truth." Hushovd, who took his first win of 2011 at the Tour of Switzerland two weeks ago, admitted he did not have the legs to challenge the Belgian. "It was a hell of a hard day," the Norwegian told AFP. "Our team was working hard to chase down the breakaway with Omega-Pharma and in the end I think there was a lot of teams who wanted to make it hard for riders like me. I was dead for the sprint. "But when Gilbert goes like that, no one can hold on to him." Gilbert, however, is being tipped to lose the yellow jersey on Sunday's second stage, a 23km team time-trial. |
| Android app Retrollect offers a unique way to share and organize your photos (Appolicious) Posted: 02 Jul 2011 12:30 PM PDT |
| Facebook engineers copy Google+ with 'Circle Hack' app (Digital Trends) Posted: 02 Jul 2011 03:55 PM PDT
There's been quite a bit of talk about how Google ripped off some of Facebook's features with its new social network, Google+. But it seems the biting goes both ways. Now, a group of four Facebook engineers have launched an unofficial Facebook app called "Circle Hack," which allows users to organize their friends into lists in a near-identical fashion to the "Circles" tool in Plus — one of our favorite features. Since Circle Hack works in exactly the same way as Circles — even if it's graphical interface isn't quite as pretty — anyone who's already on Google+ should know exactly how it works. Since Plus is still technically closed to the general public (though there are a few ways around the wall), we'll give you a quick run-down on how it works: Go to the Circle Hack Website, where you are presented with a white, no-frills landing page. Click the blue "login" button, where you will have to login to Facebook (if you aren't already). You will then be asked to allow the application to access you Facebook information. From there, you will be taken to a simple page, with each of your friends displayed as a box on the screen. At the bottom of the screen is a grey box that says "Drag here to create new list." Pick a category you'd like to place a group of contacts, like "Family" or "College Buddies" — whatever you like. Like Google+'s Circles, you don't have to drag each friend into the box individually. Simply click each friend you'd like to add to the group. Their contact box will turn blue. Once you've picked everyone you want to include (though you can add people later if you miss someone), simply click and hold on the last one you choose, and drag the whole group into the box. From here, Circle Hack will prompt you to create a name for the group, which you can enter in a drop-down menu that automatically appears. Enter the name, click accept, and you're done. Simply repeat that process for each group you'd like to create. That's all the functionality that exists, however, so anything else you'd like to do, like change privacy settings, edit the group or anything else, you have to do within Facebook itself. But it does simplify the process of making friends lists, which requires clicking your "Friends" icon in Facebook, selecting "Manage Friend List," and then, on the next page, clicking on "Create a List." To actually use your friend lists once you've created them is an entirely other headache altogether, and requires customizing the privacy settings for each individual post, so this feature isn't exactly practical. What it does show, however, is that Facebook — or at least some of its engineers — are taking Google+ seriously. And they should. |
| Supreme Court rules games are art, is Apple listening? (Appolicious) Posted: 02 Jul 2011 12:00 PM PDT |
| Vodafone buys out Essar from India unit for $5 bn (AFP) Posted: 02 Jul 2011 06:53 AM PDT NEW DELHI (AFP) – British mobile phone giant Vodafone is taking full control of its Indian joint venture by buying out its local partner Essar Group, a statement said Saturday, ending a troubled relationship. Vodafone, which has sought to make India a crown jewel in its expanding emerging markets portfolio, said it will pay Essar Group companies $5.46 billion for the one-third holding in Indian mobile-phone services provider Vodafone-Essar. "The settlement marks the end of a four-year partnership between Vodafone and Essar in India, during which Vodafone Essar has grown to reach almost 140 million subscribers," the British firm said in the statement. Vodafone had announced plans for the buyout in March after friction between Vodafone and the Essar Group, founded by billionaires Shashi and Ravi Ruia, became more public over the valuation of Essar's minority stake. The deal caps a process which began when Vodafone bought a 67 percent stake in Hutchison Essar Ltd from Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa for $11.1 billion in 2007, marking its first foray into India. The company, which was renamed Vodafone Essar, now is the third-largest mobile operator in India's fiercely competitive market. Vodafone's pact with Essar gave the Indian conglomerate an option to sell its stake in Vodafone Essar to the British firm for $5 billion. The figure of $5.46 billion to be paid to the Essar Group is higher than the $5 billion initially announced and reflects tax on the transaction. However, Vodafone has insisted it doesn't have to pay tax on the initial 2007 deal with Hutchison Whampoa that gave it control of Vodafone-Essar. It argues the deal was between two companies based outside India while Indian authorities counter that tax must be paid on the transaction because it involved an asset based in India. India's Supreme Court is slated to hear the dispute over the Vodafone-Hutchison transaction on July 19. The tax department is seeking $2.6 billion in tax from Vodafone, plus up to the same amount in penalties, on the $11.1 billion Vodafone-Hutchison deal. Vodafone's purchase of Essar's stake pushes the British firm slightly above the 74 percent foreign companies are allowed by law to hold in Indian telecom firms. Vodafone chief executive Vittorio Colao said in May the company could sell some of its Indian business in an initial public offering (IPO) to comply with local foreign direct-investment rules. |
| Apple iPad Nabs 1 Percent of Global Web Browsing (PC Magazine) Posted: 02 Jul 2011 08:20 AM PDT It's been a little more than a year since Apple first launched its popular iPad, and the tablet now accounts for 1 percent of global Web browsing, according to data from NetMarketShare. The stats, which were first reported by The Register, show that the iPad also comprises 2.1 percent of browsing in the United States. Mobile Web browsing is dominated by iOS devices, NetMarketShare found. The iPhone and iPad combined comprise about 60 percent of mobile Web browsing in the states. Alone, the iPad accounts for about a quarter (25.5 percent) and the iPad makes up 35.5 percent. By contrast, 31.6 percent of mobile Internet surfing is done on Android-based devices, including both smartphones and tablets. RIM's BlackBerry is the third most-used platform for mobile browsing, but according to the data, it has a much smaller share of the space with just 6.9 percent. The iPad has clearly been the top tablet on the market. Other companies have produced their own tablet PCs, like Samsung's Galaxy Tab and HP's TouchPad, but there hasn't yet been a device that has presented significant competition to the iPad. The iPad 2 was unveiled just four months ago, and already there's rampant speculation about what will will be included in the iPad 3. Another recent study from comScore found that the iPad accounts for 97 percent of all tablet traffic on the Web. On the other hand, Android-based tablets only make up 0.6 percent of tablet traffic, comScore reported. Despite the impressive stats, Apple reported a decline in iPad sales in its last earning call, possibly due to a hitch in its supply chain. The company sold 4.69 million iPads, down from the 7.33 million sold in the fourth quarter. Apple will report second quarter results on July 19, and iPad sales are expected to be between seven and nine million. It's rumored that Apple will step up iPad shipments in the third quarter, with some predicting that Apple will aim to ship as many as 14 million of its second-gen tablet. |
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