FT Chronicle

The rumour mill for the expected Apple iTablet launch on Wednesday reaches fever pitch.

It might look like four iPhones stuck together on close inspection of the pictures, but what you are looking  is actually really believed to be Apple’s latest gadget* that promises to revolutionise how we consume media like games, magazines, newspapers, music and video in the home, while saving virtually every industry you know in the process.

The device, we understand, will come with not one but four touchscreen displays that in total measure up to around 8 inches on the diagonal. The use of four screens will allow multitasking, something not previously available on Apple’s other touchscreen device – the iPhone. The new iTablet will, you guessed it, run four applications at the same time. Based on the company’s Spaces offering in it’s operating system OS X you be able to have one screen for video, one for email, one for Twitter and one for websurfing.

Resource: pocket-lint.com

An artist called Laura Balboa has coined the analog version of online Facebook, the ‘Feisbuk’.

Founder Mark Zuckerberg studied at Harvard, and built a site that allowed students to share information and photos of themselves.

Feisbuk, however, takes the idea back to its dead-tree roots, and includes printed pages with graphical elements from the website. The feisbuk notebook is a real-world, pen and paper manifestation of facebook, letting people jot down their info and draw a profile picture, as well as putting down something on their “wall”.

WASHINGTON- Facebook said Monday that it is blocking a website called “Web 2.0 Suicide Machine” that helps users delete their social network profiles.

This website has launched which lets you “reclaim your life” by deleting your MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn profile.

The Web 2.0 Suicide Machine site, which features a hangman’s noose on its homepage, deletes profiles, friends and other information on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and LinkedIn for users who provide their account information.

Facebook, in a statement to AFP, said the suicide site was in violation of Facebook rules. “Web 2.0 Suicide Machine collects login credentials, which is a violation of our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (SRR),” it said.

Agence France-Presse

BEIJING–China arrested more than 5,000 people in a crackdown on Internet pornography in 2009, officials said, vowing tougher online policing in the new year as a key element of “state security”.

China maintains strict censorship of the Internet to curb what the government deems to be unhealthy content including porn and violence — an effort that has become known as the “Great Firewall of China”.

Authorities in December offered rewards of up to 10,000 yuan (1,465 dollars) to Internet users who report websites that feature pornography.

According to figures published by the ministry of public security late Thursday, 5,394 people were arrested last year under the Internet porn crackdown, and 9,000 illegal porn-related sites were shut down.

The ministry, in a statement on its website, did not specify if all of those arrested were later prosecuted.

It said it would “strengthen punishment for Internet operators that violate the laws and regulations” in the coming year and “severely punish operations that have serious problems with harmful information”.

China has blocked several social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Citizens can only gain access to such sites by using proxy servers.

Last year Beijing threatened to sanction major websites, including search engine giants Google and Baidu, alleging that pornography and other material that could corrupt young people was turning up in search results.

Authorities effectively cut off Internet access in the far-western Xinjiang region after deadly ethnic unrest erupted there in July.

The government says terrorists, separatists and religious extremists used the Internet, telephones and mobile text messages to spread rumours and hatred as the violence broke out.

Earlier this week, limited access to state-run news websites was restored.

Coming in from the left field as a kind of replacement or upgrade for the Nokia XpressMusic 5800. The Nokia X6 is the first X-series handset and presumably the new brand name for the XpressMusic range. With that in mind you get a 3.2-inch, 360 x 640 pixel, wide touchscreen display that in physical terms is as long as the Apple iPhone, but two-thirds of the width.

The back sports a 5-megapixel autofocus camera with a Carl Zeiss Tessar F/2.8 – 5.2 lens. Like the Nokia N86, you’ll get Dual LED flash rather than Zenon and this will double up as a video light for when shooting with the camcorder feature. In use and the Dual LED flash can be rather harsh, leaving a yellow cast over subject, who then complained that they could still see spots on their eyes some 5-minutes after being snapped.

“In the tradition of year-end lists, we’re introducing Facebook Memology”, says the social networking site in a blog post. “‘Memology’ refers to the study of how ‘memes’, or new ideas and trends, are spreading on Facebook”.

In the United States alone, people on Facebook are “sharing hundreds of millions of words every day”, and Facebook – as always of late competing with Twitter – says it offers a “unique barometer into the issues, world events and thoughts that are connecting people”.

If you’re feeling the pressure of getting poked just that little too much and want to end it all – virtually, of course – then head over to The Web 2.0 Suicide Machine and enjoy an hour or so of watching dialog boxes being clicked.

This website has launched which lets you “reclaim your life” by deleting your MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn profile. Best of all, it rips the accounts apart bit-by-bit and you get to watch it.

All you have to do is put in your login details and password, and a script will open up a Firefox browser and automatically click through the process of deleting your profile pic, removing your connections to all your friends, and posting a final “last words” before removing your account once and for all.

So if you want to end up your burden in harvesting your crops in Farmville, or if are getting bored playing poker, it is just a one click away to cancel your account by visiting this web site.

Check out Friendster and you will find out an entirely fresh look which comes with a new green logo and a tagline “Connecting Smiles.”

Starting this December 4, the social networking site undergone a major modification with changes that they claim, will make other social networks plain and boring.

Friendster has redesigned its templates and new functions have been added focusing on their theme: Simple, Fun and Personal. The site’s new lay-out looks like Facebook’s but it has the customization capabilities that Facebook does not have.

So, who’s leaving Facebook now?

Yahoo! announced a partnership with Facebook, a social networking site on Wednesday which will enable users of Yahoo to share content with their friends through their Facebook account.

Visitors of Yahoo!’s homepage will see a full “news feed” of Facebook activities and also, can leave comments in Yahoo! articles by their Facebook account and send content from Yahoo sites to Facebook.

Yahoo hopes to achieve two goals with the partnership, says Cody Simms, senior director of product management: “Making Yahoo stickier and helping syndicate content.”

Yahoo hopes each time users send photos, comments, and other content back to their Facebook feed, it will entice onlookers to click through to Yahoo sites.

“You’re seeing the beginning of a move toward that consolidation,” says Josh Bernoff, who follows social media in his role as senior vice president of idea development at Forrester Research. “Strategically, Yahoo understands that allying itself with the most powerful social network is going to be more successful than trying to win with an ID of its own,” he says.

The Yahoo-Facebook alliance may deal the strongest blow to OpenID, a movement to create a non-proprietary standard for identity and authentication on the Web.

Some advocates for OpenID challenge the use of Facebook as an ID by millions of Internet users.

The five-year agreement, which includes no financial compensation, will begin to take effect in the first half of 2010.

Imagine a day with millions of crops being harvested by farmers around the Globe. No hunger of course and the land is plenty of food! But before we can build castles in the sky, that scenario happens in Farmville, the largest and fastest-growing social game on the Internet with its 50 million players.

Such social games are applications that can be accessible free through social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. If you’ve spent any time on either site you’re probably familiar with titles such as FarmVille, Mafia Wars, and Caf World. All three games, ranked as the top games played daily on Facebook, were developed by San Francisco-based Zynga.

Zynga was founded in 2007 by Mark Pincus, 43, who is also the creator of the social-networking site Tribe.net and software company SupportSoft, which eventually went public. (The name Zynga is a misspelled tribute to his deceased American bulldog, Zinga.) While many of his Web 3.0 peers rely on advertising and sponsorship for revenue, Pincus makes its money by having gamers to buy virtual goods, like tractor fuel or decorations, that enable players to build bigger farms at a faster rate.

Once a player is hooked, they spend real cash in exchange of virtual goods to help them on their farms — thereby enriching Zynga and more likely give them ability to surpass $100 million this year. Zynga spends millions each year marketing itself on Facebook, thereby providing the social-networking site with a part of its revenue.

(via CNN)