Web Concepts

Posts Tagged ‘facebook’

IFTTT primarily works with social networking sites, including ones that make you wonder if "social networking" actually means anything at all. That ranges from the obvious (Facebook, Twitter) to the niche (ZooTool, Posterous) to the useful (Craigslist, Google Calendar), with some basics like Weather and RSS Feed thrown in. It also works with your phone, so you can add SMS texting and even phone calls to the mix. You can create your own IFTTT command from a list, or customize what's already there, or you can simply browse through the previously created IFTTTs, which the site calls "Recipes."

IFTTT is now available to everyone, instead of the private invite-only beta it was running before. It's a pretty great tool--my own tests worked flawlessly, and the breadth of services is pretty impressive. There are restrictions, yes, and real nerdly types may scoff, but it's actually a lot more flexible than it appears and, more importantly, it's not the least bit threatening to set up. Check it out here.

[IFTTT]

We’ve seen how easily biometrics can be used to identify people based on their Internet photos, using something as simple as an iPhone app. Cops themselves are using this technology to ID people on the street — so why wouldn’t intrepid motorcycle gang leaders do the same?

The Australian Federal Police is researching how social media may impact covert ops. In a survey last winter, they found the vast majority of law enforcement officers were using social media — 90 percent of females and 81 percent of males, with Facebook and Twitter the top two sites, respectively. Nearly half of those surveyed said they used the sites daily, while another 24 percent used them weekly, according to ComputerWorld Australia.

The worst news, from a cop’s perspective: “All respondents aged 26 years or younger had uploaded photos of themselves onto the Internet,” ComputerWorld reports. And 85 percent of respondents said someone else had uploaded photos of them. What’s more, 42 percent of respondents said they could identify someone based on his or her social media relationships, ComputerWorld says.

“The 16-year-olds of today who might become officers in the future have already been exposed,” Mick Keelty, a former Australian Federal Police commissioner, said at a security conference in Sydney.

This covers Australia, not the U.S., but it’s reasonable to expect the numbers would be somewhat similar in this country. If so, that means the next generation of undercover agents may have to go to even greater extremes to win the trust of the groups they’re trying to infiltrate. It can already take several years to do this. Maybe future cops should adopt the adage used by aspiring politicians: Decide at age 5 and act accordingly.

[ComputerWorld Australia]

In a statement this morning to other members of Parliament (MPs), Cameron let loose with this bit of totalitarian wisdom:

"Free flow of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill. So we are working with the police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality."

That was about all the detail Cameron gave, so, as Thinq noted, we don't know how he might approach the task of shutting down Twitter's, Facebook's, and BlackBerry's U.K. services--though of course it is possible. Several Middle Eastern nations, including the United Arab Emirates, have in the past blocked BlackBerry from operating on their soil. But for the U.K. to even think about such a step, and to express it in such a high-profile speech, is a bit shocking.

Shutting down social networks is not an unfamiliar approach--we saw it in a more severe form in Egypt, when the government shut the Internet down entirely in an effort to quell protests mostly by stymying the use of Facebook and Twitter as protest coordination tools. (That didn't last, of course, and Egyptian Internet services went back online after about a week.) But it ignores that social media is also being used en masse for beneficial coordination, like the 20,000-person-strong London Cleanup Facebook page. That's not even to mention the "Supporting the Met Police against the London rioters" page, which has garnered nearly a million Likes. It remains to be seen whether Cameron and the police forces will actually pursue this line of inquiry. In the meantime, authorities are using the country's ridiculously dense system of CCTV cameras (one for every 14 people!) to identify looters.

[via Thinq]

The department has put one of its more tech savvy officers (he’s previously had success catching sexual predators and monitoring for gang activity on the Tubes) in charge of this new juvenile justice unit, which will mine Twitter, Facebook, Myspace and other social sites for signs of impending mayhem or bragging about past lawbreaking.

It’s an appropriate week to implement something like this. As I write this, rioters in the UK are using social media to coordinate their chaos and warn other rioters about police actions. And police are using social media to figure out where the rioters are headed next.

Such use of technology has been used by the NYPD specifically in the past to track down everything from unruly house parties to murder suspects, so the tactic isn’t really new. But the institutionalization of a dedicated police unit to patrol social networks marks a shift in priorities and in the value the NYPD places on this kind of policing. So is it Big Brother or sound police practice? That probably depends on which side of the law you are on. Guess it’s time we pulled down the video of our editors popping off firecrackers somewhere in the greater NYC area, lest we finally have to own up to the act.

[NY Daily News]

A simple system that compares Facebook pictures and webcam snapshots can make a positive match after less than three seconds, according to Carnegie Mellon University researchers. Alessandro Acquisti and colleagues presented their findings at the Black Hat computer security conference in Las Vegas.

“A stranger could know your last tweet just by looking at you,” Acquisti told CNET’s privacy blog.

The system was able to correlate Facebook profile pictures to webcam shots, and to otherwise anonymous photos on a dating website. The Facebook-webcam system identified about 31 percent of users, and only 10 percent of the dating site users, but the message was clear — anonymity is becoming harder and harder to maintain.

This can be problematic for several reasons, not the least of which is the damage that can be done by mistaken identity. Computer systems that put the wrong name to a face can cause headaches or worse. But in simpler terms, do average Facebook users really want random people to find out their e-mail addresses and phone numbers simply by looking at their faces?

Google engineers have discussed hypothetically using its own this technology for such a purpose, but say they have no plans to actually do it.

Acquisti, an information technology and public policy professor, made a database of about 25,000 photos taken from CMU students’ Facebook profiles, CNET explains. Acquisti had volunteers peer into a webcam, and facial recognition software connected their images to their Facebook profiles. The system made a successful identification for 31 percent of the students after less than three seconds. The team also compared about 278,000 Facebook pictures to 6,000 dating website profile pictures, in which the members used pseudonyms, and about one in 10 were identifiable, CNET says.

Then the CMU researchers also developed an iPhone app that works the same way, running a photo through facial recognition software and displaying that person’s name and information on the screen.

The system only works with front-facing photos, and it would need to be refined, but as technology improves it will only get easier, Acquisti said.

[CNET]

Google+ is, despite that difference, essentially Google's riff on Facebook. It may not seem all that new at first, but it is a very big idea and implemented into Google's myriad properties, especially Gmail, on a scale we haven't seen before. Facebook was an outcropping of networks like MySpace and dating sites--centered around the profile page. Google+, though, is a sharing engine. Google describes the main thrust of Google+ as sharing: It's designed to let you share status updates, links, videos, and whatever else with exactly who you want.

To do that, Google created "Circles," which are essentially groups into which you place specific clumps of people--family, friends, co-workers, that kind of thing. Sharing is done to those circles, rather than to everyone in your social network (which might include coworkers, exes, relatives, and other undesirables). The layout of the Circles is pretty cute; removing a contact from a Circle blasts them into a puff of smoke, to which you are free to add your own laser noises. Interface has historically been a weak spot at Google, as many Android owners (or foes) will tell you, but the head of design for Google+ is an ex-Apple designer who seems to be overcoming Google's design woes.

There are a few other ways to communicate with a set group of people: There's an instant-messaging-type service for small groups, and a video chat service called Hangouts that lets you spontaneously jump into group video chats. The latter feature is definitely something we haven't seen before, and it's emblematic of Google's new strategy with Google+: Google wants you to spend as much time as possible in Google+, rather than the typical Google method of getting you in and out with your data quickly.

Then there's a feature called Sparks, which is sort of like an automated news feed--add your interests, and it gives you a stream of things you might care about, a bit like StumbleUpon, which you can then share with whomever you want. Presumably, Google Reader, Google's excellent RSS reader web app, will also have lots of Google+ sharing options. Sparks will run alongside your social feed (updates and shared items from people you know), though Google hasn't ruled out combining the two feeds sometime in the future.

Your actual network is created from other Google users, but you can add anyone, even if they don't want to use Google+. Just add an email address to a Circle, and that person can be emailed updates just like everyone else. According to this startlingly in-depth look at the birth of Google+, Facebook integration is not in the cards--apparently, Facebook is unwilling to work with an obvious competitor.

Google+ will be all over Google; aside from an Android (and, soon, iPhone) app, you'll see a link to your Google+ page whenever you use any Google web service, alongside the links to search, Maps, Reader, and all the rest. It's in a small private beta for now, as Google works on the kinks to avoid another Buzz situation. But this is going to be a major part of Google's identity from now on--if we're to believe the hype, this isn't just a new app. This is a new direction for Google itself. Whether people will use it...well, that remains to be seen.

[Google]

One Facebook user warned Jason Valdez that a SWAT officer was hiding in the bushes outside the motel room where he was holed up with a hostage.

“Thank you homie,” Valdez replied. “Good looking out.”

Valdez, 36, is in critical condition after shooting himself in the chest as SWAT officers stormed his hotel room, according to the AP.

Valdez was charged with drug possession back in March, and a judge issued a warrant for his arrest when he didn’t show up for court June 1. Police tried to serve him with a felony drug warrant Friday afternoon, and he barricaded himself inside the Western Colony Inn in Ogden, AP said. He said he was with a woman named Veronica, who police described as a hostage.

His first Facebook post, updated at 11:23 p.m. Friday, reads in part: “I'm currently in a standoff ... kinda ugly, but ready for whatever. I love u guyz and if I don't make it out of here alive that I'm in a better place and u were all great friends.”

In all, he posted six updates, including pictures of himself and Veronica. He received more than 100 comments from family and friends, many of whom pleaded with him to “do the right thing,” AP notes. Others offered words of support, even “liking” his update about shooting at police. Click through to the AP's account for a full re-telling of the tale.

Now the police are debating whether to charge any of his friends with obstruction of justice for hampering a police investigation. His friends' responses, including words of support and details about the scene, gave him an advantage, police said.

This could be a new realm for law enforcement and attorneys — how do you file charges for activity that happened in an online setting?

"We're not sure yet how to deal with it," said Ogden Lt. Danielle Croyle.

[AP]