CY.TALK: The latest internet news

Political donors and Facebook’s IPO

Emmy Wales — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 11:06:59 +0000

With social network giant Facebook officially gearing up for its initial public offering, the company’s top executives and largest investors are poised for a historic windfall.

Megaupload appeal rejected by court

Frank Stewart — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 17:22:35 +0000

Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom's bail application appeal has been rejected in New Zealand. The High Court in Auckland said it agreed with an earlier ruling that Mr Dotcom - a German national - might try to flee the country.

Zynga shares soar on Facebook IPO

Mila Fisher — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 18:25:53 +0000

The social-gaming company's stock has risen by more than 14 percent at times, as investors responded positively to the company's strong ties with Facebook.

Facebook could be worth $200B

Jordan Smith — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 18:53:21 +0000

Facebook has defined the social era of computing--and the companies that defined the previous eras of computing each command market values of $200 billion or more. Facebook should get there, too.

Sparkology: a dating website for graduates of elite universities only

Emmy Wales — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 11:10:20 +0000

Sparkology was started to help the smart, reserved, hopeless romantic guy win. This new invite-only online dating site allows only college graduates to join and the men are held to an even higher standard — all must be verified graduates of U.S. News & World Report’s top 50 universities.

Google defends change to privacy policy

Frank Stewart — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 22:40:43 +0000

Planned changes to Google Inc's privacy policies that have caught the attention of U.S. lawmakers would not take away the control its customers have over how data is collected and used, the company said in a blog post on Tuesday.

Help offered to Megaupload users

Mila Fisher — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 21:02:06 +0000

Users affected by the closure of Megaupload have been offered legal help to retrieve their data. A website has been set up to assist former members of the site to contact the Electronic Frontier Foundation in order to start co-ordinated action.

Firefox simplifies add-on updates

Megan Gray — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:08:56 +0000

Web developer site-building tools are only sexy to developers, but they get a big makeover in update to Firefox and that will affect how developers connect to the people who use their sites.

Facebook to file $5 billion IPO today

Jordan Smith — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 11:59:01 +0000

Facebook is expected to submit paperwork to regulators on Wednesday morning for a $5 billion initial public offering and has selected Morgan Stanley and four other bookrunners to handle the mega-IPO.

FBI to develop its social networks application

Brad Catcher — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 19:25:04 +0000

The FBI wants an app to combine information from Twitter, Facebook and Google Maps.

ACTA: worse than SOPA?

Mila Fisher — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 19:52:23 +0000

SOPA and PIPA are stalled (or dead) in the halls of the U.S. Congress. Yet, there may be a bigger, perhaps more dangerous threat to Internet freedoms on the way, called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA.

Meet Zynga Bingo beta on Facebook

Brad Catcher — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 12:07:26 +0000

Game developer Zynga, which appears to be unfazed by the controversy surrounding its new iOS game Dream Heights, launched a new social bingo game today in a closed beta test on Facebook.

Web searches: illegal content to be demoted

Jordan Smith — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 12:20:59 +0000

Illegal content should be forcibly demoted in web searches, a group of UK rights holders has suggested.

Twitter will selectively ‘censor’ tweets by country

Megan Gray — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 12:05:49 +0000

Twitter has announced that it now has the technology to selectively block tweets on a country by country basis.

Google’s broken promise

Mila Fisher — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 12:17:26 +0000

Google announced that it will begin tracking users universally across all its services—Gmail, Search, YouTube and more—and sharing data on user activity across all of them.

Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom: profile

Mila Fisher — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 19:44:28 +0000

Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom's online profile was larger-than-life, with fast women, faster cars and chartered planes, yet he lived like a virtual recluse in a sprawling, manicured estate on the outskirts of New Zealand's biggest city, Auckland.

Storage sites unnerved by Megaupload shutdown

Megan Gray — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 12:45:01 +0000

The arrest of Megaupload's founders has led to other file storage sites taking action in an apparent attempt to protect themselves from legal action.

Could Bing seriously challenge Google?

Frank Stewart — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 11:36:44 +0000

Google's search is getting cluttered with pointless crap, while Bing has super-clean bare-bones interface and page rank.

Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom in New Zealand court

Frank Stewart — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:34:23 +0000

The founder of file-sharing website Megaupload has appeared in a New Zealand court seeking bail.

Row over Indonesia atheist Facebook post

Brad Catcher — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 09:15:36 +0000

An Indonesian man who said that God did not exist in a posting on a Facebook page for atheists could face jail.

Megaupload is shut down

Brad Catcher — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 11:40:54 +0000

Megaupload, one of the internet's largest file-sharing sites, has been shut down by officials in the US. The site's founders have been charged with violating piracy laws.

Why SOPA and PIPA won’t stop piracy

Frank Stewart — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 06:42:49 +0000

Supporters of the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA (and its Senate-sister the Protect Intellectual Property Act, PIPA) legislation — like the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) — argue that legislation is needed because online piracy puts jobs and industries at risk.

Wikipedia traffic goes up during SOPA blackout

LateNight — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 21:36:14 +0000

Wikipedia experienced increased traffic Wednesday, despite blacking out its English language content to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA).

Facebook: 60 new apps

Mila Fisher — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 19:45:49 +0000

Facebook is adding a series of new applications to let users share such things as photos, travel or fashion.

Sopa and Pipa protests on major web sites [PICS]

Jordan Smith — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 13:06:04 +0000

A co-ordinated protest in opposition to two proposed anti-piracy laws in the US - the Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (Pipa) - has seen many high-profile websites "go dark" for the day.

8 US lawmakers back away from SOPA/PIPA introduction

Emmy Wales — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 12:23:16 +0000

Eight US lawmakers have withdrawn their support for anti-piracy laws, after "blackout" protests on thousands of internet sites.

Song against SOPA ‘The Day The LOLcats Died’

Jordan Smith — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 12:38:41 +0000

Created by comedy team LaughPong, the video is silly enough to go viral but simple enough to make a difference. It urges viewers to fight back against SOPA/PIPA by finding their senators’ phone number at Cheezburger’s http://bit.ly/lifeaftersopa and telling them how they feel.

World IPv6 launch day is set

Megan Gray — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 08:02:03 +0000

IPv6 is the new net address system that replaces the current protocol IPv4, which is about to run out of spaces to allocate.

Wikipedia blackout on January 18: SOPA and PIPA protest

Mila Fisher — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 18:50:49 +0000

The Wikipedia founder announced on Twitter today that starting at midnight on Wednesday, January 18, the English language version of the world’s encyclopedia will go dark for 24 hours in protest of SOPA and PIPA.

China: number of Web users goes up to 513 million

Brad Catcher — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:45:13 +0000

The number of Internet users in China has surged past 500 million as millions of new Web surfers go online using mobile phones and tablet computers, an industry group reported Monday.

Facebook scam: Mark Zuckerberg promises free iPhones and iPads

Megan Gray — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 18:52:37 +0000

Scammers hope you will be tricked by a message from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, where he offers free iPads and iPhones to randomly selected individuals.

Rupert Murdoch attacks Obama on Twitter

Jordan Smith — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 18:10:05 +0000

Media baron Rupert Murdoch used his new Twitter account this weekend to attack the Obama Administration's opposition to parts of proposed legislation designed to combat Internet piracy.

DHS monitors your social media, blogs, message boards

Emmy Wales — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 11:43:21 +0000

According to a government document, the DHS has been monitoring social media as well as select blogs and message boards for more than a year.

Bing overtakes Yahoo for the first time

Emmy Wales — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 12:25:46 +0000

comScore has released its search data for December 2011. This was the first month Bing overtook Yahoo in terms of search queries.

Hitch.me: dating site for LinkedIn professionals

Jordan Smith — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 18:20:50 +0000

After noticing how unsafe some online dating sites are Naveed Nadir created Hitch.me, the first and only dating platform for LinkedIn professionals.

Recharge Orange Mobiles in Uganda

Mila Fisher — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 06:15:15 +0000

Recharge Orange Uganda mobiles immediately via cysend.com! Available mobiles recharge values: 7.50/15 EUR (23,399/43,799 UGX).

Google doesn’t index Twitter @ symbol

Brad Catcher — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 12:10:23 +0000

Twitter argues that by promoting Google+ in search results, Google isn’t providing the most relevant social results.

Web domains to get custom names

Megan Gray — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 11:24:34 +0000

From Thursday it will be possible to register almost any word as a web address suffix. Familiar endings like .com and .org could potentially be joined by the likes of .pepsi, .virgin or .itv.

Google puts Google+ into search

Mila Fisher — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 12:28:29 +0000

Google is launching an update to its core search engine at Google.com that continues this trend — and then some. They’re calling it ‘Search plus Your World’.

London: Europe’s biggest free wi-fi zone

Emmy Wales — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 08:32:08 +0000

London's Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea districts will be delivered the largest free wireless zone in Europe.

Sopa and Pipa: don’t let war on piracy break the internet

Frank Stewart — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 11:34:34 +0000

Legislation on internet piracy presented to Congress last year is the typical kneejerk response of the 'content' industry to change.

Facebook: 2011′s most popular trends

Mila Fisher — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 20:03:49 +0000

As several major changes to status updates (increased character limits, for example) rolled out throughout the year, Facebook data scientists kept their eyes focused on tracking the trends among those status updates.

Happy New Year From CY.TALK Team

Mila Fisher — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 19:30:20 +0000

CY.TALK Blog team wishes happy winter holidays to all its readers!

.XXX domains are ready to hook up

Jordan Smith — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 21:10:22 +0000

If you always fancied your very own .xxx domain name, it's not too late: plenty of real estate in the Internet's official red light district remains unclaimed. WhiteHouse.xxx and NASA.xxx are reserved, but USDOJ.xxx, Treasury.xxx, DARPA.xxx, and USEmbassy.xxx could be yours for as low as $100 a year.

Google+: 62 million users

Frank Stewart — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 11:36:24 +0000

Paul Allen, a Google+ watcher whose estimates about the social network's growth have proved accurate in the past, claims that the site now has 62 million users and is adding 625,000 new users per day.

Noah Kravitz sued for keeping company Twitter followers

Brad Catcher — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 11:45:54 +0000

A man is being sued for keeping Twitter followers that he attracted while working for a US mobile news website. Noah Kravitz tweeted for Phonedog as @Phonedog_Noah, but later changed his username when he left the company - taking 17,000 followers with him.

Facebook: Gardens of Time is the most popular game of 2011

Emmy Wales — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 12:30:25 +0000

The Disney-owned firm's hidden-object title beat Zynga's Cityville to the top spot despite statistics suggesting it has fewer active users. Facebook said it gave priority to games with the highest satisfaction scores.

Obama administration: web gambling gets boost

Jordan Smith — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 20:44:17 +0000

The Obama administration cleared the way for states to legalize Internet poker and certain other online betting in a switch that may help them reap billions in tax revenue and spur web-based gambling.

Leo Laporte accidentally broadcasts sex chat with his boss

Mila Fisher — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 12:09:03 +0000

A tech expert Leo Laporte aired a spicy conversation between him and his boss Lisa Kentzell, which was seen by millions of viewers.

Vatican.xxx is not a porn site

Brad Catcher — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 09:15:46 +0000

A Vatican spokesman's comments on radio this week led news organizations to report that the Vatican had lost its bid for Vatican.xxx, a coupling of the Vatican and the ".xxx" extension now reserved for pornographic content.