Adobe Retaliates on Apple’s Attack Against Flash
Adobe finally broke their silence on Apple’s claims that Flash will be fading away due to arrival of HTML 5. As HTML 5 arises, a war on words started on the web giants Adobe and Apple.
Adobe retaliated by saying that a switch to HTML 5 will put web users to “back to the dark ages of video on the web” . Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch also sighted reasons on the lack of Flash support to iPhones and the upcoming iPad and put the blame on Apple. Lynch stressed that it is due to Apple’s lack of cooperation that impedes Flash support to Apple’s products.
Here is the quote from Lynch’s blog:
“We are ready to enable Flash in the browser on these devices if and when Apple chooses to allow that for its users, but to date we have not had the required cooperation from Apple to make this happen.”
It is early to predict the fate of Flash with the arrival or HTML 5. Flash is not just a web browser tool but a web development tool with a community of dedicated developers. Flash may suffer a downfall when it comes to video support on browsers but obviously Adobe will not just sit around and let it fade away. Flash is a ground breaker and well loved by web developers so expect improvements on its usability and supports in the near future.
Right now, Flash is gearing up for the latest version (Flash Player 10.1) which will support mobile devices such as blackberry, nokia and also Apple’s products.
Phishing scams are back, but on Twitter now!
Phishing returns to twitter with a different strategy. This time, Phishing is done through direct messages. Twitters will receive a message claiming that an embarrassing blog about you is circulating in the world wide web and you have to click a website usually in a tiny url form to view it.
Of course, your first impulse with messages like that is to verify the credibility of the the twit and you can only do that by clicking the link. The link will open a twitter-a-like page that will requires your log -in information. The website is not actually the twitter site rather a hoax site built to imitate twitter and trick you in giving your log-in details.
The real embarrassment will befall at you once the phishers got your twitter account for they will use it in spamming or worse, sending messages to your twitter network. If you become a victim of phishing, change your password and notify your network about the incident.
The best way to avoid Phishing in twitter as well as other Social Networking Sites is to avoid clicking dubious links. Don’t let phishers steal your log-in account for they will use your accounts in scams and spams.
Yelp accused of Extortion
The online review website, Yelp has been accused of extortion in the lawsuit that has been filed against the site in Los Angeles.
It has been alleged that the website attempted to wrest from a veterinary hospital by the name of Cats and Dogs in Long Beach, an amount of $300 per month for at-least a year. The amount was extorted in favor of the site repressing or deleting the reviews that tarnished the image of the hospital.
Yelp, it may be remembered is the leading site when it comes to reviews. Users find the San Francisco based site to be a great place to look for reviews on local business. Launched in 2004, the company has now spread throughout United States and opened up in the U.K. and Ireland last year.
The site’s slogan, “Real people, Real reviews” though is under scrutiny as the complaint that has been filed in the U.S. District Court states that the website manipulates and influences reviews for money. The allegation is that the site promises to delete or move the negative reviews to the bottom if an advertising subscription is purchased.
The suit is essentially filed by the owner of Cats and Dogs, Dr. Gregory Perrault. The story began when a negative review was posted on the site about the hospital and the doctor in particular. When Dr. Perrault complained about the same to Yelp regarding the irregularities in the visit of the user, the site complied and removed the statement. Within a week however, there was another user with another review which again seemed inappropriate to the doctor.
This time, even after the complaint, Yelp did not remove the review and soon he began to receive calls from the site’s staff who asked him to buy their advertising contract in lieu of removal of the negative comments.
This suit demonstrably has the backing of an East Bay Express article that had similar statements from numerous businesses who complained of the same extortion technique. Yelp, which recently turned down a $550 million offer by Google and had more than 9 million reviews in December alone, has denied the allegations and plans to fight the lawsuit aggressively.
Social Networking – Private things to keep in mind before you go public
Next time you go socializing, here are some of the things that you might want to keep in mind.
Do you want to go Public?
The first thing is to decide whether you want to make your profiles public or private. If you do go public, do not make jokes regarding your financial positions or anything else that can some day come back to haunt you. Remain true and there’s nothing to worry about.
Get rid of the extra
Does your network have people you know very little about? If so, be done with anyone you don’ really know or approve of. Keep your company with those that you really associate with.
Who are you connecting to?
Do not randomly accept invitations from all and sundry. Before saying yes, have a look at the profile of the concerned person. Take a moment and think about it. Do you befriend anyone you meet on the go? Not really. Why would you want to be any different with your virtual life then?
It may be possible that you just need to be publicly available. That doesn’t mean you cannot be careful with what you post. Take care.
Who is using your Social data?
With the advent of social networks, there’s nothing that you cannot know about a person online. From personal wishes to professional bursts, people are pouring their hearts out on Facebook and Twitter. It is being called the new way of socializing but there is something else that not many understand when they throw their life out in the open.
A Should Have Been Banned Sexy App Earned $10,000 a Week
Apple made a smart move by purging smut or sexy apps for iPhones. Apple started an anti-smut campaign as a response to parent’s rising complaints of their children being able to access sexy apps. But one sexy app slipped through the cracks of the banning campaign and instead gained $10,000 a week.
Tubes was able to skip in the culling because of its target market. Tubes was developed for a client who specifically ask that it should not be released in the U.S. and the banning of sexy apps by Apple was targeted in the U.S.
Tubes was finally banned by Apple’s, but earned huge revenues first. The remaining sexy apps for Apple are now only the ones coming from prominent companies such as FHM, Playboy and Sports Illustrated. If Tubes earned $10,000 a week, imagine how much the remaining sexy apps will earn now that they are the only ones left in market.
Facebook rises as Myspace falls
U.S. unique monthly visitors to Facebook grew 96.5 percent between January 2009 and January 2010, with over half the U.S. online population visiting during the course of the month, according to data from comScore.
Digitally Dead: Your Online Afterlife
What happens to all your online accounts after you die? The digital revolution has changed things. Actually, it has done a lot more than just changing lives. It has altered the very fabric of the life as we knew it. The words remain the same but the digital dictionary has changed their meanings to the very core. Social networking is no more about meeting someone. Well, it is, but in a new way. You poke them, tease them or wink at them through just a click. From Facebook to Twitter, the world and our ways of communicating have gone from shorter to short.
Made to Stick
Mark Twain once observed, “A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on.” His observation rings true: Urban legends, conspiracy theories, and bogus public-health scares circulate effortlessly. Meanwhile, people with important ideas-businessmen, educators, politicians, journalists, and others—struggle to make their ideas “stick.”
Why do some ideas thrive while others die? And how do we improve the chances of worthy ideas? In Made to Stick, accomplished educators and idea collectors Chip and Dan Heath tackle head-on these vexing questions. Inside, the Heath brothers reveal the anatomy of ideas that “stick” and explain sure-fire methods for making ideas stickier, such as violating schemas, using the Velcro Theory of Memory, and creating “curiosity gaps.”
In this indispensable guide, we discover that “sticky” messages of all kinds—from the infamous “organ theft ring” hoax to a coach’s lessons on sportsmanship to a product vision statement from Sony-draw their power from the same six traits.
Made to Stick is a book that will transform the way you communicate ideas. It’s a fast-paced tour of idea success stories (and failures)—the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who drank a glass of bacteria to prove a point about stomach ulcers; the charities who make use of the Mother Teresa Effect; the elementary-school teacher’s simulation that actually prevented prejudice . Provocative, eye-opening, and funny, Made to Stick shows us the principles of successful ideas at work—and how we can apply these rules to making our own messages “stick.”
Coming Soon – Search Ads by Twitter
As of this writing, grapevine has it that highly popular social networking hub, Twitter, is soon going to give Google a run for its money in the search ads business.
The core concept behind the theme is that the related ads (of the advertisers that sign up with Twitter) would show up when a user searches Twitter for a particular theme. The ads would conform to the standard twitter word count and would be no more 140 words.
A simple example may be a search for ‘cars’. This would result in an ad for a car firm that has tied up with Twitter. Hence those who do not search for anything would not be seeing any ads.
The success magnitude of this system of ad generation can be gauged from the wonders it has done for Google. These text ads that show up next to the search results in the Google Search Engine account for more than 60 percent of the total revenue that is generated by the firm annually.
The next in the ad business for Google is the Adsense program that allows users to place ads on their own websites and share the revenues with Google. And something similar that allows Twitter to place ads after some regular intervals on the tweeter’s page should be a logical extension of Twitter’s ad program.
This step although highly lucrative may not find favor with all of its users and hence the current step of starting with the searching part seems to be a good idea. There may not be a great deal of searching that goes around at Twitter as of yet but it is definitely a good place to start.