1. curator’s ǝpoɔ
   I love this: a standardized way to give cred to sources of information. Curator’s code has two icons, one for “via” which is the original source and one for “hat tip”, a source of indirect discovery, story lead or inspiration. I’m going to use this from hereon after.  ᔥ

    

2. Social Media Security Basics [Exclusive Infographic] – SocialTimes
   This is a pretty good summary of security with more and more cloud based services. Only pretty good because it talks about “complex password” as having “letters, symbols and numbers” which isn’t true (here’s a comic explaining why) and it misses one important source: scam login pages looking like the original. For example, many Twitter accounts are “hacked” (or rather, get their password stolen) when they log in through a scam login page, that’s linked from a DM saying something like “I can’t believe what this person is saying about you”. Clicking that link takes you to a login page that looks exactly like Twitter’s. You log in there and boom – password stolen.

    

3. Gay Travel Index
   Spartacus has ranked the world’s countries according to how gay-friendly they are. The most gay-friendly? Sweden. It’s kind of interesting to see that among the top 9 countries, 5 are in the northern part of the northern hemisphere (Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Canada). Maybe cold climates make people more tolerant and liberal?

   The countries that score the lowest are Iran, Nigeria, Jamaica, UAE, Jordan and … Russia. This is my surprised face

    

4. New Samsung TV Watches You Watching It – Slashdot
   The creepiness of this is stunning. A TV directly modeled after Orwell’s 1984. The only difference is that these are (still) voluntary to get. How people would voluntarily buy these TVs from Samsung, I do not understand. And I’m the guy who has lived with a 24/7 web cam controlled by the users in my studio apartment for three months.

    

5. Tweepi’s New “Force User to Unfollow You” Feature
   Tweepi claims to have a feature that “forces users to unfollow you” to “maintain [your] brand’s image at a certain standard”. This is weird on so many levels. First of all, someone working with Twitter services who thinks that your followers profile images (yes, that’s what they exemplify users you might want to block) is something that impacts your brand image and is worth spending time on.

   Second, there’s nothing in Twitter’s API that allows a user to “force” another user to do anything. This is simply Tweepi’s way of charging for a service that Twitter provides for free as a part of their core: blocking a user. Tweepi probably blocks the user, and then unblocks him/her directly. Premium pricing for someone else’s free service is … hinky, at best. NOTE: I’ve tweeted Tweepi to ask how they do it, but they’ve ignored the tweet.

    

6. Tablet Owners Are Hungry for Paid Content [STUDY]
   This Nielsen study shows that 41% of “tablet owners” (in the US) have bought a digital magazine on their tablet. I daresay that this can be translated to “2 out of 5 iPad owners in the US have bought a digital magazine”. Why? Because the availability of paid digital magazines on Google Play is laughable. Looking at the top list shows that in the top 20 paid “news & magazines” apps on Android, not a single one is a digital magazine. Instead, it’s different aggregators and apps for reading RSS streams and the like. It remains to be seen if Google’s move to integrate Google Wallet into the app store formerly known as Android Market will increase the willingness to pay for Android content to the same level as iPad owners. I remain skeptical.

    

7. Prospective Employees Are Now Being Asked for Facebook Login Details
   I’m sure that this is just a few, clueless recruiters who don’t really know how to handle the shift to digital. While outrageous, it’s no worse than the data surveillance directive that the European Union wants all member states to implement. Sweden is passing the law on Wednesday, March 21.

    

8. PayPal Is Rumored To Be Launching A Square Competitor
   Paypal seem to be aiming for Square (and probably iZettle too, considering Paypal’s test with NFC payments happened in Stockholm, the home of iZettle). The question is if Paypal can get enough momentum. I hope not. To me, the jury is still out whether Paypal are evil or not. On one hand, we have lots of stories like Regretsy’s Cats 1, Kids 0. On the other, Paypal has actually started to ban accounts belonging to groups preaching hate against LGBT people.

    

9. Guy Sues Apple Because Siri Doesn’t Do What Apple Says Siri Does
   This lawsuit probably won’t get the plaintiff anywhere, but it’s interesting nonetheless. Apple’s success is partly based in a minute attention to detail. From packaging to usage, it’s flawless. Siri is a key feature in iPhone 4S marketing, and I agree with the plaintiff: it’s a piece of crap with Apple standards. I think Google’s voice assistant stands a real chance unless Siri becomes vastly better in the next release.

    

10. Bill Gates: Hilarious Response When Engineer Compared Windows To A Toilet
    This is an interesting story. I’ve never thought about the different interfaces for shower – toilet, but the engineer is right, and proven so by the success of the iPad and iPhone.

     

curator’s ǝpoɔ I love this: a standardized way to give cred to sources of information. Curator’s code has two icons, one for “via” which is the original source and one...

1. Pinterest, We Have a Problem — What Blag?
   Pinterest is a legal nightmare. I would be careful with pinning stuff there until it is resolved. You see, when you pin something there, you say that you either own the thing, or you have explicit rights to it. And you transfer those rights to Pinterest, who in turn can sell them. Should you pin a photo, and Pinterest sells it, and the original copyright owner sues over this, guess who takes the hit? You. You will also take on any legal costs this incurs for Pinterest. Good deal? (via @annika)
2. The iPad HD Sucks* | TechCrunch
   This is very interesting, not so much about the iPad HD (aka iPad 3) as about Apple in general and tech bloggers/journalists in particular. There is a wide disconnection between the people “in the know” and the consumers. The people in the know are writing for people in the know, with stuff that will get flaming debates started but have no connection to reality and consumers.
3. Google Assistant may become semi-open equivalent to Siri | Electronista
   Having tried Siri quite a lot since I got my iPhone 4S, I have to say it’s a very weak product, well below Apple standards. Too often she misinterprets things, even when I speak slowly – and it’s not things that sound similar and could be attributed to my Swedish accent, but totally random stuff – and the reply that Siri isn’t available right now is too frequent. Google have been working with collecting voice data longer, and could actually do something great, especially if they open their API to third parties.

Pinterest, We Have a Problem — What Blag? Pinterest is a legal nightmare. I would be careful with pinning stuff there until it is resolved. You see, when you pin...

1. TED Blog | Peter Weyland at TED2023: I will change the world
   The pop culture geek in me loves this awesome way of promoting “Prometheus”. It’s sort of a prequel to the Alien series, in which Weyland-Yutani – a corporation founded by Peter Weyland – plays a big role. Here he is at TED in 2023, doing a TED talk on humanoid robots.
2. Things Apple is Worth More Than
   A fun initiative that puts the size of Apple’s market cap into perspective. Did you know that Apple is worth more than the construction of the interstate highway system in the US?
3. Facebook introduces Reach Generator packaged advertising solution to boost page posts
   Facebook has a brilliant business model: 1. Gather lots of people at the same place. 2. Filter their content based on interaction and social signals. 3. Sell opportunity to bypass that filter.

   It will be interesting to see what the cost of this new Facebook ad-model will be. If it’s too low, I can see lots of un-liking and in the long run, people being much more selective with what they like (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing). You have to give Facebook that they’re very creative with their new ad models.

4. foursquare is joining the OpenStreetMap movement! Say hi to pretty new maps! | Foursquare Blog
   Foursquare are moving to OpenStreetMap. They claim a lot of reasons (including that it’s prettier, which is very subjective) but I’m guessing the real reason is money. Google obviously charge ridiculous amounts ($4/1000 map views) after the 25 000 free map views per day, and Foursquare is probably very heavy on map views.

   I think more services will follow suit, and Google will either be forced to reconsider their pricing, or develop a truly premium service. OpenStreetMap has got an advantage: no matter how much money Google pours into the updating of Google Maps, a crowdsourced solution – with a big enough crowd – will create more accurate content.

   One thing you can say is that the only users of Foursquare that are thrilled about the change so far are the ones involved in the OpenStreetMap community, if you read the comments. I think that will change over time, but meanwhile Foursquare will get a lot of heat. I think transparency about the fact that Google Maps is just too expensive would’ve gathered more understanding from the disgruntled users.

5. Who decides what gets sold in the bookstore? – The Domino Project
   The always smart, oftentimes brilliant Seth Godin got a book rejected from Apple Store. Why? Because the book has references to hardcover (“analogue”) books on Amazon. I wholeheartedly agree with Seth here, that this is a dangerous path when major book stores start refusing books because of their content.

   This is one of the reasons I choose to support Amazon by reading most my e-books on Kindle (either on my  Kindle Touch, or on my iPhone or iPad). So far, Amazon appear to be less prone to censorship because of content. Based on this I could argue that Amazon are more pro free speech than Apple. (via @johanhedberg)

6. Facebook DOMINATES Google , Tumblr, And Pinterest
   Facebook continues to dominate the users’ time: in January 2012 visitors spent 405 minutes on average on Facebook. For Tumblr and Pinterest the figure is 89 minutes each. Twitter is even lower with 21 minutes, however this is not a fair comparison as most people would access Twitter through third party clients such as Tweetdeck or Tweetbot. Google+ is the big loser here: they’re down to 3 minutes, which is even lower than the measly 5 minutes per visitor per month (!) they were at last fall.
7. Hetslagstiftningen värnar intolerans | Debatt
   Jag håller helt med om att hetslagstiftning är problematisk och icke önskvärd på det stora hela. Mycket bra poäng att det också tillåter länder som Ryssland att göra åt andra hållet: förbjuda att folk omnämner homosexualitet i positiva ordalag.
8. Apple’s Toughest Competition in the Fourth-Quarter Tablet Market Was…Apple
   This is an interesting dilemma. What do you do when you’re biggest competitor is one of your own products? The wrong company structure will create an unhealthy competition, where managers who want their bonuses won’t cooperate with other divisions if it means lower turnover or profit for their own division – even if the total profit for the company as a whole would go up.
9. “The TV is broken”
   Have you seen the Youtube video with a one year old that tries using a magazine like an iPad? This is sort of the same, but with a four year old, and tv instead of magazine. This is a story about a four year old who never before has watched regular tv. It makes you think about how traditional tv programming with commercials is old.
10. [STUDY] Facebook Defriending is on the Rise
    People are more prone to defriending, untagging themselves and deleting comments from friends on Facebook. There’s nothing strange with this. In the beginning, before people get used to having a digital persona, it’s sort of like a honeymoon. It’s fun and play. Since it isn’t serious, you add lots of people without thinking.

    This actually shows that digital personas are here to stay, and that people are starting to take them seriously. it’s a good thing.

TED Blog | Peter Weyland at TED2023: I will change the world The pop culture geek in me loves this awesome way of promoting “Prometheus”. It’s sort of a prequel...