Recently in Social Networking Category

SNAP. Select. Send. Sending photos instantly from your camera phone to the Web isn't entirely a new thing. Blackberry or iPhone users can install Facebook for mobile which allows photos to be sent instantly to one's profile. Depending on how fast your connection is , of course. (But that's what 3G is for, right?) But not all people carry Blackberrys and iPhones. Yet, most people today can't be caught dead carrying a phone that doesn't have a camera. So basically, Globe is eyeing a bigger market for PixLink since it works with m ost Nokia series 60 phones, those Sony Ericsson Cybershot units and Windows Mob ile handsets. Pixlink uses compression technology from a company called PixSense. Which promi ses to send files faster and then un-compresses them so it retains the original resolution when posted on Facebook, Flickr, Blogger and Picasa. So unlike most file-s haring sites that reduces file size (ergo, lower resolution) in order to send f iles faster - it's free anyway so they wouldn't want your pics hogging their se rvers - there's a good chance your pictures will appear clearer when your frien ds view them online. Unfortunately, I'm a Blackberry user and PixLink isn't available yet for my dev ice and the iPhone. The service is also on free trial right now and Globe isn't telling yet how muc h it costs. I'm guessing users will be charged per picture sent. And yes, it's not just Facebook. So if you think you just took the perfect prof ile shot, and you have money to burn, then post it right away to all your socia l networking accounts.

By Glenn Chapman AFP SAN FRANCISCO--The first US Internet president is an online sensation, triggeri ng a tidal wave of Web traffic as he officially seized the nation's reins on Tu esday. Millions around the world commented, Twittered, posted and prayed as they watch ed Barack Obama's inauguration live on the Internet, pinning their hopes on a n ew world order and era in American politics. Akamai Technologies, which specializes in assuring that websites don't crash un der the weight of heavy online traffic, saw digital content streaming surge to record levels -- more than two terabytes of data per second. "Take a busy day for Akamai and double it, that is where you are," said Akamai corporate communications director Jeff Young. "It was an immense online streami ng day." Akamai said its EdgePlatform was streaming more than seven million v ideo feeds, most of them live, at points during Obama's acceptance speech. "In addition to the historic nature of the Inauguration, it is now clear that t his event has driven unprecedented demand from a global online audience," said Akamai marketing vice president Robert Hughes. During the inauguration, the number of Haiku-style updates fired off by users o f Twitter leapt fivefold, the micro-blogging service said. "Overall, Twitter sailed smoothly through the inauguration but at the peak, som e folks did experience a 2-5 minute delay receiving updates," a Twitter blog en try said. "We'll be analyzing this later today so that during the next massively shared g lobal event there is no appreciable delay. Exciting!" Hot social-networking website Facebook said the rate of profile page updates su rged, peaking at an unprecedented 8,500 per minute during Obama's speech. Facebook and CNN had teamed together to let viewers post comments or other upda tes to their social network pages while watching the news organization's online broadcast of the inauguration. A contributing factor to the online popularity of the inauguration was likely t hat the swearing-in of Obama took place when many people in the United States w ere at work with computers and high-speed Internet. "The Internet is more mature; broadband adoption has grown, and the galvanizing nature of the inauguration all played a part," Young said. "Combined with it being 11:00 am on a Tuesday, when the East Coast is in the of fice, the West Coast is getting to work and Europe is home online." Millions scrambled to sign in, watch the trailblazing proceedings live from hom es or offices... and air their views for the entire world. One US blogger said the National Mall, where the ceremony was held, was once a slave market and that the White House was built by black slaves. Others feted the entry of the first black man in the White House. "You stand today as a beacon of hope for the world," wrote Farayi Makwanya from Britain. "Change has come to the US and indeed to the whole world. People of a ll races are smiling..." Unflattering references to Obama's predecessor George W. Bush quickly clogged u p the blog sites. A post on the New York Times site said the "brass band picks up as if to drown the boos" accompanying Bush and outgoing Vice President Dick Cheney. The frenzy was not without dangers. Hackers were using dozens of fake websites linked to Obama's inauguration to sp read a virus on the Internet, Panda Security warned. More than 70 websites are running a bogus news story titled "Barack Obama has r efused to be a president," aimed at tricking Internet users into downloading th e computer virus, according to Panda. It said the cyber-attack appeared to have originated in China, based on analysi s of the website domain names, which were all bought by a Chinese company linke d to previous cyber-attacks. In India, the world's largest democracy, messages of hope flooded the website o f NTDV, one of the country's top television channels airing the proceedings liv e on the Internet. "Eight years of seeing things as black or white have resulted in two possibly f ailed wars and a tarnished reputation the world over," wrote a man who identifi ed himself as Siddharth. NDTV said Obama would have a "clearer shot at greatness than any of his recent predecessors," precisely due to the burdensome legacy he was inheriting from Bu sh. Obama is saddled with recession and has to deal with wars in Iraq and Afghanist an and the threat of terrorism amid a historic transfer of power. "But in great crisis lies great opportunity," it said. A viewer wrote in the New York Times that while the hope invested in Obama was a "little unrealistic," sometimes "people need a hero and a little blind faith. "Obama is the man! The worst president ever will be followed by the best," he w rote.

By Izah Morales INQUIRER.net YOU may be too trusting as you go and click on the link that you see on your fr iendâs site only to find out that the link was a malware. During the Cybersecurity: Protecting the Business forum, Vu Huy Nguyen, field r esearch consultant of McAfee Avert Labs said that social networking sites are n ow becoming more vulnerable to attacks since the users within the networks are trusted. âBe suspicious. Be wary. Itâs more of protecting yourself. Users should be awar e and beware. When they let the guard down, thatâs when attack happens,â Nguyen said. According to Nguyen, Asia faces these unique threats because users are often na ïve. He also said that the high growth in Internet users in Asia resulted in higher rate of cybercrimes. âEighty percent of the malware attacks are money-motivated,â explained Nguyen. Nguyen attributed the high rate of cyber crime to the lack of government regula tion and laws for some Asian countries. Also, he related that governments react to cybercrimes depending on its severit y. In the United States, the National White Collar Crime Center, The National Publ ic Survey on White Collar Crime in August 2005 stated that regulatory agencies attended to only one out of seven incidents of Internet fraud. In the 2007 Internet Crime Report, the National White Collar Crime Center, Bure au of Justice Assistance of the Federal Bureau of Investigation recorded 206,88 4 cybercrime cases, with Internet auction fraud as the most reported offense, f ollowed by non-delivered merchandise. Meanwhile, in the Philippines, the anti-cyber crime bill also known as "Cybercrime Prevention Act o f 2008" is yet to be passed into a law.

By Anna Valmero INQUIRER.NET MANILA, Philippines â Yahoo! Philippines launched September 30 the Yahoo! Open Strategy to rewire itself and open up its assets to third-party developers and help drive innovation and differentiation in terms of its products and services . Yahoo! Open Strategy product management Cody Simms on the Yahoo! developer b log that the new initiative is âYahoo!âs big bet to deliver open, industry- leading platforms that attract the most publishers and developers." Sau Sheong Chang, head of engineering of Yahoo! Southeast Asia explained during an interview with INQUIRER.net that the Y! Yahoo! Open Strategy âaims to marry the best of the Web with what Yahoo! has internally. This will provide a holis tic and consolidated platform for developers to grow applications in the curren t Yahoo! backdrop.â Currently, the Yahoo! developer group is very much US-centric but with this new initiative, the company aims to tap developers and grow strongly in many count ries, including the Philippines. This means a huge opportunity for the local developer community who can develop applications built on Yahoo!âs existing products. Chang said: âI think the Phi lippines has a very strong developer community. The skill set is very suitable to what is needed by Yahoo! and to what the company is providing to the communi ty.â Filipino developer Andrei Mariduqui Navarro proved this when he joined the Yaho o! Open Hack at Silicon Valley earlier this month. At the cradle of technology innovation, Navarro joined Web developers from around the world to develop APIs and Web services for Yahoo! With his experience at the event, Navarro believed that âFilipinos who have the passion for innovation can develop their ideas an d present it in a global platform.â For him, technology is universal and is an open avenue for everyone with creative ideas for Web applications. Though specifically targeted at open source developers, the Yahoo! Open Strateg y is said to benefit users. âYahoo! users can benefit by having more variety in the services available to them and within this singular âstarting pointâ, they can access an Internet gateway to additional services and functions for other providers,â said Chang. This singular starting point aims to provide users a more social, more customiz able and personally relevant Yahoo! experience. This will also mean more local offerings to countries like the Philippines. Chang noted that these localized a dd-on feature to the Yahoo! services are currently in the works. At present, the companyâs top two applications in the Philippines are the Yahoo ! Mail and the Yahoo! Messenger. Jojo Anonuevo, general manager of Yahoo! Phili ppine Operations, said the Philippines alone captures âabout more than a quarte r of the total mail trafficâ generated by the six countries in the Southeast As ia. In terms of Yahoo! Messenger usage, the country ranks second in the region. âYahoo! does not have the monopoly of ideas for our Web services so we want use rs and developers using our products develop their great ideas to enhance the Y ahoo user experience. Ultimately, this benefits the consumer,â said Chang. The Southeast Asia Yahoo! Developer Network site can be accessed at http://developer.yahoo.com

WATCH this video interview with Miriam Quiambao done by online videographer Jan ie Octia. Quiambao shares her thoughts about blogging, Facebook, YouTube, and how she's using technology in her life. Quiambao was 1999 Ms. Universe first r unner up. She also recently p osed for Playboy Philippines.

By Erwin Oliva INQUIRER.net IF you're tired of using Twitt er (because of the annoying downtime mainly), you might consider flocking t o Plurk. After discovering this on Mas hable, I took the plunge and created a profile. A service almost like Twitt er, Plurk looks, er, cuter. Its interface shows a timeline of messages posted b y users. You can respond quickly to any user using a pulldown menu. As in Gmail, you can see the threads of discussions among users. No need to put @(name of twitter friend) You just click on a friend, and send your message. I t's that easy. You can also send private messages, post cute emoticons (which o ne user suspects is similar to Yahoo! emoticons), and choose one of Plurk's col orful verbs. By colorful verbs I mean literally verbs in different colors. The word "says" is in orange, "loves" in red, and so on. I started plurking today, and I found a lot of people/friends starting to move to Plurk. So because I've gained more friends, I have earned some karma points. Yes, you earn more karma points by being an active user (completing your prof ile, adding friends, etc.). If you get more points, you'll be given access to s ome special emoticons, among others. Let's see how this new micro-blogging sens ation will last when it becomes as popular as Twitter. Plurk me.

By Lawrence Casiraya INQUIRER.net NOTHING brings people together from different parts of the world more convenie ntly than the Internet. So in order to foster collaboration among its more tha n 175,000 employees, Accenture took its cue from popular social networking sit es like Friendster and Facebook and created its own social networking tool called Accentu re People. Everyone in Accenture from CEO Bill Green down to employees has created his or her own personal profiles. The site, however, isnât really made for sharing p ersonal details but rather knowledge within the company. Or primarily, as in the case of Annbel Tierro (shown here with her personal pr ofile behind her on the screen), who heads Accentureâs systems integration bus iness in the country, it at least gives her an idea who sheâs talking to when doing conference calls with fellow Accenture executives from different locati ons. The site was created by a team of Filipino developers headed by Michael Duff (s hown pointing at his picture). Duff, a project manager for Accenture Philippine s, keeps a blog wherein he shares programming âtips and tricksâ with the rest o f the Accenture network. In fact, he says he recently got a call from someone w orking for Accenture in London, asking for his help. Social computing is one of the major technology trends Accenture foresees takin g off this year. With a dose of Filipino software skill, the company is simply practicing what it is trying to preach.

HERE'S a Reuters video report on social networking site Bebo's new Open Media platform.