Children's Safety on Facebook

Facebook has recently admitted that their response rates to complaints regarding pornography and harassment are poor. The social networking site will now be changing their conduct to ensure that children are protected from inappropriate content and Paedophiles.

Social Networking websites and the internet in general have been a playground for molesters that use these to prey on children. Last summer, Myspace in the US removed thousands of users from its network after being pressured by the US government.

Facebook will now be changing its procedures regarding complaints involving unsolicited approaches and inappropriate content, all thanks to New York attorney Andrew Cuomo who carried out his own investigation after receiving numerous complaints. As per Facebooks chief privacy officer "the attorney general pointed out some weaknesses in our complaint-handling process (...) what he has directed us to do is renew our vigilance around complaint handling."

Facebook's new procedures will involve:

• Fast-track and priority to any complaints to do with nudity, pornography and unwelcome approaches;


• Quicker responses to any complaints of these nature, they will be aiming to respond within 24 hours, and demonstrate their actions within 72 Hours;


• Warnings concerning the risks of social networking would be presented to perspective members before signing up;

An independent examiner should also be monitoring the effectiveness of these new procedures, nevertheless alot more could be done on Facebook, but it does seem to be a good first step.

http://www.tetridia.com/1075

Anja Glauch is the co-founder and managing director of Tetridia Ltd. She began her career in Information Technology more than 11 years ago. She is leading the companies Online Marketing, Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimisation activities.

Myspace, Facebook, and Windows Live Spaces-5 Internet Safety Tips for Parents

The popularity of social networking sites like: Myspace, Facebook and Windows Live Spaces is overwhelming and rapidly increasing. According to Wikipedia, Myspace has over 168 million users worldwide, Facebook has 19 million users and Windows Live Spaces has over 120 million users.

Social networking sites offer many benefits to their users, from sharing personal profiles and communicating with people of similar interests to finding romance and relationships.
These sites serve many useful functions, but there are several dangers young people face when using them.

The most alarming set of dangers comes from online sexual predators seeking to lure your children into inappropriate sexual situations. These online sexual predators comb these social networking sites looking for adolescents and children who willingly provide personal information and will naively engage in intimate online conversations with them.

5 Safety Tips to Protect Your Children From Online Sexual Predators:

o Keep your family's computer in an open area, like the kitchen or family room.
Try to use the internet with your kids when possible.

o Talk to your children about their online habits. Explain to them the reasons why it's important to keep personal information, i.e. phone number, address, name of their school and where they work to themselves. Any information that could be used to locate them offline should not be shared.

o Learn as much as you can about the internet and the kinds of sites your children are using, so you can keep up with their surfing habits and maintain an understanding of the types of danger they are facing.

o Remind your kids that once online information is posted, it stays on the Internet forever. Even if your children delete the information from a site like Myspace, older versions can exist on other people's computers.

o Only allow your children to post information that you and they are comfortable with others seeing and knowing. Many people may happen upon your child's page from teachers, to potential employers and college admissions officers.

Social networking sites like Myspace, Windows Live Spaces and Facebook are popular places for your children to network and communicate with friends. But, to protect their safety and your whole family's privacy, you must teach your children to exercise caution. You should also communicate with them constantly about their online use and educate yourself and your children about the dangers facing them online.

Helpful links for concerned parents:

http://onguardonline.gov/index.html,
http://www.getnetwise.org

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites

Coming Soon:

Internet Security Tips for the Home User-Part 3

Jason Dick is an Internet Security Specialist. Mr. Dick is a Tier-3 certified antivirus technician with extensive experience creating customized antivirus solutions for new and resistant spyware and virus infections. In addition, he has spent several years consulting with the average home computer user helping them get the most from their Internet Security Software. He is currently writing a series of articles entitled "Internet Security Tips for the Home User" to share his knowledge and expertise.To follow Jason's entire series and read a multitude of other exciting and up-to-date articles on Internet Security

visit: http://home.stopsign.com

TYT Hour - April 28th, 2010

New Facebook Page(!): www.facebook.com Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com TYT Network (new WTF?! channel): www.youtube.com Check Out TYT Interviews www.youtube.com Watch more at www.theyoungturks.com



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hDSbzKTaDE&hl=en

DownzUp.Net - Sketch sur Facebook de Jérôme Commandeur

Facebook dans la vraie vie... Mort De Rire... Partager la sur Facebook , ce serait rigolo downzup.net



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QV1y_If-r4&hl=en

Velocity 2010: Tom Cook, "A Day in the Life of Facebook Operations"

Tom Cook (Facebook), "A Day in the Life of Facebook Operations"



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-Xr_PJdNmQ&hl=en

The Funny Facebook Status

Two years ago, the Facebook status was nothing more than a novelty on a growing social network called Facebook. Now, the importance of having a funny Facebook status is such that large companies are employing people with marketing savvy and expertise to write their promotional messages and paste them into their Facebook status updates. How did this come about?

The Facebook status - some history

Facebook used to serve the purpose of a social network between University students. Famously, Harvard University was the first to have access to the network, and it soon grew to encompass all of the major campuses in the USA and globally. One of the novelties of each person's Facebook profile page was their 'status message'. Its format was simple:

Danny is XXXXX

Where 'XXXXX' means exactly what that user decided to say about themselves. All of the Facebook statuses were therefore in the third person, and they produced a quite boring range of response. 'Danny is eating pizza'. 'Danny is watching a movie'. This formatting gave users a dilemma. It was not flexible enough for them to enter the types of information which they wanted to share with their colleagues and friends, and so usage of this function was relatively low.

At the same time as Facebook received a global rise to prominence, another social network was becoming more and more popular. Twitter billed itself as a 'micro-blogging' platform, and was in effect a company built around a similar form of status updates. The difference, however, was flexibility. Twitter users were not forced to use the third-person to describe their thoughts or feelings, in fact they just had an empty box in which they could write whatever they desired.

The concept was simple, but the service exploded in popularity. Twitter suddenly had the world talking, and the Facebook status appeared to be dying away.

By this time, Facebook had become the world's largest social network. They could not help but notice Twitter's rise in terms of global branding, and they needed to adapt. This happened with a clear move by the developers to strike at the core market of Twitter. Facebook redesigned their 'home feed' page - the page that users see when they log in - and included a huge amount of prominence to status updates. Also, they had removed the need for users to use their own name in their updates, and thus removed the 'third person' restriction.

The results were staggering. Facebook's page views experienced an increase such that Twitter had experienced just months before. Users were becoming interested in what people were doing 'real time' - users noticed that Facebook had also put more of an emphasis on posting its users' statuses as fast as possible into their friends' home feeds, meaning a comment which they made could be discussed almost instantly, a la Twitter.

The other prong to the Facebook attack was to add a 'like' button to all items on the Home Feed. This added the 'user vote' system, which meant that statuses which had more 'likes' were displayed on more users' pages. This again meant that the importance of having a funny or amusing Facebook status was paramount - if you could get users to click on that button you were confirming yourself as a trusted and influential user of the system, and for marketers, this is extremely important.

If you log in to Facebook today, you will notice that a far greater number of people are using status updates. There are newer functions coming out which will further enhance this system, such as 'friend tagging' within statuses and more. The importance of having a funny Facebook status will only continue to rise, and with it, Facebook's standing in its position as the world's most powerful social network.

Sammy is a technology author who writes about Facebook and loves a good funny Facebook status. He changes his more than five times a day.

Tips For Developing Facebook Games

The Facebook Platform has created a whole new market for online games and start ups such as the Social Games Network (SGN) and Zynga. I wrote about developing Facebook Applications a while ago as a overview of my experiences. Some of my apps are games and some are not - I'm a game developer so I prefer making games.

While going through my blog traffic data, I saw search terms specifically about developing games on Facebook. That leads me to believe that someone is looking for information about that. I have some of that knowledge to share!

I generally make games for Facebook using Flash and ActionScript. There really isn't a good way to make really interactive games using web languages and Flash is fairly powerful for 2D casual game experiences. You can find a list of the Facebook games that I've made or had a hand in from my developing Facebook Applications article.

There are basically three real games on that list: FlipCup Challenge, Sam's Solitaire, and Sheep Tycoon. Sheep Tycoon is by far the prettiest because there was a real artist on that project - the other two I just slapped some art together to get the game out quickly. I'm not really an artist.

Using Facebook API From Flash

Figuring out how to best make calls to the Facebook API from Flash was one of the first things we had to deal with. In Sheep Tycoon, the high score table shows up in the Flash part of the game opposed to FlipCup or Sam's Solitaire where I just did it in PHP. There are a whole bunch of Flash Facebook API's - I didn't like any of them.

The solution we came up with is to make a 0x0 iframe - basically invisible - on the canvas page and load a PHP script that would do all the Facebook API calls. So, if we needed to add a new high score to our database, we would load the script in the invisible iframe. This works for sending notifications or doing any sort of Facebook API call.

Getting the Friends

Although I didn't find doing this all that complicated, I did see a search term for it in my traffic data. The easiest way to accomplish this is to just get the user's friend ID's in PHP and then passing it into the game using flashvars. I don't see many cases where the user's friend list will change while the game is being played. Once you have the friend ID's in the game you can do whatever you want with it. We used it to show the list of your friend's high scores in Sheep Tycoon.

The game takes the friend ID's from flashvars. When we need to get the high scores, we pass the same ID's to our PHP script that does all the database work and then returns the data in XML form for Flash to read.

Dealing with High Scores

You can display the high scores inside the game or you can display as a PHP page. I will generally opt to do the latter because there are less steps involved. PHP will get the data and display the data while Flash has to call a PHP script to get the data and then display it. However, displaying the high scores as part of the game itself is a better experience.

The semi-tricky aspects with high scores is how to record them and assign global ranks to each player. I've used time as a tie-breaker for scores that are identical. If you got the score first, you will stay above the person who got the score second. MySQL has been our database of choice and you can use ORDER BY with more than one field so it would be: ORDER BY score, time.

In FlipCup Challenge, each user has a global rank that is determined by their high score. This rank changes as players get new high scores. Updating everyone's global rank every time someone managed to get a new high score didn't seem like a good idea.

Firstly, to calculate the global rank, I figured out the number of rows that had a score higher than the score we are looking to get a new rank for. With that information, we'll know that the rank will be something lower than the row count. We then find all the scores that are the same as the score we are using and then determine where it fits in there. With those two pieces of information we can calculate the right rank.

In order to make sure the scores are correct when anyone goes to look at the Scoreboard in FlipCup, we also update the ranks of all your friends when your rank changes. Global ranks are also recalculated every time you view the Scoreboard page. This will ensure that all the global ranks will be correct when someone is viewing it.

I'm sure there are better ways for determining global ranks than this but, for FlipCup's purposes, it works fine. The main objective was to make sure the pages loaded fast so the code had to do the work quickly.

Experiment

Game development on Facebook is still in infancy. I'm not aware of many sites dedicated to providing information about games and Facebook. The games themselves are still rather primitive as most don't really tap into the potential of social networks. I believe social networks are a powerful tool that can help spread new games and game ideas.

I have not looked much into development on the "new" Facebook even though I have switched to it and my links above point to the new Facebook. My apps are still working fine so I am not too concerned. The marketing and growth of apps are going to be affected. The chance of a Zombies-esque app proliferating is very unlikely in this new environment.

I will continue to create games for Facebook and other social networks. There are some ideas I have floating around - some of which I am working on. Experimenting with different ideas is the best any of us can do as this is a new road to travel.

Tommy Leung
http://www.supertommy.com/blog/

Facebook Helped Free NY Teen

There are many types of WildBlue customers who use Facebook for many different reasons. Some use it to keep in touch with old friends, others use it network, and then there are the people who use it to tell everyone their daily plans and thoughts kind of like twitter. But for 19-year-old Rodney Bradford a Brooklyn NY native Facebook saved him from going to jail for a long time.

On October 17 two people were robbed at the housing complex were Bradford lived after a quick investigation police arrested Bradford for the crime even though he and other witness said he was innocent. After spending 12 days in holding, the detectives on the case finally checked out Bradford's alibi that he was at his father's house in Harlem during the robberies. Even though the story seem to check out police still were not sure he was innocent of the crime up until they checked his father's computer, which showed that Bradford had sent a message to his girlfriend on Facebook. The message was sent one minute before the crime took place back in Brooklyn, in the message Bradford asked his girlfriend where his pancakes were.

After verifying that it was from him the police released Bradford and dropped all of the charges. Had he not posted that one message on Facebook at that exact time Bradford would still be in jail and on his way to face trial for armed robbery. Even though he may have been proven innocent at a later time, just by sending that message it saved the city, and taxpayers money and the detectives further embarrassment had the case gone to trial.

While Facebook continues to serve as a melting pot where many people gather and give daily insight into their lives. It also seems to help people prove themselves innocent from any wrongdoing.

There are many types of WildBlue customers who use Facebook for many different reasons. Some use it to keep in touch with old friends, others use it network, and then there are the people who use it to tell everyone their daily plans and thoughts kind of like twitter. But for 19-year-old Rodney Bradford a Brooklyn NY native Facebook saved him from going to jail for a long time.

Facebook Flirting

The good thing about Facebook as opposed to those on line free and paid dating sites is you get a better glimpse of one's personality. They are out there interacting with others with no lame written profile that may or may not be true. You have references that come in the form of friends. You don't get that on a dating site. Facebook flirting is by far safer and actually more effective than the dating sites. You just have to perfect it, it is an art form to a degree.

So how does one go about flirting on Facebook? It's simple, it's just a matter of commenting on a post. It may be a post of someone that sparks your interest or it may be a friend commenting on the original posters post. I have many a times commented on a friend's post where one of his or her friend's commenting sparked my interest. The result usually is a new connection.

Think in terms of everyone has single friends, brothers and sisters. The more you broaden your network, the greater your chances are. Pay attention to the comments, wait for the opportunity and toss in your witty, humorous Facebook flirt. This process will not progress as quickly as it could on an on line dating site, but anticipation often builds the attraction. The result is more than likely better quality matches and dates. Flirting on face book can get the ball rolling and greatly increase your dating life.

So go ahead and try some Facebook flirting, you have nothing to lose. If you can flirt in a text you can certainly succeed at flirting on Facebook. More and more couples are hooking up on Facebook. Don't just sit back and wait, take some action, try some Facebook flirting.

I am a single woman very active on facebook. I have experienced success with getting dates on facebook by the simple art of being able to spin some pretty good flirty words, much like flirting with text messages. It is fun and I have been sharing this with others both men and women of all ages. For more details on how to make facebook work for you in your dating life, visit here. http://www.squidoo.com/facebookflirting

The Way Facebook is Taking Over Your Internet

Previously, it was Google. Now it is Facebook. This month, Facebook has surpassed 350 million users which is a BIG figure. According to Alexa rankings, Facebook is number two on the most visited website list around the world. Google is number one. The graph of Facebook's growth has been nearly exponential. Yahoo, the previous biggest website has announced that they will implement Facebook connect all over their website. So the users who would have used Yahoo log ins earlier can now log in using their Facebook ids. This will fuel Facebook's growth further and lead to Yahoo's demise probably.

How do you explain this massive growth of Facebook? I feel it is still undervalued as a company. They price it only at $10 billion to $12 billion, which is low in my opinion. Even if the revenues are not substantial enough to price it at a higher level. But the fact that everyone and his/her friend is on Facebook speaks a lot. People share their entire lives on the website with what they are doing, photographs, events, debates, discussions, etc. They spend hours on end playing the various games and apps. One reason for the massive growth is the website is clean and free of ads (to an extent). And you don't get errors like you get at MySpace. MySpace is declining because it's quite user unfriendly these days. On Facebook, you can control your privacy settings to a very high extent, which is a big plus point.

The emergence of the application platform has further added to the growth. Apps like Farmville have over 60 million users which is more than the total number of Twitter users. Facebook's growth will slow down a bit because slowly everyone in the connected world will be on FB. But by then it will have taken over the Internet and prove to be a parallel force to the might of Google.

The author is a keen follower of the social networking scene. He also writes quizzes and works on free wallpapers in his free time.

LOST Parody #12 - AVATAR

John Locke returns to the Island, but is it Pandora? More LOST Parodies: www.youtube.com Our Main Channel: www.youtube.com Our 2nd Channel: www.youtube.com Our Twitter: www.twitter.com Our Facebook: apps.facebook.com Written, Directed, and Most Voices by Benny & Rafi Fine www.TheFineBrothers.com Special Effects by WillHundredPercent http Hurley by Eadge! Action figures made by Mcfarlane Toys: www.spawn.com lost parody avatar spoof funny comedy finale thefinebros james cameron season 6 harry potter



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7b9A4ukseZ8&hl=en

Facebook - Applications and Fan Pages

It has now been over a year since the social media "hype" began. If you are an internet marketer, e-marketing strategist, smo consultant, online organization, website owner or an entrepreneur you must have come across the term social media or social networks. The entire business scenario is being now dictated by social networks. Each day we witness new changes in the trends and thousands of social networking applications are developed.

Facebook is without a doubt the leading social site at the moment with a colossal user base and a gigantic list of apps to its name. The platform is rich in features which are essential for social media marketers in order to promote their business and increase their overall monetization worth. Facebook applications and Facebook Fan Pages are considered to be the two most effective and highly used SM tools. Social media consultants maintain the view point that in order to develop a sound social media campaign for your business, Facebook apps and Fan Pages are a must.

Facebook Applications - Why does your business need one?

Facebook Application is the best way possible to kick off your social media campaign. Facebook apps play a major role in not only promoting your business but also in improving your monetization value and in generating greater revenue. The trick with Facebook applications is to make it as engaging as possible. Why is that necessary? The amount of engagement you bring about in your application will directly affect how viral it becomes.

By being viral I mean that how many people who use your Facebook application will recommend it to their friends? Remember that the core concept behind social networks is to share, socialize and connect! Facebook application development is offered by many firms. It is best to get a custom Facebook application developed by some professionals so that your application can best suit your product.

Facebook Fan Page - What? Why? How?

If you are wondering what a Facebook Fan Page is or that how does it helps your cause or that why you need one, read on to find the answer!

Facebook Fan Page is a great way to interact with your clients, fans and consumers. It can be thought of as a single page website where you can involve with the people who use your product or services (fans). The best thing about a Fan Page is that your customers feel more connected and personalized with you. This is highly effective in terms of brand maintenance and improving your market repute.

Customized Facebook Fan Pages are developed which make use of photos, videos, applications etc so that the page looks alive and entertaining. It can be used to promote new services, get feedback on existing products and know what your targeted audience really needs! A Fan Page can prove to be a great resource if used wisely. Hold competitions and offer freebies! The possibilities are endless to what can be gained for a Facebook Fan Page.

It is quite evident that social media has become the key element in marketing and Facebook equips you with the best set of possible tools to promote your services and brand. Facebook Guru is a social media consultancy that provides app development for social networks. For further info visit our website http://www.facebookguru.co.uk

Inside Gaming: Killzone in 3D, Microsoft shakeups, Retro Goodness (Machinima Video Game News) S06E33

www.youtube.com Click here to watch the last episode of Inside Gaming! Inside Gaming: Killzone in 3D, Microsoft shakeups, Retro Goodness (Machinima Video Game News) S06E33 Killzone goes 3D, industry shakeups and some retro goodness, today. This is Inside Gaming for May 29th, 2010. Check out our Facebook app at apps.facebook.com ! - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Follow Machinima on Twitter! Machinima ‪twitter.com Inside Gaming ‪twitter.com Machinima Respawn ‪twitter.com Machinima Entertainment, Technology, Culture ‪twitter.com FOR MORE MACHINIMA, GO TO: www.youtube.com FOR MORE GAMEPLAY, GO TO: www.youtube.com FOR MORE SPORTS GAMEPLAY, GO TO: www.youtube.com TAGS: Inside Gaming IG news machinima dead pixel Adam Kovic twitter youtube facebook yt:quality=high Killzone Kill Zone 3 3D Splinter Cell Conviction Sam Fisher Robbie Bach Jay Allard Microsoft Zune XBox360 Xbox 360 Natal Insomniac EA Sony Resistance Rachet Clank Playstation Bungie Gears War Alan Wake DLC Writer Signal Lost Mac Half Life 2 Steam OS X MAG Massive Action Game PS3 Uncharted 2 The Lab Naughty Dog Dragon Age Wardens Fall Halo Reach Blur Sark COD Black Ops Mass Effect Film Bruce Willis Vin



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChBkE0Fc1TQ&hl=en

FaceBook Or Bebo?

Which should you use? Both websites have their own advantages and disadvantages to why a user may or may not use the one and choose to use the other. Lets first look at Facebook. Facebook is a clean looking website that offers you the ability to chat with friends any where around the globe, however this isn't in real time and is done in a forum posting sort of way with the users writing on each others walls. One of the main points that Facebook really hammers Bebo on is the search function which on Facebook displays the people on your friends lists and closest geological position first where as the Bebo search function is terrible.

Facebook has its flaws however and by flaws I mean many. Not only does it seam as if when you log onto Facebook it takes a long while for you to be able to explore on your own page but also when viewing your own or others pictures Facebook seams not to respond and nothing happens.

Now onto Bebo which is an acronym for 'Blog early, Blog often' I don't really think that Bebo is used for blogging in the way the creator thought it would have been but its used more like Facebook to keep up-to-date with friends and so on.

Both Facebook and Bebo have similar features, however Bebo blows Facebook out of the way with customisability, instead of looking at the same boring and bland profile layout Bebo members are able to create their own skins and then display them on their page.

Normal users can make their own and use them but most of the skins for Bebo have come from users with a graphic knowledge who make these skins for Bebo for free.

In my opinion if looking at a bland slow and boring social network appeals to you then Facebook should be a weapon of your choice however if your looking for a cool and funky profile then a Bebo page that offers you the chance to pick your own skins for Bebo should be your choice.

I Love Bebo Skins and I think allowing members to create their own layouts is much better than having to use the standard boring layout forced on you by facebook.

a great site for free bebo skins that i have found is http://www.wantaskin.com