6 posts and columns on ID

Don't Want to Sign In to Yahoo? That's Okay, Use Your Facebook or Google ID.

in Social on January 18, 2011 at 11:12 am PT

Yahoo this week will begin allowing users to participate on its properties without signing in to a Yahoo account. It’s a significant move for the company, which had for a long time incessantly popped up login screens whenever visitors tried to do seemingly anything on the site.

Voices

Why Facebook Carded Some Users

in News on November 18, 2010 at 5:00 am PT

On Tuesday, Facebook discovered a bug: An automated system designed to detect spammers and people with fake accounts spun out of control, and started challenging a wider set of regular users. It disabled some people’s accounts, and asked them send in a copy of their real-world ID. Facebook said the issue only affected a “fraction of a percentage” of the social network’s users, and they fixed it within hours. The company also deleted all the ID information that some people sent in.

Twitter Firehose Too Intense? Take a Sip From the Gardenhose or Sample the Spritzer

in Social on November 10, 2010 at 11:21 am PT

Twitter is well-known for carefully metering out access to its Firehose, or the real-time stream of all its users’ tweets. Last year, Google reportedly paid $15 million for access to the Firehose, Microsoft $10 million, and Yahoo joined later with a cash and revenue-share deal.

Voices

Facebook Says User Data Sold to Broker

in News on November 1, 2010 at 8:15 am PT

Facebook Inc. said that a data broker has been paying application developers for identifying user information, and that it had placed some developers on a six-month suspension from its site because of the practice. The announcement, which Facebook made on its developers’ blog Friday, follows an investigation by Facebook into a privacy breach that The Wall Street Journal reported in October.

Macworld ’09: All About the Mac, iLife ’09, Faces and Places

in News on January 6, 2009 at 9:09 am PT

An appreciative Phil Schiller welcomes the crowd and thanks everyone for showing up. He says it’s an incredibly exciting time for Apple, and offers a quick overview of Apple’s new retail stores. Says Schiller: This year’s Macworld will be all about the Mac. I’ve got three new things to tell you about. Subject No. 1 is iPhoto.

New Clues About Missing Aviator Fossett–Whom the Internet Has Tried to Find–Discovered by Analog Hiker

in News on October 1, 2008 at 5:32 pm PT

A man hiking in a remote part of Mammoth Lakes in California’s Sierra Nevada found a pilot’s license and an FAA card, both bearing the name of aviator Steve Fossett. The discovery is about 50 miles away from Nevada desert locations where teams had been searching for the well-known adventurer, who vanished while on a solo flight in a single-engine Bellanca Super Decathlon a year ago. After Fossett’s disappearance, tens of thousands of Web users mounted an unusual online search mission, called “crowdsourcing,” studying satellite photos of a huge swath of ground.