Archivi Blog
Twitter simplifies search for Android, iOS and mobile web users
Today, Twitter announced an update for its search features for Android, iOS and mobile web. Furthering the company’s efforts for a more uniform user experience, the new updated adds a search button to the iPhone app, bringing it up to speed with its Android and iPad counterparts. Across the board users will be treated to improved search results for photos, tweets and accounts, along with a preview section for the Discover tab that takes a peek at the latest trends and activity. Wondering how all this magic works? Twitter’s Engineering blog describes the process by which pieces of content are ranked and scored based on factors like “burstiness” to account for recent interest spikes.
As for the Connect tab, it now defaults to Interactions, which displays new followers, mentions and retweets. However, if you’re not looking to keep track of who quoted your recent product placement rant, you can change your settings to Mentions only. Finally, and perhaps our most favorite new addition is a change to how Twitter’s mobile implementations handle links. You can now click a URL directly from your timeline without having to open the related tweet. The mobile site is already sporting the latest updates, but you’ll need to update your iOS and Android (it’s a manual update, thanks to a change in permissions) apps at their respective stores.
Instagram Officially Removes All Twitter Photo Integration
Since the disabling of Twitter cards by Instagram, the Instagram pictures service with inside Twitter has been a little strange, and was made by Instagram to attract users to its own web interface.
Now Instagram has taken another step which is a little more drastic to pull users to its service, and has now removed all twitter photo integration from Instagram.
From today onwards Instagram pictures on twitter will only work as links, and Twitter has confirmed that the removal of the photo integration is due to Instagram turning off support and not because of a glitch within Twitter.
The Twitter update on Dec 9, 3:10pm PST confirmed:
“Instagram has disabled photo integration with Twitter. As a result, photos are no longer appearing in Tweets or user photo galleries. While tweeting links to Instagram photos is still possible, you can no longer view the photos on Twitter, as was previously the case. “
Source: Gizmodo
Twitter si aggiorna anche su iPhone: moltissime novità nella nuova release 5.1!
Novità graditissime, su iOS, per l’applicazione ufficiale di Twitter, che segue a ruota quella aggiornata, nelle scorse ore, anche per i device Android. Con numero di release 5.1, anche su iPhone e iPad il popolare social network dei 140 caratteri migliora così la propria capacità di interagire con gli utenti, fornendo loro contenuti interessanti.
Tra le principali funzionalità introdotte, le più evidenti sono sicuramente quelle che riguardano le tab Scopri e Cerca. Per quel che riguarda la prima, ora i tweet appaiono direttamente nel flusso delle notizie, con tanto di foto, video e anteprime degli articol. Per quel che concere invece la seconda, quando si effettua una ricerca, un flusso di foto rilevanti apparirà in cima ai risultati, e anche qui, ovviamente, saranno presenti varie anteprime multimediali.
Twitter resetting passwords due to security threat
If you happen to get an email from Twitter prompting you to change your password, it might be best to go ahead and do just that. Twitter has reportedly sent emails to several users asking them to change their passwords because of a potential security threat.
The email reads, “Twitter believes that your account may have been compromised by a Web site or service not associated with Twitter. We’ve reset your password to prevent others from accessing your account.” No word on just what the threat is, but TechCrunch is reporting that its Twitter account has been compromised and was used by a spammer to promote some “work from home” scams. Voice of America, the external broadcast institution of the U.S. federal government, says that several China-based foreign journalists and analysts are reporting an attempted hacking of their accounts as “China’s Communist Party begins a sensitive meeting that will set in motion a once-a-decade leadership transition.”
At least Twitter is on the case and making sure that people’s accounts are safe.
Source Ubergizmo
Firefox introduces preliminary support for Social API, brings your networks into the browser
While you might use Firefox to access your social media of choice already, preliminary support for a new API has been introduced that could integrate key features into the browser itself. The aptly named Social API, will allow developers to embed services into the browser directly, letting you interact with friends and stay updated without having to open new windows, or keep hopping into different tabs. There’s no solid info just yet on how this will manifest itself, or how issues such as security and privacy might be addressed, but with testing beginning soon, we’re expecting the curtain to lift on the finer details soon. Interested developers can head to the source, for the other billion, you’ll just have to wait.
New York Times releases ‘experimental’ HTML5 iPad app, puts Twitter trends front and center
The New York Times isn’t beyond a little “experimentation” — not when it comes to iPad apps, at least. The old gray lady today is showing off its “experimental” iPad web app, an HTML5-powered reading experience available to digital subscribers with its Web + Tablet and All Digital Access packages. The app’s got four ways to consume all the news that’s fit to digitize, including the Trending format, which offers up the past hour’s top 25 trending stories on Twitter and the more traditional Today’s Paper, which recalls those days when people used to get their news from dead trees. More info can be found in the press release after the break, and if you’re on an iPad, you can access the site via the source link below.
Connected To The Case to use Facebook for crowd-sourced crime solving
Ready the spandex and decide on a name for your alter ego, because come October 16th, you’ll have the chance to fight crime from the comfort of your computer. On that date, the “Connected To The Case” website goes live with the aim of crowd-sourcing tips from its users to help the cops solve active investigations. You’ll use your Facebook login for access, as the service pulls data from your profile to prioritize cases with which you might have a connection. Morgan Wright, CEO and Chief Crime Fighter of Crowd Sourced Investigations, told us its system looks at five key areas when digging for pertinent triggers: “date, location, time, relation and demographics.” It then uses that data to tailor notifications of unsolved crimes based on — for example — proximity to your school, or where you used to work. Rest assured that you control the privacy settings, and if you’ve got useful info to share, you can do so anonymously.
Law enforcement agencies can register to include their cases from today, with the initial roll-out targeting the US. The plan is to expand first to other English-speaking countries, with foreign language support in the future to build a global network of internet do-gooders. Including data from other social networks is also in the pipeline, starting with Twitter and later, Foursquare and Pinterest. A smartphone app is also on the agenda, so get your detective devices ready — we can be heroes, if just for one click.
Twitter revamps its iPad app for expanded content, adds header photos and image streams
Twitter’s iPad app is sometimes the neglected stepchild of its mobile app family: newer features usually come to the Android and iPhone versions first and are handed down to the iPad later, if they come at all. The company is making amends for that in style with a major update to the iPad version as of today. Whether you like them or not, expanded tweets are now baked in and will optionally show some photos, videos and web links within the timeline rather than disrupting the entire experience. The Connect, Discover and Me sections we’ve seen elsewhere also come to the tablet-tuned app, albeit at the expense of more quickly finding direct messages and lists.
You’ll soon notice a much more visual spin on people’s profiles, regardless of whether or not Apple’s slate factors into the daily routine. Both the Twitter site as well as the official Android and iOS apps now show a header photo behind the bio to provide a little more color than avatars and background pictures can manage. If you’re on one of the mobile platforms, you’ll also see a photo stream in the profile that will help relive memories without hunting down individual tweets. The phone and tablet makeovers require an update to shine, so hit the relevant source link if you’re ready for a prettier (if not always more functional) social experience.
Twitter brings search autocomplete to the web, helps find Biebs tweets in record time
Twitter had been hinting at a big search update today, and that’s just what it delivered. Instead of the (quite frankly clunky) search results page, a search box at top now provides autocompleting search results that split into keywords and people. The system is smart enough to check for spelling gaffes and related searches, and results can drill down just to followed users rather than the entire social network. Autocompleting has been a mainstay of the Android and iOS apps for some time, but we’re glad to hear that web users can now track down their favorite recently graduated teen pop stars faster than ever.
Flipboard Now Available For Android
Flipboard has been an extremely popular application on Apple’s iOS platform, and the team behind the app have just released Flipboard for Android, it is compatible with Android devices running Android 2.2 Froyo and above.
Flipboard for Android comes with some new features which include support for Google’s social platform Google+, as well as support for many other social networks that include Facebook and Twitter.
Flipboard’s award-winning experience lets people see everything in one place. By bringing together the world’s stories and life’s great moments, you can stay up to date with the things that matter most. Flip through the news from your Twitter timeline as well as from outlets like the BBC, USA Today and The Verge. See everything from posts and photos shared by friends on Facebook and Instagram to videos from Stephen Colbert and pop culture nuggets from Rolling Stone. Find inspiration for your travel, style and life from places like National Geographic, Oprah and Cool Hunting.
You can find out full details about Flipboard for Android over at the Google Play Store.
Twitter tries to debunk hacker claims
Hackers posted five pages worth of usernames and passwords for claimed Twitter accounts to Pastebin this week. The hackers claim to be affiliated with Anonymous and to have stolen the username and password combinations from Twitter servers. Twitter is trying to debunk those claims.
The debunking won’t make most of us feel better though, twitter claims that most of the hacked accounts were deactivated spammer accounts. The fact that hackers were able to access Twitter servers and steal usernames and passwords at all should be enough to make twitter users nervous no matter the status of the accounts.
Hackers claimed that some celebrity accounts were among those compromised. However the list of user accounts and passwords contains more than 20,000 duplicate items according to twitter making it tech less effective than it seems.
via Mashable
Twitter app update brings improved discover, search and notifications to iOS and Android
It’s not like there’s any shortage of alternatives, but those sticking with the ooh-ficial Twitter app on iOS and Android woke up to a rather pleasant update today. Briefly, the company’s promising improvements to discover, search and notifications, with the new build allowing users to view “Activity” — described as a “stream of updates that shows which tweets are favorited or retweeted by the people you follow and which accounts those people follow or add to lists.” Search has also been made simpler in both programs, with the Connect tab allowing you to start typing the first or last name or username of the person you’re looking for and watching autocomplete handle the rest. Finally (and perhaps most importantly), notifications for Interactions are in place, enabling busybodies to know right away when a tweet has been retweeted or favorited. Hit up your market of choice to get the new bytes, or just visit one of the source links below. Your call — no pressure.
Twitter Open Sources Its MySQL Secrets
Over the years Twitter has been growing from strength to strength being powered by the open source MySQL database code. MySQL has allowed Twitter to keeps it database in control and manager the massive amounts of Tweets it needs to process on a daily basis.
The MySQL has been used in many free-software-open source projects in the past that require a full-featured database management system. But this week Twitter has announced they will now be giving something back to the MySQL community in the form of its MySQL contributions, adding Twitters knowledge to the open source community via GitHub under the BSD New license.
Twitter developers Jeremy Cole and Davi Arnaut explain on the Twitter engineering blog:
“MySQL is the persistent storage technology behind most Twitter data: the interest graph, timelines, user data and the Tweets themselves,”-“Since we believe in sharing knowledge and that open source software facilitates innovation, we have decided to open source our MySQL work on GitHub under the BSD New license.” “We look forward sharing our work with upstream and other downstream MySQL vendors, with a goal to improve the MySQL community,”.
Source: Venture Beat
Twitter Goes After Spammers With Federal Lawsuit
Any popular platform unfortunately will suffer from spam, Twitter has now decided to address Spam on its network, and has filed a Federal lawsuit in San Francisco against five companies which twitter says are the most aggressive tool providers for spammers.
Twitter has filed the lawsuit in an attempt to have these five tools shut down, and in the process they hope to reduce spam significantly on Twitter, by shutting down the tool providers.
While this is an important step, our efforts to combat spam don’t stop here. Our engineering team continues to implement robust technical solutions that help us proactively reduce spam. For example, earlier this week, our engineers launched new anti-spam measures within Twitter to more aggressively suspend a new type of @ mention spam. Additionally, we now use our link shortener (t.co) to analyze whether a tweeted link leads to malware or malicious content. This helps us prevent users from visiting malicious links and helps us shut down hundreds of thousands of abusive accounts. You can help out, too, by reporting and blocking spammers you encounter on Twitter.
It will be interesting to see how effective the lawsuit is at reducing spam on Twitter, and whether a bunch of other tools will pop up once these ones have been shut down.
Source Twitter
TweetDeck Receives A Major Update From Twitter (video)
Twitter has just rolled out a major update to its TweetDeck application, which brings with it a couple of features which were removed in its last update during December. Together with a number of new features and bug fixes.
New features within the new TweetDeck update provide in-line media previews, enabling you to view videos and images with less fuss as you read activity. However if the new feature is not for you it can be turned off under the “General” settings.
Twitter For iOS And Android Gets Updated
Twitter has released a new version of their Twitter mobile application for Apple’s iOS platform and Google’s Android platform, and the new version brings a range of new features to both platforms.
Both applications come with some new feature, Android gets support for a new range of devices which include the Kindle Fire tablet and the Barnes & Noble Nook Color and Nook Tablet, as well as some enhancements to existing features.
Twitter for iPhone now comes with copy and paste, a feature which had been removed in the past, they have also updated the design for direct messages, and the ability to change you font size, plus some other new features.
You can find out more information on all the new features in Twitter for Android and Apple’s iOS over at the Twitter Blog.
OS X Mountain Lion (10.8) in-depth preview
You can bid farewell to the days of Apple’s theatrical OS reveals — at least until OS 11 rears its head, anyway. In the meantime, the outfit has seemingly been content to strip away more and more pomp and circumstance with every subsequent big cat release. Lately, the company has settled into an evolutionary release schedule, eschewing full-fledged makeovers in favor of packing in lots of smaller changes, many of them quite granular indeed. It’s a trend that can be traced as far back as 2009′s OS X Snow Leopard (10.6), a name designed to drive home the point that the upgrade wasn’t so much a reinvention of the wheel as a fine tuning of its predecessor, Leopard.
The arrival of Lion (10.7), though, marked a full upgrade. With features like Launchpad and Mission Control, it seemed like it might be the last version Cupertino dropped before finally pulling the trigger on operating system number 11, and perhaps transitioning to something with an even stronger iOS influence. Right now, at least, the company’s not ready to close the book on chapter X, but it is giving the world a first peek at 10.8. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Mountain Lion.
Canon welcomes ELPH 530 HS / 320 HS, SX260 HS and D20 to PowerShot lineup
Alongside the new additions to Canon’s A-Series of digital cameras, the company is also giving more demanding consumers a similar outpouring of love with four additional shooters in the PowerShot family, which sport a diverse array of features such as WiFi connectivity, 20x optical zoom and rugged designs. Leading the charge for the ELPH lineup is the 530 HS. Along with the 320 HS, it features the ability to wirelessly upload images to Canon’s online portal, where users may then post their latest captures to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The ELPH 530 HS features a 12x optical zoom lens paired with a 10 megapixel sensor and is expected to retail for $349 in April. Meanwhile, the 320 HS delivers a 5x optical zoom lens and a 16.1 megapixel sensor. It’ll carry a $280 price tag and is set to hit stores in March. Both ELPH models feature Canon’s DIGIC 5 image processor, capture 1080p video and include a 3.2-inch LCD touchscreen.
Those who roll Rear Window style may want to check out Canon’s new SX260 HS, which packs a 25mm wide-angle lens that boasts up to 20x optical zoom. Like the latest ELPH’s, it also offers the DIGIC 5 processor and captures 1080p video. Unique to the SX260 HS, it features GPS for location tagging and a burst shooting mode that captures a continuous 10.3 frames per second. It’ll be available in March for $349 and is set to come in black, green and red finishes. Lastly, the D20 offers up a few ruggedized features for outdoor enthusiasts. It features underwater shooting abilities (including a specific macro mode), and is also said to be shock-proof and freeze-proof — no mention of it tolerating heat, though. The D20 incorporates a 12.1 megapixel sensor, captures 1080p video and features a 5x optical zoom lens. It also offers GPS, but unlike the other cameras here, it uses the DIGIC 4 image processor. If you’re considering the D20 for your next adventure, it’ll be available in May for $349. You’ll discover more about these four additions in the PR, after the break.
Gravity 2.50: rilasciata la nuova build 7028
Jan Ole continua a rilasciare periodici aggiornamenti di Gravity, l’applicazione di social networking dedicata ai possessori di uno smartphone Symbian. Nelle scorse ore è stata rilasciata la nuova build 7028 che introduce ulteriori miglioramenti all’applicazione dedicata alla gestione degli account di Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Google Reader e Flicker.
La nuova build 7028 introduce i seguenti cambiamenti:
- Corregge i memory-leak in Foursquare
- Corregge i memory-leak nell’anteprima immagine
- Corregge il bug del crash della tastiera
- Corregge i problemi della tastiera fisica di Nokia N97, N97 mini ed E6
La più recente build di Gravity può essere scaricata collegandosi a questo indirizzo.
Twitter gets a new look: faster, simpler, cleaner (Video)
Are you someone who has yet to jump on the Twitter bandwagon because it’s just too darn complicated to use? Well, the time to spread your tweeting wings has come, because the service has just done a redesign of its web portal and mobile apps around four new tabs — “Home”, “Connect”, “Discover” and “Me” — that make for a less complicated and more streamlined experience (sound familiar?). Twitter’s new threads will be rolling out universally over the next few weeks, though the Android and iPhone apps have already been refreshed. All you 140-character mavens can head on past the break for a video of the new look or hit the source links to learn more. For those of you in need of an even simpler Twitter interface, well, we hear there’s a guy with a rotary phone who can deliver just what you’re looking for.
