Facebook

In an interview with the Guardian over the weekend, Google cofounder Sergey Brin said:

[…]he was most concerned by the efforts of countries such as China, Saudi Arabia and Iran to censor and restrict use of the internet, but warned that the rise of Facebook and Apple, which have their own proprietary platforms and control access to their users, risked stifling innovation and balkanizing the web.” There’s a lot to be lost,” he said. “For example, all the information in apps – that data is not crawlable by web crawlers. You can’t search it.”

It is interesting that “lost” is defined above as “not crawlable by Google’s search engine.” Framing the argument—as “what is in the best interests of users” versus what Google wants—would probably have helped his case. We are supposed to think that it is just a coincidence the two biggest corporate threats to Google are also the two biggest threats to humanity/the Internet. (via Slashdot)

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O.K., here is another Instagram story, but now its about the iOS app landing the No. 1 free app spot in the App Store for the first time—despite much media attention on the subject of it selling out to Facebook.

Hipsters everywhere donning their skinny jeans took to Twitter to post one last heavily filtered image, while threatening to delete their Instagram accounts after news broke earlier this week that social network giant Facebook bought the app for a cool $1 billion.

Many tweets and reports even detailed how to keep Instagram photos from Mark Zuckerberg’s acquisitive hands through export services like Instaport.me that essentially leave users free and clear to erase the Instagram app from their smartphones.

The public’s warning now seems empty, of course, as Instagram itself used Twitter this morning to announce its sudden surge in popularity. It looks as though the intense press scrutiny only encouraged the iOS app to soar up the charts. Meanwhile, its new parent company does not even sit in the top 25 free apps in Apple’s App Store.

[tweet https://twitter.com/#!/instagram/statuses/189845445458132992]

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TL;DR: By popular demand, we are rolling out 9to5Forums.com built on the Vanilla platform. As part of this new structure, we are moving our comments going forward to Vanilla, as well. Single sign up for both is quick and easy (including login with Twitter/Facebook/Open ID, etc.). Oh, and there will be prizes!

Long version:
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Probably not.

The “hacks” require the attacker to have physical access to your device (whether it be Android or iOS). That could be a speaker dock, a charging station, or a friend’s computer, but it still requires you to plug the iPhone into something compromised or give up physical access to it.

The issue, as Gareth Wright first discovered, is that Facebook stores saved account information in a plaintext file that can be transferred to another phone and used to log into your Facebook account without signing in. Other services, like Dropbox, were also shown to have the same vulnerability (but that is disputed).

This is why, when you restore a phone from a backup, you already have access to your Facebook app without having to sign-in again. Facebook attempted to dispel the concern by claiming that a phone would need to be compromised for this to work. That is untrue.

However, as we know, once someone with the right software has your iPhone, your information is pretty much his or hers to use.

[tweet https://twitter.com/chronic/status/188363051139989504]

The bigger issue here is the software that people use to access your data. It is free—and the process is very simple. I expect Facebook and Apple will probably make it more difficult in forthcoming updates.

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Like everyone else, Facebook is going Retina.

What’s New in Version 4.1.1

In this release, we added some features and fixed some bugs so now:
– You can go offline in chat
– The right profile picture appears for everyone
– Your list of friends always includes all your friends
– In sets of photos, your name is displayed correctly
– Photos of people who like Facebook Pages load correctly
– Your friend-request notification only lights up if you have a request
– You can change your language to Czech, Danish, Greek, Indonesian, Malaysian, Norwegian (Bokmal), Portuguese (Portugal) or Thai
– If you’ve got a new Retina iPad, you’ll see a crisp, high resolution interface
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Rejected twice for being too similar to Apple’s “Find My Friends” app, a new app from developer IZE called “Find My Facebook Friends” is now live on the App Store. The app essentially works the same as Apple’s, allowing you to see your friend’s location on a Google map. It also provides privacy settings to control who can view your location. The difference is rather than using your Apple ID and iCloud account, the app allows you to sign-in and invite friends through Facebook. We talked to the developers who told us the story behind why Apple rejected the app the first two times…

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Pictionary-like drawing game “Draw Something,” developed by OMGPOP, has quickly become one of the hottest mobile apps for both of the industry’s leading platforms. A few days ago, the developer told TechCrunch it reached 25 million registered users, 10 million active daily users, and close to 1 billion paid ad impressions every day. That is just over 5 weeks after launching. With even more press following reports that Zynga is in talks to acquire developer OMGPOP, the app is continuing to climb app charts in both the App Store and on Google Play.

Currently the app sits at No. 1 in both stores as the No. 1 Top Paid and Top Free iPhone app in the App Store, and the No. 1 Top Free app on Google Play. The app is also currently the No. 1 Top Free iPad app in the game category and in the Top 5 of many other charts in over 80 countries. It looks like the company might get picked up by Zynga, which is not surprising, because a gain of 3.5 million daily users over the last week saw Draw Something take over Zynga’s “Words With Friends” as the most popular Facebook Connect game, according to AppData.

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iUvuaChDEg]

According to Above the Law, the original iPhone jailbreaker, Geohot, was arrested for felony possession of marijuana while at an international border crossing on his way to SXSW. According to the report, the arresting border patrol officers may have been outside of their jurisdiction (and likely measured improperly).

[tweet https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/180262261535940610]

Before you rush to judge the guy, remember Steve Jobs’ thoughts on mind-altering substances (and phone hacking). If you have jailbroken using any of the “xxxRain” jailbreaking tools, you have used Geohot’s work. He also recently worked at both Google and Facebook (and Lady Gaga’s BackPlane).

He was still able to give his talk at SXSW, which is a pretty interesting (mp3). The full description is below:

According to an Apple filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission today, Tim Cook sold 20,178 shares of his company’s stock in a series of transactions over the past two business days. The sales started at $547 per share and climbed to $551 before the last transaction, which left Apple’s Chief Executive Officer with $11.1 million.

Cook, who earns a bit more than $1 a year in Apple salary, was awarded 1 million shares of Apple last year, which vest in 2016 and 2021. Those shares are now worth over half a billion dollars.

Apple is the world’s most valuable company with stock valued at $552 upon today’s closing bell and continued to climb in after-hours trading.

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In another display of how native apps are beating the web, the social networking behemoth Facebook revealed intentions to launch its first native chat client for the Mac. Put simply, it brings Facebook to your desktop and lets you chat with people without logging into Facebook.com in a browser. The company posted Messenger app for iPhone in August 2011 and today released the Facebook Messenger for Windows client, bringing the Facebook Chat functionality to beige boxes.

A Mac version will follow shortly. The Windows client requires Windows 7. Support for Vista is on its way and there are no plans for an XP version, the company said. If you are a daily Facebook user, you will want to integrate this handy program into your daily workflow. True, you can already set up a Facebook Chat account in iChat, as well as Pidgin, Adium, or other IM apps using the industry-standard Jabber protocol. If I were theatrical about this one, I would claim that the arrival of the native Mac client marked an important milestone in our daily productivity.

Bear with me for one more second…

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Apple responded today to the contacts-sharing issue with a statement indicating it plans to put some form of a setting on contact data that would allow users to control who views the data, similar to the way Apple locks down location data.

“Apps that collect or transmit a user’s contact data without their prior permission are in violation of our guidelines. We’re working to make this even better for our customers, and as we have done with location services, any app wishing to access contact data will require explicit user approval in a future software release.”

Congress became involved and probably motivated the move, but the legislative body is not going to like what it hears.

The problem is that iOS apps not only have access to a user’s contacts database (including addresses and notes), but apps also have full and unencumbered access to everything in the iOS app sandbox, such as pictures, music, movies, calendars, and a host of other data. Any of this content is literally open for developers to freely transmit to their own servers while apps are open.

(note that pictures with geotags will pop up a Location dialog which can be averted in code with some well known tricks)

Moreover, approved apps also have access to the iPhone’s camera and microphone, so apps can also take pictures and make recordings without permission (although, this would be easy to detect by the user with the light from the front camera or red bar during audio). Photos, videos, and audio are transmittable securely or insecurely up to servers that you and Apple do not know about.

To developers, this is no big secret. It is not trivial, but putting that kind of functionality into an app is straightforward and only uses Apple’s publicly available and blessed developer APIs (which means this stuff will not likely be detected by Apple’s App Store approval process).

Obviously, shady developers and even government entities are probably already using such apps to gather information. Therefore, these are some scenarios:

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-fU-knxT0U&t=1h1m55s&start=3720]

American politicians are in a hullabaloo over the 500,000 Foxconn low-wage jobs in China that they claim could be stationed in the United States, but no one seems to pay attention to the booming “App Economy” that created roughly the same amount of decent jobs stateside. Both sides of the aisle have made public statements on how the Cupertino, Calif.-based Company should bring its grueling $0.31-an-hour factory occupations home.

President Barack Obama reportedly once asked the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs, “What would it take to make iPhones in the United States?” at the Silicon Valley Summit last year, and Jobs allegedly responded: “Those jobs aren’t coming back.” The New York Times described why those positions are not returning last month. You can watch the Republicans, perhaps besides Ron Paul, be just as dumbfounded about the labor issue in the video above.

Bureaucrats can toy with the idea of stimulating employment, but innovation —the creation of new goods and services— is already boosting industries and small businesses capable of employing hundreds of thousands of workers at respectable wages. For example: According to Indeed.com, the average app developer salary in Palo Alto, Calif., is $119,000 a year.

“Nothing illustrates the job-creating power of innovation better than the App Economy,” contended a new NetTech sponsored study (PDF) released today. “The incredibly rapid rise of smartphones, tablets, and social media, and [apps] that run on them, is perhaps the biggest economic and technological phenomenon today.”

The Bureau of Labor Statistics is currently unable to track App Economy employment numbers. TechNet is a “bipartisan policy and political network of technology CEOs that promotes the growth of the innovation economy,” and it enlisted Dr. Michael Mandel of South Mountain Economics to conduct analysis from The Conference Board Help-Wanted OnLine database and track accurate employment statistics.

Dr. Mandel’s conclusions illustrated that the industries housed under the App Economy’s wide umbrella are responsible for an estimated 466,000 jobs (including spillovers not depicted in the above graph) across the states…

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So, you are sitting in a coffee shop and looking around you —wondering whom the blonde-haired person is sitting by the window or even the bearded hipster serving the latte. Well, “Highlight” is a free social network app for iOS devices that can now let you creep the world within your vicinity.

Facebook helps users to organize online relationships while exploring professional networks, but it cannot help them interact with those in the “real” world. Whether social networkers are in a –well– coffee shop, or even a restaurant, clothing store, entertainment event or conference, strangers constantly surround them. Anyone is connectable through shared interests or mutual friends, but it is difficult to know who is nearby.

To change this circumstance, install Highlight onto an iPhone and connect to Facebook. The app will alert users to other Highlight users up to a block and half away. From there, profiles with information pulled from Facebook are viewable, and Highlight users can even send text messages to such profiles.  The app essentially helps folks meet new people, while refreshing memory about past relationships and alerting users to friends who are nearby.

More information is available below.

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You are probably familiar with Shazam’s iOS app that lets you identify the name of the song being played, but today, Shazam launched a new iOS app called “Shazam Player.” Shazam Player is free and aims to be a more feature-packed alternative to the default iOS music player.  Shazam Player offers options like streaming lyrics; tour dates from artists, YouTube videos, artist biographies, and even the ability to buy new tracks from iTunes within the app.

Besides the ability to play music, Shazam Player can also identify songs similar to the original Shazam app can. From there, you can launch iTunes from within the app to preview or purchase the song. You can share music with your Facebook and Twitter friends. The ability to view tour dates and bios from your favorite artists right within the app is very cool.

Shazam Player certainly is not as lightweight as Apple’s music player, but it does add a great list of features. If you are big on listening to music, this might be the perfect app for you. Try Shazam Player in the App Store!

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TomTom unveiled a new version of its iPhone and iPad app at CES 2012 that utilizes data from social networks like Facebook and Twitter to provide users with enhanced navigation to friends, places, and events.

The press release does not provide much information on exactly how TomTom is using social network data, but the company claimed it would be a source for turn-by-turn navigation features baked into the current iOS apps. TomTom will obviously have to avoid user-generated data that might be inaccurate, but it is unclear what specific data the app will access. From the screenshots above, it appears you will be able to easily navigate to friends who have recently checked-in (with their location) to a social network.

The new app, version v1.10, will also allow you to share your destination and ETA through email, SMS, Twitter, or Facebook. Managing Director Consumer at TomTom Corinne Vigreux explained:

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vnhzuKcDo6A]

According to Winrumors, you can take out a Windows Phone 7 device (they say various Windows Phone 7s on any carrier) with a single, solitary SMS message with a [redacted at request of Winrumors].  Worse (or better?) yet, it doesn’t have to be a text, it can be a Facebook message or Windows Live chat.

The flaw works simply by sending an SMS to a Windows Phone user. If the SMS contains a particular string of text then Windows Phone 7.5 devices will reboot and the messaging hub will not open despite repeat attempts. We have tested the attack on a range of Windows Phone devices, including HTC’s TITAN and Samsung’s Focus Flash. The attack is not device specific and appears to be an issue with the way the Windows Phone messaging hub handles particular characters. The bug is also triggered if a user sends a Facebook chat message or Windows Live Messenger message to a recipient.

And you don’t just get a reboot.  When your phone comes hobbling back to life, the Messaging hub no longer works.  And other parts of the OS are wonky.

If a user has pinned a friend as a live tile on their device and the friend posts a particular string of text on Facebook then the live tile will update and causes the device to lock up.

The fix? Hard reset of the device.  Ouch.

In a totally unrelated note, the head of the Windows Phone 7 division was fired today. 
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5LOcUkm8m9w]

As we reported over on the sister blog, Google just launched Currents, their Flipboard/Pulse style reader for iPhone and iPad (and I guess Android too).  Head over for the details.  (Yes, 9to5Mac is a launch partner so look for us on the App!)

Google Currents is now available for download in Android Market and the Apple App Store for US users.

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Update: The Business Software Alliance has officially withdrawn their support for SOPA on the BSA blog. Important bits after the break.

So where does Apple stand on the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)? A report from TNW gives the impression Apple is in support of the bill via their association with the Business Software Alliance, who made their stance clear by commending the introduction of the bill in a recent bulletin. However, while Apple’s stance isn’t official, they do support SOPA by proxy, and haven’t made an effort to distance themselves from it with an official statement. The BSA is also associated with Microsoft, Adobe, Dell, and 20+ other large tech companies.

According to Apple’s website, “Apple works closely with the Business Software Alliance (BSA) and the Software Information Industry Association (SIIA) to combat software piracy worldwide.” They also provide links to report piracy through the BSA and provide the following statement on copyright law and piracy on their Piracy Prevention page:

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Skype announced in a blog post today a new version of its desktop client that supports Facebook0-to-Facebook video calls and other enhancements such as smoother video rendering on the Mac platform and group screen sharing for Windows users with a Premium subscription, which is currently available for Mac users. Users who are chatting one-on-one will also be able to screen share with live video streaming.

The Facebook video calling is obviously the most interesting feature. You could previously see your Facebook friends’ social feed, like posts and update your Facebook status from within the Skype app and now you can call them in-app:

Initiating a Facebook-to-Facebook call from within Skype is quite easy; all you need to do is connect your Skype and Facebook accounts. Then, select a Facebook friend and hit the video call button in Skype- your friend simply picks up the call from Facebook. 

If Skype weren’t such a unwieldy app, we’d be tempted to consider it as a replacement for Facebook clients. To get the aforementioned features, download Skype 5.4 Beta for Mac or Skype 5.7 Beta for Windows.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v=DO5GbYHv7HM]

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KQlPCflWP9k]

Last month, after the passing of Steve Jobs, the media exploded with stories and interviews of the former CEO of Apple. In the 60 Minutes interview with Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs had some rough things to say about his competitors Google and Microsoft. However, in an outtake that didn’t make the televised segment, Steve Jobs expressed some respect for Mark Zuckerberg and his social networking giant Facebook.

“We talk about social networks in the plural,” Jobs said to Isaacson, “but I don’t see anybody other than Facebook out there. Just Facebook, They are dominating this. I admire Mark Zuckerberg . . . for not selling out, for wanting to make a company.  I admire that a lot.”

In an interview with Charlie Rose that’s airing later today, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerbeg reveals that Steve Jobs didn’t just respect Zuckerberg, but coached him on how to build the right management team and focus his company.  “I had a lot of questions for him,” Zuckerberg says. The topics include, “how to build a team around you that’s focused on building as high quality and good things as you are.” 
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Two short months after Adobe released Photoshop Elements 10 and Premiere Elements 10 in boxed form for $99/each or $149 combo, the apps have now arrived in the Mac App Store, priced at $79.99/each.

Photoshop Elements 10 (App store) and Premiere Elements 10(App Store) became available overnight with the same functionality improvements that the box versions produced, including:

New Facebook features allow you to auto analyze your images to identify people and tag them based on your Facebook friends. Those tags are then carried over to Facebook when uploading from Elements. A new object-based search is one of the most impressive enhancements, allowing you to find images containing a particular object such as a house or vehicle.

Other features include auto enhance and color correct for video footage, allowing you to “Automatically boost tone and vibrance without affecting skin tones, or use sliders to adjust color with complete control”. You can now also paint 1 of 100 new paint effects onto specific photo areas, add new text effects, and immediately upload video clips to Facebook and Youtube. Learn more about all the new features in these latest releases here.

Screenshots follow..

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