Internet Evolution editors find the best, worst, and most interesting social media, Internet, and mobility news of the week and serve it up in one sizzling slideshow.
This week, zombies attacked Michigan, the president signed a huge cybersecurity bill, Chubby Checker's career took a legal twist, and one intrepid BBC reporter discovered the challenges of having even a fake girlfriend on Facebook.
Got a good Friday File candidate to share? Tell us in the comments.
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Zombies Attack Michigan
Some Michigan residents feared for their lives on Monday, when hackers took over at least two television stations' emergency broadcasting systems and claimed "dead bodies are rising from their graves." Instead of watching ex-lovers battling on The Steve Wilkos Show or a purple dinosaur on Barney and Friends, some viewers called the authorities to find out whether the report was true. Orson Welles would have loved to see Night of the Living Dead come to life -- so to speak.
Facebook has now become a kind of platform through which any news or post which you want to spread, can go viral in no time.This feature will particularly benefit the businesses I suppose ,because it will multiply their fans or followers if they choose the promote option for their updates.And as far as the promotion costs are concerned,I believe that they will seem nothing in front of the profits and huge fan following that they will enjoy afterwards.
Mitch, there's already plenty of companies that keep track of all the required taxes -- including Amazon, which did it for Target. Basically any company with a brick-and-mortar presence in a state has to collect sales tax for that state. Amazon is already collecting sales tax for Idaho even though it doesn't have a point of presence. Like anything else, you buy software to do it or do it through a service.
Have to say I'm a little surprised to see the Heartland Institute quoted as though it's a legitimate source. It's a conservative think tank that never met a government program it liked.
I hate to be mean, but those Michigan natives who feared the attack of the living dead must have been brain-dead themselves.
Oh, who am I kidding? I love to be mean.
I got one of those emails from LinkedIn saying I'm in the top 5% of LinkedIn users. It's less impressive when you consider that the overwhelming majority of LinkedIn accounts -- as with most social platforms -- probably belong to people who don't use the service at all.
I love that Bill Gates photo. It's from his boy-band years.
Facebook wants to charge users to promote other people's posts (rather than one of their own)? That's actually a pretty good idea. It's more gracious than self-promotion, certainly.
That sales tax proposal has the potential to choke Internet retail in a tangle of blue tape. Imagine having to keep track of taxes in 50 states, plus the District of Columbia, plus federal and local taxes.
I'm sure there's a Chubby Checker/Do the Twist joke here somewhere that would be completely inappropriate to Internet Evolution. So let's just forget it.
I was surprised when a well-versed, tech-astute friend posted something about the Chubby Checker lawsuit, stating his surprise that HP created an app with this name. I quickly corrected him--but it emphasized the danger companies face when they operate these app stores and sell these smartphones and tablets. Of course, HP had absolutely nothing to do with the development of this app; it merely sold it, along with thousands of others, on its Palm device. But it's certainly a warning for other app store operators out there!
I know, it's so silly. The fact that a few (thankfully, only a few) people called police about the "scare" is beyond me. The first few times this happened -- when hackers warned drivers about 'Zombie Invasion Ahead' on highways -- was kinda cute. Now it really is passe, I totally agree!
Another week, another purported zombie invasion no thanks to hackers. You'd think people would be smart enough to recognize a hoax or a prank when they see one.
Will there be no end to all this zombie madness? I used to find it funny (who didn't?) but I think it's time people stopped, so these hackers would stop doing these kinds of pranks that might induce mass panic.
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The Memorial Day weekend begins with Geek Pride Day on Saturday. Kick off your holiday with nine news tidbits that are perfect for sharing at backyard BBQs and poolside get-togethers.
At the IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit here in Nashville, I'm hearing many stories about how businesses have adapted their IT strategies in response to this rapidly changing, pressurized, data-driven commercial world.
Neal Stephenson is best known as the author of science fiction novels such as SnowCrash and Anathem. But he does other things as well. Among them: He's assembled a team of scientists and engineers to figure out how to build a 20-kilometer-tall tower to use as a platform for launching rockets into space.
While interstellar travel presents huge challenges, it's "almost inevitable," according to a speaker at the Starship Century symposium here in San Diego.
Facebook's Graph Search may face some profound challenges and risks, first, because Facebook users haven't been thinking of their posts as product reviews; and second, because Facebook will now have to contend with the social-network equivalent of SEO "gaming" of results.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
What can users today do to protect their online privacy? The simplest and most obvious option is to not use the Internet – at all. However, once all digital information is consolidated over the Internet, trying to protect digital identity by simply unplugging from the Internet becomes impossible – a fact that has manifest implications for civil liberties, Saunders says.
By 2011 the number of Internet-connected sensors will exceed 1 trillion, making your chances of doing anything or going anywhere unnoticed pretty much zero. Saunders talks about how the 'sensortization' of the Internet is eliminating the traditional divide between online and offline populations.
The 20th Century Internet was characterized by the ability to interact with other people and information on the Internet largely without anyone knowing who you were. The Internet of this century, conversely, will be defined by identity. Saunders explains how Internet users are unwittingly contributing to the demise of the anonymous Internet.
A recent release of the popular TweetDeck app for Twitter power-users gives new life to software that had previously taken a wrong turn. Here's a quick walk-through of the new TweetDeck, to show you why it should be at the top of your Twitter toolkit.
Michael Brutsch, a.k.a. Reddit's Violentacrez, is a creep who posted borderline kiddie porn to the Internet anonymously, and got fired when outed by a media outlet. It's a cautionary tale even for people who aren't jerks and predators.
Marissa Mayer at Yahoo has come out with her strategy on turning the company around: culture, company, calibration, and compensation. But Yahoo needs to have a technical approach to the mobile cloud opportunity, not a management theory lesson.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
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