Today’s Top Stories: Facebook Adds Organ Donor Status, Samsung Ships 93.8 Million Phones in Q1

Welcome to this morning’s edition of “First To Know,” a series in which we keep you in the know on what’s happening in the digital world. Today, we’re looking at three particularly interesting stories.

IDC: Samsung Is the Biggest Phone Maker by Shipments

According to the latest data from IDC, Samsung was the biggest phone maker by shipments in Q1 2012, followed by Nokia and Apple. Samsung shipped 93.8 million units, compared to Nokia’s 82.7 million, and Apple’s 35.1 million.

Facebook Adds Organ Donor Status to Timeline

Facebook has added the possibility to share your organ donor status on your timeline. You can also share your story about when, where or why you decided to become a donor.

UK Court Orders ISPs to Block The Pirate Bay

UK internet service providers must block the torrent search engine The Pirate Bay, the High Court has ruled. Five major ISPs have complied with the request, while a sixth ISP – BT – requested “a few more weeks” to consider their position on the matter.

“As a responsible ISP, Virgin Media complies with court orders addressed to the company but strongly believes that changing consumer behaviour to tackle copyright infringement also needs compelling legal alternatives, such as our agreement with Spotify, to give consumers access to great content at the right price,” Virgin Media told the BBC.

Source : Mashable Social Media

May 1, 2012 by Borneo Themes0

Facebook Timeline Changed the Way We See Brand Pages; Here’s How

When Facebook launched Timeline for brands last month, it wasn’t just marketers’ social media strategies that got turned upside down.

The new format also changed the way consumers experience brands on Facebook.

In a webcam eye-tracking study for Mashable by EyeTrackShop, participants spent less time looking at Wall posts and ads and more time looking at the cover photo on brands’ timelines than they did on their old Facebook Walls.

“The new Facebook Timeline limits the effective branding space, and the top portion of the page must be effectively utilized,” suggest the study’s authors.

EyeTrackShop recorded eye movements of 30 participants as they were shown brand profiles — before and after being converted to timeline — from the Dallas Cowboys, Good Morning America, “The Muppets” and Pepsi in 10-second intervals. What participants looked at on each webpage, for how long and in what order is recorded in the images below.

Results suggests a few ways our perception of Brands on Facebook has changed :

• Ads on Facebook Timeline are less visible than ads on Facebook Brand Pages. While 30%-40% of study participants looked at ads on brand Timeline pages, 80% looked at them on Brand Pages. In both cases, ads placed higher up on the page fared better than those below them.
• Cover photos are the new Facebook Wall (at least as far as attention goes). On brand pages, Wall posts were the star attraction. Viewers on average looked at them first and for the longest amount of time.On the brand Timelines, however, viewers always looked at the cover photo first. In all but one case, they spent a longer time looking at it than at Timeline content.
• Everyone will notice your cover photo. It’s larger than anything else and at the top of the page for a reason, and 100% of viewers looked at it. On average, they saw it in 0.5 seconds or less. Meanwhile, only 65% to 92% of viewers noticed profile photos on Brand Pages.
• Viewers see Timeline content last. In every case, viewers looked at either the left or right column of Timeline content last — after ads, navigation buttons and brand logos.
• Information that was invisible is now a focal point. Facebook moved the number of Likes, events and apps to prime top-and-center territory. It now gets more attention than when it was listed on the right-hand side of the page.In the case of Good Morning America, for instance, the show’s 585,000 Likes went from being completely ignored on its Brand Page to being the biggest attention-getter on its Timeline.
• Cover photos with faces attract the most attention. Good Morning America and “The Muppets” have cover photos with faces, whereas the Dallas Cowboys and Pepsi do not. The cover photos with faces attracted more attention.

Source from : Mashable Social Media

by Borneo Themes0

Twitter Is Exploring a Premium Version, CEO Suggests

Twitter might be developing a premium version of its service, CEO Dick Costolo indicated on stage at Wired‘s business conference in New York City Tuesday afternoon.

An audience member asked Costolo whether Twitter would ever introduce a “pro” version for individual users. Costolo refused to confirm that Twitter was working to develop one, but did suggest that it was an idea the company was exploring.

Costolo said he imagined a product with “lightweight controls” for users. “Our designers and engineers would define how that would work. I don’t know what it will look like,” he said.

He offered no further details about what the premium product might look like, nor whether Twitter is developing any premium offerings for brands.

What would you like to see in a pro version of Twitter? Let us know in the comments.

Source from : Mashable Social Media

by Borneo Themes0

Twitter Announces Improved ‘Discover’ Tab

Just days after releasing significant updates to its iPhone and Android apps, Twitter announced Tuesday its plan to upgrade its ‘Discover’ tab on both Twitter.com and its mobile apps.

Twitter introduced Discover in December as part of an overhaul to its website and mobile apps. The tab displays trending topics and hashtags, suggests people to follow and recommends stories based on your connections, location and language settings.

In a company blog post, Satya Patel, vice president of product at Twitter, says the company has improved Discover’s recommendation algorithm to surface more relevant and meaningful content. Stories will also be given “social context” — i.e., you’ll be able to see which of your connections tweeted about each story and what they had to say about it. This, says Patel, will help you “understand why each story matters to you and make it easier to join the conversation.”

The improved version of Discover will roll out to users on Twitter.com and Twitter’s apps for iPhone and Android in the coming weeks.

Source from : Mashable Social Media

by Borneo Themes0

Google Officially Launches Google Drive

We’ve heard the rumors for weeks, and seen leaked versions during an Android developer’s Google+ Hangout and in one employee presentation. But now Google Drive, Google’s cloud-storage service, is official.

Announced on the company blog Tuesday, the service will integrate with Google Docs and will allow you to access files from anywhere and collaborate on documents with colleagues.

Google Docs is built right into Google Drive, which means you can work with others in real time on documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Once you’ve shared content with someone else, you can add and reply to comments on anything (PDF, image, video file, etc.) and you’ll receive notifications when other people comment the items you’ve shared.

One interesting feature of the service is smart tagging, which allows you to tag items stored on your drive. So if you’ve uploaded a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge to your drive, the next time you perform a search for the bridge, your photo will show up along with other results.

Google Drive also uses image recognition — so if you drag and drop photos from your recent vacation into Drive, you can later search for locations you’ve visited and those photos will show up.

Using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology, Drive can also recognize text in scanned documents. That means if you’ve scanned in a page from an old book, for instance, you can search for words in that document.

When it comes time to access your files, the service can open a variety of different files types – 30 of them to be exact – within your browser, regardless of whether or not you have the required software installed. Supported file types include PDFs, HD video, and images from Illustrator and Photoshop.

You can install Drive on your Mac or PC , and use the service via an app on your Android phone or tablet. Google also has plans for an iOS app in the future. Blind users can access Drive with a screen reader.

Google is offering all users 5GB of storage on the service for free. If you need more than the 5GB, then it is offering several tiers of storage options.

You can choose to upgrade to 25GB for $2.49/month, 100GB for $4.99/month or 1TB for $49.99/month. When you upgrade to a paid account, your Gmail account storage also expands to 25GB.

Source from : Mashable Tech

Apr 30, 2012 by Borneo Themes0

Google Probe: Meet the FTC’s Secret Weapon

San Francisco — The Federal Trade Commission has hired an outside litigator to lead its antitrust probe of Google, FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said Thursday during a visit to the agency’s‘s Western Region office here.

The search giant is getting some serious treatment. This is the first time in at least four years the FTC has had anyone other than internal staff run a major investigation.

The outside litigator in question: Beth Wilkinson. She’s a partner at the international law firm Paul, Weiss and previously helped secure a conviction against Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. She will begin work on the Google case Monday.

“We want to bring in someone who is a world class litigator and has some antitrust experience and the trust of the commission,” Leibowitz told a small group of reporters.

Wilkinson previously chaired the white-collar crime group at the law firm Latham & Watkins. She also worked in-house for the mortgage company Fannie Mae for several years. Wilkinson began her legal career in the U.S. Army, where she achieved the rank of captain and was an assistant to the general counsel of the Army for Intelligence & Special Operations from 1987 to 1991, according to her bio page on the Paul, Weiss site.

Leibowitz announced Wilkinson’s addition to the FTC’s Google investigation team while in San Francisco visiting a number of startups and tech companies including Square, Mozilla and others.

The FTC is investigating Google’s search business for anti-competition infractions. The investigation does not necessarily mean the FTC will sue Google, but it does pave the way for possible litigation.

“In an important case, you want to do a thorough investigation and make sure you get it right,” Leibowitz said Thursday. “It’s sometimes a good idea to bring someone in from outside and we found out Beth was interested in coming aboard. The commission talked about it and we thought it would be great for the consumers we represent.”

Also Thursday, Google agreed to pay a $25,000 fine — less than the cost of a day’s lunch for its employees — for allegedly impeding a Federal Communications Commission investigation into personal emails and other data collected via the company’s Street View cars.

This article source from : Mashable US & World

Apr 28, 2012 by Borneo Themes7