Facebook photo tag suggestions: What's so bad about them anyway?

By Rachel King | June 9, 2011, 4:00am PDT

Facebook recently rolled out a new facial recognition feature for its Photos app. Like many new Facebook features, this one has stirred up controversy immediately.
Initially, the feature asks Facebook users to match faces and friends, after which Facebook should automatically remember those features and tag users in groups far quicker. Of course, that isn’t foolproof. It also has a lot of people talking about privacy standards on Facebook again - to the point where European Union data-protection regulators have launched an official probe to see if this has broken any laws.
While it probably hasn’t (at least stateside), it certainly has tongues wagging about whether or not this invades privacy further. Personally, I don’t have a strong opinion one way or the other. My first instinct and action was to disable the service, which seems to be the pattern with almost any new Facebook feature these days. Users really should be allowed to opt-in to services and see how they work before being thrown into them head first. (Literally this time.)
PROS:

• Tagging multiple photos of the same people is far easier
• Saves time and energy when tagging photos
• Only friends can tag other friends in photos

CONS:

• Photos of you that you might not want tagged will be
• Photos not of you might get tagged as you accidentally
• Even more people you don’t want seeing photos of you could have access to them
• It’s just another way to waste time on Facebook instead of doing something more productive

The last point is the most subjective, but it’s definitely true to some extent. How do you feel about Facebook’s face recognition feature for photos? Should it stay or go? Or does it even matter?
 source : ZDNET

HP's TouchPad tablet with Wi-Fi coming July 1

A model for AT&T's network is due this summer

By Matt Hamblen

June 9, 2011 01:36 PM ET

Computerworld - The HP TouchPad tablet running WebOS will be available in the U.S. on July 1, starting at $499.99 for a 16 GB, Wi-Fi version, HP said today.

AT&T will also sell a cellular wireless version of the tablet "later this summer," HP said in a statement. No details on pricing for the AT&T version were announced.
The Wi-Fi version will also include a 32 GB model for $599.99. Retailers will include Best Buy, Staples and others.
HP said the Wi-Fi version will be available in the U.K., Ireland, France and Germany a few days after going on sale in the U.S., and in Canada in mid-July. Sales in Italy, Spain, Australia, Hong Kong, New Zealand and Singapore will "follow later this year," HP said.

 The TouchPad's display measures 9.7-inches, the same as the iPad, the clear market leader in a crowded field of tablets. HP said in February that the WebOS will set its tablet apart, including its tight integration with other products running WebOS, including its phones, printers and eventually PCs. http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9208859/HP_launches_first_run_at_the_tablet_market
Optional accessories sold separately for the TouchPad include a Touchstone charge dock, a wireless keyboard and a case.
In a statement, Jon Rubinstein, general manager of the Palm unit at HP, which is behind the WebOS, called the new tablet "only the beginning of what HP's scale can do with WebOS."
source : Computer World

Google Panda update 2.2 coming soon

Google is making more changes to its search algorithm, the company reportedly confirmed at the SMX Advanced conference in Seattle this week.
According to Search Engine Land, which puts on the event, Google's Matt Cutts said that his company plans to launch Panda version 2.2 at some point in the near future. The update will reportedly tackle the issue of sites that republish content being placed higher in search results than the original source.

Google launched a Panda update earlier this year. At the time, the company's goal was to improve results on queries that had previously been dominated by content farms, like eHow and Answers.com, that wrote SEO-friendly stories that contained little actual value to users. (SEO stands for search engine optimization.) In a blog post announcing the change, Google said that it would affect 11.8 percent of all queries.
"This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites--sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful," the search giant wrote in a blog post in February. "At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites--sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on."

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20070336-17/report-google-panda-update-2.2-coming-soon/#ixzz1OqOcVtDz

Google, Facebook promise new IPv6 services after trial

By Carolyn Duffy Marsan

June 9, 2011 05:07 PM ET

Network World - One day after completing a successful 24-hour trial of IPv6, Facebook, Google and Yahoo said at a joint press conference that they would begin permanently supporting this upgrade to the Internet's main communications protocol on some of their key websites.

Joined by two content delivery networks -- Akamai and Limelight, which also pledged their commitment to IPv6 deployment -- these popular websites proclaimed the World IPv6 Day trial to be a resounding success. All three companies said they had handled a significant increase in IPv6 traffic on June 8 without suffering serious technical glitches.
IPv6 features an expanded addressing scheme, so it can handle vastly more devices connected directly to the Internet than its predecessor called IPv4. However, IPv6 is not backward compatible with IPv4, which means website operators have to upgrade their network equipment and software to support IPv6 traffic.
DETAILS: No news is good news on World IPv6 Day
Google said it has decided to leave its main YouTube website enabled for IPv6 for the time being. Since 2008, Google has supported IPv6 on separate websites -- such as www.ipv6.google.com -- rather than on its main websites.
"We saw 65% growth in our IPv6 traffic on World IPv6 Day," said Lorenzo Colitti, IPv6 Software Engineer at Google, who pointed out that Google added IPv6 support to several new services including Orkut for the trial. "This event has really been successful in galvanizing the community."
"At Facebook, we saw over 1 million of our users reach us over IPv6," said Don Lee, senior network engineer at Facebook. "There were no technical glitches in this 24-hour period. We were encouraged by the many positive comments on our blog. ... It is really interesting to see how passionate people were about IPv6 around the world."
Because of the positive results from World IPv6 Day, Facebook has decided to support IPv6 on its Website for developers, which is www.developers.facebook.com.
"We will continue to adapt our entire code base to support IPv6," Lee added. "IPv6 will allow the Internet to continue its amazing development."

For more detail read source :http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9217508/Google_Facebook_promise_new_IPv6_services_after_trial
 

Microsoft must pay $290m for patent infringement

9 June 2011 Last updated at 23:37 GMT

The US Supreme Court has denied an appeal by Microsoft against a $290m verdict for infringing a small Canadian company's patent.

The company, i4i, sued Microsoft in 2007, saying it owned the technology behind a text manipulation tool used in Microsoft's Word application.
The technology gave Word 2003 and Word 2007 users an improved way of using a document's contents.
Lower courts had said Microsoft wilfully breached the patent.
They ordered the world's biggest software maker to pay up, and to stop selling versions of Word containing the infringing technology.
'Clear and convincing' Microsoft claimed a judge used the wrong standard in instructing the jury that decided on the award, and said the judgement should be overturned.
It pushed for a lower standard of proof of infringement to be used instead, arguing that the level of proof usually required to overturn a patent in the US was too high.
Defendants in US patent suits are required to show that 70-80% of the "clear and convincing" evidence supports their case.
Microsoft argued that they should only need to show a "preponderance" of the evidence - more than 50% - was in its favour.
However, the Supreme Court said the "clear and convincing" standard was the correct one.
Prior to the decision, President Obama's administration had called for the court to uphold the higher standard of proof.
Microsoft said in a statement: "While the outcome is not what we had hoped for, we will continue to advocate for changes to the law that will prevent abuse of the patent system and protect inventors who hold patents representing true innovation."
Microsoft now sells versions of Word that do not contain the technology in question.
Loudon Owen, chairman of i4i, welcomed the outcome: "Microsoft tried to gut the value of patents by introducing a lower standard for invalidating patents.
"It is now 100% clear that you can only invalidate a patent based on 'clear and convincing' evidence."

Source :BBC Business News