networking

Report: Facebook axes third-party app Audio over copyright issues

VentureBeat reports that Facebook has removed a popular application from its third-party developer platform over potential copyright issues. The application, called Audio, allowed users to upload MP3 files and share them with their friends--yup, that's a recipe for copyright disaster.

Facebook had already axed the app once before, according to the article. It appears that Audio had been created by a single developer, not an existing company.

<>As VentureBeat's Eric Eldon points out, this shows that Facebook is taking terms-of-service violations seriously when it comes to the Platform, which was launched in late May and catapulted … Read more

Iomega unveils new members of its StorCenter line for small businesses

Iomega announced today three new members of its StorCenter Network hard drive family. All three offer a built-in media server, an on-board print server, Active Directory support, a journaling file system, and EMC Retrospect backup and recovery software, as well as two external USB ports for hard drives or printers.

The 1TB product comprises two 500GB drives and supports RAID 1, RAID 0, and JBOD. The 500GB and 750GB versions each contain just one drive. All three use 7,200rpm SATA-II drives with 8MB of cache. They also offer a gigabit Ethernet connection.

Both Macs and PCs are supported, as … Read more

Facebook experiencing 'upgrade' outages

Tried to visit Facebook today and had no luck? It appears that the social-networking site has been experiencing some growing pains. No one in CNET News.com's newsroom was able to access the site starting around 10 a.m. PDT.

Some experienced a time-out while others were met with the message "We're upgrading. We'll be back soon."

Is Facebook down for you? Working for you? Redirecting to MySpace.com? (Just kidding.) Let us know.

UPDATE (11:24 AM PT): Facebook has updated its home page with a new message that says "Facebook is temporarily … Read more

Facebook blocks 'Gay' as last name, but don't push panic button

If you're the hottest dot-com in the Valley--as Facebook undoubtedly is--you're going to come under occasional scrutiny. Over the past few days, it's been circulating around the Web that the social networking phenomenon won't let people sign up with the last name "Gay," which has led to accusations of homophobia.

Online LGBT hub GenerationQ put it in the harshest of terms, pointing out that "you're allowed to be Hitler, but don't even try being Gay on social networking site Facebook."

There is indeed reason to find Facebook's blocking of … Read more

Visual: How not to use Facebook

I count this as one of social networking blog Mashable's greatest accomplishments: installing as many Facebook Platform applications as possible onto a single profile and then taking a screenshot.

I've copy-pasted the screenshot below, but I'm warning you, it's enormous. Scroll down at your own risk.… Read more

Rate your friends online

Do you have the urge to tell your friends how much you like them or maybe dislike them? Now you can share your feelings about them on community Web site FriendChart, which debuted this week in beta. The site slogan is "Your friends at glance".

Interested? I wouldn't do it. It's OK to put yourself out there--that's a personal choice. But to expose your friends and rate them, that's drawing a line, at least for me. I haven't even thought about my friends in terms of scores.

In an example of one rating, … Read more

TrustedOpinion: Another spin on recommendation services

Here's yet another way to harness the wisdom of the crowd for your personal gain: TrustedOpinion, a recommendation engine that creates product ratings based on reviews that are weighted by the writers' proximity to you in your social network.

Your friends' opinions carry the most weight. The opinions of their friends (your friends-of-friends) carry less. Your friends-of-friends-of-friends still less, and so on. The thinking being that you're more likely to trust your friends' takes on product reviews than those of people you don't know. If you want, you can control the weightings even more, individually scoring people … Read more

CNET News.com feature: Judge unimpressed by case against Facebook

BOSTON--The judge's message Wednesday to ConnectU over its intellectual property lawsuit against fellow social-networking site Facebook was clear: show us the evidence.

ConnectU, which accuses Facebook of stealing its ideas, has been in legal pursuit of its rival, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and early employees Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, Andrew McCollum and Christopher Hughes for nearly three years, and there still isn't an end in sight.

Massachusetts Federal Judge Douglas P. Woodlock repeatedly stressed that there was simply not enough evidence to back up allegations that Zuckerberg, who had performed programming work for ConnectU while it … Read more

Judge gives ConnectU founders two weeks to revise Facebook complaint

BOSTON--A federal judge in a Massachusetts district court gave the founders of college-based social networking site ConnectU two weeks to revise the complaint that they have filed against Facebook, its CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and four other early employees of the fast-growing social network. The ConnectU founders, twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and their fellow 2004 Harvard graduating classmate Divya Narendra, have accused Zuckerberg and his company of stealing their code and business plan when Zuckerberg was casually employed as a programmer for ConnectU in the 2003-2004 academic year.

Judge Douglas P. Woodlock, during the case's dismissal hearing on Wednesday … Read more