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New Media News Every Morning

Bing Creeps Me Out With Twitter Recommendations

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After being thrashed by Google’s Instant search, it looks like Microsoft has come up with a new strategry in order to subplant the search engine king.

With Twitter growing to more than 145 million accounts, finding interesting people to follow can be difficult. People Recommendation on Bing Social helps you discover interesting and relevant Twitter users based on your searches. Whether someone is “Influential” and helping shape the conversation or “Popular” like a celebrity, the new Twitter User Recommendation feature helps to identify Twitterers related to your query. (Bing Community Blog)

Excluding the fact that Twitter already has a similar feature on Twitter.com, Bing’s tweet recommendation feature could help Microsoft challenge Google for search supremacy (the latter who owns the web).

A few users however may not enjoy have Bing! play tweet match maker based on search queries (as it does sound kinda creepy to have a search engine company “know” your tweet preferences).

Bing! has not indicated whether they will port this feature upon Yahoo! (which they recently assimilated), although as of right now there is no word on if they will include Facebook in the near future (which would give Bing! one leg up over its Google foe).

Originally posted on September 20, 2010 @ 4:41 pm

Virus Attacks Google On Orkut

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Unless you live in India, Brazil or the geekosphere, you probably have never heard of orkut, which is Google’s official social network which (sadly) never became popular in the US.

Anyways it seems as if a new virus has hit the service, which isn’t good news (especially with Facebook attempting to dethrone orkut in the nation of a billion minds).

Anyway, as for the Bom Sabado worm, it is a JavaScript based worm that spreads itself through Orkut scraps (the Orkut equivalent of a Facebook wall scribble). The worm is an auto generated message which might look like just another scrap from your buddy. The scrap actually embeds a malicious JavaScript code which infects the profile of the person as soon as he opens the scrap page. Soon after this, the code is executed and it will make the user join bot communities automatically. The worm then starts posting similar scraps to the user’s friends using his name, thereby spreading itself. The worm also steals browser cookies. (TechTree)

While orkut is not a stranger to these types of attacks (after all, even Facebook gets hit with these every once in a while), Google may want to consider curbing the spread of this attack by temporarily freezing accounts affected.

Although orkut will probably have everyone’s scrapbook cleaned up within a few days (or a week at the latest), users should be careful whenever receiving strange links from friends online, and if suspicious should probably pick up the phone and call to verify whether the hyper link is safe.

Originally posted on September 27, 2010 @ 1:19 pm

Can Bing! Save Firefox?

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Unless you live outside of the geek-o-sphere, you probably did not realize that Mozilla recently added Bing! as a search option to Firefox.

Today Bing and Firefox announced that Bing will be included as one of the search engine choices within Firefox on both the Mac and PC.

We’re very excited to be included in the search engine choices in the upcoming version of Firefox.  Having Bing in the “out of the box” list makes it easier than ever for the Firefox community to experience the benefits of Bing.

We expect the Bing option to show up in an upcoming build of Firefox 4. (Bing! Community Blog) [Read more…]

Originally posted on October 7, 2010 @ 1:44 pm

Would You Buy An HP Slate Over An iPad? (Video)

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Despite the fact that HP is already working on perfecting the PalmPad (HP’s “iPad Killer”), the company is (surprisingly) also launching a Windows 7 Tablet as well.

There is still no word on when HP will be unveiling this device (and for how much), but if HP is able to price this below $1,000 they could potentially slow down sales of the iPad (or at the very least help bring some life to the HP brand.

It could also help Microsoft compete against its ancient the upcoming Google Pad (or would one call it gPad?) which will reportedly be powered by Google Chrome OS.

While full fledged tablet computers have yet to gain popularity among the masses (who are currently obsessed with iDevices and Droids), launching the HP slate early could help the company gain needed market share (especially if Apple decides to enter the market with a Mac OSX tablet of their own).

(via BGR)

Originally posted on September 23, 2010 @ 1:08 pm

Filed Under: HP

Facebook Phone: iPhone Killer Or Android Slayer? (Rumor)

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Yes, I know what you’re thinking. Why on Earth would Facebook launch a phone with Microsoft jumping in the fray and HP attempting to resurrect Palm in order to take on Apple and Android.

Apparently Micahel Arrington from TechCrunch fame received a tip from a credible source saying that Facebook is about to launch its own mobile phone.

Facebook is building a mobile phone, says a source who has knowledge of the project. Or rather, they’re building the software for the phone and working with a third party to actually build the hardware. […]

Specifically, Facebook wants to integrate deeply into the contacts list and other core functions of the phone. It can only do that if it controls the operating system.

Two high level Facebook employees – Joe Hewitt and Matthew Papakipos – are said to be secretly working on the project, which is unknown even to most Facebook staff. (via TechCrunch)

Some people are already claiming that this rumor is a farce, with public denials from Jaime Schopflin (Facebook’s spokesperson).

Despite the the apparent absurdity of a Facebook phone (at least to those within the geekosphere), a Facebook phone could potentially threaten both Apple and Google’s reign in the smart phone world (key word is “potentially”). [Read more…]

Originally posted on September 20, 2010 @ 1:24 pm