Tag: GOOGLEBUZZ

Google reached a historic settlement with the Federal Trade Commission yesterday, bringing an end to the FTC's investigation into Google Buzz -- the social network that has mired the company in allegations of privacy violations. Under the settlement, Google will have to implement a "comprehensive privacy program," and will be subject to independent audits for the next two decades. Yesterday's ...

Yesterday, Google announced that it had reached a settlement in a class-action privacy lawsuit targeting its Buzz social networking service. But instead of issuing another boring old press release, the company was mandated to reveal the settlement details in an e-mail addressed to those whom the lawsuit concerns most -- its Gmail users. "Google rarely contacts Gmail users via e-mail, but we ...

Thanks to new social networking site Youphonics, bandmates needn't jam in their mom's basements anymore. Instead, they may choose to collaborate via Youphonics' cloud-based server, where users first upload clips (known as 'stems' to users of Youphonics) and then wait for friends or complete strangers to collaborate by adding more stems to the original. When adding to a base stem, you have two ...

Google News got a major overhaul last night, and, as you'd expect, the site's major changes revolve around user autonomy. The news aggregation site now lets you choose to view stories in headline or section view, and, with the help of a drop-down menu, more easily shares stories on Facebook, Twitter, Buzz or Reader. The revamped version of Google News will also provide more local news and events, ...

Highlights from this morning's other big tech headlines.... When free services like Twitter and Google crash, users may caterwaul and whine, but the sites don't immediately suffer from significant revenue loss. Outages certainly penalize online retailers, though. Amazon endured a rare three-hour crash yesterday, leading to a 7.8-percent drop in shares by the market's Tuesday close. Based on ...

We love the various features that the Google Apps labs add to our favorite Web tools. The latest one, which can be found in the labs settings in Gmail, automatically embeds a map in your e-mails and Buzz messages, if they contain a recognizable real-world address. Until now, checking an address in Google Maps required copying the address, opening maps, pasting it in the search box and hitting ...

When Google launched Buzz, the service immediately became a lightning rod for criticism from privacy advocates. Many people ended up having their list of most frequent Gmail contacts exposed to the entire Web. One of those people included Andrew McLaughlin, the Deputy White House CTO. This would, of course, be of little concern to anyone, except that McLaughlin's list of most frequently ...

Google may be relatively new to the social networking scene, but the company is proving to be a quick study. After the undeniable debacle that was the Buzz launch, Google moved quickly to clean up the mess it had made by automatically connecting users to their most frequent contacts. Now, the company is planning to completely reboot its privacy settings, and, starting today, will be asking ...

Share For the past year, Microsoft has been quietly testing a microblogging service for businesses, essentially developing a corporate Twitter. Taking the tweeting bird and dressing it in office park grays, OfficeTalk's resemblance to the popular microblogging service is uncanny: The experiment uses topic hashtags, has an in-built URL shortener, supports "@" mentions and limits its messages to ...

Highlights from this morning's other big tech headlines.... Over a decade ago, Web TV seemed to represent the future of television and Web browsing, but the technology never truly fulfilled its promise. According to the New York Times, some heavy hitters are currently investigating a similar system; Google, Sony and Intel are reportedly developing an Android-based 'Google TV' Internet ...

Share Facebook is taking a break from the constant, user-infuriating redesigns to add an honest-to-goodness new feature -- location updates (which will probably be user-infuriating, anyway). Location awareness is all the rage for social networks as GPS has become a standard feature on most smartphones. Twitter, Google Buzz, Google Latitude, and Foursquare have all tightly interwoven these ...

It was only a matter of time, really. After ceding its traffic throne to Google two years ago, Yahoo! has recently been knocked down yet another notch. As Mashable reports, Facebook has shot past the search engine to claim the title of second-most visited site in the US. According to new data released from Compete.com, 133.62 million people visited Facebook in January, compared to the 132 million ...

Highlights from this morning's other big tech headlines.... Last year, a Roman Catholic bishop urged believers to give up text messaging for Lent, and, this Ash Wednesday, other religious leaders are expanding on that suggestion. Instead of encouraging church members to avoid chocolate or other trivialities, a group of English bishops has asked that Anglicans engage in a complete ...

Highlights from this morning's other big tech headlines.... The first authorized Steve Jobs biography is reportedly in the works, and Jobs has apparently (and somewhat surprisingly) cooperated with the man tabbed to chronicle his life. Jobs has invited writer Walter Isaacson, who has previously penned biographies of Ben Franklin and Albert Einstein, to take a tour of the Apple mogul's ...

Google Buzz may still be in its infancy, but it already has one obvious leg up on its competition: speed of evolution. Facebook may seem to have an endless line of facelifts, but its response to user criticism is slow at best. Twitter, on the other hand, has been slow to roll out new features and tweak the interface, often announcing changes months in advance. Meanwhile, Buzz has been out for ...