Under Indonesia’s Information and Electronic Transactions Law, users can face between seven and 12 years behind bars if their tweet is found to be conveying any of the following: pornography, threats, fraud, gambling, and blasphemy. “If they violate the laws, they will be punished. Principally, every account user could be held responsible by tracing his position and device,” the country’s minister Tifatul Sembiring was quoted as saying.

It seems a bit crazy, but then again Indonesia isn’t the only country to treat Twitter as a public forum that is no different than something you would do or say in the real world. In fact, there have even been cases in the US where tweets led to governmental action. Earlier this year, a British tourist who tweeted that he wanted to “destroy” America (using the word to mean he’d “tear it up,” etc) was denied entry into the country and detained by federal agents. The moral of the story? Be careful what you tweet.

[via VentureBeat]

Once you sign in, you’ll see your Twitter feed on the leftmost tab, your mentions next, messages, then two custom tabs. In these tabs you’ll have a selection of Favorites, Lists, Retweets, Mute Filters, Search, and your Profile. These two buttons have all of these options but will not repeat the same option twice. It’s kind of magical like that. Your interface gives you all the options you get on the desktop web browser version of Twitter and more – connections!

When you double-tap on a users profile, you’ll be taken to their profile on Favstar. If you double-tap on the direct messages tab, you get the option of marking all of your DMs as read at once. There’s even a triple-tap for each tweet, your options being several including replying or starring that tweet as a favorite. To access a Tweet’s entire conversation, you’ve only to swipe to the right. If you want to see any replies that a single tweet has gotten, swipe left.

This entire app also has a lovely set of sound effects for each action, each of them a simple foosh, tic, or bamp, making the whole set of interactions fun to initiate. This application is currently on the market for both iPhone and iPad and you can pick up the iPhone version for a cool $2.99 – go grab it!

One memorable Twitter message that was quoted was, “Facebook has been slow/down since the IPO. Are they all too busy selling their shares and buying fancy things? I might be.” This kind of comment underlines just how much more Facebook will have to come under the microscope now that it will be a publicly traded company. This also begs the question of if getting listed will lead to more transparency since there’s more accountability, or less transparency since Facebook now has to make its shareholders happy above anyone else.

The initial public offering has been destined to be a spectacle like no other, but there cannot be any hiccups. Facebook has a lot of concerns on its plate, including reliable site performance, privacy issues, and all sorts of other very delicate and complex problems. As for today’s slowdown, analyst Ezra Gottheil was quoted on Computerworld as saying, “It’s only a problem if it lasts a long time, or recurs. One bad morning isn’t going to hurt them.”

[via Computerworld]

Twitter has released one very interesting statistic. An official tweet from Twitter has announced that during the final 3 minutes of the Super Bowl there was an average of 10,000 tweets every second. That’s an insane number to me 600,000 tweets in a minute and over that three minute span 1.8 million tweets were made.

I wonder how many those tweets were from Patriots fans bemoaning the impending loss by their favorite team. It would be interesting to know how those tweets were made be it from smartphones, tablets, notebooks. I would imagine the vast majority were made via mobile phones.

[via Twitter]

From there, it will be easy to implement country-specific rules and regulations. This means, for example, someone in the US who posts pro-Nazi content on their Blogger blog will be perfectly in his legal rights to do so, but someone in Germany, where the exact same content would be illegal, will be censored. For Blogger, this process will be implemented over the next several months.

While this doesn’t mean Google can automatically weed out content that local governments deem illegal, it does mean that if a local government asks Google to take down a post, the search giant will have the ability to take it down only to users within that country. The idea is to promote free speech as much as possible without entirely blocking access to some countries or restricting posting guidelines to the entire world.

[via PC Mag]

Yesterday, several new brand pages rolled out on twitter, including pages for NBC news, Volkswagen, the Huffington Post, and several others. A twitter spokesperson told Gigaom the rollout of enhanced brand pages would continue with more advertising partners and other companies and individuals getting their own enhance pages in the coming weeks and months.

These enhanced brand pages are a good move for twitter because it wants to attract more advertising dollars. Major brands that spend on advertising want to control as much as they can about the campaigns and the way the ads are viewed. I would bet most brands would have their own branded page before long. What do you think of enhanced brand pages, do they make it easier for you follow your favorite brands and companies?

[via Gigaom]

This is not the first time Microsoft has taken advantage of Google’s misfortune (or perhaps misstep) today, the first time being Microsoft actually taking out ads that told the world that “Putting People First” is what they’ve got to hold up. Google is being cut into here because of the Privacy Policy changes that took place recently. Now comes the double fire with the bringing back up of #DROIDRAGE.

This #DROIDRAGE keyword is being used for the second time now, the first being a very similar situation where Android was put on the spot – then also with Windows Phones as the prize for participants in the project. Twitter will be the place for battle here in the Windows Phone vs Android war, and the fight will be chipping, chipping, chipping away piece by piece. Is this what Microsoft needs to get Windows Phone into the spotlight where they believe it belongs?

[via Gotta Be Mobile]

“There’s been no change in our stance or attitude or policy with respect to content on Twitter” Costolo said. However, he also insisted that Twitter’s hand had been forced by legal requirements, with the tacit suggestion that the short-messaging network shouldn’t be the target of complaints but rather policy makers in governments instead. “It is simply not the case you can operate in these countries and choose which of the laws we want [to adhere to]” he pointed out.

Instead, rather than a black or white situation where Twitter is either allowed to operate in a country or not, Costolo hopes the flexibility of masking certain messages will mean only a small percentage will lose access. “When we receive [a takedown notice],” he explained, “we want to leave the content up for as many people as possible while adhering to the local law.”

Nonetheless, despite the tweaks, Costolo holds little hope for Twitter launching in China, where the social network’s involvement in numerous protests has left it a source of grave concern for the censorship-prone government there. “I don’t think the current environment in China is one in which we could operate” he said.

Twitter argued that the selective-censoring system was a better option than the company’s existing approach, where locations that do not allow free-speech were simply blocked from seeing all of a users’ tweets. However, privacy and free-speech advocates were quick to criticize the social network, claiming the decision would prevent future uses of Twitter as seen during the “Arab Spring” of 2011, when the site became a hub for communication when state-run methods were locked down.

The simplicity of this workaround – forcing Twitter to assume you are in a different location to where your IP address resolves to – is likely to prompt questions as to whether the social network left such an obvious loophole open on purpose. If not, it’s possible that faking your location could be subsequently made more difficult.

Twitter is working with Chilling Effects to publicly flag up incidents where messages have been blocked, though the company says it is yet to actually implement the new system.

In an official blog post, the microblogging site explained that it now has the ability to ” reactively withhold content from users in a specific country — while keeping it available in the rest of the world. We have also built in a way to communicate transparently to users when content is withheld, and why.” This change goes into effect as of today.

The blog post goes on to say that if and when a Tweet is restricted, users will be notified and the message will be clearly marked. No doubt this move will pave the way for new controversies. After all, there were probably very few people who despised Twitter’s global policy against posting pro-Nazi content. But free speech is always a good thing, and if Twitter can limit the amount of censorship while still adhering to local laws, that’s a definite win.

[via Twitter Blog]

If you fear that the information you share with the public on a daily basis will be read by the FBI and you’ll get targeted for it, you’re in for a sour surprise: they’ve been reading your posts since the internet was invented. What this tool will be for them is a way to be a bit more omnipotent about it all, it being a “secure, light weight web application portal, using mash-up technology” whatever that means, that “must have the ability to rapidly assemble critical open source information and intelligence that will allow SIOC to quickly vet, identify, and geo-locate breaking events, incidents, and emerging threats.” I’m not so sure their “cached and real-time proprietary data” request is all that realistic, but the rest seems like a task that could be attainable by a team of you industrious developers and engineers out there.

One of the main objectives of this future setup the FBI is requesting someone make is:

Provide a user defined operations pictures[sp] (ODOP) that are flexible to support a myriad of functional FBI missions. Examples include but are not limited to: Reconnaissance & Surveillance, NSSE Planning, NSSE Operations, SIOC Operations, Counter Intelligence, Terrorism, Cybercrime, etc.

The reason this comes to our attention is, of course, the specific listing of a set of websites that should, first and foremost, be able to be Searched:

Ability for user to create, define, and select parameters/key word requirements. Automated search of national news, local news, and social media networks. Examples include but are not limited to Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Another interesting layer lies in the “Map” category for requirements:

Ability to immediately access geospatial maps with coding in addition to providing critical infrastructural layers. Preferred maps include but are not limited to Google Maps, Google 3D maps, ESRI, and Yahoo Maps. The FBI will provide the layers to the selected vendor who must in tern incorporate the layer(s) on the respective geospatial map.

Finally there’s a category for requirements that’s called “Twitter and other Social Networking Monitoring:

Ability to instantly search and monitor key words and strings in all “publicly available” tweets across the Twitter Site and other “publicly available” social networking sites/forums (i.e. Facebook, MySpace, etc.).

Got your interest piqued? You’ll want to head to the Social Media Application listing “Packages Section” to find the PDF that contains the full listing. For the original listing (on the 19th of January, 2012,) head to the job post and go wild!

[via New Scientist]

Twitter has acquired web security firm Dasient, a real-time link checking system that scans URLs for malware and other online threats, in a move that will likely make clicking a link on the terse social network safer in future. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Dasient’s technology scans both web addresses and sites for potentially harmful content, as well as operating a service that keeps web-based advertising malware-free.

The acquisition is not Twitter’s only security-related buy in recent months. Back in November 2011, the short messaging service bought Whisper Systems, an Android security and encryption app specialist. No indication of exactly what Whisper’s tech – which includes modifying the core Android kernel to lock down user date – will be used for at Twitter has been given.

Use-cases for Dasient are far easier to envisage, however. Twitter continues to struggle with malware links shared by fake accounts, masked by the general use of URL shorteners to get longer web addresses to fit into the 140-character messages. “Dasient will be able to apply its technology and team to the world’s largest real-time information network” the security firm says.

Dasient was founded in 2008, by a team including ex-Google staff and security researchers from well-known firms like McAfee.

Currently, Don’t Be Evil is a bookmarklet that works on a per-visit basis to Google. Users click the bookmarklet and, rather than being shown Google’s specially crafted results, see a purer set of results that have not been refined according to the search company’s own social promotion.

That promotion has already got Google into hot water with regulators, with the FTC looking closely at “Search plus Your World” to see if it pushes the company into antitrust territory. Nonetheless, Google is ramping up its Google+ promotion; last week it announced it had passed 90,000,000 users of the social network, and that number is set to increase with more pressure to use Google+ put on new Gmail sign-ups.

The Don’t Be Evil add-on – its name a reference to Google’s unofficial motto – works in Chrome, Firefox and Safari and has been released under an open-source license. Already there’s a Chrome extension using the tech, with more likely in the pipeline.

Twitter is always looking for ways to streamline their already seemingly simple system – it’s just a bunch of text, right? No way, says Twitter, it’s much more complicated than that, and the amount of data they must filter already with all of this “just text” comes down to one thing: they need more hands to help. What Summify is set to do is not only help them on the back end, but bring forth a possible front-end interface change to Twitter down the line as well. Imagine a much simpler way to have all of your social media filtered through Twitter instead of having yet another system to work with?

Twitter’s user base is still expanding, believe it or not, and they’ll continue to scoop up companies like Summify to make the move into the future. While Google+ and Facebook have algorithms galore to work with relevant content filtered in to users based on their interests, with new features as such being launched constantly, it’s high time Twitter stepped their game up once more to stay fresh. Are you still using Twitter?

Summify, for those of you unfamiliar, is known for its two founders, Mircea Paşoi and Cristian Strat, two former interns of Microsoft and Google, having come from Romania to set their headquarters in Vancouver, now moving on to Twitter to stay! Their message from their official blog post outlines their changes to the platform in the coming weeks as thus:

What happens to Summify?

We will be disabling new account registrations immediately and we will also be removing some features. We will keep the email summaries for a few more weeks, but at some point we will shut down the current Summify product. In the meantime, if you’re a user of Summify you’ll still receive your summaries, just like before.

What features are you removing?
Starting today, the following changes will take effect:
We’re removing the ability to make your summaries public (i.e. all summaries will be private)
We’re removing profile pages and influence pages
We’re removing the auto-publish feature
We’re disabling user registration from the website, iPhone and Hootsuite apps

Why are you removing these features?
We are offering a more streamlined service as we transition our efforts to working at Twitter.

Will you still be in Vancouver?
We will be moving down to San Francisco and will work out of the Twitter office.

What will you be doing at Twitter?
We are joining Twitter’s Growth team and will continue to explore ways to help people connect and engage with relevant, timely news.

[via target="_Blank">Wired]

The app shows that as of now there are 465 million accounts, a 65% increase since May when the figure was 300 million. With the gain of accounts at 11 per second, it looks like the 500 millionth accounts may come online in February. That is a significant milestone. While twitter may be nearing the 500 million mark for accounts, most of those are not active users.

Twitter has said that it has about 100 active user accounts. The site is also racking up 400 million unique visitors each month. Some of that new use is attributed to the integration of twitter into iOS 5. I wonder how many of the 100 million active accounts are spammers.

[via TheNextWeb]

Called “Search plus Your World“, the new system uses the Google+ social network to act as a filter for search results. For instance, if users have expressed interest in maritime history, a search for “navy” might pull up sea-bound warfare rather than results related to the color. Meanwhile other Google+ user suggestions are included in the autocomplete and flagged up as part of results.

Nonetheless, the news was met with anger by other online services and privacy campaigners. Twitter led the charge, furious that tweets from its own users might receive less priority than status messages left in Google+, while the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a watchdog organization, wrote a public letter to the FTC demanding it investigate Google’s actions.

Google, for its part, remains defiant. “We believe that our improvements to search will benefit consumers” spokesperson Adam Kovacevich said of the recent updates to the company’s filtering technologies, arguing that artificially limiting Google as the dominant player in search would be a business decision rather than one intended to actually help individuals making searches. “The laws are designed to help consumers benefit from innovation,” he argued, “not to help competitors.”

Kovacevich declined to comment on the potential inclusion of Google+ into an FTC investigation. Its practices in search, along with how it has handled Android as a potential hammer against competition in the mobile space are already under the microscope.

The thrust of Twitter’s argument is that the short messaging service has become the go-to place for breaking and evolving news stories. “As we’ve seen time and time again,” the site claims, “news breaks first on Twitter.”

That, it’s suggested, means that tweets “are often the most relevant results” but, thanks to Google’s new filtering, there’s a good chance that it’s Google+ posts that will be shown instead. Google and Twitter did have a realtime search deal at one point, showing live tweets relevant to search terms, but that deal expired last year and was not renewed.

For all the “breaking news” talk and positioning easy access to tweets as a public service, this does seem more like a case of Twitter trying to make sure it’s not elbowed out by Google’s own social network. Google+ is in the privileged position of being linked with the most commonly used search engine; Google may have been later to social than Facebook or Twitter, but it already has a considerable foot in the door with users.

Twitter statement:

“For years, people have relied on Google to deliver the most relevant results anytime they wanted to find something on the Internet.

Often, they want to know more about world events and breaking news. Twitter has emerged as a vital source of this real-time information, with more than 100 million users sending 250 million Tweets every day on virtually every topic. As we’ve seen time and time again, news breaks first on Twitter; as a result, Twitter accounts and Tweets are often the most relevant results.

We’re concerned that as a result of Google’s changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone. We think that’s bad for people, publishers, news organizations and Twitter users.”

The Echo Nest provides contextual music information for web and mobile apps. The company’s database helps power Nokia Music on the Lumia series of Windows Phones, for instance, creating on-the-fly playlists from a single “seed” track.

According to the company, integrating its service is a simple process of a few lines of code, with the apps subsequently downloading the most recent tweets from artists as they come through The Echo Nest’s systems. “The Echo Nest hopes to enhance music apps by extending Twitter to this new terrain while bringing fans closer to the artists they love” the company says.

Your money gets you a desk-bound friend that can read out your emails and other messages, tell you the news and weather, track tweets and RSS feeds, and more. There’s also Facebook integration, freshly added, which allows Karotz to read out text messages or play received audio files, and allows your friends to twiddle the rabbit’s ears and flash its multi-colored lights. You can also use the webcam in the rabbit’s nose to post images to Facebook, its microphone to share an audio clip, or dictate a text wall update.

A free Android and iOS remote control app is available, and there’s also matching Flatnanoz key ring tags, with embedded RFID chips to trigger apps or macros, such as automatically alerting you when your kids have made it home from school. The Karotz is available now, priced at $129.99.

Kanye is looking for some geeks to help launch his new company called DONDA. What exactly DONDA will do is unknown, but it’s clear the company has a tech bent. If you are the sort of guy (I assume women can apply as well) that has some tech skills you might be able to work for Kanye.

Kanye is looking for a slew of people in addition to app and tech guys (we assume he means programmers when he says tech guys). Kanye is also looking for game developers, car designers, graphic designers and a bunch more. Check out the official listing below.

I am assembling a team of architects, graphic designers, directors musicians, producers, AnRs, writers, publicist, social media experts, app guys, managers, car designers, clothing designers, DJs, video game designers, publishers, tech guys, lawyers, bankers, nutritionist, doctors, scientist,teachers. DONDA will be comprised of over 22 divisions with a goal to make products and experiences that people want and can afford. I want to put creatives in a room together with like minds that are all waaaay doper than me. We want to help simplify and aesthetically improve everything we see hear, touch, taste and feel… To dream of, create, advertise and produce products driven equally by emotional want and utilitarian need.. To marry our wants and needs.

[via Betabeat]

Such a move would echo that of microblogging platform tumblr, which prompted almost 90,000 calls to US Representatives last month after intentionally blacking out its service to users. Those visiting their tumblr page, or that of other users, were faced with a message warning of the potential impact of SOPA and offering to connect them with their Representative to discuss their concerns and opposition.

Some of the biggest names online penned an open letter to regulators midway through last month, decrying SOPA as poorly thought through. The Senate will debate the act again on January 24, giving the NetCoalition members plenty of opportunity to stage their blackout and prompt online shoppers, video junkies, bloggers and more to get in touch and be heard.

[via Slashdot and via Fox]

And you boyfriends and girlfriends out there – don’t you DARE ignore the fact that your significant other just spit in your face because you didn’t pick them up the gift they say they very obviously deserved, having gotten them the wrong color iPod instead. Take it back and return it, or take it back and toss it down a flight of stairs. You’ve only got one choice for the start of this response. It’s almost too unbelievable that these people exist, but there they are, all of them retweeted by Jon Hendren [@fart] and made into a song by Jonathan Mann here — NSFW by the way:

Are you effing kidding me? Christmas should be over for everyone who made those messages public, plain and simple. There’s no reason, first of all, to let any thought like the ones these maniacs are thinking get beyond their minds, much less to their friends ears, much less still that they send them along the Tweetwaves to the whole world. Impoverished children in Africa: please do not watch this video, you’ll just want to end it all on the spot.

Everyone who made these Tweets: shame on you. Shame on you forever.

If Apple created a social networking site, it would not have the mass of functions and abilities that places like Google+ and Facebook have, instead it would be limited to a hand-picked set of bits such as your ability to play your iTunes purchased media. Other than that, you’d be able to keep a contact book, call and text your friends (to their mobile devices like iPad and iPhone), and there would be no such thing as a Wall or a Main News Feed. Basically if Apple ever creates a social networking site, it will mature beyond this hanging out on the internet fad, solidifying even further their set of physical products and the ultra-strong tie between the Apple lifestyle and the software bits it employs.

From what I’ve experienced over the past handful of years in the mobile extension of Apple’s great hand then reaching back through the majority of my relatively short time here on the planet, I can see clearly a set of affirmations the company has made with its customers that will without a doubt follow through to the social networking site it may or may not make. You can apply the Apple way to any product or service just so long as it is inside the reach and realistic applicability of Apple’s current or near-future family of products and services. Apple’s future social networking site will only exist once they’ve hit the point of no return with absolutely devoted users and the investments they’ve made with the company.

They’re not quite there yet, but the tipping point may well be inside our lifetimes.

[Image via Double-J Design]

Let me tell you an epiphany I had earlier today: the reason Apple works and is more enticing than Windows for masses of consumers is that OS X is a tool that tells you what it can do and how you can use it, while Windows is just a tool. Windows Phone is catching on to this idea, and Android certainly had the idea right from their start as well, but iPhone is without a doubt based on this idea implicitly. The same is true of Facebook and Google+, to a degree, where Facebook is very easy to understand for a relative beginner and Google+ is pretty much the most confusing place in the world for those who don’t have the power to glean its abilities by exploring.

So Google+ became instantly rather popular not because it was easy to understand and fun to use, but because of Google’s brand power and the fact that it did not have an open door at first, invites handed out to sites like SlashGear for later contests and giveaways. Keep a line and people will stand in it, basically. Google+ is a tool that can be powerful, but because it does not inform the user properly how it can and should be utilized, it will never grow to the level Facebook has.

Over at TechCrunch you’ll find that Erick Schonfeld has found searches for the term “Google+” to be going down here at the tail end of 2011. In the timeline below this paragraph you’ll find that Google’s team for their social networking site never ever stops innovating and adding to the abilities of the site. Look into your heart and you’ll find that like MySpace, so too must this site eventually pass.

The links with the posts sent the users to a website that collected personal details, which was apparently part of a phishing scam. The attacks are thought to have been specifically targeting the singer’s accounts because they used “monsters” which is what the singer calls her fans. One of the messages read, “Monsters, I’m giving away FREE ipad2′s to each one of you in the spirit of the holidays :)”

Web stats show that 100,000 visitors to the web page followed the link. Gaga isn’t the only social networking artists that has been targeted by attacks. BBC reports that Maroon 5 and Nelly Furtado have had similar attacks.

[via BBC]

That redesign, splitting different elements of the Twitter experience into separate sections, also frees up more room for advertising potential. Meanwhile, Twitter has streamlined its brand page options in what’s being seen as a more pointed attempt to take on Facebook for commercial presence. Last month, the company bought a mobile security and encryption specialist, Whisper Systems, in a move believed to be a sign of Twitter ramping up its privacy settings and positioning itself as a more secure messaging service.

Alwaleed has built a comprehensive portfolio of sizable stakes in various well-known firms, many with a significant tech focus. The Saudi royalty is Citigroup’s biggest individual investor, through the company Kingdom Holding, and he has holdings in News Corp, Apple and GM. Twitter has confirmed the investment but refused to give any further details of the deal itself.

Twitter should be able to gain serious traction too considering it has a giant user base of folks and the retweets that posts generate can be further reaching than the original tweet alone. The down side to the Twitter brand pages is that they are seemingly harder to program than the competition since they won’t handle big blocks of HTML code according to CNET.

The cooler parts of the people looking to brand their products on Twitter is that they do have full control over the colors on the page so it can match the corporate color, the pages look really good too as you can see in the Pepsi example here. The brand pages allow interaction of fans with Follow and @Reply buttons so the users can interact with those that are behind the brand. I am sure the brand pages will be tweaked as time goes by. What do you think, which social network has the better and more effective brand pages? I think the reach of Facebook still gives it in the lead.

[via CNET]

You’ll be able to see all your friends uploaded content, including photos hosted right there in the app, as well as big pushes for celebrity and featured Tweeters of all kinds. Real-time search shows breaking Twitter-based news, trending topics show what’s popular in the hashtag world, and see what other people are talking about in regards to you with the Connect tab. With this goes a new aesthetic, blue, gray and black, and white make you know that this newest Twitter sits pretty with the web-based version also updated today.

Essentially what’s been done here is some tweaking to make this version of Twitter fall in line with the rest of the updates on the other platforms. Twitter has had a pretty decent application on the Android mobile OS for most of 2011 now, this being simply an incremental update more than anything, even though it’s numbered 3.0. You’ll have a great time using this application if you’re an everyday user, most certainly. Grab the app from the Android Market now!

The new Discover section pulls together Twitter Stories and trends, showing a more global overview of what’s happening on the 140-character social network. Hashtags and search are also found in this new section, along with suggestions of people to follow, and the more you use Twitter the more accurate the content suggestions are.

Finally, there’s the new “Me” section, with lists, favorites, followers, photos and direct messages. It’s possible to see what photos and videos you’ve shared from here, together with which other Twitter accounts are similar to yours.

In addition to the new UI on the browser and the Twitter apps for iOS and Android, the company has also updated Tweetdeck to suit the refreshed interface; an refresh to the iPad app is in the pipeline. The new browser interface will be rolled out in the coming weeks, but you can get early access by downloading the iOS or Android apps. Let us know what you think in the comments!

Currently, the company offers five products, each Android based. RedPhone and TextSecure add encryption to voice and messaging, meaning even if either are intercepted the contents shouldn’t be accessible. Flashback makes system backups to the cloud, encrypting them first so that if the remote storage is hacked, user files can’t be accessed.

Finally, WhisperCore and WhisperMonitor work together to lock down devices and track their use, including “full disk encryption, network security tools, encrypted backup, selective permissions, and basic platform management tools for Nexus S and Nexus One phones.”

Terms of the deal have not been revealed publicly, and Twitter has not said exactly what it will do with the new security expertise it has acquired. However, it’s possible that the social network company might use Whisper Systems to create a hardened version of Twitter that could be positioned as an enterprise communication tool, similar perhaps to RIM’s BlackBerry Messenger but with a more group-centric focus.

The Windows Phone web platform manager got into trouble for not only talking about the handset but he gave a mini review and had a few not so good things to say about the camera. The Nokia Lumia 800 is quite an excellent handset if I don’t say so myself. Feel free to read our in-depth review by Chris Davies.

It looks as if Marini is back to his tweeting ways today after posting a few of those 140-character messages about his new venture with Google. You can see from the tweet he aims to “drive the web forward” and his job description is titled “Google Dev Advocate” and will involve developer relations, HTML5 apps, and many other things that aren’t yet known.

We aren’t sure if Joe will continue to share details on Twitter but we’ll be sure to follow him. He also noted that he’s putting together a blog to answer questions regarding what happened with his departure from Microsoft.

[via LiveSide]

I could fill pages with disclaimers about this case. I used to be a tech journalist full time, and I was friends with just about every editor with a byline on all of the sites involved. I still see them regularly on a professional basis, and we still drink and joke and tell embarrassing stories about the time we got too excited over a new phone with polyphonic ringtones. So, I’m not going to say who’s right and wrong.

I’m also not going to simply flesh out the merits of the case. You can find those details elsewhere. I’m not going to analyze this issue from an unbiased perspective. I’m not legally qualified to do so. I’m just giving my opinion on the case as I understand it.

I went directly to Kravitz, but I didn’t talk to anyone on the PhoneDog team. Noah is a friend, but I don’t know any of the people named on the PhoneDog side of the case.

It seems there are two issues here. The first is how to measure the value of a Twitter account when social networking is part of your business strategy. How and why the account was created makes a difference here. Eventually, that won’t be the case. When companies start assigning Twitter accounts like email addresses and phone numbers, they will certainly have more sway over the ownership of that account when the employee leaves. But for now, we’re all still feeling our way around Twitter. We’re cautious and unsure of its utility. We’re worried about making huge, career-ending mistakes.

I tweet a lot. My day job employer does not require it, but does not forbid it. It’s all at my own risk, and it’s a heavy risk. It is far more likely I’ll make a mistake on Twitter that will get me in some sort of trouble than it is I’ll generate some great success on Twitter that will prove it’s worth the risk.

I asked Kravitz why he opened his Twitter account in the first place.

“I saw enough of the people around me using it that I figured I should be paying attention. And seeing as I make a living posting content to the Web – and tech-related content at that – it seemed like a good, potentially great, way to spread the word about what I was doing.”

Kravitz opened his Twitter account as “@phonedog_noah.” I asked if he was the first PhoneDog employee to open an account. “I believe I was, yes.” Was the “PhoneDog” name in the Twitter handle a company mandate? “No, nobody told me what to name myself.”

See. The company did not yet understand the branding value of a Twitter feed. This brings me to the second issue here. Is Kravitz’s Twitter feed a part of his work life, or part of his identity? Is it part of his brand, or just something fun he does to pass the time?

I have worked for companies that lay claim to any creations while you are employed. So, if I work for Samsung (which I do), and I create a really amazing pickle slicer, that’s Samsung’s pickle-slicer now. If the Twitter account is a work product, there could be an argument that PhoneDog owns anything Kravitz creates.

However, what if it is part of his identity? Let’s say I work at a company and I change my hair style, lose some weight, and start dressing much better. I might have better luck with my clients, and the company reaps the benefits. If I then leave the company, can they claim to own my image? Should I become slovenly, hairy, and fat again?

I asked Kravitz about how he accumulated so many followers on Twitter.

“I tweet a lot about Phil Collins, trips to the dentist, and sports in addition to technology. Maybe people like me? … I tend to tweet quite a bit in general, and quite a bit about non-technology things – and I tend to carry on conversations with other tweeters, so Twitter is often more of a virtual town square for me than anything else. Some people like my style, some don’t, and so it goes.”

I use Twitter similarly. I do comment about mobile technology, which is my job. But I’m in this job because I love mobile tech, and I tweet about the things that interest me. I’ve always thought about Twitter as a virtual water cooler, similar to Kravitz’s idea of a virtual town square. Of course, Kravitz has more than 10X the followers I have, so I suppose he needs a town square (by the way, you can follow me @philipberne, hint-hint).

So, can work lay claim to the relationships you build around the water cooler? If you spend your spare time chatting with strangers in a nearby town square, can your job say you can’t take those strangers with you when you leave?

How would that happen, exactly? I suppose that Kravitz could have changed the PhoneDog_Noah Twitter handle to simply “PhoneDog.” Then he could have started at scratch with a new account. When you leave an office, you don’t get to keep using your desk, or your email account. The desk is physical. They clean it out and the next person takes it. The email account is virtual. They flush it to save space, or dig through your emails for pertinent information, but they can’t give it to the next person. It loses all of its value when it is no longer connected to you.

The Twitter account seems to fall somewhere in the middle. It could still have value even if Kravitz weren’t the one behind the tweets. It’s like reading a new Robert Ludlum novel. The poor “Bourne” author passed a decade ago, but a fan who wasn’t paying attention would still be thrilled by his latest paperback. It would be even easier for PhoneDog to continue tweeting from that account, even with Noah uninvolved.

The most damning evidence against PhoneDog might be Kravitz’s last post. He suggests readers find him on his blog, or check out his newly renamed Twitter feed, under the @noahkravitz name. That post is still up at PhoneDog as of writing, so it would seem that PhoneDog is endorsing Kravitz’s ownership of the new name, while at the same time suing him over it.

I asked Kravitz about whether he saw his Twitter account as part of his identity, part of his job, or part of his brand.

“I’d say it’s all more part of my identity than my brand. In order to view it as part of my brand I’d have to be a better businessperson than I clearly am, given that I’m somehow in the middle of this silly mess. I mean, seriously, would the pitchman for a brand be tweeting photos of himself at the dentist?”

“India can submit the name of a suspect its investigators want to wiretap, and RIM will return decoded messages for that individual, as long as it is satisfied the request has legal authorization, according to the people familiar with the matter” WSJ

However, while RIM says it “continues to work very well” with the government in India, according to the insiders the security services there still aren’t content with the degree of access they’re allowed. Their preference, it’s said, would be independent access to the decoding systems RIM uses, so as to avoid revealing the identities of those it suspects of potential terrorism links or other crimes. BlackBerry Messenger conversations are among the data RIM will disclose on request, though enterprise email is supposedly still secure.

According to the sources, the Indian government isn’t stopping at BlackBerry, however. Skype, Facebook and Twitter are apparently all on its list of communication technologies it would like to have better monitoring access to.

And you might say to yourself, wait, couldn’t that be a fake account? Don’t even worry about that, partner, Google themselves have the confirmation tweet up – this tweet available for your viewing directly below this paragraph. So what’s the deal then, Google, how did this come about? Did someone pick up Android back when Twitter was invented, and only now they were timed out after having not used the account for many many long months? Or did you do a buyout? Or some third thing?

All that matters here is that there’s @Android now, and yes, you should add both @Android and @Androids, just to be sure. Then heck, why don’t you add @SlashGear while you’re at it? Hay heck, double heck, while we’re here, go ahead and me too, @t_chrisburns, why not?

This update also brings Twitter’s official photo sharing feature to the iOS app for the first time. This feature lets users share photos directly through Twitter, which has partnered with Photobucket to power the image hosting. Although Twitter’s photo sharing becomes default, users can still change the settings to use third-party photo sharing options like TwitPic.

Specific improvements for Twitter on the iPad, include a new Direct Message interface that now shows threaded conversations in chronological order. The updated app also lets you touch a location on the screen to see nearby tweets. All the new features should work on previous version of iOS, with the only exception being the enhanced sign-on.

[via TUAW]

The data include 65,968 messages shared on Twitter between June 15 and September 22. About half of the tweets favored the Windows 8 Metro UI when compared to Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android. The tweets also generally focused on Windows 8′s fast boot times, Xbox Live integration, and the new Windows App Store.

“The most interesting thing I found was that people were so receptive to Windows 8 on a tablet,” said MashWork founder Jared Feldman in an interview with VentureBeat, noting that the data skewed towards the tech savvy. “A lot of times when you get very well-educated people, who know all the products on the market, they evaluate new things and immediately start hating and ripping it apart.

“What we found for the most part was that people are genuinely excited about Windows on a tablet — so much so that we actually have developer clients who are using this infographic to drum up excitement for Windows 8 before getting their hands on a developer kit to create apps (for the new platform),” added Feldman.

For more details on the recent Windows 8 developer preview, make sure to check out our complete guide as well as our hands-on with the Windows 8 tablet.

On September 9, Allen claims, his counting model suggested Google+ had 28.7m users. That figure leapt to 37.8m users by September 22, “with most of the growth coming in the last 2 days”; his model uses a list of common and uncommon surnames, factoring in a little extra wiggle-room for those still using unlisted profiles and those with non-Roman names. It’s a system he claims has kept pace with Google’s own figures for Google+ activity.

Those official figures have been in short supply, despite there being plenty of interest in how the search giant’s fledgling service has grown compared to Facebook and Twitter. Generally unloved Facebook profile changes have shaken the social networking ecosystem this past week, and coupled with Google dropping its invite-only system for Google+ there’s speculation that Zuckerberg’s losses could be Google’s gains.

We won’t know for sure until Google gives us some accurate stats, though it’s important to remember that Google+ has only been operational since July 28. The site faces its own issues, however; spam has anecdotally been increasing since Google allowed open registration, with some users complaining that the tools for managing followers, comments and other unwanted content are insufficient to meet the new influx.

That’s more than anyone on the SlashGear team can handle, which officially makes us less capable than a car; among the choices are both US and UK English, German, French and Italian. BMW’s ConnectedDrive system can access Facebook and Twitter, reading out new updates and messages, as well as allow you to subscribe to various RSS feeds and have new content read out to you.

Triggered by the Play button, ConnectedDrive is being billed as both a safety and entertainment system. It’ll hook into your iPhone Calendar, too, calling out your appointments for the day, week and month; while your iPhone is connected, the iDrive system can also stream internet radio.

Apple is expected to use similar text-to-speech (and speech-to-text) technology from Nuance in iOS 5, as part of the well-rumored iOS Assistant. Expected to debut on the iPhone 5, itself tipped to launch imminently, this will allow users to make spoken commands including navigation requests, new messages, media playback and more.

The concept is enticingly straightforward. You already upload galleries of your adventures, and updates about what you’ve eaten, where you ate it and who you were sharing ketchup with, and the minutiae of your lovelife. Why not go one step further and make that into an interactive timeline, a permanent record of your past – fleshed out with video and photos – and a continuously evolving journal of your future.

There was plenty else to talk about at f8. Facebook is making a noticeable push, away from being merely the online version of your yearbook. Still, the new music, video and news integration – wrapping services like Spotify and Color up in the social network – is all really just to keep you locked to Facebook a little longer. Zuckerberg & Co. don’t want you to get distracted and wander off, not when you could be fleshing out your Timeline.

But look. You’re a special person. Really special. And I like you a lot. But I’m not particularly interested in browsing through my own baby photos, nor my partner’s, and unsurprisingly that means I’m really falling short when it comes to enthusiasm about seeing yours.

I use Twitter and Google+ more than I do Facebook because they’re about a conversation, not a slide-show. Paging through your galleries – whether they’re of your weekend clubbing or your 5th birthday – isn’t of much interest to me; I’d far rather talk about what you did, find common ground and the places we agree to disagree. Show me a link to something that excites or intrigues you, not yet another video clip of graduates flinging their caps in the air.

Is Facebook’s new Timeline feature right for the market? When it comes to the self-obsessed “brand me” zeitgeist, yes, certainly. Over-sharing is big business now, and Timeline means everyone who cares to can now curate their own, personal Wikipedia page. We needn’t even keep to those pesky editorial guidelines: Facebook has sensibly made sure that we can pick and choose what’s public and what isn’t, portraying ourselves in the very best way possible.

After the UI furore has died down, then, people will flock to Timeline. Just as Chris Burns wrote yesterday in our f8 2011 wrap-up, “Your profile page has become a destination again, much like it was when Facebook first began.” Facebook has recognized exactly what makes it so valuable – user self-interest – and capitalized on that.

There’ll be questions to answer as Timeline rolls out. Context will be everything, and it remains to be seen whether users are willing to invest the effort in whatever granular access controls are on offer, if they don’t want every facet of their lives laid bare. Until now that’s been as straightforward as policing your timeline and deleting the occasional tidbit by an over-sharing friend; soon it’ll be the monumental task of editing your entire history into different versions.

Then again, perhaps we won’t need to bother. In all the hurry to document, detail and commemorate our fascinating lives, maybe we’ll never get around to reading about everyone else’s.

The new feature is available starting today on select carriers around the world. Those carriers include AT&T, Verizon, and Cellular South in the US; Vodafone, O2, and Orange in the UK; Vodafone Italy; Rogers Communications in Canada; VIVA Bahrain; and TIM Brazil. Twitter is working on expanding the service to other carriers.

Twitter has enhanced its Tweet by text message service in the past with the addition of a Fast Follow feature that lets anyone instantly receive Tweets on their phone by sending a text message, even without a Twitter account. Twitter also offered SMS Commands, which are a one-word commands that you can text to Twitter to get information, including Suggest, Stats, and Help.

[via Twitter]