The majority of British people support shutting down social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter during times of civil unrest, a new study reveals.
The polling follows Prime Minister David Cameron’s August statement that the government would consider temporarily blocking social media to prevent protesters from organizing. Cameron’s assertion led many to discuss freedom of speech and the right to organize.
Online security firm Unisys polled 973 British adults about whether they agreed with Cameron. Seventy percent “completely agree” or “agree somewhat” that social networking sites should be shut down to prevent coordinated criminal activity, Forbesreports.
When it comes to online privacy, 46% of respondents believe governments should have open access to users’ data to prevent organized criminal activity; 42% say networks should get more information from users before allowing them to join; and 49% think authorities need more resources to monitor online behavior.
Respondents ages 65 and older were most supportive of shutting down social networking sites, while those between 18 and 24 — the most active demographic on social media — were least supportive.
A joint study by the Guardian and the London School of Economics found little proof Twitter and Facebook played a significant role in orchestrating illegal activity. BlackBerry Messenger use was found to be tied closer with instigating violence during the August London riots.
Apple today posted a new support document outlining procedures users should follow if they experience strain relief problems with their "T" style MagSafe power cables on various notebook products. Long-standing issues with fraying on those cables resulted in Apple redesigning the MagSafe several years to adopt an "L" style connector that puts less strain on the cable.
While Apple has for several years offered a replacement program to users whose MagSafe adapters (as well as pre-MagSafe "barrel" style adapters) have exhibited signs of strain relief problems, the company has updated its support materials to reflect that a settlement has been reached in a court case over the design of the connectors.
Frayed cable on "T" style MagSafe connector
According to the terms of the settlement, Apple will offer full or partial refunds to customers who purchased replacement adapters and will also continue to cover the cost of replacement adapters for users who have future problems with the issue. Apple will offer users who purchased a replacement adapter within one year of purchase of the original computer a $79 cash payment, with users who replaced their adapters in the second year receiving $50 and those who replaced in the third year $35.
The settlement will provide a cash payment if you are the original owner (by purchase or gift) of certain Apple MacBook or MacBook Pro computer models (“Subject Computer”) or separately purchased an Apple 60W or 85W MagSafe MPM-1 (“T”) Power Adapter (“Adapter”), your Adapter showed signs of Strain Relief Damage, and you purchased a Replacement Adapter within the first three years following the initial purchase of the Subject Computer or Adapter. If the court approves the settlement, you may be entitled to a cash payment in the following amounts depending on whether you purchased your Replacement Adapter during the first, second or third year following the initial retail purchase of the Subject Computer or Adapter: (a) first year, the actual amount you paid (excluding taxes and shipping/handling fees) up to a maximum of $79; (b) second year $50; (c) third year $35. There is a limit of three refunds per Subject Computer. You may also be able to obtain a Replacement Adapter at no charge from Apple if your Adapter shows signs of Strain Relief Damage now or in the future.
Disney and YouTube are set to announce a content partnership worth $10 million to $15 million, The New York Times reports.
Under the terms of the agreement, YouTube will invest millions of dollars on an original video series produced by Disney and distributed exclusively through a new co-branded channel on both YouTube and Disney.com, according to the Times.
Disney has had a couple of bad quarters, and it’s hoping to re-capture its audience through new distribution channels. It wants, as co-president of Disney Interactive James Pitaro told the Times, to “go where (its) audience is.”
The deal also makes sense for YouTube, which is always on the lookout for more original, quality content and strong brand partners. However, Robert Kyncl, YouTube’s global head for content partnerships, emphasized that YouTube will be a neutral distributor and is not planning to go into the production business.
YouTube recently announced a big push to bring more premium content to the site, with a slew of new video channels. Google has reportedly spent $100 million on the deals for the new channels, and its partners include celebrities such as Madonna and Ashton Kutcher, as well as media companies like The Wall Street Journal, The Onion, SB Nation and Demand Media.
NBC’s The Voice — a singing competition that became a social media powerhouse on TV earlier this year — returns for another season Feb. 5 with added star power: Grammy-nominated singer Christina Milian.
She has been tapped as the show’s new social media correspondent to join host Carson Daly and celebrity judges Christina Aguilera, Cee Lo Green, Adam Levine and Blake Shelton in the search for America’s next singing sensation.
Milian replaces last season’s correspondent, former G4 personality Alison Haislip, and will interact with fans on Facebook, Twitter, NBC Live and NBC.com. She’ll also appear on live shows. Milian will serve as a role model on set for the contestants. Last season, The Voice trained finalists to leverage blogs, Facebook Pages and Twitter, and gave them cameras and Samsung Galaxy Tabs.
“She knows how important social media is to current musicians and is very active online to engage with her fans,” a spokesperson for The Voice recently told Mashable. “She will be a great example to our artists.”
Q&A With Christina Milian
Milian burst into the pop scene 10 years ago with “AM to PM,” continued charting worldwide with “Dip It Low” in 2004 and has since released a third album and made several appearances on TV shows, including CSI.
“I look forward to being the eyes and ears for the show and I hope everyone enjoys my fun demeanor. … I get a chance to integrate my music career with a show like this. My fans will be very happy with that.”
Mashable: How is social media important for you?
Milian: I’ve always been an advocate of the Internet and staying ahead of the game by communicating with my fans. I want to know what they like or dislike, etc. It keeps your fans riding with you in the long run when you constantly provide them with content or something to talk about.
Mashable: What will you bring to The Voice team?
Milian: I think the coaches will feel even more comfortable with me to share a lot more. I know their fans will for sure appreciate it, especially Xtina fans! They’re tweeting me already wanting to know the inside scoop. I hope to make it fun and informative, and I would like to find more ways to give them what they want to see. Maybe YouTube videos? I love doing those!
Mashable: What was your favorite part of season one?
Milian: The show stays very true to music and talented vocalists. It’s great to see people get a chance at hitting it big and to be coached on how to become better artists.
Mashable: What is your most memorable online moment?
Milian: I would say the first time I realized there were fan clubs on the Internet for me. It started with ChristinaMilian.org. I still remember to this day a girl named Suz ran it and it had all types of info. I was shocked to find that so many people were into my music career.
Mashable: So what’s next?
Milian: I look forward to being the eyes and ears for the show and I hope everyone enjoys my fun demeanor. At the end of the day, I’m so blessed to do this and The Voice is happening at a great time in my life. I get a chance to integrate my music career with a show like this. My fans will be very happy with that.
BONUS: A Look Back at Christina Milian’s Music Videos
I love that we’re now getting punditry informed by market odds. Even better would be if the commentators disclosed the trades they were making consequent to their analysis rather than saying which way they would trade were they to trade!
There is now a whole prime-time TV show, in New Zealand, where pundits discuss various events through the market of prediction windows. At the link you will find full clips of all the shows. Bomber Bradbury hosts the programme.
This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.
The number of Facebook applications can seem a little overwhelming at times. While Facebook doesn’t share an exact number, an independent website called AppData monitors trends for over 100,000 Facebook applications, which is a lot to sift through.
As a business, trying to determine which of those apps can help your organization can be daunting. To get you started, here are four essential Facebook apps that allow you to better reach and communicate with your audience, as well as save you time for all those other things you have to do.
Tweets to Pages, which has 1.2 million monthly active users, will create a tab on your Facebook Page that displays a timeline of your company’s most recent tweets. This is a great feature for providing additional, real-time information to Facebook users who don’t have a Twitter account and for avoiding the annoyance your fans would feel if you were to constantly stream your tweets to Facebook as wall updates. The app is very easy to set up, and the free version allows you to adjust the number of tweets that show on the Tweets to Pages tab.
If you want to upgrade to the paid version, you can better control your content limits, choose a color scheme, add a banner and allow comments on your tweets.
Static HTML: iframe tabs, which has 61.8 million monthly users, will simplify the process of making a custom landing page by automating many of the steps. Forget about creating a developer account and your own application — this app provides copy and paste textboxes for your custom HTML, CSS and JavaScript. It also offers checkboxes to remove the scrollbars and to enable Facebook’s FBML. If you want to incentivize Likes on your Page, the application enables you to “like-gate,” and show different content to those who have and haven’t “liked” your page.
It’s worth noting that you will still need to host your own files, and you won’t be able to remove the scrollbars for any design over 520 pixels wide and 800 pixels tall.
ContactMe, with 180,000 monthly active users, adds a tab on your organization’s Facebook Page with a contact form. This allows anyone visiting your Facebook page to easily get in touch with you at the very moment when they’re most interested.
The biggest advantage of this app is its customization options. You can choose whether you’d prefer to show your company’s contact information or social media icons for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Skype. You can also adjust, add, remove, reorder and require specific fields through a simple user interface on contactme.com. And of course, there’s a paid option to remove the ContactMe branding, offer a custom success message and receive text message alerts when someone submits the form.
RSS Graffiti, with 1.5 million monthly users, allows you to automatically post wall updates any time there’s a new item in one of your specified feeds. For example, if you publish to a company blog every day, RSS Graffiti can automatically post an excerpt of the article with a direct link onto your Facebook page’s wall. That saves you the time and effort of creating a new wall update every day to distribute your company’s content.
Just like ContactMe, the customization options for this application make it stand out. You can automatically post more than one RSS feed, adjust how the post looks when published, schedule how often the feed is checked, and specify how many posts should be published per check. And most importantly, with all these options and more, the configuration interface is still easy to use and intuitive.
Do you use any of these apps on your business’ Facebook Page? Do you use other ones? Let us know in the comments below.
Instructables user Random_Canadian turned a power drill and miscellaneous other power tool parts into a functioning mini-metal lathe that can machine copper and aluminum. As assembled the mini-lathe has a three-jaw chuck and a 2-axis tool holder. More »
Well, the guys and gals over at Plex are on a roll right now. Less than a week ago they took the wraps off myPlex then, just a couple of days ago, new versions of the desktop and mobile clients hit the web alongside updated server software. Now the streaming media service is landing on the newly revamped Google TV. Even though this is the first release of the client for Mountain View's living room platform, all the most essential features are in place, including myPlex support and some keyboard-friendly UI tweaks. It seems like the only major limitation, and we're using that term loosely, is the limited support for HLS -- an essential ingredient in Plex's transcoding formula. Thankfully, bandwidth over your local network shouldn't be a major concern and Google TV has pretty robust codec support, so you might not even notice it's missing. You'll find a few more detail at the source and you can install the app right now from the market.
It was but a few months ago that we realized an updated TWCable TV iPad app was under development, and this go 'round, the cable giant has figured it best to just go ahead and confess rather than wait for any leaks to do it for 'em. In other words, a TWCable TV app for Android tablets is in production, and amazingly, it might be out before anyone realizes that there's no NBA season to speak of. According to the company, it could be released as early as November, and it'll most certainly eventually deliver "a live streaming TV experience." In the first build, it'll also include an interactive program guide, a remote control function for set-top boxes and a DVR manager for remote programming. Support for live TV streaming is on the way in 2012, at some point after Ice Cream Sandwich starts hitting tablets -- we couldn't confirm whether that's completely due to Android 4.0's enhanced DRM underpinnings but it seems likely. Really screws up your New Year's Resolution to drop cable, huh?
The numbers are in for DirecTV's third quarter and it looks like Deion Sanders isn't just a HOF shutdown corner, he's also an excellent pitchman. The satellite company had a net addition of 327,000 subscribers in the US, which it credited to offering free NFL Sunday Ticket for the first year as a lure. Going forward, CEO Mike White says the company plans to maintain momentum with "DirecTV Anywhere" bringing live-TV streaming and VOD to customer's mobile devices (as seen in its iPad app), as well as the launch of a new HD UI and HR34-based home media center. Not mentioned? The DirecTiVo. Check out the rest of the details in the press release after the break, we'll listen in on the earnings call shortly to see if any other gems are dropped.