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Google+ offers custom URLs for verified accounts, other profiles to come 'over time'

Google offers custom URLs for verified accounts, other profiles to come 'over time'

Do you happen to be David Beckham or Toyota? Well, congratulations -- you now have a Google+ vanity URL. The rest of us looking for the football star or car manufacturer need only type "google.com/+davidbeckham" or "google.com/+toyota" to reach those respective pages, enabling easy access to that must-see picture in front of a private jet, or a vehicle recall notice. Sadly, you're probably not eligible for a custom shortcut of your own -- here's the word from Google:

At first, we're introducing custom URLs to a limited number of verified profiles and pages. But over time we plan to offer custom URLs to many more brands and individuals, so please stay tuned!

So, for now, you better get comfy with "plus.google.com/108326689306432447266," or whatever the good Goog has granted.

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Google+ offers custom URLs for verified accounts, other profiles to come 'over time' originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 13 Aug 2012 21:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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from Engadget http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/13/google-plus-custom-url/

App.net Raises $600K to Build an Ad-Free Alternative to Twitter


Twitter is planning to restrict access to its API, and developers are worried. Some are publicly protesting via their blogs and group petitions. One bold group is seeking to build a full-featured social network to compete against Twitter and other ad-supported social networks.

After having raised $600,000 (and counting) via fundraising platform Kickstarter, the team behind App.net is ready to build a "real-time social service where users and developers come first, not advertisers." The solution? An open, ad-free network funded by users (who pay $50 per year for basic access) and developers (who pay $100 year for API access and support).

The campaign was inspired by a widely ci
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More About: App.net, Twitter, dalton caldwell, kickstarter, open web

from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2012/08/13/app-net-kickstarter-funding/?utm_source=feedbu...

Fanhattan for iOS adds HBO, NBC, more

Fanhattan is a video aggreggator with an app on the iPad and iPhone, and as of today, that app became a little more useful. The service has added HBO Go, Cinemax, NBC, and CW content to its service, which means that you can now find those videos in the Fanhattan listings and follow the links out of the app to watch them on their respective networks.

Fanhattan will also clue you in when certain shows or movies become available on all of the various streaming networks, so it sounds pretty handy indeed. The app is a free download on iOS right now.

[via The Verge]

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Fanhattan for iOS adds HBO, NBC, more originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 31 Jul 2012 23:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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from TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog http://www.tuaw.com/2012/07/31/fanhattan-for-ios-adds-hbo-nbc-more/

Olympic winners: How NBC’s authentication helped VPN providers

NBC is streaming some 3,500 hours of video live from the London Olympics – but access to the live streams is restricted to pay TV subscribers who have access to MSNBC and CNBC as part of their TV bundle.

That leaves out quite a few viewers. Cord cutters, for example, but also subscribers to low-cost satellite bundles have to follow the games on TV, where coverage is limited and tape-delayed.

Or they have to look elsewhere — and a number of more tech-savvy viewers are turning to VPN providers to access live streams from the BBC or other foreign media organizations. One provider told us that installs of his software tripled since the games started.

From security to free TV

Virtual private networks, or VPNs, have been around for a long time. The corporate world uses this technology to offer remote workers secure access to PCs in their office. Security-conscious web workers have been paying for VPN services to encrypt the traffic they’re sending over public Wi-Fi hotspots. And an increasing number of TV fans have been using VPNs to access foreign streaming services.

The technology behind these different use cases is fundamentally the same: A user connects to a remote server, which then forwards the traffic to other servers. One benefit can be that the connection between the user and the remote VPN server is encrypted. Another is that to other servers, it looks like the user is accessing them from a different IP address.

That second part is what a number of VPN providers have been cashing in on. Video services like Hulu or Netflix regularly block all traffic from countries they’re not officially launched in yet. Users can circumvent this by accessing a VPN provider that offers them an IP number from the same country as the service they’re trying to access.

Suddenly, we all want to be British

The BBC blocks access to its Olympics live streams to anyone who doesn’t have a U.K. IP address.

Usually, this means that users in other countries access VPNs to pretend that they live in the U.S. Hulu is especially popular with foreign VPN users, and some have even figured out how to pay for Netflix with a U.S. credit card and then access it from abroad. But during the London games, this trend was suddenly reversed — and everyone wanted to be British.

Case in point: VPN provider AnchorFree, which targets foreign Hulu fans with a special offering called Expat Shield, usually serves 93 percent of its software downloads to users outside of the U.S. However, during the Olympics, 46 percent of all new users came from the States.

But Americans weren’t the only ones looking for access to the BBC’s streaming offering. Business was up across the board for Expat Shield during the games. A company spokesperson told us that the service usually registers around 3,400 new users per day. During the games, that number went up to almost 10,700.

VPNs are here to stay

Of course, those are small numbers, which might explain why NBC doesn’t care about the money VPN providers are making with the circumvention of its pay TV authentication wall. (AnchorFree’s offering is ad-supported, but many other companies are charging between $5 and $15 for access to their servers.) Even if tens of thousands of viewers were paying for VPN services, it would still be a drop in the bucket compared to the hundreds of millions NBC makes with retrans fees they’re charging cable providers.

The same is true for foreign rights, which is why territorial restrictions for services like Hulu and Netflix aren’t going to go away anytime soon. Of course, that also means that people who are tech-savvy enough are going to use VPNs to access foreign video providers. And the Olympics likely helped to introduce a whole bunch of new users to this idea.

Image courtesy of (CC-BY-SA) Flickr user mark sebastian.


from GigaOM http://gigaom.com/video/olympics-nbc-authentication-vpn/?utm_source=feedburne...

Now You Can Scan Your Deposit With Bank of America’s App



They may be late to the app store with this one, but it will still make lots of customers happy. Bank of America has updated its iPhone app to allow users to deposit checks without having to go to the bank or an ATM.

You simply snap a picture of the front and back of the check using the app, and your money is deposited. Banking is finally truly mobile.

While it makes life more convenient, this feature is not new. USAA Bank was the first to offer it almost three years ago. Chase Bank made it available to its customers the following year.

Bank of America was the subject of public backlash and many online petitions last year when it instituted a $5 per month fee for debit card u…
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More About: bank of america, online banking


from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2012/08/08/now-you-can-scan-your-deposit-with-bank-of-ame...

Leveraging big data to extract value from social media

While traditional databases and associated analytic frameworks are powerful in understanding customer structured data, many organizations see the combination of social media and traditional database analytics as a very powerful way to glean customer insight, predict trends and bring products to market faster.

Join GigaOM Pro and our sponsor HPCC Systems LexisNexis for a live analyst roundtable discussion titled “Leveraging big data to extract value from social media.” Topics to be discussed include:

  • The inherent challenges and potential around analyzing the massive amounts of social data created by customers
  • Real-world lessons from case studies of specific social-media analytics
  • How to leverage traditional business data and social-media data together to create increased understanding and actionable business strategies
  • How to create a strategy for creating better frameworks for understanding your customers through traditional data and social-media data

Our panel of experts includes:

This free analyst roundtable webinar takes place on Wednesday, Aug. 8, 2012, at 10 a.m. PT. Register here to claim your spot.


from GigaOM http://gigaom.com/2012/08/06/leveraging-big-data-to-extract-value-from-social...

Mathematician Predicts Wave of Violence In 2020

ananyo writes "In a feature that recalls Asimov's Foundation series and 'psychohistory', Nature profiles mathematician Peter Turchin, who says he can see meaningful cycles in history. Worryingly, Turchin predicts a wave of violence in the United States in 2020. Quoting from the piece: 'To Peter Turchin, who studies population dynamics at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, the appearance of three peaks of political instability at roughly 50-year intervals is not a coincidence. For the past 15 years, Turchin has been taking the mathematical techniques that once allowed him to track predator-prey cycles in forest ecosystems, and applying them to human history. He has analyzed historical records on economic activity, demographic trends and outbursts of violence in the United States, and has come to the conclusion that a new wave of internal strife is already on its way. The peak should occur in about 2020, he says, and will probably be at least as high as the one in around 1970. 'I hope it won't be as bad as 1870,' he adds." We recently discussed similar research into predicting violence in the short term.

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from Slashdot http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/vXxkbwqLIRs/mathematician-pre...