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The Funniest Instagram-Facebook Tweets

Facebook just acquired Instagram and the best place to get that news was, of course, Twitter. A number of hilarious reactions emerged and I decided to share some from my timeline here. Have a good laugh!

RT @Pinboard: BREAKING NEWS: Pinboard acquires medium coffee at a $1.50 valuation. Believe this will have sitewide benefits; excited go ...
@ArpitNext
Arpit Kumar

RT @4JIT: 1 billion for Instagram is like paying 10,000 Rs for a pack of lays chips.
@nirmaltv
Nirmal

Facebook: "We want to buy you. What price is cool with you?" Instagram: "You know what's cool?"
@andrekibbe
Andre Kibbe

RT @JennyJohnsonHi5: Instagram is now in a relationship and it's complicated.
@chr1sa
Chris Anderson

RT @nestguy: "Please give us all your users' data." "No way!" "Here's a billion dollars." "Well in that case... We have image filters too."
@bgardner
Brian Gardner

RT @beastoftraal: Instabook. Facegram. Instaface. Instacebook. Factagram. Facebooam. Instagrook. Inook. Facram. Faceram. Ink.
@clintonjeff
Clinton Jeff

RT @PabloVikasso: So does this mean my Facebook timeline is going to be full of images of locks, windows and other useless objects shot ...
@madmanweb
Madhu 'MadMan' Menon

RT @RyanJCormier: Wonder which pisses Instagram users off more: release of Android version or news of Facebook acquisition?
@tsuvik
Vikas SN

What to expect with the new Instagram/Facebook acquisition: http://t.co/iE1FsWZk
@Percival
Sean Percival

 

The above article - The Funniest Instagram-Facebook Tweets was published at Jeet Blog.

from JeetBlog http://www.jeetblog.com/the-funniest-instagram-facebook-tweets/

Checking for Mac Flashback infestation? There's an app for that

Our post from Friday about how to check your Mac for a Flashback malware infection has been wildly popular so far. And with good reason, too, since a second security firm has now backed up the numbers indicating that more than half a million Macs have been infected. That's slightly more than 1 percent of all 45 million Macs in the world—still a relatively small number, but a worrisome one for Mac users, as the tally of infected machines continues to grow.

But for those of us who are kept on electronic umbilical cords in order to help our family members with computer questions, asking them to open the Terminal and start typing in foreign commands can be daunting. That's why Ars reader and programmer Juan Leon put together a quick Flashback checker that can be run on its own to see whether the Mac in question is infected. The download is posted to github and can run on Mac OS X10.5 and above; Leon also posted the source code for those interested in checking it out.

The downloadable app runs the same three Terminal commands that we outlined in our how-to last week—it either says "No signs of infection were found" or spits back further information if necessary. There is also a link to F-Secure's instructions for removal, but if you have less-technical family members whose Macs are infected, you'll likely need to step in and help before they have to start mucking with the Terminal.

Read the comments on this post


from Ars Technica http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2012/04/checking-for-mac-flashback-infestat...

Dataminr builds a Twitter-powered early warning system

Dataminr, a New York-based start-up that has been quietly building a global sensor network powered by Twitter, is introducing its technology to the public Monday, showing how its real-time engine can act as an early warning system for enterprise and government customers. Dataminr has signed a partnership with Twitter to access its firehose and is analyzing it in dozens of ways, helping surface breaking news, critical information or highlighting trends from emerging events.

Dataminr combs through 340 million daily tweets on Twitter and its algorithms quickly seize on abnormal and actionable signals that can be analyzed and confirmed as a relevant event for a client. This could be anything from an assassination or general instability in certain countries to government sanctions, natural disasters or on-the-ground chatter about products or trends. Dataminr uses available Twitter metadata along with other contextual factors such as historical and concurrent data to create a mathematical signature for an event, ultimately deciding on the fly whether an event is valuable for decision-making purposes. For example, Dataminr’s clients were alerted 20 minutes ahead of mainstream news coverage of Osama Bin Laden’s death.

Dataminr, which is built heavily on Hadoop and is hosted on Amazon’s EC2, processes 50 terabytes of data per month. The company works to make the data easy to use so clients can find what they’re looking for quickly, Dataminr CEO and founder Ted Bailey told me in an interview. He said previous technologies that tried to look at Internet data relied on things like sources and the authority of sources or keyword frequency. Dataminr is very focused on the now and deriving instant value from the flow of tweets online.

Predicting the now

“It’s not just that we capture early information, but also where the eyes of the world are pointing. That’s a valuable indicator of what’s happening in the world and where the world will focus in the future,” said Bailey. “We have event detection software that is able to pinpoint specific events going on in the world. Instead of predicting the future, we’re very much predicting the present and giving people better understanding of what’s happening right now. And that has enormous value.”

One of the Dataminr’s key strengths is the way it can absorb and merge third-party information or a client’s proprietary data to help add more context and inform Dataminr’s work. That ensures that a customer can harvest unique insights that are geared toward their interests or bolstered by their own data.

Customers can access Dataminr’s API and also view information through a desktop dashboard. Typically, a client will ask questions of the Twitter data or look for specific events to base decisions on. But Dataminr can also surface other information relevant to clients based on their general interests and needs.

Founded in 2009, Dataminr has signed up a number of big banks and hedge funds and has been making inroads with government clients. It’s now planning to roll out its services to a lot more customers  in the second half of the year. The company closed a $7 million round of financing last fall from a number of angels and private investors from the tech and finance industries.

A big fan in Twitter

Twitter has been a big fan of the service and has talked up Dataminr at a couple of events — they got a mention from CEO Dick Costolo in October. Robert Weeks, a spokesman for Twitter, told me by email that Twitter sees a lot of value in what Dataminr is doing, helping the enterprise market be aware of and capitalize on moments that matter. It’s also an example of the kind of start-ups that Twitter likes to encourage, showing off the overall power of the Twitter fire hose in areas like finance and government.

“Dataminr is a strong team building compelling products to help clients grow their businesses. Twitter is committed to working with partners like Dataminr who add value to the hundreds of millions of Tweets sent every day by finding the right signals for the right audiences,” said Weeks.

There’s a growing opportunity in making sense of the flood of data flowing through services like Twitter. More and more, there are valuable insights that can be gleaned from real-time social data if it can be identified and confirmed as critical events for markets, industries and governments. Dataminr has got a good sense of how to leverage that data and make it useful to this growing customer base, who sees more insights emerging from the flood of social data.

Thumbnail image courtesy of Flickr user bettina n

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from GigaOM http://gigaom.com/2012/04/09/dataminr-builds-a-twitter-powered-early-warning-...

PAX East Nerds v. Anime Boston Geeks: Who Rules?

With PAX East in the Seaport and Anime Boston in the Back Bay this weekend, nerds flooded the city from all angles. As Boston became the land of the geek for the past three days, we ask “who was King?”

In terms of the length of their bodies of work, Anime has the edge. PAX is in only it’s third year in Boston while Anime has been geeking in the Bean since 2003. PAX did recently sign a 10 year deal with the city, but I doubt we were going to see either event disappear anytime soon regardless.

PAX East has the overwhelming advantage in size though with almost 70,000 attendees in 2011 compared to Anime Boston’s 19,000. In addition, PAX is expected to grow to over 100,000 attendees in the coming years. If this milestone is reached, it will become the biggest video gaming event in the world  (At which point I will begin taking an annual vacation out of the city for that weekend). Anime has expanded every year it has operated but, unless Japanese cartoon fervor consumes America, it is unlikely to be as popular as the gamer fest.

Anime is more of a celebration of weirdness while PAX is mostly a business expo so it’s difficult to compare the number of companies at each. That said, PAX had 150 of the biggest names in the gaming industry filling the Boston Convention Center’s exhibit hall for three full days.  Anime overtook the Hynes Convention Center and Sheraton, but the grandeur of the wasn’t nearly the same.

PAX is an absolute spectacle. When I attended on Saturday I was awed by what I saw. Mostly because I had no idea that people actually care so much about playable fantasy. The exhibits assembled by many of the bigger companies rivaled Broadway stage sets.

I give the weird award to Anime. Each convention had events, challenges, promotions, speeches, gaming, and panels but Anime had a blood drive and masquerade ball.  Yes, a blood drive. That kind of freakiness deserves an extra point in my book.

At both events there were wild costumes all around, but it was in the Back Bay where I didn’t even feel comfortable making eye contact with the men and women behind the masks. To be honest, I felt like I was walking through 8 Mile. I just put my head down, tried not to walk into anyone, and hoped make it out alive.

So, who wins as King of the Geeks? Based on the size and scope of its weirdness, PAX does.  In terms of creepiness per capita, Anime Boston does. PAX pulls a huge crowd–from casual gamers interested in seeing new products to people who clearly split their personalities with video game characters.  Anime’s army was hardcore and devoted to its creepiness.

I don’t mean for that to sounds like a middle school “everybody wins” award, but it’s true.  The events are hard to compare because of the difference in their motivations–business vs celebration. So, it appears that the land of the nerds was ruled by an oligarchy.

[image via animeboston flickr]

from BostInno http://bostinno.com/2012/04/08/pax-east-nerds-v-anime-boston-geeks-who-rules/

Netflix wants to wield more influence in election season

Earlier this week, Netflix filed a statement of organization with the federal government to form a political action committee, or a PAC, which will allow the company to raise and spend money on campaigns and causes in Washington, D.C. The web service registered its newly-founded committee as "Flixpac."

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, "A PAC can give $5,000 to a candidate per election (primary, general or special) and up to $15,000 annually to a national political party. PACs may receive up to $5,000 each from individuals, other PACs, and party committees per year." Microsoft is an example of a tech company with heavy influence in the capitol, spending $1.3 million in contributions last year.

Behind the scenes, Netflix has employed lobbyists since the mid-2000's, although it has only employed full-time lobbyists since the end of 2010. The recent years have seen an exponential growth in Netflix's cash flow to Congress, however. In 2009 the company spent $20,000 in lobby money, which grew to $130,000 in 2010, and by 2011 the company reported spending half a million dollars lobbying Congress.

A lobbying registration form from November 2010 indicated Netflix's "current and anticipated" lobbying issues included "copyright, telecommunications, consumer protection, tax and the Internet." Donations from Flixpac will likely go to candidates who have strong feelings on those issues as well.

Earlier this year, while congress battled over SOPA and PIPA, Netflix largely stayed out of the spotlight, and vacillated on its support of the acts until it took a publicly neutral stance. While Politico suggests the PAC formation is "another political tool with which to aggressively press a pro-intellectual property, anti-video piracy agenda," the company has historically been much more outspoken about federal issues like net neutrality and working around the Video Privacy Protection Act.

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from Ars Technica http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/04/netflix-wants-to-wield-more-i...

Shapeoko, the Affordable CNC Mill Kit

On April 1, Inventables made Shapeoko kits available for the first time. No fooling! This low-cost CNC mill comes in three versions and each features the MakerSlide system. This inexpensive kit is quite an achievement and drives home the fact that MakerSlide is an empowering building block for makers. For Edward Ford, the inventor of Shapeoko, this is a watershed moment but it’s been a long time in coming.

Edward’s CNC odyssey started in 2004. While in college, he worked part-time at a manufacturer where he spent his days at a punch machine performing a boring, repetitive task hour after hour. Just across the aisle from him was a giant plasma CNC machine that captivated his imagination with its precision, power, and speed. Weeks went by. The boredom was stifling but the allure of the plasma CNC was intoxicating. His conclusion? “I’ve got to have one of those!”

Who among us hasn’t been caught up in watching CNC perform its magic? While many of us wish for such empowering tools, few of us will set out to build one from scratch. Yet within six months of falling in love with CNC, that’s exactly what Edward set out to do.


Learning CNC
With ambition but little knowledge, Edward joined CNCzone where he found himself at the epicenter of those longing to make CNC machines. In this online community, Edward found people to engage with, projects to watch. and resources to learn from. With this site as his online resource, he set out to learn CNC.

On this journey, his first lesson was to get the hardware right. His first CNC project was done with the resources of a student and the result was his first CNC frame, cut and assembled with hand tools in his father’s workshop. While building it was a major achievement, the result was disheartening. Hand-cut hardware assembled imprecisely. Keeping everything square proved a major challenge. If it had been completed and powered with motors then it would have torn itself apart. In despair Edward shelved the project.

His second lesson was to get the electronics right. With new-found access to a laser cutter at work, it became possible to produce precision parts and build a quality frame, which he did. Moving to the next stage, he bought a kit from Xylotek to handle the electronics. It came with stepper motors, controller boards, and a power supply which would bringing his new CNC mill to life. While the electronics would readily perform their function, they had to connect to the hardware which presented new challenges. Establishing good mechanical coupling wasn’t easy. Getting the electronics to drive hardware correctly also didn’t come easy. It took a year of tweaking to get the electronics working well with the hardware. By the end of it, he had climbed major learning curves and was well on his way to conquering CNC.

At this point it was 2007 and Edward was years into the process of mastering CNC building. He had learned about hardware and electronics; it was now time for his third major lesson in getting the software and operations right. He installed EMC2, ran his first test, and experienced the joy of success! He had managed to draw a straight line.

Drawing that line was a major milestone, but obviously only a start. There would be many things still to learn about operating the mill. The concepts of homing, backlash, and learning G-code had to be mastered. He had to familiarize himself with different materials, their speeds and feeds, and much more. As he learned, he realized the many things he’d need to improve on his mill and this increased awareness became a growing burden. So much so that he tabled the project for almost two years.

A Fresh Start: Building on lessons learned
By 2008, the landscape had changed for makers. Affordable laser-cutting made it possible to produce precise hardware on the cheap. Open hardware had made controller systems inexpensive and created a vital development community; open source software had produced a raft of wonderful applications. It was time to leverage all these changes and start fresh.

In Edward’s life, SketchUp had been replaced by Autodesk Inventor, so now full 3D prototyping was both possible and powerful. He designed a completely new CNC mill in software. Before cutting even a single piece of wood, he tested the assembly thoroughly in Inventor. When he was confident of his design, he sent the files to Ponoko to be cut. When he received the cut wood, it fit together precisely and assembled perfectly.

When it came to electronics, Arduino and the shields ecosystem were now available to provide controller systems. G-code interpreters such as Grbl made it easy to control CNCs. Together they make it possible to quickly and cheaply build the rest of the mill and put it to the test. With high hopes he ran a test print of the SparkFun logo and he achieve fantastic results!

Open Source CNC Mill Kit
It was 2009 and Edward had been learning CNC mill-building for five years. Since starting his journey, the world of hardware building had changed radically. Starting from scratch he could now model and built a mill quickly and cheaply. A question gnawed at him: Could he help others fulfill the ambition he’d been pursuing for so long? Could he help others build a cheap CNC mill.

Of all the costs of mill-building, the cost of the rails stood in the way his goal. With cheap enough rails a mill could be built for $300. He looked around and found new sources that might work. He didn’t want to pour his own money into testing these options but decided if he could get the work funded then he’d take the time to do the prototyping.

Enter Kickstarter, the crowdfunding service where he posted his CNC project. If the community would fund his test of three different prototypes then he committed to release the results as open source hardware, providing a build of materials (BoM), and drawing files for free to all. A schedule of awards tied to funding levels was set; top contributors would receive complete CNC mill kits of the selected design. The campaign started on June 28, 2011 and ran for 30 days.

Coincidentally, just as the Shapeoko campaign began on Kickstarter, the MakerSlide campaign ended. Since Edward was looking at rail systems, he was naturally interested and after talking with Bart Dring of MakerSlide, he became a big fan. His mill prototypes started to use MakerSlide, and as its structural properties became better understood, Edward used more and more of it. Below you can see renderings of several prototypes: earlier versions on the left,  later versions on the right. Note the last two use MakerSlide exclusively. The end version is the Shapeoko.

The campaign goal had been to raise $1,500 to fund the prototyping. He easily exceeded that and raised a total of over $11,000 with 14 people paying $500 for the CNC kit. Six extra kits had been assembled so Edward offered them for sale to Kickstarter supporters. All six were gone within 15 seconds of sending the offer email and almost 50 people were left wanting. So Edward did what any good businessman would do, he made more.

He made 20 more and sold out in an hour. So he made 30 more… and sold out in an hour. There was obviously demand but only so much time available in Edward’s life to supply kits. With a second baby having recently arrived in his life, Edward needed help. Referencing MakerSlide’s Bart Dring as a role model and Inventable’s Zach Kaplan as a prospective partner, Edward was soon on the path to getting relief. Shapeoko is now available through Inventables who builds kits, does online sales, and performs fulfillment.

Edward is in the process of getting his life back. Without the burden of selling Shapeoko, he can focus on the many ideas he has for Shapeoko add-ons. He wants to design, build, test, and share them with others. He also longs to spend more time in the CNC community forums to help newly excited members learn about CNC. It’s been many months since he could run regularly, ride his mountain bike, or simply watch TV with his wife. Life with his family will soon become more sane… as sane as life gets with two kids under the age of three.


from MAKE http://blog.makezine.com/2012/04/06/shapeoko-the-affordable-cnc-mill-kit/?utm...

Rumor: YouTube Rentals Coming to Google TV Soon


YouTube is working hard to transition for an amateur video sharing site into a full-blown TV network and first-run movie-consumption destination. It’s creating its own TV shows and has made big deals, including one this morning with Paramount, for scads of tasty filmic content. But there is one big problem. You can rent YouTube movies in the one place you most want to: your big-screen TV.

Obviously, you could hook up your PC to your TV, but the quality and dependability (DRM could block the film from playing over your HDMI connection completely) could be suspect. Wouldn’t it make far more sense to rent digital movies directly through YouTube parent Google’s own living room product, the Web content/broadcast TV hybridGoogle TV?

Yes it would. Now rumor has it that Google TV will soon support direct YouTube movie rentals. There’s no timing, official announcement or statement from Google, but sources are telling Mashable this is a possibility. The use of the word “soon” is enough to give credence to the possibility that Google and YouTube might finally crack this all-important nut.

The reality is that, right now, for all the content YouTube is collecting, it simply is not on a level playing field with Apple and Apple TV, Netflix and Amazon’s Prime. These services are on set-top boxes (Apple has its own) that plug directly into your HDTV. No concerns about whether or not DRM rights will prevent movie playback. The experience for renting a movie on any of them is seamless.

If YouTube does go this route, though, it’s hard to imagine that it will even be able to introduce a subscription service alongside the premium movie rentals. YouTube’s legacy is free, bite-sized content supported mostly by ad overlays, no one will want to pay for content that was originally free on, say, broadcast television on YouTube – unless, of course YouTube offers an ad-free network. Then viewers might pay a monthly fee for the privilege.

YouTube has another problem, though. It needs more people to buy Google TV. Logitech walked away from the first Google TV after dumping millions into the program. However, at CES, a bunch of new manufacturers lined up with brand new Google TV hardware, so the future could be bright for YouTube Rentals. On the other hand, Google still has a lot of work to do on Google TV. The Sony Google TVs we have in Mashable’s office feature a compact, yet often inscrutable remote. I could go into all the myriad issues, but suffice to say that it often switches “enter” back and forth between two physical controls.

As most know, regular YouTube is, in addition to being on Google TV, already on set-top boxes like the Roku2, but it’s unclear if these partners will ever get YouTube Movie rentals or if Google wants to save that all for itself.

For now, YouTube is still a great platform for finding the best one-minute viral videos. Getting consumers to see it as more, no matter how many content partners and original programing YouTube adds could be a challenge, unless and until YouTube Movies finally arrive on Google TV.

Do you own a Google TV? Would the addition of YouTube Movie rentals change how you feel about it? Would you buy a Google TV just to have this feature? Tell us in the comments.

More About: Apple TV, Google, google tv, logitech, Movies, netflix, sony, YouTube

For more Entertainment coverage:

from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2012/04/04/rumor-youtube-rentals-coming-to-google-tv-soon...

An Animated History of the MBTA [Map]

As a creature of habit, you get on and off the same T stop every morning, likely thinking only about when you can get your first sip of Dunkin. But it’s worth pausing to think about the rich history behind your commute: When was this tunnel built? How old is this T stop? What was it originally called?

Andrew Lynch is a New York-based photographer, freelance web designer and hobby cartographer who wants to answer those questions for you. Lynch created an animated map showing the history of the MBTA, which looks at the chronological evolution of the system from station names and tunnels to now-defunct lines.

“I got the idea when I saw a simple map depicting the MBTA back in 1912, and I realized what a great idea it would be to show the system from the past, but updated the way we are used to seeing the map,” Lynch tells BostInno in an email. “Historical transit maps aren’t the stripped down modernist diagrams we see today. The MBTA map we are used to seeing didn’t come into being until 1967.”

Describing the creation process for his map, Lynch explains:

Seeing an old map modernized like this gives the reader a context. Then I just took the next logical step and created one for each year and animated it. I’ve seen similar maps made for other cities but what I’d seen wasn’t as clean as I’d like. What I did was to create a separate map for each year to give it a better continuity.

So, why this map?

What I’d like the public to get from this is a better understanding of how the T has changed and continues to change. Hating on the T is a Boston past-time because it’s seen as so rigid and politically clogged. What I hope to show is that the system is more flexible and fluid than people give it credit for. Boston was in a long depression from the 1920s until the early 60s and through the hard work of city and state leaders they were able to use transportation infrastructure as a way to turn the city around.

Lynch sums it up nicely: “Boston is far more dynamic than people give it credit for, and I hope this is one small way to depict that.”

Check out his Animated History of the MBTA map below, and for more, check out his blog.

Map via Andrew Lynch

from BostInno http://bostinno.com/2012/04/05/an-animated-history-of-the-mbta-map/