Analysts suggest the search giant is seeking a share of the social-networking growth its rival enjoys, writes Sonja Ryst.

The tweet sent a quiver through the blogosphere: “Google to launch Facebook competitor very soon.” That line, from Kevin Rose, the entrepreneur who founded content-sharing site Digg, unleashed a sense that the online world as we know it was about to change fundamentally.

The idea that Google, the world’s dominant search company, would soon take on Facebook, the world’s dominant social-networking site, intrigued business analysts and bloggers alike. They set out to guess what the service, reportedly called “Google Me”, would be like. They predict Google’s efforts could yield a “Facebook killer”. Google has confirmed so little about its strategy, it’s unclear how or what results it might bring. But the speculation has been rampant.

Full Story: The Age (Australia)

The contest proved a number of things. That it is easy for strangers to get potentially sensitive information over the phone if they have a good ruse. That workers at companies, even tech companies that spend a lot of time and resources protecting their networks from hackers, were practically handing over the keys to the data storerooms without knowing it. And that humans are the weakest link in the security ecosystem and yet many corporations fail to recognize that.

I learned about the risks from social engineering personally when I worked at a company many years ago that was receiving calls on the main phone line from people who identified themselves as telephone workmen. They would say they needed an outside line to “test the system” and my colleagues would just hit the button to give them an outside line and hang up without a second thought. When I answered one of the calls I asked why it was taking them so long to do their work and the caller hung up. I reported it to the boss and later found out that the calls were made by inmates at a nearby prison who were phoning friends and family around the world for free thanks to the company’s lax security.

Full Story: CNet News

Price: $1.99 -> Free, Version: 1.5 (iTunes)

Description:

Chatting with the whole world has never been so easy. Just start Rooms and you’re connected – everywhere and every time!

Based on Chat Core* (part of the Colloquy project) Rooms provides you easy access to every IRC network all over the world.

If you dont know anything about this IRC thing, this isn’t even a problem since the app also provides a preselected list of channels to start chatting right after you’ve entered your nickname.
Using this IRC chat protocoll you can even join for example ICQ or Ustream chat rooms, cause they share the same technique!

Rooms already comes with a lot of functionality, but more and more features are planned to be added in upcoming (free) updates.
Besides the screenshots and the feature list below, theres also a screencast on the webpage to show how it works.

Please take a look at the FAQ using the support link if you need any more help.

Main Features:

• Chat with friends or other people all over the world in different chatrooms or just tap someones nickname to go to private chat
• Search for other chat rooms using the servers own lists or the “Rooms Browser” which contains a preselected choice(can also be useed to surf other sites while chatting)
• Use your fingers to slide through the current open chatrooms just like the home screen
• Double tap the chat window to get a quick-list to access all channels directly
• Start your own chatroom by just joining any room name you like and invite some friends
• Add chatrooms to your favorites – so you can easily access them again next time
• Chat in landscape just by tilting the device sideways
• Ignore function to hide messages from certain users
• Activity notification with sound, vibration and more so you never miss a message in some other chat room again (including special alert for your nick or own defined words)
• Open links from the chat directly within Rooms without leaving it
• Manage your connections & chat rooms easily using the connection settings
• Saves all currently open chat rooms – except temporary connections – when pushing the home button and rejoins them when starting up again
• In addition you can enable the chatlog to remember the latest conversations
• Temporarily disable the sleep timer to prevent the iPhone from powering off the display and go to sleep
• You may even disable the auto correction withing Rooms

IRC Specific Features:

• SSL support
• Ident/Nickserv support
• Easy User Actions(Op, Kick, Ban, …) thru quick UI actions
• Add default chat room per server/connection
• Send IRC RAW commands directly from the chat
(most of them also mapped to the well known pseudo commands, for example: /msg or /me)
• Add commands to send automatically on connect
• Supports server password
• Change the encoding for every connection and/or chat room separately
• Automatically opens if you click any irc:// link in the iPhones browser or mail
• Clear UI for whois/user information
• Color support (also to disable them)

• … find some more minor features at the changelog in the wiki (found as ‘Rooms … support’ link at the bottom)

What’s New

- New: optionally alert priv msgs too when backgrounding/inactive chat room
- New: Channels stay open when disconnected

- Changed: some final in-app improvements for enabling the user to manage his “upload media library”

- Fixed: a crash happening sometimes on removing connections
- Fixed: getting disconnected on popups
- Fixed: some tapcontrols/keyboardDown issues
- Fixed: transparent keyboard on iPhone 4
- Fixed: a bug where some chat rooms got hidden after deleting another connection
- Fixed: bug when changing chat room order

Price:  Free, Version: 1.0.0.3 (iTunes)

Description

Using Chikka, you can send free text messages (SMS) to the following countries: Guam, Hong Kong, Philippines, Saipan, Spain, United States, and United Kingdom. People you send to can also reply to you. When you are offline, replies can be sent back to you via SMS or email.

You can also send and receive instant messages to other Chikka users (iPhone, web, PC, Mac, Linux).

Last week, data protection officials in Hamburg, Germany, sent a menacing missive in Facebook’s direction, accusing the social network of partaking in illegal activities by retaining data about people who aren’t members of the site but whose contact information may have come into its possession through members’ e-mail importer tools. Last year, the privacy commissioner in Canada put significant pressure on Facebook to simplify its privacy controls, citing concerns that were pulled back into the spotlight when a Toronto law firm filed suit against Facebook this month, for which it’s seeking class-action status.

There will be more incidents like these. Facebook’s privacy policies, however maligned by advocacy groups, have thus far held up decently well in the United States; a coalition of senators who called attention to the amount of data that Facebook shares with third parties quieted down when the social network made some modifications. But more than three quarters of Facebook’s users live outside the U.S., in countries where laws are different, and where lawmakers are much less likely to agree with the Facebook concept–or even the American concept–of online privacy.

Full Story: ZDNet Asia

Its new Open Graph protocol, an extension of its Facebook Connect, is a clear challenge to Google but may not prove useful for many Web searches

When Facebook launched its Open Graph protocol in April, blanketing the Web with “like” and “recommend” buttons, it seemed obvious that one of the company’s goals was to use the resulting behavioral data to power a social search engine—one based on likes instead of links.That process is now well under way, as a report at AllFacebook notes. The company has confirmed that all Web pages that use the network’s open graph plug-ins show up in the social network’s search results in the same way traditional Facebook pages do, as described by Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg in his keynote at the F8 conference.

Facebook hasn’t said exactly how many websites have implemented the Open Graph API and plug-ins since it launched the new platform (a week after the launch, it said there were 50,000), but the protocol was an extension of the company’s existing Facebook Connect service, which enabled publishers to integrate features from the site into their pages, including allowing users to log in with their Facebook credentials. According to the company, more than 1 million websites—including some highly trafficked sites, such as The Huffington Post—have integrated its features, and 150 million of the network’s more than 400 million users “engage with Facebook” in some way through external sites every month. So will Facebook’s social search engine be a Google (GOOG) killer?

Full Story: Business Week

Columbia Pictures has just released the very first teaser trailer for its upcoming film, The Social Network. Like the poster that debuted last week, the teaser is sparse in its detail, but intriguing and provocative at the same time.

The Social Network, otherwise known as “the Facebook movie,” is based in part on the book The Accidental Billionaires. It chronicles the formative days of Facebook, from its founding in Mark Zuckerberg’s Harvard dorm room through its early rise to success. Written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by David Fincher, the film stars Jesse Eisenberg as Zuckerberg. It hits theaters this October.

The tag line for the film, “You can’t make 500 million friends without making a few enemies” seems to sum up some of those early days, and the film (or at least the version of the script that I read) is as much an exploration of young people coming to terms with creating something bigger than themselves as much as it is about loyalty, jealousy and money.

Some have questioned why Facebook and its story was worthy of a film, let alone a film from A-level writers and directors. Well, think about just how much Facebook dominates the online communication space today. Think about how much bigger it is than it was even a year ago. Now consider that it was started only six years ago. Its overwhelming success and the fact that it has become important enough to drive ongoing discussions regarding privacy and data ownership is indicative that it is a force.

Full Story: Stuff

Facebook and Zynga have just announced a five year partnership and the expansion of use of Facebook Credits in Zynga games.

After months of discord, Zynga and Facebook have made peace– at least for now. Despite Zynga’s earlier frustrations and reports that it was ready to abandon Facebook, the two companies were able to agree to a “five-year strategic relationship.” “Facebook was a pioneer in opening their platform in 2007 and in just three years tens of millions of Facebook users play our games every day, from FarmVille and Café World to Treasure Isle and Mafia Wars,” Zynga CEO Mark Pincus said in the press release. “We are excited about Facebook’s long-term commitment to social gaming and Zynga, and look forward to working with them and other platform providers to bring the best social gaming experience to users worldwide.”

Although Zynga and Facebook are now tied together for at least the next five years, don’t expect Zynga to abandon its Zynga Live project and other avenues that will help it grow more independent of the social networking site. We hear that the game developer is still ramping up for its independent projects.

Full Story: Tech Crunch

A 44-year-old man is in federal custody after using a social networking app to meet and have sex with a 14-year-old girl.

Moses Virgil Campbell Jr., 44, allegedly used the “iDate-Personals Dating Service for Singles of Any Sex” app on his iPhone to hook up with a teen, according to an affidavit written by FBI Special Agent Alicia M. McShane.

This is the third sex case involving minors and iPhone apps we’ve come across — after one in Canada involving Grindr and another unnamed social networking app in Phoenix.  Both Grindr and iDate are free apps and classified as “games,” require users to be 18 or over.

iDate is not marketed overtly as a hook-up app but “love at your fingertips.” There are also iDate gay and Christian versions.
App maker Netway President Tom Reed told the Washington Examiner that the company looks for underage users by scanning profiles for words like “teen.” They also review every picture to screen out users who look like they’re too young to join.

Full Story: Cult of Mac

Cybersecurity experts say any concerned users should change their passwords immediately.

According to the US-based cybersecurity company iDefense, the Facebook passwords first appeared for sale on a Russian internet site back in February.

The advertisement was posted by a user named Kirllos.

The hacker is offering to sell Facebook logins in batches of 1,000 for between $US25 and $US45 per batch.

Full Story: ABC News

Most developers are switching from building networks from scratch using PHP to highly-customizable social network platforms that give way to flexibility. Below we’re going to cover several of the most sought after open-source platforms that allow you create your very own social network and run it on a server of your choice. These networks will give you a hyphened control over the front/back end design along with a social networks most valuable asset; the database.

Full Story: dzineblog