News

Today I’ve read a nice article in readwriteweb.com so I wanted share it with you: We believe that Google will preview a major new social service called Google Circles at South by Southwest Interactive today. Update: Google has now officially denied that Circles will launch here, but not that it exists. Others, including Tim O’Reilly, have also now confirmed that they’ve seen it and that it’s awesome. If what we’ve heard is correct, the service will offer photo, video and status message sharing. Everything users share on Circles will be shared only with the most appropriate circle of social contacts in their lives, not with all your contacts in bulk. Circles may be shown off at an event co-hosted tonight by the ACLU, an organization focused on privacy and the liberties it affords. It may not be a big public launch yet, but it’s clear that this is a major product in the works at the very least. ...

Examiner.com wrote: As many people are aware, bullying today is not like it used to be. Back in the day, all one had to do to turn his bully in was give the name of the person who bothered him to a trusted adult. Today, it is not that easy. Bullying doesn’t end at the school bell. It follows students from the blacktop to their cell phones to their computer screens. Many times, these “cyber bullies” create fake online profiles which allow them to bully anonymously. Kids in turn learn to fear school instead of perceiving it as a place of safety. Consider these staggering statistics- One third of middle school and high school students report being bullied during the school year. Almost 3 million students have said they were pushed, shoved, tripped and even spit on. Those are only the reported incidents of bullying. It does not include the day to day bullying that goes unreported. Bullying has also shown to lead to absences and poor performance in the classroom. ...

TheNextWeb wrote: We’ve received a solid report from a reliable and proven source that Yahoo has sold social bookmarking site Delicious for $5m+. The service was placed on the market in December after a meeting to discuss Yahoo’s future direction. After a heated bidding process, the site has reportedly been sold to a rival bookmarking service – who exactly we’re unsure of but we’ll update once we have confirmation. We do know its been sold to an existing competitor with “strong user base.” ...

Twitter has issued a statement to its mailing list encouraging third-party developers to cease creating applications that use the Twitter API solely to duplicate the functionality offered by Twitter’s own official clients. Citing an effort to improve consistency of the Twitter user experience, the social networking behemoth is exercising more control over how its service is utilized. Developers who already have an established audience, such as those who create such popular clients as TweetDeck and Seesmic, may continue developing their applications and supporting their user bases. However, developers are encouraged to cease creating new applications that duplicate existing functionality. With 750,000 applications in existence that already use the Twitter API, it is quite clear why Twitter wants to stop the tide of new apps and grab the reins of its users’ experience: it wants to own the user experience. ...

TechSpot wrote: Microsoft this week reportedly signed off the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) build of Internet Explorer 9. The RTM build is 9.00.8112.16421.110308-0330, meaning it was compiled on March 8, 2011 at 3:30 AM, according to Windows 8 Beta. A user by the name of sp3ciali5t has managed to post an image of the IE9 about screen for this build on Twitter. It’s in Turkish, but you can still the build number: ...

Google Operation System: While most Chrome users have been upgraded to Chrome 10, Google is fixing the bugs from Chrome 11 and working on Chrome 12. A recent Chromium build made a significant change: Gears is no longer included in Google Chrome. Gears is a browser plugin released by Google back in 2007, The initial goal was to add support for offline web apps, but the plugin added many other HTML5 features at a time when HTML5 wasn’t a priority for most browsers. Google discontinued Gears last year to focus on “bringing all of the Gears capabilities into web standards like HTML5” and to implement them in Google Chrome. Features like geolocation, notifications, web workers, application caches are already available in Google Chrome, so it’s probably the right time to stop bundling the Gears plugin. ...

Avira’s Anti-Virus Technology Used by ZeoBIT in New System Utility – MacKeeper Avira provides anti-malware scanning engine to MacKeeper App Tettnang / Silicon Valley, March 11, 2011 – IT security expert Avira announced today that it licensed its industry-leading antivirus product to Silicon Valley-based ZeoBIT to be used in ZeoBIT’s MacKeeper product. MacKeeper is an all-in-one app that includes 16+ unique features for security, cleaning, data control and optimization for Macintosh computers. ...

BetaNews wrote: Thursday, Microsoft announced two updates to its Software Assurance Desktop Optimization Pack for enterprise Windows deployments available immediately: App-V 4.6 SP1, and MED-V 2.0. Microsoft Application Virtualization, or App-V, is the solution which turns software applications into centrally managed, virtualized services that don’t have to be installed on client machines. With the SP1 update, Microsoft has introduced package accelerators in the new App-V Sequencer, which Microsoft has been discussing since mid-2010. Package Accelerators are files that admins can combine with install media to automatically convert applications into virtual packages. They are released 1:1 with the applications they work with, and the first accelerators will be available in early April, and will include Project, Adobe Reader, and Office 2010. ...

Google is always looking for new ways to make it easier for developers to get started with our APIs. When you come across a new Google API, you often want to try it out without investing too much time. With that in mind, we are happy to announce the Google APIs Explorer, an interactive tool that lets you easily try out Google APIs right from your browser. Today, the Explorer supports over a half dozen APIs – and we expect that number to grow rapidly over the coming weeks and months. ...

Mashable: Monday night, Adobe released a new, experimental Flash-to-HTML5 conversion tool codenamed Wallaby. Wallaby is an AIR app that lets devs and designers quickly and simply convert Flash Professional files to HTML5— and when we say “simply and easily,” we mean it’s a matter of dragging and dropping. The company is specifically hoping this tool will make it easier for designers and developers to get their content onto iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad. ...