Author: Josh Wolford

If you’re a deadbeat dad and looking to stay off the child support radar, it may be wise to refrain from posting pics of yourself rolling in cash on Facebook. Or, you could just pay your child support.

But if you’re not going to pay up, please understand that your Facebook photos are public, and that investigators are most likely checking them in order to build a case against you.

This story comes from Milwaukee, where a 23-year-old man is facing three felony counts of failure to pay child support. And it isn’t looking too good for him after some specific Facebook photos emerged.

Christopher Robinson is facing up to 11 years in prison, and Facebook photos he posted showing him posing with cash and bottle of booze aren’t helping.

Although Deputy District Attorney in the case Kent Lovern won’t speak on pending cases, he did tell ABC News that Facebook is becoming a much more useful aid in these types of investigations.

“Facebook has become a repository for information that we may not…know about,” he says.

If the office gets a complaint on failure to pay child support, Facebook can then be tapped to help the investigation. Upon judge’s orders, the DA can have access to the Facebook profile and find any damning evidence – photos or otherwise.

“It is an investigative tool,” says Lovern. “It can be effective in assisting in the investigation and prosecution of certain criminal targets.”

So, when the DA finds photos of money and tons of things bought with money, it kind of ruins the story that the target doesn’t have to resources to pay.

Or, once again, let me be the first to suggest that you just pay the child support. Then you can make it rain all over Facebook with no worries.

Today, we wish Amazon’s Appstore a happy 2nd birthday. And Amazon is celebrating with a giveaway.

Today, you can grab 18 “app of the day” apps for free. The apps that Amazon is offering for free range from $0.99 to $9.95, and include games, productivity apps, and more.

We’re celebrating our 2nd birthday today with Free App of the Day Greatest Hits. One day only, Friday March 22. amzn.to/YdnzI1

— Amazon Appstore (@amazonappstore) March 22, 2013

Last year, on the Appstore’s first birthday, Amazon celebrated with an entire week of discounted apps. This time around, you have a smaller window to cash in on the occasion. The free apps will only be free for today, Friday, March 22nd.

Amazon’s Appstore launched on March 22nd, 2011 and almost immediately pissed off Apple, who ended up protesting Amazon’s use of “Appstore.” Now, two years later, everything has been settled and the world is still spinning on its axis. Here’s to many more years, Amazon Appstore.

Dude’s got skills. And it’s always nice to see the little guy prevail – especially with a twisting, spinning, flying face-kick. I’m not sure you try this move in a real fight, but this is a Karate match. And there, this is simply badass.

[boringlytv]

There is a lot of awesome content coming from HBO. The venerable premium cable network has produced some of the best shows to ever grace the small screen (The Wire, The Sopranos), and currently produces some of the most interesting (Game of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire) and popular (True Blood) programs around.

Because the content is so good, people are willing to do just about anything to get to it. For some, that means paying over $100 a month for a cable subscription + HBO. For others who have cut the cord on cable, that usually means pirating it.

But that’s not because they’re cheap, or because they think that the content isn’t worth paying for. Quite the contrary, actually. At least one online campaign showed that people are more than willing to pay HBO, directly, for their content.

And until now, HBO has shut down any and all hopes of their content moving out from under the cable subscription umbrella. Until now.

HBO CEO Richard Plepler gave cordcutters a glimmer of hope this week. Speaking at the Game of Thrones season 3 premiere, Plepler said that offering HBO content (via HBO GO, the company’s on demand content hub) without requiring a cable subscription could maybe possibly might just may be an option, down the line, maybe.

“Right now we have the right model,” Plepler told Reuters. “Maybe HBO GO, with our broadband partners, could evolve.”

He went on to say that they would “have to make the math work.”

Not exactly a signal that HBO is planning to give up on the lucrative cable subscription-based model that has served them so well for so many years, but it sounds like Plepler is aware that the times may be a’ changing. Although abandoning the traditional distirubtion system system may be a shaky business call, Plepler seems to understand that there is an availability issue with HBO content:

“Doesn’t mean we are not mindful that the problem exists,” he said.

If HBO decided to go this route with an internet-packaged HBO deal, they know that they would have plenty of support for the venture. Last summer, a viral campaign saw hundreds of thousands of people take to Twitter and shout, “Take my money, HBO!”

The campaign was simple. Give us a standalone HBO GO service, free of cable requirements, and take our money. As in we’re ready to pay you for your content if you will just let us. People tweeted the price that they might pay for such a service, and the average was an impressive $12+ per month – a couple bucks more than Netflix. Some people even said that they would pay well over $20 per month for a cordless HBO GO service.

The effort received over 163,000 supporters in just two days.

Shortly after, HBO dismissed the whole thing with a single tweet, basically saying that their model was the right model for now. Thanks, but no thanks.

But these few words from HBO’s CEO gives cordcutters a little bit of hope that HBO could break at least a few of their ties with cable. It’s not like it would be a first for the company. Last year they launched HBO Nordic, a standalone streaming service like HBO GO, in Sweden, Finland, Norway, and Denmark. It’s available for under 10 euros per month.

Hope. Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.

Twitter has just announced that they’ve made Twitter archive available for a bunch of new languages: Danish, Filipino, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Urdu. Now, Twitter users using the service in those languages can access and download a complete archive of every tweet they ever sent.

As you may remember, Twitter opened up their archive service to English-speaking users back in December of 2012, after promising the service for a few months. With the Twitter archive, users get to look at every single tweet they ever made – including retweets. It’s a nice trip down memory lane, but beware: it’s pretty painful to see how much of a Twitter-noob you were when you first began.

If you want to obtain your Twitter archive, simply go to your settings (desktop). Scroll all the way to the bottom and you’ll see a link the says request your archive.” Once you click it, Twitter will let you know that it may take a few minutes to prepare. When it’s ready, Twitter will email you a link.

Twitter archive adds Danish, Filipino, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Urdu

— Twitter (@twitter) March 21, 2013

Twitter has been busy adding language support for Twitter archive. Earlier this month, they added support for another 12 languages: Dutch, Farsi, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Malay, Norwegian, Polish, & Spanish. That brings the total up to 25 languages supported by Twitter’s archive feature.

Google+ search has just gotten a little more useful.

Now, when searching anything within the social network, you can filter the results to only show photos. Just search for whatever you’re looking for, and hit the drop-down menu at the top of the results.

The option to filter by photos joins the other filtering options: everything, people and pages, communities, Google+ posts, Hangouts, and events.

Adding a search filtering option for photos makes sense for Google+, who can boast an enthusiastic photography-oriented demographic. It’s actually one of the more popular things to do with Google+. Nearly every day of the week there’s a new photography-related trend, whether it be #LongExposureThursday, #FloralFriday, or #MountainMonday.

Dave Cohen14 hours ago

Filter Google+ search results to only show photo posts

You can now filter your Google+ search results to only show photo posts. Just type in what you’re looking for, and select “Photos” from the filter dropdown.

You can find any photo post that’s shared with you — from items shared only with you, to public photos shared by some of the great photographers on Google+. Here are some searches that I enjoy:

– Long exposure: https://plus.google.com/s/long%20exposure/photos
– Steel wool: https://plus.google.com/s/steel%20wool/photos
– Cartoons: https://plus.google.com/s/cartoons/photos

We hope you enjoy using this feature. Keep the feedback coming!

#googleplusupdate   #googleplusphotos

93    26 Powered by socialditto

Google+ isn’t the only major social network that’s making it easier to find and group photos together. You may remember that Facebook recently announced a huge news feed redesign that, among other things, brings new content-specific feeds to the mix. These specific feed options include music, games, pages, groups, and yes, photos.

The new photo search filter should be available to all users.

Pinterest has just launched an update to their iOS app that brings two important functional features to the app and one minor, but fun cosmetic improvement to the iPad.

With today’s update, you can now edit your profile inside the app – something that was a long time coming.

Individual pin pages have also received a tuneup to help promote discovery. Scroll down to the bottom of a pin page to see the new “people who pinned this also pinned” section.

This “people who pinned this also pinned” feature is the same one that Pinterest recently rolled out on desktop. It was part of a larger rollout of their brand new UI redesign that they said was all about discovery. Individual pin pages on desktop now feature pins from the same board and pins from the same source alongside “people who pinned this also pinned.”

The desktop redesign also brought bigger pins, better browsing, and more.

You can get a more detailed (close-up) look at your pins with the new iOS app as well, but only on iPad.

You can grab the new Pinterest app from iTunes today.

Do you like information? Do you like actually useful information inside Facebook? If so, you’re going to love a new feature that Facebook is beginning to roll out.

One of the most important things to consider when planning an event or deciding on whether or not to attend an event is the weather. Sure, that bonfire sounds like a blast, but if it’s going to be 39 degree and drizzling you’re probably going to choose to do your drinking at a bar.

Now, Facebook is making that decision easier by adding weather information to events.

The weather data will reside right under the date and time on any event page, right above the map and the event description. It’s provided by Weather Underground.

You’ll also see the weather info when creating an event, so that you can either change the date or at least throw in a description. “Hey, it’s supposed to rain, so bring an umbrella!”

The weather info is also coming to place pages (ones that aren’t owned pages). It will be visible on mobile as well.

We’re not seeing the weather info inside events or unclaimed places yet, and we’ve reached out to Facebook to determine how fast their rolling it out.

[via TechCrunch]

There was a pretty significant hailstorm in Brookshire, Texas on Wednesday morning. And when it hit, it sounded like KAPOOYA KAPOOYA!

So, what the hell is happening with Google Now for iOS? According to conflicting reports from people on each end, it’s stuck in some sort of non-existent approval limbo.

Speaking at the Big Tent Summit in India earlier, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt made a sort of off-handed remark about Google Now and whether we’ll be seeing it pop up for iOS in the near future.

“You’ll need to discuss that with Apple,” Schmidt said. “Apple has a policy of approving or disapproving apps that are submitted into its store, and some of them they approve and some of them they don’t.”

Not exactly crystal in its clarity, but it suggests that Google Now for iOS’ fate currently rests in the hands of Apple.

Now, Apple is denying this. According to CNET, Apple told them that Google Now has not even been submitted to the App Store for approval. Apparently, Schmidt is misinformed, at best.

Nearly a year ago, Google Now launched at an Android-exclusive product. It may be coming to Chrome pretty soon, but it looks like its fate on iOS, if it exists, is up in the air.

Last week, a video “leaked” (or surfaced, depending on whether not not you feel it’s legitimate) showing Google Now for iOS. It looks official enough, and it led many to believe that Google Now would be heading to iPhone and iPad sooner than later.

Since the NCAA tournament started today and we know you’re not doing any real work anyway, how about a fun little game to waste more of your time?

A new Chrome Experiment lets you turn almost any site into a giant, 3D maze that you can play.

You get to control a marble and direct it around the site maze, picking up little blue crystals for points. You have a time limit, and a limited amount of lives.

What’s really cool is that you can sync your mobile device and play with your phone as a controller. You can connect Chrome on mobile to Chrome on your PC using Android 4.0 or greater or iOS 5.

Or, you can just play using your arrow keys. Either way, it’s pretty fun. Definitely more fun than actual work.

Just visit chrome.com/maze to start playing. Shhh…we won’t tell anyone.

[Google Chrome Japan via Gizmodo]

Back in November of 2012, Facebook began testing a new commenting format for page posts. The new system added comments threads, allowing users to reply to specific comments, and also implemented a new ranking algorithm that sorts comments by their popularity.

Now, that feature is about to go live.

Facebook tells TechCrunch that the new threaded comments will rollout on Monday, on an opt-in basis. That period will last a few months, and Facebook will eventually push the new system to everyone in July.

“We think this update will allow for easier management of conversations around posts, which is a better experience for people interacting with Pages and public figure profiles,” said a Facebook spokesperson.

Basically, the new comment threads let users reply to individual comments. So instead of one long flow of comments, which can be confusing, you will be able to follow entire conversations based on one original comment.

And the best comments should rise to the top. Facebook’s new algorithm makes sure that you see the comments that are the most engaging – meaning having the most likes and replies. The algorithm also takes into account your connections, so you could see a different comment on the top of a post than your friend does – depending on who you know.

Here’s what the comment threading will look like courtesy of the Huffington Post, who is already using the new system. As you can see, users are now able to comment on other comments. The cream has been pulled to the top, if you will, with the most engaging comment thread appearing at the top:

Not everyone is getting comment threading and the new ranking. It will only be an option for pages with over 10,000 followers, and it won’t be available for personal accounts at all. It’s also not going to be available on mobile – but Facebook hopes to add that functionality soon.

If you’re the owner of RSS.com, there’s probably no better time than now to try and sell it.

On the heels of Google’s decision to kill their popular Google Reader RSS feed product and the outrage spawned by that decision, Ron Sheridan is trying to sell RSS.com. The asking price? $200,000.

He initially acquired the doman for $125,000.

The sale is being brokered by WebsiteBrokerage.com, who also represents brand.com, geo.org, and haircare.com

RSS.com still boasts its plans, which is to “launch a high quality RSS reader, married to a crowd sourced, crowd curated RSS feed directory.”

They says that this “community approach will allow users to drill down to top subject matter content and experts quickly and efficiently.”

That plans never really worked out for Sheridan, and now he’s looking to sell.

With Google Reader on the way out, there’s now a giant void that must be filled (unless you think RSS is dead). Digg has announced plans to build their own Reader replacement. Existing feed readers like Feedly and Newsblur are looking to capitalize on the many Google Reader users looking for an alternative. Will someone step up and bring RSS.com’s plans to life? 200 large is a pretty hefty asking price, but who knows?

[via The Next Web]

Twitter is being sued in France for failing to disclose the identities of users wrapped up in an anti-Semitic hashtag controversy that has spanned five months.

Here’s my attempt to make a long story short:

Back in October of 2012, a hashtag emerged on Twitter that many users found exceedingly offensive. The hashtag, #unbonjuif, roughly translates to “a good jew.” Some Twitter users jumped on the hashtag, posting photos of dust-filled dustpans and other anti-Semitic jokes alongside the hashtag.

A handful of French anti-racism groups called out Twitter, asking that the site remove all of the offending tweets. Eventually, as the pressure mounted, Twitter complied.

But some of the groups, including the French Jewish Students Union (UEJF), decided to push Twitter a bit further. They demanded that Twitter give up the names of all of the users associated with the #unbonjuif tweets, so that they could be prosecuted under local anti-hate speech laws. Twitter wasn’t too keen on this idea, and that led the UEJF to file a summons against the company back in November.

In January, a French court ruled that Twitter must provide the identities of the requested users, to comply with French law. Twitter said that they would review the decision.

And that brings us up to date. The UEJF has officially taken action against Twitter, suing them four roughly $50 million for failing to carry through with the court’s order. Twitter apparently had two weeks to hand over the names, and that time has come and gone.

“Twitter is playing the indifference card and does not respect the ruling,” said UEJF President Jonathan Hayoun. “They have resolved to protect the anonymity of the authors of these tweets and have made themselves accomplices to racists and anti-Semites.”

Twitter reserves the right to give up any information it holds on users if requested by law enforcement or by a court order. They say so in their terms of service – this is not part of the debate. In the past, however, Twitter has gone to bat to protect user privacy when they sense some government overreach. In September of 2012, Twitter gave in to the Manhattan D.A.’s office and gave up the deleted, inaccessible tweets of an Occupy Wall Street protester – but only after they fought it tooth and nail.

You may remember that they also blocked a neo-Nazi account in Germany last year, utilizing their self-appointed authority to censor content locally if they saw fit. Blocking or removing content is one thing, but disclosing the identities of users in order to aid in regional hate-speech laws is a different ballgame.

[UEJF via JTA]

Sometimes, the ability to trick someone has less to do with the trick itself and more to do with the presentation. Here, we see a very simple trick that should have been figured out by at least 90% of the victims. But, as you may have guessed, everyone falls for it. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have a video to show you, right?

Dude, I’m so ‘ella mad at you.

[MagicofRahat]

Wednesday afternoon, Digg disappeared from Google. Vanished. Gone. It was clear that Google had de-indexed Digg, but why? To what end?

Was it because Digg had just announced plans to build a Google Reader clone to satisfy angry users when Google kills the product on July 1st? Was Google just being a dick?

No, conspiracy theories were put to rest when Google released a statement, saying that it was all just a big screwup.

We’re sorry about the inconvenience this morning to people trying to search for Digg. In the process of removing a spammy link on Digg.com, we inadvertently applied the webspam action to the whole site. We’re correcting this, and the fix should be deployed shortly.

And fixed it they have. Digg is back up in Google:

It’s not like being de-indexed in Google was really a killer for Digg, considering the majority of their traffic is direct. But for Digg, you’d at least want digg.com to show up in a search. Thankfully, Google has fixed the screwup and everyone can carry on.

Join me in wishing a very happy birthday to Twitter, who turns 7 years old today. Yes, if you were wondering, you can sing the Happy Birthday song in less than 140 characters.

Twitter, which first began with a tweet from co-founder Jack Dorsey back in March of 2006, now boasts over 200 million monthly active users. Today, they’re also announcing that tweets per day has hit an impressive 400 million.

Here’s where it all started:

just setting up my twttr

— Jack Dorsey (@jack) March 21, 2006

“As we’ve grown, Twitter has become a true global town square — a public place to hear the latest news, exchange ideas and connect with people all in real time. This is where you come to connect with the world at large. Get on your soapbox to critique elected officials, or go sotto voce to the neighbor next to you. And as in other gathering places, commerce happens too (and jokes and art-making and debating, and — you get the idea),” says Twitter in a blog post.

Last March, when Twitter turned 6, they announced 140 million active users. Today, on their 7th birthday, they can boast well over 200 million active users. Twitter says that it’s a steep trajectory that they could have “only dreamed about back in 2006.”

Take a look at Twitter’s video below, which takes you from Jack Dorsey’s first tweet in 2006, the the first use of the hashtag in 2007, to a funny exchange between Oprah and Shaq.

YouTube has just announced a huge milestone, one that shows just how powerful the world of online video really is.

The Google property and most popular video site on the internet has just hit a billion unique users every month.

“In the last eight years you’ve come to YouTube to watch, share and fall in love with videos from all over the world. Tens of thousands of partners have created channels that have found and built businesses for passionate, engaged audiences,” says YouTube.

“From the aspiring filmmaker in his basement and the next great pop musician, to the fans all around the world who tune in, subscribe and share their favorite videos with the planet, thank you for making YouTube what it is today. You have truly created something special.”

The only other comparable network would be Facebook, which has over a billion monthly active users.

When you think about a billion uniques in a month, the number itself is simply staggering. In just one month, about 10 Super Bowl-sized audiences watch at least one video on YouTube. If YouTube’s monthly unique audience were a country, it was be the third biggest country in the world (behind China and India).

Almost half of all people on the internet watches a video on YouTube each month.

Considering that there are about 6.9 billion people on Earth, 1 billion would represent about 14.5% of the entire world.

And the mind-blowing comparisons could go on and on. The point is simply this: YouTube is hands down one of the most ubiquitous presences in our lives.

In other YouTube-related billion view milestones, last December, viral smash “Gangnam Style” became the first video to ever break the 1 billion view milestone.

[Image via jm3, Flickr]

Apparently, Facebook is trying to get people to engage with the network with a new push notification that asks them to post an update.

“Name, tell friends what’s on your mind. Post an update,” reads the new iOS notification.

Here’s a screenshot of the new push notification, via Bijan Sabet:

Facebook confirmed to Mashable that the new push notification is part of a “small test” that they are currently running. If just looking at this annoys the hell out of you, find solace in the fact that Facebook tests tons and tons of features all the time, and only a small percentage of them ever come to fruition.

There’s no telling who’s going to be left standing in a couple weeks when the NCAA tournament comes to a close. This season has been a showcase of true parity, with a bunch of good teams but no standout dominating presence. This could lead to one of the more exciting tournaments in recent memory.

We hope.

Since it’s all up in the air anyway, we might as well look at some alternative methods of choosing our winners. Earlier this week, we told you that LinkedIn had picked its national champion based on a ‘dedication score.’ They chose Gonzaga.

Now it’s Facebook’s turn. Their bracket is based on they buzz each team received in the weeks leading up to Selection Sunday.

In the Final Four, Facebook has Duke, Notre Dame, Michigan, and Indiana. From that, Duke and Michigan advance. In the end, the Puke Blue Devils end up taking the title.

As a UK fan, this whole notion that Duke may win the NCAA tournament can go straight to hell. Anyway, here’s Facebook’s data: