Blog Update 20/05/2011

I'd Like To Take This Time To Say Sorry For The Last Week And Not Update The Blog But We Were Have Some Internet Issue Here And I Could Not Get Online So No Way To Update It.

TGW7- Empire Avenue

You Can Help Me Out By Buy Share at http://empireavenue.com/emailforhelp

TGW8- Google, Microsoft And Skype!

Google I/O 2011 Keynote Day 1

Android device can now be use as a USB host like plug in a camera into the table and import you photo.
Google TV will be getting android market and the new version of the android OS moving in 2011 to ice cream sandwich.

Starting to Day there are now Android movie rent in android market it. Background download of movie that you have rent though the android market  so you can watch them on an airplane with no connect. but there is one bad thing about this is you only get 24hr after you started watching it.

There new music service from Google at Google Music but once again this is only in the US not outside the US.
Android At Home this make it so you Android Phone be able to talk to things around you home in the demo they turn on and off the light in the hall.



The Google Chrome Keynote tomorrow so please check back tomorrow for that

Memolane Allows Users To Review Their Social Media History

I’ve always been bugged that I couldn’t look back in time. After all, last week I celebrated my 10th year blogging (I first blogged December 15, 2000) but looking back isn’t all that easy.

It’s even worse today because we’re spreading our behavior over so many different sites. Heck, I tweet. I Flickr. I YouTube. I WordPress. I Tumble. I Google. I TripIt.

Today two services added new history features: Memolane and Foursquare (Foursquare mostly added new photo and comment features, but they also now let you look back in time, I don’t remember being able to do that before).

Memolane, though, takes the cake. Here, look back at my timeline on Memolane. You’ll see photos, checkins, tweets, status messages. All in a unique timeline and you can look back pretty far.

Unfortunately only the last 3,000 tweets or so are on the timeline. Also, only the last 50 blog posts, or so, are there (RSS only lets you put a few into the system). Flickr, though, goes all the way back to when I started using that service.

Over on Foursquare I can look back at my history (unfortunately, unlike with Memolane, I can’t make this public, friends can only see the last few checkins. I do add everyone who asks if you want to check those out). From now on it’ll show photos from Instagram, Foodspotting, and PicPlz. Great stuff and brings that service up to par with Whrrl and Gowalla, which had that capability for most of the year.

By: Jordan

StaySocialMarketing.com

Twitter: @StaySocialMrk

Facebook: StaySocialMarketing

Social Media Management

Google I/O Predictions (quick version)

Just thought I'd throw out some quick predictions for Google I/O. I'm sure there will be more in-depth coverage once the event kicks off.

1. Honeycomb SDK is finally released.

2. GoogleTV is completely forgotten, as is Google Wave.

3. Google unveils their new attempt at cornering the social media market.

Empire Avenue: The Newest Thing in Social Media

Is it a game, a social media exchange, a social media measurement tool or a rating system? Empire Avenue has been the eye candy of the social media world since the last month or so. Being an avid admirer of innovation in social media, I couldn’t resist the temptation to jump aboard the Empire Avenue bandwagon.

What is Empire Avenue?

To be honest, I think it’s difficult to design Empire Avenue in one word. It’s a social media exchange – part game, part ratings that simulates a virtual stock market based on social interactions and the concept of online influence. It provides a stock exchange platform where you can literally buy and sell shares in your ever-expanding network and be rewarded for your strategic thinking and tactful maneuvers. There’s an Empire Avenue website and an associated Facebook app which doubles up the fun.

How do you play Empire Avenue?

It’s a virtual stock market game that thrives on social media. Every new user who signs up becomes a “stock” that can be bought and sold using play money. Whether anyone buys your stock depends on your perceived value which in turn is determined by 1) how many people have bought shares in you and 2) how active you are on leading social media sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube.

In my opinion, the underlying concept behind Empire Avenue is simple yet brilliant – it leverages a person’s social media activity graph/ popularity to determine their net worth. The more active you are on social networks, the higher your stock price goes.

Why Empire Avenue?

Empire Avenue provides a fun way of tracking your ability to leverage social media effectively. It serves as an invaluable social media exchange and connects you to some of the best minds (me included) in the social media world. In business terms, Empire Avenue can be used to connect with individuals for recruitment, advertising or reaching out to like minded individuals.

Moreover, since your perceived value is at stake, it gives you another reason to be serious about your social media endeavors.

Business Perspective

It would be foolish to write off Empire Avenue as just another social media game/ pass time. A number of heavyweights including Audi, FORD and Intel have joined the Empire Avenue bandwagon and I’d expect other leading B2B brands to be on board sooner than later.

Buy me out!

I’d encourage my readers/ followers to join Empire Avenue and purchase my shares. Here’s a link to my profile – I am still pretty inexpensive but it’s a matter of time before my shares skyrocket
And Richard`s Profile

By: Jordan

Stay Social Marketing.com

Twitter: @StaySocialMrk

Facebook: /StaySocialMarketing

Social Media Manager

Apple and Sony: A Tale of Two Companies

For my first post on the blog, I thought I'd post about something that's gotten a lot of coverage in the press over the last week or two. In this case, the perceived security issues affecting both Apple and Sony. What's interesting is that the two incidents started opposite ends of the spectrum, then wound up at opposite ends again (although reversed) as more information became available.

The first issue relates to Apple and what has become known in tech circles as “Locationgate”. Basically, researchers discovered that iPhones running iOS 4.x had a file that stored location information. When this information was backed up to a computer, it was left unprotected. Some other enthusiasts then created a program that allows you to decode the location information and display it over a Google Maps layout. (They did intentionally skew the accuracy a bit). Upon the initial report, a lot of people were up in arms, but as more information was put forth, the anger began to subside.

First of all, when you turn on your iOS device for the first time, you are explicitly asked if you want to share location data with Apple. If you click yes, then you had consented to this practice. There is also language in the EULA outlining this, but most people never read more than the first and last paragraphs. Also, the data in the location file was based off the Assisted GPS (utilizing cell towers and wifi hotspot info), not the regular GPS service. This means that at best, it would provide an approximation of your location. To give you an idea of the vague nature of this data as I’m writing this post, the location data could show me at my house, the hospital, the university, or even the police station depending on which direction the data skews due to using aGPS instead of regular GPS. Finally, a lot of people have signed up for the “Find My iPhone” service through Apple’s Mobile.me website. So there should at least be some vague understanding that this data is being traced.

To Apple’s credit, they addressed these concerns in a FAQ they posted on their website last week. They admitted that they should have provided more clear and concise information about the location caching, and that the file was actually caching more data than intended. They promised to address this in a future update of the iOS software, which was released last night. I strongly urge anyone using iOS devices to upgrade to iOS 4.3.3 as soon as possible. So at this point, the issue has largely been resolved, and the majority of users have returned to their normal day-to-day affairs.

On the other hand, Sony’s issues relating to the Playstation Network (PSN) started out as simple downtime, but have grown progressively worse and worse. At first, users were just miffed because they couldn’t play Modern Warfare 2 or some other multiplayer game on their Playstation 3s. As time went on, Sony then notified its user base that the service was being rebuilt from scratch, and that there had been some sort of intrusion into the system. Then it started getting worse. Sony sent out an email to all PSN users notifying them that their usernames, email addresses, password and (possibly) credit card information may have been obtained by these hackers. But it gets worse from there.

This past Sunday (May 1), Sony officials had a big press conference in Japan to address these issues, complete with the deep bowing that is a customary sign of apology in the Japanese culture. The officials stated that they were working to restore services as quickly as possible, and that they would work to compensate its users in some fashion. Fast forward to Monday, when it was revealed that not only had the Playstation Network and Qriocity been hacked, but Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) as well. This means that anyone playing its online games (including Everquest and Everquest 2) on the PC side of things were affected as well. At this point, stories began to circulate that some of these hackers tried to sell back a list of 2.5 million credit card numbers they lifted from Sony’s servers. Sony executives were called before the US House of Representatives on May 4 to answer some serious questions pertaining to this breach. Sony did not personally attend the hearing, instead submitting a written response to the questions. In the press release Sony put out about this issue, they summarized what they told the Congressional committee about the intrusion.

Just today (May 5), it was revealed that the servers that Sony was using to run PAN/Qriocity/SOE were not only running outdated server software, but lacked even a basic firewall to prevent intrusion on their systems. Dr. Gene Spafford of Purdue testified before the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade that independent security experts had been monitoring Sony’s systems and reporting security threats to Sony in an open forum available to all Sony employees. These expert reported these major security issues to Sony about three months BEFORE their systems were hacked. This means that Sony knew full and well that they had a security concern on their hands, but did nothing about it until it was too late. It’s literally as if Sony’s engineers decided that the system worked fine, so there was no need to make changes.

There’s a difference between making an oversight that leads to a security vulnerability (such as we’ve often seen with Windows and to a lesser extent OS X) over the years, and just choosing to ignore a known issue. The former could be considered careless, the latter outright ignorant, even dangerous. For a company that was under hot water once before for installing rootkits on customer’s computers with any notification if they inserted music CDs into their machines, this is just another example of Sony placing an emphasis on profit over security.

Links to more information are below:

Apple FAQ on the Location caching issue: http://bit.ly/fvsEiM

Sony response to US House: http://bit.ly/iYdrY7

Sony using insecure servers for PSN: http://bit.ly/mBaXJr