YouTube new redesign features

YouTube has gone through a complete redesign with a view to keep all of us watching longer. There is also a lot more interactivity and sharing options. Most of what you used to see on the left of the video has now been moved below the video.

You can also share a video now with a single click on Facebook. Twitter, Myspace, Orkut, StumbleUpon, LiveSpaces, Hi5 And Bebo. You can also share by email.

For those of you who use the embedding options which used to be on the right. It is now found below the video.

With regards to user comments. The comment with the highest rating is now featured prominently above all the other comments.

Additional information about the video is also consolidated below the video. This is a very subtle change but noticeable for long time YouTube users.

You will no more see the five stars rating system on YouTube. You now have only two buttons like with a thumbs up and another button with a thumbs down. The logic being that when the five stars were around people still clicked only on 1 or 5. So either you like it or you don't.

Name of the person's channel is now directly above the video and a drop down button to show you other videos uploaded by the user.

There is also better search integration. Depending on how you found the video, did you come via a search query, playlist or recommendation. So if you arrived via a search query the videos suggested on the right are the other results you could have clicked on. Of you found the video via a playlist or recommended video. The videos featured on the right are similar in nature. YouTube wants their video search to work smarter.

An original post by

Sociolatte

Amazon buys Touch-Screen startup.

The New York Times has reported that Amazon has bought a Small New York start-up Tech company called Tuchco. It is a small company and does not have a large number of employees, they have not even produced a product on the market so far. What they do have however is a technology for touch-screens that is far advanced and costs less than the technology Apple uses on the iPad.


What this means is this. Apple has released the iPad which immediately rivals Amazon's kindle. With the iPad you can read and download e-books and is so much more flashy that the Kindle. Amazon though is not giving up without a fight and we can now see the competition heating up with Amazon investing in tweaking the Kindle.


Kindle is Amazon's e-book reader that enjoyed huge sales during the last holiday season. So it seems now that Amazon is not willing to give up that easily. With the acquisition of Touchco they will take the fight to the iPad.


After the debut of the iPad last month Amazon announced that  its customers can read and sync their Kindle books on iPhones, iPod touches, PCs, and soon Blackberrys, Macs, and iPads.


Touchco's website states that as of January 2010, the company had ceased to do business.

An original post by

Sociolatte

Password hacking as easy as 123456

In December Rockyou.com was hacked and out of it cam a list of passwords of which the most popular was "123456" and "Password". These have been the ever popular passwords that have been used and it is strongly advised to stop. 

Imperva studied the breached passwords and has published an interesting study that talks about them. 

Of the 32 million passwords exposed, "123456" was the most commonly used, followed by "12345" and "123456789."
The list of the 20 most commonly used passwords, and the number of accounts which used them, includes:
"123456" in 290,731 accounts
"12345" in 78,078 accounts
"123456789" in 76,790 accounts
"Password" in 61,958 accounts
"iloveyou" in 51,622 accounts
"princess" in 35,231 accounts
"rockyou" in 22,588 accounts
"1234567" in 21,726 accounts
"12345678" in 20,553 accounts
"abc123" in 17,542 accounts
"Nicole" in 17,168 accounts
"Daniel" in 16,409 accounts
"babygirl" in 16,094 accounts
"monkey" in 15,294 accounts
"Jessica" in 15,162 accounts
"Lovely" in 14,950 accounts
"michael" in 14,898 accounts
"Ashley" in 14,329 accounts
"654321" in 13,984 accounts
"Qwerty" in 13,856 accounts




Because of the shortness of the passwords and their simplicity, Imperva concluded that users are very susceptible to what it termed "basic, brute force" password attacks.
Users, if allowed, will choose very weak passwords even for their most important data, Imperva said.
"Worse, as hackers continue to rapidly adopt smarter brute force password cracking software, consumers and companies will be at greater risk. To quantify the issue, the combination of poor passwords and automated attacks means that in just 110 attempts, a hacker will typically gain access to one new account on every second or a mere 17 minutes to break into 1000 accounts," the company wrote.

Does any of this look familiar to you. Your sitting with a lil smile on your face as you read. If you are guilt then this is the time for you to stop and get serious about the passwords you choose. 

Some key findings of the study include:

• The shortness and simplicity of passwords means many users select credentials that will make them susceptible to basic forms of cyber attacks known as "brute force attacks."


• Nearly 50% of users used names, slang words, dictionary words or trivial passwords (consecutive digits, adjacent keyboard keys, and so on). The most common password is "123456".


• Recommendations for users and administrators for choosing strong passwords.

So it is advised for you to use a combination of alpha-numeric and throw in a few symbols to better protect yourself from hacks

Imperva provides a list of password best practices, created by NASA to help its users protect their rocket science, they include:

• It should contain at least eight characters


• It should contain a mix of four different types of characters - upper case letters, lower case letters, numbers, and special characters such as !@#$%^&*,;" If there is only one letter or special character, it should not be either the first or last character in the password.


• It should not be a name, a slang word, or any word in the dictionary. It should not include any part of your name or your e-mail address.

Following that advice, of course, means you'll create a password that will be impossible, unless you try a trick credited to security guru Bruce Schneir: Turn a sentence into a password.

For example, "Now I lay me down to sleep" might become nilmDOWN2s, a 10-character password that won't be found in any dictionary.

Can't remember that password? Schneir says it's OK to write it down and put it in your wallet, or better yet keep a hint in your wallet. Just don't also include a list of the sites and services that password works with. Try to use a different password on every service, but if you can't do that, at least develop a set of passwords that you use at different sites.

An original post by

Sociolatte

Facebook take down Defriended iPhone App for tracking friends who remove you

Most Social Netoworking sites will let you know when you have a friend request but few will let you know when you have been unfriended. If we can use that word. Being Defriended is one thing most users like to find out about. Unfortunately on Facebook if you want to know who has defriended you you need to browse through your list of friends and find the missing person.

An iPhone App launched about a week ago was able to do just that. Let you know when you've been defriended and by whome. The App Called Defriended created by  i-Doodz has unfortunalty been blocked by Facebook. As it violates Facebook's Developers platform policies which states " you must not notify a user that someone has removed the user as a friend." In other words, Facebook doesn't want you to know who doesn't want to be your friend ".

Today, a message on the i-Doodz site states:

Last week our developer was bored one evening, had an idea, and a few hours later uploaded the "defriended" iPhone app. it unexpectedly got a lot of attention, then subsequently Facebook blocked the app, causing it to stop working. We will be looking at how feasible it is to make the app work without a corresponding facebook app, but in the meantime if you've bought the app you should ask apple for a refund - and please do...we don't really want to get money for an app you paid for and that doesn't work. We apologise for the inconvenience.

If you really want to know which of your friends have removed you as a friend, you are better off using the Facebook friend checker greasemonkey script which Facebook can't block. Any service which attempts to use Facebook's API for the purpose of notifying users about those friends who've defriended them are typically banned. Yes, being unfriended is extremely commonplace.

An original post by

Sociolatte

Facebook partners with McAfee to offer it's users free antivirus software

Facebook has partnered with McAfee to offer free antivirus to it's 350 million users free for a period of 6 months. After which you can still use it provided you pay a discounted annual fee. This is helpful but a far cry from real protection. To make sure your account is not compromised it is really up to the user. User's need to be able to recognize security threats to their accounts. Facebook has listed a few things you need to be aware of.

• Don't open attachments in emails that look suspicious or come from an unknown or untrustworthy source.


• Don't open attachments unless you know what they are, even if they're from friends.


• Delete chain mail and spam from your email and Facebook inboxes.


• Be cautious when downloading files from the Internet.


• Be cautious of any message, post or link you see on Facebook that looks suspicious, requires an additional login, or asks you to download or upgrade software.


• Use an up-to-date browser that features an anti-phishing blacklist. Some examples include Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3.0.10.


• Choose unique logins and passwords for each of the websites you use.


• Check to see that you're logging in from a legitimate Facebook page with the facebook.com domain.

So if your computer gets infected Facebook will let you know and offer to help clean your system with the new deal with McAfee. Take a look at the screenshot below.

So how do you access this antivirus software. Log into your account Click on MaCfee in your search bar or simple follow this link here.  You need to then become a fan of the McAfee page and you can then download McAfee to yur PC free for a period of six months.

An original post by

Sociolatte