Facebook facial recognition technology not coming to Canada

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, July 27, 2011 at 12:43 PM - 0 Comments

Facebook’s new facial-recognition technology for photographs will not launch in Canada, a Facebook representative has confirmed. The rep did not say why Canada won’t adopt the controversial technology, which is capable of recognizing faces in photographs automatically, whether the user knows the person being identified or not. Digital rights groups in the U.S. are against the technology, arguing that it’s a gross invasion of privacy. Facebook users are not asked for their permission to be targeted by the technology, but must opt out instead. A coalition of U.S. digital rights groups has filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission as a result.

The Globe and Mail

Who owns your Facebook friends?

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, July 21, 2011 at 11:08 AM - 13 Comments

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Investors eagerly awaiting a chance to get a piece of Facebook, valued as high as US$100 billion, might want to pay attention to the skirmish going on between the company and Google over who actually owns the “friends” of social networking users. Facebook’s lofty valuation is rooted in the idea that users will never abandon the site (as they once did with Friendster and later MySpace) because they don’t want to leave their friends behind. But what if someone makes it easy for them to take their friends with them?

Facebook, with some 700 million users, recently blocked a tool created by a third-party developer for Google’s Chrome browser that was designed to easily export a Facebook user’s friend list (including their all-important email addresses) to a rival social network. The developer assumed that Facebook users’ friends belong to them, not to Facebook. Facebook disagreed. With Google now trying to edge its way into the social networking space with Google+, Facebook explained that “each person owns her friends list, but not her friends’ information. A person has no more right to mass export all of her friends’ private email addresses than she does to mass export all of her friends’ private photo albums.”

What Facebook failed to mention is that it unsuccessfully tried to convince Google to allow its Gmail users to export their contact lists to Facebook last year. Getting other people’s email addresses is a key way Facebook helps to integrate new users into its site, allowing its software to suggest potential friends. Influential tech blogger Michael Arrington pointed out another irony: “Facebook already allows mass exporting of friends’ private email addresses via deals with Microsoft, Yahoo and possibly other partners.” In other words, it’s okay if Facebook does it to make money, but not if you want to switch to a rival network. And, as Arrington notes, that could be perceived as anti-competitive by the U.S. government. Suddenly, Facebook’s reign as social networking’s king looks a lot more vulnerable—as does that $100-billion valuation.

Google + you = what?

By Jesse Brown - Monday, July 4, 2011 at 11:58 AM - 0 Comments

It’s my fourth day on Google +, the search giant’s new social network service, and my impression is….non existent.

I don’t know what I think of +, but I must admit I’m intrigued. It’s obvious that there are tons of features within the service that Google is not pushing or even unveiling yet, for fear of scaring users off with too much complexity. It’s also clear that Google could have made things easier for me, algorithmically suggesting (or even automatically assigning) some friends from my Gmail contacts to get me started. But after their privacy snafu with Google Buzz, they don’t dare. Google doesn’t want to be pushy. It’s up to me to pick and choose who I’d like to share with, and then it’s up to them to decide if they want in too. Continue…

Winklevii drop Facebook appeal

By macleans.ca - Thursday, June 23, 2011 at 11:39 AM - 0 Comments

The Winklevoss twins, made famous by the 2010 film “The Social Network,” have decided to drop their appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court of a ruling upholding their multi-million dollar settlement with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss accused Zuckerberg of stealing the idea for Facebook from them when they were students at Harvard in 2004. In a statement filed in a California court Wednesday, the Winklevii, as they are collectively known, indicated they had decided to accept a 2008 ruling giving them US$65 million. Analysts predict the social networking site could be worth more than US$100 billion on the stock market.

Toronto Sun

Good news, bad news: June 9 – 16, 2011

By macleans.ca - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 0 Comments

Good news

Dirk Nowitzki is named MVP as his Dallas Mavericks win the NBA title. (David J. Phillip/AP)

Setting it straight

Federal government lawyers took a justified bruising from judges of the Ontario Court of Appeal at hearings on the fate of Canada’s prostitution laws. The Crown is appealing a decision that struck down bans on brothel organizing. The government argued existing Criminal Code provisions had only a “remote connection” with increased sex-trade risks. The judges exploded in disbelief. “What’s ‘remote’ about a law that prevents a prostitute from having a bodyguard?” asked Justice James MacPherson. The judges also admonished an effort to compare prostitutes—practising a business that is legal in itself—with drug pushers.

A slick move

Bowing to technical realities, the U.S. auto-service company Jiffy Lube is abandoning its rule that oil should be changed in any car every 3,000 miles (or 4,800 km). As engines and gasoline quality improve, manufacturers have lengthened recommended intervals between changes to as long as 16,000 km. Jiffy Lube will now follow the makers’ advice for each model. It’s a reminder that even in hard times, the auto sector has been improving in ways we barely bother to notice.

Continue…

Ex-wives rail about phony Facebook dads

By Joanne Latimer - Thursday, June 16, 2011 at 11:50 AM - 4 Comments

Getty Images; Photo Illustration by Taylor Shute

You see pictures of them playing with their kids in the park or posing at movie theatres. They document every family trip to a restaurant and every birthday present. Who are these seemingly devoted parents with digital cameras? They are the scourge of single moms everywhere: phony Facebook dads. “It’s infuriating! My ex’s Facebook page is full of pictures of our kids with their dad. Talk about false advertising! I still have to make him do activities with the kids!” says “Gail,” a single mom who is a translator in Montreal. (All of the single mothers in this piece requested anonymity.) “What am I going to post? Pictures of me making their lunch for school or banning the Xbox?”

“Tina,” a professor and another single mother, finally de-friended the father of her daughter. “He’s visibly trying to construct a narrative of himself as an involved father,” she noted. Aesthetician and single mom “Dina” put it another way: “What a crock! My ex’s photos say ‘Look at me, I’m a good dad,’ but I had to [garnishee] his wages to get child support. He complains about gas money to drive his daughter to birthday parties and he won’t babysit, yet he’ll post photos where he looks like the world’s best dad…right!”

Phony Facebook dads are the newest irritant for fractured families. “It’s very grating for the custodial parent, which is often the mother,” noted Deborah Brakeley, a clinical counsellor and collaborative divorce coach in Vancouver. “It’s well known that exes, particularly moms, become resentful when their partner suddenly becomes a more dutiful parent, or at least appears so. They ask, ‘Where were you?’ They feel deceived and angry.”

Continue…

Canadians bored with Facebook?

By macleans.ca - Monday, June 13, 2011 at 12:34 PM - 5 Comments

The number of Canadian users of Facebook plummeted in May, with around 10 per cent of Canadians saying sayonara to the social networking site. According to Inside Facebook, a site that tracks such data, 16.6 million Canadians used the site at the end of the month, down 1.52 million from the beginning of May. We weren’t alone. The United States, Britain, Norway and Russia all posted declines. And those statistics helped drag down the overall number of users joining Facebook. Whereas last year around 20 million people hopped on board each month, now that number has been cut almost in half. The slow down couldn’t come at a worse time. Wall Street is abuzz with speculation that Facebook will launch its much-anticipated IPO next year.

The Guardian

Attack of the Bimbots

By Jesse Brown - Friday, June 10, 2011 at 5:15 PM - 10 Comments

Have you ever been suckered into sharing personal information with an attractive stranger who turns out to be not quite….human? If so, you’re not alone.

Over at BlogAds, Henry Copeland has done some online sleuthing into the identity of one Nicole Bally, a friendly Facebook fox who probably does not exist. Nicole, it seems, is a “bimbot,” a fake account assembled with generic photographs and automated status updates, let loose on social networks to lure unsuspecting dupes into handing over access to their valuable social graphs.

Bimbots are common on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere, and I’ve always been confident in my ability to distinguish them from my many fleshy human admirers. But perhaps I shouldn’t be so cocky. After all, Nicole Bally’s list of conquests includes some of the savviest people on the Internet. She’s successfully friended Sean Parker of Napster and Facebook, Chris Anderson of Wired, Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia, and Arianna Huffington of Arianna Huffington. She’s even friended Vint Cerf himself—the father of the Internet!

The more impressive Nicole’s friend list gets, the more convincing she becomes to new suckers.  The first thing I look at when considering a friend request from a stranger is whether or not we have friends in common. The second thing I look at is whether their friends are people I’d like to have in common.

Heck, at a certain point, who cares if she’s human? Any robot with friends like that is a friend of mine.

So, what exactly is LinkedIn good for?

By Erica Alini - Monday, May 30, 2011 at 12:22 PM - 2 Comments

The social networking site LinkedIn must be suffering from a serious case of performance anxiety after last week’s Initial Public Offering. Shares priced at US$45 were trading above US$100 shortly after the offering, and the company’s market valuation now stands at around US$8 billion, or roughly 520 times its net earnings in 2010.

While there’s no shortage of warnings that this is yet another sign of a tech bubble in the making, even the critics admit there’s something more to LinkedIn than meets the eye. “You can make some reasonable assumptions that the company will be successful and profitable in the future,” says Josh Bernoff, a social media analyst at Forrester Research. In part, that’s because the number of LinkedIn’s members is growing, and there aren’t competitors on the horizon to woo them away. LinkedIn currently stands at over 90 million registered users, almost double as many as it had only two years ago. If that seems small compared to Facebook’s 500 million-strong network, it’s because LinkedIn appeals to a very specific kind of user: White-collar office dwellers. In a online entry for Business Insider, marketing consultant Byrne Hobart calls it “the place for things you’re willing to brag about, which are not fun.” It’s the social network where people job-hunt, and schmooze—a niche that has little to do with Facebook, which is all about vacation pictures and updates about kids and pets.

The amount of time LinkedIn users are spending on the website is also growing. And the bigger the network gets, the more useful it becomes for its members, who are then more likely to become active and engaged. Faiyaz Dossaji, for example, joined LinkedIn about four years ago, but didn’t initially see the benefit of it. “I joined because I was job-hunting at the time, …but I hadn’t thought too much about it because nothing came of it,” says the 31-year old analyst at BAE Systems, a defense, security and aerospace systems firm. Last year, though, Dossaji, who was again searching for job opportunities, heard of a former boss who’d found a job through LinkedIn. That spurred him to devote more energies to the site, joining groups of other professionals and alumni networks and asking for recommendations from former employers. Not long afterwards he received an inquiry from an employer–the very BAE Systems he now works for.

If job hunters are rapidly warming up to LinkedIn, headhunters are already unwavering loyalists. Byron Tarboton, head of research and operations at Archer Mathieson, a U.K.-based management recruiting firm, calls the social network “a primary tool” for his job. “About 90 to 95 per cent of the individuals I place in roles are through LinkedIn,” he says. That’s because the website is an ideal search engine for resumes. It allows Tarboton, for example, to look for a human resources director in the fast-moving consumer goods industry, working in a company with a client size of 500 to 2000 individuals, and living within a 25 miles radius from the new, prospective employer. A search like that, he says, would normally turn up anywhere between 50 and 500 potential job candidates. LinkedIn charges a fee for this type of service, but the price tag is easily justified. For about $80 a month, Tarboton can reach up to 50 potential candidates a month; if only one of them is hired, he pockets between $40,000 and $50,000.

Users like Tarboton make up the backbone of LinkedIn’s business, which last year, according to Business Insider, derived over US$100 million of its US$243 million revenue from its recruiting services. A much smaller part of that comes from premium subscriptions, which, for example, allow members to reach out to other users outside their network of contacts. Finally, a sizable slice of the money comes from advertising. The three-pronged revenue structure is another factor that sets LinkedIn apart from Facebook, whose business relies almost exclusively on marketing—and another trait appreciated by investors.

But whether LinkedIn is worth US$4 billion, as the initial IPO pricing suggested, or $8 billion, as the market seems to think, it will need to continue to grow fast. LinkedIn will have to find a way to increase ads while maintaining their characteristic unobtrusiveness. And it will have to find new members beyond the North American market, which is close to saturation, says Bernoff. In Europe, that means taking on the local online professional networks: France’s Viadeo, with its 35 million members, and Germany’s Xing, which counts over 10 million. In China, there’s the problem of heavy regulation and government interference with the Internet, something that tripped up even Google. Elsewhere in Asia there’s the question of cultural barriers. Facebook hit a wall in Japan, where people tend to engage in online social networking using pseudonyms rather than their real names. In LinkedIn’s case, Japan and Korea’s corporate culture means that employees don’t switch jobs very often, and they might not feel the need to network professionally, says Bernoff.

None of this, of course, spells doom for LinkedIn’s prospects, but it probably indicates that, even if the US$8 billion valuation is no bubble, the market might need to let out some hot air soon.

Democracy by tweet

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, May 27, 2011 at 5:21 PM - 1 Comment

Steve Paikin convenes a panel—including Treasury Board President Tony Clement, the NDP’s Charlie Angus and our own Jesse Brown—to discuss technology and politics.

I confess to being somewhat closer to Mr. Angus’ position when it comes to Twitter, at least insofar as its impact on the last election cycle is concerned. I’ve tended to think its been like introducing crack into the political sphere: rendering everything that takes place within this world even more incomprehensible to those on the outside.

High-tech smear job

By Chris Sorensen - Friday, May 20, 2011 at 8:05 AM - 0 Comments

Keystone Press

The overlap between Facebook and Google isn’t immediately obvious—one is a social network, the other a search engine—but Facebook’s recent attempts to plant nasty news stories about Google demonstrates just how intense the rivalry between the two tech giants has become. Facebook was recently forced to admit it secretly hired PR firm Burson-Marsteller to urge journalists to investigate claims that Google had invaded people’s privacy with its new social networking tool, Social Circle, a potential Facebook competitor.

Despite their different business models, both companies rely on online advertising to pay the bills, with Google leading the charge with annual sales of about US$29 billion, compared to an estimated US$1 billion for Facebook. But Facebook is growing fast and, in many cases, is competing for the same bucket of ad dollars. Longer term, there’s speculation Facebook could replace Google as the Web’s gatekeeper, with users turning to their social networks when looking for online information. This may be the first time the fight between the duo has turned dirty, but likely not the last.

Facebook tried to plant negative stories about Google

By macleans.ca - Thursday, May 12, 2011 at 2:52 PM - 4 Comments

Newly released emails show Facebook has been paying a top public relations firm, Burson-Marsteller, to plant negative stories in major U.S. media about Google’s privacy policies. The smear campaign was brought to light after a blogger posted an email exchange between himself and a Burson-Marsteller employee who had offered to help him to write an anti-Google op-ed. Chris Soghoian, a prominent internet security blogger challenged the company’s assertion that Social Circle, a new Google feature, was a privacy threat and accused them of “making a mountain out of a molehill.”

The Guardian

Leaked emails

Obama’s best friends

By Jason Kirby - Thursday, May 5, 2011 at 11:15 AM - 1 Comment

Jim Young/Reuters

U.S. President Barack Obama’s latest Facebook update was well above the usual fare of Farmville alerts and motivational quotes. On a trip to Facebook’s head office for a town hall meeting last week, Obama declared America’s finances to be “unsustainable,” and took a few swipes at his Republican opponents. But Obama’s visit also highlighted his increasingly close ties to some businesses. This wasn’t Obama’s first Silicon Valley sojourn. He has visited the Googleplex and has appointed General Electrics CEO Jeffrey Immelt to head an economic advisory panel. And he’ll forever be associated with General Motors for the mega-bailout. Whether the ties are good for the companies or Obama is debatable. Outrage over GE’s low tax bill and indications Facebook may block some content in China haven’t made either very popular. But then again, polls say Obama’s popularity is tanking too, so it’s a two-way street.

The Internet candidate for Edmonton-Strathcona

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 at 2:15 PM - 33 Comments

The election should probably not pass without noting the candidacy of Christopher White, running as an independent in Edmonton-Strathcona. Mr. White is the fellow who started the Facebook group that helped rally thousands of Canadians to protest prorogation.

Now seeking office—however long the odds in his particular case—his wide-ranging platform includes a wiki to encourage discussion and feedback.

The Facebook vote

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 1:52 PM - 12 Comments

The current tally, with improvements since the previous tally in parentheses.

Michael Ignatieff 56,089 (7,882)
Stephen Harper 49,054 (3,260)
Jack Layton 41,355 (4,757)
Elizabeth May 9,577 (865)
Gilles Duceppe 6,965 (669)

'Stop creeping'

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, April 6, 2011 at 12:18 PM - 196 Comments

The latest clip from the Liberal shop.

The Facebook vote

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, April 4, 2011 at 11:01 AM - 12 Comments

The current tally (with improvements from the last tally in parentheses).

Michael Ignatieff 48,207 (15,531)
Stephen Harper 45,794 (9,183)
Jack Layton 36,598 (5,505)
Elizabeth May 8,712 (1,540)
Gilles Duceppe 6,296 (1,411)

Google hopes you "like" +1

By Jason Kirby - Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 9:14 PM - 7 Comments

Google has unveiled its latest effort to muscle into the social networking sphere. Google +1 is the company’s answer to Facebook’s Thumbs-up “Like” button. The +1 will show up next to search results and eventually on pages all over the Web, and when you click on it, your recommendation will be registered. Likewise, the search results and ads you see will tell you who among your contacts has vouched for them. Here’s a video explaining it.

As many have pointed out, this is just another in a long line of attempts by Google to be more social, with most of them falling flat. How can it be that a company that only a few years ago looked like it was going to take over the world has failed so miserably at making friends? Continue…

This week: Good news, bad news

By macleans.ca - Friday, March 18, 2011 at 11:27 AM - 0 Comments

Good News

End of history department

The military council provisionally ruling Egypt has scheduled a referendum on constitutional reforms that would restore judicial oversight of elections, term-limit the presidency, and take away a presidential veto over the formation of new parties. The Muslim Brotherhood and the ousted National Democratic Party favour a “yes” vote; other, newer movements are urging a “no,” saying the reforms don’t go far enough. But the referendum itself will be a milestone for the country’s transition to democracy.

Nine out of 10 ain’t bad

Ministers of health from nine provinces announced that they will create a national storage bank for blood from umbilical cords. Canadian Blood Services will manage the bank; Quebec has its own version, managed by Héma-Québec. Umbilical cord blood contains stem cells useful in treating leukemia and other blood disorders, particularly in children. Until now, the lack of a nationally registered bank for cord blood has made finding stem-cell donors difficult, especially for minorities.

You know what’s cool?

Groupon, the Web phenomenon that lets businesses offer conditional “group coupons” that kick in when a particular number of customers sign up, is facing its long-foreseen ultimate test: competition from Facebook. The social-networking giant, which is the means by which many Group­on users track new offers, will test-drive its own service for time-sensitive discounts from bricks-and-mortar businesses. Groupon rejected a US$6-billion buyout offer from Google in December.

Her royal hipness

Details of a record collection held by the late Queen Mother at a holiday retreat have revealed her penchant for the yodel stylings of Nova Scotia-born cowboy Wilf “Montana Slim” Carter (1904-1996). Carter, called the father of Canadian country music, was not the only surprising element in the consort’s collection. A tiny treasury of LPs, kept for the Queen Mum’s use at the Scottish Castle of Mey, included large helpings of ska and Paul Simon’s 1986 classic Graceland. One hopes Montana Slim’s estate is ready for a revival.

Bad News

The colonelissimo’s edge

Forces controlled by Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi gained ground in the country’s civil war as Western powers squabbled over creating a “no-fly zone” over the North African republic. France and Britain have pushed hard for flight restrictions, but Germany expressed reservations, and the U.S. is demanding UN Security Council support for the potential move—a sure deal-breaker, given Russian and Chinese reluctance.

A recession-proof trade

India has passed China as the world’s largest arms importer, according to a report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Figures from the think tank suggest that, for the period from 2006 to 2010, worldwide arms transfers rose 24 per cent over the previous four years. During that time, India is said to have made almost one-tenth of all global weapons purchases. The figures reflect ongoing efforts to modernize India’s military and increasing self-reliance on the part of China’s army.

Tell me on a Sunday

NFL labour negotiations ground to a halt as the players’ union decided to break off talks and voluntarily decertify for the second time in history. The previous instance, in 1989, allowed individual antitrust lawsuits against the league and led to the adoption of free agency. NFL owners responded this time by declaring a lockout, putting the 2011 season in question and leaving congressional figures scrambling for means of encouraging a settlement.

Money never sleeps

Are Canadian coins a spy’s dream? Maybe, hints a report from the U.S. Defense Security Service, a federal agency that teaches the ins and outs of spying to military personnel and contractors. A newly released summary of “technology collection trends” says that, “On at least three occasions between October 2005 and January 2006 . . . Defense contractors’ employees travelling through Canada discovered radio frequency transmitters embedded in Canadian coins placed on their persons.” The report does not say which coins were used, but the bimetallic toonie, with its removable centrepiece, seems to cry out for espionage use.

Those creepy Facebook apps

By Kate Lunau - Tuesday, March 15, 2011 at 9:54 AM - 0 Comments

Facebook isn’t a dating site, but countless users treat it as such, trolling friends’ pages to see who’s in a relationship and who’s available. Now, thanks to a handful of new applications, Facebook users can anonymously stalk their crushes with greater ease than ever—and maybe even nudge them out of a relationship they’re currently in.

Launched in late February by Dan Loewenherz, a 24-year-old computer programmer living in L.A., “Breakup Notifier” informs its users via email once targeted friends change their relationship status. The app has proved hugely popular: “It grew super fast,” Loewenherz told Maclean’s, attracting over 116,000 people to the site within 24 hours of launching. Hot on its heels, Loewenherz introduced “Crush Notifier.” People pinpoint friends they’re interested in, and if that person likes them too, both get an email.

Perhaps even more creepy/brilliant is the new “WaitingRoom” app, which Facebook users can install anonymously—it never appears on their profiles—and use to woo an unrequited love. Their target receives an email that someone is interested in them, but they won’t find out who until they ditch their current partners. (They have to change their relationship status on Facebook to “single.”) “If you’re already in a relationship, WaitingRoom will give you the confidence to become single again—if that’s what you really want,” promises the site.

The popularity of these apps indicates they’re meeting a “huge cultural need,” says Sidneyeve Matrix, a media professor at Queen’s University. Social networking sites like Facebook are by far the most promising places to find love, according to a recent study from Euro RSCG Worldwide, even more so than matchmaker sites. (Last month, Facebook made relationship statuses more customizable, adding “in a civil union” and “in a domestic partnership” to the options list.) “People are just inherently interested in being with somebody,” Loewenherz says, explaining the success of Breakup Notifier. Looking to make the next big app, he and other developers are only too happy to give them what they want—or at least, provide a new way to creep their crush’s Facebook page.

How Gandhi, MLK and Facebook inspired a revolution

By John Parisella - Monday, February 14, 2011 at 3:05 PM - 18 Comments

History buffs and proponents of nonviolent protest never fail to be inspired by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King in their respective struggles against colonialism and prejudice. They mobilzed and through peaceful means overthrew an intolerable status quo and brought revolution and change to their countries. In the past week, we have been witnesses to the events in Egypt that brought down the 31-year dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak. Thousands of protesters peacefully stood their ground for 18 days until the inevitable happened. Gandhi and King would have approved.

Of course, the events were not entirely without violence as over 300 people were reportedly killed and countless others injured. But the violence was not the work of those clamoring for change; it came from repressive elements within the Mubarak regime. What this revolution illustrated was how the courage, the discipline and the will for freedom was able to triumph over tyranny and repression.

We do not know how this revolution will ultimately turn out. The military, while respected, has produced every ruler in Egypt since 1952. Now that it is in charge, it has suspended the constitution and ended the emergency measures of Mubarak. It has embarked on a process with members of the civil society that is expected to lead to a new constitution with free elections. The revolution, with no real identifiable charismatic leadership, represents a shocking and game changing development in the Arab world—not unlike the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is not surprising that other autocratic states in the region seem concerned and Israel, the only real functioning democracy in the area, is cautiously observing future developments.

In the United States, it appeared that events in Egypt and their extent were not anticipated. The American political class, however, showed reserve and restraint. President Obama and his team acted in a responsible and wise manner, supporting the goals of the revolution and nudging Mubarak out in a way that it remained an Egyptian moment and not one instigated by a meddling American administration. The Republican leadership on foreign policy matters—including John McCain, Lindsay Graham and John Boehner—has supported the way the White House conducted itself.

While the US government cannot be accused of interference, it is fair to say that American ingenuity and innovation played a pivotal role in the success of the protesters. Facebook and other social media such as Twitter are being attributed a major role in mobilizing the masses and maintaining the resistance. There may not have been a Gandhi or Martin Luther King leading the charge in the crowd , but there was technology that paved the way for the vision, the goals and the opportunity which led to a peaceful and victorious outcome . That in itself is sufficient enough to worry the other goverments in the region. Again, I assume Gandhi and King would have approved.

John Parisella is currently serving as Quebec’s delegate-general in New York City.

Friending Japan

By Erica Alini - Thursday, February 10, 2011 at 11:26 AM - 0 Comments

Dave & Les Jacobs/Getty Images

Japan, Russia, China and South Korea are the only countries in the world where Facebook isn’t the most popular social networking site, founder Mark Zuckerberg said last year. And now Facebook is bent on making friends with at least one of them—Japan.

Despite the country’s record-high Internet literacy and obsession with techy gadgets, Facebook never caught on there. Japanese have remained loyal to homegrown social networking sites like Mixi and Gree. With a share of around 20 million users each, they dwarf Facebook’s latest figure of 2.93 million users in Japan.
The California-based company is eager to tap into the lucrative Japanese advertising market, and recently partnered with Recruit Co., a Japanese marketing firm, in a push to increase membership up to 30 per cent of online social networkers, according to Taro Kodama, head of Facebook’s Japan office. To build numbers, Recruit launched a new service on Facebook last fall allowing senior college students looking for a job to connect to alumni from their institutions.

But some industry watchers predict Facebook will struggle to get the Japanese to embrace the cornerstone of the company’s money-making strategy:  profiles featuring personal information. Facebook encourages users to sign on using their real names instead of pseudonyms. That, contends Japanese technology journalist Munechika Nishida, runs counter to Japanese desires for privacy. Facebook also tends to recreate the outgoing party culture of American colleges, with a goal of building huge networks, notes Nishida. Sites like Mixi, by contrast, are aimed at connecting smaller groups with similar interests—”a culture that is more like students talking in the girls’ restroom at school,” she told the Asahi Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper.

For Silicon Valley firms, expanding into Asian countries where local technology and competitors are already well-established can be an uphill battle. But it’s not impossible. Apple, for instance, is finally breaking through in South Korea, where iPhone4 sales have taken off to the dismay of Samsung, the local industry champion.

The social disconnect

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, January 25, 2011 at 2:27 PM - 29 Comments

Tasha Kheiriddin considers apathy.

According to Ilona Dougherty, executive director and co-founder of Apathy is Boring, a group dedicated to instilling personal political responsibility in Canada’s next generation, “a TV ad will get you to change your mind about who you’re voting for, but it won’t get you to vote. Before the advent of television (and now, the Internet), politicians would go shake people’s hands. That connection is what will cause a person – particularly a young person – to get involved.”

It may seem counter-intuitive in the age of MySpace and Facebook, but social media may not increase voters’ actual political involvement. Instead, Dougherty’s group holds regular “Calls to Action” – the next is scheduled for Feb. 11 in Montreal – which put hundreds of young people and politicians in the same space. “If you don’t create the habit of getting involved when you’re young, you won’t have it in later life,” cautions Dougherty. “This risks disengagement by an entire generation; today’s low voter turnout by young people will be the general population’s rate in 20 to 30 years.”

Winklevoss brothers aren't finished with Zuckerberg

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, January 11, 2011 at 6:43 PM - 1 Comment

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and their business partner, Divya Narendra, are working to eradicate a 2008 settlement with Facebook, arguing that the company didn’t give an accurate valuation of its shares, the LA Times reports. The $65 million settlement followed their dispute with founder Mark Zuckerberg, who they claimed stole their idea for the social networking website. Lawyers representing the brothers took their request to a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco on Tuesday.

LA Times