• Mashable

  • iTunes Ping’s Latest Problem: Spam

    iTunes Ping is apparently full of spam, yet another hiccup in Apple’s road to establishing a legitimate social network. As Sophos notes on its blog, a barrage of spam links are hitting the music-themed social network. Many of these links are to offers promising free iPad, iPhone or iPod touch devices. Apple released iTunes 10 and iTunes Ping earlier this week and the rollout has been a little bit rocky. Beyond the latest spam attacks, issues with Facebook Connect , international access issues and unclear policies for musicians have plagued the service. These messages, which you can see in the screenshot below, are showing up in comments to posts from iTunes Featured Artists or in responses to posts from other users who make their content accessible to anyone. Online spam is perhaps the annoyance that unifies us all. No matter how big a company or network or blog is (or small), the spammers will come. What’s curious is that it doesn’t appear that Apple has any spam safe-guards in place. While it’s true that iTunes Ping has a approval process for all profile photos used with Ping (presumably to prevent nude or other NSFW photos from showing up), the real-time nature of Ping prevents that sort of scrutiny for comments on posts. Real time is actually pretty new for Apple. Users have long been able to leave reviews for music, movies and applications using iTunes, but like the profile photos in Ping, these reviews are held for review before publishing. Still, it appears as though Apple did anticipate the problem, at least in part. On any post on your wall, there is a “Report” button next to “Like.” That button lets users report content for lots of reasons, including spam. Clearly Apple anticipated people using the post feature to spam friends or followers. What isn’t an option, however, is the ability to report individual replies to those posts as spam. A simple starter solution would be to reject any comments that contain “http://” or “www.” in the text box. Comments are not hyperlinked so this would stave off some of the automated spam that seems to be showing up right now. What is clear is that Apple will need to institute a much stronger anti-spam algorithm into its commenting system to ebb the flow of spam on Ping. More About: apple , itunes , itunes ping , Ping , spam For more Apple coverage: Follow Mashable Apple on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Apple channel Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

    Sep, 03 2010 0 Comments Full Story

  • Morning Brief: Ubuntu 10.10 Beta, Plex Partners with LG, Verizon Prepaid Plans

    This series is brought to you by HTC EVO 4G , America’s first 4G phone. Only from Sprint. The “First to Know” series keeps you in the know on what’s happening now in the world of social media and technology. Welcome to this morning’s edition of “First To Know,” a series in which we keep you in the know on what’s happening in the digital world. We’re keeping our eyes on three particular stories of interest today. Ubuntu 10.10 Beta Now Available The first beta for the next version of the popular Linux distribution Ubuntu , dubbed Maverick Meerkat, is now available for testing. While the final release isn’t expected to ship until October 10, users who aren’t afraid of encountering some bugs are encouraged to download and test the new version. For netbook users, the Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook Edition features a brand new default user interface designed to better take advantage of screen proportions for smaller devices. The desktop version will feature improvements to the Ubuntu Software Center and faster boot times. Users can download Ubuntu 10.10 beta 1 from Ubuntu.com . Plex Partners with LG to Take On Apple TV, Boxee Plex , a popular media center for Mac OS X, has announced that it will be partnering with LG Electronics to bring the Plex platform to LG’s 2011 NetCast line of HDTVs and Blu-ray devices. On the Plex blog, Co-founder Elan Feingold discusses how Plex will now be able to compete with Boxee and the Apple TV , while remaining free to use on a Mac or iOS device (Android coming soon) or via an LG HDTV or Blu-ray player. Plex, which like Boxee is a fork of the original XBMC project, recently released its latest version, Plex Nine. For users interested in running their own home media server, Plex is a very attractive option. Verizon Offers Pre-paid Data Plans for Some Smartphones Verizon Wireless will be offering no-contract prepaid data plans for some smartphones later this month. The company will be offering a $30 per month unlimited data pay-as-you-go plan for eligible devices. Multimedia phones (non-smartphones with media features built in), customers can prepay $10 per month for 25MB of data, plus 20 cents per megabyte over that limit. Eligible smartphones include select BlackBerry models (Curve, Storm, Storm2, Tour, Bold); the Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus; Motorola’s DROID, DROID X and DROID 2; and HTC DROID Eris, HTC DROID Incredible. Prepaid smartphone data plans will be available on September 28. Further News Six Apart is shuttering its Vox blogging service on September 30. No new posts can be created after September 15, and blogs will be inaccessible after September 30. Vox has a page dedicated to helping users migrate their content to TypePad, Posterous or WordPress.com. Apple’s new iTunes Ping social network is off to a rocky start. Facebook turned off access to the app and musicians are confused as to how to actually use the service. Many international users continue to be unable to access the service. Google Wave may live on as its own stand-alone project known as “Wave in a Box.” Let the jokes begin! Facebook has just introduced a remote logout security feature. This means that when you accidentally decide to check Facebook from your boyfriend’s computer, you can log out before he gets smart to the fact that you’re chatting with other guys on the side. Series supported by HTC EVO 4G This series is brought to you by HTC EVO 4G , America’s first 4G phone. Only from Sprint. The “First to Know” series keeps you in the know on what’s happening now in the world of social media and technology. More About: Apple TV , boxee , first to know series , itunes ping , plex app , prepaid data plans , Ubuntu , verizon , Vox For more Social Media coverage: Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Social Media channel Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

    Sep, 03 2010 0 Comments Full Story

  • Google Wave to Rise Again on Its Own

    Google Wave was once one of Google’s hottest projects, promising a new way of communication that might even replace email. Alas, it was not to be, and Google shut it down soon after public launch due to lack of user adoption – but not completely. Wave still draws interest from users, although it turned out to be more of a niche product than a massively disruptive tool. Recently, Google promised to keep Wave alive at least until the end of the year and to open source some parts of it. Now, Google has finally decided what to do with Wave. According to a recent blog post, Google will release most of the Wave code in the form of an (almost) complete application, which Google calls “Wave in a Box.” For exact deatils on what this bundle will include go here , but it seem to be enough for developers to pick up where Wave left off and create their own, complete app based on the code. Yes, Wave was a failure in Google’s hands, but we’ll sure that developers will find a way to instill new life into the project. Who knows, maybe soon we’ll see a better Wave, and maybe this new version will (finally) conquer the hearts of users. More About: Google , open source , wave For more Tech coverage: Follow Mashable Tech on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Tech channel Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

    Sep, 03 2010 0 Comments Full Story

  • NASA Plans to Visit the Sun

    If you’ve seen Danny Boyle’s movie Sunshine , you may be a little disappointed: NASA’s mission to visit the Earth’s Sun won’t include sending people up there. But it will be sending a spacecraft into the Sun’s atmosphere, approximately four million miles from its surface. The project, called Solar Probe Plus , is slated to launch sometime before 2018. Four million miles doesn’t sound very close, but it’s still very exciting, since this is a region no other spacecraft (created by us) has ever encountered. NASA plans for the project to “unlock the sun’s biggest mysteries.” Although the spacecraft will be relatively far from our star’s surface, its carbon-composite heat shield will have to withstand intense radiation, as well as temperatures exceeding 2550 degrees Fahrenheit. “The experiments selected for Solar Probe Plus are specifically designed to solve two key questions of solar physics – why is the sun’s outer atmosphere so much hotter than the sun’s visible surface and what propels the solar wind that affects Earth and our solar system?” said Dick Fisher, director of NASA’s Heliophysics Division in Washington. “We’ve been struggling with these questions for decades and this mission should finally provide those answers,” said Fisher. [Image credit: NASA ] More About: mission , NASA , space , spacecraft , sun , Sunshine For more Tech coverage: Follow Mashable Tech on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Tech channel Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

    Sep, 03 2010 0 Comments Full Story

  • Twitter for iPhone/iPad Getting Push Notifications Soon

    We’ve just gotten an email from Twitter stating that staffers are testing push notifications amongst themselves and the company will be rolling this feature out to all users soon. Push notifications would enable users to get instant, real-time updates for certain types of tweets — probably DMs and @replies and perhaps other kinds of tweets, as well. A few lucky users accidentally got the new feature with the Twitter for iPad application which was recently released. “When we launched Twitter for iPad, there was a configuration error that caused us to offer push messages to a small set of users,” wrote a Twitter spokesperson. We’ve stopped sending push messages, but users may see an option to turn on push until we release an updated version of the app.” “We’ve been testing push notifications internally,” the rep continued. “Push isn’t ready yet, but we look forward to rolling this out soon.” Twitter for iPhone, formerly known as Tweetie , was made available to the public three months ago . Since then, it’s skyrocketed to a top spot as one of the most-used Twitter interfaces. In fact, 8% of all users of Twitter access the app via Twitter for iPhone. As for Twitter’s official iPad app , which just launched late last night, we don’t yet have any data on how much use that app is getting, but we do know that its interface is exciting and well-designed enough to get geeks around the web pretty excited; stay tuned for our full write-up and review later tonight. What do you think of push notifications for Twitter mobile apps? Are you looking forward to getting real-time updates from those you follow? Image courtesy of Flickr, tsevis More About: ipad , iphone , push , twitter For more Mobile coverage: Follow Mashable Mobile on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Mobile channel Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

    Sep, 03 2010 0 Comments Full Story
  • More from Mashable

  • Other Recent Articles

  • Archives: