futureweb

For the next few days, I’m in Cannes, France at the most tech-focused edition yet of long-running music industry conference Midem.

The music industry is changing – its old model just doesn’t work any more and finally, top-to-bottom, the industry has realised the need for change. Startups and app developers have flocked to Cannes for this year’s event, and between now and Tuesday we’ll be meeting the established names and new companies that will shape the future of music.

You’ll find all our Midem coverage at a specially branded channel thenextweb.com/midem – although our coverage will of course be completely independent. Expect audio and video interviews as part of our coverage, and we’ll be live-streaming Visionary Monday, when the industry’s future will be discussed by everyone from Facebook’s Dan Rose to Rovio’s CEO Mikael Hed.

We’ll also be looking at the Midem Hack Day – a 48-hour hackathon which aims to surface innovative solutions to music industry problems. Everyone from small startups to major labels have been pitching ideas to the assembled developers at the Innovation Factory stage.

So, keep an eye out for The Next Web’s coverage of Midem – and if you’re a startup or established tech company at the event, drop me a message on Twitter and let’s meet up.

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It seems you can’t even post a photo of yourself eating a chocolate bar on Twitter these days without kicking up a stink.

On Tuesday, Manchester United and (former?) England defender Rio Ferdinand – with almost two million Twitter followers – posted this message, accompanied by a photo of himself just about to get stuck in to a Snickers chocolate bar:

You’re not you when you’re hungry @snickersUk#hungry#spon lockerz.com/s/177408824

— Rio Ferdinand (@rioferdy5) January 24, 2012

So what, right? Well, yes. Except, with the status that Rio has – both in real life and on Twitter – he holds a lot of sway. And a simple 5-second tweet can get him a lot of money from companies willing to pay him to promote their products, which is what happened here.

Such an offence actually contravenes the UK’s Office of Fair Trading’s (OFT) guidance that celebrities must make it absolutely clear that they are promoting or endorsing a product. It’s deceptive advertising if they don’t reveal they are being paid to promote.

Snickers-gate, as it will surely be known, was actually preceded by a number of other UK ‘celebrities’ doing something similar to promote Snickers’ new UK Twitter account – Jordan, Ian Botham and Amir Khan all tweeted images of themselves eating Snickers over the weekend.

The basic premise is thus – they send tweets about something really banal and out of character, and follow it up shortly after by saying they were feeling out of sorts because they hadn’t eaten a Snickers. It’s all very imaginative. Here’s what Rio had to say prior to his ‘Snickers’ elation:

Really getting into knitting!!! Helps me relax after high-pressure world of the Premiership

— Rio Ferdinand (@rioferdy5) January 24, 2012

We don’t know how much these celebrities were paid for the ‘stunt’, but it must’ve been fairly substantial. It’s thought that Rio alone earns over £100,000 a week at Manchester United (even when he’s not playing), so for him to risk irking his mass of followers, Snickers must’ve waved a sizable sum at him.

This is perhaps indicative of the way Twitter is going though. Yes, it can be used to communicate and broadcast to the world in times of political crises, but it can also be leveraged as a BIG marketing tool, especially with users that have millions of followers.

Ashton Kutcher: The value of a tweet

In January 2011, we pondered how much traffic a single Ashton Kutcher tweet gets you, after the actor tweeted a link to a media company’s online video. In just five hours, the company in question said that the tweet had sent 13,000 people to the video’s YouTube page. A company spokesperson said at the time:

“This means that my video was watched for a total of 365 hours. In other words, with 5 seconds of effort Ashton was able to consume 365 hours of his followers time.

Now, that is leverage. To be exact that is about 1 to 250,000 leverage!”

Indeed, The Next Web actually discovered first-hand what an Ashton Kutcher tweet is worth, after he tweeted one of our stories on New Year’s Eve:

Best places in the world to be on New Years Eve – where will you be? tnw.co/so3qr9

— ashton kutcher (@aplusk) December 31, 2011

What did it mean for us? Well, let’s just say he drove a heck of a lot of traffic to our site and leave it at that.

Of course, Kutcher wasn’t being paid for his ‘promotion’ – he was merely sharing links to content he liked. But with well over 9m followers, he has the ability to bring a website to its knees, especially if it’s just a small company with small server capacity. But that’s another debate altogether.

Legal issues

As we’ve mentioned, Snickers-gate actually raised a genuine legal question in that celebrities must make it clear they are being paid to endorse a product. In the UK, at least.

“The internet plays a key role in how people purchase products and services and the importance of online advertising continues to grow,” said Heather Clayton, Senior Director of OFT’s Consumer Group, to the Telegraph. “The integrity of information published online is crucial so that people can make informed decisions on how to spend their money. We expect online advertising and marketing campaigns to be transparent so consumers can clearly tell when blogs, posts and microblogs have been published in return for payment or payment in kind. We expect this to include promotions for products and services as well as editorial content.”

A spokesman for the Advertising Standards Association (ASA) added that it would look into the Snickers campaign only if it received a formal complaint, so it looks like Snickers and Rio are off the hook for now.

Back in 2011, the OFT was forced to take action against a PR firm Handpcked Media that was found to be paying bloggers to write favorably about its clients, noting at the time that it has to clearly state when promotions in the social sphere have been paid for.

The future of advertising

But what does this Snickers campaign mean for the future of advertising? And what implication does it have for Twitter as a platform? It seems we’ll start seeing much more of this kind of activity moving forward, and we could see a staggered pricing structure – the more followers you have, the more you can charge to promote. However, all that will come at a price, figuratively speaking.

For celebrities, they risk alienating themselves from their followers, and a single ‘promotional’ tweet could potentially sever any trust ties that are in place. Legal issues aside, if you are paid to promote a chocolate bar you probably should mention that you’re deliberately advertising it, because people will then wonder if future tweets are ‘promotional too. What if Rio says on Twitter “I’m watching the big fight on Sky Sports tonight,” people may assume he’s being paid for it when in fact he isn’t.

On TV adverts, there’s no blurring of lines – you know it’s an advert and you know the people in it are being paid for it. Following Rio’s Snickers promo, a number of his followers took umbrage at his actions, asking him whether he really needed the money and complained that they didn’t follow him to be ‘advertised to’. One even called it embarrassing.

The whole furor over the actions of these Snickers-celebs may seem a bit over the top, but fans of the microblogging service don’t want Twitter to be turned into a massive marketing fest.

Wait a minute…who’s paying Twitter here?

We’re already seeing brand pages rolling out, whilst promoted tweets and trends are gaining traction too as Twitter strives to build a proper revenue-generating platform. And this perhaps raises the biggest question of all – how does Twitter get its cut of the Snickers’ promo cash? Or with other brand-celebrity partnership for that matter? Well…it seemingly doesn’t.

From what we can tell, the money from Snickers bypasses Twitter’s coffers altogether. If that’s the case, and we see many more of these celebrity/brand team-ups (which we will), you can bet your bootlaces that Twitter will be extending its palm for a share. Or at the very least, it could look at ways to discourage paid-for tweets that don’t carry its official ‘promoted’ stamp of approval. Because that’s the whole point of Twitter’s Promoted Tweets, right? You KNOW you’re being promoted to because they’re labeled quite clearly. Of course, how Twitter would enforce this is another issue altogether – it may have to simply rely on the respective consumer watchdogs around the world to enact their own country’s laws.

This is actually quite an interesting quirk. In TV advertising, a brand pays people (celebrities or otherwise) to star in its commercial, but crucially the broadcaster receives its share of the money. With Twitter, this doesn’t seem to be the case.

However this all pans out, you can be certain that 2012 will be the year Twitter really comes to the fore as a powerful platform for advertisers, and you’ll likely be seeing many more celebs take to the Twittersphere to endorse big brand names. We’re just at the very beginning.

In what appears to be one of the first public cases of a mobile operator approaching a smartphone operating system provider to amend how its software operates, Japan’s NTT DoCoMo is reportedly to ask Google to reduce the amount of data its mobile OS consumes, Reuters reports.

According to the report, DoCoMo has already taken issue with an Android VOIP application that allows free voice communication, which assisted in bring down its service on Wednesday, but will also campaign for Google to increase the periods between when the Android operating system requests new data for its applications.

With some Android applications polling for new data every three to five minutes (even when not in use), Android devices are pulling around ten times as much traffic as a normal mobile phone, increasing the strain on smartphone-intensive mobile operators.

Android is said to transmit control signals every 28 minutes; DoCoMo will ask that Android does that less regularly, as doing so would enable it to offer its service to more Android device owners and reduce disruptions on its networks.

DoCoMo also intends to work with Google and other mobile operators to ask Android app developers to reduce the frequency of their control signals, which could not only anger software creators, it could also have an impact on smartphone users, who invested in Android because of its open nature.

Because Android is an open platform, operators have more control over how the operating system operates on devices that they sell. Some are able to limit certain features, include their own applications and modify the software to brand devices. However, with tools available to users, some of these customisations can be wiped at launch.

It’s an interesting request by DoCoMo, one that could see other operators across the world requesting the same changes in order to better serve their customers.

The question remains, is limiting how often an Android device requests information better serving customers or should the operators ensure investments are made in their networks to cater for users?

Proactive copyright protection systems like YouTube’s ContentID are double-edged swords. On the one hand, they help large companies efficiently ensure that their copyrights are not infringed, which can be difficult with sites where anyone can upload content. On the other hand, they can give those with the right deals and connections unfair influence, are open to abuse, and can lead to some unfortunate and frustrating situations for fans and independent artists.

With Universal Music Group’s recent YouTube takedown of a song by After The Smoke, it seems to be all of the above. The Florida rap group, who are not signed to a label, uploaded their song “One in a Million” to YouTube, only to have it taken down by UMG hours later for copyright infringement. Confused, After the Smoke tried to figure out from YouTube what was going on. They “went through the all the correct procedures” with YouTube, as member Whuzi tells VICE, and were told that the copyright for their song was owned by UMG. “I filed a dispute and got a message back saying that, basically, we were lying and that Universal owned it, without any proof,” he explains, “It’s pretty much their word over ours.”

What happened

Apparently, here’s what happened: After the Smoke wrote and recorded a beat and were trying to sell it to another artist, which is not uncommon. Yelawolf was interested and recorded a song with it, but was then signed to a subsidiary of UMG, and nothing came of the track (and the beat was never paid for). So After the Smoke used the beat in their own song, the aforementioned “One in a Million.”

While Yelawolf’s track was never officially released, it was leaked (without any credit to After the Smoke), and UMG apparently had it taken down. When After the Smoke uploaded their track with the same beat, the beat they wrote and own, YouTube’s automated system recognized it and removed the video, telling them that it was infringing on UMG’s copyright.

Abuse, not enforcement

“This is really quite an amazing form of copyright abuse when you think about it,” writes Mike Masnick at Techdirt, “UMG artist fails to license beat on a song that is leaked… and then UMG claims copyright over the official song over the same beat.” As Whuzi put it to VICE, “We’re independent artists with our own copyrighted material and we’re being accused of infringing on their artist just because they’re on Universal.” A system where UMG doesn’t even need to own the copyright to content for it to be added to YouTube’s content matching system is ripe for abuse, as this and last year’s take down of Megaupload’s “Mega Song” demonstrate. YouTube denied that its partners can take down videos they don’t own the rights to, but this latest take down seems to contradict that.

Fortunately, UMG retracted its claim over the video, so After the Smoke can now treat their own music like it’s really their own. But it took the support of their fans, “back and forth with the right people, and some advice from lawyers.” Whuzi told VICE, “if it wasn’t for our fanbase getting riled up about it, I think this would have been swept under the rug.”

Unsurprisingly, Whuzi says he wouldn’t accept a record deal from UMG even if it was offered. “We’re not even Universal artists and they think they can push us around,” he said, “imagine what they’d be doing to us if we were actually signed to them.”

A larger problem

Along with some important questions about how YouTube’s Content Management System works, this story highlights a significant problem with much of the copyright systems and suggestions proposed by those like UMG: often, they’re good for large companies more than they’re good for artists overall. It shouldn’t take an uproar from artists and their fans for a system to work as intended.

This meme is certainly making a strong case to be one of the biggest of 2012. Sure, the first episode of “Sh*t Girls Say” was uploaded at the end of last year, but who’s counting really? The results that Google yields when you start typing “Sh*t People Say” are as far-ranging in quality as they are in topic.

SEE ALSO: 15 Best ‘Sh*t People Say’ Videos

We’re sure you’ve got your own favorite quotes from the wide array of videos out there. These 15 favorites (and an honorable mention for each) should get the conversation started.

1. Sh*t Girls Say - Episode 1

The original that started a whole sh*t revolution. Many great lines, tough to choose a favorite, but this one stood out.

Honorable Mention: "You're the best!"

Click here to view this gallery.

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The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Name: ZangZing

Quick Pitch: Store and share your photos from multiple services in one place.

Genius Idea: Makes it easy to create and share group albums using email.

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Some of my photos are stored on Instagram. Many more are saved across Facebook, iPhoto, Picasa, Flickr, Dropbox and in a stationary box on top of my dresser.

Earlier this week, I used ZangZing, a photo storage and sharing app, to bring them all together. (Well, most of them. The printed ones remain in the stationary box.) The clean, intuitively designed web app lets you quickly import your photos from your computer, iPhoto, Picasa, Facebook (including your friends’ photos), Flickr, Instagram, Shutterfly, Kodak, MobileMe, SmugMug, Photobucket and Dropbox. You can also automatically share out new uploads to Facebook, Twitter and email.

While it’s nice to have all my photos in one place, the best part about ZangZing is its group photo-sharing features. When you create a public or private album, you have the option to invite others to contribute. Friends can simply send a reply email to your album’s designated address (i.e., albumname@yourusername.zangzing.com) — no signup required — or they can head over to the album’s URL to import photos from any of the previously mentioned services that ZangZing supports. It’s an easy way to gather shots from a big group event like, say, a baseball game or a birthday party, particularly for those whose familiarity with the web doesn’t extend much beyond email.

Once photos are uploaded, viewers can leave comments and download high-resolution versions from the album.

ZangZing does have some drawbacks. It’s not easy to sort albums after you’ve uploaded your photos, for one thing, and there’s no option to create sub-folders. The service won’t automatically import any of your new uploads to Instagram, etc.; you’ll have to reimport them yourself. The site also isn’t fully optimized for mobile, although that — as well as an iPhone app — are currently in the works, ZangZing CEO and co-founder Joseph Ansanelli says.

The site launched in private beta last April, and launched version 2.0 last month. Unlike just about every other startup we write about, the company isn’t banking on ads or brand partnerships to support itself: Instead, ZangZing is hoping users will purchase prints and other photo products through the site. The startup is also planning to introduce a freemium payment model mid-year that would let users expand their storage space. Users are given 2 gigabytes of storage at signup, and can earn another 8 gigabytes by signing up friends. After that, they can opt to pay $5 per month (or $50 per year) for 25 additional gigs, or $10 per month ($100 per year) for 50 gigs on top of that.

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Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark

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The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

More About: bizspark, ZangZing

Each day, Mashable highlights one noteworthy YouTube video. Check out all our viral video picks.

An extensively choreographed “It Gets Better” music video — set to Lady Gaga‘s “Hair” — gained steam Friday after the mega pop star gave it her seal of approval on Twitter.

This is so AMAZING tinyurl.com/7jd638s #HairMusicVideo you guys did such an amazing job for #ItGetsBetter. The Choreo! I died!

— Lady Gaga (@ladygaga) January 27, 2012

The clip hit YouTube on Thursday, but the making of the video has been well documented on Facebook since August thanks to the project’s mastermind Colton Boettcher, who routinely posted updates on the CeeJbee Productions’ Facebook page.

The It Gets Better Project is an online campaign aimed at providing supportive messages for LGBT high school students who are facing discrimination and bullying. Since launching in 2010, It Gets Better has gained support from celebrities, athletes, the tech world and everyday people alike.

SEE ALSO: San Francisco Giants Are First MLB Team To Say “It Gets Better”

Boettcher teamed up with the LGBT community in Madison, Wis., and the It Gets Better Project to create the music video that looks like it came directly out of an episode of Glee.

“I want to let you know that it does get better,” Boettcher says at the end of the video. “We made this video in response to the number of suicides of gay kids in high school. … I’m gay and number of other people in this music video are also gay and we’re OK. We love our life.”

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Bonus: Google Chrome’s “It Gets Better” Video

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This “It Gets Better” video from the Google Chrome team aired during an episode of Glee in May 2011.

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Microsoft has just awarded $300K in starter capital to four teams from the 2011 Imagine Cup series. Each team received 75K and are on their way towards making their product a reality. Read more...

The make-believe town of Beckinfield is the setting for the Mad Libs-style show of the same name, which uses crowd-sourced amateur actors from all over the world who create the show’s story by posting videos.

Writers outline the plot and email a “town happenings” newsletter to actors each week. Each actor tells a small piece of the story in their video, adding their own flair. Related segments are linked together to create a kind of webisode that will be unique to every viewer depending on which videos they watch.

Beckinfield is a production of online network Theatrics.com. Friday, at Macworld, director Jonathan Frakes (Ryker of Star Trek fame) presented the winner of Theatrics’ “Ultimate Online Audition Contest,” with $10,000 and a vacation to Hollywood, Calif. Entrants selected one of six characters and showcased their acting chops in videos posted to the site.

Billed as “mass participation television,” Beckinfield is like a soap opera where anyone can be an actor. Three minute recaps are posted once-per-week on theatrics.com and pick-up where the previous week’s plot line left-off.

Here’s the confusing part: There is no one weekly episode. Actors submit their videos to the site, ranging from 30 seconds to 5 minutes. In theory, this lets every viewer creates their own experience. A short summary video is posted the following week.

It makes more sense when you consider that Beckinfield was originally created as a tool for actors’ character development. Co-creators Bob Gebert and Tracy Evans launched the site at South by Southwest in 2011 — then soon found out how many non-actors wanted to be part of Beckinfield, Evan said.

There are around 4,000 actors involved with Beckinfield, although most do not get chosen to be in webisode wrap-ups. You can sign up to be a performer anytime. At the moment, the number of viewers is roughly the same as the number of actors.

The question is whether there is a larger audience for do-it-yourself compilations of YouTube videos of varying quality. The movie Life in a Day managed to stitch together a story arc from YouTube videos, drawn from people around the world aiming to document one day on Earth.

Life in a Day, however, was a curated experience. Beckinfield is scattered and difficult to follow. Without a clear plot line and no direct character interaction, it seems unlikely the show will garner a mass audience.

But it does point to a possible future trend — crowdsourced entertainment. Cable networks have already tuned-in to consumers’ eagerness to integrate social media and their favorite TV programs, sometimes known as transmedia.

With the integration of social media and television, Evans says it’s possible this will become a niche interest for super-fans who want to act out their favorite characters and create a community who wants to watch the result.

What do you think about crowdsourcing talent for a show? Tell us in the comments.

Beckinfield "Crowd Sourced TV"

Beckinfield is a crowd-sourced show on theatrics.com. Anyone can audition to be an actor and post a web-cam created video. The videos are linked together to form a story.

Click here to view this gallery.

More About: Social Media, television, YouTube

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Sony has announced more information about the launch bundles that will be made available to US customers when they purchase the PS Vita portable console in mid-February. Read more...

It’s no secret Apple, one of the most valuable public companies in the world, is making major cash off today’s tech gadgets — but how much?

This week, the company reported a record net profit of more than $13.6 billion for its quarterly report lasting 14 weeks and ending Dec. 31, 2011. Apple’s income is 207 times the average annual salary for a U.S. worker. A rumored summer release of the iPhone 5 will help keep the money flowing in this year for the more than $400 billion company.

“We’re thrilled with our outstanding results and record-breaking sales of iPhones, iPads and Macs,” Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, said in a statement. “Apple’s momentum is incredibly strong, and we have some amazing new products in the pipeline.”

Cook alone raked in $378 million last year, naming him the highest-paid CEO. In the past three months, Apple brought in four times more profit than Walmart, the world’s largest retailer.

It seems unimaginable to see how far $400 billion could be used. The infographic below puts into perspective Apple’s monetary power and influence around the world. First off, $400 billion could cover 42% of the United States if dollar bills were laid flat across the South.

Apple could pay off the public debt of eight European Union countries. Apple could also write $6,622,516 checks to each of its employees before exhausting its fortune. More than $97.7 billion of Apple’s money is in cash reserves, and two-thirds of the money is stored offshore.

How could Apple’s money be better spent? Should Apple spend more money on its China suppliers to improve working conditions for workers?

Infographic created by MBA Online; Thumbnail image courtesy of iStockphoto, wdstock

More About: apple, infographic, ipad, iphone, ipod, tim cook

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A new rumor using unnamed sources claims that Nintendo is thinking about changing the name of its next generation game console the Wii U before it is shown again at E3 2012. Read more...

It’s not always clear how Facebook apps interact with the data you share on the social network. Are they allowed to broadcast it? Sell it? Compile it in a way that you never intended?

“When you turn all Platform applications off, your User ID is no longer given to applications, even when your friends use those applications,” says a portion of Facebook’s privacy policy. “But you will no longer be able to use any games, applications or websites through Facebook.

Simply, should you choose not to share with apps at all, they are taken away from you. If you want to use some, but limit their functionality, you have to carefully customize your privacy settings in order to ensure your information is used appropriately. With the Open Graph, which can push any information to your Facebook page without explicit permission each time, it becomes more of an imperative.

Here are seven things you may not realize that Facebook knows, and is using to interact with your friends or advertisers. Concerned about what you share on the social network? Be sure to check the Apps You Use in the Privacy Tab to ensure that you have full control of your privacy in a way that makes you feel comfortable.

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1. Where You’ve Been

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You’ve always kept your location up to date on Facebook, ensuring everyone knows when you change cities — but you’re not interested in geotagging. Watch out, because your exact location can still be picked up by Facebook and broadcasted.

One of the more prominent design features in Facebook’s new Timeline is the “Maps” feature, which gathers the meta data from a user’s location and prominently displays check-ins, life events, photos, and the like on the map. The issue is, for those who aren’t necessarily keen on sharing discrete location details, this feature is virtually unavoidable. According to Facebook’s privacy policy: “We receive data from the computer, mobile phone or other device you use to access Facebook. This may include your IP address, location, the type of browser you use, or the pages you visit.” This data is collected every time, even when a friend of yours has GPS turned on and tags you in a picture she’s uploading from her mobile phone.

Even if you’re stringent about your whereabouts not making it to a highly visible plane, Facebook has already gathered data from you retroactively, ensuring that every time you’ve changed your city location — or listed your home town– it will show up on the map as well.

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2. What You’re Listening To

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You just downloaded Spotify and you’re really excited to get started. You signed up and were asked to link to Facebook before launching the app, so you clicked the boxes and everything seems ready. But don’t click play on that MC Hammer track just yet…

Since September, Spotify has required that new users sign in through Facebook, thanks to a partnership forged after the music giant hit the U.S. Essentially, anytime a regular Spotify user turns on the app and clicks play, whether via desktop or through mobile, the app can beam information right into Facebook and broadcast it to friends without prior notice. In response to major backlash, Spotify now includes a “Private Listening” mode, which blocks sharing immediately to Facebook. However, it will turn off after a restart or an extended period of time.

The only way to circumvent the compulsory posting is to turn it off permanently in both places. Spotify’s desktop app does have a “turn off publishing to Facebook” within its settings, but the only way to ensure posting does not occur is to revoke Spotify’s publishing abilities within Facebook apps.

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3. When You’re Creeping

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That girl you met at the event you went to last week. Your ex from college. Your worst enemy from middle school. Odds are, they’re all on Facebook, and you can’t resist the urge to creep. Just remember that Facebook is watching, too.

Naturally, anything you do on Facebook is seen and gathered by Facebook, and creeping on people is no exception. Facebook specifically tracks all clicks done within its platform in order to better tailor an experience for the user. Do you ever wonder why certain people show up in your feed, while others are hardly ever reported on? That’s your creeping doing its work. Visit your frenemy’s page enough times, and he or she will end up gracing your feed more often than you may like.

Don’t worry, Facebook does not specifically share this data with other users, though it will assume that this person is important in your life. Marking someone as a VIP can lead to their appearances more often in your advertisements or apps in addition to the extra face time on the feed.

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4. Where You Run

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Social running is all the rage these days, and you’re ready to load up your iPhone with RunKeeper, connect it to Facebook and get to stepping. But there’s more, and it has to do with that sneaky little GPS…

Runkeeper is one of the poster children for Facebook’s new “frictionless” user experience. A social network for avid (and aspiring) runners, Runkeeper packs sophisticated technology usually reserved for GPS watches and other athletic gear into a handy iPhone application and has the option of linking material to Facebook. Except, with the Open Graph, linking gives companies an opportunity to simply push all of the info that they collect into a user’s Timeline. And in this case, that means valuable GPS data.

Say that you go on a run with Runkeeper around the park. The GPS data routes the run you made and then pushes it to Facebook so your friends can see where you’ve been and for how long. This may not be much of a problem for you, but what if one day you forget to turn off Runkeeper and go to work? Anywhere you go from that point on is at risk of becoming common knowledge among your social circle, which can be unnerving at best and dangerous at worst. Runkeeper does a great service for those motivated for fitness, but in participating in the Open Graph, the information is fair game.

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5. Your Saturday Night Plans

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Your local bar is having a comedy night, and you have to RSVP on Facebook to get on the guest list. But when you click “Attending,” your plans can be broadcast to your social network — whether you realize it or not.

One of the trickier features of Facebook is the “sponsored stories” section, which is a particular form of advertising. Companies can sponsor particular Facebook actions, called “stories,” that double as advertising for a brand. However, this also means that your information could be used as an advertisement for another brand.

“Sponsored Stories” are a possibility every time you like a brand or location or respond positively to a public event. When you do this, companies can tap into your friends and let them know that you like or are attending an event — with the hopes of getting them involved, too. Liking a brand or attending its event automatically makes your information available for brand ambassadorship, and you can become an advocate for the event or the brand without implicitly signing up.

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6. When You’ve Slacked on Your Diet

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You have a Fitbit and you’re ready to get your connected fitness in gear. You allow your account to connect with Facebook so you can broadcast your successes to friends and family, but the Open Graph does change things.

Fitbit is not currently on Facebook’s list of fully-adopted Open Graph apps, but its potential (and partnership with Runkeeper) can create quite an issue for users who are concerned about privacy. The nuances of Facebook’s Open Graph mean that everything is done for the user as soon as permission is granted, rather than approving every singular action within an app. Combine that with an app that already makes those decisions for you, and the possibility of sharing information you actually don’t want to share is high.

The key issue with Fitbit is that it already uploads very personal information automatically whenever the portable device is near its connected docking station. Combined with Open Graph, data could be broadcasted to friends without even logging into Facebook.

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7. What News Articles You Just Read

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A friend read an article that catches your eye through the Washington Post Social Reader. You click on the title and realize that the app requires permission before linking to the article. You may think little of it and click through to the article, but Facebook watches as you keep reading.

The main news app that has adopted Facebook’s Open Graph structure is the Washington Post Social Reader. You may have already seen the app in your News Feed, highlighting some articles read by friends that could be of interest to you. However, if you’re interested in one of the articles, you’re going to have to allow the app to access your personal information.

That can be an inconvenience for some, but the real issue lies after you read that first article. Because of the app’s structure, you aren’t prompted whether you want to share a particular article with your peers. So, once you begin clicking around the Post’s website, all of your articles become fair game for posting onto someone else’s mini-feed. The result is, from that point forward, even without accessing the app directly through Facebook, your connection to your reading habits is already cemented and anyone can access it.

More About: apps, Facebook, facebook open graph, features, mashable, Open Graph, privacy, trending

As Flash's ubiquity begins to erode, standards-based Web technologies are going to become the path forward for developers who want to offer a user experience that works across all screens. The HTML5 video element is already widely supported in modern Web browsers, but the capabilities and codecs that are available differ between implementations.

A new State of HTML5 Video document offers some clarity by painting a clear picture of the current status of standards-based video across the spectrum of browsers and mobile environments. The document was authored by LongTail Video, the company behind JW Player, a very popular video playback framework that supports Flash and HTML5.

Based on statistics from various browser marketshare trackers, LongTail says that two thirds of Internet users are running browsers that support HTML5. Support for standard HTML video element attributes is relatively consistent, though there are gaps: Android and iOS both lack support for the preload and autoplay attributes, for example.

Fullscreen playback and support for adaptive streaming are still highly limited. The latter will likely be remedied in the future as MPEG's DASH standard sees adoption. Codec compatibility is still a tricky issue--some browser vendors are standing behind H.264 while others favor Google's WebM.

LongTail says it will keep the document updated as the status of Web video evolves.

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In a strange twist, some lawmakers in Poland donned Guy Fawkes-styles masks, the same that have been used by Anonymous members, to protest the country's signing of ACTA. Read more...

Facebook COO Shifts Europe focus from privacy to economy -  At a recent conference in Europe, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg told the audience that the economy is probably more of a concern than privacy. She said so given an impending privacy law draft that would affect 27 European Union countries. Specifically, she suggested that the law could have a negative impact on the EU economy. [Image via Facebook]

Facebook has a €2.6 billion U.K. impact -  A study from Deloitte found that Facebook’s overall economic impact in the United Kingdom was €2.6 billion, or 35,200 jobs in the U.K. and 32,000 jobs in the European Union and Switzerland.

Facebook ads game categories to News Feed -  Facebook now displays the genre category below game names and stories in News Feed stories. As we reported on Inside Social Games, users might be more likely to click on games when they know more about them.

Facebook engineer creates Google hack -  An project called Focus on the User, created in part by a Facebook engineer, provides a bookmarklet that forces Google Search Plus Your World to display results from social networks besides Google+.

Causes now a standalone website – TechCrunch reported that the charity app Causes has re-launched as a standalone website.

85K Arab Facebook logins hacked – ZDnet reported that Israel and Saudi Arabia are in the midst of a hacking war, and 85,000 Arab Facebook logins are one casualty.

Washington state AG targets clickjackers -  Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna announced suits against two companies thought to encourage clickjacking on Facebook. The suit was announced at Facebook’s Seattle office.

Facebook registers ‘FB Origin’ domain - Facebook registered several domains, .com and .biz for example, for something called FB Origin via the company MarkMonitor.  Fusible speculated that this means the company is set to launch a new product along with Timeline apps.

If you're not smiling in your Facebook photo, your life is probably going to suck in 4 years time.

Reseachers J. Patrick Seder and Shigehiro Oishi at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville discovered that smile intensity from a single Facebook profile photo in the first semester of college predicted self-reported life satisfaction 3.5 years later, at the time of college graduation.

This type of study isn't actually unique to Facebook, however. A 2011 study by Harker and Keltner showed that female students smiling in their college graduation yearbook photos from 1958 and 1960 were reportedly happier 30 years later. A similar study by Abel and Kruger (2010) found that professional baseball players who smiled more intensely in archival photos lived seven years longer than those who didn't smile much.

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Why does intensity of smiling in a photo predict well-being later in life? Smile intensity is associated with life satisfaction and smiling. But what about extraversion? This is another, third variable that the researchers considered.

The researchers also considered that people who smile more in their public Facebook photos tend to have better social relationships. Past research shows that people who smile in photos are usually warm and friendly, and they tend to have an easier time in social relationships. As such, smiling intensity in photos correlates with a higher life satisfaction through positive social relationships.

Does extraversion play into the longitudinal association between smile intensity and life satisfaction? Smile intensity did not significantly correlate with self-reported extraversion. The researchers did not find evidence for extraversion-as-third-variable account of life satisfaction. They did find that first-semester social relationships satisfaction was an important link between smile intensity and future self-reported life satisfaction.

Interestingly, they did not find evidence that extraversion was responsible for association between smile intensity in photos and future life satisfaction. So just because someone is extraverted on Facebook or in life doesn't mean they're satisfied - it just means that they're extraverted.

One caveat to the study: Researchers worked with students who were college freshmen in the fall 2005, and used Facebook when it became available to most colleges. In September 2006, Facebook became available outside of the academy. The first study worked with 92 participants (35 male), which is a rather small sample size. All Study 1 participants were early adopters of Facebook.

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U.S. Patent # 6,591,353, "Protocol for Communication with Dynamic Memory," tends to refer to a "memory device." The innovation with respect to this device appeared to be the introduction of a synchronous clock. That way, time-multiplexed transfers could take place in a regulated fashion.

But as USPTO documents published today show, the appeals judges found that two existing patents cited by Nvidia qualify as prior art, and moreover, that the teachings demonstrated by those older patents would be inspiration enough for a skilled artisan to apply the teachings to improving synchronous memory the way Nvidia appears to have done.

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In their decision, the judges refer to the patent concepts by the names of their inventors - "Hayes" for the one under contention, "Bennett" for the prior art. Citing directly from the decision:

The Examiner agrees that Hayes discloses a memory device and anticipates claim 1, but maintains that including all the RAM control logic into each Hayes DRAM chip would not have been obvious... But dependent claim 2 recites sampling data synchronously and does not require all the RAM control logic to be integrated into each chip. NVIDIA points out that the term "memory device" in these claims is not limited to a single chip, but even if they are, NVIDIA persuasively shows the obviousness of creating a single chip... The claim 2 memory device, whether as a chip or a broader device, requires strobe functionality which Hayes teaches and synchronization which Bennett teaches according to this record. As NVIDIA persuasively explains, Hayes describes time-multiplexed clock data transfers between a master and slave during different clock cycles, and Bennett teaches benefits to providing a synchronized interface in a memory device using an external clock. The Examiner does not appear to disagree with these findings... NVIDIA also relies on Mr. Parris [an expert witness] who testifies that ordinarily skilled artisans were shifting from asynchronous to synchronous operations to increase speed... Based on this record, NVIDIA shows that it would have been obvious in view of Bennett to implement certain control logic, including a synchronous logic interface, into the memory device of Hayes.

This week's loss is the latest in a string of bad luck for Rambus, that comes on the heels of what had been an upward trend for a company whose reputation was pretty much created in the courtroom. The uptick began four years ago, when a Federal Trade Commission ruling was overturned. That ruling had found Rambus was withholding critical implementation plans for its memory standards from the JEDEC standards agency, and had sent a signal to the industry that Rambus was unfairly trying to manipulate standards to its own advantage. The overturning of that ruling was the beginning of what had been a glorious resurrection of Rambus' respect.

But perhaps buoyed too much by the outcome, Rambus then tried to hold the same manufacturers that first accused it of unfair standards manipulation - Hynix Semiconductor and Micron technologies - responsible for essentially the same conduct. The court didn't buy that argument either, ruling in favor of Hynix and Micron two months ago.

Suddenly, Rambus had resumed its former public image of pursuing greater revenues through litigation. With only three of six patents remaining valid in its case against Nvidia and five others, Rambus may not be able to hold on to even that. Today, Rambus' stock price hit what memory engineers would call a "low state," losing another 13% in NASDAQ trading today after already having lost over half its value last November in the wake of the Hynix/Micron decision.

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Former President of Facebook, Sean Parker, did an interview with CNBC today in which he discussed Facebook’s “inevitable” IPO and applauded Mark Zuckerberg for keeping the company private for as long as he has. While Parker didn’t provide any insight as to when the public offering would be made or at what valuation, he did admit that the public push for Facebook shares can’t be ignored:

To the extent that there is any bubble in technology at all, it is really a bubble around Facebook in the sense that there is a huge amount of pent-up demand among retail investors for access to Facebook equity.

Our sources say that the IPO could happen as early as next Monday, but it’s anyone’s guess at this point.

In the interview below, Parker discusses how ironic it is that Zynga, which has found success with its games by piggybacking Facebook’s social graph, went public before Facebook did.

Notice that the interview started to go south when questions about Justin Timberlake’s portrayal of him in “The Social Network” started being asked. Let’s keep it to tech folks, shall we?