Internet

Facebook has officially released a new and somewhat controversial feature that allows users to track the location of their friends. But if used maliciously, the app raises major privacy concerns. The application is called "Nearby Friends" and it ... uses location information collected by smartphones. Facebook says its goal is to make it simple for people to find their friends and meet up in real life. When it's enabled, Nearby Friends shows users a list of Facebook friends who have agreed to share their location. The app can also alert a user if a friend comes within range (such as ... (view more)

Mozilla's co-founder, Brendan Eich, is stepping down after only one week as the company's chief executive officer (CEO). Eich is abandoning the post amidst controversy surrounding a $1,000 donation to a same-sex marriage ban. Eich is a US-born ... computer programmer who started his career in California's Silicon Valley during the late 1980s. In the 1990s he worked on Netscape, one of the Internet's earliest web browsers. Eich was also a key figure in the development of JavaScript, an exceptionally popular programming language. Brendan Eich is arguably best known for founding the ... (view more)

Facebook is introducing new rules governing the way its users can offer to sell guns online its website. While it's not banning such posts altogether, Facebook is taking steps to ensure its users are complying with the law. According to Facebook ... policy chief Monika Bickert, the subject of gun sales means the site faces "a difficult challenge balancing individuals' desire to express themselves on our services, and recognizing that this speech may have consequences elsewhere." (Source: fb.com ) Facebook already has several policies on the sale of goods, which don't always ... (view more)

One of the largest businesses that allowed people buy the online currency Bitcoin is filing for bankruptcy protection. The collapse means customers have almost certainly lost nearly half a billion US dollars in "real money." Mt Gox is a Tokyo-based ... business founded in 2009 as a trading card exchange (Source: wikipedia.org ). It has recently filed for bankruptcy protection because it has debt worth $63.6 million, but assets worth only just half over that. Customers had a total of around 750,000 Bitcoins stored in the Mt Gox equivalent of a bank account, which translates to around $ ... (view more)

A newly-published study shows fifteen percent of online Americans believe the Internet is a bad thing for society. The study also found most users generally think the Internet is a good thing in terms of benefitting themselves. The study comes from ... the Pew Research Center, which regularly surveys the public about the use of and attitudes to online services. Its latest survey came to mark the fact that the World Wide Web was created 25 years ago, in March 1989. (Source: pewinternet.org ) Although the Internet itself (I.E.: the physical connections between computers) has been in existence for ... (view more)

Most stories regarding privacy on the Internet involve complaints that tech firms go too far when divulging personal details of its users. In a twist of irony, however, advertisers are now complaining that Amazon and Apple are far too protective of ... their customer details. Several major advertising groups have told industry magazine 'Ad Age' that the two firms are missing out on ad revenue because they refuse to share personal customer information to the same extent as the likes of Google and Facebook. (Source: adage.com ) The advertisers say that the more details they have about ... (view more)