Netlog violates Facebook’s policies and gets banned

Facebook takes measures to ban European social network Netlog

Facebook has certainly developed a controversial reputation for their privacy policies. But the social networking giant has also made waves with its policies towards third party companies using their platform.

According to a report from TechCruch, European social network Netlog has been banned from Facebook for an unclear violation of Facebook’s terms. Massive Media, Netlog’s parent company, said that Facebook provided no explanation for the extreme measure. On Tuesday of this week, roughly 1.5 million users that use Facebook Connect to login into their Netlog account found themselves locked out.

The first explanation was that Netlog violated a policy that states third party vendors can’t link, promote, integrate or redirect to any apps on a competing social network platform. But Netlog, while they considered it, hasn’t built any redirecting applications.

According to TechCrunch, a Facebook spokesperson said:

“Netlog took extensive steps to access internal Facebook APIs and deliberately compromised intended limitations of our platform. We took appropriate and necessary steps to protect people on Facebook.”

Massive Media still maintains they are aware of no wrongdoing in this department and reportedly considered filing a complaint with the European Commission over “anti-competitive actions.”

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Inventive Metals clads your iPhone in aluminum

If you can't afford to wait for an iPhone case that deploys airbags if you drop, Inventive Metals has iPhone cases made from solid aluminum.

There might be plans on the drawing board—somewhere—for phone cases that deploy airbags in the event a phone goes into freefall, but the rest of us tend to need more practical solutions that are available today. Although there’s no lack of iPhone cases on the market, Inventive Metals has a new twist on the idea with its new line of iPhone cases that are constructed from solid aluminum. The cases provide access to all ports and controls, and Inventive Metals says they do not interfere with reception.

“Aluminum cases provide the iPhone with a great deal of drop protection,” said Inventive Metals product manager Ron Benditt. “Most of our competitors who have tried this really haven’t put enough engineering into the signal-loss problem. We’ve studied this extensively and have tested and refined many prototypes before we were satisfied that our cases would out-perform our competitors and provide a good user-experience to our customers.”

The cases are available for the iPhone 4 and iPhone 3G/3GS in six different powder-coated finishes: black chrome, silver vein, rust, gold rush, neon pink, and wilder red. While in the case, users have full access to the phone’s touch screen, along with the headphone jack, and dock connector—and the cameras, mic, and speaker get their own ports too. Customers will need to engage in a little assembly (“Enclosing a phone in metal is a challenging endeavor,” noted Benditt), but the cases come with a torx wrench for fitting the four recessed screws.

The cases are available now from Inventive Metals for $69.

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AOL website hit by hacker

A minor hack of AOL's Postmaster website has already been fixed, but it adds another negative light on a company that is already on hard times.

On top of a particularly difficult week, AOL’s postmaster.aol.com website was hacked Saturday afternoon by someone who goes by the name “HodLuM.” The site was slightly defaced with a message from the hacker.

“AOL S3RV3RZ ROOT3D BY HODLUM LOLZ!,” the message read.

AOL finally discovered the hack, and fixed the page between two and four hours after evidence of the breach was posted to Reddit.com.

There are a number of reasons this hack looks bad for AOL. First of all, someone got into AOL’s servers, which is bad enough. Second, HodLuM likely has a sense of humor, as the HTML file used to deface the webpage appears to have been written in Microsoft Word — a sign that the cyber-security experts at AOL weren’t exactly doing their job up to par. Third, the ALL CAPS LEETSPEEK used by HodLuM suggests he or she is probably around 13-years-old.

Lastly, the various forums where this hack was posted all included various jokes along the lines of, “AOL still exists?!” Ouch…

It is not clear whether the people in charge of keeping AOL’s primary business properties, sites like Engadget, Joystiq and the Huffington Post, are the same people responsible for a relatively unknown site like Postmaster, which is a help site for businesses who regularly send emails to AOL members.

The AOL Postermaster blog has so far not responded to the hack.

The hack of AOL Postmaster comes at the end of a difficult week for AOL. Despite seeing a double-digit surge in display advertising revenue during the second quarter, AOL revealed this week that it was still losing money. Following the dire news, its stock price dropped more than a third (37 percent) from Monday through Wednesday, amidst an overall tumultuous week on Wall Street.

Prices did begin to rise on Friday, however, jumping 13 percent after AOL announced that it would invest up to $250 million in its own stock in an attempt to stop bleeding value.

While the hack of a minor AOL web property has nothing to do with the poor performance of its stock, the incident can only serve to worsen the mood at a company that’s struggling to stay upright.

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Google+ public posts being inserted into search results

If you are an early adopter of the Google+ social network, be careful what links you are posting on the service. Google is taking those link recommendations and using them for search.

Coming off the a recent dissolution of a partnership with Twitter for real-time search results, Google has started to intertwine public posts made on Google+ with search results. When a user is signed into any Google service and performs a search, they will see annotations about links shared on Google+ from their friends and connections of friends.

However, the text only shows that a person shared the link, not their opinion on it. If a friend shares a link to restaurant website on Google+ to mock the terrible food or service, it would still show up on Google as “Friend Name shared this on Google”. It’s possible to that disliked links will appear as recommendations. However, if a user clicks the Google+ link underneath the search result, they can see the full Google+ post to understand why the link was posted.

Google was quick to stress that only public posts will appear in search results. Any links or posts shared within a circle of friends won’t appear on a Google results page. Micrsoft’s Bing launched a similar feature recently that ties search results into the Facebook API. When searching for a term on Bing, any links that have been “liked” by Facebook friends become more prominent in the results. This requires the user to be logged into Facebook while performing a search on Bing.

This announcement likely ties into Google’s attempt to make sure that all Google+ users are listing their own names on the service. Google has recently shifted its policy from banning accounts without notice to giving users 4 days notice to change the Google+ account to the legal name. In some cases, they are even requesting scans of government issued ID to prove that a user has that name. After the grace period of four days, the account is suspended by Google.

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Pagani Huayra pictures

Pagani's successor to it's Pagani Zonda, the new Pagani Huayra from the exclusive super car designer.

Gratuitous motor porn awaits with the second car to be designed by exclusive automotive boutique car producer Pagani, with the new Pagani Huayra (pronounced wai-rah). The new successor to what many car purists deem pure automotive perfection, the Pagani Zonda, the new Huayra is a mid-engine sports car with an estimated cost of $1.2 million. Named after a South American wind god , and featuring gull-wing doors, one would be forgiven to think that this car could fly, with its Mercedes AMG 60° V-12 engine, fitted with dual turbochargers. The engine itself produces over 700 horsepower  and (740 lb ft) of torque. The Huayra’s top speed is 230 mph and can hit 0-62 mph in less than 3.5 seconds. More impressively, the Huayra can pull 1.5 G in corners, in spite of its 3,000 pound curb weight. Up until now, the Pagani was unattainable in the United States because of failed emission and safety testing, but it looks like the Pagani Huayra will finally touch ground sometime in 2013.

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SteelSeries World of Warcraft legendary gaming mouse

Introducing the new SteelSeries World of Warcraft MMO Gaming Mouse: Legendary Edition.

The SteelSeries World of Warcraft MMO Gaming Mouse: Legendary Edition is the ultimate weapon during your red bull drinking, hot pocket snacking, just-one-more-level-until-I-go-to-bed, adventure in Azeroth. The ultimate in geek chic, the Legendary edition features 11 programmable buttons, and an ergonomic design for long sessions of dungeon crawling or raiding. Further adding to the customization options , the SteelSeries allows you to configure your settings in game, script your macros, add button assignments, and adjust the illumination option that enables you change the amount of pulse and light the mouse emits. Finally, the SteelSeries World of Warcraft Gaming Mouse: Legendary Edition is both PC and Mac compatible and will release some time in September and set you back $79.99. 

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Driver: San Francisco returns in this new trailer

Trailer: After wowing crowds at last year’s E3 with the new game in the Driver series, the title is finally ready to debut this August.
It has been a tough road for the Driver series…no pun intended. The franchise has been somewhat hit or miss, with a heavier emphasis on the “miss” in the last few years, but Ubisoft thinks they have worked out the kinks in the newest entry to the series, Driver: San Francisco.
After debuting the game back in June 2010 at E3 to a solid reception, the title has since gone to ground and remained fairly quiet while Ubisoft Reflections finished work on it. But now it appears that the developer has decided to begin a PR push for the game, which is due later this summer.
Returning to the character that made the franchise famous, players will once again assume the role of Tanner, the Steve McQueen-like cop that would be right at home in a 1970s detective show. For those that didn’t play Driver 3—and let’s be honest, that is most people—the game picks up after Tanner and his arch rival, Jericho, were involved in a shootout in Istanbul. Both men survived, but Jericho landed behind bars in San Francisco, while Tanner went off to continue to be cool and do whatever else he does while not launching cars off of jumps at insane speeds.
As Jericho is being transported, he pulls off a daring escape, and he and Tanner face off once more. Rather than let him escape, Tanner rams Jericho head on, and winds up in a coma following the head-on collision.  Thankfully, it turns out to be one of the best comas ever, and Tanner has a kick ass fever dream in which he takes control of any car in the city of San Francisco and completes missions. It is in this fever dream that the new game takes place.
The game will feature a lengthy campaign set in and around San Francisco, with 208 miles of drivable road. There will also be a multiplayer aspect which was debuted at E3 last year. Look for more info on Driver: San Francisco in the coming months, then keep an eye out for it in stores when it is released on Mac, MS, PS3 and Xbox 360, with a modified version for the Wii, due out on August 30.
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