2013

Corona, California, March 13, 2012: Quality craftsmanship, friendly and dependable service and an organized and professional approach to our projects are the secrets behind the success of Forness Constructions, the company’s promoter Ken Forness has said in an interview. Forness Construction is a leading construction contractor engaged in construction of residential and commercial buildings, additions and remodeling of existing buildings. The company also takes repair, reconstruction and restoration work of buildings damaged by fire, water, wind, earthquake, vandalism or any other reason.

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Redmond, Washington -- In the midst of discarding the preview tag, software behemoth Microsoft is touting a new milestone as it continues its attempts to lure users away from Google's Gmail. The Redmond giant announced on its blog that Outlook.com, the company's new free Internet-based email service, has flourished to 60 million users since launching in “preview” at the end of July, the company will now start phasing out its Hotmail and begin moving users over to its new product, according to the software giant.

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London -- In a surprising turn of events, besieged with an epidemic of phishing attacks on its academic networks, Oxford University took drastic measures: It decided to temporarily block access to Google Docs for 2.5 hours on Monday, after a dramatic increase in phishing attacks trying to harvest academic email credentials using bogus forms hosted on the service and has said Google should share some of the blame for the outage.

 

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Los Angeles -- Barely a month after announcing the release of its much touted Graph Search feature with much fanfare, and now in an effort to mollify privacy fears, the social network giant Facebook over the weekend announced in a blog post that it is introducing specific preventative measures to make sure parents do not get up in arms about their children's privacy when Graph Search is rolled out to the public.

Ever since it was launched, there have been many murmurs of the security issues and privacy glitches on the new Graph Search. But now, in order to better protect its users, Facebook said that certain searches made on its network that could help to identify a young person by age or by their location, would be hidden from its younger users.

In fact, these rules firmly dictate that if an adult does a search that could display a minor's location or age, then the Graph Search results will only be displayed to that person's Friends, or Friends of Friends who are also between the age of 13-17. Even basic details like birth-date, location, school, hometown will be visible only to a select group of minors in the below 18 persons friend list.

“What we really wanted to do was try to identify things that could be even more sensitive for minors -- that would identify them by their age and location,” Nicky Jackson Colaco, Facebook's manager of Privacy & Safety, informed CNN. “Those kind of things are more sensitive and we wanted to really make sure they had an even more restrictive experience.”

Surprisingly though, as with anything that Facebook does, privacy is clearly the issue here. Besides, considered as the social network's search tool, it offers users a novel ways to uncover people, places, photos, and interests that have been buried alive inside the social network. However, it also exposes a huge amount of personal data that members may not realize is available for public scrutiny.

In addition, by bringing together all data under one roof, it might get a little overwhelming and a field day for prowlers. For Eg: It would become very easy for a person to hunt all the ex-employees of a particular company and misuse the data. Or hunt the students of a particular school class.

Although it might not seem like a big thing right now, especially since Graph Search has not been released to its entire user base, but for those that do have access, this could present an interesting dilemma for people. However, in order to prevent such a scenario, Facebook has decided to take an advanced security measure. Especially for minors.

However, with the issue causing lots of uproar in tech circles, since then, the company has been working to quell users' privacy fears over Graph Search. It has answered questions and offered insight on how users can control their audience by adjusting their “likes,” managing who can see friend and family lists, and how to review tagged photos.

In the blog post, Facebook added a couple of other ways to control what will be shared on Graph Search:

Manage Your Activity Log: Activity log makes it easy to see the things you have posted on Facebook, make changes to the audience of past photos and other posts, and choose what appears on your Timeline. We recently announced some new tools that make it easier to take action on multiple photos, such as untagging them, or requesting that they are removed with one click. If you are ever concerned who can see content you have posted or shared on Facebook, review it on your Activity Log.

Review About Me: In addition to your Activity Log, review the 'About' tab to check any basic info you have shared with others on your profile, such as your current city, your workplace, Pages you like, or your education. The same people who can see this info on your profile can search for this info about you. Check this section to make sure you are comfortable with the audience you have chosen to share this information with.

Facebook's Graph Search is currently available to a small number of users but should roll out to the general public later this year.

Mountain View, California -- The NFL season may be over now, but Google's Street View cameras are always active that have journeyed to the Grand Canyon, under the sea, and to the top of ski slopes, and over the weekend added some pretty interesting, interactive, 360-degree imagery of Lucas Oil Stadium, home of the Indianapolis Colts, to its Maps service.

For those armchair viewer as well as those in the faraway land, Google brings a novel way to explore an NFL stadium without paying the $100 average ticket price: Google Maps today introduced Street View for Lucas Oil Stadium, better known as the home of the Indianapolis Colts. This is the first time the Web giant has mapped the inside of an NFL stadium, and it is the first U.S. sports venue to get the Street View treatment in Google Maps.

Lucas Oil Stadium, as seen in Street View... (Credit: Google)

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“Together with the Colts and Lucas Oil Stadium, we are truly delighted to give you, the fans, a behind-the-scenes look at the home of the Colts, and enable anyone to 'visit' the stadium from wherever they may be,” Google Maps product manager Evan Rapoport, wrote in a blog post Friday.

However, the company announced that the plan was made possible due to collaboration with the National Football League's (NFL) Indianapolis Colts. Through this arrangement, Google Maps now offers users a VIP, 360-degree interactive tour of the team's stadium, Lucas Oil Stadium.

As part of its ongoing mission to create the most accurate and usable map of the world, Google decided to take it things a step further by recording what a professional football team's stadium looked like. The company says that it has captured a variety of views, including allowing users to view what it is like right on the football field, look at the VIP suites and concourses, and check out the locker rooms.

The interior of Lucas Oil Stadium... (Credit: Google)

The idea of photographing the stadium was the search engine's idea. In order to photograph the Colts' stadium to Google Maps, the Street View team showed up on a day where no sporting events were planned and proceeded to document using two key tools: the proprietary Street View trolley, a roving pillar on wheels that has a camera mounted on top of it, and more traditional tripods used for capturing the 3D imagery.

Through the use of its Trekker camera, the Google Maps team was able to get a rather realistic view of what it’s like to be inside the stadium. “We had the stadium as most people would never get to see it,” said Rapoport. “We got to go in on an empty day. You got a feeling of what it might be be to like to own the place.”

Amazingly though, with the new imagery, you can virtually walk the tunnel and down the field toward the end zone, just like the Colts players do every season. You can also check out what it is like inside the Colts's locker room (right), or explore the stadium's three concourses and suites, including the Quarterback Suite, a field level suite, and a lodge-level suite.

In fact, users can access Street View by clicking a link to it following a search for Lucas Oil Stadium in Google Maps, or by dropping the orange Pegman figure onto the stadium from the map view.

A view from the stadium terrace... (Credit: Google)

Apparently, the football stadium is the latest in Google's relentless mapping of sometimes hidden places, which follow ski resorts, the Grand Canyon, North Korea, and the Great Barrier Reef.

“We are just really, really thrilled about the level of enthusiasm that people have for Street View,” Rapoport said. “People are always asking us to bring Street View to new places, whether it is in new countries or famous places around the word.”

For those interested in checking out the stadium, they can go to Google Maps and do a search for “Lucas Oil Stadium” or “Colts Stadium”. Also, more sports venues are likely on the cards. However, getting inside requires Google to work with them individually to get permission and coordinate the shoots.

 

France - When Google instituted a new privacy policy early last year, European regulators instantly warned that it was likely illegal under European law. Now, in a fresh legal fracas, global web search giant is under pressure EU watchdogs plan to take action against Google by this summer over the web giant's current privacy policy, French privacy regulator CNIL has said.

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Mountain View, California - In a latest discovery of glitches, Google's privacy practices are attracting heat after every time a purchase made on Google Play, the store on the Android platform, results in the email address, neighborhood and name of the purchaser being sent to the developer of the purchased application, it has been revealed-and then the company flexes muscles on journalists who report the privacy breach to tone down their stories. (more…)

Los Angeles - In an effort to spruce up its services, social networking humongous Facebook is collaborating with global retailers on a test of a new version of its Offers product, which empowers users the option to shop immediately or get a reminder before the promotion ends. The interface also lets users decide if and when to share the offer with friends, according to a report from Inside Facebook.

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San Francisco -- Relentlessly striving to spruce up its services, search engine titan Google has again taken a step further by empowering users the choice to export the data and save it locally on their computers. Google Takeout is a service by Google that now offers extended support for those of you with a Blogger account and/or a Google+ page account to save some of their data to a local system. (more…)

Redmond, Washington - In a fresh bout, Microsoft-owned Skype is rolling out an array of updates today to both version of its Mac and Windows desktop applications dubbed Skype 6.2, both of which include support for 'eGifting' of Skype credits in addition to a re-designed toolbar for PC users. (more…)