Social Media

Earlier today, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (or SOPA) which, depending on who you ask, is either a means to stop piracy and copyright infringement on so-called “rogue” websites, or the most serious threat of internet censorship that we’ve seen in some time. In the latter camp are some of the biggest internet companies around, including Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, eBay, LinkedIn, Mozilla, Zynga and AOL (full disclosure: Engadget’s parent company), who today made their stance clear by taking out a full-page ad in The New York Times.

The ad itself is a letter sent by the nine companies to Congress, which states that while they support the stated goals of the bill and the related Protect IP Act, they believe that, as written, the bills “would expose law-abiding U.S. Internet and technology companies to new uncertain liabilities, private rights of action, and technology mandates that would require monitoring of web sites.” The companies further went on to say that they believe the measures also “pose a serious risk to our industry’s continued track record of innovation and job-creation, as well as to our Nation’s cybersecurity.” While they didn’t all sign onto the letter, those companies also also joined by a host of others who have spoken out against the legislation, including Foursquare and Tumblr. The sole witness against the proposed measures at today’s hearing, however, was Google’s copyright policy counsel, Katherine Oyama — you can find her testimony on Google’s Public Policy Blog linked below.

Full Story and associated articles here:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/16/google-facebook-twitter-and-others-speak-out-against-the-stop/

Is the Internet a fundamental human necessity? Is a workplace with flexible mobility policies as valuable as salary?

To demonstrate the role of the network in our lives, Cisco commissioned an international workforce study of nearly 3000 people. The study revealed that one in three college students and young professionals consider the Internet to be as important as air, water, food, and shelter. The study also found that their desire to use social media, mobile devices, and the Internet more freely in the workplace is strong enough to influence their future job choice, sometimes more than salary.

Full Story Here: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns1120/index.html

Mozilla on Tuesday released Firefox 8, adding Twitter search to the browser and patching eight vulnerabilities.

Since Mozilla kicked off its every-six-week upgrade cycle last summer, each new Firefox has had relatively few visible changes. That held true yesterday.

Firefox 8′s most notable addition was Twitter as a choice in Firefox’s search bar, letting users look up topics, hashtags and usernames on the micro-blogging service. Twitter search is currently available only in the English, Japanese, Portuguese and Slovenian editions of Firefox.

Mozilla also made good on a promise last August to automatically disable add-ons installed without user approval. Behind-the-back add-ons have cropped up at times, most recently in January when one bundled with Skype caused so many browser crashes that Mozilla blacklisted it. When users start Firefox 8, all add-ons that have been surreptitiously installed are turned off by default.

Full Story:
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9221663/Mozilla_ships_Firefox_8_adds_Twitter_search_and_patches_8_bugs