The largest social networking site Facebook has not found out methods to account for the dead! Deceased users in Facebook still have their accounts running which has led to the problem of their friends getting unwanted messages from Facebook. Facebook’s social algorithms have this problem to solve!

“It’s a very sensitive topic,” said Meredith Chin, a company spokeswoman, “and, of course, seeing deceased friends pop up can be painful.” Given the site’s size, “and people passing away every day, we’re never going to be perfect at catching it,” she added. “So many of Facebook’s early users were young, and death was rare and unduly tragic,” James E. Katz, a professor of communications at Rutgers University said.

“Sometimes it’s quite comforting when their faces show up,” Ms. Tamu Townsend, a Facebook user said. “But at some point it doesn’t become comforting to see that. The service is telling you to reconnect with someone you can’t. If it’s someone that has passed away recently enough, it smarts.”

The major problem is that while most of the users of the networking site are young, death in most cases can be tragic and sudden which futher aggravates the pain of losing. The solution to this may be difficult. One might suggest that friends take suo moto cognizance and remove users from their lists, or Facebook to determine a mechanism for archiving, if not deleting user accounts on a good share of friends reporting death.

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If Facebook is still wondering its new application is going to be another hit, it’s time Zuckerberg and co. do some real soul-searching. As if one nuisance wasn’t enough for this social networking site, it got caught in another.

The social networking site is drawing much flak in India for its newly launched “fair skin” application which can apparently make one fair by its use. The application titled “Vaseline Men Be Prepared” application has Indian actor Shahid Kapoor as its brand ambassador and digitally makes one fair, thus advertising for the product. Its popularity has shored up, nevertheless, with currently about 9000 monthly users.

For a country obsessed with fair skin, it’s no wonder that the campaign is quite a rage. A user writes, “Indians are the only group of people I know who try everything to try and make themselves whiter. They name their kids western names, dye their hair, wear contacts, they even say that they’re white…. it’s quite disgusting when you see some of them that try to make themselves white”. Another user commented “Transform your face… by whitening it? Ahh, racism.” The exasperation is evident. One user writes, “It is insidious of them to take advantage and make profit out of a bias that unfortunately exists in Indian society. As a side effect of their campaign, many people are developing needless self-doubt and inferiority complex. I strongly condemn this ad campaign.”

Were the Aussie racist attacks not enough, dear Mr. Zuckerberg? What of those promoting this silly fairness product? Facebook’s double standards are glaring and it’s unlikely that anyone is going to take it by the face this time.

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Now Indians can move away from Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera or Google Chrome. It is time to try something new, something special and something indigenous.Why not try something that has intentions of making Indians all over the world proud! A web browser by Indians and for the Indians, Epic has been launched and is available at http://www.epicbrowser.com/

The main features of this browser are Latest Film Songs, Live Cricket Scores, News from a dozen+ leading sources, Regional and Hindi language News, Live TV, Stock Quotes, Events, Videos, even a Daily Joke. A built in antivirus scans downloads automatically, scans your system manually. It also kills viruses it finds.It’ll warn you if you’re about to visit a web site known to host viruses or malware, and also provides anti-phishing protection.

Bangalore based startup Hidden Reflex was founded by the then U.S. based Engineer Alok Bhardwaj in 2007 and the company has its present office at Bangalore. They started out with a team of three members.Their debut product , Epic, has already been launched, whereas one is under construction.

Typing in Indian Languages and 1500+ Indian Themes and Wallpapers are other features provided by the browser which has been made on a Mozilla platform.One-Click Private Data Deletion,One-Click Private Browsing, Flash cookie deletion are built in.It doesn’t even store your browsing or search data, making it quite user friendly.

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Google is huge. In terms of share of market, in terms of revenue, in terms of liquid reserves it holds, in terms of geographical presence. In every possible sense, that is. Is there anything that can force an enterprise like Google to step back and do a rethink on its policy of providing uncensored and unbiased results to millions of search queries posted by its users? Yes, There is. The largest internet market in the world. China.

When, in January this year, Google discovered cyber attacks originating in China on its databases, it talked in plain terms with the Chinese Government. It stopped censoring search results on its Chinese site. In March, when it closed its Internet search service in China, we all thought that Google is simply unwilling to compromise on Internet censorship. Only to be proved wrong.

As Google restarts its operations following a review of its Internet Content Provider (ICP) license, the question many are asking is- Did Google bow down to pressure from Chinese authorities? Most probably, Yes. Google decided to continue censoring results to avoid being kicked out of a rapidly growing Chinese market. Maybe for China, “Be a little evil” can be a new tagline for Google.

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Facebook is synonymous with social networking. Not for Russians though. “What is Facebook? Seems like some kind of a book where you stick faces of people”, they say when you mention Facebook to them. At a time when the popularity of Facebook is at sky heights, this looks strange enough.

In Russia, a social network called Vkontakte leads Facebook to be the largest networking service in Russia. And as the reactions of the Russians on hearing the name of Facebook would have told you, this lead is not slim by any measures. It runs comfortably into millions. How can Facebook cut down this sizeable lead, if not surpass it?

The best solution, and which is being seriously being worked upon by Facebook in Russia is to promote its text only website- Facebook Zero. And that too without a rouble in cost. Also, Facebook can also target users through mobile networks and this undoubtedly can be a win-win situation, both for Facebook and mobile phone operators alike.

Let’s sincerely hope that Facebook makes inroads into the Russian market. “How is Facebook?” rather than “What is Facebook?” can be a good start.

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On Saturday, when Apple opens a store in Shanghai, it will be no ordinary an event. Not just because the store lies right in front of the historic Oriental Pearl Tower. But more so because China is no ordinary a market when it comes to Apple’s products. Potentially the biggest undoubtedly.

For Apple, the problem is not about popularity of its products. In fact, Chinese people love the iPhones, iPads, Macs and all other Apple products but they seldom buy it from Apple. There are countless unauthorized dealers who sell smuggled products thus hitting the revenue of the company hard. Also, China is notoriously known for its large scale imitation of the popular electronic items which downgrades the company’s earnings which makes the real product. To check this trend, Apple plans to have an extensive presence across the country with a couple of dozen stores to be opened within next two years. Apple also needs to get several other things in order. Firstly, the delays in the launch like the one in case of iPhone have to be avoided. Secondly and most importantly, Apple has to work in close tandem with Chinese authorities to stop the imitation of its products.

Given the success of Apple in other markets, China may just be the next big story.

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On Tuesday, Twitter announced something different. On Tuesday, Twitter announced an entry into selling products. The company plans to display time sensitive deals on products and events. How? Through tweets obviously.

The company has created an official “earlybird” account which will promote special time bound deals, sneak peeks and events. The company also announced that it would be very selective about the deals it will offer and would go out in ensuring that these deals are of sizeable value to customers. The company also plans to offer deals specific to geographical locations- say a city or a country. So if you are a twitter user, you need to follow @earlybird and you will see tweets of marketing campaigns especially designed by companies for twitter.

What does this mean for the world of advertising? A lot, actually. With companies like Dell already using Twitter to promote their marketing campaigns, the ‘earlybird’ phenomenon can help users to pick up the best of those deals. Happy Shopping, Tweeple!

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Giving a serious defame to the Apple’s credibility, iTunes accounts of over 100′s of its users were compromised or rather hacked. Reportedly over 100’s dollars of users were sacked and used to purchase apps in the iTunes App store.

Although the exact reasons for the mass attack are yet to be known, users reported that their funds have been routed to buy various books from the iTunes stores unwillingly. Engadget earlier reported a hyperbolic rise in the sales of book apps by certain developers identified as Thuat Nguyen. Relevantly it has been noted that the developer used the hacked accounts to buy his apps, which has resulted in his apps occupying 40 of the top 50 spots on the iTunes iBook section. The apps mostly belong to 3 books series namely - Vien Ngoc Rong, Conan and Thuy Hu which were purchased at around $5 a copy. The apps have been removed from the app store for now.

It is evidently apparent from the tweets of the victims, that the users were robbed of credit in no fixed amount. Some users claimed that they have been robbed of amounts less than $150, and few have even reported of being reduced by as much as up to $1500. Apple for now hasn’t given any official statement and the users for now are advised to reset their password details and remove their credit card details. No causes have been reported for now regarding how the hackers managed to get to their user accounts and Passwords.

With the confirmed reports of flaws in its product iPhone4 and this very hacking of iTunes accounts is a cause of concern for Apple and definitely questions its credibility for being termed as a Perfectionist Company.

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After doing all that it could to market and keep iPhone in news, it’s now the arch-rivals Motorola and Nokia who are ensuring to keep the version four of the Device buzzing; but for all the wrong reasons.

Motorola and Nokia have started their ad-campaigns highlighting the flaws in iPhone 4, and leaving no effort to poach the Potential customers to switch. Motorola published an ad in New York Times to market its latest product DroidX. The ad read,"…And most importantly, it comes with a double antenna design. The kind that allows you to hold the phone any way you like and use it just about anywhere to make crystal clear calls,"  very well targeting the antenna error in iPhone4 reported by its users. Even Nokia didn’t let go of chance and posted on its conversation blog, "Realistically, you’re free to hold your Nokia device any way you like…and you won’t suffer any signal loss". Perhaps apple is now hoping for some faults in DroidX to strike back, when the device releases on 15th July.

Apple for now just seems to be limited to its Labs trying to rectify the error. In a recently released statement, apple has apologized for the signal reception problem and has blamed the products software for the error, which is reportedly denied by many of its users experiencing the problem. In response to the problem Apple commented that on investigation they were stunned to find that the algorithm used to calculate the number of bars to be displayed  is totaling wrong, and that the code was same as used in earlier iPhone versions. It further added that a software update to fix the problem will be shipped soon and the existing iPhone 4, 3G and 3GS users will be able to update to it within few weeks. But the question that arises is, did the reports of the flaw manage to discourage to the users from buying an iPhone 4? Perhaps the answer is a certainly a “no”.

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