Cited: AP

The head of the House Judiciary Committee is asking Google and Facebook to cooperate with any government inquiries into privacy practices at both companies. In fact, Michigan Democrat John Conyers sent letters to Google and Facebook on May 28^th amid mounting concern in Congress that the two online companies are not adequately protecting personal privacy on the Internet.

Facebook has come under fire for sharing user information with a handful of other online services as part of its new “instant personalization” program, which is intended to let Facebook members share their interests in everything from music to restaurants with others in their social network. The program draws information from a member’s profile to customize several other sites, including the music service Pandora.

Facebook simplified its privacy controls this week in response to the backlash among users. As part of the changes, it added a tool to make it easier for members to turn off the instant personalization service.

Conyers asked Facebook on May 28 to provide details about its sharing of member information with third parties and about its privacy policies. Several privacy watchdog groups, including the Electronic Privacy Information Center, have already filed a complaint against Facebook with the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC has been reviewing the privacy policies of Facebook and other social networks.

Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said the company looks forward to meeting with Conyers’ staff to explain its privacy practices and policies.

Conyers stopped short of saying the Judiciary Committee will begin its own investigations into Facebook and Google.

Google recently admitted that it had sucked up fragments of e-mails, Web surfing behavior and other online activities over public Wi-Fi networks in more than 30 countries while it was photographing neighborhoods for its “Street View” mapping feature. The company said it discovered the problem following an inquiry by German regulators.

Conyers is asking Google to retain the data collected by its Street View cars along with related records until any federal and state inquiries are complete. At least two House members, Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, and Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., have already asked the FTC to look into the matter and are seeking more information from Google about the incident.

Google already has hired a security consulting firm, iSEC partners, to make an encrypted copy of all the U.S. data collected by Street View to ensure the information is preserved, according to records in a federal lawsuit filed against the company in Portland, Ore. The judge overseeing that case has ordered Google to retain the data.

However, it is unknown at this time whether the FTC is investigating Google or not.

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My Take: All I can say is these companies should have been better prepared. They both are working Internet and should have known that the Internet can be dangerous because of hackers. They should’ve been using network security software to prevent this type of thing. I am sure that they will hire managed security services to prevent this from happening again if they can’t do it themselves.

Many seo services depend on Google and other search engines for their clients. An SEO company would lose their clients and a lot of business in Google goes down. Both Google and Facebook are supposedly are putting in new software to prevent this from happening again. Hopefully, they will get a software test before they put it out. Google, of all companies, should know that there are many software testing services available that they could use.

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Social Networking and Email

There are a lot of reasons why a person might want to use a social networking site as a part of their overall marketing campaign, but one of the interesting things about today’s social networking options and how they apply to businesses is the idea that email blasts can be crafted so as to coincide with whatever type of marketing initiative is being pushed on a social networking site during which another facet of the campaign can be designed to match such as through traditional print media which will always send a person to the website.

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Cited: ABC News

Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, hopes to put the fears and mistrust of consumers to rest. Facebook’s privacy settings and user concerns have been debated and analyzed for weeks

“We made a lot of changes at the same time,” Zuckerberg said regarding his company’s f8 announcements of the Open Graph API and other new Facebook features. “A lot of what we were trying to do got lost. We really need to simplify the controls… The feedback we got from users really resonated with us.”

Facebook’s new privacy controls are dead simple, as simple as a single button-click for sharing or restricting all your information — from your birthday and contact information to your posts and photos.

Now, Facebook will give users one simple control for all sharing. In a couple clicks, you can change all your settings, and the changes will apply retroactively as well. And of course, changes will apply to any new products that might be released in the future.

When you first open the new privacy settings page, your current privacy settings will appear; you won’t be automatically switched to the recommended settings.

Controls Let You Share With Friends Only, Friends of Friends or Everyone

Users simply click one button (”Everyone,” “Friends of Friends” or “Friends Only”) in the left column to restrict or open all their information to those groups. They can also choose to make certain types of information open to certain groups, as per the recommended settings you see above.

“You can think of ‘Everyone,’ ‘Friends of Friends’ and ‘Friends Only’ as big buckets containing different groups of information,” the new controls page reads. “With our recommended settings, your information is distributed across all three buckets.”

While Facebook does recommend leaving certain information, such as your bio or status, open to everyone, other data should probably be more private, such as photos or videos.

The recommended settings ask users to make their status, photos, posts, bio, favorite quotations, family and relationships viewable to everyone. They also recommend making personal contact information viewable by friends only.

Are you one of the many job seekers using Facebook to get an introduction to a hiring representative? That is one way to avoid a telephone answering service. However, there are many ways to get a business introduction, other than Facebook.

Facebook Users Can Still Remove Tags from Posts, Images, Videos Shared by Others

Granular sharing for wall posts will remain the same, and sharing information with applications will become even more granular than what we’re used to seeing now. Users will still be able to remove tags from posts, images or videos posted by others.

Facebook’s directory will have specific controls for information that is shared and discoverable. With controls this simple it is difficult to imagine users being confused or upset. Unfortunately, not all will be pleased with the settings because as the saying goes, “You cannot please all the people all the time.”

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My Take: I am one of the very few who does not use Facebook. I prefer to talk to my friends face-to-face or over the telephone. What I don’t understand, is why Facebook didn’t have all of these controls to begin with? That would be like having a NYC computer networking system and no remote backup. That would mean if you had a problem with your system you would have to pay for hard drive recovery, which can be expensive. If he had the remote backup you may only need computer service NYC. Then again, nobody said these guys were intelligent, just smart.

The CEO of Facebook is one of the CEO jobs I would not want, at least not in recent times. He has had a lot of problems come down on his head slightly. I bet his business answering service has been bogged down a lot lately.

But, like I said, I do not use Facebook because I prefer a more personal touch when communicating with friends and family. Unfortunately, it is a sign of the times and eventually snail mail will be only used for packages an e-mail will be used for everything else. The day is just around the corner when a person will get an e-mail saying “You’re Fired” instead of the boss looking them in the face and saying it.

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It can be hard to find the specific PSP part needed to get your broken PSP back in commission. One company is a recognized leader in PSP repair and PSP parts. Other PSP repair shops may charge you nearly the price of a new one. Not only do they provide PSP UMD repair at the best prices, but also have a complete inventory of PSP spare parts and provide PlayStation repair.

Cited: AP

Imagine, a college graduate lecturing his or her parents about privacy online. That may not seem, but according to Pew Internet & American Life Project who in a report stated that young people are fast becoming the gurus of online reputation management, especially were social networking sites are concerned.

Among other things, the study found that they are most likely to limit personal information online — and the least likely to trust free online services ranging from Facebook to LinkedIn and MySpace.

Marlene McManus, 21, is among those young adults. On the job hunt since graduating from Clark University in Massachusetts, she’s been “scouring” her Facebook page, removing photos that contain beer cups and any other signs of college exploits. She’s also dropped Twitter altogether.

“I have to present a public face that doesn’t have the potential to hurt my image,” McManus says.

She has seen otherwise upstanding adults, well past their 20s, sharing compromising photos and questionable rants with too many people online. “I get embarrassed for these people and sometimes just want to shake them,” she says.

In this instance, adults over the age of 30 might do well to listen. The Pew study and a mounting body of new research is showing that the very generation accused of sharing too much information online is actually leading the pack in online privacy.

The Pew study found, for instance, that social networkers ages 18 to 29 were the most likely to change the privacy settings on their profiles to limit what they share with others online. The percentage who did so was 71 percent, compared with just 55 percent of the 50- to 64-year-old bracket. Meanwhile, about two-thirds of all social networkers who were surveyed said they’ve tightened security settings.

The survey also determined that:

— about half of young people in that 18-29 bracket have deleted comments that others have made on their profile, compared with just 29 percent of those ages 30 to 49 and 26 percent of 50- to 64-year-olds. The numbers were similar when it came to social networkers who removed their names from photos that were tagged to identify them.

— When asked how much they can trust social networking sites, 28 percent of the youngest adults surveyed said “never.” A fifth in the 30-49 bracket said that and just 14 percent of those ages 50 to 64 agreed.

The Pew report, which was released Thursday, was compiled from telephone interviews conducted by Princeton Survey Research International between Aug. 18 and Sept. 14, 2009, among a sample of 2,253 adults. The margin of error is plus or minus 2.3 percentage points.

Mary Madden, the Pew researcher who was the study’s lead author, says the findings partly reflect the fact that young people have been using social networking longer than their elders, thus making them more experienced in dealing with its intricacies.

But she says young people also are at a point in their lives where, like McManus, they’re looking for work and just starting to develop a name for themselves.

Consider also that the study found that a quarter of online adults said their employers now have policies about how they portray themselves online.

“Young adults have, in many ways, been forced to become experts in their own form of social revision,” Madden says.

They’re also an extremely “brand conscious” generation, says Fred Stutzman, a doctoral candidate at the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina who co-founded ClaimID.com, a free online identity management service that he now uses as a research project.

“Increasingly, it’s the advice that young people get from counselors and elsewhere: `You need to have your own brand and you have to watch that brand,’” Stutzman says.

He jokes that older people don’t care as much because “if you’ve got a pension, you can pretty much say what you want.”

There might be more truth than poetry in that statement because the older you get, the less you’re going to worry about applying to college or moving up the career ladder. A 28-year-old, Stephanie Juell of Westchester County, New York, has become more increasingly aware of it. She has opened an extra Facebook account after her supervisor and friends began to make her a “friend” on her personal account.

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My Take: This is nothing new to me. I have told my mother many times about something that she does, but that doesn’t mean she’s going to stop doing it. Then again, she doesn’t use a computer either. My mother is more into organic vitamins and staying healthy. That could have something to do with the fact that she is 91 years old. She did get interested in sports supplements at one point and I told her that she didn’t need them because she wasn’t into sports.

To me, social networking is something a lonely person does. It allows a lonely person to meet people from the safety of their home. They should go out and get folk tickets and go to a concert. Or maybe they should go get theater tickets and see a play. Anything to get them out of the house and away from the computer!

They do not have to wear sexy jeans when they go to get their tickets or to see the play. Just wear a pair of regular old pair of jeans will do. They don’t need to impress anybody, just be comfortable and have a house and away from the computer.

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Seniors Knowledge

The other side of 50 is not a bad place to be these days. There are so many places in things for “seniors” that it is hard choose just one. One website even has a section for senior financial planning. That same website also offers senior websites so that the grandparents can communicate with their families. Even if you’re not quite over 50 yet, the site has a retirement calculator for your convenience.

Cited: Associated Press

Investigators are now focusing on why a computerized system failed to stop an oncoming train, especially when evidence shows the operator did try to slow it down. When the train is operating in automatic mode, the operator’s main job is to open and close doors and respond to emergencies, which evidence shows that he did. Under automatic mode, the training is primarily controlled by the computer that failed to do its job.

Debbie Hersman, an investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board, said it was unclear if the emergency brake was actually engaged when Monday’s crash occurred. But the mushroom-shaped button that activates it was found pushed down in the operator’s compartment.

Hersman said it wasn’t clear when the button was pressed or how it got that way. She also said there was evidence of braking on the train’s rotors, indicating it was likely that the operator tried to slow down. The train plowed into a stopped train ahead of it at the height of the Monday evening rush hour, killing nine people and injuring more than 70 in the deadliest accident in the 30-year history of the Metro subway system.

Crews spent the day pulling apart the wreckage and searching for bodies. Authorities also worked to determine why the train’s safeguards apparently did not kick in.

“That train was never supposed to get closer than 1,200 feet, period,” said Jackie Jeter, president of a union that represents Metro workers.

All Metro trains were running on manual control following the crash as a precaution against computer malfunction. The cars in the moving train were some of the oldest in the transit network, dating to the founding of the system. Federal officials had sought to phase out the aging fleet because of safety concerns, but the transit system kept the old trains running, saying it lacked money for new cars.

Hersman told The Associated Press that the NTSB had warned in 2006 that the old fleet should be replaced or retrofitted to make it better able to survive a crash. Neither was done, she said, which the NTSB considered “unacceptable.”

Metro General Manager John Catoe said the agency expected to receive proposals “over the next month or so” to replace the old cars, but new trains were still years away from being installed. He insisted the existing cars were safe.

This is not the first time that Metro’s automated system has been questioned. In June 2005, Metro had a close call because of signal troubles in a tunnel under the Potomac River. A conductor noticed he was getting too close to the train ahead of him even though the system indicated the track was clear. He hit the emergency brake in time, as did the operator of a train behind him.

Shortly afterward, Metro attributed the problem to a defective communications cable. The signal relays that control trains were replaced after a serious safety warning in May 2000 by the Federal Railroad Administration. The warning came after failed relays were detected on the system, formally known as the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority.

The operator of the train that barreled into the stopped cars Monday was identified as Jeanice McMillan, 42, of Springfield, Va., according to Metro officials.

McMillan was hired in January 2007 as a bus driver and was tapped to become a train operator in January 2009, the NTSB said. McMillan completed training and began working as an operator in March. Metro officials say employees start out as bus drivers before moving to trains.

Investigators want McMillan’s cell phone and texting records to determine whether she was distracted before the crash, Hersman said. Safety officials also are investigating a passenger’s statement that the train had stopped briefly then started again before the crash.

Iyesha Thomas, a Metro employee who worked with McMillan, said McMillan would often work the late shift. She did not have a car and if she were unable to get a ride home, she would sleep at Metro’s offices, take the first train to Franconia, Va., and return to work later that day.

A neighbor, Aicha Mezlini, said McMillan was killed driving the first train on her 4 p.m.-to-11 p.m. shift. She said McMillan normally worked Tuesday and Wednesday, but last week Metro changed her shift to Monday.

“There is no evidence whatsoever that this driver has done anything to cause this accident,” Catoe said Tuesday.

The crash occurred on the red line near the D.C. and Maryland border, in an area where higher train speeds are common because there is a longer distance between stops. Trains can go 55 to 59 mph, though it was not clear how fast the train that crashed was traveling. Meanwhile, emergency crews cut away the top of the train that jackknifed on top of a stopped train. They removed the debris with help from a crane brought in overnight.

“The scene that I witnessed was one that no one should have to see,” Catoe said. “It was unbelievable destruction.”

Later, his voice choked with emotion as he addressed hundreds of employees at a prayer vigil. He told them the agency will find out what caused the accident and develop a solution.

“We cannot afford to lose any more of our own, or any more of our customers,” Catoe said. “I need your prayers. This agency needs your prayers.”

Metro has long pleaded for more funding to ensure the system’s safety. The transit network is supported by the District of Columbia, Maryland and the Virginia jurisdictions that it serves. However, unlike other major systems, Metro has no dedicated funding source. Metro officials have long argued that the federal government should contribute because the trains serve the capital, and some 40 percent of rush-hour riders are federal workers.

Catoe said last year it would take $7 billion just to maintain current service and keep the system running safely and reliably from 2010 to 2020. That includes replacements for aging rail cars.

It would take billions more, he said, to deploy longer trains and more buses to meet the projected increase in demand. The number of trips taken on Metro trains is expected to grow 22 percent to about 1 million a day by 2020.

Some passengers involved in Monday’s crash returned to the site Tuesday to get another look at the destruction. Jamie Jiao, 20, of Vienna, Va., said he was aboard the first car of the moving train just a few feet from where the car was smashed.

“It was only a split second,” he said. “We were probably traveling pretty fast. No one had time to react.”

Jiao had two bandages on his face, and his foot was in a splint. He was walking with a cane and complained of aches in his back. “I’m thankful it isn’t more serious,” he said.

Tijuana Cox, 21, was in the train that was hit. She had her sprained arm in a sling on Tuesday.

“Everybody just went forward and came back,” with people’s knees hitting the seats in front of them, said Cox, of Lanham, Md.

The last and only fatal crash in the Metro subway system was on January 13, 1982. That crash caused the deaths of three people in a derailment. January 13, 1982 was a very sad day for the capital. Earlier that day, before the subway crash, and airport plane had slammed into the 14th St., Bridge just after takeoff killing 78 people during a severe snowstorm when it took off from the Washington National Airport. Since 1982, there’ve only been 2 accidents within the Metro subway system. In November 2006, 2 track workers were killed by an out-of-service train because the operator failed to follow safety procedures. Another Metro worker was struck and killed in May 2006. Then in January 2007, a Metro subway train derailed in downtown Washington, that severely injured 20 people and trapped 60 others in the tunnel.

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My Take: Hopefully, Metro has good predictive dialer software! Because there is one thing that is definitely going to happen, people are going to be contacting their call center to find out all the details. People are going to want to know if it is still safe to ride the Metro.

Where I live, trains are just becoming part of the Metro bus system. We have had a few minor scrapes, but nothing major. Knock on wood! These “bus” trains are so new out here that they only cover one part of the city. It will not be for another 20 or 30 years before it gets to where I live. I may not be around then to experience the “trolley” as they are calling it.

After hearing about this accident, I am not sure I want to even ride one again. I did ride the trolley in San Diego once. It was so crowded you could not even move, just like riding a bus. So I think I will just stick with the bus. I do not want to be one of those people that are searching for funeral urn for family members. At least they will not have to search for pet urns as well, it was bad enough losing a family member.

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What kind of network security programs do you have? Even the best technology is rendered ineffective in untrained hands. The bad guys don’t sleep, and neither should you. You need dedicated security analysts who are passionate about defending your network. Moreover, they should always available. You can find someone that can help you with intrusion prevention management.

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Your Bucks County criminal lawyer can easily and quickly explain the process involved in a criminal court procedure. He/she will explain that the first hearing is an evidence hearing before a local District judge where the crime was allegedly committed. Then, about 30-60 days letter, the formal arraignment will occur in the Court of Common Pleas. This is where you get your formal charges and enter your plea. Any of your criminal attorneys may be able to help waive your appearance at this proceeding, depending on what county you live in. Then comes the pretrial conference between lawyers and prosecutors and then your trial.

The customer is everything in this fast-growing marketing world. Satisfying their customers is a business’s number one priority besides sales. Moreover, the fastest growing market is the Internet market. This makes tracking and storing of customer information including their likes and dislikes very important. This is what is known as Customer Relationship Management or CRM for short. Software and hardware products have been developed that are intended solely for the purpose of customer relationship management.

In today’s business, the ability to integrate sales, marketing and customer service processes makes for a better CRM system. A small business CRM performs tasks that include database management, building partner programs, data conversion, and customer data integration, employee training and troubleshooting. CRM software solutions are integrated with all resource proceedings enabling them to track even minor transactions as well as large-scale undertakings with all the proper client information.

CRM for small business usually incorporates three parts, operative, analytical and collaborative. Operating tracks and manages customer contacts for marketing, sales and service. Analytical is the research done through the database that helps improve customer relationships. It also helps in forecasting the company status, decision making and planning of new projects. The collaborative helps to coordinate individual functions through multichannel collaboration methods.

You gain certain advantages when you use CRM solutions for your business. These advantages include full automation of all processes, better resolution, customer tracking, contact management and market management as well as cost-effectiveness, reduction in working capital, sales force automation, on-demand analytics and a flexibility in Internet marketing.

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About 20 years ago, if you lost data on your computer you were on your own. Anybody that had the expertise to help was probably working on your staff or employed by someone else. As the information technology industry grew in both hardware and software things began to change. The systems became more complex and so did the problems that befell them. This is what caused the development of data recovery services around the world.

Data recovery came into being around 15 years ago. The specialists were inundated with frantic calls to come and rescue businesses and people’s information. Of course, at the time, it was mainly software tools there were written by specific vendors for their hardware only. However, many of the data loss situations actually called for a physical hardware solution. This meant the use of what is called “clean rooms”. These are laboratories where malfunctioning or damaged drives can be taken apart or reconfigured to yield whatever data is left as well as preventing any further damage from particles in the air.

The file recovery industry is not a large one. There are only about 20-25 companies that have the ability to tackle data loss situations that cannot be resolved in-house with commercially available software or by vendors. Moreover, some in the industry move away from the “physical” side of the business and specialize in software-only solutions. A good data recovery company will be able to provide both the “physical” and the software solutions.

One thing is for sure, the business of data or file recovery will always be needed in our daily lives. It is estimated that over 200 million computers with varying sizes of hard drives are shipped every year. They are getting faster and more complex with each generation. This means that the future is unlimited for the data recovery industry.