Daily Bits

Internet

Farmville Player Spent £900 Using His Savings and Mother’s Credit Card

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I saw this news covered by a local news program yesterday but at first I didn’t give it much thought since I was waiting the the news program’s coverage of the iPad. Then I saw this new hitting the Techmeme’s headline right now and decided to give it a run.

After reading what happened to the 12-year old kid who spent £900 buying Farmville virtual goods, I could not help but sigh and felt relief that it didn’t happen to me. Two of my teen-age kids are into Farmville as well. But they don’t have access to my credit card.

So, the story goes that the kid spent around $900 to purchase Farmville goods using her mother’s credit card and his own savings. The credit card was used by the kid without her mother’s knowledge. All in the name of putting up the “coolest” farm in Facebook.

Zynga, the game developer refused to refund the amount since the kid lives in her mother’s house.  While the credit card company would only refund if the mother will report his son to the police and give him a police record. Now, what kind of mother would do that to her own son?

So, now. The son’s Farmville account was cancelled. The mother and the kid lost quite a sum of money. And Zynga earns. What a crappy system, right?

The kid and his mother should have read TechCrunch’s series on game monetization schemes of Zynga. This could have been prevented from happening.

Lessons learned?  You know that already.

Google Wants You to (Re)Confirm Buzz Privacy Settings

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True to what has been reported a couple of hours ago, Google has started asking Buzz users to confirm the new Buzz privacy settings. You’ll get the notification page the next time you click on the Buzz tab on your Gmail account.

Google also explained why they are asking Buzz members to confirm their privacy settings again. According to a post on the Official Google Blog – “we quickly realized we didn’t get everything right and moved as fast as possible to improve the Buzz experience. ”

Google has been making a number of changes since issues on privacy started to escalate such as replacing the auto-follow with suggestions for people to follow instead.  The good thing about this setup is that Buzz users are given the freedom to choose people that they will follow.

Now, this is well and good for new Buzz users after the new privacy policy was implemented. But for those who started using Google Buzz earlier, the auto-suggest may not have worked. So, Google is issuing the Google Buzz confirmation page again to ensure that old users are given a chance to change their privacy settings or accept these settings as it is.

The confimation page is the same privacy settings page given when you first activated Google Buzz. When you get it now, you are free to edit, unfollow and follow people before finally accepting it.

So, are you going to accept the new Google Buzz privacy settings? Or have you totally deactivated Google Buzz already?

TweetDeck App Fully Optimized for the iPad

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With the large screen real-estate that the iPad offers, I wasn’t really quite surprised that the first adopters among application developers would be those with mobile Twitter client apps. If you checked the iTunes iPad App Store right now, you’d find several Twitter apps for the iPad – both new and old ones ported to the new platform. One of these Twitter apps which happens to be also my favorite on mobile phones is TweetDeck.

Thankfully, the TweetDeck folks didn’t just ported their mobile TweetDeck app to the iPad platform but build a new application instead. In fact they’ve build two new interfaces – for portrait and landscape modes. TweetDeck for iPad also takes full use of the device’s multi-gesture features.

Feature-wise, TweetDeck for iPad lets you do practically everything that you can with its mobile phone versions. The app lets you fully manage all your Twitter accounts, check web pages from within TweetDeck, use columns to manage your real-time feed, sync your data with the desktop and iphone client, iPad gesture based navigation, geolocation data and map interface, and of course all the basic Twitter functions such as composing tweets, retweeting and sending DMs.

And guess what? TweetDeck for iPad is a free download. Get it from the iTunes iPad App Store once you received your iPad.

Or watch this video showing the TweetDeck for iPad in action.

Automattic Launches VaultPress, Back Up Service for Self-Hosted Blogs

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Automattic has announced its new service that is aim to help self-hosted WordPress blog owners ensure that their blog properties are safe and secure. The new service called VaultPress is an online backup service built on the Automattic grid which in case you’re not aware is serving more than 10 billion WordPress.com blogs and 250 million monthly visitors.

VaultPress would ensure that your blogs and sites are completely secure no matter what happens to the server where it is hosted.  The service will secure your plugins, themes, comments, posts revisions  and of course every bit of content of your WordPress blogs.

Despite the complexity of what it can do, using VaultPress will be surprisingly easy. It’s actually your usual WordPress plugin that you can install on your blogs.  And you can always add additional blogs easily anytime you need to.

And once you get VaultPress running, it will continously monitors and stores updates to your blogs and sites. Everything that you do – write, edit, and upload will be simultaneously reflected in your VaultPress backup.

Sounds wonderful, right? Unfortunately, VaultPress will be offered as a Premium service.  Monthly fee is expected to be around $10.  But hey, it’s not really a big sum of money considering that it will safely secure that your blogs will always be online.

VaultPress is about to go on close beta state. If you want to be part of the beta testers, you may sign up here.

Will you register your blog on VaultPress once it goes public? Are you willing to pay for it?

MySpace Hosts Casting Calls for Glee

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Glee Open Casting Call Video with Matthew Morrison

Glee Auditions | MySpace Video

I’m not really a fan of the hit musical Glee, but if you are and you’ve dreamt of becoming part of the cast of this show, you might be interested to know that auditions for the next season of Glee has just started.

And guess what? You don’t have to go all the way  to the Fox studio to audition. You can show the producers and casting crew of  Glee that you’ve got the talent to make it to the next cast of Glee  via the MySpace Glee audition site. Yes, MySpace? You still remember that social networking site, do you?

If  you are up for the challenge, here’s how you can audition for the next season of Glee:

  • If you’re an amateur or professional performer between the ages of 16 and 26, submit an audition video at www.myspace.com/gleeauditions, explaining why you want to be on “GLEE” and demonstrating your stellar singing ability to the sounds of one of 10 “GLEE” hits via MySpace Karaoke. You can also opt to upload your own pre-recorded video.
  • Audition videos must be limited to five minutes in length (intro one minute and song up to 4 minutes) and one submission per person.
  • Whether auditioning or not, viewers can share videos, post comments and rate favorites with gold stars in real-time.
  • Visit the official “GLEE” Auditions MySpace page for more information, song list and additional rules.

Want me to enumerate the list of songs that you can use for your audition? Well, you probably know that more than I do. If you’ve made it this part of the article means that you’re a big fan and you’re interested with this gig. So, have fun!

Yahoo Now Lets You Update Facebook Status Inside Yahoo Mail

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Yahoo continues its drive towards becoming more social with another integration feature in cooperation with Facebook.  To be rolled out gradually to users, Yahoo is now allowing you to update your Facebook status while you are reading your Yahoo mail. You can also see your friends’ Facebook profile photos when they send you an email.

This is a follow-up to the previously rolled feature which allows Yahoo users to import their Facebook friends’ email addresses to Yahoo! Contacts. The new feature also solidifies some more Yahoo and Facebook’s underlying partnership. Of course,  Gmail also somehow has this feature wherein you can respond to updates via email, but this feature is not as fluid as the Yahoo Mail-Facebook integration.

The new feature is to be rolled out to select users initially. If you’re one of them, you’d find the activation link if you see the “Add to Facebook” option in the status section on the What’s New page in your Yahoo Mail account.

Once you’ve logged on with your Facebook credentials and successfully connected to Yahoo Mail, you can start using the following features:

Update your Facebook Status: Simply start typing what’s on your mind in the status box, and then choose where you want to share it – Yahoo!, Facebook or both.

See Facebook profile photos when people email you: With this feature, you will see people’s Facebook profile photos – if available – anytime someone emails you.  In addition, by clicking on the profile image, you will go right to that person’s Facebook page.