Daily Bits

Internet

Google Rolls Out File Transfer Feature on Orkut and iGoogle, Coming Soon for Gmail Too

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Google is rolling out a new  feature to some of its communication services such as Orkut, iGoogle and Gmail. This new feature has something to do with easily transferring files through the chat facility.

If you are an Orkut member or you use iGoogle as a start up page for your browser, you might be aware that both these services have a Google-powered chat facility.  And one of the important feature of  any chat facility is of course file transfer capability.

So, if you want to transfer file to a friend, you don’t have to send them an email again. Just start a chat session, click on the “Send a file” option from the Actions menu and then start sending the file.

And while you’re either in your Orkut dashboard or iGoogle account, you may have noticed that Google also did some minor facelift to on the chat facility of these two services. More particularly you may have noticed three new blue icons that enable you to start a video, voice or  group chat easily and quickly.

These new chat features will also be available to Gmail Chat facility . But in the meantime, you can still use the “Video and More” option from the Gmail chat window to start a video conference with your Gmail buddies.

Facebook Takes a New Step in Site Governance

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Recently, Facebook has published some updates to its statement of site governance. These updates aim to maintain users’ control over privacy and the things they share on Facebook. Here’s a quick look at the salient features of the proposed changes to Facebook’s Site Governance Page.

On Location – Facebook might soon introduce a new feature that will let you add a place to something you post. By place, Facebook means a page for a local restaurant instead of the actual geotag of its location. More details and other privacy controls about this feature will be rolled out in the coming days.

On Sharing and Connections – Facebook is also clarifying on how members connect with people, places and things that are important and how this information and content are shared with friends and other people. Right now, Facebook members share photos or links on their profile and can control who can access those. Facebook will change some wording to further clarify these policy.

On Applications and Third-Party Websites – Facebook will soon be proposing a new privacy policy that would offer more personalzied experience when visiting and sharing third-party websites that are featured on Facebook.

Other Policy Changes – Facebook is also explaining the series of smaller changes on different aspects of Facebook including why invitations that a non-user receives to join Facebook sometimes include the names of other people besides the person who invited them, as well as a thorough explanation of the “Everyone” setting. The new policy changes also explain how people can sync their contact lists on mobile devices and other contact management services.

Here’s the link to the proposal: Facebook Site Governance policy.

GoDaddy Will Stop Selling .CN Domains

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Looks like Google has gained an unexpected ally with its China boycott. Domain name registration and web hosting company GoDaddy.com has announced that it will  stop selling .CN domains.

According to the GoDaddy announcement, courtesy of the Search Engine Journal:

“We didn’t want to act as an agent of the Chinese government,” Jones said. “We can’t let them be strong and us be weak all the time. We just have to stop it, and then we’ll start offering .CN domain names again,” said Christine Jones, general counsel for Go Daddy.

This is in response to Chinese policies requiring every website owner to submit photographs, business information and individually signed forms including their physical address, email address and telephone numbers when registering a new .CN domain. These data will be forwarded to the China Internet Information Center (CNNIC), a quasi-governmental agency. GoDaddy does not usually require this information from its billions of domain registrants asking only name, address, telephone number and e-mail address before they register a domain.

According to Ms. Jones,   China was the first government to retroactively seek additional verification and documentation of registrants.  The Chinese government is implementing those policies to stop individual Chinese owned websites from getting attacked by spam.

Interestingly, Jones said that while Chinese domain name have been recently attacked most frequently, those sites however are mostly those “deemed not appropriate” for Beijing. Particularly sites containing information about  the Tiananmen Square uprising or human rights.

It would be interesting to see how this issue will unfold in the coming days. Will China feel the pressure from Google, GoDaddy and perhaps other Internet players and relax their internet policy a bit?

Facebook Tightens Policy on Photo Tagging, Feed Sharing

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In a possible move to contain the growing complaints of members who consistently receive unwanted photo tagging notices and news feeds that they are receiving, Facebook is updating its policies on these features.

First, the new policy on policy tagging states – “You can tag a photo only with the express consent of the user on whose behalf you are doing the tagging, and must only tag images when the tag accurately labels what is depicted in the image.”

In short, you can no longer tag your friends and other Facebook members on photo collages, avatars and other images which are being used for marketing purposes, just to get their attention and hope that they clicked on your campaign materials.

On news feed publishing, the new Facebook policy states – “You must not publish a Feed story unless a user has explicitly indicated an intention to share that content, by clicking a button or checking a box that clearly explains their content will be shared.”

This policy aims to put a stop on reports that some apps are forcing their Facebook members to extend permissions to publish news feeds on their walls. This will give other application developers a good chance at getting more followers and users the legit way – that is because they’ve gained the Facebook members’ trust.

And finally, you can no longer publish the same Feed story to more than one friend’s Wall at a time. This is to avoid spamming of Facebook members stream with feed stories that do not interest them.

Facebook will enforce punishments and suspensions of account on a case to case basis if anybody is proven guilty of violating these policies.

So there, hope these new policies help reduce the noise level in your Facebook content streams.

Skype Mobile for Verizon Goes Out on Thursday

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If you’re a Verizon Wireless customer using a smartphone under any Verizon data plan, you’d be glad to know that come Thursday, Skype Mobile will be available for download to your Verizon phones.  Of course, if you’ve been using Skype since ages ago, you’d know that this mobile app will allow you to get in touch with friends, family and colleagues all over the world.

Skype Mobile will let you make and receive unlimited Skype-to-Skype voice calls to practically anyone else who are also using Skype.  It will also let you send and receive unlimited instant messages with other Skype users, and call international phone numbers at cheap rates.

So, if you’ve got any of the following Verizon smartphones:

  • BlackBerry Storm 9530,
  • Storm2 9550,
  • Curve 8330, Curve 8530,
  • 8830 World Edition
  • Tour 9630 smartphones,
  • DROID by Motorola
  • DROID ERIS by HTC
  • Motorola DEVOUR

then prepare your smartphones now to download Skype Mobile on Thursday.

Skype Mobile works on Verizon Wireless’ voice network for wireless connection during Skype-to-Skype calls.  When making international calls, Skype Credits are required. But for domestic Skype-to-Skype calls are free of charge and will not affect your monthly minute allowance and data plan.

To get the download link for the app, text SKYPE to 2255 on Thursday.

Digg Unloads Widget, Buttons Generator and Soon an iPhone App

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As if telling us that they are still up and running, the folks at Digg has been sending out noisemakers one after another.  Digg has just released the buttons and widget generators while a native iPhone app is in the pipeline.

The New Digg iPhone Application

The new Digg native iPhone app is not yet announced but Mashable was able to obtain some insider info as well as screenshots to prove that the Digg iPhone app is indeed in the works.  The app would support browsing of popular, upcoming and recent stories across all topics in Digg.com. It will also let you Digg and bury stories right within the app. Plus an option to navigate through comments and related stories. The Digg iPhone app is slated for release anytime now in the Apps Store.

Digg Buttons and Widget Generators

The new Digg buttons and widget generators on the other are now both available. What these online tools allow you to do is to create and customize Digg buttons that you can incorporate to your blogs/sites seamlessly.  Digg is releasing these online tools in preparation for the launch of the redesigned Digg.

But aside from letting you create Digg buttons easily, the buttons that you will create and incorporate in your websites now boasts of  new features such as dynamic display of live Digg count, faster load time, customizable look and feel and more.

The Digg widgets also gets some other new features including more customization options, tabs and columns, thumbnails, fallback content and more.

You can try creating your Digg buttons here, or the Digg Widgets here.