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Rotten Tomatoes sold to Flixster

By Terence Huynh on January 5th, 2010 No Comments

rotten-tomatoes It’s official. Rotten Tomatoes, the popular movie reviews aggregator, has a brand new owner – Flixster, another movie social network. The company acquired the site from IGN, which is owned by News Corporation, in exchange for a minority stake in the company.

"It’s a huge step forward in our goal of connecting users to their own personalized world of movies on any platform they choose. We can’t think of a better pairing for movie fans and our technology partners," CEO of Flixster, Joe Greenstein, said.

"Joining Rotten Tomatoes with Flixster creates a company that can dominate the online movie category," President of IGN Entertainment, Roy Bahat, said. "This also enables IGN to focus on serving the male 18-to-34 audience–especially videogamers–and the advertisers looking to reach them." Bahat will also join as an observer to Flixster’s Board of Directors.

However, exact details of the deal have not been revealed yet; but the deal looks like a perfect partnership as both deal with movies and user reviews from Flixster and critic reviews from Rotten Tomatoes would complement each other. They previously had a partnership where the critic reviews from Rotten Tomatoes on Flixster’s website and its mobile applications.

Japanese PM starts tweeting, opens blog

By Terence Huynh on January 3rd, 2010 No Comments

First Kevin Rudd, then Barack Obama and now Yukio Hatoyama? Hatoyama, who is the current Japanese Prime Minister, has decided to join a long list of politicians who are hoping to gain some youth creditability by launching a blog and tweeting – especially when his government’s support rating has dipped after taking control from the long-running Liberal Democratic Party of Japan in September last year.

His blog, titled Hato cafe, aims to "burying the gap between people and politics as well as changing this country together," according to Hatoyama. He even uploaded a picture of his office roof from his mobile phone camera, and promises to tweet once a day to get the hang of it (though, we are highly sceptical that he will be doing so and maybe get an aide to do it for him).

One little problem – it looks like it may be in hiatus for a couple of months sometime in the year because it is an election year for its upper house, as laws currently prohibit internet political campaigning; though they are considering in lifting the ban as many young politicians start using the Internet to campaign, following in the footsteps of Barack Obama – including Twitter, which has gain in popularity in the country after the microblogging site opened a localised version in April 2008.

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WordPress to create Android application?

By Terence Huynh on January 3rd, 2010 No Comments

RUMOUR MILL: Want a rumour to keep your senses tingling? Well, it might for some of you – especially those with an Android phone. WordPress is rumoured to be launching an Android application where, like the iPhone and BlackBerry applications, to edit and manage your WordPress-powered blog from your phone.

Turns out it may be true, they have created a special blog on the subdomain android.wordpress.org, hinting at the development of the application. And, if you are a master of hacking, you are more likely never going to see what is behind the protected blog.

So, what OS is next after Android? Symbian?

Source: The Blog Herald

Canada as a password is a bit too obvious . . .

By Terence Huynh on December 28th, 2009 No Comments

Ever wondered what happens if you type in “firebird” or “iloveyou” or even “vagina” as a password in Twitter when you created a new account? Well, your answer is now that they are “too obvious” to be your password and will refuse to register your account until you make it complex enough that you can remember.

How do we know? They have coded in their sign up page, and we do mean every word and number used. So “asdfgh” and “ferrari” are now banned, along with a couple of names and several instances of the letter X (though you can get away with it if you used it seven times, but not eight). To find it, just view the source code. HINT: Search for “twttr.BANNED_PASSWORDS”.

If you can’t be stuffed, we have posted the entire thing for you, after the jump.

Facebook COO to join Disney Board of Directors

By Terence Huynh on December 24th, 2009 No Comments

Disney has nominated Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer for the largest social networking site Facebook, to become part of its Board of Directors as an independent board member.

“Sheryl has been at the forefront of a technological revolution that’s opened up a world of new possibilities for consumers and which has greatly affected the way we do business. Her unique insight, born of great practical experience, will be of considerable value to Disney’s shareholders,” President and CEO Robert Iger said in a press statement.

The post becomes effective immediately when she is elected, along with the re-election of the other twelve members of the board, by the shareholders at its annual meeting on March 10 of next year in San Antonio, Texas.

Before joining Facebook as its COO (its previous one, Owen Van Natta, joined rival MySpace to be its CEO), Sandberg was the Vice President of Global Online Sales and Operations for Google, and was a former Chief of Staff at the US Treasury Department.

Her election makes her the second tech industry head to join the board, with CEO of Apple Steve Jobs already having a seat at the board after Disney acquired Pixar Animation Studios in May 2006. Jobs remains to be the largest shareholder in the company, owning seven percent of Disney stock.

But having two technology heads in its board of directors might not be a bad thing, as its already has a foot in the Web 2.0 world. It already owns an equity stake in Hulu, alongside NBC Universal and News Corporation; owns a virtual world for kids titled Club Penguin; and is rumoured to be in discussions to be part of Apple’s rumoured subscription TV service.

French court fines Google for digitising books

By Terence Huynh on December 19th, 2009 No Comments

The Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris, the court of responsible for handling large claims, has found Google guilty for putting the books online as part of its Google Books Search service after a legal challenge by the major French publishers and authors.

The court heard arguments made by the La Martiniere group that Google’s plan of digitising books and putting extracts of the text online saw publishers and authors losing out. Along with the French Publishers’ Association and the SGDL, a group that represents authors in France; they also argued that scanning of the books was an act of reproduction – and that they should receive royalties.

According to Le Monde, the search engine will be forced to pay 300,000 Euros. This was less than the 15 million Euros asked by the plaintiffs, according to Reuters. It would be also fined an additional 10,000 Euros per day until it removes the French books from its database.

Twitter hacked by “cyber army” from Iran

By Terence Huynh on December 18th, 2009 No Comments

Reports are coming in that Twitter had been hacked with a message from a supposed group called the “Iranian Cyber Army”, with Twitter admitting that their DNS records were compromised – allowing the group to deface the site with the following message:

IRANIAN CYBER ARMY

THIS SITE HAS BEEN HACKED BY IRANIAN CYBER ARMY

iRANIAN.CYBER.ARMY@GMAIL.COM

U.S.A. Think They Controlling And Managing Internet By Their Access, But THey (sic) Don’t, We Control And Manage Internet By Our Power, So Do Not Try To Stimulation Iranian People To ….

NOW WHICH COUNTRY IN EMBARGO LIST? IRAN? USA?

WE PUSH THEM IN EMBARGO LIST

Take Care.

TechCrunch is also reporting that the same defacement appears on another site, Mowjcamp.com. The attack looks like to be similar to the Twitter defacement, where its DNS records were compromised. A quick search on Google appears to show the website is affiliated with the anti-government protestors after the elections in June.

This appears to be a common link with Twitter and Mowjcamp.com being taken down – as Twitter was instrumental in the coverage of the Iranian protests, with news outlets like CNN and MSNBC using the microblogging site to report on the protests.

Mowjcamp.com has now redirected themselves to another domain and have asked users to use the IP address directly or the other domain; while Twitter remains up.

Video game listing made easy

By Shane Luckman on December 12th, 2009 No Comments

Ever wanted to keep a rather well organised list of your games, unfinished or completed? Then sign up to Backloggery, the best way to keep a tab on your games.

Whether it be old, new or unreleased, Backloggery has a complete listing of games from all consoles and peripherals ever made. And that’s not all, there are also other special features suggesting what game to play next, friends lists, medals and so much more. If your an avid games collector or just a casual player, sign up anyway and get your Backloggery today!

Web users come together to create a happy memory

By Terence Huynh on December 6th, 2009 No Comments

Lets end the night with something happy. A Reddit member’s mother passed away this week, and he turned to the social news site to ask them if they could Photoshop the last photo with his mother because of the breathing tubes were obscuring her face and wanted them to remove.

The user, elmstreeter, wrote in a posting:

My mother died of cancer yesterday. This is the last picture of us together and I wondered if anyone with mad Photoshop skills could touch up the picture and remove the oxygen cannula. I would greatly appreciate anyone who could be of assistance.

PS Hug your mom today

In a touching moment, users did come to his aid, Photoshopping out the breathing tubes and even ‘fixed’ up the broken chair. You can see both the original and the Photoshopped versions below.

Celeb tired of being called gay online, decides to sue

By Terence Huynh on December 6th, 2009 No Comments

If you search on Google, or any other search engine for that matter, for “Ron Livingston” (the guy on the right), you would be given his IMDB page, where it states he starred in Office Spaces and Sex and the City. Also, the second result would be his Wikipedia page, but it might be a tad bit inaccurate about his personal life.

Livingston, tired of having his Wikipedia page being edited (starting in May of this year) to say he is in a gay relationship with Lee Dennison, has decided to sue the anonymous trouble maker. It should be noted that he is married to a female, Rosemary De Witt.

Currently, his Wikipedia page mentions no references to his ‘relationship’ with Dennison, but previous entries – including one on December 5, has this line:

Livingston lives in Los Angeles with his life partner Lee Dennison. Livingston and Dennison married November 2nd, 2009 in San Francisco.

According to TMZ, this has also continued on Facebook, where the anon created fake profiles of both Livingston and Dennison and list their relationship status with each other.

The lawsuit, filed in the Los Angeles County Superior Court yesterday, seeks unspecified damages for libel, invasion of privacy, and using his name and likeness without permission. While details are minimal, this could be interesting since it would require Wikipedia to reveal the identity of the poster.

MJ tops Google search terms, ONE HD tops AU rising search terms in 2009

By Terence Huynh on December 2nd, 2009 1 Comment

Last night, we reported on Yahoo’s top searches; and now, its Google’s turn. Google has brought out its search data and compiled the “fastest rising” searches for this year, and are very different to what Yahoo users were searching. Topping the global scale was, obviously, Michael Jackson; while social networking sites Facebook, Tuenti and Twitter placed second, third and forth respectively. Rounding out the top five was the search term “sanalika”.

Fastest falling search terms were a bit obvious, with Euro 2008 and Beijing 2008 placing second and first place. Heath Ledger was third, while Barack Obama and Amy Winehouse took fourth and fifth place. The Nintendo Wii was also in the list in ninth place, French video-sharing site Dailymotion was seventh; and the AOL-owned social network Bebo was eighth.

MJ, Pop culture tops searches on Yahoo in 2009

By Terence Huynh on December 1st, 2009 No Comments

It’s December, and its the time where the search engines release their top 10 searches of the year. Yahoo has today released the top searches on their search engine, which is set to be replaced with Bing soon, and there may be surprises – but many of them are not so surprising. Pop culture dominated the searches this year, as Michael Jackson topped the list after his death caused an internet frenzy in finding the latest information.

Second was the Twilight Saga, mainly helped by teenage girls; with the WWE coming in third place, Megan Fox in fourth, Britney Spears taking fifth place, and Naruto back on the list (again) in sixth position – though, I still don’t get why people like the series. Seventh position goes to American Idol, thanks to fan-favourite Adam Lambert; while Kim Kardashian coming in eighth place, NASCAR in ninth and the free MMORPG Runescape coming in tenth place.

For those wanting to know what were the top gadgets this year according to their search results; the top five places were held by (in order from fifth to first place) the PlayStation 3, the iPod touch, the PSP 3000, Nintendo Wii and the iPhone.

You can find more lists on their dedicated website.

Google goes graphical in new redesigned homepage

By Terence Huynh on November 26th, 2009 No Comments

Google has been testing a brand new design for its search engine, which some users have been able to access (either via Google’s random selection or using a piece of JavaScript). The new design, which looks like it has been inspired by Google Wave, still includes the suggested search terms and the two familiar buttons; but the colours are lighter and that there is a gradient on the buttons.

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