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Google is still hard at work on their social strategy. You know it, I know it, we all know it. What it will actually be, remains to be seen. But there are clues related to it that have started to appear.

The first was the redesign of the toolbar. While Google claimed it doesn’t directly point to the social strategy (even though it looks exactly like the verified +1 leaks we’ve seen), it is a first step. The second was the revamping of profile pages. Also nothing particularly social about it, but again, related to the overall strategy. And now we’re seeing something else: a unification of profiles across Google properties. And a big push for all of them to be public.

As The Next Web spotted a couple weeks ago, Google quietly announced that it would be deleting Google Profiles that weren’t public starting in July. Here’s the wording:

The purpose of Google Profiles is to enable you to manage your online identity. Today, nearly all Google Profiles are public. We believe that using Google Profiles to help people find and connect with you online is how the product is best used. Private profiles don’t allow this, so we have decided to require all profiles to be public.

Keep in mind that your full name is the only required information that will be displayed on your profile; you’ll be able to edit or remove any other information that you don’t want to share.

If you currently have a private profile but you do not wish to make your profile public, you can delete your profile. Or, you can simply do nothing. All private profiles will be deleted after July 31, 2011.

And that’s important because other Google properties are also being woven into these profiles. Yesterday, the following note was left in the Google Groups message board:

Google Groups-specific profiles will no longer be supported. Instead, you will be able to use the new Google Groups to (optionally) link your new and improved Google profile with your groups. Starting July 1st 2011, you will not be able to make changes to your Groups profile. Your profile information will be available for export from your profile page until November 1st 2011. This change will not affect the nicknames you might have chosen for yourself to participate in groups. It will only affect the custom profile fields, such as your photo, location, and occupation.

This type of unification will also take place across other Google properties as well, we hear. It’s a part of a broader effort to bring Google’s properties closer together, and allow for more social activities, is our understanding.

But as we laid out a couple weeks ago, don’t look for a massive launch of something being billed as a “Facebook-killer” (not that anyone besides the press would label it as such anyway). Instead, expect smaller social features across Google properties to appear once the unification is more complete. Judging from the timelines of the changes above, this could be late summer or even later.


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Microsoft Disables HTTPS for Hotmail Users in Iran, Sudan (and More) / emailGovernments in Bahrain, Algeria, Syria, Iran and the Sudan are all free to snoop their citizens' Hotmail accounts today, as Microsoft has inexplicably disabled HTTPS support for Hotmail users in those countries.

Equally disturbing is how quickly Microsoft seemingly abandoned the feature (at least in the listed countries, as it is still active in Europe and the U.S.). Microsoft deployed the feature, which is present on such platforms as Twitter and Google's Gmail, in December. HTTPS is largely effective at blocking snooping tools like Firesheep, which hackers can use to glean sensitive information from unprotected Hotmail users.

In a statement, the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) offered further explanation, and called for a swift correction of the as-of-yet unexplained security snafu:

"For Microsoft to take such an enormous step backwards— undermining the security of Hotmail users in countries where freedom of expression is under attack and secure communication is especially important—is deeply disturbing. We hope that this counterproductive and potentially dangerous move is merely an error that Microsoft will swiftly correct."

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Microsoft Disables HTTPS for Hotmail Users in Iran, Sudan (and More)

Jack Loftus — Microsoft Disables HTTPS for Hotmail Users in Iran, Sudan (and More) / emailGovernments in Bahrain, Algeria, Syria, Iran and the Sudan are all free to snoop their citizens' Hotmail accounts today, as Microsoft has inexplicably disabled HTTPS support for Hotmail users in those countries.

Equally disturbing is how quickly Microsoft seemingly abandoned the feature (at least in the listed countries, as it is still active in Europe and the U.S.). Microsoft deployed the feature, which is present on such platforms as Twitter and Google's Gmail, in December. HTTPS is largely effective at blocking snooping tools like Firesheep, which hackers can use to glean sensitive information from unprotected Hotmail users.

In a statement, the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) offered further explanation, and called for a swift correction of the as-of-yet unexplained security snafu:

For Microsoft to take such an enormous step backwards— undermining the security of Hotmail users in countries where freedom of expression is under attack and secure communication is especially important—is deeply disturbing. We hope that this counterproductive and potentially dangerous move is merely an error that Microsoft will swiftly correct.

Luckily for Hotmail users in the affected countries, the fix is apparently fairly easy: Just change your settings so that the country you've selected in your profile is one of the unaffected countries. Good ol' U.S. of A. works, as does Germaany, France, Israel or Turkey. If you're using Firefox, the EFF says you can force the use of HTTPS by default. Simply install the HTTPS Everywhere Firefox plug-in and you'll be good to go. [EFF via Boing Boing]



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SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) – Internet rights attorneys appealed a US judge's order that Twitter must hand over data of three users in contact with the controversial website WikiLeaks.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) challenged the March 3 ruling on behalf of Icelandic parliamentarian Birgitta Jonsdottir, one of the Twitter users targeted by the decision.

The EFF and ACLU want Magistrate Judge Theresa Buchanan's decision overturned and WikiLeaks investigators to reveal any similar requests for information from other Internet firms.

"Except in very rare circumstances, the government should not be permitted to obtain information about individuals' private Internet communications in secret," said ACLU staff attorney Aden Fine.

"If the ruling is allowed to stand, our client might never know how many other companies have been ordered to turn over information about her, and she may never be able to challenge the invasive requests."

Besides Jonsdottir, the Twitter accounts belong to US computer researcher Jacob Appelbaum and Rop Gonggrijp, a Dutch volunteer for WikiLeaks.

The government request for information from Twitter became public because the California-based microblogging service notified them, according to the EFF.

In her decision, Buchanan rejected arguments that the grab for Twitter information violated freedom of speech and privacy.

She said the three "already made their Twitter posts and associations publicly available" and voluntarily provided information to Twitter pursuant to the website's privacy policy.

Buchanan also dismissed the argument that the order violated the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution, which protects people against "unreasonable" searches.

When the trio relayed information to Twitter, they gave up "any reasonable expectation of privacy," she said.

"Services like Twitter have information that can be used to track us and link our communications across multiple services including Facebook and Gmail," said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn.

"The Magistrate's ruling that users have no ability to protect that information from the US government is especially troubling."

President Barack Obama's administration obtained a court order last year seeking information from the Twitter accounts as it considers action against WikiLeaks, which has released a flood of secret diplomatic documents.

WikiLeaks, which has strongly criticized the order, said that three Twitter users never worked for the site but that two helped make public a video that showed a 2007 US helicopter strike in Baghdad that killed several people.

The footage appeared to show the Apache pilots mistaking a camera carried by an employee of the Reuters news agency as a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

WikiLeaks has since angered US authorities by posting secret documents on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and releasing a slew of internal correspondence among US diplomats around the world.

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Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Generasi terbaru Apache Hadoop, implementasi piranti lunak yang memproses petabyte data, akan keluar tahun ini, kata seorang eksekutif Yahoo seperti dikutip IT News.com.

Papaioannou Todd, Wakil Presiden Arsitektur Yahoo kepada Computerworld minggu ini mengatakan perulangan Hadoop yang saat ini berlaku kurang mampu mengelola sumber daya ribuan server secara efektif dalam sebuah kluster.

Jadi pengembang sedang bekerja untuk meningkatkan penggunaan, penjadwalan dan pengelolaan sumber daya.

Misalnya, arsitektur baru itu akan mencakup ResourceManager global yang akan melacak ketersediaan server penjadwalan invarian ketika ApplicationMaster beroperasi dalam kluster dan melacak program semantik untuk pekerjaan tertentu, tulisa pengembang Yahoo Arun Murthy mdalam satu posting blog.

Menurut Papaioannou, saat ini Yahoo memberikan kontribusi sekitar 70% dari kode perulangan Hadoop dan Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS).

Awal tahun ini, Yahoo menghentikan distribusi Hadoop-nya sendiri dan mulai bekerja erat dengan komunitas Apache Hadoop karena dapat menarik komunitas open source untuk membantu pengembangan-pengembangan, kata Papaioannou.

Bersama Apache, Hadoop menggunakan iterasi MapReduce, suatu teknik pemrograman yang berasal dari Google, untuk membangun program-program paralel. Dengan menggunakan Hadoop, MapReduce memungkinkan melakukan pemrosesan data secara paralel.

"Generasi berikutnya HDFS akan lebih tangguh dan andal. Kami berharap akan menempatkannya bersama-sama dalam sebuah peluncuran beberapa waktu ke depan. Itu adalah uji kerja sama dengan seluruh komunitas pembangunan," kata Papaioannou.

Yahoo baru saja meluncurkan satu proyek baru yang disebut H Catalog yang adalah sebuah skema manajemen tabel metadata Hadoop.

"Itu akan membantu mengatasi sejumlah kasus berbeda-beda. Program ini baru saja makuk ke versi Apache minggu lalu." (*)
Adam

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Bandung (ANTARA News) - PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia segera meluncurkan Satelit Telkom-3 yang akan memperkuat jaringan dengan mengatasi saluran yang belum terjangkau jaringan teresterial serat optik.

"Satelit Telkom-3 dijadwalkan rampung sekaligus diluncurkan pada akhir 2011," kata Head of Coorporate Communication Telkom Eddy Kurnia dalam siaran persnya di Bandung, Kamis.

Proyek Satelit Telkom yang bernilai total 200 juta dolar AS tersebut saat ini tengah dibuat di pabrik satelit ISS-Reshetnev Rusia dengan subsistem komunikasi yang dibuat Thales Aleniaspace Prancis.

Satelit tu rencananya akan diluncurkan dengan peluncur Proton M-breeze.

Eddy Kurnia menyebutkan, Satelit Telkom-3 juga untuk meningkatkan kapasitas dan kualitas infrastruktur ICT dan memenuhi keperluan pemerintah dalam kaitan pertahanan dan keamanan, serta mendukung operasional perusahaan-perusahaan milik pemerintah.

Menurut Edi, sekarang ini terjadi peningkatan permintaan atas satelit komunikasi baik di Indonesia maupun di negara-negara tetangga lainnya di ASEAN.

"Permintaan terhadap transponder masih akan tumbuh. Saat ini lebih dari 160 transponder dimanfaatkan untuk GSM backhaul, jaringan data dan untuk penyiaran," katanya.

Sedangkan pasokan domestik yang dilakukan oleh Telkom hanya 101 transponder, permintaan saat ini masih tumbuh untuk keperluan penyiaran, 3G, "triple play" dan "Quardraple".

"Satelit Telkom-3 berkapasitas setara dengan 42 transponder," katanya.

Dari sisi cakupan geografis, Satelit Telkom-3 yang merupakan satelit pertama Indonesia yang dibeli dari Rusia itu mencakup Standart C-band (Indonesia dan ASEAN), Ext C-band (Indonesia dan Malaysia) serta Ku-Band (Indonesia).

Sebelumnya Telkom telah mengoperasikan Satelit Telkom-2 pada 12 November 2005 yang diluncurkan di ArianeSpace Kouroune, Guyana Prancis

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