Mastodon servers are federated, similar to the way email is federated. While thousands of users hang out and talk about software development on Mastodon.technology, they can also follow and interact with cat lovers over on Toot.cat, the same way Gmail users can exchange messages with Outlook users. Continue reading Mastodon, the Twitter alternative, surpasses 2 million users
Abode revealed three critical vulnerabilities in the last week. The zero-day exploit, made public by the dump of Hacking Team’s data and email, was the most publicized but the company also disclosed another two issues that compromises the security of its users. This comes on the heels of many more security issues that involve the browser plug-in. Steve Jobs famously penned his reason as to … Continue reading Facebook Security Chief Says It’s Time to Kill Flash
While BlackBerry would like you to think everything’s fine and there’s nothing to see, the former smartphone powerhouse is attempting to stay relevant by embracing Google’s little green droid. Amazon’s Android Appstore apps currently run on the Canadian company’s devices, but it intends to take it a step further with the imminent release of an actual Android phone. The device was hinted at in March during … Continue reading Rumor: BlackBerry Prepping Android Phone for AT&T
When the iPhone originally launched, it didn’t come with Apple Music. It didn’t even come with a “Music” app. That was years later. Early adopters who can remember that far back will tell you that it came with an iPod app. Which makes sense. When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone in 2007, the anticipation building up to the event was that Apple put a phone … Continue reading Apple Music: What’s in a Name? A Whole Damn Lot
With Apple about to enter its space, Spotify is hunkering down and spending money to shore itself up with the purchase of Seed Scientific. With a client list that included Audi, Unilever, the UN and Beats (pre-Apple buyout, Seed Scientific is an analytics company that will delve into how bands, listeners and brands interact with Spotify — and only Spotify. Possible uses for the data include … Continue reading Streaming Heats Up: Spotify Buys Big Data Firm Seed Scientific
Taylor Swift’s highly publicized tumblr post accomplished something that’s happened a few times in Apple’s history — she made the company change course. You’ve probably heard about the Tweet storm by Apple’s Eddie Cue over the weekend, saying that the company will do the right thing when it comes to paying artists during Apple Music’s three month free trial — though this was something Apple should have … Continue reading Taylor Swift, Indies and the Cost of Streaming — Thinking about Apple Music’s Recent Reversal
In another life, Ben Barokas would have been the sort of smoking, drinking advertising man that sells slide machines on the back of nostalgia and popsicles by referencing Catholic imagery. But in the 21st century, Barokas wants to deliver ads to your computer screen. His problem isn’t punchy prose of teaching the world to sing — his problem is your ad blocker. Barokas solution? Sourcepoint, … Continue reading Who Blocks the Blockers? A Mad Man
With the recent federal government hack, online security’s taken center stage. At some romproint, someone may have suggested to you that a password manager is a good idea. However, LastPass, one of the most popular password managers, revealed that it is investigating “suspicious activity”. To be clear, this doesn’t mean that passwords were stolen — LastPass encrypts its users’ logins and passwords. But what was … Continue reading LastPass Prompting Users to Change Passwords Due to Hack
In a post on its developer blog, Twitter announced it’s doing away with its 140 character limit on direct messages. The change will take place in July. The change in policy is speculated to be prompted by increasing competition from Facebook, which beefed up its own messaging capabilities. Twitter’s added changes to its DM functionality by allowing group messaging as well as allowing any user to … Continue reading Twitter Wants to be Your New Messaging App
Apple’s unveiled the possibility that ad blockers would be coming to mobile Safari, iOS’ browser, keeping with their WWDC keynote theme of advocating for consumer privacy. While ad-blockers are now fixtures on the browsers of power users, they’re not as widely used on mobile device — and until this year’s WWDC, they were unheard of on iPhones and iPad that weren’t jail broken. The new … Continue reading New iOS Developer Guidelines Point to Ad Blockers on Apple’s iPhones and iPads
