From the second Norwegian men’s curling team hit the ice, they hit a chord on the people around the world and all eyes were set on the team’s funky, diamond-print, multi-colored argyle pants.
Norwegian curlers, from left, Haavard Vad Petersson, Thomas Ulsrud, Torger Nergaard, and Christoffer Svae at the Vancouver 2010 Olympics
Appreciation for the team’s bold uniform is now going viral on Facebook. A Facebook group dedicated to the pants, “The Norwegian Olympic Curling Team’s Pants“ had amassed almost 504,000 members.
Norway’s King Harald V reportedly visited the team this week and asked to be presented with a pair.
Apart from the many humorous post and links to videos posted on the group’s page, the page also features a link to buy the pants.
The team is not entirely famous because of their crazy pants. Norway has become a sensation at the Vancouver Games as much for its pants as its strong performance on the ice.
As a matter of fact, the guys with bold fashion statements are going for the gold tomorrow against the Canadian team. Will they be able pull this one off?
[Image source: The Age]
A Directive-Type Memorandum from the office of Deputy Secretary of Defense outlines the Pentagon’s new policies on use of social media like Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. The decision applies only to the military’s non-classified network.
This policy follows a seven-month review in which the Defense Department weighed the threats and benefits of allowing the wide use of emerging Internet capabilities.
This new directives will reverse the nearly three-year ban on access to bandwidth-heavy sites such as MySpace, YouTube and dozen other sites. The access to Prohibited content sites – those featuring gambling, pornography, hate-crime activities – will remain blocked.
The new directive allows commanders to cut off access - on a temporary basis – whenever required to safeguard a mission or reserve bandwidth for official use.
“We need to take advantage of these capabilities that are out there – this Web 2.0 phenomena,” said David M. Wennergren, deputy assistant secretary of defense for information technology. “The idea is be responsible and use these tools to help get the job done.”
[Source: Washington Post, Defense.gov ]
Facebook account is a mess at times. Newsfeed and notifications sort of spam your homepage and in the mist of all these, important notifications goes unnoticed at times and leaves you fuming or embarrassed.
Thankfully, Facebook is going to become a little more tidier and less annoying. Now your “notifications” on Facebook will be for things like comments left on your posts or Profile wall.
Facebook announced today that beginning next Monday, March1, 2010, they are not going to deliver application notifications anymore.
Developers and their apps will be required to use less intrusive methods of sending news to users.
Many developers will not be very happy about the decision as it will push them out of the user’s line of sight. Many developers tries to notify all users of anything, at any and all opportunities because those notifications drive traffic.
Facebook have recently given permission to ask app users for their email addresses, which can be use to email app notifications directly. Facebook also advises developers to make use of the recently added Applications and Games dashboards to share lightweight messages.
Nothing have been mention about any affect on the newsfeed.
Personally, i would like it better if Facebook does something about the newsfeed generated by apps. But at least, clearing off the clutters in the notification section is one headache less during my time spend on Facebook.
So, watch out for the changes to go into effect on Monday, and let us know about your views on this too.
Recently, we have come across various incidents of students being suspended because of many reasons relating to post on Facebook.
Now, according to Pocono Records, a professor at a northeastern Pennsylvania university says she’s been suspended indefinitely for what she though was a humorous posting on Facebook about hiring a hit man.
Gloria Gadsden, an East Stroudsburg University sociology professor, was put on paid leave indefinitely following a meeting with a dean and university administrators Wednesday afternoon.
“Does anyone know where i can find a very discrete hitman? Yes, it’s been that kind of day…,” wrote Ms Gadsden in a post.
In another comment, posted one month later, Gadsden wrote, “had a good day today, DIDN’T want to kill even one studen 
. Now Friday was a different story,” which she said she had removed.
Gadsden says officials referred to the shooting at the University of Alabam-huntsville earlier this month during the meeting.
Gadsden, who is black, claims the suspension had roots in a 2008 incident, when she published an essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education that was critical of what she saw as inadequate efforts to retain minority faculty on university campuses.
A university spokesman wouldn’t comment on Gadsden’s claims, calling it a personnel matter.
Facebook’s virtual currency, Facebook Credits, is almost on it way for a full launch.
Facebook explains in their developers blog that the long-term goal of Facebook Credits is to provide a currency that makes purchasing virtual items across applications fast and simple.
Facebook Credits supports various credit cards, fifteen currencies, mobile payments and now PayPal too.
Source:Facebook
According to the blog, “Today more than 500,000 applications exist on Facebook, and the virtual goods within those applications (particularly games) have become an increasingly valuable part of the user experience. By providing a single, cross-application currency, our goal is to making transactions simpler for users, leading to a higher conversion rate for developers. Specifically, our early testing has shown that users paying with Facebook Credits are significantly more likely to complete a purchase than the average Facebook user.”
Apart form the full launch of Facebook virtual currency, Facebook has publicly announced that it plans to take a full 30% of the revenues earned for goods sold via Facebook Credits.
Some developers are said to have denounce that as being too expensive, but Facebook assures developers in the blog post they are going to invest “heavily in the ecosystem” by educating users and marketing the currency, testing out incentive to get people to try the credits, and seeding Credits in a way to promote repeat engagement.
Though this sudden proposal of 30% cut from the developer’s revenue will be felt as a big hole in the pocket, as Facebook assures, providing a single, cross-application currency, and simpler transactions will drive users to repeated engagement of buying virtual goods. This will also help to erase users reluctance to do transactions with third-party currency providers. And by the way, Apple also happens to take the same percentage from App Store sales.
Making money from creating Facebook games is known to come from each miniscule sale of virtual items. However, earning from the sale of real goods is possible. In fact, Playfish has proven that this month of hearts.
It was reported that in just two weeks before Valentine’s Day, thousands of real flowers were sold through a game advertisement in Playfish’s Facebook Pet Society. According to EA’s Vice President for Business Development and Strategic Partnerships, Sebastien de Halleux, there was a 20% increase in Valentine’s flower sales compared to last year’s. In fact, the sale was so substantial that it matched the revenue from the sale of about 60 million virtual items during that two-week period.
The game, currently, has over 19 million monthly active users. Many of these people clicked the ad that directed them to a flower vendor’s website. After making a purchase, Pet Society then gave the player virtual money that can be used in the game. This little intangible thing was the incentive to purchase the flowers.
Virtual cash can be used to purchase virtual furniture, accessories, etc. Though these are items that the player can’t get hold of in real life, many are still patronizing it for the sake of improving their game play.
These virtual features may not be real but the satisfaction it gives players make the money spent worth it.
Playing games on Facebook is usually free. It is not a secret that Facebook game developers earn their profit from purchases of virtual goods and not through ads. But what if gamers do not wish to make any purchases? How can the developers get their income? Washington-based WildTangent answers that with BrandBoost.
This new advertising platform, called BrandBoost, had been developed from the concept of value exchange advertising. This means that for players to get something, they must do something in return. In this case, it allows players to access game features by watching advertisements.
If you think about it, this is a win-win situation for both gamers and brand owners. Why? BrandBoost offers players the opportunity to unlock game features and get virtual goods just by watching 30-second advertisements for a certain product or brand. For advertisers, new advertising platform paves a way for brand owners to gain entry, promote its products, and make its existence known to the fast-growing social gaming world.
Research has proven that advertising this way is effective. 95% of the gamers take advantage of this value exchange advertising. Additionally, more of these viewers are actually attentive to the ads when in exchange for game features.
Currently, WildTangent has a wide variety of advertisers. The company’s clients include 75 top advertisers like Kellogg’s, Kraft, Unilever, Wendy’s, Burger King, and Proctor and Gamble.
BrandBoost platforms are already being used by Massive Multiplayer Games such as Free Realms. This allows gamers to view ads in exchange for free one day trials, virtual goods, power boosts, locked weapons, and other premium items which are often bought with credit cards and Paypal. Soon, it will soon be making its entry to numerous games in the social networking giants, Facebook and My Space.
Facebook again went through a minor glitch on Wednesday. During a routine “code push,” or update, some Facebook users started receiving personal messages from other users that were not intended for them.
Several Facebook users complained on Twitter, that they were receiving dozens of private Facebook messages from people they didn’t know.
According to Facebook, it affected a small number of users and was promptly fixed. Affected users were blocked during the repair to limit the spread of private information.
A company spokeswoman wrote in an e-mail, “During our regular code push earlier yesterday evening, a bug caused some misrouting to a small number of users for a short period of time. Our engineers diagnosed the problem moments after it began and worked diligently to get everything back in its rightful place. While they fixed the issue, affected users were not able to access the site.
38-year old Paul Franco of New York allegedly hacked into his girlfriend’s Facebook account and demanded ransom to allow her to re-assume control of her profile.
Account owner Jessica Zamora-Anderson, 30, alleged that apart from the many changes he made to her personal information in the account, he changed her sexual preference to gay and accepted various requests for relationship with women.
According to the the New York Post, she said she met Franco on Facebook in November 2008 and claims to be repeatedly mistreated physically by Franco during their relationship.
She also told the source that she even after repeated attempts to end their relationship, she failed because of fears that Franco would release a sex tape of them that he claim to have made.
Franco didn’t received any cash from Anderson for hijacking the account, but was instead charged with coercion and harassment after his girlfriend went to the police.
Facebook is lately on an expansion spree, with the latest expansion being Austin. Facebook is expected to open a 200-staff office in Austin, Texas.
Facebook also opened an office in Hamburg, Germany, earlier this week.
According to the San Jose Business Journal, Facebook Inc. is expected to create around 200 jobs and is said to be investing about $3.1 million for setting up the operations in Texas.
“Facebook continues to grow and Austin, with its deep talent pool, would allow us to hire the high-caliber employees we need to properly serve the people, advertisers and developers that rely on our service,” Facebook Chief Operationg officer Sheryl Sandberg said.
Thanks to Gov. Rick Perry’s deal of investing $1.4 million for the Austin office through the Texas Enterprise Fund and a $200,000 economic development incentive proposal from the City of Austin.
